Trust Me (35 page)

She looked up. Sebastian walked
into the chamber. She reached out a hand to him and he hurried to her and took
it. “Anne, what ever is the matter? You called for me so early. I didn’t know
what to think.”

His voice was calm but his eyes
shone brightly with emotion.

She stared at him dumbly, her
mind refusing to bend to her command.

Her body seemed frozen. She
couldn’t do this.

He squeezed her hand.

At the simple touch, she startled
into the moment. She let her eyes move over his face. His expression was so
gentle, his eyes so kind.

“Anne, no matter what it is, you
may trust in me.”

Thank God for his friendship, as
who else could she have turned to?

And she must do this.

There was no way out for her.

No quarter.

No mercy.

She must press ahead and walk
through the fire until the whole matter was done. For Jon’s sake.

“I-I—” she took a quavering
breath. “I need to leave my husband.”

His hand went rigid, gripping
hers a little too tightly. He flushed, slightly. And his nostrils flared.

Alarm flared into her heart. Oh
God. She was playing with fire.

“Please, it is no great matter—it
is my own pride, my jealousy.”

“He has another interest.”
       

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Good God, you’ve only just wed.
Couldn’t he restrain himself until—”

“He had interests before he met
me.”

“Yes, I suppose he would have.”

“Please, I don’t want to—”

“Yes, of course.” Sebastian’s
expression eased.

“If I could just return home to
Marshwray Place, just for a while.”

Marshwray Place had never been
her home. It had been Papa’s estate. The place where he and Mama spent hunting
season. Whilst Anne had lived in Ireland.

“Yes, you are always welcome to
Marshwray Place.”

“There will be talk, scandal.”

“It is your childhood home. And I
am your only living relative. Where else would you seek sanctuary?”

“Sebastian.”

“Yes, Anne?”

“You must promise me that no
matter what comes to pass, you will make certain that I retain the liberty to
eventually go live on my estate in Ireland.”

“Ireland?”

“Just please promise me.”

He fell quiet for a moment and
simply studied her.

“Please, Sebastian, promise me.”
She couldn’t keep the stridence from her voice.

“I shall always protect you,
Anne.”

A small measure of relief washed
over her. He was her only living male blood relation. Of course he would
protect her. She gave him a thin smile. “I am eternally grateful.”

“You needn’t be. You knew I would
help you.”

****

“I did talk with Rebecca
Howland.”

Jon’s bluntly-stated words
settled on Anne and left her bemused.

She had expected more of a fight,
a denial. The cold, heavy lump that had lain in her heart all day grew
weightier. “Oh, you don’t deny it then?”

“She came to me as I was leaving
the tailor. It was storming out. I invited her into my carriage and we talked.”

“You talked?”

“Her son had been expelled from
school.”

“Her son?” Anne’s throat went
tight. “
Your
son?”

“Not my son. Her husband’s son. I
told you that I have no children. I didn’t lie.”

“She must come running to you for
help with another man’s child?”

“I promised Donald Howland, as he
lay dying, that I would watch over his son and make sure he was educated.”

“Yes, you had to promise, seeing
as you’d been making a cuckold of him for years.”

“Anne, you don’t understand the
situation. I have tried to explain it to you. But you refuse to see it in any
other way than through the veil of your own emotional thinking.”

Anne’s mouth gaped and she put a
hand to her collarbone. “My
emotional
thinking?”

“I had to help her, Anne. Edwin
is sixteen and not much of a scholar or a solider or… or anything. He has been
a difficult child for her to cope with.”

She stared at him for several
moments. “I can’t believe you are just admitting to having seen your mistress
in private.”

“I didn’t lay with her, Anne.”

“You said nothing to me about
this. Nothing.” How much of this was pretend outrage and how much genuine, she
didn’t know. “If you had nothing to hide, then you would have hidden nothing.”

“Things were difficult between us
that night. And it was a minor thing. A little unravelling on a thread of my
life from before you.”

“I don’t believe you.” She folded
her arms over her chest. “Neither you nor she had any respect for her marriage
or her husband. Why would it be any different with us?”

“Because it was as I told you.
Her husband had long ceased to be a husband to her, in any sense of the word
except that she still bore his name.”

“So they had some difficulties.
It couldn’t have helped that she had someone convenient to turn to for solace.
Surely, if you had left her alone they could have solved their problems. She
would have been forced to turn to her husband.”

“He had long since been destroyed
as a person.”

“What does that mean, ‘destroyed
as a person’?”

“The war had unhinged his mind.
Turned him from a brave person into one filled with anxieties and—” He seemed
to catch himself. “He turned to drinking heavily. All the time.”

“Oh, I see. Well, then now you
and Mrs Howland will have so much more in common. Both knowing what it is like
to be burdened with a mad spouse.”

He held up a hand. “Anne, it is
not like that. Not at all. It was the drink that did him the most damage. It
took away his ability to reason clearly. He could no longer cope with life.
They made him a groom. Took away his rank. And the shame of being knocked down
like that, he never got over it. He could be a very vicious person when in his
cups and feeling sorry for himself. He was drunk at Badajoz and he was
confused. He wandered somewhere he should not have been and got himself
killed.”

“But it was the fear he suffered that
first led him to drink excessively.”

“Yes. But Anne, I mean he drank
excessively
,
all day, all night. It was killing him slowly. He was becoming very ill. What
happened at Badajoz was a mercy to him.”

“Why would they not simply expel
him from the Dragoons?”

“Because of his family
connections. Because he’d been a brave, honourable, likable man until the drink
took hold of him. People made excuses for him, looked the other way.”

She could tell from his tone that
he had been one of those who had made excuses for this man’s behaviour.

He felt sorry enough for you to
make you his countess.

Maria Waterbury’s words echoed in
her mind.

It was true. For all his fierce
exterior, Jon was soft-hearted at his core.

“I see,” she said, stiffly.

“No, don’t do that Anne, it was
not at all like with you. He gave up. He didn’t fight his demons.”

Well, she certainly could feel
empathy for this man. She couldn’t fight her demons anymore either. She had
tried to fight them but they proved too strong.

They had won.

She took a deep breath and
returned to the original matter. Returned to her charade of being the jealous,
outraged wife. “I don’t believe that you didn’t bed with her.”

He came closer. His vivid blue
eyes stared into hers. His gaze was utterly open. She fancied she could see
right down into his soul.

And she believed him.

He had not been unfaithful.

Oh, this was
hard
.

So very hard.

She put her hands behind her
back, where he wouldn’t see, and dug her nails into her palms.

Because she loved him, she must
hurt him. It would hurt him far less to make a break now, in the early days of
their marriage. It would hurt less than a lifetime spent tied to a woman who
had descended into madness.

No, she wouldn’t do that to him.

She must make him so angry, so
hurt in his pride, that he would gladly cast her aside, once given the means to
do so.

She reached behind her neck and
touched the fastenings of her necklace.

His eyes widened. “Anne—” he held
up a forestalling hand “—don’t do anything rash. We can discuss—”

“No, I have thought it all
through. It is too late for talking.”

“Anne—”

“Talk can’t help us. We were
ill-suited from the start.”

The line between his eyes
deepened. “Who told you all this about me and Rebecca.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was
strained. The clasp was proving difficult. Or her fingers were failing her.

Oh damn, damn it all!

She grasped the
sapphire pendant and gave it a strong tug. The chain dug into her flesh but the
clasp refused to break.

He scowled. “If you
want to remove it that badly, then come here.”

On shaking legs, she
closed the distance between them.

He reached behind her
neck and his fingers brushed her nape, briefly. He pulled away, holding the
chain. The sapphire pendant dangled and caught sparks of blue fire from the
light.

The chamber seemed to
tilt and spin.

It was not real.

It couldn’t be
happening.

This was all a
nightmare. She willed herself to wake up, in bed, in his arms, in Scotland. All
of this time in London just a terrible dream—

“You wish to go home,
to Blackmore Castle then?”

Oh, his eyes. All
hot, burning with emotion. She had never seen such a look in anyone’s gaze.

Inside, she quailed.
But she shoved the little tremor of cowardice down. “No, I do not wish to go
home to Blackmore Castle. It is not my home.”

“It is your home.”

She shook her head,
the motion made her feel slightly ill. “No, it can never be my home. I couldn’t
feel comfortable there.”

His look hardened.
“You will not go to Ireland. Not now. Not alone like this.”

His firm, absolute
tone made her weaken and crumble inside. No, she didn’t wish to go anywhere
alone. She wanted only to throw herself into his arms and have him caress her
back and assure her that everything would work out. That he would be there to
protect her from the mysterious, internal demons that tormented her.

She couldn’t.

She had no right to
lean on him. To use him like that when she had nothing to offer him but years
and years of one-sided dependency upon his strength.

She must pretend
strength now, while she still could. She straightened her spine. “You no longer
have any cause or right to dictate to me.”

His eyes flashed. “I
have every right, Anne. I am still your legal husband and I will be until death
parts us.”

“I am going to
Marshwray Place.”

He stared at her and
blinked several times. Her answer had taken him by surprise.

“You’re going to
Saxby?”

“Yes, Sebastian says
he will help me.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Jon!”

“You must have
realized this. I swear, if Saxby dares to come and take you away, I will kill
him.”

Her heart pounded and
her mouth went completely dry. Of course, she had realized this. She was mad,
not stupid. But now she must gamble everything on the strength of Jon’s feeling
for her. “If you touch a hair upon his head, if you cause him the least harm, I
shall hate you forever.”

Chapter Thirteen

Anne stood so straight and proud.
Her arms folded over her chest, her dark blue eyes flashing with determination.
Her words echoed in his ears. The resonance of her feeling for Saxby, her
protectiveness of the younger man, stunned him.

He had thought this was simply a
matter of jealousy, hurt and anger.

Now it appeared to be something
very different.

Anne loved Saxby?

It didn’t seem possible.

But she certainly gave every sign
of it.

And such was the fickleness of
women. He had known this. He had been determined to never be such a fool for
love as his father had been. And yet, he’d been caught unawares by this
beautiful woman who had seemed so different from everyone else in his life.

This woman who had wanted so much
from him. Who had, with her slumbering, sultry glances, silently demanded so
much from him.

And believed in his ability to
deliver all her dreams to her on a silver tray.

“Anne, you can’t simply walk out
of here and run to your lover. I won’t allow it.”

“Yet, you may have your
mistress.”

“I don’t have a mistress. I
didn’t touch her.”

“If you had nothing to hide, then
you wouldn’t have hidden the meeting from me. People who are honest do not hide
their deeds.”

“And what of your secrets, my
Lady Ruel?”

Her eyes grew wide and the colour
flushed from her face, leaving her appearing sallow. She threw a hand up to her
collarbone and stepped several paces back. “W-what secrets?”

“Your secret fortune.”

Her nostrils flared, slightly.
She blinked.

“Don’t bother denying it, Anne. I
spent a ridiculous amount of money to discover the veracity of it.”

She clapped a hand to her mouth
and turned away from him.

“Anne?”

Her shoulders sagged and she
walked slowly to the window. There she stood, just looking down at the street.
“I suppose you will want an accounting.”

“I don’t care about the money. I
want to know why you would withhold this information from me.”

“Oh, Jon…” Her voice resounded
with sorrow.

“You haven’t trusted me at all.”

“You don’t understand.” Her tone was
miserable.

“I understand perfectly. You do
not trust me.”

“I did not intend to hurt you
with this.”

“Yes, of course. You didn’t
intend for me to ever know.”

“That money does not belong to
me.”

“Doesn’t belong to you? Anne, it
is in an account, in your name.”

“No, no. My mother’s father
entrusted that to me. He wanted me to protect it, to be able to use it for my
mother should the need ever arise.” She turned to face him. Her eyes were
glossy with unshed tears. “He visited me at Whitecross Hall, a year before he
died. He made me promise all of this. He made me swear I would never tell
anyone.”

For the space of a moment, Jon
felt like a coxcomb. Then anger swept through him. “So you didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t tell you! I promised
not to tell.”

“I am your husband, I am your
lord. You should have no secrets from me.”

Her tears spilled over, falling
on to her cheeks. Making her eyes sparkle like the sapphire pendant he still
held. She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself. She looked lost,
girlish, vulnerable.

He steeled himself. He would not
soften. He would not weaken to her.

“Oh, oh, I see, my lord. You may
have your secret meetings with your mistress. She may suck your cock in your
carriage—but
I
may not keep a solemn
vow to a relative for the sake of my mother.”

Frustration boiled over in his
blood. “I did not touch her!”

She gazed back at him, calmly
now. “You certainly sound guilty to me.”

His anger flared hotter than
ever. No, he must regain control over himself. He turned away from her and went
to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of Scotch. But his hand was
trembling from the emotions that continued to seethe inside himself. He
couldn’t raise the glass without the liquor sloshing over the rim.

Her bloody knotty-headedness!

God, how did one reason with such
a woman? He didn’t know how. He’d tried, again and again. Well, there was one
thing he
could
do and by damn, it would give him the greatest
satisfaction of his life.

He turned back to her and smiled
coolly.

“I’ll kill Saxby.”

“You will not.”

“Do not doubt it, my lady. I
shall call him out and I will not fail to render a mortal wound.”

Her honey-coloured skin had
turned almost the colour of aged parchment. “If you do, I swear, I shall hate
you.” Her look hardened, her eyes turned to blue ice. “Forever.”

The vehemence in her tone chilled
him.

He staggered back, gaping at her.
He couldn’t bear for her to hate him. She had rendered him powerless.

Powerless.

His hand tightened about his glass
and he threw it into the hearth. The Scotch made the flames flare.

Her sharp cry of alarm echoed in
his ears.

He whirled on her. “You love him
that much?” Uttering these words, he felt as though he’d
 
torn them from himself, tearing with them
his very flesh.

She stood her ground and took on
a superior look. A look like he’d never seen on her face. It was the face of a
duke’s daughter for certain. “I do think the two of us are eminently better
suited than you and I.”

“He can be nothing to you.
Nothing. I will never divorce you and I have no intention of dying until I am
very, very old.”

****

In the carriage, Anne leant her
head back against the seat and released her breath, slow and long. Yesterday
morning, it had taken everything she had to act convincingly during that
terrible scene with Jon.

Now she had decided to leave,
before he returned from Parliament.

The door came open. Cool air
rushed over her face. She opened her eyes, slowly, and turned to the light.

Sebastian leaned in. “I am sorry,
Anne.” He spoke before she could greet him.

She frowned in confusion. “What?”

“I can’t travel with you today.”

She froze. Surely, she’d heard
him wrong. “But you promised.”

He held up his hands, a gesture
of apology. “Some unexpected business came up.”

“But Sebastian—”

“Please, Anne, you must
understand.”

She couldn’t speak. She was so
afraid of what she might do—of how she might behave during the journey to
Marshwray, if her madness should return.

He touched her knuckles. “Don’t
be so overset.”

She looked down and saw that she
was gripping the seat’s edge.

“You will be all right, Anne. You
will have your abigail. She is very loyal to you.”

He said this as though he had
some special knowing that Anne wasn’t privy to.

“I know she is loyal but—”

“And she seems quite capable.”

What else should Anne have
expected from a duke of Saxby?

They would always put their own
interests first.

Oh, how uncharitable
of her! Saxby was trying to help her. “I understand, Sebastian.”

He patted her hand. “I shall arrive
at Marshwray on Saturday. You may depend upon it.”

****

Anne had expected to feel nothing
but miles and miles of sheer panic in the travelling carriage. But even the
rain, softly pattering the windows, couldn’t faze her.

She had slept the
entire morning’s journey. Deeply and without dreaming.

“My lady.” Nellie
spoke in that slightly chiding tone. A tone only a long-time family retainer
would dare use.

Anne opened one eye.
“Yes, Nellie?”

“You should not have
eaten that second serving of pork pie.”

Anne lifted a hand
and waved her off. “Hush, Nellie.”

“Look at you now, you
can barely hold your head up. If you keep eating like that—”

“Hush,” Anne
repeated, more irritably now. She’d been ravenous by the time they had stopped
for their noon meal and simply couldn’t help herself. She’d devoured the pie
despite the slightly rancid, off taste of coaching inn food.

Now she was so tired.

She just wanted to
close her eyes. Her body was so drained of energy, she felt she might die if
she didn’t catch some more sleep.

Just a little more.

Nellie frowned. “My
lady, should you not have come upon your courses by now?”

Drowsily, Anne tried
to recall her last show of blood. “Oh, yes, I suppose I should have.” Wasn’t
that the oddest thing? She had forgotten she was even due. “I think the madness
has chased them away. Just like it did right after Lord Cranfield… well, you
know, the accident.”

“Yes, I do remember.
You missed them a couple of months. Heavens, how alarmed the new Lord and Lady
Cranfield were, fearing you carried an heir.”

Anne laughed softly.
It was spiteful of her but she couldn’t help picturing Francesca, trying so
hard to seem concerned for Anne’s welfare whilst in fact terrified that she’d
be ousted from her new position by an infant.

“It was an impossibility,
you know.” She had used preventatives even that last time with William.

“But you told them—”

Anne laughed again.

“Oh there’s that
wicked laugh again. Sometimes I do not know you, my lady.”

“Nellie, I wasn’t laughing
then. I was afraid. I didn’t want to be pushed out of Whitecross. It was my
home. It was the only place I’d ever felt I had any
place
in.”

“I don’t understand
what you mean when you speak like that. You were Lady Anne Seymour. You always
had a place. A very grand place.”

Jon had understood
her when she spoke like that. He’d been the only person to ever have listened
to her and truly
heard
her. And to have answered.

But Jon was no longer
hers.

A mad woman had no
right to accept any man’s love.

“I wish I understood
you. I want to be a help to you.”

“It is all right,
Nellie.” Anne closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax.

Every mile put
between them and London seemed to relax her even more.

Anne suspected she
was just a woman who was unsuited for the strains of marriage and Society.

How could she have
not known herself? Why had she allowed Jon to draw her into a marriage that
could never work? She had been selfish, plain and simple.

She would never make
that mistake again.

She would keep to
herself and ask nothing from anyone, except for servants, who were paid to be
useful to her. All the remaining days of her life would be spent in solitude.

****

The lips upon hers kissed her so
fiercely.

Just as he had always kissed her.

God, but it was wonderful to be a
woman and young enough to still enjoy it. To still
feel
it.

Rebecca Howland went limp and
allowed herself to be tilted backwards.

His large, strong
hands gripped her shoulders and she gloried in his power.

Then, she felt
herself pulled back up and pushed away.

She opened her eyes.

He stood several
paces apart from her. His blue eyes burned with some emotion. Anger…
frustration?

“I can’t do this.”

His words were not
harshly said but they crashed over her like icy water.

She closed the distance
between them and dropped to her knees and pressed her cheek against his thigh,
rubbing against the fine velveteen nap of his trousers.

“Jon, Jon, please let
me please you.” She reached up and ran her hand over his erection.

The rigid, swelling
heat strained against her touch. God, his cock was so huge, so magnificent.
She’d never known its like. And she missed it. Missed it so badly. She’d do
anything
if only he would honour her by demanding her service.

He said nothing. He
did nothing.

She glanced up.

His face was blank,
his eyes distant.

“Jon?”

He looked down, his
eyes widening as though with surprise.

“Come.” He placed his
hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away.