deception.
“Please don’t fret!” Galen was saying. “I will support you when you tell him; I
will explain you could not have possibly known. The matter can be kept very
quiet; no one need ever know! Don’t fret! Darfield will understand! Men on their
deathbeds change their last testaments all the time, they do!” Galen’s voice was
low, rushed. Abbey doubled over with sickening dread.
“Look, I’ve brought all the proof you need. His ivory cuff links, that doll from your youth, for God’s sake, and the will! What more proof could your husband
need?‘’ The nausea that swept over Abbey prevented her from speaking.
Too
shocked and confused to do anything, she stared helplessly at the cuff links on
the table, the doll tossed onto an armchair, and the will Galen had taken from
her and placed on the table.
She dragged her gaze to Galen, whose genuine concern was etched around his eyes.
She shifted her gaze to the doll across the room, sprawled in the chair, its black eyes staring blankly at her. It was a replica of the doll she had carried
all those years ago, but the last time she had seen it, it had no head. Did her
father repair it? Had he truly saved it for her?
And in that moment, the enormity of her anger with the captain hit her. A flood
of tears erupted, and in painful fury, she buried her face in her hands.
Galen
quickly rose to put a comforting arm around her shoulder.
Michael looked curiously at the footman stationed outside the drawing room door.
“What are you about?” he asked kindly.
The footman cleared his throat. “The marchioness is receiving a visitor, my lord.”
Michael assumed it was Sam, a frequent visitor to his home. He opened the closed
door.
He was not prepared for the sight that greeted him. Abbey, with her back to him,
was bent over. A man was seated next to her, his arm draped around her shoulder.
When he looked over his shoulder, Michael immediately recognized him as the
stranger from Blessing Park. The stranger she had so warmly embraced.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Michael’s voice boomed in the drawing room
as he strode across the carpet. The man sprang to his feet, but Abbey did not
move. Michael went quickly to her, leaning down to look into her tearstained
face. “Good God, Abbey, what has happened?” he asked, suddenly and oddly
frightened.
“ Oh, Michael!” she muttered hopelessly.
Michael jerked upright and glared at the man. “By God, you had better speak!”
“Please, my lord, I am Galen Carrey—your wife’s cousin.” The name, vaguely
familiar, registered somewhere in Michael’s brain. “I am afraid I have brought
her some disturbing news,” he said softly. At Michael’s increasingly dark look,
Galen spoke quickly. “It’s about her father. It is troubling news. Perhaps you
would like to sit—”
“You had best tell me before I force it out of you.” Michael’s voice had gone
from angry to deadly calm.
Galen blanched visibly. “Lord Darfield, it is with extreme displeasure that I must inform you Captain Carrington composed another will. A later will, I should
say. Not the one you have in your possession.”
Dumbfounded, Michael glared at Carrey. Of all the idiotic things. Of all the completely insane, reprehensible things. “What?!”
“It would appear that Mr. Strait was too efficient. He began disposing of the
estate before the captain died. Unfortunately, the captain had a change of heart
and signed another will shortly before his death that effectively invalidates the first.”
It was preposterous and a little too convenient for Michael. “Impossible,”
he
muttered angrily.
“I beg your pardon, my lord. It is quite possible,” Galen said quietly.
“And I suppose this new will has something to do with you, does it?”
Galen colored slightly as he reached down to retrieve it from the table.
Holding
it out to Michael, he said calmly, “It leaves his estate to me, my lord. The dowry you received belongs to me.”
That was absurd. Michael did not give a damn about her dowry, but he was not
about to believe for one moment that the captain had penned another will.
He
took the document from Galen’s hand and quickly scanned it. It was all there,
the blasted agreement, the payment of debts—everything, but instead of a sum for
her dowry, he was supposed to have accepted the cancellation of his debts.
Carrington’s estate was left, in total, to Galen Carrey.
“This is a forgery!”
“It’s his signature,” Abbey said softly.
Her words slammed into Michael’s head; he dragged his gaze from the document to
her. She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and dull, then flicked her gaze
to Galen Carrey. All right, Galen did not kiss like that. Michael felt as if he had been punched in the gut. Galen. The embrace. Dear God, it was inconceivable,
but he had to consider that she was somehow a part of this fraud. His expression
remained inscrutable despite the thoughts racing through his mind. He carefully
folded the vellum and placed it on the table.
“My lord, your wife could not know of the second will, as she was already in
England. And I did not mention it in my correspondence to Blessing Park, only
that I was expecting some important news,” Galen interjected.
Correspondence? Astounded, Michael stared blankly at the man across from him.
She had corresponded with him? He clenched his jaw as he recalled the day he had
seen this man at Blessing Park. She had said he was a deck hand aboard the
Dancing Maiden, a friend of Withers’s. She had not mentioned any correspondence.
Or their kinship. Indeed, there had been a decided omission of any kinship.
“You, sir, are a fraud,” he announced flatly, his disgust apparent.
Galen blinked nervously. “I am truly sorry, my lord. I know this comes as quite
a surprise, but I am not lying to you. Abbey told you herself it is the captain’s signature. And I have brought some other articles, articles only her
father could have had, along with the will.” Galen motioned to the cuff links and the doll. Chafing from the familiar use of her name, Michael stared at the
articles Galen indicated. The doll triggered a distant memory, one he
could not
quite grasp.
“These are articles that could be acquired anywhere. I do not believe they signify.” Galen swallowed a visible lump in his throat. “Mr. Carrey, my solicitors thoroughly documented and authenticated the papers I received from
Captain Carrington. If Mr. Strait wishes to inform me of a mistake, I shall be
obliged to listen.” He did not miss the flicker of Carrey’s eyes at the mention
of Mr. Strait. “Until such time, however, I will consider anything you bring me,
including your trinkets, as nothing more than a pathetic attempt to defraud me.
I will thank you to leave my home,” he said calmly.
“Michael,” Abbey said weakly, “I think my father did this, not Galen.”
Michael could not believe what he was hearing. She was defending the bastard. Ice began to run through Michael’s veins; he could hardly
contain his desire to throttle Carrey. And Abbey, good God’t The last few months
had not been a lie, he was certain of that—wasn’t he? Was it possible she could
have deceived him so completely? Michael’s chest tightened painfully and he
turned an icy gaze to her. “I will speak with you in a moment,” he said coolly,
then flicked his gaze to Galen. “Leave now.”
Galen moved from the settee. “Clearly you need time to absorb the unfortunate
news I bring you. Naturally you will want to review the papers,” he said as he
walked to the door. He paused and smiled reassuringly at Abbey. “I shall give
your butler my direction. But I will call on you in a few days, little one.”
Galen’s endearment for his wife rifled through Michael like a shot; his hands
clenched at his side. He stepped in front of Abbey, blocking Galen’s view of
her.
“You will not, under any circumstance, call on my wife, Mr. Carrey. Now leave!”
With a final look at Abbey, Galen walked out the door.
The silence in the wake of Galen’s departure was almost deafening.
Abbey touched
Michael’s sleeve, but he reacted by moving away from her. Her soft gasp did not
daunt him as he turned, his roiling emotions masked beneath an expression of
stone.
“You lied to me. I asked you who he was. You said he was a deckhand aboard the
Dancing Maiden, not your kissing cousin.”
A shot of fear and remorse rumbled through Abbey. Michael’s granite eyes blatantly searched her face. “I did not lie to you, I just did not—”
“Tell me the truth?”
Abbey winced, realizing how horrible it all seemed. “I could not tell you then,”
she blurted. “He was embarrassed because…” The words were no sooner out of her
mouth than she recognized the deep hole she was digging for herself. She needed
to think, to gather her wits so she could explain everything coherently.
“You were saying, little one?” he spat. “He was embarrassed to present himself
to me? Why? Because it was exceedingly bad form to do so before he defrauded
me?”
“No, no,” Abbey replied hoarsely. “He… did not have a post,” she said lamely as
her mind raced. Terribly shaken by her father’s latest betrayal and Michael’s
anger, she felt completely inept to explain. Obviously, her responses were not
easing him in the slightest. If it was possible for a man’s face to harden any
more, Michael’s did.
“I suppose his correspondence was quite illuminating on that front,” he said in
a low voice. Before she could respond, he pivoted away from her. “I think you
should retire to your rooms.”
Panicked, Abbey debated how to explain to him. God, she was so confused! She
could mess it all up, much worse than she already had. But she could not leave
it like this. Against her better judgment, she took a step forward. “Michael, please listen to me! Galen didn’t tell me about the other will. He said only that he was expecting some important news, a post on a merchant vessel!
He was
reluctant to present himself because he felt… inadequate,” she blurted. “I honored his request—for God’s sake, he is my cousin!”
“That,” Michael drawled icily, “is a fact you should have mentioned when I asked
you.”
He stalked to the sideboard and poured a whiskey as Abbey stared at his back. He
did not believe her. Dear God, he did not believe her. She closed her eyes and
quickly, painfully, decided that until she had collected her wits and could think, she was doing more harm than good.
“You are upset, and so am I. It’s extraordinary news, for both of us,” she heard
herself saying.
Michael glanced over his shoulder at her with a look of disdain that made her
flush.
“I would rather wait until we can both discuss it rationally,” she said with a croak, and pivoting on her heel, walked unsteadily to the door. She paused at
the threshold to glance at Michael’s rigid back before fleeing upstairs to the
sanctity of her room.
Michael stared at the window, gripping the whiskey glass with all his strength
as his emotions warred. It did not occur to him even once that Galen Carrey
could be telling the truth; it was simply too preposterous. All he could think
was that Abbey’s eyes did not lie. She did not lie, goddammit!
But she had lied to him in the cove.
And she purposely had not told him of Galen’s correspondence. Bloody hell, could
she have done this to him? Could she have participated in a scheme with her
cousin to embezzle him? Could she have perpetuated such a lie over the last
months? Standing in the middle of the room, he weighed the fantastic thought. He
recalled every conversation, every night spent in his massive bed, every stroll
about Blessing Park, every single meal. And not once, not once had she shown him
anything but genuine esteem and affection. Not once had her story changed.
No, it simply could not be true.
He moved stiffly to a chair and sat heavily, staring into the amber liquid he swirled in the glass.
It could be true.
Could he have been so wrong about her? Could she have played him so completely
false? Could he have mistaken her response in his bed or the look in her violet
eyes every time their gazes met? Bloody hell, she had professed to love him! Oh,
and he had fallen for that like a stone sinks to the bottom of the river. For Chrissakes, he had never, in all his thirty-one years, been a victim of a woman’s charms. Not once! Was it possible he could have been so completely
unguarded this time?
It was definitely possible.
He recalled with some bitterness the night she had realized Carrington had lied
to her. She could not have manufactured her devastation. Or was she as fine an
actress as one would hope to find on Drury Lane?
Michael shifted his gaze from the glass he held to the table where the will lay
next to some cuff links. He sat forward, reached across the table to pick up one
of the links, and examined it closely. As he replaced it, his eye caught the doll sprawled haphazardly across a chair near the window. The toy struck a faint
chord in him. He stared at it, blinking, until it registered. In two strides, he was at the chair.
The moment he picked it up, he knew unequivocally that Galen Carrey was a fraud.
The doll was a copy of one Abbey had carried more than ten years ago.
How could