The Earl's Untouched Bride (23 page)

And caught her holding out the envelope containing the money
—
his money
—
to Robert.

They both froze, looking at him just like two children caught with their hands in the biscuit barrel.

A vision of her in some French farmyard feeding chickens flashed into his mind. Robert emerged from a shadowy doorway, put his arm about her waist and kissed her cheek. She smiled up at him, the picture of contentment...

Charles could not bring himself to say a word. He felt as if he was teetering on the edge of an abyss, and one wrong move would send him hurtling eternally downwards.

Until this moment he had not really believed she hated him. She had said it once before, in the heat of the moment. When she had calmed down, she had admitted she had not really meant it.

But here was the evidence she could not bear to spend another moment as his wife.

It was his own fault. He had treated her abominably. He had left her shaking and crying at the masquerade. No wonder she had turned to Robert for comfort. He had practically driven her into his arms. And, worse, he had flung his mistrust in her face at the worst possible moment...

He drew in a ragged breath. This time, no matter what it cost him, he would hold his anger in check until he had learned the truth. All of it. Whatever it might be.

Only then would he deal with it
—
or rather find a way to survive losing both his brother and his wife in one fell swoop.

Like an automaton, he crossed the room to the fireplace and propped himself against the mantel, folding his arms across his chest.

Eyeing Robert, who was reaching for the crutches that were propped on the arm of the sofa on which he sprawled, he ground out, 'I think it is high time someone told me exactly what is going on.'

'Tell him, Lady Walton,' ordered Robert, letting the crutches fall.

'I cannot!' Heloise stood rooted to the spot, the money clutched in her hands, large tears welling in eyes that stared at him piteously from a pinched white face.

'Then I will,' Robert declared, pulling himself to a more upright posture. 'It's no use trying to hide it from him any longer. The game's up.'

'Robert!' she cried, rounding on him as though he had betrayed her.

'It is far better for Charles to act for you in this matter,' he went on mulishly. 'I said so from the start.'

Act for her? These were not the words of a man contemplating eloping with his brother's wife. Nor was his exasperated tone in the least lover-like. A great weight seemed to roll from Charles' shoulders.

'Perhaps you would find it easier to confide in me if I were to tell you that I know you were trying to sell your drawings, and that it was, in fact, I who supplied the publisher with the five hundred guineas in that package?'

Heloise let out a strangled cry, dropping to a chair and covering her face with her hands. She should have known no businessman would pay so much money for the dozen or so drawings she had given him. They were probably not worth a sou!

'I can see I have been even more stupid than usual,' she said, turning the packet over in her hands.

She would have to tell Charles everything. And then he would be so angry with Robert. He would say things that might alienate them from each other for ever. They were both of them so deucedly proud! Insults, once spoken, would not be easily retracted or forgiven by either. And it would all be her fault.

Perhaps if she could tell Charles alone, and he had time to calm down before confronting Robert...

'Robert,' she said, getting to her feet and dropping the mangled package onto the cushion beside him, 'you know what to do with this. Charles
—
' She turned to him, lifting her chin. 'If you will spare me a few moments, I will tell you the whole.' She took a few steps towards the door. 'In my sitting room.'

To her great relief, not a second after she quit Robert's rooms, she heard Charles' tread on the staircase behind her.

'Please
—
won't you sit down?' She waved him to a chair to one side of the fireplace once she had dismissed Sukey. Nervously, she perched on the one opposite. 'I p...promised you before we married that I would not be any trouble to you at all, but I have got into such a terrible mess! I do not know where to start.'

'Start with the pictures,' Charles said grimly. 'I should very much like to hear why you felt obliged to run round town selling your work for a paltry sum.

'It is not a paltry sum. Robert said it was a small fortune!'

'Well, I have a large fortune at my disposal. For heaven's sake, Heloise, am I such an ogre that you cannot even apply to me for funds when you need them?'

'It is not at all that I think you are an ogre. But that I have broken my word and did not want to admit it. Nor why I broke it! I have done all that is reprehensible. And then I lost all that money at cards...'

'Gaming debts.' Why had he never considered that she might have been fleeced at cards? He shook his head. 'I have even made you think I would not meet your gaming debts,' he said bleakly.

Wringing her hands, she plunged on. 'I am the imbecile. Maman warned me I must not mind about your mistresses, but when I saw her, with those rubies you chose for her, and her air of such sophistication, while I had only those horrid yellow stones... But then Robert said they were diamonds, and priceless, and I knew how angry you would be that I was such a ninny
—
but how could I know?' She got to her feet then, pacing a few feet away before turning to exclaim, 'You said you had got them cleaned, and handed them to me as though they meant nothing, I thought you could not bother to go out to a jeweller and buy anything just for me. I did not know,' she sniffed, dashing a solitary tear from her cheek, 'I swear I did not know how valuable that bracelet was, and if I had known what a vile place the Opera House was I would never have made Robert take me there. He warned me, but I would not listen, so it was entirely my own fault that horrid man kissed me-
—
'

'Just stop right there!' Getting to his feet, Charles crossed the room and took hold of her firmly by her shoulders.

He had considered once before that there might be only one way to stop his wife when she was in full flow.

He employed it now. Ruthlessly, he crushed her lips beneath his own, knowing she would not welcome the kiss, but completely unable to resist. When he thought how close he had come to accusing her of infidelity again... He shuddered. Thank God he had managed to rein in his abominable jealousy!

'Ch...Charles,' was all she could manage, in a strangled whisper, when he finally pulled away. Why had he kissed her when he was clearly very angry with her?

As he looked down into her distraught face, he knew he still had a long way to go. Though she had not been planning to run off with Robert, he had still been the one she had run to in a panic, assuming she had nowhere else to turn.

Gently, he tugged her to sit beside him on one of her prettily brocaded sofas.

'Heloise,' he explained, 'anyone can get badly dipped at cards. You should have just told me.'

'I was too ashamed,' she admitted. 'I knew I should not have been playing at all, when I am so useless at counting, but when Mrs Kenton looked at me with such contempt I felt I had to prove I could be as good as her at something! And then, because it was the house of one of Robert's respectable friends, and not a gaming hell like some we had been to, I was not on my guard. And nobody told me a guinea was worth more than a pound!' she complained, as though the injustice of this had just struck her. 'Why must you English have crowns and shillings, and guineas, and everything be so complicated?'

'That is the second time you have mentioned Mrs Kenton,' Charles said sternly. 'Would you mind telling me how you came to make her acquaintance?'

Determined to protect Robert as far as she was able, Heloise said, 'Nell introduced us.' When Charles looked puzzled, she explained, 'Lord Lensborough's mistress. They are friends.'

'Yes, but how came you to be acquainted with a woman like Nell
—
if that is her name?'

'Why should it not be her name? She is entitled to a name, like any other person. Just because to earn her living she has to
—
'

Charles took the only certain method of silencing his wife once again.

'If you cannot keep to the point, madam wife, I will have to keep kissing you, you know.' He wanted more than anything to rain kisses all over her dear little face. But her reaction told him she would not be receptive to such a demonstration of affection.

She disentangled herself from his arms, her cheeks flushing mutinously. So he kissed her to punish her, did he? A perverse excitement thrilled through her veins. She only had to defy him, then, and he might kiss her again! Oh, if only she were not so determined to clear her name and prove she was not the amoral hussy that Englishmen all seemed to assume, just because she did not follow the stricter rules their society imposed on Englishwomen.

While she was still dithering between his kisses and his contempt on the one hand, or his respect with coldness on the other, he said, quite sternly, 'Heloise, you should not be socialising with women like Nell and...Mrs Kenton...'

'No, Maman warned me that I must pretend not to know about your mistress. But this was absurd when we walked into each other. How am I supposed to ignore a woman who is standing right in front of me?'

Felice would have done it with relish, he reflected. She had a way of cutting people, a haughty tilt to her head sometimes when she took offence at something said to her, that had made it easy for him to envisage her as his Countess. She would have had no trouble ripping his discarded mistress to shreds. She could easily have become the sharpest-clawed of all the tabbies in town. He swallowed suddenly on the frightening prospect. But Heloise
—
his sweet, good-natured, straightforward little pea-goose
—
needed his support and his care in a way Felice would never have done. A feeling of hope warmed his veins. She had based at least some of her actions on a couple of misapprehensions about him. If he could clear those up, perhaps he could begin to redeem his character in her eyes.

'Heloise,' he said, steeling himself for the kind of conversation a man as fastidious as himself should never have to have with his wife, 'Mrs Kenton is not my mistress.'

'Don't lie to me, Charles! Everyone knows those rubies she flaunts were a gift from you.'

'She
was
my mistress. That much is true. But, for your information, those rubies were my parting gift. I gave them to her before I left for Paris. And now we will not mention her again. In that I have to agree with your
maman
. I should not have to discuss my mistress with my wife.'

Heloise did not question how she knew he was telling the truth.

But that cat had deliberately made her think the relationship was current!

Indignantly, Heloise leapt to her feet, pacing back and forth as she assessed how the woman had deliberately played on her insecurities, taunted her into playing beyond her means, and finally goaded her into parting with the bracelet she must have known was priceless.

'Oh!' she cried in vexation, flinging herself back onto the sofa. 'She has made a complete fool of me.' Suddenly sitting up straight, as another thought occurred to her, she exclaimed, 'And
he
was in it too! Percy Lampton!'

'Lampton?' Charles grated, his hackles rising. He might have known the Lamptons would do their utmost to hurt his chosen bride.

'Yes
—
he persecuted me until Mrs Kenton and her game of cards seemed like a perfectly reasonable means of escape. And he kissed me, too!' she concluded, remembering the assault at the Opera House.

'He
what
?'

A shiver of dread ran down his spine. Apparently Lampton would stop at nothing. Oh, he no longer feared Heloise would stray into an adulterous affair. He must have been mad to suspect her integrity for so much as a second! But a ruthless swine like Lampton would only have to get her into a compromising position, arranging things so that there were witnesses, and his wife's reputation would be in tatters.

It was no use hoping she would suddenly start trusting him enough to listen to any warning he had to give her. The only sure way to keep her safe would be to remove her from that man's reach altogether.

'We will have to leave London.'

He would take her down to Wycke, his principal seat. And while they were there he would make sure she spent at least some part of each day in his company. There were so few other distractions to amuse a city-bred girl like Heloise that she would soon welcome any company
—
even his. He would rein in his absurd jealousy, treat her with the kindness and consideration a young bride deserved, and maybe, just maybe, she might come to regard him as a patient, devoted husband rather than the unapproachable tyrant of her imagination. God, how he wanted to kiss her again! If only she didn't freeze whenever he took her into his arms, and then look at him with those bemused, wounded eyes when he let her go.