Every Scandalous Secret (24 page)

She clapped her hands together. “There were signs about treacherous rock, so I stayed well back, of course. But I could tell that someone has begun excavation there. It could be Roman antiquities, since we’re near St. Albans, don’t you think? Surely you have heard about this, hence your fascination.”

“I don’t remember.” And he didn’t. There seemed to be a suspicious blank space in his mind. “Show me.”

The walk took less than an hour, well off the manicured lawns of the park itself. Susanna turned and followed the banks of a small stream, where rocks had tumbled over each other. All of this was familiar, but like an old recollection, a dream long forgotten.

At last she veered away from the water, and for some reason, his stomach seemed to clench. Nothing was making sense, but he needed to know the truth.

The trees thinned, the rocky ground leveled out, and he saw the warning signs now. Rope had been strung all around the clearing, but that would never stop a curious boy, even now. This was no cave one walked directly into, he remembered, coming close and looking down into a dark, gaping maw at his feet.

“What do you think?” Susanna demanded. “I saw something etched on one wall, where the sunlight touched it. Do you see it?”

He grabbed her arm and tugged her back to his side. “Be careful,” he said harshly.

She looked up at him in surprise, but whatever she saw in his face stopped her response, except for a faint, “Leo?”

“I’ve been here,” he said softly, forcing himself to look away from the cave though it drew him with a sick fascination. “I think I fell in when I was a little boy and was trapped.”

“You think . . . ?”

He strained to look over the edge, and his mind flashed to the dark franticness of his recent nightmares. “This is the place in my dreams. But I don’t understand why I haven’t remembered before now.”

She linked her arm with his. “It depends how young you were. You could have been quite frightened. That sometimes makes people forget. Perhaps it was the corpse you mentioned, Leo?”

“I just remember sheer terror and nothing else. If there was a corpse, surely my family would have discussed it over the years.”

“Or would they have banned any mention of it,” she said slowly, “because of your fears? We could ask.”

“Not yet. Let me think.”

She leaned forward again. “Such a shame we don’t have a rope.”

Once again, he grabbed her arm, this time bringing her right up against his body, using his height to look down on her, to intimidate, something that did not come naturally to him with women. “I know you have your own mind, Susanna, but don’t put yourself in danger.”

She stared up at him in surprise, and he realized he was holding her arm too tightly. He let her go and thanked God she didn’t stumble away from him with anger or mistrust. But her assessing look was almost as bad.

“I can’t ignore this,” he said grimly. “Let’s return for rope.”

An hour later, he tied the rope around a tree and lowered the other end into the cave. Susanna handed him a small sack she’d quickly prepared, and he dropped it over the edge, before climbing down and landing silently on the earthen floor. He found himself breathing heavily, although it wasn’t with exertion. He could see the rats fleeing into the corners. He remembered the rats.

“Leo?”

“Don’t come near the edge. I’m fine.”

He removed a candle and lit it with a match, then held it up, inhaling swiftly at the sight. Broken columns littered the floor, evidence of past civilization. More modern tools were stacked in a corner, as if abandoned. Then he held the candle higher and inhaled with surprise. One wall was covered by a fresco, now scarred with time, its colors muted, lines like spiderwebs etched all through it. It was a landscape, with a woman on the edge, as if part of the scene, but not its focus.

Had the nude painting in London somehow connected his mind with
this
painting, one he’d seen as a child during a traumatic time?

“Tell me what you see!” Susanna called.

“Roman columns, but any pottery seems long gone. Some excavation work was begun, then abandoned.”

“Lord Bramfield did say the archaeologists were concentrating on St. Albans. Anything else?”

“An old, cracked fresco dominates one wall.”

“From Roman times? How incredible!”

“I remember it. Give me a moment.”

He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was a little boy again, concentrating so hard that his head began to pound. But his reward was a murky scene that seemed to emerge from the mists.

“I was walking with someone,” he called to his wife, “and together we fell in. I was unharmed, but he was not so lucky.”

“The body from your dreams. So it was all true. Can you remember anything else? Did he die immediately? How did you go for help?”

“I don’t think I did. I was young, not yet of age for school. But—I cannot remember anything more. Only a man who died here, and the rats that are scurrying around even now.”

“Rats? Oh, Leo, come up from there!”

He blew out the candle and left it below, climbing up the rope with alacrity. He kept Susanna away with a raised hand as he emerged from the unstable opening, then went to her.

“So a man did die here?” she asked softly, her gaze searching his face as if she needed to know he was all right.

She rubbed a smudge of dirt off his cheek, and he took her hand. “I think so. But I don’t remember who he was, or how we were discovered. I can’t go on being haunted at night. Soon my wife won’t sleep with me if I disturb her.”

She shrugged shyly, playfully. “I only need you for one thing, then you’re free to find your own bed.”

“You mean as your model?”

“Oh, I had forgotten all about that!” she answered sweetly.

He found himself laughing, and it felt good and pure, not like the darkness in the cave behind him, not like the senseless, mysterious death that made even the shadows of that cave seem menacing.

Chapter 21

L
eo behaved . . . differently after their return from the cave. Susanna did her best to hold a normal conversation at luncheon, but he seemed distracted. She mentioned that perhaps his interest in studying antiquities was a way to put unpleasant memories to rest, then showed him an advertisement in the
Times
for the British Archaeological Association, which met in London. He only thanked her and set it aside.

In their room that night, she watched him undress, enjoying the movement of his body, the very beauty of muscle and bone. But he wasn’t just a handsome man, a daring rake, or any of the other names Society had given him. He was gifted with great intelligence, and the thought made her eager as to what more she could unearth about her husband.

“Leo.”

He turned from where he’d been hanging up his coat. In white shirtsleeves he looked dashing, a touch of sun darkening his skin after his ride at Madingley Court.

“I went up to the nursery today,” she said.

“Surely it is too soon for a happy announcement.”

“It is.” She answered his smile with a shy one of her own. “I found things that had been marked with your name, books, even a project or two. I thought you hadn’t spent your childhood here?”

He frowned, his fingers stopped on the collar buttons of his shirt. “I didn’t. I assumed I merely visited on occasion, and that’s when I fell into the cave.”

“Perhaps there was more going on than a simple walk in the woods. Were you escaping the house? You said you used to amuse your parents to distract them from a bad marriage. Was it better to be a little boy who caused trouble, to draw attention to yourself?”

He smiled and shook his head. “You are looking too deeply into a little boy’s motives, Susanna. I liked to be bad, and the attention was better than none at all.”

He came to the bed, still wearing his trousers, but the garment didn’t exactly hide what else was on his mind. And much as she welcomed him, part of her was still thinking about how she’d misjudged him. She’d been treating him as she’d always been treated, as if what the world saw was all that counted.

He knelt on the bed above her, and his smile faded. “Susanna, this preoccupation with my childhood doesn’t change anything. It’s as if you’re looking for a revelation in me, a misunderstood knight-errant rather than the selfish bastard I’ve chosen to be much of my life. Marriage cannot totally change me—I’m still what I was, the man who compromised an innocent woman into marriage, who almost ruined his future sister-in-law.”

“I beg your pardon?” She came up on her elbow, the counterpane bunching at her waist to reveal her nightgown. She remembered Lord Greenwich’s warning back at the house party, but hadn’t imagined the whole story.

“She wasn’t my sister-in-law then. Louisa was an innocent young woman who enjoyed the parties as much as I did, whom everyone liked, especially the men. I was fascinated with her, and one drunken night at a ball, I followed her down a corridor. She didn’t allow my kiss, but my friends assumed she had, and I let them think it.”

His voice was clipped and hard, and though he was warning her, Susanna sensed he was also reminding himself of what he’d done.

“Her reputation changed drastically, and all thought her fast. She didn’t realize what was going on and thought she was simply even more popular than before. I found out later that men were betting on who could get her to take the next step in her ruination.”

“But not you.”

“No, not me. But I didn’t put an end to it. And when her father died, leaving her penniless, she lost even the friends she’d once had. She took a position as my grandmother’s companion.”

“And met and fell in love with your brother.”

“But in the middle of that, the whole story and my involvement came out. You aren’t the first woman it was suggested I needed to marry to restore her reputation.”

She relaxed back, saying, “You wouldn’t have let her be ostracized for something you began.”

His jaw clenched. “You’re doing it again, Susanna. You’re making me out to have fine motives. I was simply trapped, and my grandmother and mother were there, and Simon—Simon wasn’t certain what he should do.”

“So your blind brother needed a push from you to realize he loved Louisa. You married me, even when there was no certain proof that I had been openly compromised. Ah, Leo, you are so wicked.”

He turned his back and sat on the edge of the bed. She came up behind him, putting her arms around his neck, resting against him, separated by only the sheer linen of her nightgown.

“Leo, I don’t believe you even know yourself. There’s a childhood accident you can’t remember, and an interest in archaeology you’re trying to pretend doesn’t exist when perhaps you might wish to delve into it further.”

She felt his resistance in the stiff lines of his body.

“You’ve spent your life keeping people at a distance, all while you played the charming scoundrel. You can’t keep a wife away, Leo.”

“It seems I can’t keep my wife properly naked in bed,” he said darkly.

She kissed his neck, then beneath his ear. “Surely you don’t want every step of our marriage to come easily. We’ve both been a challenge to each other, and I will see this wager through.” She felt some of the tension leave his back, and hugged him closer, saying, “Since you aren’t that frightened boy anymore, bad memories can’t hold sway over you.”

He turned his head, and she could see his severe profile.

“But there’s more I can’t remember,” he said quietly. “Part of me doesn’t want to.”

“That makes sense. It’s been hidden inside you all this time. We need to talk to people who can give you answers, and I don’t just mean the rumors of servants or neighbors. You said your grandmother’s estate isn’t that far away—is your brother there?”

Simon nodded. “He spends much of the Season there, close to London when they need to be in town but easier for him to get about.”

“Then let’s invite them. I’d love to meet them all.”

“I won’t announce our marriage in the letter,” he said.

“No?” she asked with regret.

He grinned. “I want to see his face.”

L
eo knew that others had to know what happened when he was young. The half dozen servants now working inside the manor were hired too recently, but his steward had records of the woman who’d acted as nurse to visiting children. Leo and Susanna rode their horses several hours to visit her.

Miss Deering was an elderly woman with thinning white hair and papery, wrinkled skin that smelled of powder. She lived in a little vine-covered cottage on a village green, where she could sit in the window and watch her neighbors pass by. A maidservant introduced Leo and Susanna, and when Miss Deering tried to rise, Leo quickly went to take her hand.

She smiled up at him with obvious delight. “Did she introduce you as Mr. Wade? Mr. Leo Wade?”

Leo bowed as Susanna reached his side. “That is my name, Miss Deering. Do you remember me?”

“I do! You often came to stay at Woodhill Manor with your older brother and younger sister.”

“And this is my wife, Mrs. Susanna Wade.”

Miss Deering beamed as Susanna curtsied. “How lovely to meet you, my dear! I always knew that Leo—I should say Mr. Wade—would find himself the perfect bride. Now please sit down.”

As they sat side by side on a delicate sofa across from the nurse’s chair, she regarded Leo fondly.

“What a scamp you were, Mr. Wade. Your visits used to turn the household upside down for days.”

“He does have a certain reputation for pranks,” Susanna said dryly.

“Every young boy has that,” Miss Deering agreed with a nod. “But Mr. Wade . . . ah, he was a bundle of liveliness. He wanted to know everything, to do everything. The library was not safe from him, of course.”

Leo frowned.

“I imagine you’ve read every book by now. Insatiable curiosity, Mrs. Wade, but of course you know that.”

“I do,” Susanna said quietly, but gave Leo an amused glance.

“He demanded to be taught to read, or so his mother once told me. He held up a book at just two years of age and said he wanted to be like his brother.” She clasped her trembling hands together. “Such an intelligent mind! And a gift for languages, too. I was not his tutor, but I enjoyed seeing how he could learn. He knew a smattering of three languages by the time he was five years old.”

Leo frowned. “Surely that can’t be right, Miss Deering.”

“How many languages do you know now?”

He glanced at Susanna and gave her an apologetic shrug. “Five.”

She stared at him, lips parted.

“Well, I foresaw that,” Miss Deering said with satisfaction. “When others tried to tell me about your town ways, I told them they didn’t know everything.”

“I do have things I’m not as proud of.”

“So do we all, my boy, so do we all.” She paused while the tea tray was brought in, then insisted on pouring for them though her hand faintly trembled. “I’ll continue to rattle on about your childhood if you don’t interrupt and tell me why you’ve come to visit.”

Leo accepted his tea black, took a sip, then set it down. “Miss Deering, do you remember an accident I had as a child? Apparently, I fell into a cave, but I have no memory of it.”

Her cheerful expression faded, making her look suddenly older. “Yes, I do remember, though I can’t be surprised that you do not. Such a sad business. You and your tutor, Mr. Boorde, were having a walk, and you fell in together.”

“Mr. Boorde?” he said blankly. The name conjured up nothing, like there was a hole in his head.

“You were inseparable, my boy. You had such a curious mind, and he so enjoyed opening up the world to you.”

Susanna was watching him as if judging his reaction. He didn’t know what reaction to have.

“I can’t even picture his face,” Leo said between gritted teeth.

Miss Deering reached across the little table and patted his hand. “You blamed yourself at first, and though I tried to comfort you, you would never discuss it again. Your parents forbade the subject, since you reacted so badly whenever it was brought up. During the twenty-four hours you were trapped in there, you fought to keep the rats from Mr. Boorde.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Susanna breathed, her eyes brimming with sympathy. “No wonder you can’t remember. That must have been truly terrible.”

He nodded, but except for knowing he’d been there, the details themselves seemed blurry.

“Let us talk of happier things, Mr. Wade,” Miss Deering said brightly. “Tell me of your marriage.”

He glanced at Susanna, cocked an eyebrow, and let her answer. He kept trying to remember what Mr. Boorde had looked like, but why that was so important, he didn’t know.

S
usanna rode quietly at Leo’s side as they crested a hill and saw Woodhill Manor nestled in the valley. Hedgerows separated much of the land into variegated squares of farmland, and the sun seemed to shine down as if blessing the scene.

She glanced at her husband, who studied the view with something less than enthusiasm. And now she knew why he hadn’t wanted to come here.

Twenty-four hours alone with a dead man, screaming for help, wondering if you were soon to meet the same fate. Hungry, thirsty, frightened . . . it made her shudder.

“What’s wrong?” Leo asked.

She met his speculative gaze. “I’m dwelling too much on what the accident must have been like for you.”

“Perhaps it would be better to be like me and barely remember it,” he said wryly. “I can’t even picture his face, and the man died in front of me.”

“We can do something to spur your memory. There are things of yours in the schoolroom. Perhaps seeing where you spent time with Mr. Boorde will help.”

“Wait,” he said, before she could urge her mount forward. “You don’t need to help me with this. You certainly didn’t plan for a husband with . . . mental problems when you married me.”

“Mental problems?” she echoed, smiling softly.

That smile cut into Leo, and he found himself wishing he could be a better man for her. He’d drunk and gambled and wasted his life, and now, just when he thought marriage would make him happy, he was less than whole in her eyes. She was patience itself, and never had he imagined, when he’d given thought to the perfect wife, what a blessed virtue that was.

She urged her horse sideways until their knees brushed, then reached to touch his arm. “I never expected perfection, Leo.”

He put his hand over hers, and said softly, “Neither did I.”

She searched his gaze, then looked away. She was harder on herself than she was on him.

“To the nursery then?” he said, trying to sound determined.

She nodded, tapped her heels into the horse’s flank, and called back, “Race you!”

He watched her gallop away and enjoyed the sight immensely. Having a good seat—another attribute for the perfect wife.

But once they reached the nursery, after a quick meal of cold ham and bread in the kitchen, Leo’s mood turned dark again. This place he remembered, the little desks, the large windows with their expansive view of the surrounding park.