The Secret Pearl (26 page)

“I have heard that very skilled hangmen can do their job in such a way that death is instantaneous and painless,” he said. “Unfortunately, not all are skilled.”

Her smile faded. “Thank you,” she said. “I have finally had my answer. I marry you, then, Matthew, or I hang. How long do I have to decide?”

But he had no chance to answer. The doors at the end of the long gallery opened to admit the Duke of Ridgeway.

“You are still here,” he said. “It is easy to lose track of time amid so many paintings, is it not? But my daughter’s governess needs her sleep, Brocklehurst. Perhaps you can continue the viewing some other time. You may return to your room, Miss Hamilton.”

But Matthew walked along the gallery with her so that all three of them soon stood in the doorway. And the duke looked assessingly at Matthew and held out his arm to her.

“I will escort you upstairs,” he said.

She placed her hand on his arm and did not look back to see what Matthew did. She removed her hand as soon as they had passed through the archway to the staircase. She ascended the stairs as close to the inside wall as possible.

He did not turn back at the top of the stairs as she had expected, but walked along the corridor to her room. And he set his hand on the doorknob. She watched it, the long-fingered, beautiful hand that she so feared.

“I’m sorry, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly.

“Sorry?” She raised her eyes to his face, dark, harsh, and angular in the dim light of the hallway.

“For all this,” he said. “For getting you from your bed. For allowing you to be made into a pawn. I will not let it happen again.”

She would not lower her eyes from his.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Or harass you in any way?”

“He is not the one who hurt me,” she said.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, and closed it again. He looked at her with set lips and tightly clenched jaw. And she wondered, too weary to feel instant terror, if he would open the door soon, usher her inside, and order her to remove her clothes again.

And she wondered if she would obey.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she watched in horror and fascination as his eyes dropped to her lips and his head drew closer.

He opened the door suddenly and motioned her inside.

“No!” She stood where she was and shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. Please, no. Ah, please, no.”

“My God!” He stepped into the doorway and took both her shoulders in a bruising grip. “What do you think of me? Did you think I intended to come inside with you? Did you imagine that I could apologize to you in one breath and seduce you with the next?”

She bit down on her lip and stared at him.

“Fleur.” His hands gentled. “Fleur, I did not take you against your will that one time. I would never take you against your will. And I would never again take you with your will, either. I am a married man who has had one lapse in fidelity in five and a half years of marriage. I will not have you afraid for your safety with me.”

She was drawing blood from the inside of her upper lip.

He looked into her face, into her tense, horror-filled eyes, made an impatient sound, and drew her into his arms. He held her hard against him until she stopped shuddering and sagged forward. And she turned her head and set it against his steadily beating heart, and closed her eyes.

“You must not fear for your safety with me.” His voice was low against her ear. Those fingers were stroking lightly over the back of her neck. “You are the very last person on this
earth whom I would want to hurt, Fleur. My God, tell me you no longer believe what you just believed.”

“I don’t.” She pushed wearily away from him. Had the day really been quite as long as it had seemed?

“Well, then.” He released his hold on her and took a step to one side, looking down at her uncertainly. “Good night.”

“Good night, your grace.”

She stepped inside her room and closed the door. She set her forehead against it and took several deep, steadying breaths. She had nothing to fear. He had been alone with her and could have taken her with ease. He could have muffled her screams so that even Mrs. Clement would not have heard. He had not taken her.

He would never do so against her will, he had said, or even with her will.

She had nothing to fear. Yet she could feel his arms straining her against his hard-muscled body. And she could feel his fingers against the back of her neck. She could hear his heart beating, and she could feel herself sagging against him, surrendering to his warmth and his strength. To the illusion of comfort.

She thought very deliberately about who he was and what he had done to her—about his powerful male body and his scars. About his hands.

And she felt fear. Fear because when he had finally touched her, she had forgotten her repulsion—as she had when she had waltzed with him and when she had ridden with him.

H
IS MASTER WAS IN A BAD MOOD AGAIN, PETER Houghton noticed as he entered his office the following morning—five minutes late, as ill fortune would have it. The duke was standing looking out of the window, his bearing military, one hand drumming a tattoo on the sill.

It must be true, then, what was being said belowstairs about her grace and Lord Thomas, though everyone knew that all was not right with his grace’s marriage anyway. And then, of course, there was that report about the duke’s ladybird strolling in the long gallery with Lord Brocklehurst after midnight the night before.

Though Houghton had wondered since his return to Willoughby Hall if the governess was after all his master’s ladybird. He liked the woman, despite a predisposition not to do so. She was always quietly courteous belowstairs and did not put on airs at Mrs. Laycock’s table, even though every word and gesture marked her as a lady born and bred.

“Where the devil have you been?” his grace said, confirming his secretary’s suspicions.

“Helping Mrs. Laycock with a small problem in balancing her housekeeping books, your grace,” he said.

“How would you welcome a holiday?” the duke asked.

Houghton looked at him suspiciously. Was he about to be
handed a permanent holiday? For being five minutes late at his desk?

“You are to go into Wiltshire for me,” the duke said. “To Heron House. I am not sure quite where it is. You will, no doubt, find out.”

“To Lord Brocklehurst’s, your grace?” His secretary frowned.

“The same,” his grace said. “I want whatever you can find out about an Isabella who lived there until quite recently.”

“Isabella?” Houghton looked inquiringly. “Last name, your grace?”

“Unknown,” the duke said. “And you are to be invisible and mute while finding the answers. Do you understand?”

“Just Isabella, your grace?” Houghton said. “Do you have no other description?”

“Let us say she looks remarkably like Miss Hamilton,” his grace said.

Peter Houghton stared at him.

“I can rely on your discretion, Houghton?” his grace asked. “You are going on a long-overdue and well-earned holiday?”

“To visit my cousin Tom,” his secretary said, his face impassive, “and his wife, whom I have not yet met. And their new son, to whom I am to be godfather.”

“I don’t need a family history,” the duke said curtly. “You had better leave today, Houghton, or you may miss the christening.”

“I am much obliged to you, your grace,” Houghton said as his master turned to stride from the room. “I will not forget this favor you have done me.”

“You will see about that other matter before you leave?” the duke said, looking back from the doorway. “I gave instructions that she was to go into Wollaston this morning.”

“It will be taken care of, your grace,” Houghton said briskly.

Well, he thought, the master must be far more discreet than her grace. There had not been a whisper of a scandal belowstairs about his relationship with the governess—the London
whore. Though of course there had been the grooms’ claim that the two of them had gone riding alone together for a whole hour the morning before—a claim that seemed to be borne out by the fact that he had been instructed to see that the governess was fitted out for a riding habit and boots.

So she was his ladybird after all. And his grace must be smitten indeed if he was about to pry into the poor girl’s past. She was living under a false name, was she?

But then, one could hardly blame his grace when the duchess was doing nothing to hide her preference for Lord Thomas.

T
HE MORNING WAS WET
. There was not even the chance of a brief stroll outside after her music practice, Fleur found with regret. And no chance that there would be another riding lesson for Lady Pamela.

But the regret she felt over that fact was tempered by memories of her ride the morning before and the way it had developed. And memories of the night before and of the terror that had led her to make a most embarrassing assumption. And the memory of his arms about her and his heart beating against her ear and the smell of his cologne.

She was glad after all that it was raining.

As she watched Lady Pamela print rows of letters and later told her a story from history while they both embroidered, she began to hope that perhaps his grace would not come to the schoolroom that morning. And she listened for him, every sound startling her.

They were examining the globe again when he came. But instead of taking a seat in one corner as he usually did after kissing his daughter and bidding them both a good morning, he stayed on his feet and handed Fleur a letter.

“It came this morning,” he said, “together with one for me in the same hand. You have my permission, Miss Hamilton, to
accept the invitation. And I do believe Houghton is waiting belowstairs in his office for you. Have you forgotten your errand for this morning?”

Fleur had not. But she had thought it very likely that he had forgotten, and had not liked to mention the matter to Mr. Houghton at breakfast.

“I will have a carriage brought around for you in half an hour’s time,” he said. “Pamela, you and I will play with Tiny for a while until it is time for me to join some of the gentlemen. This afternoon you may come with Mama and me to the rectory. Some of our guests wish to see the church. You may play with the children while we do so.”

“Ye-es.” Lady Pamela jumped up and down on the spot.

“Come along, then,” he said, reaching out a hand for hers. “Good day to you, Miss Hamilton.”

Mr. Chamberlain was inviting her to join him and his sister and Sir Cecil Hayward for dinner and a visit to the theater in Wollaston that evening. A traveling company of players was to appear there.

She folded the paper and lifted it to her mouth. And she felt an enormous regret for the life that might have been hers at Willoughby. She had work that she was beginning to find quite pleasant, enough social life to keep her active and interested, and the friendship of an attractive gentleman to make her feel like a woman.

She could never have taken that relationship beyond friendship, of course. She had known that and accepted it. She had not asked for much—merely life as it had been for the first two weeks after her arrival.

If only the Duke of Ridgeway had stayed away from home. And if only Matthew had not tracked her there.

The carriage was to be waiting for her in half an hour’s time, his grace had said. She hurried to her room to get ready and to pen an acceptance of her invitation.

Peter Houghton gave her a letter to present at Wollaston so
that the bills for her riding clothes could be sent to the house. He also paid her her first month’s salary, though she had not been there for quite a month, explaining that he was to leave within the hour for the christening of his cousin’s son and might not be back for a week or more.

Fleur enjoyed the next few hours. After her experiences of just a couple of months ago, it was a delightful feeling to be dressed respectably, to ride in a smart carriage, to be treated with deference because the carriage bore the crest of the Duke of Ridgeway, to have a little money to spend on silk stockings, which strictly speaking she did not need, to choose rich velvet fabric for a riding habit and soft leather for boots.

And returning to Willoughby Hall felt like coming home again, she thought later, despite the rain and the heavy clouds. The carriage rumbled over the bridge and she turned her eyes to the house and felt a great churning of love for it. And a great sadness that it would not be her home for much longer.

She smiled at the coachman as he helped her down from the carriage, and would have hurried through the doors to the servants’ quarters beneath the horseshoe steps if someone had not hailed her by name. Matthew was hurrying from the direction of the stables.

“I came upstairs after luncheon to visit you,” he said as the carriage drew away again. “The child’s nurse told me you had gone into Wollaston. Alone, Isabella? Why did you not let me know? I would have come with you.”

She stood in the rain and looked at him.

“I shall be leaving on this infernal visit to a Norman church soon,” he said. “But I must see you this evening. Where? Your room? Or downstairs somewhere?”