The Notorious Marriage
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Nicola Cornick
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Chapter One
May 1814
Eleanor Mostyn knew that she was in trouble even before the landlord told her, with a sideways wink and a leer, that there was only one bedchamber and there would be no coaches calling until the next morning. Eleanor, following him into the tiny inn parlour, thoughtfully concluded that the signs were all there: they were miles from the nearest village, it was pouring with rain and the carriage had mysteriously lost a spar when only yards from this isolated inn. What had started out as a simple journey from Richmond to London looked set fair to turn into a tiresome attempted seduction.
It had happened to her before, of course—it was one of the penalties of having a shady reputation and no husband to protect her. However, she had never misjudged the situation as badly as this. This time, the relative youth and apparent innocence of her suitor had taken her in. Sir Charles Paulet was only two-and-twenty, and a poet. Though why poets should be considered more honourable than other men was open to question. Eleanor realised that her first mistake had been in assuming it must be so.
She knew that Sir Charles had been trying to charm his way into her bed with his bad poetry for at least a month. The baronet was a long, lanky and intense young man who laboured under the misapprehension that he was as talented as Lord Byron. Still, she had thought his attentions were a great deal more acceptable than those paid to her by some other men during the Season. He might be trying to seduce her but she had believed that the only real danger she was in was of being bored to death by his verse. That had to be mistake number two.
Eleanor removed her sodden bonnet and decided against unpinning her hair, even though it would dry more quickly that way. She had no wish to inflame Sir Charles’s desires by any actions of her own, and she knew that her long, dark brown hair was one of her best features. No doubt her hopeful seducer had written a sonnet to it already. At the moment he was out in the yard, giving instructions to his groom and coachman, but she knew that she had very little time before he joined her in the parlour, and then she would need to be quick-witted indeed. The lonely inn, the unfortunate accident, the single bedroom…And he had been dancing attendance on her for the past four weeks and she had been vain enough to be flattered…
Here Eleanor sighed as she looked at her damp reflection in the mirror. Eleanor, Lady Mostyn, passably good-looking, only nineteen years old and already infamous, having been both married and deserted within the space of a week. She could remember her come-out vividly, for it had only been the Season before. Then, she had been accorded the scrupulous courtesy due to all innocent débutantes; now she was a prey to every dubious roué and rake in town.
Her re-emergence into the Ton this Season had set all the tongues wagging once again about her notorious marriage, just as Eleanor had known it would. Not enough time had passed for the scandal to die down, but she had been foolishly determined to confront the gossips, to prove that though her husband were gone, squiring opera dancers around the Continent if the stories were true, she was not repining. She had the Trevithick pride—plenty of it—and at first it had prompted her to defiance. Let them talk—she would not regard it.
Eleanor stripped off her cloak and hung it over the back of a chair. Needless to say, she had underestimated the power of rumour. One salacious story had led to another, each more deliciously dreadful than the last. The gossips said that she had eloped with Kit Mostyn to avoid a forced match; that he had deserted her on her wedding day because he had discovered her to be no virgin; that she had told him to leave because she had discovered he was a brute and a satyr who indulged in perverted practices…Eleanor sighed. The gossip had caused a scent of disrepute that hung about her and had the rakes sniffing around and the respectable ladies withdrawing their skirts for fear of contamination. Worse, she was not blameless.
Despite her mama’s strictures that a lady always behaved with decorum, Eleanor had decided to scorn the gossips and fulfil their expectations. Just a little. At the start of the Season her off-white reputation had actually seemed rather amusing, much more entertaining than being a deadly dull débutante or a devoted wife. And in a complicated way it was a means of revenge on Kit, and she did so desperately want revenge. So she had flirted a little, encouraged some disreputable roués, even allowed a few rakes to steal a kiss or two. She had planned on taking a lover, or even two, perhaps both at the same time. The possibilities seemed endless for an abandoned bride whose husband clearly preferred to take his pleasures elsewhere.
The idea had soon palled. Eleanor had known all along that she was not cut out to be a fast matron. The liberties were disgusting, the kisses even more so. All the gentlemen who buzzed around her had the self-importance to assume that she would find them attractive and did not bother to check first. Their attentions had become immensely tedious, their invitations increasingly salacious and their attempted seductions, such as the present one, most trying. In the space of only six weeks Eleanor had had to slap several faces, place a few well-aimed kicks in the ankle or higher and even hit one persistent gentleman with the family Bible when he had tried to seduce her in the library. And she was miserably aware that it was her own fault.
Eleanor sat down by the meagre fire and tried to get warm. Now she had to deal with Sir Charles’s importunities. If she had found it difficult to decide whether to live up or down to her reputation previously, she knew now beyond a shadow of doubt that she was not cut out for some sordid intrigue. There was enough scandal already attached to her name without some indiscreet dalliance in a low tavern with a man she found boring. Besides, she inevitably compared every man she met to Kit and found them wanting. It was curious but true—he had left her alone to face the scandal of their marriage and she had not heard a word from him since, yet still she found other men lacking.
In the five months since Kit’s defection, Eleanor’s childish infatuation had turned to anger and misery. When her mother delighted in passing on another snippet of gossip about Kit that had been garnered from her acquaintance, Eleanor hardened her heart a little more each time. However, it did not prevent the memory of her husband from overshadowing every other man she knew.
But that was nothing to the purpose. Eleanor smoothed her dress thoughtfully as she tried to decide what to do. She could appeal to Sir Charles’s better nature but that was probably a waste of time as she suspected that he did not possess one. She would not be here if he did. She could play the innocent and scream the house down if matters turned nasty, or she could act the sophisticate, then run away when she had lulled Sir Charles into a false sense of security. Eleanor frowned. She was not entirely happy with either option. There was plenty of room for error.
She could hear voices getting closer—Sir Charles was quoting Shakespeare in the corridor. Oh dear, this was going to be very tiresome. The door opened. Sir Charles came in, followed by the innkeeper bearing a tray with two enormous glasses of wine. Eleanor raised her brows. That was not in the least subtle and somehow she had expected better of a poet. She really must rid herself of these false expectations.
‘There you are, my love!’ Sir Charles’s voice had already slipped from the respectful courtesy of their previous exchanges to an odious intimacy that made Eleanor’s hackles rise. ‘I hope that you are warm enough—although I shall soon have you wrapped up as cosy as can be, upstairs with me!’
The innkeeper smirked meaningfully and Eleanor looked down her nose haughtily at him. No doubt he was warmed by the size of the bribe Sir Charles must have slipped him to connive in so dubious an enterprise. She wondered whether Sir Charles had always spoken in rhyme and why on earth she had not noticed it before. It was intensely irritating.
‘The inn is adequate, I suppose,’ she said coldly, ‘but I do not anticipate staying here long, sir. Surely there is someone who could carry a message to Trevithick House? The others will be almost back by now and will be concerned to find me missing…’
‘Oh, I do not believe that you need trouble your pretty little head about that, my love,’ Sir Charles said airily. He struck a pose. ‘Why, I sense a verse coming over me!’ He smiled at her. ‘My heart leads me to wed when I spy your pretty head, as you lie in my bed…’
‘Pray, sir, restrain your imagination!’ Eleanor snapped. ‘I do not believe that an inclination to wed forms any part of your plans! As for the rest of your verse, I like it not! A work of folly and vivid imagination!’
Sir Charles did not appear one whit put out. Evidently it would take more than plain speaking to deter him. He came close to the fire, rubbing his hands together. Eleanor found herself hoping uncharitably that his ruffled sleeves would catch alight. His dress was very close to that of a macaroni, with yards of ribbons, ruffles and lace, and she was sure he would go up like a house on fire.
‘Alas, my dear Lady Mostyn, that you are married already, otherwise I would show you my affections were steady!’
Sir Charles fixed her with his plaintive dark eyes, behind which Eleanor could see more than a glimpse of calculation. ‘You must know that my love and esteem for you know no bounds—’
‘As does your effrontery, sir!’ Eleanor interrupted, before he could finish the rhyme.
Sir Charles pressed a glass of wine into her hand and downed half of his own in one gulp.
‘You know that your relatives will not reach home for a half hour at least, sweet Eleanor, and will not start to worry about you for another hour after that, by which time it will be dark…’ His eyes met Eleanor’s again, carrying the implicit message that no one would be coming to help her. Eleanor noted wryly that he could speak plainly enough when he chose. ‘But have no fear! You are safe with me here!’
Eleanor bit her lip and turned her head away, hearing the innkeeper’s laugh as he went out and closed the door behind him. There would be no help from that quarter.
Sir Charles nodded towards her wine. ‘Drink up, my love. It will fortify you.’ He suited actions to words, gulping the second half of his wine in one go, wiping the excess from his chin. ‘This is a charming opportunity for us to get to know each other a little better. Most opportune, my rose in bloom!’
‘Or most contrived!’ Eleanor said coldly. She looked straight at him, noting that he was nowhere near as good-looking as she had once imagined him to be. His pale brown eyes were too close set to look trustworthy, and taken with his long and pointed nose they gave him the appearance of a wolfhound. Who was it had told her never to trust a man who looked like a hunting dog? It could only have been her aunt, Lady Salome Trevithick, and Eleanor wished she had paid more attention.
She took a sip of her wine, if only to give herself breathing space. Damnation! How could she have been so unconscionably foolish? She had been set up like a green girl and now had very limited options. The poet was nowhere near as harmless as he pretended and her dénouement looked to be only a matter of time. She shuddered at the thought.
Sir Charles smiled at her. It was not reassuring. His lips were thin and wet-looking. Eleanor, realising suddenly that staring at his face might give quite the wrong impression of her feelings, looked hastily away.
‘How far are we from London, sir?’ she asked casually.
Sir Charles’s smile became positively vulpine. ‘At least ten miles, my lovely Lady Mostyn. We are benighted, I fear. You must simply…accept…your fate, my love, my dove.’
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. ‘The carriage—’
‘Will not be ready until tomorrow, alas.’ Sir Charles spoke contentedly. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. Here we shall stay in our pastoral heaven with only our love, the darkness to leaven…’
Eleanor, privately reflecting that Sir Charles’s poetry was the hardest thing to tolerate so far, nevertheless thought that it could be useful. If she could but flatter him…
‘Pray treat me to some more of your verse, sir,’ she gushed, with what she knew to be ghastly archness. She hoped that his vanity was greater than his intellect, or he would know at once precisely what she was doing.
Sir Charles wagged a roguish finger at her. ‘Ah, not yet, my pet! I believe our landlord is waiting to serve us a feast fit for a king…’
‘Well, let us see what he can bring,’ Eleanor finished a little grimly.
Sir Charles looked affronted. ‘No, no, my love, it does not scan!’
The door opened to admit the landlord with the dinner tray. Eleanor, who considered him a most unpleasant character, was nevertheless pleased to see him, for his arrival afforded her time to think—and time when the odious Sir Charles could not press his attentions for a space, unless he was inclined to do so over the dinner plates and with an audience. Eleanor thought this entirely possible. It seemed that Sir Charles was so in love with himself and his pretty poetry that he could not envisage rejection, and probably an audience would add to his enjoyment.
While the landlord laid out the dishes, she measured the distance to the door with her eyes, then reluctantly abandoned the idea of trying to run away. They would catch her, she was in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. How had she ever got herself into this situation? Her foolish idea of taking a lover, or even two, mocked her. Here was Sir Charles, proving another of Lady Salome’s adages, which was that reality was seldom as exciting as imagination. What folly had possessed her to accept his escort on the journey from Richmond back to London, when only five minutes before, her sister-in-law, Beth Trevithick, had looked her in the eye and told her that Sir Charles was an ill-bred philanderer who would try his luck if only given the chance? Eleanor had tossed her head in the air and allowed the baronet to hand her up into his curricle, and had not even noticed as they had fallen behind the other carriages and finally become separated altogether.
But this was not helping her to effect an escape. She allowed Sir Charles to hold a chair for her, watching under her lashes as he took the seat opposite and pressed her to accept a slice of beef, for all the world as though this were some Ton dinner rather than a squalid seduction. Eleanor accepted the beef, and some potato, wondering if either would be useful as a weapon. Probably not. The beef was too floppy and the potato too wet, though she supposed she could thrust it in his face and try to blind him with it. Her first plan, to hit Sir Charles over the head with the fire irons, had been crushed when she realised that there were none. The dinner plate would be a better option but it would probably crack, leaving him undamaged.
Eleanor sighed and tried to force down a little food. Even if she were able to escape Sir Charles for a time, she still had the landlord to contend with and she was alone and benighted in the middle of the country. All the same, there was little time for finesse in her planning. She had to come up with an idea, and quickly, and in the meantime she had to lull her seducer’s suspicions by flattering his diabolical poetry.
‘I remember a poem you wrote for me but a few days ago,’ she began, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘Something to do with beauty and the night…’
‘Ah yes!’ Sir Charles beamed, waving a piece of speared beef around on the end of his fork.
‘Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright, She walks in beauty, like the night, And brightens up my lonely sight…’
‘Yes…’ Eleanor said slowly, bending her head to hide her smile as she calculated how much the poem owed to Lord Byron and William Shakespeare. ‘How many other words rhyme with bright, Sir Charles? There must be so many to inspire you!’
‘You are so right, my brightest light!’ Sir Charles proclaimed fervently. He seized her hand. ‘Lovely Lady Mostyn, your instinctive understanding of my work persuades me that we should be as one! I know that you have your scruples, virtuous lady that you are, but if you could be persuaded to smile upon me…’
Eleanor, tolerably certain that she was being spared the second verse so that Sir Charles could get down to the real business in hand, modestly cast her eyes down.
‘Alas, Sir Charles, your sentiments flatter me, but I cannot comply. You must know that I am devoted to my absent spouse…’
Sir Charles let loose a cackle of laughter. ‘So devoted that you let Probyn and Darke and Ferris dance attendance upon you! I know your devotion, Lady Mostyn! Aye, and your reputation!’
Eleanor resisted the impulse to stick her fork into the back of his hand. Despite his ridiculous habit of talking in verse and his overweening vanity, Sir Charles would not prove easy to overcome. And all this talk of love was a hollow fiction, to dress up his lust. He was filling his wineglass for a third time now and his face had flushed an unbecoming puce.
‘Eat up, my little filly! The night is becoming chilly and I need you to warm my—’
‘Sir Charles!’ Eleanor said sharply.
The inebriated baronet had come round the table to her now. His hand was resting on her shoulder in a gesture that could have been comforting and paternalistic—for all that he was only two years her senior—but it was neither of those things. His fingers edged towards the lace that lined the neck of Eleanor’s modest dress. Her temper, subdued for so long and with difficulty, triumphed over her caution. She pushed his hand away, repulsed.
‘Kindly stand further off, sir, and avoid any inclination towards intimacy! I may be marooned here with you but I have no intention of using the occasion to further our acquaintance! Now, is that clear enough for you or must I express myself in rhyming couplets?’
The angry, dark red colour came into Sir Charles’s face. He leant over Eleanor’s chair, putting a hand on either armrest to hold her in place. His breath stank of wine and meat and his person smelled of mothballs. Eleanor flinched and tried not to sneeze.
‘Very proper, Lady Mostyn!’ Sir Charles was still smiling, his teeth bared yellow in his flushed face. ‘I suppose I should expect a show of decorum at least from one who was raised a lady but has never managed to behave as such!’
He moved suddenly, grabbing Eleanor’s upper arms, and she was sure he was about to try to kiss her. It was disgusting. She pulled herself away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. She was shaking now. It was no more or less than she had expected but the reality made her realise how hopelessly out of her depth she had become.
Into this charade walked the landlord, the pudding held high on a covered dish. There were footsteps in the corridor behind him but Eleanor did not notice, for she was too intent on a plan of escape. As the landlord came in, Sir Charles straightened up with an oath and in the same moment Eleanor stood up, swept the silver cover from the dish and swung it in an arc towards his head. It clanged and bounced off, throwing the startled baronet to the floor where he lay stunned amongst the remains of the blancmange. Eleanor staggered back, almost fell over her chair, and was steadied, astoundingly, by arms that closed around her and held her tight.
There was a moment of frozen silence. Sir Charles had sat up, the blancmange dripping down his forehead, a hunted look suddenly in his eye. Eleanor freed herself and spun around. Then the world started to spin around her. She grasped a chair back to steady herself.
‘Kit?’
It was undoubtedly her husband who was standing before her, but a strangely different Kit from the one that she remembered. His height dominated the small room and his expression made her insides quail. His fair hair had darkened to tawny bronze and his face was tanned darker still, which made the sapphire blue of his eyes gleam as hard and bright as the stones themselves. There were lines about his eyes and mouth that Eleanor did not remember and he looked older, more worn somehow, as though he had been ill. Eleanor stared, bemused, disbelieving, and unable to accept that he had appeared literally out of nowhere. She swayed again. The chair back was slippery beneath her fingers and she shivered with shock and cold.
‘Kit…’ she said, trying to quell her shaking. ‘Whatever are you doing here? I had no notion…I had quite given you up for lost…’
‘So it would seem,’ Kit Mostyn said to his wife, very coolly. His hard blue gaze went from her to the lovelorn baronet, who was showing all the spine of an earthworm and was still cowering on the floor, on the assumption that a gentleman would not hit him when he was already down. A smile curled Kit’s mouth, and it was not pleasant. Sir Charles whimpered.
‘So it would seem,’ Kit repeated softly. ‘I see that you have indeed all but forgotten me, Eleanor.’
Eleanor barely heard him. Darkness was curling in from the edges of the room now, claiming her, and she gave herself up to it gladly. She heard Kit mutter an oath, then his arm was hard about her and she closed her eyes and knew no more.
‘This is all most unfortunate.’ Eleanor had not realised that she had spoken aloud until a dry voice in her ear said: ‘Indeed it is.’
Eleanor turned her head. It was resting against a broad masculine chest, which she devoutly hoped was Kit’s since for it to belong to anyone else would no doubt cause even more trouble. His arm was around her, holding her with a gentleness that belied the coldness of his tone.
‘Drink this, Eleanor—it will revive you.’
Eleanor sniffed the proffered glass and recoiled. ‘Is it brandy? I detest the stuff—’
‘Drink it!’ Kit said, this time in a tone that brooked no refusal, and Eleanor sipped a little and sat up. Kit disentangled himself from her and moved over to where Sir Charles Paulet was standing near the door, brushing the remaining blancmange from his person.
Eleanor watched, hands pressed to her mouth, as Kit grasped the baronet by the collar and positively threw him out of the door, dessert and all.
‘Get back to London, or to hell, or wherever you choose,’ Kit said coldly, ‘and do not trouble my wife again!’
The door shuddered as he slammed it closed. Then he turned to Eleanor. She shrank back before the sardonic light in his eyes.
‘My apologies for removing your…ah…admirer in so precipitate a manner, my love,’ he drawled, ‘but I fear I have the greatest dislike of another man paying such attentions to my wife! Perhaps I never told you?’
‘Perhaps you did not have the time, my lord!’ Eleanor said thinly. She put the brandy glass down with a shaking hand and swung her feet off the sofa and on to the floor. She glared at him. ‘We scarce had the chance to come to such an understanding in the few days that we spent together! You were gone before we had exchanged more than a few words and I do not believe that any of them were goodbye!’
Kit drove his hands into his pockets. ‘I realise that it must have surprised you for me to appear in this manner…’
‘No,’ Eleanor said politely, ‘it is not a surprise, my lord, rather an enormous shock! To disappear and reappear at will! Such lack of consideration in your behaviour is monstrous rude—’
‘And I can scarcely be taken aback to find my wife in flagrante as a result?’ Kit questioned, with dangerous calm. His glittering blue gaze raked her from head to toe. ‘As you say, we meet again in unfortunate circumstances, my dear.’
Eleanor’s temper soared dangerously. Matters, she thought savagely, were definitely not falling out as they should. Her errant husband, instead of demonstrating the remorse and regret suitable for their reunion, was exhibiting a misplaced arrogance that she had always suspected was part of the Mostyn character. It made her want to scream with frustration. Except that ladies did not scream like Billingsgate fishwives. They endured.
‘Surely the point at issue is your want of conduct rather than mine, my lord,’ she said sharply. ‘I am not the one who has been absent for five months without so much courtesy as a letter to explain!’
Kit sighed heavily. ‘Eleanor, I sent you a letter—several letters, in fact—’
‘Well, I did not receive them!’ Eleanor knew she was starting to sound pettish but her nerves were on edge. ‘As for finding me in flagrante, surely you cannot believe that I am in this poky little inn by choice!’
‘Then you should arrange for your lovers to find somewhere more acceptable, my dear,’ Kit observed, his tone mocking. ‘I have searched for you in hostelries from Richmond to London, and there are plenty more that could offer you greater comfort!’
Eleanor felt the tears prick the back of her eyes. This was all going horribly wrong, yet she did not understand how to stop it. The anguished questions that she had wanted to ask ever since he had left her—why did you go, where have you been—remained locked inside her head, torturing her. She had been told that ladies did not question their husbands’ actions in such an unbridled manner and since Kit had not volunteered the information of his own free will she could scarcely shake it out of him. Eleanor struggled to master her anger and misery.
‘You misunderstand the situation, my lord,’ she said coldly. ‘If there have been others who have paid me attention during your absence, that was because you were not here to discourage them—’
‘And because you did not choose to!’ Kit said, between his teeth. His face darkened and Eleanor realised with a pang just how angry he was. ‘Do you know that all I have heard since I set foot back in England is that Eleanor, Lady Mostyn, is the Talk of the Town? The lovely Lady Mostyn, so free with her favours!’ His voice was savage. ‘They are taking bets in the Clubs, my lady—should Probyn be next, or Paulet? The wager is a monkey against Darke being your current lover!’
His fist smashed down on the table, making the brandy bottle jump. ‘Mayhap I am at fault for leaving you for all this time, but you have scarcely been pining in my absence!’
Eleanor turned her back on him. She could feel the fury bubbling up in her like a witches’ cauldron after a particularly uncontrollable spell. Here was Kit, firmly, demonstrably and absolutely in the wrong after deserting her with no word for five months, and here was she, being hauled over the coals for something that was not even her fault! She had already found herself trying to justify her presence in the inn with Sir Charles whereas Kit had barely mentioned his disappearance. Apologies, explanations…Clearly they were foreign to his nature.
She sighed sharply and moved away from the window. ‘How did you find me here, my lord? If you are but recently returned to England…’
Kit looked up. He raised an eyebrow. ‘I am sorry—did you not wish to be found? I must have misunderstood! I thought that you had just been strenuously explaining that you were not here by choice!’
Eleanor gritted her teeth with exasperation, wavering on the edge of abandoning the polite manners bred in her bones and upbraiding him as he deserved. She wanted to shriek at him, to beat at him with her fists and pour out all the hurt and misery of the past five months. Except that ladies did not—could not—behave like that, no matter the provocation. Self-possession was all. She screwed her eyes up tight and took a deep breath.
‘I dislike your double standards, my lord, but I suppose that a husband may do as he pleases, appearing and disappearing if he so chooses!’ The words came out with a kind of haughty desperation. She stole a look at Kit. He was pouring himself a glass of brandy and his face was quite expressionless. The misery that was squeezing Eleanor’s heart tightened its grip. She stared blindly out into the dusk, where Sir Charles’s carriage, its broken wheel spar miraculously restored, was just setting off down the road to London.
‘You may have been debauching yourself in all the bordellos from here to Constantinople for all that I care, sir,’ she added untruthfully, ‘but you could at least have warned me of your return!’
Kit stretched his legs out before the fire and took a long draught of brandy. ‘I am sorry if I have spoiled your fun, my dear!’ he drawled. ‘I had no notion that you had set up as a demi-rep!’
Eleanor made a sound of repressed fury. ‘All you can reproach me for, my lord, is indiscretion, whereas you…’ Her voice failed her. She could not even begin to put into words all the things that Kit had done wrong.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ she burst out. ‘Sit and wait for you? You might never have returned! At one point we even thought you dead!’
Kit’s expression was bleak. ‘And better off that way so that you could carry on a merry widow? You honour me, my dear!’
It was the last straw. With an infuriated squeak, Eleanor picked up the ugly clock from the mantelpiece and threw it at him. Kit fielded it with ease.
‘Glaringly abroad, my dear! One wonders why you did not use it against Sir Charles if his attentions were so repugnant to you!’
There was a heavy silence. Eleanor pressed both hands hard to her mouth to prevent herself from crying. She could not believe how close she had come to losing her self-control, nor how furious and unhappy Kit was making her. She could not see beyond the wicked coil that had enveloped her. Kit’s return had solved no problems for her; in fact it had generated nothing but trouble.
Kit rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. For the first time, Eleanor noticed that he looked weary.
‘Maybe we are both in the wrong, Eleanor.’ Kit’s tone was heavy. ‘May we not just sit down and discuss this sensibly? I know that I have been away for a space, but I sent you a letter as soon as I could, explaining what had happened. And then several more, after that. Surely you cannot deny it?’
The very patience of Kit’s tone grated on Eleanor’s nerves now, when all she wanted was to give way to impassioned recriminations. Perhaps if he had shown such calm forbearance when he had come in, matters might have been different. But he had not. And now…
She looked at him and wondered if she really knew him at all. Once, a year ago perhaps, she would have said that she knew Kit instinctively. There had been a recognition between them, sharp and exciting, as they had circled each other at Ton balls and snatched a dance or a conversation when her mother’s back was turned. Kit Mostyn was the type of man that all the chaperones warned against and under the veneer of well-bred sophistication, Eleanor had sensed a certain degree of ruthlessness in him that had made her feel in danger yet protected at one and the same time. She had not understood it but it had been desperately romantic—or so she had thought.
Now, though, she realised that she was married to a stranger. A very good-looking stranger, she allowed, as she studied him. The Mostyns, like the Trevithicks, were generally accounted to be a good-looking family and Eleanor saw little to argue with in that assessment. Like his twin sister Charlotte, Kit was tall and fair, but where Charlotte’s classical features were pleasingly feminine, Kit’s face was strong and unforgettable, aristocratic arrogance softened only by a rakish smile that had made her heart beat faster. But he was not smiling now. The arrogance, Eleanor thought furiously, and not the charm, was decidedly to the fore.
She walked over to the fire and made a business of checking her cloak and gloves to see if they were yet dry. The steam was still rising from her dress. Eleanor felt as though she was going through the washing process still inside it. And strangely she was suddenly aware of how every damp fold clung to her figure, yet when she had been intent on preventing Sir Charles’s seduction she had not even noticed it. But it was Kit who was watching her now, his smoky blue gaze appraising as it rested on her. Eleanor’s nerves tightened with misery and anger.
She swallowed hard. ‘Several letters!’ she said incredulously. ‘Thank you, my lord. I fear I never received them.’
Kit sighed again. It was clear that he simply did not believe her. Eleanor felt another hot layer of anger add to the volcano inside.
‘Very well,’ he said wearily. ‘I am quite willing to explain what happened and where I have been…’
Eleanor clenched her fists to prevent herself from screaming. So now he wanted to explain—when it was too late! If he had arrived at Trevithick House one evening rather than catching her in flagrante in such a ridiculous situation, if he had been remorseful rather than accusatory, if she had not felt so wholly in the wrong and yet so furious with him…Eleanor shook her head. It was impossible to sit down and discuss matters quietly now.
Visions of opera singers flitted before her eyes and she tried to swallow the tears that threatened to close her throat. She did not want the humiliation of hearing Kit justify that a man was permitted to come and go as he pleased, to take his pleasure where and when he chose, whilst expecting a different standard of behaviour from his wife. She had heard all of that from her mother when she had been a débutante and had thought it so much nonsense—except that now it appeared to be true. She had had such romantic notions of marriage, whereas her husband evidently did not expect it to interfere with his existing way of life.
Eleanor pressed her hands together. Her pride would never permit her to tell Kit her true feelings—how she had waited for him, heartbroken; how her mother had made matters irredeemably worse by broadcasting intimate details of her situation to the Ton; how she had been reviled and made a laughingstock, her hasty marriage and even swifter abandonment the on dit on everyone’s lips. It was Kit who had left her at the mercy of every rake in London then made matters worse by apparently parading his amours elsewhere. And deeper than all of these things was the secret suffering that made it impossible for her ever to forgive him his desertion.
Explanations…There were some that she would never make to him. And Kit was clearly incapable of expressing any kind of remorse. He had not apologised, not at all, and with every minute that went by Eleanor resolved that she would not, could not, move to make matters right when he clearly did not care. She turned away and hunched a shoulder against him.
‘You do not need to explain yourself to me, my lord! You may do as you please!’
Kit was now looking positively thunderous. A little thrill of pleasure went through Eleanor at her ability to provoke him. She knew it was childish but just at the moment it was all she had.
‘Eleanor, I want to explain…’
Eleanor smiled. Even thwarting him in this small matter made her feel perversely better. It might be contrary but it was satisfying.
‘There is no need for explanations, my lord,’ she said coolly. ‘I think it would be better if we pretended that it had never happened!’
‘Confound it, Eleanor, do you simply not care?’ Kit sounded exasperated now. ‘Not ten minutes ago you were castigating me for leaving you! I thought you would at least wish to know the reason why!’
Eleanor fabricated a delicate shrug. ‘It was the suddenness of your reappearance that shocked me, my lord, rather than anything else. I have no particular desire for us to become drawn into descriptions of what each has been doing. That would be most tiresome! Far better to let the matter drop!’
There was a pause. She saw a strange expression steal across Kit’s face but she did not understand it. He ran a hand through his dishevelled fair hair and sighed heavily.
‘I understand you, I suppose! And for all my anger earlier I shall ask no questions of you. Truth to tell, I really do not want to know.’
Eleanor frowned a little. She was not quite sure what he meant.
‘Oh, I was not intending to tell you anything of my exploits anyway, my lord!’ she said brightly. ‘I have managed quite well on my own! I have had the status of a married lady after all, without all the tedious responsibilities of tending to a husband!’ She paused as she heard Kit swear, and finished sweetly: ‘Now that you are back we shall be a thoroughly modern couple—you have your interests and I have mine—’
‘And plenty of them—’
Eleanor ignored him. ‘And we may present a charming façade to the Ton—’
‘It sounds delightful,’ Kit said, with an edge to his voice.
Eleanor essayed a bright smile, though in fact she knew the tears were not far away. For all that she had manoeuvred the conversation in this direction, it was not what she truly wanted. If only he had swept her into his arms and told her he loved her, everything else, even apologies and explanations, could have waited. She had imagined a reunion with Kit a hundred times, and it had never been like this. This cold stranger, with an angry light in his dark blue eyes, was not a man she could reach.
She told herself sternly that she had been brought up to understand the concept of duty in marriage and so did not expect a husband to show her an unsuitable affection, the way that her brother Marcus did so unfashionably with his wife Beth. Her parents had preserved just such a chilly outward show, and whilst she had sometimes thought that love might be more fun, she had learned that that was not so. Nevertheless, something was hurting her and she did not intend to give Kit the satisfaction of knowing it.
‘After all, I hardly expect you to hang on my sleeve in a tediously slavish way!’ she finished lightly. ‘You shall go your way—indeed, you already have done!—and I shall go mine—’
‘As you also appear to have done,’ Kit concluded dryly.
They looked at each other in silence, and then Eleanor shrugged. ‘So there we have it, my lord! What happens now?’
‘We go up to our chamber, I believe,’ Kit said slowly. A mocking smile touched his mouth. ‘As you are so determined to maintain a pretence of normality, my lady wife, I do believe we should start practising straight away!’
