The Secret Pearl (14 page)

His indolent, almost effeminate manner and graceful person and permanently sleepy eyes were apparently irresistible to the ladies. And Sybil was already sparkling up at him, one slim white hand on his arm. Where the devil had she met him? But of course she sometimes took herself off on visits without him—she never asked, and he never resented not being asked. Most recently she had spent two weeks at her sister’s, apparently in company with other select guests.

The duke sighed inwardly. He hoped he was not going to have to go through that ridiculous farce again of playing the icy husband guarding his conjugal rights. It was so very tedious—and not a little humiliating. And of course it forever enhanced her image of him as humorless tyrant. Perhaps he was just that. He was coming almost to believe it himself.

When could he decently escape? he wondered. And where could he escape to? The lessons abovestairs were doubtless finished for the day. He was glad at least that Miss Hamilton had done her practicing early that morning, when he had been able to listen to her at his leisure. He had opened the door between the library and the music room and sat at his desk and listened. But he had made sure that she saw him. He did not wish to give the impression that he was spying on her.

She really did have talent. Music that he had only ever been able to produce with competence she brought alive and warm and flowing. The hour he had spent listening to her had soothed him far more than the ride he had planned.

He had not entered the room at all, or stood in the doorway to watch her. He would have had to be blind not to have noticed the deep revulsion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. But it did not matter. He was not looking for any sort of relationship with her. He merely hoped she would be good for Pamela. And he liked her music.

“Adam, my dear man.” The voice was low, the perfume seductive. Lady Victoria Underwood, widow, who had decided during the Season the year before that they were close enough friends that they could drop the cumbersome formality of using titles, smiled up at him from beneath artfully darkened eyelashes. “What a very splendid home you have. Why have you not invited me here before?”

She was leaning slightly toward him. For some reason she had never found his scar repulsive.

“It makes you quite the most attractive man of my acquaintance,”
she said to him the year before on one of the many nights when she had failed to entice him into her bed.

He often wondered why he had never given in. She was not beautiful, but there was a seductive sexuality about her. Coupling with her would have been a somewhat more sensual experience than the one he had had with Fleur Hamilton.

But he wished he had not had that thought. He had been unconsciously trying to divorce in his mind the Miss Hamilton who wanted to teach and care for Pamela and who made of Mozart and Beethoven haunting experiences of the soul from the thin and pale and lusterless prostitute he had taken with such quick lust in a cheap tavern room a month before.

“I thought you did not like to leave London, Lady Underwood,” he said, smiling.

“Victoria,” she said, looking down to his lips. “I believe I would accept an invitation to the Hebrides, my dear Adam, if I knew you were to be there.”

“I never would be,” he said. “It sounds too cold for me.”

“But what a delicious excuse,” she said, “to huddle under a blanket for warmth—with the right company, of course.”

He laughed and used the excuse of a plate of cakes passing at that moment to draw the Mayberrys into the group.

He could stomach the flirtations and the empty chatter when in London. He could even derive some amusement from them, though he preferred evenings of serious and stimulating conversation with his closer friends. But there he could always withdraw to the quiet of his own home when he had had enough. Here he was in his own home.

That was always the trouble with Sybil’s confounded parties.

Fortunately the guests did not linger. Almost all of them had had long journeys and welcomed the chance of some time to rest and refresh themselves in the privacy of their own rooms. The duchess, too, flushed and bright-eyed, retired to her own apartments until dinnertime.

The duke wandered out onto the terrace. He wondered if Pamela was visiting her puppy and heard a distant shriek of laughter even as he did so. He turned and strolled in the direction of the stables, wondering idly if Fleur Hamilton would be there too or if Pamela had brought a footman with her as she had the day before. He did not imagine that Nanny would consider a visit to the stables and a puppy consistent with her dignity.

Pamela was sitting on top of the fence around the paddock beside the stables, her legs swinging, while Fleur, inside the paddock, tickled the puppy’s stomach with her slippered foot. She was laughing, a look of such carefree beauty on her face that his grace hung back, reluctant to be seen.

A groom—Ned Driscoll—was also laughing, one foot resting on a lower rung of the fence, his arms draped over the top, his cap pulled low over his eyes.

“I think the puppy likes it,” Fleur said.

“But then, who wouldn’t, miss,” Ned said boldly a moment before spotting his master standing quietly behind him. He straightened up hastily, pulled at the brim of his cap, and scuttled off in the direction of the stables.

Fleur did not look up, and continued to tickle the dog with her toes. But the laughter in her face faded. His grace knew with an inward sigh that his presence had been noted.

“Papa.” Pamela looked at him petulantly, her laughter of moments before forgotten. “Mama promised that she would call me down for tea. Nanny got me all dressed up, but Mama did not send, and Miss Hamilton would not let me go down unless she did.”

The duke looked at Fleur, who was watching the puppy try to eat the grass.

“She was not sent for,” she said. “I explained to her that all the guests must be tired and that her grace must have decided to wait for another day. I brought her out here, hoping she would forget her disappointment.”

“But she promised, Papa,” the child said. “And Miss Hamilton would not let me go. Nanny would have let me.”

“I think not,” he said. “And doubtless Miss Hamilton is right. Mama must have decided that some other day will be better, Pamela. I will remind her.”

“You are horrid,” the child shrieked. “You are both horrid. Mama said I could. I am going to tell Mama.”

She jumped from the top of the fence to the outside of the paddock, gathered up her skirt, and raced around the corner of the stable block and out of sight.

“I’ll catch up to her,” Fleur said.

“Let her go,” he said. “She will come to no harm, and sometimes it is best to be alone when in the middle of a temper tantrum.”

The gate into the paddock was chained shut. Fleur must have entered it over the fence. He saw her flush as she glanced toward the gate. She arranged her skirt carefully as she set a foot on the lower rung of the fence and swung the other leg over. He kept his hands behind him. He knew she would not welcome his help.

But her skirt caught on the rough wood of the rung below and behind her, and she was stuck. He strode toward her, leaned over to release the fabric, took her by the waist, and lifted her to the ground.

He did not remember her sweet fragrance from that first time. But then, of course, she would have had only water with which to wash herself and her hair at that time. The sun made a shining burnished-gold halo of her hair now. And there was soft warm flesh at her small waist.

She shuddered convulsively and pulled blindly away from him. She made a guttural noise in her throat, similar to the one he remembered her making when he had penetrated her body. She lifted a trembling hand across her mouth and kept it there. She closed her eyes.

He could think of nothing to say and could not move.

She opened her eyes and removed the hand. She opened her mouth as if to speak, bit down on her lower lip, and turned her head aside. And she stooped hastily down to scoop up the puppy, which had come scampering through the bottom of the fence.

“I must take her back to her pen,” she said.

“Yes.”

He stood aside and watched her go, her golden head bent to the puppy, her walk hasty and self-conscious. And he felt a great weight of depression on his spirits.

But why? A governess—a whore turned governess—shuddered and almost vomited at his touch. There was a lady guest at the house—a baronet’s widow—who would welcome his touch and even his presence in her bed, a woman who found his disfigurement arousing and who would perhaps not even blanch if he came to her naked and she saw the other, far worse scars.

What was there to be depressed about? Perhaps he should encourage Lady Underwood. Perhaps she would be a balm to his wounded self-esteem. Perhaps he should make her his mistress for the duration of her stay, have his fill of a woman who wanted him.

Except that by doing so he would be accomplishing exactly what he had come home to prevent Sybil from doing, making of Willoughby a place of debauchery, making himself unworthy of the privilege of being the master of it all.

He was still standing against the fence when Fleur came out of the stables, her arms empty. She glanced his way, turned her head sharply, and hurried off in the direction of the house.

Well.

What the devil had he been thinking of to send her here? It was true that at the time he had not been planning to follow so soon after, but even so, he had known that sooner or later he would be returning to Willoughby. He could never stay away for more than a very few months at a time.

Why had he had her sent here? There were numerous other places he could have sent her. Or he could easily have found her a post with one of his acquaintances. In either case he need not have seen her ever again.

Why had he had Houghton send her here?

Of course, it was not too late, he supposed, to have her sent on somewhere else. Sybil would be delighted; Nanny would be triumphant; Pamela would not be heartbroken; Fleur herself would be relieved beyond measure.

And he?

He turned to walk away from the house toward a grove of trees and the artificial ruins of a tower, which his grandfather had been particularly pleased with. He would think about it some other time. He had been home for only three days. It was no time for hasty decisions.

He rather thought that she would in time prove good for Pamela.

Besides, she needed the pianoforte in the music room. He did not have an instrument to match it on any of his other properties.

The thought consoled him.

The gardeners would need to be reminded, he thought, that there was much deadwood to be cleared out from among these trees.

A
PART FROM A STROLL IN THE PARK THE DAY after their arrival, the guests did not exert themselves a great deal. All was in preparation for the grand outdoor ball that evening. It seemed certain that the event would take place out-of-doors. The long spell of warm, dry weather continued through the day.

Servants were frantically busy from early morning on, catering to the needs and wishes of sixteen newly arrived guests, preparing a grand banquet for them in the evening, decorating the area about the lake for the festivities, and preparing the refreshments for those who would attend the ball.

Lady Pamela was bouncing with eagerness to watch the proceedings and was convinced that her mama would allow her to see all the ladies in their evening finery. Fleur was less convinced. The duchess did not come to see her daughter all day, and it seemed altogether likely that she would forget her entirely until the following day.

She would do what she could to give the child some pleasure, she decided. After a morning of easy lessons, which did not require too much concentration on her pupil’s part, she took her outside, and they made their way to the spot from which they had been going to paint the pavilion a few days before.

From there they could watch the preparations without getting in the way of busy workmen.

“Oh, the lanterns!” Lady Pamela exclaimed in some awe, gazing at the hundreds of colored lanterns that were being strung in the trees surrounding the lake and on the island and main paths leading from the house. “They will look like magic tonight, Miss Hamilton.”

The orchestra had arrived and were resting and refreshing themselves somewhere in the house. Their instruments were being taken across to the island by boat. On a flat lawn to the west of the lake, closest to the house, a large wooden floor was being laid for the dancing. Tables were being set with white cloths on the north side, directly below where Fleur stood with Lady Pamela.

All the gentry from the neighborhood and the town of Wollaston would come for the ball, Mrs. Laycock had told Fleur. And all the servants would be allowed to attend, provided they were not on duty.

There had been some hunt balls at Heron House. Fleur had always enjoyed them. There was something marvelously exciting about dressing up and seeing all one’s acquaintances dressed up too, and in seeing a ballroom decorated with flowers and candles and in hearing it filled with music. There was a wonderful exhilaration in dancing.