Almost Heaven (60 page)

Robert was sitting with his back against the old cherry tree, moodily contemplating his scuffed boots when Elizabeth first saw him, and he stood up quickly. “You didn’t happen to bring food, did you?”

She’d been right, she realized; he
was
half-starved. “Yes, but only some bread and cheese,” she explained, taking it out from behind her skirts. ‘“I couldn’t think of a way to carry more out here without causing someone to wonder whom I was feeding in the arbor. Robert,” she burst out, no longer diverted by such commonplace needs as food, “where have you been, why did you leave me like that, and what –”

“I didn’t leave you,” he bit out furiously. “Your husband had me kidnapped the week after our duel and tossed onto one of his ships. I was supposed to die –”

Pain and disbelief streaked through Elizabeth. “Don’t say that to me,” she cried, wildly shaking her head. “Don’t – he wouldn’t –”

Robert’s jaw clamped down, and he yanked his shirt out of his waistband, jerked it up, and turned around.
“This
is a souvenir of one of his attempts.”

A scream rose up in Elizabeth’s throat, and she pressed her knuckles against her mouth, trying to stop it. Even then she felt as if she was going to vomit. “Oh, my God,” she panted, looking at the vicious scan that crisscrossed almost every inch of Robert’s thin back. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“Don’t faint,” Robert said, clutching her arm to steady her. “You have to be strong, or he’ll finish the deed.”

Elizabeth sank to the ground and put her head against her knees, her arms clutched around her stomach, rocking helplessly to and fro. “Oh, my God.” she kept saying over and over at the thought of his tom, battered flesh. “Oh, my God.”

Forcing herself to take long, steadying breaths, she finally brought herself under control. All the doubts, the warnings, the hints, crystallized in her mind, focusing on the proof of Robert’s battered back and an icy cold stole through her, numbing her to everything, even the pain. Ian had been her love and her lover; she had lain in the arms of a man who knew what he had done to her brother.

Leaning a hand against the tree, she stood up unsteadily. “Tell me,” she said hoarsely.

“Tell you why he did this? Or tell you about the months I’ve spent rotting in a mine, dragging coal out of it? Or tell you about the beating I got the last time I tried to escape and come back to you?”

Elizabeth rubbed her arms; they felt cold and numb. “Tell me why,” she said.

“How in hell do you expect me to explain the motives of a madman?” Robert hissed, and then with a sublime effort he got himself under control. “I’ve had two years to think about it, to try to understand, and when I heard he’d married you, it all came clear as glass. He tried to kill me on Marblemarle Road the week of our duel, did you know that?”

“I’ve hired investigators to try to find you,” she said, nodding that she knew part of it, unaware that Robert had gone more pale than before. “But they thought
you
tried to kill
him.”

“That’s garbage!”

“It was – conjecture,” she admitted. “But why would Ian want to kill you?”

“Why?” he sneered, tearing into the bread and cheese like a starving man while Elizabeth watched him, her heart wrenching. “For one thing, because I shot him in our duel. But that’s not really it. I foiled his plans when I barged in on him in the greenhouse. He knew he was reaching above himself when he reached for you, but I put the onus on him. Do you know,” he continued with a harsh laugh, “there were people who turned their backs on him over that episode? Plenty, I heard before I was thrown in the hold of one of his ships.”

Elizabeth drew a shaky breath. “What do you mean to do?”

Robert leaned his head back and closed his eyes, looking tormented. “He’ll have me killed if he learns I’m still alive,” he said with absolute conviction. “I couldn’t take another whipping like the last one, Elizabeth. I was on the brink of death for a week.”

A sob of pity and horror rose in her throat. “Legal charges, then?” she asked, and her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “Do you mean to go to the authorities?”

“I’ve thought of it. I want it so badly I can hardly sleep at night, but they’d never take my word now. Your husband has become a rich and powerful man.” When he said “your husband” he looked at her so accusingly that Elizabeth could scarcely meet his haunted eyes.

“I –” She lifted her hand in helpless apology, but she didn’t know what to apologize for, and tears were starting to blur her eyes and impede her speech. “Please,” she cried helplessly. “I don’t know what to do or say. Not yet. I can’t think.”

He dropped the bread and wrapped his arms around her. “Poor beautiful baby,” he said. “I’ve lain awake nights scared out of my mind for you, trying not to think of his filthy hands on you. He owns mines – deep, endless pits in the ground where men live like animals and are beaten like oxen. That’s where he gets the money for everything he buys.”

Including all the jewels and furs he’d given her, Elizabeth realized, and the need to vomit was almost overwhelming. She shuddered repeatedly in Robert’s embrace. “If you don’t bring him up before the magistrates, what will you do?”

“What will
I
do?” he asked. “This isn’t a question for me alone, Elizabeth. If he learns you know what he’s done, your beautiful back won’t take the punishment mine has. You won’t survive what he has his people do to you.”

At the moment, survival was unimportant to Elizabeth. Inside she was already battered, and she was already dying.

“We have to get away. Use new names. Find a new life.” It was the first time Elizabeth hadn’t paused to consider Havenhurst before making a decision. “Where?” she asked in a shattered whisper.

“Leave that to me. How much money can you get your hands on in a few days’ time?”

Tears dripped from her clenched eyes because she had no choice. No options. No Ian. “A great deal, I suppose,” she said dully, “if I can find a way to sell some jewels.”

His arms tightened, and he pressed a brotherly kiss on her temple. “You must follow my instructions exactly. Promise me you will?” She nodded against his shoulder and swallowed painfully. “No one must know you’re leaving. He’ll stop you if he knows what you mean to do.”

Elizabeth nodded again; Ian would not let her go easily, and never without weeks of probing questions. After their torrid lovemaking, he certainly wouldn’t believe she wished for a separation because she didn’t want to live with him.

“Sell everything you possibly can without raising suspicion. Go to London; it’s a big city, and if you use another name and try to make yourself look as different as you can, you aren’t likely to be recognized. On Friday take a hack from London to Thurston Crossing on the Bernam Road. There’s a posting house there, and I’ll be waiting for you. Your husband will launch a search for you once your disappearance is noted. They’ll be watching for a blond woman, and if they find me, I’m as good as dead. If you’re with me, so are you, if he finds you first. We’ll travel as man and wife; I think that will be the best way.”

Elizabeth heard it all, she understood it all, but she could not seem to move or feel. “Where are we going?” she asked numbly. “I haven’t decided yet. To Brussels, maybe, but that’s too close. Maybe to America. We’ll travel north and stay in Helmshead. It’s a little village on the seacoast, very secluded and provincial. They only get the newspapers irregularly, so they won’t know of your disappearance. We’ll wait for a ship going to the colonies up there.”

His hands tightened, moving her away. “I have to leave. Do you understand what you need to do?”

She nodded.

“There’s one thing more. I want you to quarrel with him – in front of someone, if possible. It doesn’t need to be anything serious – just enough to make him think you’re angry, so that when you leave he won’t set investigators on your path so quickly. If you disappear for no apparent reason, he’ll start searching for you at once. The other way will buy us time. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I imagine so. But I wanted to be able to leave him a note, to tell him” – tears clogged her throat at the idea of writing Ian a note; he might be a monster, but her heart was refusing to let go of her love at the same speed her mind was accepting Ian’s treachery –  “to tell him
why
I’m leaving.” Her voice broke, and her shoulders began to shake with wrenching sobs.

Robert gathered her into his arms again. Despite the comforting gesture, his voice was icy and implacable.
“No note!
Do you understand me?
No note.
Later,” he promised, his voice softened and silky, “later, when we’ve made good our escape, you can write to him and tell him everything. You can write volumes to that bastard. Do you understand why it’s imperative that you make it look like you’re leaving over an ordinary quarrel?”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely.

“I’ll see you Friday,” he promised, moving away from her and kissing her cheek. “Don’t fail us.”

“I won’t.”

Mechanically going through the motions of living and survival, Elizabeth sent a note to Ian that night announcing her intention to stay overnight at Havenhurst so that she could go over the books. The next day, Wednesday, she left for London, her jewels in a velvet sack concealed beneath her cloak. Everything was there, including her betrothal ring. Scrupulously adhering to the need for stealth, she had Aaron drop her in Bond Street, then she took a rented hack to the first jeweler she saw in a neighborhood where she wasn’t likely to be recognized.

The jeweler was impressed with what she had to offer. Speechless, in fact. “They’re all exceptionally fine stones, Mrs . . .”

“Mrs Roberts,” Elizabeth provided with a kind of dumb inspiration. Now that nothing mattered anymore, it was easy to lie and dissemble.

The amount he offered her for the emeralds sent the first stab of feeling through her, but it was only a sense of mild dismay. “They must be worth twenty times that much.”

“Thirty, more like, but I don’t have the clientele that can pay those lofty prices. I have to sell them for what my clients are willing to pay.” Elizabeth nodded numbly, her soul too dead to bargain, to point out to him that he could sell them to a Bond Street jeweler for ten times more than he was paying her. “I don’t keep this kind of money around. You’ll have to go to my bank.”

Two hours later Elizabeth emerged from the designated bank with a fortune in notes filling the large sack and her reticule.

Before leaving for London she’d sent word to Ian that she intended to spend the night at the house on Promenade Street, using as an excuse a desire to do some shopping and look in on the servants. It was a lame excuse, but Elizabeth had passed the point of rational thought. She followed Robert’s instructions automatically; she did not deviate or improvise; she did not feel. She felt like a person who had already died but whose body was still ghoulishly propelling itself around.

Sitting alone in her bed chamber on Promenade Street, she stared blankly out the window into the impenetrable night, her fingers idly twisting in her lap. She ought to send Alex a note to tell her good-bye, she thought. It was her first thought of the future in almost two days. Once the thinking began, however, she wished it hadn’t. No sooner had she decided she couldn’t risk writing to Alexandra than her mind began tormenting her with the single remaining ordeal before her. She still had to see Ian; she could not avoid him for two more days without awakening his suspicion. Or could she? she wondered helplessly. He had agreed to let her live her own life, and she’d stayed at Havenhurst occasionally since they’d been married. Of course; the reason had owed to foul weather, not whim.

Dawn was already lightening the sky when she fell asleep in her chair.

When Elizabeth’s carriage drew up at Havenhurst the next day she half expected to see Ian’s in the drive, but everything looked normal and peaceful. With Ian’s money available, Havenhurst was filled with new servants; the grooms were walking a horse by the stable; the gardeners were laying mulch on the dormant flower beds. Normal and peaceful, she thought a little hysterically as Bentner opened the door. “Where have you been, missy?” he asked, anxiously searching her pale face. “The marquess sent word he wants you to come home.”

Elizabeth should have expected that, but she actually hadn’t. “I can’t see why I must, Bentner,” she said in a strained voice that was supposed to pass for annoyance. “My husband seems to forget we had a bargain when we wed. “

Bentner, who still resented Ian for his past treatment of his mistress – not to mention for the assault on Bentner’s person the day he forced his way into the house on Promenade Street – could not find any reason to defend the marquess now. Instead he trotted down the hall on Elizabeth’s heels, stealing anxious glances at her face. “You don’t look well, Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “Shall I have Winston make you a nice hot pot of tea with some of his delicious scones?”

Elizabeth shook her head and went into the library, where she sat down at her writing desk and composed what she hoped was a politely evasive note to her husband stating her intention to remain at Havenhurst tonight to finish working on the account books. A footman left with the note shortly afterward, with instructions to make the carriage trip in no more than seven hours. Under no circumstances did Elizabeth want Ian leaving their house –
his
house – and barging in here in the morning – or worse, tonight.