The Secret to Seduction (37 page)

Silence. Odd how he could hear servants moving about in other parts of the house. It seemed impossible for anything ordinary to be taking place anywhere near him.

“So you sacrificed my family…for yours.”

Her voice was faint. She gave her head another little shake, as if the knowledge had lodged somewhere in her mind, a jagged thing, hurting her. Rhys regarded his beautiful wife, her face so taut with confusion. She simply could not understand that this man she had made love to, and had laughed with, and was building a life with…had committed this astounding betrayal. Had done this unforgivable thing to her.

For he knew that it was precisely that: unforgivable.

“Sabrina…what would you have done in my place?” He managed to say it quietly.

“I don’t know what I would have done, Rhys, because, thanks to you, I never had a mother or sister to worry about.”

Cold and even in tone, but the words lashed like a whip. They were ironic. He supposed she’d learned how to be ironic from him.

“Sabrina…I swear to you, I wanted to tell you all of this. I was glad Anna had disappeared. I was glad she was never caught. I prayed for her, I swear to you. But I never knew whether she’d been killed, or whether she had managed to escape. And I never knew what became of her daughters.”

Sabrina’s mouth parted for an instant; no words emerged. Just an airless sound. And then, finally:

“All of my life, Rhys. My mother…it’s the one thing I have wanted all my life, to know who my true family was. I was so lonely all my childhood. And you knew it. I told you. And oh, God, Rhys . . .” She stopped, her voice breaking. “And you made love to me that night I showed you her miniature.”

How could he defend the indefensible? He could only try to explain.

“Sabrina, as a child you were cared for and loved, and I thank God for that. But until you find yourself in the position I was in…I ask that you try to not judge me too harshly.”

“Not judge you?” She made a sound, an incredulous laugh. “You helped destroy a family. If I hadn’t found out—if he hadn’t—you might never have told me.”

And then as the full realization sank in, she repeated it, her voice stunned.

“You might never have told me, Rhys. I might…I might never have known. I might have lived happily here in the country with you. I might have lived my whole life without knowing what manner of man you are.”

And though he hadn’t a right to it, he was suddenly furious. It swept up from somewhere inside, someplace it had been lurking for years. Furious at the choice life had required him to make, perhaps, and what that choice might now take from him.

“What manner of man I am?” he ground out ironically. “I know full well what manner of man I am, my righteous little wife. And so did you the first time you kissed me, and so do you every time you take your pleasure in my arms. You’ve always known. From the very first moment.”

She flinched. He saw her hand curl into her skirt, reflexively. He’d struck home, somehow.

“Did you ever think of her, Rhys? Of my mother? Did you think of us? Of the three little girls?”

“I thought of all of you, Sabrina. Sometimes I spent days thinking of all of you. But what I knew was that my mother and sister would have a chance to live, and I admit, I rejoiced in that.” His voice was harder now, too.

“But your mother and your sister died, didn’t they?”

He was silent.

“Perhaps,” she said lightly, “that was the price you paid for sacrificing mine.”

He knew he hadn’t the right to his rage. And still there it was, tangling with a roiling panic. “Sabrina, damnation, please
listen
to—”

But her own righteous fury had her in its grip, and she wouldn’t hear him. She went on, coldly articulate. “With your blood money, you also managed to gain…all of this.” Her hand sailed out in a gesture, indicating everything about La Montagne. “You don’t have your mother, and one of your sisters is dead. And I don’t have
my
mother or my sisters. But
you
have all of this. All of these precious, beautiful things.”

“Sabrina—”

She lifted up a hand to stop his words. “And now that’s all you’ll have, Rhys.”

She turned so quickly her skirts lashed her legs.

Rhys reflexively lunged across the desk for her, closed his fingers over her slim arm. She froze. Stared down at his arm, looked up into his face.

“Don’t go.” He said it softly, shocked at how low and even his voice sounded. And yet he’d never felt quite so desperate. There was so much he could say. But it all seemed to be summed up in those words: “Please don’t go.”

She stared up at him with those clear, direct eyes. He’d seen them dazed and hot with passion, crackling with anger, glowing with pleasure, shy and uncertain.

He’d never seen them so bitterly, bitterly cold.

“Unhand me or I will scream as if I’m being murdered.” She said it calmly.

He had enough pride not to cling, and enough sense to believe she would do what she said.

“Sabrina—”

“Unhand me,” she repeated calmly.

And so she’d learned to give orders like a countess. There was so much she’d learned from him.

Rhys uncurled his fingers, gently, one by one. Loath to relinquish her, as it might very well be the last time he ever touched her.

Freed, Sabrina turned on her heel and walked away from him.

It wasn’t a mad dash, which somehow would have given him hope.

There was only resolve in it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

O
NCE OUT OF the sight of Rhys, out of his hearing, Sabrina picked up her skirts in her fingers and ran like the devil was on her heels. Down the marble hallway, down the stairway, recklessly out the door into the cold day outside, where the wind tore her bonnet back and whipped her hair loose of its pins.

And like this she ran, like the sturdy country girl she’d always been, to the stables. She was only a little winded when she got there, and Mr. Croy appeared, puzzled.

She drew herself up to her full height, and breathed a moment before she spoke.

“Saddle her again, Mr. Croy, if you will.”

She managed to say this calmly, even through her heaving breath, even as Mr. Croy stared at her. She knew her cheeks must be vivid pink; her eyes stung and watered from the wind.

“Saddle her now.” She reissued the order, all but snapping it. “A man’s saddle. And do it quickly.”

And now, she knew, she sounded like a countess, and was glad for the first time of the title. She’d once been glad to be Rhys’s wife; the “countess” part had been incidental.

But it was the countess part that would get her to London. For coaching inns would happily extend credit to the Countess Rawden, and she knew she could find the inn because Mary, social Mary, had told her about it. It was the inn that troubled Paul’s delicate digestion.

Mr. Croy saddled and bridled the mare, while Sabrina let the fury and pain make her numb.

“And don’t you dare follow me,” she commanded over her shoulder.

She gripped the saddle and swung herself into it, then kicked the mare into a run.

An hour? Two hours?

For a time, Rhys stared at the space where Sabrina had been, and then he stood in his office like a caged animal, as though an entire vast home didn’t surround him.

How long could he leave Sabrina alone with her anger and hurt before he attempted to speak to her again? He refused to accept defeat; he’d never accepted defeat in his entire life. Even when he’d made his ugly, fateful decision so many years ago, he’d done it in part for that reason. He was born to fight, it seemed.

He glanced up to find Mrs. Bailey in the doorway. She curtsied to him. It seemed an inordinately commonplace thing to do, jarring almost, given how his life had changed in a mere two hours.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Rawden, but Lady Rawden hasn’t yet told the staff what she’d like to serve for dinner. Will you be taking a light repast in your rooms, then?”

Rhys went still. “When does Lady Rawden typically discuss dinner with you, Mrs. Bailey?”

“By midmorning, Lord Rawden, on a usual day. Even when she dines alone.”

He thought he detected a whiff of accusation about the word “alone,” but then everything seemed portentous now, somehow. Every word, every tick of the clock.

He glanced at the clock. The small brass hand pointed to four o’clock in the evening. Only an hour or so of daylight remained.

He remembered the resolve in Sabrina’s step as she’d turned to leave, the cold determination in her eyes.

She hadn’t known about her pride, her temper, her sense of impulse, until she’d met him.

Even as he asked it, he suspected he knew the answer to his next question: “When did you last see the countess, Mrs. Bailey?”

“This morning, sir. In the kitchen. She asked whether two ladies had visited, but she did not discuss dinner, then. And she’s so very good about it.”

An embellishment from Mrs. Bailey. She didn’t want Rhys to think ill of the countess’s ability to run a household, clearly. Everyone, even the taciturn housekeeper, had come to care for Sabrina.

His next question was practically a formality, and he was already moving past her, through the door as he asked it: “Will you kindly find her for me, Mrs. Bailey?”

But he suspected he knew the truth. And while the servants would no doubt futilely search the house for the countess, Rhys bolted for the stables.

Mr. Croy blanched, gripping his cap in his hands, and took two steps back from the looming earl. “I’m sorry, sir. She…ordered me not to follow her.”

“You should know bloody well not to follow a
stupid
order, Mr. Croy, even if it’s the countess who gives it.”

Rhys knew it was a ridiculous thing to say even as he said it. He inhaled sharply, breathed out to steady himself. “Mr. Croy…in which direction did she ride?”

“Toward Buckstead Heath, sir. She…fair rode like the devil. Astride. Nivver seen ’er ride like so before. But she seemed very . . .”

“
What
did she seem, Mr. Croy?” Rhys demanded. He reached for Gallegos’s saddle himself; Mr. Croy bridled the animal quickly, Gallegos tossing his head a little, sensing Rhys’s tension.

“She seemed calm, for all of that. As though she knew what she was about.”

Rhys closed his eyes briefly.
She isn’t. She doesn’t.

He pictured Sabrina, who rode well enough but was no equestrienne, riding at breakneck speed. He pictured the mare striking an icy patch, tumbling, Sabrina flying from—

He swung himself into the saddle and rode Gallegos at breakneck speed to the vicarage.

No brown horse was tethered outside the churchyard.

Rhys pulled Gallegos’s head around hard and nudged him toward the stables, swinging down from the saddle and leaving the reins to dangle. He threw open the door.

But only one horse stood quietly there in a stall, peacefully working a chaw of hay in its jaws and gazing at him with faint surprise. A gray. Geoffrey’s horse. Not Sabrina’s brown mare.

Where the bloody hell could she have gone?

He swung himself back into Gallegos’s saddle and trotted him from the outbuildings to the building that had housed vicars at Buckstead Heath for a century and a half.
1665
were the numbers over the door. The house and the church were built that year; the outbuildings and stables were only a decade or so old.

And all of it belonged again to the Gillrays, thanks to Rhys. And the living here at the vicarage was Geoffrey’s, thanks to Rhys.

And Rhys just might kill Geoffrey with his bare hands.

He pounded on the door.

And moments later, Geoffrey flung it open. He was in shirtsleeves and trousers. A faint greasy smell of sausage wafted from the kitchen.

“Where is she?” Rhys demanded.

Geoffrey, accustomed to his cousin’s temper, looked a little surprised. “She isn’t here.”

The bastard hadn’t even asked whom he meant. “Let me in.” Rhys shoved his leg through the door.

Geoffrey stood aside. “By all means, cousin, come in. It’s not precisely La Montagne, so your search shouldn’t take long. Crawl under the bed, look under tables. Did you check the stables?”

“I looked in the damn stables.”

“Well, if she isn’t there, she isn’t here. But she’s not a reckless sort, typically. Sabrina always has a plan. I assume she left you.”

Rhys rounded on Geoffrey. “Don’t tell me what
sort
my wife is.” His voice was low with threat.

Geoffrey had the good sense to back a few steps away.

There was a silence between them. Rhys stood in the middle of the small vicar’s house, heavy with a sense of futility.

He looked at Geoffrey. “Why? Why did you tell her?” He could hear the weariness in his voice.

“I swear I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, Rhys. She just—I just—”

“What?” Rhys snapped.

The day was beginning to die beautifully; through the window the lowering sun was staining everything amber. She could be anywhere. Had she taken refuge in a villager’s house, Sabrina? Was she lying in a ditch somewhere? He could gallop off into the middle of nowhere, and pound on every door in the village of Buckstead Heath for days, and he still might never find her.