Joan Wolf (17 page)

“Yes, except I was so embarrassed talking to the prince. He had to bend way over to hear met”

Nicholas chuckled. “He didn’t look as if he minded.” He was feeling good. Margarita had not been this relaxed with him for weeks. They had drawn together, rather as children do when they are surrounded by adults, and the camaraderie still lingered. He handed her into the coach and then got in beside her.

As soon as he was seated, she froze. All the innocent fun of the evening was erased from her mind and she was acutely conscious of him, of how close he was, of how much she loved him. She stared straight ahead, afraid that he would touch her.

Nicholas looked at her remote profile and swore silently. His hands clenched themselves into fists, but Margarita did not notice. She was too occupied with staring at the wall of the coach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

And most of all would I flee from the

Cruel madness of love.

Tennyson

When they reached home, Margarita went upstairs to bed. She was suddenly very tired and gratefully let her maid undress her and brush out her hair. “Good night, Chute,” she then said. “Thank you.”

“Good night, my lady,” the woman replied and left the room. Margarita got into bed and snuggled down under the covers. She did not check to see if the door that connected her room to Nicholas’s was locked. It was not.

Nicholas spent an hour drinking brandy in the library before he came upstairs. He never liked his valet to wait up for him, so he was alone in the bedroom, taking off his shirt, when his eyes were drawn, as if by a magnet, to the door that led to Margarita’s bedroom. With sudden decision, he went over and tried it. To his surprise, it opened.

Very quietly he entered her room. There was no sound from the bed, and he crossed the floor and stood looking down at his wife. She was deeply asleep, lying on her back with her face turned away from him, one arm thrown back above her head. The light from the dying fire illuminated her pale cheek and the long, straight, childlike lashes lying on it. Before he had time to think about the wisdom of what he was doing, Nicholas got into the bed beside her.

Margarita was dreaming that she was in Nicholas’s arms and he was telling her he loved her. “Nicholas, mio
,”
she whispered and opened her eyes to find him there beside her.

“You forgot to lock the door,” he muttered, and went on doing what he was doing. Her breath caught in her throat. She knew she should tell him to go away. He moved his hand to her stomach and felt the ripple deep within her. “Margarita.” It was almost a groan.

It was too late to send him away. She would die if he left her now. There was a wildness in the way she clung to him, in the way she answered to his own desperate, driving need. It was hungry, urgent love making, and its intensity surprised both of them.

He lay for a long time with his face buried in her neck, but she made no effort to put her hand up to smooth his hair. At last, he raised his head. Gently, he kissed her eyelids. “A man would be a fool to go elsewhere when he can get this at home,” he said.

She could feel his strength, the warmth of his body. She closed her eye. “Is that a promise to be faithful?”

He laughed softly. “If I can have you, I’ll stay faithful. Surely that sounds fair?” He moved his mouth across her throat. “Don’t be jealous, little one. Believe me, you have no cause.”

Long after Nicholas had gone to deep, Margarita lay curled up in her corner of the bed, trying not to cry, trying not to toss or turn, to lie still and rigid and quiet so as not to wake him. How could he have done this to her? How could he have used the power of love to so humiliate and outrage her? She loved him and so she was vulnerable to him. This would happen again and again. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Except . . . Toward dawn, a thought began to take shape in her mind and at seven o’clock she finally fell asleep.

* * * *

Nicholas was gone when she awoke at ten thirty. In the sunlight of reality her plan of last night looked impossible. To leave Nicholas—how could she do it? How could she accomplish it? She lay back against her pillow trying to think rationally, to think like a man, to think like Nicholas. What would she need?

Money. She got out of bed and went over to the small French desk near the window. She opened the drawer and took out the money she had put there. It was pin money, Nicholas had said when he gave it to her. She was to spend it on anything that took her fancy. She had bought some toys for the baby, but otherwise hadn’t touched it. Nicholas had paid all her clothing bills.

She counted it. There was over a hundred and fifty pounds.

She drew a deep, uneven breath. She would need to hire a carriage. She couldn’t take Nicholas’s carriage to run away from him in. Reid would know where she could hire one. Reid knew everything. She would get dressed and have Chute pack her one portmanteau. She would have Mrs. Wade pack Nicky’s things. Then she and Nicky would get into the hired carriage and leave. It sounded very simple.

Reid was deeply alarmed by Margarita’s request that he hire a post chaise for her. He suggested several times that she take the Winslow coach. Finally, she put on her most imperious, Spanish manner and he went away to do as she requested. But first he sent a footman around to White’s with a note for Nicholas.

The post chaise was at the door a little after noon. Margarita and Nicky got in. The Berkeley Square household was in a state of utter consternation, but no one knew what to do. Reid had been sending footmen all around town trying to locate Nicholas. He had not been successful. No one had the least idea where Margarita was going. Mrs. Wade was on the verge of hysterics.

Nicholas arrived home at five o’clock to be met at the door by a very disturbed Reid. “My lord!” that sorely tried retainer cried with uncharacteristic warmth. “I have had footmen all over town this afternoon looking for you.”

“What has happened?” Nicholas’s brows snapped together instantly.

“Perhaps I have been precipitate, but I was a trifle alarmed as I had not been informed,” Reid said in a troubled voice. “Lady Winslow requested that I hire a post chaise for her this morning and she and little Lord Selden left in it at about noon today.”

“Left?” Nicholas said blankly.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Where did they go?”

“I do not know, my lord.”

“Jesus . . .” Nicholas turned from the butler and went upstairs. Margarita’s room was empty. He went into his room and saw, propped upon the chimney piece, a folded white piece of paper. He picked it up and read:

My Lord,

I know it is a very great sin for a wife to leave her husband, but that is what I have done. It is impossible for me to live with you at this moment. I must have time to try to think, to try to understand how I best can live in the future. I will try very hard to come back, but I do not know if I can.

I have taken Nicky as I could not leave him. I know you will be worried and I will write as soon as I am settled. I am going to someone who I think will understand.

This is not your fault. The fault is in me.

Margarita

Nicholas sat, white-lipped, staring at the piece of paper. He couldn’t take it in. She had gone. He read the note again. What had happened? He looked toward her room and then he remembered. Last night. But she had
responded
to him. He hadn’t raped her, for God’s sake.

He started pacing around his room. He had to bring her back. God knew what would happen to her. Alone. His blood ran cold at the thought of her stopping at an inn by herself.

He picked up the note again. “I am going to someone who I think will understand,” she had written. Who? She knew hardly anyone in England.

Immediately, the name flashed into his mind. Mrs. Frost. Of course, he thought, with a wild rush of relief. That was where she was going. He frowned. She had left at noon. If he knew Margarita, she would not want to stop by herself at a posting house. She would probably push to make the whole trip in one day. Nicky was terrible in the carriage, but she would not want to have to deal with him in strange surroundings all by herself. She would go straight through to Winslow.

He felt immensely better, having come to this conclusion. He looked at his watch. He would have light for at least four more hours. He ran downstairs and told Reid to have his curricle brought round to the door in fifteen minutes and to have some cold meat and ale brought to the dining room immediately.

“Yes, my lord,” the butler said.

“Her ladyship has gone back to Winslow and I am going to follow her,” Nicholas informed him.

“I see, my lord.” Reid bowed, his face impassive.

Fifteen minutes later, Nicholas was in his curricle, expertly winding his way through the London streets.

* * * *

It was eleven o’clock the following morning when the Earl of Winslow’s curricle pulled up at the door of Whitethorn. Emma Frost was in the front yard watering the flowers. “Mr. Nicholas!” she exclaimed, surprise causing her to revert to his old name. She put down her watering can. “I didn’t know you were back at Winslow. I hope nothing is wrong?” This last was said a little anxiously, as Nicholas’s face was looking alarmingly rigid.

“Is my wife here, Mrs. Frost?” he asked.

The surprise on her face was unquestionably genuine. “Your wife? No. I haven’t seen her ladyship since she left for London.”

There was no mistaking the shock on Nicholas’s face. She saw him shut his eyes. “Are you quite certain?” he then asked, very calmly.

“Yes, my lord.” She hesitated. “What has happened?” But the curricle was already moving away, down the well-tended drive.

* * * *

They were surprised to see Nicholas at Winslow, but of course, all the servants assumed that Lady Winslow was still in London. If anyone thought it odd that Lord Winslow had arrived alone, without any extra clothing and without his valet, they confined their comments to the servants quarters. Nicholas went immediately to the library and closed the door behind him. He stood for a very long time looking blindly out the window, his eyes for once focused inward. She was not at Whitethorn. Where, then, could she be? And perhaps even more importantly, why had she gone?

She had left him. Once, long ago, another woman who said she loved him had left him. But he did not feel now, as he had felt then, betrayed and victimized. He knew, had known all along, through all the hours of fast, dangerous driving last night and this morning, that Margarita had not betrayed him. He had betrayed her.

She loved him. He did not question that; he knew it was true. She had fled because she loved him, because it is impossible to live with someone who rejects your love, who holds it carelessly in his hand to be smashed as of no value whenever it becomes inconvenient. Nicholas understood her all too well. Had he not once done the very same thing?

He moved from the window to the worn leather chair and sat down, stretching his legs before him. What a fool he had been, he thought bitterly. What a bloody, infantile fool. “This is not your fault,” she had written. As usual, she was being too generous. It was all his fault. Because he was afraid to admit he loved her, he had driven her away. And of course he loved her, had loved her for a long, long time. He would give everything he possessed in this world—including Winslow—to get her back.

There was nothing to do but to return to London. She had said she would write him. She must have friends somewhere—possibly South Americans— whom he did not know. The first frantic wave of his fear for her was gone. Margarita was sensible. And she had Nicky with her. No matter how upset she might be, he knew she would never do anything that might possibly harm Nicky. She had said that she had somewhere to go, and he believed her.

He sat on for half an hour longer, and when he rose, it was to go upstairs to his bedroom. He walked over to his wardrobe, slowly took out an old velvet box, and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper. He took the paper to the window, and for the first time in seventeen years, he reread the letter his mother had left him when she eloped with John Hamilton.

When he finished, he rested his forehead against the windowpane. From the point of view of a mature, rational mind, the letter was perfectly comprehensible. It was also clear that the writer’s heart was very near to breaking.

He closed his eyes and thought back. He knew what his mother’s life had been like at Winslow. One of the reasons there was such hostility between him and his uncle was that at a very young age, Nicholas had constituted himself his mother’s protector. His father he remembered only as an occasional brilliant presence, rarely seen and unimportant in his son’s life. It was his mother he loved, his mother he learned to fight for and to defend.

And she loved him. For the first time in many years, he allowed himself to remember the warmth and laughter of her, the smile that used to shine out of her eyes whenever their glances chanced to meet. He realized now that his presence had been the only thing that had made life at Winslow bearable to her. And then he went away to school. And John Hamilton arrived. Gentle, sensitive, kind, understanding John Hamilton. Nicholas remembered that once he had liked the quiet, scholarly man who had stolen his mother.

He looked again at the letter in his hand. “I will always love you,” she had written. “They would never let me take you and it would not be right of me to take you. Winslow is your heritage. But I am your mother and I will always love you. Please try to understand. . . .” The words blurred before his eyes. He thought of Margarita having to leave Nicky.

“Poor Mother,” he said softly to the quiet air. “What a rotten son you have.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The heart—the heart—is lonely still.

Byron

When Margarita decided to run away from Nicholas, her biggest problem had been where to go. It was in the hour before dawn that the answer came to her, the one person in England who would have family ties to her, the one place where Nicholas would never look. She went to her mother-in-law.