Reckless Viscount (36 page)

He finally looked at her then.

She saw right away how hard he was trying to shield his thoughts from her. He was well-versed in the practice, but Abbigael had learned to see beyond it. And what she saw in his eyes struck delicately at her heart and gave her pause. He was not so confident and detached as he would like her to believe.

“Go to bed, Abbigael,” he said with curt command as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I have work to do.”

She stood between him and the desk, wavering between the pain of his cold dismissal and her desire to fight back. To force him to acknowledge the emotion she sensed beneath his indifferent demeanor.

There was too much at stake, her entire future happiness, to turn cowardly now at such a vital impasse. She lifted her chin and lowered her hands to her sides, meeting his gaze with defiant openness and transparent vulnerability.

“I love you.”

His eyes hardened and his jaw clenched in reaction to her brave confession and then he glanced away.

“What do you want?” he asked dryly.

Starting to feel the rise of panic at the unrelenting harshness of his responses, Abbigael lifted her hands in a gesture of supplication and stuttered. “Nothing. Everything.”

A rueful smile twisted his lips as he looked up at her.

“The first I can give you. The other, I haven’t got. I was honest with you about that from the start.”

Abbigael stared at him, stiff with shock. He was right. He had warned her many times of what she could expect from him. There was nothing more to say.

The suffocating pain of loss filled her chest. It was a feeling reminiscent of the grief she had felt at her mother’s death.

But not nearly as bad. Or maybe she had just grown stronger than she had realized.

She loved him. Desperately and completely. But she could survive this.

Breaking free from the paralyzing effect of her heartbreak, she made her way back across the room to the door that had been wide open the entire time. Once again she had been so lost in the maelstrom of desire and need for him that all sense of privacy and decorum had flown out the window. He forever had the ability to take her outside of herself. He liberated her and caged her at the same time.

But he held no concern for the care of her heart.

She couldn’t resist the need to glance back over her shoulder before leaving the room. He was bent over his desk in the same posture as when she had first interrupted him. His pencil scratched in the notebook. It was as if the moments when she had been spread naked and gasping before him had never existed.

Abbigael returned to her bedroom, but she didn’t sleep any more that night.

She lay in her bed for hours trying to understand.

There was sadness in Leif. He was being pulled down by some internal darkness he guarded too well. She knew it with a certainty that filled her from head to toe. But he would not share his troubles with her. He had made a deliberate decision to separate himself and he rejected her love with the cool detachment of a man with no heart.

Abbigael tossed beneath her oppressive bedcovers and finally threw them off. She stretched out on her side, her gaze focused on the window as hazy grey light began to filter through the night.

Leif may excel at showing the world only what he wanted them to see, but he was not so adept that he could fool Abbigael. She was convinced that beneath the harsh façade he had built up in the last weeks he was still the loveable scoundrel who warmed her heart with his teasing grin and freed her from the restraints of her past.

By the time the morning sun cast a golden glow through the haze of early mist and she gazed out over Leif’s ancestral lands she decided that what she needed was to get away for a while. Her current presence at Dunwood Park held no purpose. Leif had no intention of involving her in his life and being held at the periphery was too hurtful.

She needed to shore up her determination and find a way to get through to him. She was not prepared to give up on the future she had always dreamed of for herself. She was not ready to sit silently on the edge of her husband’s life, waiting patiently for the smallest morsel of attention to be thrown her way. And she certainly wasn’t about to accept the kind of treatment she had received from him tonight. She needed to convince him their marriage had to be more than a business arrangement and she couldn’t do that under the current circumstances. The emotions that crowded her awareness when he was near were too compelling, and at the moment only brought pain.

She recognized that her plan held a hint of cowardice, but told herself she wasn’t running away. She was regrouping, gathering her strength and developing a strategy.

Leif would someday soon have to face her and the emotions he tried to deny.

Chapter Thirty-One

Leif tested the last of the turn cranks set into the master panel near the back door of the orangery. Tilting his head back, he watched with a wide grin of satisfaction as the large section of lead-framed glass on the ceiling above him turned on its axis, allowing the cool autumn air to flow into the glass walled building. Once open to its fullest, he turned the crank in reverse to close the window once more.

All of the panels worked wonderfully.

The large octagon orangery was set back from the house in a secluded little copse of trees between the stables and the trout stream. He had saved this greenhouse for last as it had somehow become the most important of all that he had managed to accomplish at Dunwood Park during the last several months. The small building made of stone and lead and glass had come to represent the final culmination of his vision.

And it had to be perfect.

Before leaving, he looked around the empty space and visualized the finished picture.

The eight angled walls would all be lined with the low benches that were already built and waiting to be installed. Patterned cushions in blue, green and yellow would soften the seating. Three orange trees would create a shaded grotto in the center of the greenhouse. And then here and there, he planned for planted boxes of mixed wildflowers—thistle, cornflowers, orchids, gentians, forget-me-nots and more. The crisp scent of citrus would forever mingle with the subtle perfume born of Irish meadows.

He took the walk back to the house at a slow pace, not in much hurry to return to the empty mausoleum. Since the structural work on the house finished, the place had been far too quiet. Gone were the steady pings of metal hammers and the clomping of work boots through the halls. The only noise of the last week had been the twitter of his new staff as they set up the furniture and décor of each room to his specifications.

Unfortunately, without the distraction of extra noise and activity, his mind was apt to wander into territories he’d rather not go.

As soon as he stepped into the hall, Mrs. Helmstead came up from the back of the house as if she had been listening for him. Although he had hired several girls from the nearby villages to fill the needed roles of upstairs and downstairs maids and kitchen staff, he hadn’t gotten around to hiring any senior staff. Jack still acted as sometime valet, footman and all around personal servant and Mrs. Helmstead took on the role of housekeeper, cook and butler, when needed.

Seeing the square of white paper in her hand as she approached, Leif winced inwardly and wished he had entered by a back stair.

Waving the letter before her like a flag, the old woman was upon him before he had a chance to consider retreat.

“Another letter arrived from Sir Felix, my lord.” Jutting the missive beneath his nose, she forced him to take it in his hand.

His fingers tensed with the urge to close around it in a crushing fist.

Having one of her more lucid episodes, Mrs. Helmstead planted her hands on her thick hips and looked at him as if he were a recalcitrant child.

“Don’t you think it’s time for you to read all those letters and finally form a reply? You cannot ignore your father-in-law forever.” Her lips pursed. “Nor your wife.”

“She left,” Leif retorted sharply. “If she wanted to communicate with me, she would write me herself. Or better yet, she would come home.”

Turning away from the interfering servant, Leif marched across the hall and passed through the large double doors that led to the main tower. A dark and narrow hallway stretched several steps into the darkness before they reached another pair of heavy doors. Pushing through them, he entered a circular sitting room occupying the ground floor of the tower. He had managed to trace the sales of most of the Neville tapestries and artwork that had been sold by his grandfather and had been able to buy much of it back. Some of the tapestries hung in the main hall, the rest graced this tower room and the floors above that contained the lord and lady’s personal apartments.

Leif swept past the small antique writing desk set beneath one of the large eight windows and tossed the letter onto the growing pile of similar unopened envelopes. Flopping onto the sofa in front of the glowing fireplace, he let his head fall against the back. He closed his eyes and willed himself to ignore the tight twisting in his stomach.

It had been very late on the day after his wife’s momentous visit to his study when he learned of her departure. She had left a brief note in the center of his desk stating only that she had decided to take a small trip and that she would write him soon.

Inexplicably, he had been angered by her desertion. Even though it was exactly what he had expected, what he had hoped for. He had forced the anger aside knowing it was best this way. For her and for himself. He needed to be free of the sight, scent and sound of her if he were to get through the monumental task he had set for himself. Everything he had ever dreamed of was within his reach. Every day he saw his plans for Dunwood Park coming to life, his vision taking shape, yet his focus was continuously averted to thoughts of his wife. Her sighs of pleasure intruded in the silence of his study, pulling forth memories of those unforgettable nights and days they spent enjoying each other in the narrow bed of his small corner bedroom in London.

He had known even then that the pure unadulterated pleasure could not last.

Even if Lady Carlisle had not reminded him of his background, his true nature, he would have understood soon enough that it was only a matter of time before his wife became dissatisfied and disillusioned.

He had promised her children. But he could never be the husband she had wanted.

He had assumed when she left that she had simply returned to London. But when the Blackbournes came for a visit nearly five weeks after her departure, he discovered they hadn’t seen her nor heard from her. When he questioned the driver, he found out she had gone to London but had gone directly to the docks where she booked passage on the first ship bound for Dublin.

The news that she had returned to Ireland eased the panic that had claimed him when he discovered she hadn’t been in contact with the Blackbournes. But it gave rise to the understanding that apparently London hadn’t been quite far enough away.

Throwing himself into the restoration of Dunwood Park with the dedication of one obsessed, Leif tried to distract himself from thoughts of his wife. He spent hours in his study pouring over plans and even more time working beside the laborers so that when he finally found his bed it was to be greeted by a dreamless sleep.

Still he could not dispel the ghost of her presence. And every day his first thought in the morning and his last before sleeping were of her.

Abbigael had been gone more than two months when the first letter arrived from Sir Felix Granger.

Leif had not been in the mood to hear unwanted censure from his father-in-law. Nor had he been particularly interested in what the man had to say a month later when the next letter came. Or the next, or the next. Each letter came closer on the heels of the last with this latest, coming only two weeks from the prior.

Lifting his head from the back of the sofa, Leif looked askance at the writing desk and scowled at the pile of unopened envelopes. He should have thrown them out as soon as they arrived. Now, with no more work to occupy his time, the letters called to him with strident persistence.

A rough growl of annoyance issued from the back of his throat as he pushed himself forward to sit with his elbows braced on his spread knees. He glared at the letters with so much ire it was a wonder the paper didn’t ignite into flames. Shoving his hands back through his hair, he pushed to his feet and stalked to the desk. Gathering the stack in one angry sweep of his hand, he returned to the sofa.

It took a moment to put the letters in order of delivery and then he sat back and began to read.

Dear Lord Neville,

I trust all is well in Sussex. I understand you have been making great progress on Dunwood Park.

As I am sure you are quite aware, Lady Neville arrived here in Dublin several weeks ago for an extended visit. I imagine you plan to join her at some point. Please advise when you expect to arrive as I imagine you will wish to engage in some socializing while you are here.

Sincerely,

The Right Honorable

Sir Felix Granger

Right, Leif mentally scoffed as he tossed the letter aside. He wondered how long it took for Abbigael to explain to her father that she had left him.