Regency Christmas Wishes(62)

Lady Marchwell ignored her pet’s wrath as she addressed Charles. “When you and my niece were married I believed yours to be an indestructible love match. You didn’t seem separate people, but one entity, sharing every thought and sensation, anticipating each other’s words, knowing all there was to know. Juliet entrusted you with her heart, but learned most cruelly that you were merely pretending to entrust yours to her.”

“It was no pretense, Lady M,” he broke in quickly.

Jack made a rude noise from the safety of the emperor’s head, and Lady Marchwell’s eyebrow quirked. “My sentiments exactly,” she said wryly, holding Charles’s eyes. “It had to be pretense, sir, or you would not have taken up with Sally Monckton, whom I believe to have had five further protectors since your departure from the scene. Off with the old and on with the new is her motto, it seems.”

Charles was offended. “Lady M, I do not regard this as a matter for amusement. Surely you can find it in your heart to forgive a little? It’s Christmas, the—”

“The season of goodwill?” she said quickly.

“Yes.”

“It was Christmas six years ago too,” she pointed out, and Charles’s resentful glance went to the magpie.

“So it suits you to blame Jack, does it?”

“I did,” Charles admitted, “and I suppose it is only habit now, for I fully realize that if I had behaved myself there would not have been an incriminating note to be discovered.”

“Very true.”

He looked imploringly at her. “I crave another chance with Juliet, Lady M, another chance to place this ring upon her finger.” He fumbled inside his shirt and pulled out the wedding ring on its purple ribbon.

Lady Marchwell stared at it. “Is . . . that Juliet’s ring?”

“Yes, of course. How can you doubt it?”

“Because we thought Jack had hidden or lost it forever.”

“Ah.”

Her eyes moved to his. “How enigmatically you say that.”

“Perhaps because the way it was returned to me was rather enigmatic too.”

The long-case clock near the door began to whir, and then chimed the hour. It was nine o’clock. Lady Marchwell went to a large upright chair and sat down carefully, mindful to be decorous in spite of the farthingale beneath her regally sumptuous royal costume. “Very well, Charles, you have ten minutes in which to convince me that I should help you. When you have said your piece I will consider whether to grant you your wish or have you thrown out. But first you will explain the matter of the ring. Be quick now, sir, for the seconds are ticking away.”

For a moment he couldn’t find words. He went to the fireplace, and rested a hand on the carved stonework above it as he looked up at Juliet’s portrait. “The ring was returned to me in February 1814, on the very eve of my departure for India. I had at last given up trying to gain admittance here, and given up writing letters that I feared were never opened.”

“Oh, I saw that Juliet received every one,” Lady Marchwell interrupted, “but she did not change her mind, especially as the sorry tale was still very much in circulation, and Sally Monckton was doing all she could to blacken your name in the scheme of things. Eventually Juliet desired that you be informed she was no longer here at Marchwell Park, and that I was yet to be informed where she had gone. I complied with her wishes.”

He looked around at her. “She was here all the time?”

Lady Marchwell nodded. “But we digress, sir, for you were telling me of the ring’s return.”

Charles looked at the portrait again. “In February, having decided to forget my sorrows by going to Bengal, I settled all my business here and made every possible arrangement for the running of my affairs during my absence. I also saw to it that Juliet received a handsome allowance, as always she had.”

“I know.”

He gazed at his wife’s face on the canvas. “On the eve of my departure I endeavored to sleep in the private room I had taken at White’s. It was midnight and the night one of the coldest of that unbelievably bitter winter. A fire burned in the hearth, but even so there was ice on the inside of the window. I wasn’t relishing the coming journey, or indeed leaving England, for I was leaving Juliet as well, but I had accepted that she would never forgive me. Suddenly I heard a tapping at the window. I confess I was alarmed, for it was on an upper floor with a sheer drop. I went to melt a little of the ice on the glass with my hand in order to look out, but I saw nothing. Even so the tapping came again, so I wrestled with the frozen window, which at last gave up its resistance.”