She felt the breaking of hope almost as a pain.
He was greedy and he was reckless. He was also dangerous, distant and intimidating. But there lay beneath the image he showed to the world other shadows, too, quieter and more beguiling. Tragedy was one such veil. She had seen it once when he had spoken of his uncle.
Secrets and silence stretched between them, the sound of the world around distant, though her heartbeat drummed at a frantic rhythm in her ears.
He could not bring himself to say he had paid her brother back each and every single penny twofold, penance for the only time in his life where his integrity had been held to ransom. Not now. That would come later, far away from accusation and dishonour and the reality of an enticement he had succumbed to in desperation.
Breathing out hard, he tried to take a stock of things. His estranged wife looked a little like his mother used to, beautiful and prickly and angling for a fight, wanting high emotion to wreck what little peace he had left.
God. Patricia Ellesmere had used every single second of her life to make it harder for those near her and as her son it had often been him. Tay did not want acrimony and argument. He did not want greed and wrongdoing to punctuate everything that he was now, leaching out contentment and serenity.
Had he made a huge mistake by coming back after all, searching for an elusive something he could not quite forget? Almost three years of separation had hardened Lucinda. He could see it in her eyes. She was a different woman now, less innocent, more worldly.
‘If it is of any use, I would apologise for the way I left. Excuses can only go a certain way in the alleviation of great pain so I won’t bore you with them.’
‘I have not heard even one explanation as yet, your Grace.’ Her blue eyes were reflected in the silk of her dress, almost a match in colour.
‘The dukedom was bankrupt.’
Surprise crept across her face. ‘Surely my brother did not promise to rescue the Alderworth estate in its entirety?’
‘No. He gave me the chance to do that myself. I hit a rich seam of gold in a river at the foot of the North Georgia mountains and had the luck to sell my claim for a tidy sum. After that I invested in the only services on a gold field that truly raise capital, the transportation facilities. The fortunes in mining are random, you see, but the large profits in the adjoining industries are not.’
‘So you have arrived home rich?’
‘I have.’
‘And because of it you feel the need of an heir.’
He nodded.
‘An unbroken line?’
‘Precisely.’
‘The saying that one person’s luck is another’s misfortune comes to mind.’ Her mouth was a single tight line of fury.
She spoke as the forgotten wife who was suddenly recalled for duty a thousand days after he had left her. Such a thought was sobering, the contract for an heir stretching between them.
‘If there is someone else who has gained your affections whilst I have been away, then I would—’
She did not let him finish. ‘There isn’t.’
Tay could not even begin to understand the relief he felt at her answer.
‘After … us … I was largely left alone by others. Ruin has its own particular brand of isolation that is not easy to shake off. Besides, your reputation for debauchery and sexual experience meant all were wary.’
‘When did you return to London?’
‘Last year. My brothers insisted on it and their influence paved my way. It was all going well until …’
‘I came back.’
She nodded and looked aside.
‘Why, then, did you agree to come with me?’
He thought for a moment that she might not answer, as her eyes flinted in anger, but then she did, her voice shaking. ‘Because anything is better than the stigma of abandonment.’
‘I should not have let your brothers threaten me. I should have stayed and taken you to my home.’
‘And forfeited your gold?’ Her tone was neither soft nor conciliatory. It was hard and biting. ‘No, your Grace, your promised largesse will go a long way in allowing me the freedom of a future I want.’
Tay shifted his stance and looked at her closely. She made him feel like the low-life he had not been, her lies cornering him into defending himself before her brothers, the licentious duke who had ruined a favoured sister.
Only he hadn’t.
He had bundled up a woman who, with little persuasion, would have been easy to bed, but instead he had ordered a carriage and driven her home.
He had been paying for it ever since, by God, because the Wellinghams bore a grudge with great persistence, even one based on deceit.
He had sent his own correspondence, too, of course, a few careful letters explaining his daily routines and the harsh beauty of the countryside around Dahlonega. His wife had never written back. Not once. Tay wondered if Cristo Wellingham had stayed true to his promise and delivered the notes.
He could ask her, he supposed, pull the truth out of lies, but he had no more stomach for it and an idea hatched in the lonely fields of American dreams made little sense here.
The brothers’ latest missive sizzled in his hand full of threat, the careful illusions of their wedding day dissolved here into only disappointment.
For them both.
‘When we go to Alderworth Manor you will be given your own suite of rooms. I shall not presume on you for anything save for the fulfilment of our bargain.’
He turned away as she nodded and felt his body respond in anticipation of all that was implied.
I shall not presume on you for anything save for the fulfillment of our bargain.
A duty that had turned into obligation, the giving of her body for a sum of money and the promise of future freedom. A chore and a task that sounded onerous tonight. Lucinda couldn’t decide just where she had lost all sense of herself: at Alderworth Manor three years ago or here, hurtling towards her marital requirements, only a womb for rent.
She could find no common ground with a husband who was a stranger, forged in hatred and anger by a family that gave no credence to close bonds or honest discourse.
‘If I come, I would need at least a few weeks to settle in.’ She blurted the words out, each one running on top of the other in a stream of quickness. ‘I could not just be …’
She found it hard to finish.
‘Pounced upon?’
Humour laced the query and she was glad for it, but still she pressed on.
‘I would also require some sort of kindness, your Grace.’
This time he did laugh. ‘How many men have you slept with, Lady Lucinda?’ He did not use her married name and she did not answer. The corded arteries in his throat were raised in the dim light.
‘I realise, of course, that you are used to faster women, women who would think nothing of sharing around their charms and making certain every man got their portion, but I am not of that ilk, your Grace, and if you think that I might change …’
‘I do not wish for that at all.’
‘Oh.’ All of the wind went from her sails and she stood there, exposed and waiting. ‘I need at least a few weeks,’ she repeated, the quiver in her demand easily heard. Should she have bargained for more time? A month. A year?
‘Very well.’ His voice was hoarse, a promise coerced only under duress. When he turned and offered her his arm, she could do nothing other than take it as he walked her back to the portico. Joining other couples who made their way up the wide staircase, the light from the lamps showed up his face as a handsome and distant mask.
Lucinda had not understood just exactly what it meant to be at the side of a man who was the most vilified and envied Duke in all of London. When their names were called as they stood waiting to go in, she heard the distinct murmur of surprise and a momentary lull in conversation of the three hundred or so guests present.
‘The Duke and Duchess of Alderworth.’
‘Notoriety has its own set of drawbacks and this is one of them.’ His voice was soft and steady, not a care in the world showing as he smiled at those who might crucify him. ‘Let us just hope that your unblemished pedigree shelters you from some of it.’
‘With an attitude like that it is a wonder you still receive invitations to anything at all, your Grace,’ she replied.
‘No one wants to be the first to leave the lofty ducal title off their guest list and especially now they know all the coffers are full.’
‘How full?’
The tone in his voice changed somewhat as he replied. ‘Full enough to call in the chits of men with fewer morals than I have.’ As she pulled back he made an effort to lighten such darkness. ‘Full enough so that you could order as many gowns as you desire and I would barely notice, Duchess.’
‘Tempting.’
His hand closed tighter in a movement that claimed her as his wife and Lucinda was pleased not one of her brothers was present as they walked down into the crowd. Edmund Coleridge was at the front of the group and smiled at her fondly, but she did not encourage him to come forwards because a small part of her worried that Alderworth would slice any tenderness to pieces should he know of it.
The Beauchamps, Lord Daniel and his French wife Lady Camille, were the first to receive them.
‘I had heard you were back, Tay. How long are you here for?’
His brown eyes were kind and Camille Beauchamp seemed just as welcoming. Perhaps this evening would not be as difficult as Lucinda had thought it, her husband’s reputation melding with her own to produce some sort of a halfway point of acceptability.