Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (55 page)

“Yes.” Her hands had found the handle of the door again.

“And was it?” he asked.

“No,” she said more firmly. “For a while I thought it just possible that he was sincere. He tried to persuade me that he had loved me all the time, that he had hurt me in order to protect me from his own disgrace, that he had come back with the intention of wooing me again and making me his countess. I was confused. And afraid. But I did not want to believe him or love him. I did not trust him and would never have been able to. I know now that my instinct was right, that he is still as contemptible as he ever was. Why did he want to hurt you?”

“When you asked me to walk in the garden with you,” he said, “and when you asked me to kiss you and told me
that you loved me, you were reacting to the turmoil of emotions he had aroused in you, Samantha? And the next afternoon when I came to offer you marriage, the same thing?”

“Oh.” She gazed at him unhappily. “I was so very happy to see you. Those afternoons at Highmoor with you had been among the happiest times in my life.”

“With plain, ordinary Mr. Wade,” he said. “Who had defects to add to his ordinariness. Who was the very antithesis of a Don Juan. Who would never confuse you or hurt or abandon you. Who would be your little puppy dog. You would be very safe with him. And so you married him.”

The horrifying thing was that there was truth in his words. But only some of the truth. Not all of it.

“Hartley.” Her grip on the doorknob became painful. “Don’t belittle yourself. Oh, please don’t do this.”

“Then suppose you tell me,” he said, “why you married me. Tell me, Samantha.”

“Because I wanted to,” she said. “Because you were sweet and kind and, and—”

“—and very rich?” His voice was hardly recognizable. She had never heard sarcasm in it before.

His face swam before her eyes, and her jaw felt suddenly cold as a hot tear dripped off it onto her dress. “Oh, don’t, Hartley,” she begged him. “Please don’t. You
know
that I was unaware of that fact. I married you because I wanted to, because I liked you more than any other man I have ever known, because I felt s—”

“—safe with me.” There was harshness in his voice. “I
would be so ecstatic to win such beauty for myself that I would be unlikely ever to stray from you. Well, you were right there, Samantha. I have what is perhaps an unfortunate belief in fidelity in marriage—on both sides. No mistresses for me, no lovers for you.”

“Hartley—”

“Listen to me, Samantha,” he said. There was a harsh command in his voice that frightened and distressed her. “You lied to me. You let me marry you believing that lie. And it was a momentous lie. I have never wanted a loveless marriage, and yet now it seems I am irrevocably in one. But it
is
a marriage. Never forget that. You are
my wife
. You had better sort out your feelings for
my cousin
once and for all. If it is love, put it from your heart. If it is hatred, let it go. I will not have you always afraid to see him lest you find yourself in love with him. And I will not have you beneath me on our bed, dreaming that I am he.”

“Hartley!” Her mouth fell open and she gasped for air.

“There may never be love between us,” he said. “It is strange how my own has shriveled to nothing in the course of a few hours. But there will never be shadows. Or secrets. Is that understood?”

“You are being unfair,” she said. “You are being cruel. I have never—”

“I
asked
if you understood.” His face was stony, his eyes opaque. He was unrecognizable. She did not know this man.

“Yes,” she said.

“If your maid has started packing your things,” he
said, “you may tell her to unpack again. We will be staying here.”

“No.” She was shaking her head against the door. “I want to go home, Hartley. Please let us go home. Oh, please.”

“We will be staying here,” he said. “You can enjoy the rest of the Season, as you usually do. I can occupy myself in any number of useful and useless ways. We need not be in each other’s company any more than either of us would wish.”

“I want to go home,” she whispered. But she knew it was useless. He was implacable, this stranger who still stood across the room from her, his back to the empty fireplace.

“If you have taken leave of all your friends,” he said, “you may now boast, Samantha, that you begged to stay and that your besotted bridegroom bowed to your wishes. I will not contradict you. It is late. You will wish to change for dinner. If you will excuse me, my lady, I will be taking dinner at my club.”

She turned without another word and fumbled at the handle of the door before getting it open. She hurried, head down so that the footmen would not see her face, up the stairs to her room.

It was all ruined, she thought. Her marriage. Her life. Everything.

It seemed she had been wrong to forgive herself at last.

There was to be no happiness for her.

Only three days and three nights. Pure joy, now worth
less than nothing. Yes, less. It would have been far better if she had never known it.

She did not know how she was going to live through the pain. It was worse than the last time. Oh, far worse. Because this time she—

Well, this time she was the one who had done most of the hurting. And therefore her own pain was inconsolable.

H
E LIFTED HIS LEFT
arm to the mantel and rested his forehead on it. He did not know himself or this strange, unexpected anger that had had him lashing out to hurt as badly as he was hurt. He had intended only to talk with her, to have the truth in the open so that somehow they could patch something together out of their marriage and move on.

He had not intended to become angry—he
never
lost his temper. Never until today. And with the person he loved most dearly. And he had never felt the desire to hurt. Until today. He wanted to put a bullet between Lionel’s eyes—No, that was too quick and probably painless. He wanted to pound him to a bloody pulp. And he had wanted just now to reduce Samantha to tears, to have her begging for what he would not grant.

He had succeeded admirably.

He drew a deep and ragged breath through his nose. But it was no use. He wept with painful, chest-wrenching sobs.

He froze when the door opened behind him again. He
kept his head where it was. She came close to him before speaking.

“Hartley.” Her voice was very quiet, very calm. If she had touched him at that moment, he would have gathered her to him with such force that he would have crushed every bone in her body. “I want you to return it to Lord Rushford, if you please. Or if you wish to keep it because it was your mother’s and is precious to you, then please do so. But I do not want it and I don’t want ever to see it again. This ‘something blue’ has ruined my marriage.”

He lifted his head and looked at his mother’s sapphire brooch in her palm. He took it without a word.

He felt her looking into his half-lowered face for several silent moments before she turned and left the room again.

He closed his fingers over the brooch and tightened them until the diamonds cut into his hand rather painfully.

H
E WAS LATE COMING
home. She lay on her back, staring up into the darkness beneath the canopy of her bed as she had done for several hours, listening to the sound of the door to his room opening and closing more than once, to the distant hum of his voice and his valet’s. To silence.

She gazed upward and imagined him leaning against the tree on the hill at Highmoor, watching her look
downward toward the abbey, catching her trespassing. If only she had turned and hurried away at that moment. Back to Chalcote and safety.

But she had not.

Her dressing room door opened softly and a faint beam of candlelight shone across the room, across the lower half of her bed. She did not move her head or close her eyes. He came and stood beside the bed.

“You are awake, then,” he said after a few moments. His eyes must not be as accustomed to the darkness as hers were.

“Yes.”

Please talk to me. Please tell me you did not mean those cruel things. Tell me I did not really lie to you. Take me home tomorrow
.

She did not move. She continued to stare upward.

He was removing his dressing gown and climbing into bed beside her. And turning to her and starting to make love to her.

Say something. Not in silence like this
.

He was slow and gentle and patient. His hands—not his mouth—worked their skilled magic on her body, until they both knew she was ready for him. And then he came inside her and slowly, skillfully worked the same magic there, until she was wonderfully relaxed and strangely aching all at the same time. He released his seed, hot and deep inside her.

It was all right, she told herself. Everything was going to be all right. But she knew that nothing at all was right.
He had loved her as he usually did, though there was never a sameness about his loving. But there was something missing. Something undefinable. Something essential.

She could smell liquor on his breath, though she did not believe he was foxed.

She held him against her, her legs still twined about his, willing him to sleep. But he never slept on her for more than a minute or two at the longest. He was too considerate of her comfort to squash her beneath his full weight for too long. He lifted himself away.

And up to sit on the side of the bed. He got to his feet after a few moments and put his dressing gown back on. He looked down at her in the darkness.

“Thank you,” he said. “Good night, Samantha.”

She was too miserable to reply. She gazed upward again. Moments later the beam of light from the doorway narrowed and disappeared. She was in darkness once more.

Ah, dear God, she was in eternal darkness.

L
ADY
C
AREW
,
THE
TON
were soon agreed, had got just exactly what she wanted. She had made a brilliant match to a wealthy and indulgent husband who was willing to cater to her every whim. He had been about to drag the poor lady back to his own dull life at remote Highmoor in the middle of the Season. But she had easily talked him out of that foolishness. And so they had remained,
she to dazzle society with more charm and wit than ever, he to follow in her wake or to pursue his own quieter pleasures until summer came.

It appeared to be a thoroughly successful marriage. They were both happy—no one had ever seen Lady Carew more vivacious than she was in the weeks following her marriage, and no one had ever seen as much of her husband. He was almost always smiling.

Lucky dog, the gentlemen of the
ton
thought, looking with some envy and some surreptitious lust at his wife. There was more than one thing to be said for being worth upward of fifty thousand a year.

Fortunate woman, the ladies of the
ton
thought. Her husband was not much of a man, perhaps, but he was wealthy and besotted and kept her on a very loose leash—if there was a leash at all. Give her a year to produce his heir and next spring they would watch with interest to see whom she would take as her first lover. She could hardly have done better for herself.

Samantha was pregnant already. She knew it, even though she was only one week late and her newness to sexual activity might be the reason for the irregularity. But she knew she was pregnant. There was something relaxed—she could not quite put a word to the feeling—deep inside her, rather like the feeling she always had at the end of the marriage act. She knew it was their child starting life in her womb.

She did not know how she would tell him when the time came. She did not know how he would feel about it.
He would be glad, she supposed, as she was. She would be able to stay at Highmoor. He would not be able to force her to come back next year for the torture of another Season. Perhaps, if he continued relations with her after the birth of the child, she would conceive again. And again. Perhaps she would be able to stay at Highmoor for the rest of her life.

It seemed to her, perhaps irrationally, that Highmoor was her only hope for any measure of happiness. No, never that. Of peace. She could live out her life if only she could find some peace.

They spent a fair amount of time together, almost all of it in company with other people. Almost the only time they spent alone together was the half hour or so he took to make love to her each night. A silent half hour except for the courteous thanks at the end of it. Thanks for services rendered.

He accompanied her to most evening entertainments. Even balls. He would see her into the ballroom, stand with her until the first set began and she had taken the floor with her first partner, and then disappear into the card room or somewhere else until it was time to escort her home.

He always smiled in public. She always sparkled.

The perfect couple, perfectly in love but perfectly well bred—they did not live in each other’s pockets.

They saw Lionel almost wherever they went. They avoided him and he seemed content to look alternatively amused and lovelorn—the latter if he caught her eye
across a room when Hartley was not with her. She perfected the art of moving out of a room or attaching herself to another gentleman—usually poor Francis—if she suspected he was moving her way.

She hated him. And despised him. And she was no longer afraid of the hatred. She knew that it was just that and that it was poles away from love.

She hated him, not so much for what he had done to her—innocent as she had been, she had partly asked for it—but for what he had done to Hartley. His own cousin.

For what he had done to Hartley she could cheerfully kill him. With slow torture.

She did not know how to put right what was wrong with her marriage. If only they could go home to Highmoor, she thought. Somehow it seemed as if everything would be fine if only they could go there. And there would be a baby early in the new year. A new start for them, perhaps. But he had not said anything more about going home.

And she was afraid to ask again. Or perhaps too proud to ask.