Undoing of a Lady (18 page)

Tom laughed again. “Hardly that.” He looked up at her, narrowing his eyes against the sun. “There are
things you don’t know, Lizzie—things about that oh-so-worthy husband of yours. That’s what I want to tell you.”

Lizzie’s hands tightened involuntarily on the reins and Starfire side stepped. Tom grinned to see his barb strike home. “Your Achilles’ heel,” he said softly, “your love for the undeserving Earl of Waterhouse.” He shook his head. “You’re a great girl, Lizzie—I admire you, I really do. In so many ways we are so alike, but you are too, too naive.”

“Don’t bracket me with you,” Lizzie said. “I may be wild, Tom, but I’m not a callous, heartless
bastard.”

“More fool you,” her brother said calmly. “You’ve given your heart to the wrong man, Lizzie.”

“You’re boring me with all this talk of love, Tom,” Lizzie said. Her heart had started to thunder. She felt mortified. The thought of Tom and Priscilla Willoughby laughing over her innocent love for Nat, perhaps as they lay in bed together, made her feel sick. How had Tom known? Could everyone see how she felt? Were her emotions too transparent, her vulnerability evident to everybody? Everybody except Nat…

“What are you going to tell me?” she said, affecting ennui so that Tom should not see how much he was upsetting her. “Is your big piece of news that Nat was once Priscilla Willoughby’s lover?”

As soon as the words were out she wondered if Tom was actually going to tell her that Nat was still Priscilla’s lover and she felt a lurch of horror and a
fresh wave of sickness engulf her. But Tom was shaking his head.

“I’m sure she would wish it,” he said, “but no. I’ll spare you that torture at least, Lizzie.” His eyes were full of mocking amusement as he dealt out scraps of malice like playing cards.

“What I was going to ask,” Tom said casually, “was whether you knew that Cousin Gregory Scarlet paid Nat to marry you?”

Lizzie stared at him whilst the sun poured down through the shifting leaves and the birds sang and she could not seem to hear them properly because there was a buzzing in her ears.

Paid to marry you…Paid to marry you…

“A dowry,” she said, through stiff lips.

Tom was shaking his head. “A bribe, Lizzie. You know how stuffy Cousin Gregory is. He had heard you were becoming much too much like our mother.” He paused. “The drinking, you know. You have a reputation for it. And the flirtations with unsuitable men…Very undignified and unbecoming to the ancient and great name of the Earls of Scarlet.”

“You’re a fine one to talk of conduct unbecoming,” Lizzie said. She felt cold, skin deep, bone deep.

A bribe…Nat had been bribed to marry her…

“It’s different for men,” Tom said complacently. “I won’t be labeled a drunken doxy.”

“No,” Lizzie said, “just an arrogant, insufferable, hateful
sot
.”

Tom laughed with the pleasure of hurting her. Lizzie knew he was enjoying it. She could see it in his face and yet she seemed powerless to resist his provocation.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to retaliate against me,” he said cheerfully. “At least I won’t be bought and sold like a piece of meat as you were.” He stepped closer, staring up at her. “Cousin Gregory
sold
you, Lizzie, with an extra few thousand to sweeten your dowry, and Nat Waterhouse
bought
you because he needed the money.”

Lizzie had heard enough. She dug her heels into Starfire’s side and turned the horse so sharply that she knocked Tom flying. Lizzie pulled back and Starfire reared and for one satisfying moment Lizzie saw the genuine terror on her brother’s face as the horse’s hooves came down toward him. At the last moment she turned again so the horse pirouetted in the most perfect piece of dressage. Tom scrambled to his feet, swearing horribly, and Lizzie looked down at him.

“I never understood your need to hurt people, Tom,” she said. “We were close once, you, and me, and Monty. Where did it all go wrong?”

She did not wait for his reply. She rode off toward Fortune’s Folly and left Tom standing in the bridleway staring after her. She could feel the venom in his look and her heart bumped against her ribs with the effort not to cry.

Bought and sold like a piece of meat
…

A bribe
…

A drunken doxy, just like our mother…

Gregory Scarlet had not wanted anything to do with her from the moment that he had inherited from her father and now all he cared about was preserving the good reputation of the Scarlet name. And Nat had agreed, for the money…For the money…The words drummed in her head with every beat of Starfire’s hooves.

When she got back to Chevrons she rubbed Starfire down herself and fed her. Being in the stables with the horses soothed her. It was one of the few things from her past life that was a constant. The house was quiet when she went in. A supper for one was laid on the table in the dining room.

“Lord Waterhouse returned whilst you were out, my lady,” Mrs. Alibone said. “He is dining at the Oyster Club tonight and said not to expect him back until late.”

Nat was out. Of course he was. He was always out, the husband who had been bribed to marry her. He was working, or he was visiting his family, or he was with his friends…Lizzie felt sick with misery that Nat did not choose to spend his time with her. But then it was money and duty that had forced them to wed, not love.

She stripped off her riding gloves and slapped them down on the table. The decanter on the sideboard seemed to beckon to her, the wine glowing red
in the evening sunshine. One little drink would take the edge off her misery.

A drunken doxy, just like our mother…

With a sudden violent sweep of the hand she sent the decanter tumbling onto the floor. It smashed into the skirting board and broke, spilling wine across the carpet. Mrs. Alibone slid back into the room so swiftly Lizzie wondered if she had been lurking outside the door polishing the keyhole.

“Madam!”

“An accident,” Lizzie said. “I do apologize for the mess. I’ll tidy it up—”

“Madam!” Mrs. Alibone sounded even more outraged at the thought of her mistress cleaning. “You certainly will not!”

Lizzie sighed. “Very well. Thank you, Mrs. Alibone.” She glanced at the table with its lonely dinner setting. “Pray tell Cook not to bother with dinner. I shall go out.”

Mrs. Alibone raised her brows. “Out? Madam, you cannot! It is not the Done Thing!”

“Yes, I can,” Lizzie said. “I am going out without my husband. Again. Shocking, is it not?”

And she ran up the stairs to get changed.

“I
WILL BE MAKING
your cousin Mary an offer of marriage tomorrow morning.” Tom Fortune lay sprawled in his chair in the study at Fortune Hall. His shirt was hanging loose and his trousers were unbuttoned. He was enjoying the ministrations of Priscilla Willoughby’s skilful mouth and equally clever hands and was feeling very mellow. Being pleasured by a veiled woman was proving extremely erotic. Priscilla had refused to let him either see her or touch her because the skin complaint she was suffering had left her with a terrible rash. Tom thought it hilarious that Lizzie had apparently inflicted such humiliation on his vain mistress. Priscilla seemed to find it less amusing. In fact Tom suspected that the only reason she was here and was prepared to indulge his vices as usual was because she wanted something from him in return.

“I tried to seduce Mary,” he continued. “I wanted to make sure she would be obliged to wed me.”

“What happened?” Priscilla’s mouth brushed his cock in the lightest and most tantalising of touches,
her cunning little tongue circling him, flicking and delving. Tom shivered with enjoyment.

“She ran from me like the startled virgin she is,” he said. “I do believe she was terrified. Stephen Armitage cannot have had her when they were betrothed. Or perhaps he did—perhaps that was why she took fright.”

Priscilla’s mouth tugged on him and he groaned. “At least you were spared the appalling tedium of having to make love to her,” she murmured. “Do you think she will accept you?”

“I’ll make sure she does,” Tom said. His mind was starting to splinter with pleasure. He really did not want to talk, could not talk. But Priscilla kept accompanying her attentions with questions; questions it was becoming more and more difficult for him to concentrate on.

“Did you speak to your sister?” she asked, fondling him, stroking until he thought he would burst. “Did you?” Suddenly she bit him, not quite gently.

“Ow! Yes!” Smarting, Tom almost pushed her away, but already she was soothing the hurt, laving it away with her tongue and he started to relax again as renewed pleasure swept away the pain. “I told her about Waterhouse being paid to wed her,” he gasped, shifting in his chair to aid Priscilla’s movements. “She was very distressed, though she hid it well.”

“Good.” Priscilla rewarded him with the subtlest and sweetest of caresses. “She is an evil little witch and she deserves to suffer for what she did to me.”

When Tom had first heard about the doctored lavender water he had been filled with admiration for Lizzie—and contempt for Priscilla in believing for a moment that Nat Waterhouse would have sent it. Now, though, as Priscilla urged him to the most exquisite climax, he was not inclined to do anything other than agree with whatever she said.

“I think,” he panted, “she is suffering very much indeed.”

“Good,” Priscilla said again and he heard the satisfaction in her voice and thought she was smiling as she teased him over the edge, and he came with a triumphant shout and the release rolled over him leaving him spent and almost—almost—regretful that he was to marry Mary rather than her cousin.

N
AT HAD BEEN DISAPPOINTED
not to see Lizzie before he had come out. Mrs. Alibone had said that she had gone riding and Nat had been glad of it for he knew that riding was one of the things that made Lizzie very happy. He wanted her to be happy and manifestly she was not. He could not understand why things seemed so different from how they had been before he and Lizzie wed, but evidently they were and it was his task to discover why and to solve the problem. That was what he had been doing from the first: solving the problem of Celeste’s disgrace, solving the problem of Lizzie’s lost reputation, protecting his family, trying to make all well again
because he cared deeply for them all and, devil take it, dealing with problems was what men
did.
It was the most damnable thing that everything seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket rather than sorting itself out. His father was dangerously ill, Tom Fortune was circling and threatening further blackmail, Lizzie was grief-stricken and seemed wilder by the day and under the circumstances the July meeting of the Oyster Club, a most exclusive gentlemen’s dining club with very restricted membership, excellent food and ample wine, was exactly what Nat needed to help him forget for a few short hours that the rest of his life was in chaos.

He reached for his glass. They served wine in half pint glasses at the Oyster Club and that always loosened men’s tongues. It was Nat’s task, along with Dexter and Miles, to listen for anything that might throw some light on the Fortune murder case for they were lamentably short of leads. No one appeared to have seen or heard anything on the night that Monty Fortune had died, other than a vague rumor of a masked woman seen flitting about the village. There had been the argument between Monty and someone else several nights before his death but again, no one had seen the other person or could identify them. They were making little progress, and yet in cases of this kind something usually gave in the end. It was a matter of patience and endurance, rather like his marriage.

Further down the long table, Nat could see Dexter and Miles talking to various acquaintances. The Club was eclectic, membership comprising local businessmen, professional men and gentry. The food arrived, the famous oysters that gave the Club its name followed by a prime beefsteak. Nat started to relax and tried not to think about Lizzie, left at home. For some reason the image made him feel edgy. The last time he had left her alone in the evening she had gone out and almost gambled away the Scarlet Diamonds. The village was still talking about it. It was surely impossible that she could do anything else even remotely as outrageous but he was painfully aware that they had never really discussed the matter properly, had not really talked about anything of importance in the last few weeks because Lizzie seemed so locked in her grief that he could not reach her and he knew he had used his work as an excuse not to try as hard as he should…

Some sort of disturbance was taking place at the other end of the room. Servants were seen scurrying in all directions, diving for cover. He heard masculine voices exclaim:

“I say! Lady Godiva!”

“What ho! What a filly!”

Men were standing now, craning their necks to see, raising their glasses in a toast. The dazzling lights of the chandeliers shone in Nat’s eyes and he blinked, completely unable to believe what he was seeing.

A woman on horseback was coming up the sweeping staircase. The horse’s hooves made no sound on the thick red carpet and the soft jingle of its harness was the only noise as the whole banqueting hall fell silent. The woman was young and she sat very tall and straight in the saddle, moving gently with the motion of the horse. There was a little smile curving her lips and a wicked spark in her green eyes. Her long titian hair tumbled in glorious array over her shoulders and down to her waist. Her white thighs gripped the horse’s side as she urged it up the staircase.

Nat’s brain refused to accept the evidence of his eyes.

She was stark naked
.

Her lissom, pale skin looked like alabaster. One small but perfectly rounded breast peeked from beneath the cascade of her hair, the nipple pink and pouting from the ministrations of the cool night air. The other breast was hidden, but the auburn strands of her hair seemed only to emphasize its tempting curve. Her hands were holding the reins in her lap covering what little was left of her modesty.

Nat heard the men around him draw in their breath sharply as they saw what he saw. And what he saw was his wife, the new Countess of Waterhouse, and she was completely nude, displaying herself in all her wanton beauty in front of the assembled company of the Oyster Club.

Nat’s first response was complete denial. This
simply could not be Lizzie. Not even she would do something so outrageous, so scandalous. The room spun about him and he closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them and the world steadied, Lizzie was still there and she was still very, very naked in front of forty extremely appreciative gentlemen. She was riding along the corridor now, toward the big balcony windows and there was a very indiscreet rush of men in her wake.

Swift on the heels of Nat’s disbelief came shock, sharp and sickening, and a mixture of fury and mortification. Men were smacking their lips now, eyes bulging from their heads, the coarsest of jests on their lips.
Coarse jests about his wife
. They were looking on
his wife
with lust. No doubt they all wanted to ravish her senseless. And Lizzie herself, provocative, triumphant Lizzie, was smiling at them alluringly, enjoying the admiration and the attention.

Nat watched as Lizzie approached the open doors of the balcony window. It was a good twelve-foot drop to the ground and a ripple of apprehension spread about the room as the assembled company took in her intention.

“Thirty guineas says she will make it!” One enterprising gambler declared, slapping his coins down on the table.

“Fifty against!”

The crowd jostled for the best view.

Nat pulled himself together and strode toward his wife. “Elizabeth!”

His voice was perhaps a little less authoritative than he might have desired, whether from anger or shock or a combination of emotions. Whatever the reason, Lizzie ignored him completely and walked the horse up to the edge of the balcony.

There was a moment’s pause and then they jumped, horse and rider united in a most elegant and perfectly executed leap down to the street. Nat—and everyone else—was afforded the most perfect view of Lizzie’s pert, rounded buttocks and the quickest, tantalizing flash of the crease between her thighs. A concerted sigh ran through all the men in the room, and then the place erupted into chaos as they abandoned the landing and ran down the stairs to see if both horse and rider had survived the jump. Nat ran, too, down the staircase and out into the warm, damp night, torn between fear and an anger so intense he had never experienced it before. Men were pushing and shoving to get a view and as Nat ruthlessly cut his way to the front of the crowd he saw Lizzie trotting demurely away down the street. The lamplight gleamed on the pale skin of her bare back and buttocks and on the lovely curves and hollows of her body. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.

“I say! How marvelous!”

“Splendid creature!”

Nat felt the relief rip through him followed swiftly
by ungovernable rage. He saw Miles approach him and then his friend put a hand on his arm and started to speak but Nat did not seem able to hear him. He shook Miles off violently and set off down the street in the direction that the horse had gone. He could still hear the sound of hoofbeats echoing through the night air.

She had gone too far this time.

The blood roared in his ears. What had he been thinking to leave Lizzie alone again? How could he have been so foolishly smug and complacent as to think that she might sit quietly waiting for him, when she was no doubt bored and lonely and so like a child throwing a tantrum she had to do something completely outrageous? This was Lizzie Scarlet, the wild, headstrong,
wilful
miss who was no more likely to change and reform than her gray mare would turn to a roan gelding. Nothing could excuse this behavior—not Lizzie’s grief nor her misery nor her anger. The truth was that she was spoiled to the bone and she was never going to change. She had made him a laughingstock and proved publicly that their marriage was a sham and a debacle.

The anger threatened to devour him whole. How many years had he known Lizzie? How many times had she pulled a trick that was, if not as appalling as this one, then disgraceful and scandalous and undisciplined? When she had been no more than Sir Montague’s naughty little sister it had not mattered. He had laughed, and shaken his head over her
wildness whilst thinking privately that she was a hoyden who had been dragged rather than brought up. Now, suddenly, it mattered terribly. Everything was different because she was his wife.

Nat found that he was running down the Fortune Street, following the faint, fading rap of hooves until he came to the mews at the back of Chevrons. His breath was coming in short, sharp bursts. His blood fizzed with rage and tension. He stormed into the stables and came up short to find Lizzie there, calmly rubbing her horse down. She was wearing a loose dressing robe now, though her feet were still bare, and the fact that she was clothed now only seemed to incense Nat further. For some reason he had expected her to run and hide from him, and her blatant refusal to back down, to accept blame, to beg his forgiveness for her dreadful behavior, was the last straw. And in that moment he realized with appalled horror that he was hugely, hopelessly and unbearably aroused. He looked at the saddle lying on the floor and thought of it pressed between her thighs, and barely managed to repress his groan.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. She stood there, the brush in one hand, her face set and pale. In her eyes was a sparkle of rage that met and matched his.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” she said pertly. “It was the most perfect jump. Starfire—” she patted the horse’s neck “—is all spirit and no fear.”

All spirit and no fear.

Nat realized that he was almost too insane with rage and arousal to speak. He took Lizzie by the shoulders and pushed her roughly ahead of him out of the stall and into the hay store next door. The door of the stall banged behind them and the horse shifted. Nat caught sight of one of the grooms out in the yard, his face a picture of shock and speculation. No doubt he had seen Lizzie ride in, naked and shameless. Nat did not know why that should worry him particularly when every other gentleman in the county had just seen her displaying herself with abandon, but somehow it did. He slammed the door of the storeroom in the groom’s face, shot the bolt and turned to his wife. He grabbed the neck of her robe and wrenched it from her so that she was once more standing naked in front of him.