Candice Hern (58 page)

"Where is my mother, Grimes?" he asked as he removed his greatcoat and hat and handed them to the butler.

"I believe she is in her sitting room, my lord."

"Tell her of my arrival, if you would, Grimes. I will see her after I have had a bath and change of clothes. She would not appreciate receiving me in all my dirt."

"Yes, my lord."

Jack made his way to his rooms, where Jessop had already put things in order. He had sent Jessop ahead several days before, in order to finish preparations for the use of Pemworth's sheltered cove to receive the first shipment of smuggled goods. If all went according to plan, Jack was in line to make a tidy profit, which he desperately needed. His luck at the tables lately had been almost all bad.

Jessop appeared in the doorway, carrying Jack's portmanteau.

"Is this all you brought, my lord?"

"Yes. I intend to return to London as soon as possible."

Jessop's brows rose in surprise, but he said nothing as he entered the dressing room with Jack's luggage.

As Jessop unpacked Jack's things and carefully put them away, they discussed the plans for the shipment.

"All is in order for tomorrow evening, my lord," Jessop said. "The caverns are ready, and all the passages have been cleared."

"And the Pavilion?"

"The lantern has been repaired, and new wicks are in place. The pully mechanism has been oiled and tested, so it should be a fast and easy job to bring the lantern down and light it."

"Well done," Jack said. "I knew I could rely on you, Jessop."

"Of course, my lord."

They reviewed the details of the operation while Jessop prepared a bath for Jack, careful to speak of other matters whenever footmen entered with cans of hot water. Jack suspected, however, that most of them were also involved in some way with the local "gentlemen." It was difficult to avoid the temptation in this part of Devon, where smuggling profits kept food on the table in most households.

Jack dismissed Jessop while he soaked in the copper tub near the fire. He needed time alone before facing his mother. He knew from her letters that she either suspected or knew for certain of his activities in London. It was doubtful she would confront him or reprimand him, however, for she had never done so in the past. But the look in her eyes would be enough to make him feel her disappointment.

And he did not need his mother's guilt to make him feel shame. He was already filled with shame in plenty. He was not proud of his hedonistic activities in London, but he had not been able to stop himself. He had been obsessed with the need to use and discard woman after woman in an attempt to forget that he had ever cared for one in any other way. It gave him no real pleasure, to be sure. Oh, the momentary pleasure of sexual release, certainly. But the loathing and disgust that followed obliterated all memory of pleasure. He hated what he was doing, though he seemed incapable of stopping.

He had intended to remain at Pemworth only long enough to ensure that all went well with the shipment from France. He had intended to return to London and all its pleasures as soon as possible. But having left all that behind during his few days on the road, the very thought of resuming his life of dissipation made him weary to the bone. He was getting too old to keep up that feverish pace. He was tired of making the effort. He was even tired of all those women, of the constant search for new skirts to tumble.

And, of course, the real irony was that he had not after all been able to blot out Mary's memory. Though he still harbored a fierce anger for her, for her abandonment, he nevertheless thought of her almost constantly. In moments of the worst despair, Jack had relived in his mind those last days at Pemworth, trying to pinpoint exactly when things had fallen apart so badly. And yet time after time, he failed to reach any kind of explanation. He could find nothing in his behavior toward Mary to cause her to bolt like that. It just didn't make sense, which did nothing to alleviate his despair, but did everything to feed his anger.

Though he could not forgive her, neither could he seem to forget her. He fought to drive her out of his mind. It should have been easy enough to forget such a tiny little dab of a woman. And yet...

Every woman he used reminded him of Mary, if only by contrast. Whenever he heard a particularly delicious piece of gossip or amusing tale, he found himself almost instinctively turning to share it with her. But she was not there. Whenever he heard piano music, he followed it, expecting to find Mary at the keyboard. But she was not there. Whenever he went to the theater or drove through the Park, he found himself wanting to turn to her to point out something or someone of interest. But she was not there. She was never there.

He had not realized how much he had come to depend on her presence, her conversation, her wit, her laughter. And nothing, or no one, seemed able to assuage that need.

He scrubbed himself until his skin was raw, attempting to remove the filth that had become his life.

When he joined his mother sometime later, he found her lounging on a silk chaise in her boudoir. She turned toward him as he entered and held out her hand to him.

"Mama," Jack said, taking her hand to his lips. "I trust you are well?"

"Tolerably."

Jack raised his brows at her cold reply, then relinquished her hand and sat in a nearby chair. Some of the peculiar languor of grief that had been so common with his mother during the last year seemed to have settled back in. A wave of sadness gripped Jack as he recognized the role he must have played in the return of her grief. When he thought of her smiling and laughing during Mary's visit, he felt almost sick.

But there was something else—something more tense and grim about the set of her mouth. She was unhappy, certainly, but it was not merely the maudlin sorrow of grief. She was angry.

"What is it, Mama?" he asked. "What has upset you?"

"Hmph!" she snorted. "You can ask such a question?"

"I am asking, Mama."

She turned away from him and tilted her chin up. "If this were not your home, I would ask you to leave. I have no desire to share a roof with such a wastrel."

"Oh, Lord."

"Yes, I know of your... activities in Town."

"Mama, please—"

"And I am not so stupid as to misunderstand your sudden appearance just at this time," she said. "I have not lived in Devon all these years and remained ignorant of what happens during a new moon. Oh, Jack, how could you!"

"Mama, I—"

"Oh, I realize it all has to do with Mary. But that does not excuse—"

"Lady Mary Haviland has nothing to do with anything, Mama," Jack interrupted in a sharp tone. "She walked out of my life, as you may recall."

"And you have been trying to get over it by behaving outrageously. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

With a fierce grip on the arms of the chair, Jack held back his anger. "If it is any consolation, Mama, I
am
ashamed. But—"

"Good," she said with a flash of a smile. "I am glad to know I have not raised a son totally without conscience. Now, I want you to tell me what happened with Mary? You left Pemworth before we could speak about it. Did you ever hear from her? Did you ever discover why she left?"

"No to both questions," Jack said. "And I do not wish to speak of it in any case. Tell me about Uncle Edward and Mrs. Bannister."

"Later, my dear. I want to know about Mary first."

"I said I did not wish to speak of her."

"I am your mother, Jack Raeburn, and you will do as I ask."

Jack stared at her incredulously. He had never seen his mother so determined, particularly after last year's tragedy when she had shrunk into herself. All his life she had been calm, complacent, nurturing—never demanding. But here she was, glaring at him with the steely eye of the strictest schoolmistress, refusing to be denied. He was puzzled and did not know how to deal with this new side of her.

"We will speak of her, Jack," she said, "for, you see, I had grown very fond of Mary. I had already begun to think of her as my daughter. I miss her," she said, her voice softening. "I must understand what happened."

Jack slumped back in his chair and said nothing. This was the last sort of conversation he wanted to have with his mother, but there seemed to be no stopping her.

His shoulders lifted in a frustrated shrug. "I know no more than you, Mama. I do not know what happened."

"All I know," his mother continued, seeming to ignore his words, "is that she would not have left without good reason—at least, what would have seemed a good reason to her. I know you do not wish to hear this, my dear, but I suspect it must have been something you said or did that scared her away."

Jack placed his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. "Don't you think I have considered that, Mama? Don't you think I have gone over and over every word spoken, every gesture, every nuance—but to no avail. The last I saw her was at breakfast the day before she left. She was as cheerful and radiant as ever."

Jack recollected that morning with vivid clarity. It was the last time he had seen Mary. When he and Bradleigh had risen from the table, announcing their intention to ride out to some of the tenant farms, she had smiled at him—that wide, brilliant smile that could light up an entire room—and their eyes had locked for a moment, a kind of spark passing between them as each seemed to recollect the particularly passionate embrace they had shared the previous evening. And then, quite unexpectedly, she had winked at him.

Surely, there had been nothing between them at that moment to suggest there might be a problem. For God's sake, she had winked at him!

"Nevertheless," his mother continued, "I am convinced it has something to do with you, my dear. She was still fairly vulnerable after all those years with her father. I am afraid her spirit was more fragile than we thought."

"Mama, what are you talking about? What fragile spirit? Mary was one of the most intrepid, most confident women I ever met. She was so unaffected and open, yet so vivacious and gay. That is why everyone in the
ton
adored her."

His mother gave him a quizzical look. "My God," she said, and her brow furrowed in concern. "You do not know."

"Know what?"

"About Mary."

"Know what about Mary?"

And so Jack listened while his mother told him everything she had learned from Mary about her life of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father.

Chapter 22

"I had finally convinced her," the marchioness said, "or so I had thought, that her father had been wrong to suggest that no man would ever want her for herself alone. She was sure that you had not known of her fortune, and so she had reluctantly begun to believe that her father was wrong."

Oh my God. Jack brought a hand to his mouth. The thought of sweet little Mary brutalized by that madman caused the bile to rise in his throat. And to have bullied her into believing she was ugly and worthless, that only her fortune mattered—

Oh my God, Mary.

Thinking he might truly become ill, he took deep gulps of air.

His mother glared at him through narrowed eyes. "Was her father wrong, Jack?"

"No. Yes! Oh, God. What have I done?" He dropped his head into his hands. In a muffled, anguished voice he told his mother everything. He told her the truth about his finances, how he had determined to marry an heiress, how he discovered that Mary, a woman he knew well and liked, was worth a fortune, and how he had more or less seduced her into accepting his offer.

"And selfishly believing in my own irresistible charms, it did not seem such a bad bargain at the time," he said. "But then, after a time ... then, dammit, the money no longer mattered. I had fallen in love with her."

And though he now recognized the depth of his love for her, the irony was that she probably felt nothing but hatred for him, for she must surely have discovered his original motives somehow.

He had loved only two women in his long, wicked life. The first, a woman whose affections had been false and whose ultimate betrayal had taught him never to trust. The second, a woman who had taught him, briefly, to trust again, but who must now despise him for what he had done to her. The pain of Suzanne's disdain, though, was nothing compared to the agony of Mary's hatred. Was he destined forever to love women who did not want him?

"Why did you not tell me, Jack?" His mother's soft voice interrupted his reverie. "I had guessed there was somehow less money than before, but I had no idea ..."

Jack reached across and took his mother's hand. "You had suffered enough, Mama. I did not wish to add to your grief."

"Oh, Jack." She pulled him onto the chaise and took him in her arms. "To save me from suffering, you took all this upon your own shoulders, without a word to anyone. All alone, with no one to help you. My poor boy. My poor, wonderful boy. But some good came out of it, after all. You found Mary and fell in love with her."

Jack pulled back from her embrace. "I did," he said. "How could I not? When I came back today, it almost broke my heart to see Pemworth again, to remember how joyful and happy it had been when Mary was here, and to think that it might never be so again. Oh, God. What am I going to do?"

Jack rose from the chaise and began to pace the room. Was it possible Mary had somehow, despite all his cautious circumspection, discovered that he was a fortune hunter? Had she convinced herself that he cared only for her money?

Oh, Mary.

But it seemed the only logical answer if what his mother told him was true. It appeared he had inadvertently wounded that sweet, lovable woman where she was most vulnerable.

Oh, Mary.

The further irony—and this whole situation was altogether too full of irony for his taste—was, of course, that she would be right. He
had
wanted her for her money. That was all he had wanted from her. At first. But not anymore. No, not anymore. And yet he had played straight into her most deep-rooted doubts and insecurities, unintentionally reinforcing them.