Margaret Moore (26 page)

“Do you mind if your mama and I go downstairs for a few moments, Will?” Richard asked. “You will be all right by yourself?”

Will nodded.

“I think I should stay—”

“I do not,” Richard said, using the same tone of voice he used to command his actors when they balked at a bit of staging.

Like his actors, Elissa wisely realized this was not the time to balk.

But she did not meekly obey. She lifted her chin and, with all the majesty of a queen,
strode from the room. “We shall speak in my closet.”

Richard knew there would be no lovemaking this time.

E
lissa whirled around to face him the moment they were in her closet. “How could you take such a risk?”

“Obviously, I didn’t consider it a risk,” Richard replied, trying to remain calm.

Hopefully, that would help Elissa to see that this accident was not so very terrible. Will was not likely to suffer any ill effects, unless one counted a possible vain addiction to showing off his scar.

He sat on the edge of the desk and shrugged. “I was too lenient, or lazy—whatever you wish to call it. He was so eager and persistent, I gave in. I promise I will be wiser in the future.”

“But to use real swords!”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Or does your vivid imagination not extend to dangerous pastimes?”

“The swords were tipped. It was an unforeseen accident.”

“With children, it takes but a moment for disaster to strike. You encouraged him to climb that tree, you let him play with real swords—”

“You let him climb the tree, too,” Richard protested, straightening.

“I would never have allowed him near an unsheathed sword,” she retorted. “Perhaps I am asking too much of your imagination. You are not a parent. Still, I am shocked you could be so reckless.”

“I am not a child, Elissa, so do not speak to me as if I were.”

“You acted little better than a child.”

His expression hardened. “I have not acted like a child since I was eight years old and had that luxury taken from me. I made a mistake, and I will try not to repeat it. That is all I intend to say on this matter.”

“If I am in the wrong to upbraid you, how dare you chastise me for caring about my son? I am his mother!”

“I may not have the privilege of being a parent, but by God, my lady, did you not see that you were upsetting Will with your own childish display of temper?”

She realized with a flush of guilt that he was right. But even if he were trustworthiness personified, he still did not understand a mother’s
feelings, and he had no right to be so patronizing.

“Where have you been going at night?” she demanded.

He started at her abrupt change of subject, then his eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask that?”

“Why not? Surely I have a right to know where you go at such an hour. And what have you been doing with pens and papers and ink? I thought you were giving up writing—or have you a secret correspondence?”

“To whom do you suspect I have been writing?”

“That is for you to tell me, since you have been using goods purchased with my money to do so.”

“I am not accustomed to being interrogated, my lady, as if I were a criminal.”

“Then you should not sneak about in the middle of the night like a criminal, or take things without asking like a thief. Or an unfaithful husband.”

As he flushed hotly, dismay and shame flooded through Richard. That she would accuse him of this, after all he had said to her—things he had never said to a woman before.

For once he had dared to trust a woman, to feel something beyond lust or the challenge of seduction, to fall in love …

To fall in love.

How ironic that he, Richard Blythe, so famous
for his witty, caustic plays about the follies of love, should find himself so hopelessly and foolishly in the throes of that emotion, only to discover that the object of his love believed him capable of base deceit and duplicity and betrayal.

That she did not love him as he loved her.

At the sound of an approaching coach, they both glanced at the window.

“Are you expecting someone?” Richard demanded. “The neighborly Mr. Sedgemore? The unfortunately named Mr. Assey? Heartless Harding, perhaps?”

“I am not,” she answered briskly, going to the window.

He followed her and looked over her shoulder, trying to ignore the subtle aroma of her perfume.

Then he recognized the coat of arms on the coach door.

“Bloody hell!” he cried. “It’s Neville! What the devil is he doing here?”

“Making you use the sort of language you said you would not, if nothing else. Am I to assume this is a friend of yours?”

“Lord Farrington is my dearest friend, save Foz. Now if you excuse me, I daresay our quarrel can wait.”

Preferably forever, he thought, as he marched from the room.

When he exited the house, he put a welcoming smile on his face.

“Neville!” he called in greeting as his friend stepped out of the vehicle under the portico.

“Lo, the country squire cometh!” Neville, Lord Farrington, cried in response. Then he made a very dramatic bow.

Country living seemed to agree with the man Richard had secretly considered the epitome of urban sophistication. There was a healthy glow to his cheeks and a brightness in his eyes Richard had never seen in London. To be sure, Neville was as fashionably attired as always, and like Richard, he had never donned a wig.

“You scoundrel, what brings you here?” Richard asked.

“You know I am but melted wax to be molded by my wife’s lovely fingers,” Neville replied.

“What, has Arabella come, too?”

He had his answer in a moment, as Neville helped his obviously pregnant, pretty, and smiling wife down from the coach.

“Forgive us for not waiting for an invitation,” she began as soon as her feet were on the ground, “but I shall not be able to travel much soon, and your estate is not so very far from ours…”

“I am
delighted
you have come!” Richard cried as he kissed her on each cheek. “And I must beg your forgiveness for not inviting you sooner. I have been rather … busy.”

“I can see why,” Neville replied in low,
knowing tones as he nodded at something behind Neville.

Richard spun around, to see Elissa marching toward them. “Yes, my wife has…” He paused, then began again. “That is, she …”

“Ods bodikins, I don’t believe it! He’s speechless!”

Richard subdued a scowl as Foz’s muffled, sleepy voice issued from the coach. Then his friend, wig askew, stuck his head out of the window and grinned. “I never thought I’d see that day!”

“If it were any other man, Foz, I’d knock your head for saying that,” Richard warned.

“I only meant it as a joke,” Foz mumbled, pouting.

“I know that,” Richard answered genially as he faced Elissa.

His good spirits were quite destroyed, but one would never have known it from his expression. “Elissa, my sweet, allow me to introduce Neville, Lord Farrington, his bride, Arabella, and I think you will remember Lord Cheddersby.”

Her expression was infuriatingly inscrutable as she curtsied. “Delighted to meet you. Welcome to our home.”

“We shall only stop a little while,” Arabella explained hastily.

“Nonsense! You must stay for at least a week,” Richard replied.

Foz grinned happily, but Neville and Arabella
glanced at Elissa, then each other.

“You join me in wishing that my dearest friends stay some time under our ample roof, do you not, Elissa,” Richard said, and it was not a question.

“If you wish.”

“We can only stay one night,” Neville said firmly. “Now that I, too, have an estate to manage, I cannot stay away for long. And my father gets positively peckish when Arabella is away. He will be riding roughshod over the servants until she gets back.”

“That I can well believe,” Richard agreed. “Very well, one night only it shall be.”

“If you will all excuse me, I had better alert the servants,” Elissa announced. Then she turned and swept into the house.

Neville’s brows rose. “I knew we should have sent word first.”

“This is all my fault,” Foz moaned. “I was bored out of my skull in London with nothing to do and nobody to do it with, so I thought I’d take myself to Neville’s estate, and then we got to talking about you and you did invite me but only me—”

“It is my fault,” Arabella interrupted. “As newly married myself, I should have remembered that you two might not want company just yet.”

“Nonsense!” Richard repeated, his tone slightly defensive. “I am very pleased you have come. You have caught Elissa unawares,
that’s all, and she doesn’t like surprises.”

And that, he was sure, was no lie.

“Perhaps we would do better to stay at the inn in that village we came through,” Neville suggested.

Not where he had gotten drunk! “No, no, I insist you stay here.”

“Then she is not angry?” Foz asked worriedly.

“No! Taken aback, perhaps, but not angry. You are my friends, I am delighted you have come and I insist you stay here. There is no more to be said.”

Again, Neville and Arabella exchanged wary glances.

Foz, on the other hand, giggled. “Then it is just as I said it would be. I knew it would be so, after watching all your plays.”

Richard raised a brow in puzzlement.

“I said you would be the master here. It is a perennial theme in your plays that only a fool allows his wife to command him.”

“Is that so, Richard?” Arabella asked pointedly.

Richard suddenly wished he had not been so forceful in espousing certain sentiments in his literary pursuits. “I fear I am forgetting my manners, Lady Farrington, letting you stand here so long. Come, let us all go inside for some refreshment.”

*   *   *

“So there I was, slumbering peacefully through the third act,” Lord Cheddersby continued that evening, equally oblivious to the tension in the dining room as to the final course of the meal before him.

“Peacefully?” Richard interrupted. “I daresay your snores were audible throughout the house.”

The handsome, well-dressed Lord Farrington and his pretty wife smiled at that, as they had smiled at so much since their unwelcome arrival, Elissa thought sourly as she silently consumed her pudding and tried to ignore the banter about things of which she knew nothing.

“They were not!” Lord Cheddersby protested.

“I have heard you snore, Foz, and trust me, they probably were,” Lord Farrington said.

Elissa glanced at the man with his easy, charming speech and manners. He wore a suit of finely tailored dark brown brocade and an ecru shirt with a touch of lace. His naturally curling hair fell about his broad shoulders.

He was, she supposed, the most conventionally handsome man she had ever seen, and yet there was no challenge in his eyes, no hint of fierce determination or bold self-confidence in his features. Indeed, it was easy to believe that had he been less intelligent, he would have made a fine fop in the king’s court.

She tried not to look at Lord Farrington’s
young, merry wife at all and cursed herself for the jealousy she could not subdue.

Yet she was not jealous of Arabella’s looks, fine velvet gown, jewelry, or pretty hair ribbons. She was jealous because Lady Farrington seemed to be having the happy, carefree life that had been denied to Elissa. What did this woman know of suffering, denial, or fear?

If she had experienced what Elissa had, would she be so pleasant and ever-smiling?

As for Lord Cheddersby, his friendship with Richard was truly a puzzle, for he seemed exactly the kind of buffoon her husband would scorn or make sport of.

Perhaps he did, and the man was too stupid to know it.

She also wondered if they were secretly noting the plainness of her plate and linen, the simplicity of their meal, the lack of French wine or the champagne that was all the rage at court, and pitying their friend.

“Snores or not, that is still no reason for that saucy Nell Gwyn to throw an orange at my head,” Lord Cheddersby complained. “The wench could have killed me.”

“Indeed,” Richard replied with a wry smile, “she might have killed you, for she is a very healthy young woman.”

“Healthy? Ods bodikins, she is an Amazon!”

“That is not the Nell I know,” Neville remarked. “She is too petite to be a warrior.”

Elissa glanced at Lady Farrington and was surprised to see that the woman didn’t so much as blink.

Was she a fool, that she didn’t suspect her husband of an illicit liaison with this Nell? Everyone knew that the young women who sold oranges at the theaters were also prostitutes—and Lord Farrington had used the harlot’s first name.

Then she flushed to think that if Lady Farrington were a fool, she herself was a greater one, for surely her own husband had had numerous encounters with such creatures.

“Well, she could be a miniature Amazon, couldn’t she?” Lord Cheddersby asked after a moment’s thought.

“Nell is an impertinent wench, but I doubt she meant to hurt you,” Lord Farrington said.

“I hope you are right, for she is a pretty little thing. Mind, I’ve still got the bruise.” Lord Cheddersby started to lift his elegant wig. “Look here—”

“By all means, yes,” Elissa confirmed. “Display your wound to my husband. He is a veritable marvel when it comes to injuries, although an attack with an orange may be beyond even his expertise.”

Their company looked at her with some surprise—as if they were taken aback to realize she was there, Elissa thought coldly. As for Richard, she didn’t care how or if he looked at her.

“My wife’s son had a slight mishap with a sword,” he explained. “Nothing serious. It was no worse than the cut Buckhurst gave you in Whitehall that night when you saved Arabella from him.”

“Ah, yes. That night,” Lord Farrington said, giving his wife a secretive and loving smile.

A lump came to Elissa’s throat. Just last night, Richard had looked at her that way and she had rejoiced.

But that was last night. So much had changed in so short a time!

“Where is your stepson?” Lord Cheddersby asked. “I would like to meet him again. I swear, he was quite the finest little chap I ever set eyes on, as I said at the time. Didn’t I, Richard?”