Falling in Love Again (5 page)

The driver waited until John removed his top hat and climbed beside her. The chaise shifted with his weight. When her body started to slide across the velvet squabs toward him, Mallory scooted quickly toward the opposite door to avoid contact with him. “I don't want you here,” she said.

“I didn't ask,” he replied, before giving the coachman his Mayfair address.

Mallory opened her mouth to protest, but with a snap of the whip they were off. The coach lurched around the other coaches lined up for the party and started down the street. John's friends shouted and called encouragement from the windows. Mallory, happily, couldn't make out exactly what they said. From the corner of her eye, she noticed that John good-naturedly waved goodbye. She clung closer to the opposite door and stared out into the night.

John leaned back in the seat. Mallory felt him staring at her, the hairs at the nape of her neck tingling, but when she slid a look in his direction,
he was checking his fob watch for the time. He closed the timepiece with a soft click and she looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught staring.

In fact, she could hardly wait to rid herself of him. She should tell him so, and also that she had no intention of returning to his house, that she wanted to be delivered to the Red Horse Inn, where her mother waited. In fact, if she had to spend another second in the company of this man—

“No,” he said.

“No what?” She looked over her shoulder. All she could see of his face, hidden in the shadows, was the grim set of his mouth.

“No divorce,” he answered.

Mallory turned to face him fully. Conscious of the listening ears of the coachman and the footman, she leaned close and whispered, “Why not? Certainly from what I've seen tonight, I have plenty of justification!”

“What are you talking about?” he whispered back, as if they were playing a game.

“Your mistress,” she hissed.

He waved a dismissive hand and sat back before answering in a normal voice, heedless of the servants, “If having a mistress were grounds for divorce, then half of Parliament would be unattached.”

“Adultery certainly
is
grounds for a divorce!” Mallory whispered back, sending a pointed look at the coachman.

John ignored her. “For a wife, but not for a husband.” He studied her in the darkness for a
moment before asking, “I don't have a fear on that count, do I?”

Surprised that he would even voice such a concern, hot indignation and guilt flashed through her. What if the rumors about the many duels he'd fought were true and he decided to call Hal Thomas out? “I am as you left me,” she hurried to assure him.

John pursed his lips, the coach lights illuminating his even features. Mallory held her breath. Could he read her mind? Did he sense she was hiding something? At last he said dryly, “Well, that's comforting.”

She bristled at his sarcasm. “Of course, I don't run in the same circles you do. We country folk—” she laced these words with disdain—“take our wedding vows seriously.”

“You have a very attractive lower lip when you pout.”

She immediately pressed her lips together, angered by her reaction to his off-hand compliment. “Haven't you heard a word I've been saying?”

“Of course, I've heard every word. How else would I notice the shape of your lower lip?” He moved closer to her, his arm coming around the seat back. “In fact, perhaps having a wife isn't such a bad idea.” His rough voice sounded very intimate in such close quarters. His finger lightly touched her cheek, and Mallory couldn't suppress a shiver of awareness. He smiled, as if her reaction were exactly what he'd hoped.

He removed his arm and sat back. “Fine. I'll give up my mistress. No more adultery. No more discussion about divorce.”

Mallory opened her eyes wide in feigned surprise. “I have farm animals I speak of with more attachment than you do of a woman whose bed you share.” Her cheeks burned. Such plain speaking embarrassed her.

“You're blushing, aren't you?” He stretched out his long legs and shoved his hands in his pocket. “I can't remember a time when anything embarrassed me—least of all words.” He shot her a smile, one that had charmed women from duchesses to dairy maids, if her friend Louise Haddon's gossipy letters from London could be believed. “Would it make you feel better if I professed an undying love for her?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“Then there's no sense in pretending, is there? Mallory, there
is
no attachment. Sarah and I had an affair. I've tired of it and it's over. There's no need for excess emotion. I'll contact my uncle Louis Barron tomorrow and have him finish it with her.”

Mallory stared at him as his words sank in. He really believed what he said. He believed that the beautiful, elegant woman who served as his mistress considered him little more than a past-time—in spite of the fact that Lady Ramsgate had just made a fool of herself before society by begging John to come back to her. Her mother was right—men and women had completely different views of the world. She gave a short, humorless laugh.

“What's so funny?”

“You. Us.” Mallory pressed a pleat into the material of her dress with two fingers before
admitting, “Imagine, we've been married for over seven years, yet we're strangers. You're nothing like what I remember.” And she suddenly realized that in spite of Hal and with all evidence to the contrary, a part of her had naively believed they might still have managed to make something out of this soulless union.

“Or how I remember you.” He paused before adding, “You've grown up, Mallory.”

For a second her heart stopped. What could he mean? And why did his words and the deep, appreciative timbre of his voice start a dizzy little humming deep inside her?

Mallory clutched her hands together in fists, questioning her sanity. John had had his chance. She'd waited over six years, playing the role of dutiful wife to her roving soldier husband. She'd expected a note, a visit,
something
when he'd returned from the war. Being ignored with such finality hurt. Trusting him in spite of all evidence to the contrary and losing her home had made her incensed with fury.

“I want a divorce, John. I do
not
want to go to your home, especially in light of what happened at—” she discovered she didn't want to say Lady Ramsgate's name, “—back there. Please convey me to the Red Horse Inn. My mother is waiting for me there, and since I've been gone several hours, she will be anxious.” There. She'd said it—and very well, too, she thought. This was as she'd pictured the meeting between them, a moment of dignity and grace, in spite of the somewhat scandalous circumstances.

He made an impatient sound. “There will be no divorce.”

Mutinously, Mallory refused to answer. There most certainly
would
be a divorce…or a separation. She'd sue for private separation in the ecclesiastical courts. It was what Hal had encouraged her to do from that start.

John frowned. “You're upset over what happened this evening. I'm sorry I embarrassed you, but after you stormed into my mistress's house, publicly announced yourself, and slapped me, I felt that removing us in the most expedient manner was the best solution—and no, I don't give a damn what anyone thinks.”

All her outrage welled up again. “I've never been manhandled in such a manner….” Her voice trailed off as words failed her. Unfortunately, she also felt an annoying sense that he was right in some measure.

Her mother had begged her to stay at the inn and wait for John to respond to one of the many notes Mallory had sent him that day. However, when she hadn't heard from him after hours of waiting, Mallory's temper had got the better of her. She'd marched over to John's house and badgered the one-legged brute named Richards, her husband's butler, for John's whereabouts. The real insult had been that Richards hadn't believed his lord was married.

“Couldn't we just have walked out the door?” she asked. “Or do you make it a practice to pick up any woman you see and carry her off whenever you are bored?”

John answered her with a smile that was so
wickedly tempting it had the power to charm even her, a woman who believed herself impervious to the fatal appeal of scamps and bounders.

And that was what she'd married, she reminded herself—a rake. An infamous rake.

“We can't divorce,” he said, almost apologetically. “First, there's the scandal a divorce would create. A stigma on both our family names.”

She gave an unladylike snort. “Since when have you worried about our family names?”

“Do you mean, when have I worried how my actions affect the family name or about propagating the family name?” His grin turned wolfish.

“Your actions!” Mallory snapped. “I'll not let you close enough to think of the other.”

“Oh, I'm thinking of the other already,” he assured her, and there was something in the warmth of his voice that turned her stomach to jelly. But his voice was businesslike. “Besides, I can't see you leaving your precious Craige Castle. After all, you are the last of the
true
Craiges.”

His words washed all good humor out of Mallory. “Craige Castle is gone. Your creditors evicted my mother and me last week.”

“You're joking!” He sat up.

“Do you believe I would joke about such a thing? I've been told there is already a new owner. And when did you ever give a care to scandal or Craige Castle and its tenants? I admit you were fine in the beginning, albeit somewhat stingy, but the last several years we've been lucky to see a shilling for anything in the way of improvements to the castle itself!”

He leaned forward. “Lucky to see a shilling?
Mallory, how can you call an allowance of ten thousand a year a pittance?”

“What ten thousand a year?”

He looked squarely at her, his expression completely serious for the first time since she'd met him this evening. “The money I've been putting into your accounts ever since we parted company seven years ago. It was the living I inherited from my mother's side of the family. I lived off my pay as an officer and gave the rest completely over to you. Are you telling me you've never received the money?”

“John, we've been fortunate if we've had a thousand pounds from you in a year, and that stopped coming two years ago while you claimed half the harvest to support your grand way of life and your
women
.” She spat the last word out.

“This is astounding,” he said. “You've had nothing from me at all for two years?”

“Well, there was the brick walkway you insisted on building. I was forced to let go of servants who had been with my family for years and you were sending workmen to build walkways! Oh, yes, and I mustn't forget your occasional letters.” She couldn't resist making that jab. “Especially the one that read, ‘Dear Wife, I hope all is well with you. I am well. Sincerely, John Barron.'” She paused a moment before asking, “Had you really forgotten my name, John?”

He shot her an irritated frown. “I've been sending money. Granted, I've been negligent in many aspects of my life, but I have always honored my financial obligations. I'm not a complete villain, Mallory.”

She and the good people of Craige Castle, who had gone so long without the basic necessities, disagreed.

“Mallory, I don't know what happened to Craige Castle, but tomorrow we will both go to see my Uncle Louis and straighten this matter out. In the meantime, you will come home with me. I will send for your mother to join us.”

Mallory opened her mouth to protest, but John cut her off. “You are my wife and will stay under my roof. The Red Horse is a mediocre establishment and certainly not in the safest section of the city for two women alone.”

“What makes you so certain we are alone?” she asked stiffly, irritated by his high-handed, if completely sensible, manner.

“Oh, I have no doubt that if you'd had a host of yeomen at your back, you would have threatened me with them by now.”

Mallory wished she'd thought of that. One of her reasons for forcing a meeting with John this evening was to avoid the likelihood of his encountering her mother. It had taken the loss of Craige Castle for her mother to see reason and consider a divorce. However, if their eviction had been a mistake and John actually
did
start providing Craige Castle an allowance of ten thousand a year, her mother would fight a divorce with every breath she drew.

Mallory looked out the coach window and saw that they were already in Mayfair and approaching his street.

Hal had wanted to come with her, but she had insisted on his staying back in East Anglia. She'd
assured Hal that she would remain true to her dreams. She didn't want to live out her days as a married woman in name only. She wanted a family. A husband who cared about her, who shared his thoughts and helped shoulder the responsibility of Craige Castle and its tenants.

At the very least, she wanted someone who remembered her name
!

“What the devil!”

Startled by John's oath, Mallory turned to him in time to watch him throw open the door of the still moving coach and stand on the step. She craned her neck to look past him.

His house appeared to be ablaze with light and a host of men and women moved from the small circular park across from John's home and out into the street. For a moment, Mallory feared that the party from Lady Ramsgate's had managed to race them to Mayfair and now waited to poke more cruel fun. But peering out the window, she didn't recognize anyone. This group of men and women was dressed too plainly, and they were too sober to be more of John's friends.

The coach rolled to a stop. A man's rough face, framed by an officious-looking leather top hat, glared at them in the torch light. “Lord Craige?” he demanded.