Wilde in Love(47)
“She’s jilted the heir to a dukedom,” North said, his voice quieting. “She won’t be invited to parties next Season, if ever.” He looked up, hands falling into his lap. “Do you want to know the damnable thing?”
Alaric nodded.
“I don’t think she’ll care. I think she is so eager to rid herself of me that she’d rather marry a chimney sweep. I tried—I tried everything I could think of.”
His wig lay on the floor next to his feet. North gave it such a violent kick that it actually lifted in the air before plopping down on the empty hearth.
“That’s your Parisian wig,” Alaric said. “If this was December, it would be a cinder.” He went over and picked it up, patting it into shape the way one might pat a small fluffy dog.
“Do you really think I give a damn?” his brother demanded, the words grinding from somewhere deep in his chest.
“No,” Alaric said, placing the wig on the mantelpiece. He sat down beside North, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry Diana couldn’t see the man you are.” He hesitated. “Do you think she had already given her affections elsewhere?”
“No. I asked her as much a couple of days ago. Flatly asked her in the drawing room, when I was trying to imagine our married life.”
“She may have lied,” Alaric said, trying to decide whether it was worse to have one’s fiancée in love with someone else, or simply be in the grip of such disgust that she’d ruin her prospects of a good marriage to get away.
“There were times when our eyes would meet and I could have sworn she was beginning to be fond of me. That I could win her, given time. I told myself she was frightened by all the fuss around the Wildes.”
“Because of my books?” Alaric asked, his heart sinking.
“It’s not just you,” North said wearily. “It’s all of us. The whole family. Every damn thing we do is watched and imitated, appears in the gossip columns the next day if we’re in London. Those prints …”
“I am sorry about them.”
“There are prints sold of me, as well as of the duke and duchess. The house. Leonidas, being kicked out of Eton, matched to another of you in the same situation. Betsy.”
“Betsy! She’s only sixteen.”
“She’s beautiful,” North said. “Father managed to have an etching of Horatius struggling in the swamp destroyed, but only after it sold several thousand copies.”
That was so distasteful that Alaric bit back a curse.
North returned to the subject at hand. “The evening I asked Diana to marry me, she kissed me,” he said, sounding like a man in a dream. “I thought I would never be so happy again. But when I saw her the next day, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I kissed her earlier today, and now she’s gone.”
He came to his feet. “I have to go after her.”
“Do you think you can make a difference?” Alaric asked.
“She’ll be ruined. I can’t permit her to be ruined. I’ll let it be known that I broke the betrothal.”
“Are you leaving for London now?” And, at North’s nod, “Would you like me to accompany you?”
North shook his head. He was expressionless, his eyes like dark glass with violet smudges under them. “I must make certain that she’s safe.”
“It wasn’t a mistake to have loved her,” Alaric said, walking him to the door.
“Better to have loved and lost?” North said, biting off his words. “Bull. I feel as if I was fool enough to walk in the high grass, and now that I’ve been bitten by a snake, I can hardly complain.”
He strode away. Returning to the ledgers, Alaric realized that his brother had left his Parisian wig behind on the mantelpiece, a little worse for wear.
North had been gone for a half hour at most, when the door to the library opened again, and his father entered.
“It seems Miss Belgrave may not have left by herself,” the duke said, without introduction.
Alaric put down his pencil and came to his feet. “I assumed her maid had left with her.”
“Her maid has been given a soporific and put to bed. The poor woman is convinced that Diana’s mother will blame her. No, I am told that Miss Ffynche departed with Miss Belgrave, though I can scarcely believe that both of my sons would lose their fiancées in a single day.”
Images reeled through Alaric’s mind: the way Willa smiled at him. The way her head fell backward when he …
No. Willa did not leave him.
“It could be that Miss Belgrave begged for Willa’s assistance in her flight, but in that case, Willa would have explained it to me first.”
“Yours was not a true betrothal,” his father said, his eyes intent on Alaric.
“Not immediately,” Alaric said. “But as you saw last night, it is entirely real now.”
His father’s eyes lightened. “I did assume as much.” Then he frowned. “Prudence Larkin just informed me that Willa had decided to break her betrothal.”
“She is lying.” Dread surged through him. “Where is Willa?”
“She is not in her bedchamber, nor can Prism find her anywhere in the house or gardens.” The duke opened the heavy oak door and Alaric lunged for the staircase.
When Alaric pounded on Prudence’s bedchamber door, a voice called, “I am not prepared for visitors.”
He pushed the door open. Prudence was seated with her feet in a large pan of water. As he entered, followed by the duke, she shrieked and drew her gown over her bare ankles. Its hem fell into the water.
“Alaric!” she squealed. And then, “Your Grace!” She jumped up without stepping from the basin. “Please forgive me for not being in proper attire to greet you.”
Alaric looked down at her feet. The hem of her dress was not only wet, but caked in mud. “Why are you soaking your feet?” he asked—and at the same moment he knew the answer to his own question. He could smell the answer. “What have you done with Sweetpea?”
Prudence’s expression sweetened. “You mean Miss Ffynche’s darling little pet? I have no idea where it is.”
“Stop lying,” Alaric barked. “I am not imagining that stench. More pertinent, where is Willa?”
“Miss Ffynche left with Miss Belgrave,” she chirped, blithely ignoring a roar that would have had many young women in frightened tears. “As for the disagreeable odor, I encountered an animal akin to Miss Ffynche’s pet in the garden. Her darling would never be so mischievous as to foul my shoes.”
“Sweetpea is a North American species,” Alaric stated. “You did not encounter another of her kind in the garden.”
“Lord Roland left on a fast horse following Miss Belgrave,” the duke said, fixing Prudence with a ducal glare. “The veracity of your statements will shortly become clear.”
Alaric turned to his father. “Send for the sheriff.”
“Why?” Prudence squawked.
“To arrest you on suspicion of causing Miss Ffynche bodily harm.”
The duke nodded and left.
“Why would you say such a thing?” Prudence cried. “She left, she left with Miss Belgrave.” Stubborn hostility shone from her eyes. “She doesn’t love you, Alaric. She doesn’t deserve you. Not the way I do.” She ended on a pleased note, as if her argument was sufficient to make him stop questioning Willa’s disappearance.
Alaric took another step toward her, clenching his fists to ensure he didn’t reach out and shake her. “You don’t know what it means to love, Prudence.”
“I suppose you do?” she retorted, growing a little shrill. “I know—we all know—that you are bedding that trollop. Is that love? No! Lust will consign you to the everlasting fires of hell!”
Despite himself, Alaric’s hands seized her bony shoulders. He restrained himself from shaking her, just looked into her pale eyes and said, “Prudence, listen to me.”
“I could listen to you every moment of my life,” she said. But her expression was wary. She was caught in the lion’s trap and she knew it. Under all that treacly nonsense was a shrewdly evil, calculating brain. Perhaps not a sane brain, but a shrewd one.
“I am going to marry Willa. Only Willa. I will never marry you, under any circumstances. If you have caused harm to my future wife, I will see that justice is served; you will live out the rest of your life in the darkest, dankest prison in all the kingdom. Now tell me where she is.”
“I didn’t kill her!” Prudence cried, trying to wrench free of his grasp.
He let go and she stepped backward, tipping over the basin. Water ran across the floor and Sweetpea’s distinctive odor filled the room.
“That varmint befouled me.” Her voice was a hiss, like steam escaping a teakettle.
“Where is Willa?” Alaric demanded. His heart was beating a sickening cadence.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Prudence said, rearranging her skirts to cover her bare feet.
“Where did you see her last?”
“Outside, in the rose garden. I would never do away with her; such a thing would be morally wrong. I left her in the hands of God.”
“You have just admitted that Willa didn’t leave with Diana,” Alaric pointed out.