The Secret Pearl(104)

“Yes, your grace.” Ned Driscoll looked up at him with wary eyes. His cap had fallen from his hands.

“If we have lost her beyond trace,” his grace said coldly before turning away, “I shall beat you to a pulp on the road, Driscoll, and tie you upright to the box beside Shipley for the return journey.”

His wife had got up that morning and appeared to be feeling considerably better, the duke thought with some relief as he strode back to the house. He would feel guilty about leaving her if she were still indisposed. She was in the morning room, playing cards.

“Sybil, a word with you, if you please?” he said after standing behind her chair until the hand that was being played had been finished.

“Jessica will sit in for you,” Mr. Penny said. “Jessica?”

The duke led his wife from the room and in the direction of her sitting room.

“I have to leave for a few days,” he said, “on unexpected business. Are you feeling well enough to entertain alone?”

“If you will remember,” she said, “I invited my guests when you were from home and not expected back, Adam. I have learned to be alone and not expect help from you.”

“I hope to be back within a week,” he said.

“Don’t hurry,” she said. “The guests are all leaving soon. Indeed, Lord Brocklehurst has been called away and must leave today. I shall probably be gone myself by the time you return, Adam. I shall be leaving with Thomas.”

He opened the door into her sitting room and followed her inside.

“When I return,” he said, “I shall take you and Pamela to Bath for a few weeks. The waters and the change of air will do you good, and Pamela will enjoy something different. Perhaps we can start again, Sybil, and make something at least workable of our marriage.”

“I am going to be happy,” she said. “Before you return, Adam, I am going to be happy and I am going to stay so for the rest of my life.”

“Sybil.” He took her by the shoulders and looked down into her upturned face—lovely, fragile, and youthful. “I wish I could save you from pain. I wish I could go back and do everything very differently. He will not take you with him.”

She smiled at him. “We will see,” she said.

He squeezed her shoulders and left the room. He should not be going, perhaps. He should send Houghton after Fleur and remain with his wife. She was going to need someone within the next few days.

But he was the very last person she would need. When Thomas left, she would hate him with a renewed intensity. He would probably never be able to establish anything resembling peace between them.

He took the stairs two at a time to say good-bye to Pamela and assure her that he would not be gone for long. Even so, he left her in tears after she had pounded his chest with her fists and told him she hated him and did not care if he went away forever.

“I want Miss Hamilton,” she said petulantly.

And he could not even assure her that he would bring Fleur back with him. Whatever happened, he would not be able to do that.

He left Willoughby before Lord Brocklehurst.

At the stagecoach stop in Wollaston he discovered that Fleur had taken a ticket to a market town in Wiltshire—probably not far from Heron House, he guessed. At least she had not gone to London.

But in all the guesses he had made over the past few hours, he had clung most firmly to the conviction that it would be to Heron House that she would have gone. If he had found no trace of her he would have gambled on going there. She had fled once—with terrible consequences. She would not do so again. Not Fleur. He believed that he was beginning to understand her quite well.

The foolish woman.

Did she still trust him so little? Did she still believe that his intention was to make her his mistress? Did she not realize what superhuman control he had had to impose on himself that night in the library to send her to bed alone? When he had wanted her so badly and when he had known that she would have been easily seducible?

He could have had her that night. He could have had that memory.

He turned his attention to the rain and mist and clouds beyond the window. Before the carriage traveled even one mile farther, he must be clear in his mind about why he was making this journey. He was doing so in order to inform an innocent young woman that she could stop living with nightmares, that she was free. He was going in order to arrange some interim future for her until she came into her fortune and could live independently.

He was going because she was, or had been, his employee, his dependent, and he cared for all his servants.

He was not going because he loved her.

Although he did.


“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? We have been so very worried about you. But how wonderful to see you again.” Miriam Booth set her hands on her friend’s shoulders and stood back from her.