Almost Heaven (69 page)

“Do you truly think he wants to drive you away forever?” Alexandra asked miserably, sitting down on the sofa beside Elizabeth and putting her arm around her shoulders.

“I know he does,” Elizabeth said.

“Then what will you do next?”

“Whatever I have to do – -anything I can think of. So long as he knows there’s a possibility he’ll see me wherever he goes, he can’t put me entirely out of his mind. I still have a chance to win.”

In that Elizabeth was proved mistaken. One month after Ian’s acquittal, Bentner tapped on the door to the salon where Elizabeth was sitting with Alexandra. “There is a man – a Mr. Larimore,” he said, recognizing the name of Ian’s solicitor. “He says he has papers he must hand to you personally.”

Elizabeth went pale. “Did he say what sort of papers they were?”

“He refused until I told him I wouldn’t interrupt you without being able to tell you why I must.”

“What sort of papers are they?” Elizabeth asked, but, God help her, she already knew.

Bentner’s eyes slid away, his face harsh with sorrow. “He said they are documents pertaining to a petition for divorce.”

The world reeled as Elizabeth tried to stand. “I really think I could hate that man,” Alexandra cried, wrapping her friend in a supportive hug, her voice choked with sorrow. “Even Jordan is becoming angry at him for letting this breach between you continue.”

Elizabeth scarcely knew she was being consoled; the pain was so great it was actually numbing. Turning out of Alexandra’s embrace, she looked at Bentner, knowing that if she accepted the papers there’d be no more delaying tactics she could use, no more hope, but the anguished uncertainty would end. That at least would give her a blessed respite from a terrible, draining torment. Gathering all her courage for one last herculean battle, Elizabeth spoke, slowly at first. “Tell Mr. Larimore that while you were having your dinner, I left the house. Tell him you checked with my maid, and that she said I planned to go to a play with” – she glanced at Alexandra for permission, and her friend nodded emphatically – “with the Duchess of Hawthorne tonight. Invent any schedule you want for me this afternoon and tomorrow – but give him details, Bentner – details that explain
why
I’m not here.”

Another butler, who was not addicted to mysteries, might not have caught on so easily, but Bentner began to nod and grin. “You want to keep him looking elsewhere so you’ll have time to pack and get away without his guessing you’re leaving.”

“Exactly,” Elizabeth said with a grateful smile. “And after that,” she added as he turned to do as bidden, “send a message to Mr. Thomas Tyson – the man from the
Times
who’s been pleading for an interview. Tell him I will give him five minutes if he can be here this evening.”

“Where will you go?” Alex asked.

“If I tell you, Alex, you must swear not to tell Ian.”

“Of course I won’t.”

“Nor your husband. He’s Ian’s friend. It would be wrong to put him in the middle.”

Alex nodded. “Jordan will understand that I’ve given my word and cannot reveal what I know, even to him.”

“I’m going,” Elizabeth confided quietly, “to the last place on earth Ian will think to look for me now – and the first place he’ll go when he really believes he needs to find me, or find peace because he can’t. I’m going to the cottage in Scotland. “

“You should
not
have to do that!” Alex exclaimed loyally. “If he weren’t so heartless, so unjust –”

“Before you say all that,” Elizabeth said gently, “ask yourself how you would feel if Jordan made it look to all the world that you were a murderess, and then he breezed into the House of Lords in the nick of time, after putting you through humiliation and heartbreak, and made it all seem like one big joke.” Alex didn’t reply, but some of the anger drained from her face; more as Elizabeth continued wisely, “Ask yourself how you would feel when you found out that from the day he married you he believed there was a chance you really
were
a murderess – and how you would feel when you remembered the nights you spent together during that time. And when you’ve done all that, remember that in all the time I’ve known Ian, all he’s ever done is to try in every way to make me happy.”

“I –” Alex began, and then her shoulders drooped. “When you put it that way, it does give it a different perspective. I don’t see how you can be so fair and objective when I cannot.”

“Ian,” Elizabeth teased sadly, “taught me that the quickest and best way to defeat an opponent is to first see things from his viewpoint.” She sobered then. “Do you know what a post boy asked me yesterday when he realized who I was?”

When Alex shook her head, Elizabeth said guiltily, “He asked me if I was still afraid of my husband. They haven’t all forgotten about it, you know. Many will never believe he’s completely innocent. I made a terrible and lasting mess of things, you see.”

Biting her lip to hold back her tears, Alex said, “If he hasn’t gone to Scotland to get you by the time our baby comes in January, will you come to us at Hawthorne? I can’t bear the thought of you spending all winter alone up there.”

“Yes.”

* * *

Leaning back in his chair, Ian listened to Larimore’s irate summation of the wild and fruitless chase he’d been sent on for two days by Lady Thornton and her butler: “And after all that,” Larimore flung out in high dudgeon, “I returned to the house on Promenade Street to demand the butler allow me past the stoop, only to have the man –”

“Slam the door in your face?” Ian suggested dispassionately.

“No, my lord, he
invited
me in,” Larimore bit out. “He invited me to search the house to my complete satisfaction. She’s left London,” Larimore finished, avoiding his employer’s narrowed gaze.

“She’ll go to Havenhurst,” Ian said decisively, and he gave Larimore directions to find the small estate.

When Larimore left, Ian picked up a contract he needed to read and approve; but before he’d read two lines Jordan stalked into his study unannounced, carrying a newspaper and wearing an expression Ian hadn’t seen before. “Have you seen the paper today?”

Ian ignored the paper and studied his friend’s angry face instead. “No, why?”

“Read it,” Jordan said, slapping it down on the desk. “Elizabeth allowed herself to be questioned by a reporter from the
Times.
Read
that.”
He jabbed his finger at a few lines near the bottom of the article about Elizabeth by one Mr. Thomas Tyson.
“That
was your wife’s response when Tyson asked her how she felt when she saw you on trial before your peers.”

Frowning at Jordan’s tone, Ian read Elizabeth’s reply:

“My husband was not tried before his peers. He was merely tried before the Lords of the British Realm. Ian Thornton has
no
peers.”

Ian tore his gaze from the article, refusing to react to the incredible sweetness of her response, but Jordan would not let it go. “My compliments to you, Ian,” he said angrily. “You serve your wife with a divorce petition, and
she
responds by giving
you
what constitutes a public apology!” He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Ian behind to stare with clenched jaw at the article.

One month later Elizabeth had still not been found. Ian continued trying to purge her from his mind and tear her from his heart, but with decreasing success. He knew he was losing ground in the battle, just as he had been slowly losing it from the moment he’d looked up and seen her walking into the House of Lords.

Sitting alone before the fire in the drawing room, two months after her disappearance, he gazed into the flames, trying to concentrate on the meeting he was going to have with Jordan and some other business acquaintances the next day, but it was Elizabeth he saw in his mind, not profit and cost figures . . . Elizabeth kneeling in a garden of flowers; Elizabeth firing pistols beside him; Elizabeth sinking into a mocking throne-room curtsy before him, her green eyes glowing with laughter; Elizabeth looking at him as she waltzed in his arms:
“Have you ever wanted something very badly
–
something that was within your grasp
–
and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?”

That night he had answered no. Tonight he would have said yes. Among other things, he wanted to know where she was; a month ago he’d told himself it was because he wanted the divorce petition served. Tonight he was too exhausted from his long internal battle to bother lying to himself anymore. He wanted to know where she was because he
needed
to know. His grandfather claimed not to know; his uncle and Alexandra both knew, but they’d both refused to tell him, and he hadn’t pressed them.

Wearily, Ian leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, but he wouldn’t sleep, and he knew it, even though it was three o’clock in the morning. He never slept anymore unless he’d either had a day of grueling physical activity or drunk enough brandy to knock himself out. And even when he did, he laid awake, wanting her, and knowing – because she’d told him – that she was somewhere out there, lying awake, wanting
him.

A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her standing in the witness box, looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful, first trying logically to explain to everyone what had happened-and when that failed, playing the part of an incorrigible henwit, Ian chuckled, as he’d been doing whenever be thought of her that day. Only Elizabeth would have dared to take on the entire House of Lords – and when she couldn’t sway them with intelligent logic, she had changed tack and used their own stupidity and arrogance to defeat them. If he hadn’t felt so furious and betrayed that day, he’d have stood up and given her the applause she deserved! It was exactly the same tactic she’d used the night he’d been accused of cheating at cards. When she couldn’t convince Everly to withdraw from the duel because Ian was innocent, she’d turned on the hapless youth and outrageously taken him to task because he’d already engaged himself to
her
the next day.

Despite his accusation that her performance in the House of Lords had been motivated by self-interest, he knew it hadn’t. She’d come to save him, she thought, from hanging.

When his rage and pain had finally diminished enough, he’d reconsidered Wordsworth’s visit to her on her wedding day and put himself in her place. He had loved her that day and wanted her. If his own investigator had presented him with conjecture – even damning conjecture – about Elizabeth, his love for her would have made him reject it and proceed with the wedding.

The only reason she could have had for marrying him, other than love, was to save Havenhurst. In order to believe that, Ian had first to believe that he’d been fooled by her every kiss, every touch, every word, and
that
he could not accept. He no longer trusted his heart, but he trusted his intellect.

His intellect warned him that of all the women in the world, no one suited him better in every way than Elizabeth.

Only Elizabeth would have dared to confront him after the acquittal and, after he’d hurt and humiliated her, to tell him that they were going to have a battle of wills that he could not win:
“And when you cannot stand it anymore,”
she’d promised in that sweet, aching voice of hers,
“you’ll  come back to me, and I’ll cry in your arms and tell you I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. And then you’ll
 
help me find a way to forgive myself.”

It was, Ian thought with a defeated sigh, damned hard to concede the battle of wills when he couldn’t find the victor so that he could surrender.

Five hours later Ian awoke in the chair where he’d fallen asleep, blinking in the pale sunlight filtering in through the draperies. Rubbing his stiff arms and shoulders, he went upstairs, bathed, and shaved, then came back downstairs to bury himself in his work again, which was what he had been doing ever since Elizabeth disappeared.

By midmorning he was already halfway through a stack of correspondence when his butler handed him an envelope from Alexandra Townsende. When Ian opened it a bank draft fell out onto his desk, but he ignored that to read her brief note first. “This is from Elizabeth,” it said. “She has sold Havenhurst.” A pang of guilt and shock sent Ian to his feet as he read the rest of the note: “I am to tell you that this is payment in full, plus appropriate interest, for the emeralds she sold, which, she feels, rightfully belonged to you.”

Swallowing audibly, Ian picked up the bank draft and the small scrap of paper with it. On it Elizabeth herself had shown her calculation of the interest due him for the exact number of days since she’d sold the gems, until the date of her bank draft a week ago.

His eyes ached with unshed tears while his shoulders began to rock with silent laughter – Elizabeth had paid him half a percent less than the usual interest rate.

Thirty minutes later Ian presented himself to Jordan’s butler and asked to see Alexandra. She walked into the room with accusation and ire shooting from her blue eyes as she said scornfully, “I wondered if that note would bring you here. Do you have any notion how much Havenhurst means – meant – to her?”