The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy (29 page)

“Neither have
you,
” she shot back.

“This isn't
about
me. I'm not the one who will be off in a leaky cottage, worrying over the price of meat.”

Fleur looked away.

“I'm the one,” he said in a softer voice, “who will have to worry about you, wondering what I will do if you fall ill, or are taken advantage of, and I can't even help you because you're half a country away.”

Fleur did not speak for some time. “I cannot marry the baby's father,” she finally said. “And I will not give up my child.”

“It will be with me,” he reminded her.

“But it won't be
mine,
” she cried. “I don't want to be its aunt.”

“You say that now, but what happens in ten years when you realize that no one will marry you?”

“I realize that now,” she said sharply.

“If you have this child and raise it yourself, you will be lost to respectable society. You won't be able to stay here.”

She went still. “You would cut me off, then.”

“No,” he said quickly. “Never. But I cannot keep you in the house. Not while Marie-Claire is yet unmarried.”

Fleur looked away.

“Your ruin is her ruin. Surely you know that.”

“Of course I know that,” she said hotly. “Why do you think I—”

But she stopped, clamping her mouth shut.

“What?” he demanded. Why did he think she
what
?

She shook her head. And in a voice low and sad, she said, “We will never agree on this.”

He sighed. “I am only trying to help you, Fleur.”

“I know.” She looked up at him, her eyes tired and sad and maybe even a little wise.

“I love you,” he said, choking on the words. “You are my sister. I vowed to protect you. And I failed. I
failed
.”

“You did not fail.”

He threw out an arm, motioning to her still-flat belly. “You mean to tell me you gave yourself to Parnell willingly?”

“I told you, that's not what—”

“I should have been here,” he said. “I should have been here to protect you, and I wasn't. So for the love of God, Fleur, give me the opportunity to protect you now.”

“I cannot be my child's aunt,” she said with quiet determination. “I cannot.”

Richard rubbed his face with the heel of his hand. He was so tired. He didn't think he'd ever been so tired in his life. He would talk to her tomorrow. He would make her see.

He walked to the door. “Do not do something rash,” he said quietly. And then he added, “Please.”

She gave a single nod. It was enough. He trusted her. It was the damnedest thing, but he trusted her.

He let himself out of the room, pausing only briefly to acknowledge Marie-Claire's presence in the hall. She was still standing near the door, her fingers nervously clasped together. He could not imagine she'd needed to eavesdrop; most of the conversation had been amply loud.

“Should I go in?” she asked.

He shrugged. He had no answers. He kept walking.

He wanted to talk to Iris. He wanted take her hand in his and make her understand that he hated this, too, that he was sorry he'd tricked her.

But not sorry he married her. He could never be that.

He paused outside her door. She was crying.

He wanted to hold her.

But how could he be of comfort, when he was the one who had done this to her?

So he kept walking, past his own bedroom door and down the stairs. He went to his study and he shut the door. He looked at his half-drunk glass of brandy and decided he hadn't had nearly enough.

That
was a problem easily remedied.

He downed the dregs and refilled the glass, raising it in a silent toast to the devil.

Would that all his problems had such easy answers.

N
EVER HAD
M
AYCLIFFE
been such a cold and quiet house.

At breakfast the next morning, Richard sat in silence, his eyes following Fleur as she selected her food from the sideboard. She sat across from him, but they did not speak, and when Marie-Claire entered the room, their greetings were nothing but grunts.

Iris did not come down.

Richard did not see her all day, and when the dinner gong sounded, he lifted his hand to knock at her door, but he found himself frozen before he made contact with the wood. He could not forget the look on her face when he'd told her what she must do, could not erase the sound of her tears after she'd fled to her room.

He'd known this would happen. He'd been dreading it since the moment he slid his ring on her finger. But it was so much worse than his imaginings. The foreboding sense of guilt had been replaced by soul-deep loathing, and he truly wasn't sure he'd ever feel at ease with himself again.

He used to be a good person. Maybe not the
best
person, but he'd been fundamentally good. Hadn't he?

In the end, he did not knock at Iris's door. He went down to the dining room by himself, stopping only to instruct a maid to have supper brought up to her on a tray.

Iris did not come down to breakfast the next day, either, prompting Marie-Claire to proclaim herself jealous. “It's so unfair that married women can take their breakfast in bed, and I can't,” she said as she stabbed her knife in the butter. “There's really no—”

She stopped talking, Richard's and Fleur's twin expressions of ire enough to silence anyone.

The following morning Richard resolved to speak to his wife. He knew she deserved her privacy after such a shock, but she had to know as well as anyone that time was not their friend. He had given her three days; he could not give her any more.

Once again he breakfasted with his sisters, not that any of them spoke a word. He was trying to decide the best way to approach Iris, attempting to arrange his words into coherent and persuasive sentences, when she appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a frock of the palest blue—her favorite color, he'd deduced—and her hair had been dressed into an intricate twist of braids and loops and honestly, he didn't know how to describe it except that she looked more done-up than he'd ever seen her.

She'd donned armor, he realized. He could not blame her.

Iris hovered in place for a moment, and he shot to his feet, suddenly aware that he'd been staring. “Lady Kenworthy,” he said with full respect. It was perhaps too formal, but his sisters were still at the table, and he would not have them think he held his wife in anything but the highest regard.

Iris glanced at him with icy blue eyes, dipped her chin in a small nod of recognition, and then busied herself at the sideboard. Richard watched as she spooned a small portion of eggs onto her plate, then added two pieces of bacon and a slice of ham. Her movements were steady and precise, and he could not help but admire her composure as she took her seat and greeted them one by one: “Marie-Claire,” then “Fleur,” and finally, “Sir Richard.”

“Lady Kenworthy,” Marie-Claire said in polite greeting.

Iris did not remind her to use her Christian name.

Richard looked down at his plate. He had just a few bites of food left. He wasn't really hungry, but it felt as if he ought to be eating if Iris was, so he took a slice of toast from a plate at the center of the table and began to butter it. His knife scraped too hard against the bread, the sound grating and loud in the overwhelming silence.

“Richard?” Fleur murmured.

He looked at her. She glanced rather pointedly at his toast, which, it had to be said, was looking very sad and mangled.

Richard gave her a glare, for no logical reason whatsoever, and took a savage bite. Then coughed. Bloody hell. It was dry as dust. He looked down. All the butter he'd attempted to spread had scraped up onto the knife, all curled up like some sort of tortured dairy ribbon.

With a growl he slapped the now rather soft butter onto the toast and took another bite. Iris stared at him with a disconcertingly steady gaze, then said, with no inflection whatsoever, “Jam?”

He blinked, the sound of her voice startling in the silence. “Thank you,” he said, taking the small dish from her fingers. He had no idea what flavor it was—something crimson, so he'd probably like it—but he didn't care. Other than his name, it was the first word she'd spoken to him in three days.

After another minute or so, however, he was beginning to think that it would be the
only
word for the next three days as well. Richard did not quite understand how silence could have varying degrees of awkwardness, but this four-person silence was infinitely more awful than the one he'd endured with just his sisters for company. A frigid mantle had come over the room, not of temperature but of mood, and every clink of fork against dish was like the crack of ice.

And then suddenly—thankfully—Marie-Claire spoke. It occurred to Richard that perhaps she was the only one who could. She was the only one who wasn't playing a role in this macabre farce that had become his life.

“It is good to see you downstairs,” she said to Iris.

“It is good to be down,” Iris said with barely a glance in Marie-Claire's direction. “I am feeling much better.”

Marie-Claire blinked. “Were you ill?”

Iris took a sip of her tea. “In a manner of speaking.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw Fleur's head snap around.

“And are you well now?” he asked, staring at Iris until she was forced to meet his gaze.

“Quite.” She turned her attention back to her toast, then set it down with an oddly deliberate motion. “If you will all forgive me,” she said, rising to her feet.

Richard stood immediately, and this time so too did his sisters.

“You haven't eaten a thing,” Marie-Claire said.

“I'm afraid my stomach is somewhat unsettled,” Iris replied in a voice that Richard found far too composed. She placed her napkin on the table next to her plate. “It is my understanding that it is a malady common to women in my condition.”

Fleur gasped.

“Shall you wish me joy?” Iris said tonelessly.

Richard realized he couldn't. He'd got what he wanted—no, not what he
wanted,
it had never been what he
wanted
. But he'd got what he asked for. Iris might not be smiling about it, but for all intents and purposes she had just announced her pregnancy. To three people who knew full well it was a lie, but still, she'd signaled that she would do what Richard had demanded of her. He'd won.

But he could not wish her joy.

“Excuse me,” Iris said, exiting the room.

He stood frozen. And then—

“Wait!”

He somehow came to his senses, or at least as much sense as was needed to force his legs into motion. He strode from the room, well aware that his two sisters were gaping at him like landed fish. He called out Iris's name, but she was nowhere to be seen. His wife was fast, Richard thought wryly. Either that, or she was hiding from him.

“Darling?” he called out, past caring if the entire household could hear him. “Where are you?”

He peered in the drawing room, then the library. Bloody hell. He supposed she had the right to make this difficult for him, but it was beyond time they talked.

“Iris!” he called again. “I really need to speak with you!”

He stood in the center of the hall, frustrated beyond measure. Frustrated, and then extremely embarrassed. William, the younger of the two footmen, was standing in a doorway, watching him.

Richard scowled, refusing to acknowledge the moment.

But then William started to twitch.

Richard could not help but stare.

William's head began to jerk to the right.

“Are you quite all right?” Richard could no longer avoid asking.

“M'lady,” William said in a loud whisper. “She went into the drawing room.”

“She's not there now.”

William blinked. He took a few steps and poked his head into the room in question. “The tunnel,” he said, turning back to face Richard.

“The . . .” Richard frowned, peering over William's shoulder. “You think she went into one of the tunnels?”

“I don't think she went out the window,” William retorted. He cleared his throat. “Sir.”

Richard stepped into the drawing room, his eyes lighting on the comfortable blue sofa. It had become one of Iris's favorite spots to read, not that she'd ventured outside her bedchamber in the past few days. At the far wall was the cleverly camouflaged panel that hid the entrance to the most well used of Maycliffe's secret tunnels. “You're sure she entered the drawing room,” he said to William.

The footman gave a nod.

“Then in the tunnel she must be.” Richard shrugged, crossing the room in three long strides. “I thank you, William,” he said, his fingers easily working the hidden latch.

“It was nothing, sir.”

“All the same,” Richard said with a nod. He peered into the passageway, blinking into the darkness. He'd forgotten how cold and damp it could get in there. “Iris?” he called out. It was unlikely she'd got very far. He doubted she'd had time to light a candle, and the tunnel grew black as night once it twisted away from the house.

There was no answer, however, and so Richard lit a candle, placed it in a small lantern, and then stepped into the hidden passageway. “Iris?” he called again. Still no answer. Maybe she hadn't entered the tunnel. She was angry, but she wasn't stupid, and she wasn't going to hide out in a pitch-dark hole in the ground just to avoid him.

Holding his lantern low enough to light the way, he stepped carefully forward. The Maycliffe tunnels had never been laid with stone, and the ground was rough and uneven, with loose rocks and even the occasional tree root snaking through. He had a sudden vision of Iris taking a tumble, twisting her ankle or worse, hitting her head . . .