Megan Frampton (30 page)

There was absolute silence as the door shut.

The moment of respite seemed to have given Lady Stainton strength to go on. “You do realize,” she said in a firm tone, “that if I were to acknowledge our relationship in public, it would mean my absolute ruin.”

Alasdair watched Mary’s face crumple. She must have expected this reaction, but still, it must hurt that her mother’s first response was fear of losing her reputation.

“I would not ask for public acknowledgement.” Mary’s words were almost whispered. The answer rose up, so immediately and so clearly it unnerved him. It was the only way Mary could be independent.

Not to mention, it was cruel. Chances were, then, that she wouldn’t question him about it—she’d already made it plain she thought he was arrogant and disdainful. This would be another log to throw on that particular fire.

And would make it so she never wanted to see him again.

He removed his hand from Mary’s back. “There is a price to our silence,” he said. He felt Mary stiffen.

Lady Stainton turned her attention to him, her eyes wide, her face set. She’d expected this, Alasdair thought. No doubt she wondered why he’d asked for a private call, and now she knew: blackmail.

“What price?”

Mary moved as if to stand, and he planted his hand on her shoulder, holding her down.

“What price?” Lady Stainton repeated.

“I don’t want—,” Mary said in a strangled voice.

He cut her off before she could complete her thought. “Five thousand pounds? In exchange for which neither I nor my wife will say anything?”

Lady Stainton looked at Mary. “This is what you want?” Now she sounded broken.

Mary shook her head.

“This is what
I
want,” Alasdair said. “My wife can, and should, have a relationship with you, but unless you pay my price, you two won’t be able to keep it secret.” He shrugged, as though it weren’t tearing him apart to see Mary so frozen and
still. “I will guarantee nothing of this gets out.” He let the silence spool out. “If I get my money.”

Lady Stainton stared down her nose at him. Very like her daughter, he thought with grim humor. “I wish my daughter had chosen a better husband.” She rang the tiny bell on the table beside her. Almost immediately, the butler reentered.

“Robens, my accounts book.”

He frowned as though he hadn’t heard her properly, then bowed and took himself from the room.

“My husband does not speak for me, madame,” Mary said in a forceful whisper.

Lady Stainton’s gaze went from one to the other. Her lip curled. “Of course not, but he has absolute authority over you, does he not? If I do not cooperate with his demands …”

Mary’s voice was a tortured whisper. “I just want to know you.” She directed a look of despair toward Alasdair.

This was far worse than whatever he had endured when he’d done without the opium for too long. This was agony.

Lady Stainton’s voice softened, fractionally. “I want to know you also.” Her mouth flattened into a thin line as she turned her gaze to Alasdair. “I presume there is no impediment to my getting to know my daughter, my lord?”

He shrugged. “As long as the money is paid, I see no reason to prevent it.”

He heard Mary exhale. Anger toward him? Relief that her mother was reasonable? It was probably both—and likely didn’t matter.

The butler returned, bearing a large accounts book. He gave another questioning glance to his mistress, then departed the room again.

Lady Stainton opened the book wide and glanced up at Alasdair. “Five thousand, you say?”

“Yes.” It took all his power not to blurt it all out—how he loved Mary, how he only wanted her to be happy, how he knew that being with him wasn’t what she deserved.

Instead, he watched as she wrote out the draft and held it out to him, that look of disdain firmly ensconced on her face.

He slid the paper into his pocket and held his arm out to Mary. His wife.

Who now despised him.

She rose without his assistance and paused at the door to look back and speak to her mother. “I will call on you again.” She did not look at Alasdair as she spoke.

Her mother nodded without speaking, and they walked in silence to the carriage.

***

She felt completely numb. How could he have done that to her? Betrayed her so?

She seethed with anger, disappointment, loss; much as she had just a few weeks ago, when she’d realized that not only was her beloved father gone, her brother had run through all their money and she didn’t know what he was planning to do next.

For a while, it had almost seemed as though things would turn out well, despite everything that had happened to her. Despite everything.

“Mary?”

Alasdair sat beside her, his long, elegant fingers—those same fingers that had touched her all night last night—resting on his knees. His legs were stretched out in what she had come to think of as his arrogant lordly pose. She hated him.

“What?” She sounded rude. Good. He deserved no better.

“We will discuss it all when we return home. No doubt you are furious with me.”

“No doubt,” she echoed dryly.

“But I promise it will be fine.”

Fine. It will be fine. His words ricocheted in her head.
I need you
.

Like hell he did. He’d warned her, hadn’t he?
Welcome to hell
.

Her knees were still shaking when they returned home. To
his
house, she corrected. Not home. Not now.

Descending from the carriage, she refused to accept his hand, instead clutching the side. She stumbled as she stepped onto the street in front of the house.

“Nothing more, coachman, thank you.” Alasdair sounded almost humble as he spoke. He took her arm to lead her up the steps, and she shook him off.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped.

He raised that damned eyebrow. “I promised I would explain,” he said in a
haughty, cold voice.

Explain. As if blackmailing her mother could be acceptable under any the circumstances.

They walked into the hallway. He gestured toward his library, filled with books she’d never get the chance to read, and waited for her to pass before following. She could feel him, sense him, smell him, behind her.

She was a fool. She’d thought he’d changed, that with her he’d become something more, not something less. Not someone who’d barter happiness for money.
Her
happiness. And now, since she was married to him, and everything she owned was his,
his
money.

Hell of a bargain, Mary
, she thought in rising disgust.

“Please sit.” He nodded toward a chair upholstered in a friendly damask.

“I’ll stand,” she said, pulling her spine up straighter.

He put his hand on her shoulder and shoved her, gently, but shoved her nonetheless. “I said sit.”

She sat, teeth clenched, hands bunched, legs tensed.

He leaned on the edge of a large mahogany desk. Maybe yesterday she would have thought about him bending her over it, whereas now—now she wished she were strong enough to pick the thing up and fling it at his head.

If he cared about her at all, he’d know what this would do to her.

That was it, wasn’t it? That was why she was so angry with him.

She’d come to believe he cared for her, perhaps not as much as she knew she did him, but enough not to sell her hopes and dreams. He knew her. He’d loved her. Physically, at least. He needed her. She must’ve made a sound, because he raised that damn eyebrow at her.

“Nothing. So. I am sitting. What is it you want to explain?”

He closed his eyes as though in pain. Mary saw a muscle tense in his cheek. He opened his eyes again, after a moment, and she was struck anew by how beautiful he was. Beautiful and treacherous. Didn’t her father preach something similar about the snake in the Garden of Eden?

“I know you must be angry, Mary.” He shot his hand out to acknowledge she
wished to speak. “Just wait a moment. I know you are angry, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. If anything, I wanted to help you.” He lowered his eyes. “You are going to need money to live, Mary.” A pause. “I was presuming you wouldn’t take it from me, vicar’s daughter that you are. Was I wrong?”

The words ricocheted through her, landing somewhere in the pit of her stomach. “Money to live?” she repeated.

“Yes. You might want to consider going to Italy. Or back to Scotland. You’ll have enough for the rest of your life now. You needn’t worry.”

The air felt as though it had been sucked out of her. She dragged her nails up her legs so she wouldn’t scream. “Italy?”

She rose, barely aware of how badly she was shaking. “Scotland?” she said in something between a growl and a yelp.

He lifted his eyes to meet hers. One eyebrow rose. “If you don’t want to leave England, you can choose one of my houses in the country. I dislike the country.”

He crossed one leg over the other. Mary saw his hands bunch into fists. He continued in that same damned drawl. “It has been quite an adventure, but you have accomplished your purpose—meeting your mother—and I have accomplished mine. Now we can—”

“What was your purpose?” She could barely speak, her teeth were clamped together so tightly.

He raised an eyebrow. That eyebrow again. “My purpose was to save a damsel in distress, of course. Now that is done …”

His voice trailed off as he raised one hand in a negligent gesture. The other hand, Mary noticed, was still balled up in a fist.

“But, but …” Mary’s voice was now closer to a squeak. She wished she were as calm as he was. Damn him.

“But what about our marriage? Well,” he said, flicking something off his trousers, “it should come as no surprise that many couples live separate lives.”

Separate lives. She glanced around the room, trying to stop the flood of tears threatening to break at any moment. “People will talk.”

He shrugged. “Certainly they will, but it will die down after a while.” His lip
curled. “It isn’t as if I haven’t been talked about enough already.”

“Why?” Her voice trembled. “Why, after, after …”

He looked her directly in the face, without showing the courtesy to look abashed or ashamed or anything that would indicate they’d spent the previous evening doing what they’d been doing. “It was … pleasant, of course,” he said with a shrug, “but since circumstances threw us together, why shouldn’t they now throw us apart?”

Mary felt herself seething, actually
seething
, with anger. She glared at him for a second before stomping over to a small table covered in knickknacks. Including a vase that held several long-stem roses.

She picked it up and flung it at him, bottom first. The flowers fell onto the floor beside her, and water poured onto her hand, in her face, and arced as the vase flew threw the air.

Thwack!
It hit him on the side of the head, although he’d flung his hands up to shield his face. He didn’t budge, but she could see a bright red mark on his cheek where it must’ve grazed him.

The vase bounced on the thick carpet, and lay on its side, unbroken.

Unlike Mary’s heart. “You bastard,” she said, pushing her wet hair back with trembling hands. “You autocratic, arrogant bastard. How dare you?”

She moved forward, hardly aware of how her knees were shaking. “And after last night?” She got so close to him she could have punched him if she wanted to. Which she did, very much.

He stood his ground, giving her that icy, lordly stare she’d seen when she’d dared to question him. “Last night was tremendous, love.”

His tone indicated the topic was over. He pulled a paper from his breast pocket and held it out to her. “Here is your mother’s note for the money. You can take this to her bank. Dawkins will give you directions.”

She stared at his hand, the hand that had caressed her so lovingly the night before—and the other nights before that—and finally felt the tears come.

She shook her head in disbelief and walked past him, ignoring his outstretched hand, to head upstairs to what had been, briefly, her bedroom.

***

When Alasdair heard the door shut behind her, he fell to his knees. He couldn’t believe he could be so convincing and persuasive.

The irony was that
she
had made that possible, made it so he was strong enough to pretend he was the same callous, selfish man she’d met only a few weeks earlier.

An ache threatened to tear his heart apart. How could he let her go? She was intelligent, sensual, witty, strong, brave—everything he could want in a mate.

How could he
not
let her go? He was damaged goods, someone who disappointed the people around him, someone who couldn’t be depended on in a time of crisis.

Lately, of course, he’d managed, but how much of that was due to him—and how much to her? If he asked her to stay, she’d come to resent him, his weakness, his need for her.

His love for her.

He knew he would never take opium again; he couldn’t even threaten her with that possibility to make her stay. It wouldn’t be right.

He was confident enough to know she might be intrigued by him now, might even imagine she loved him, but in ten years? Twenty?

Best to make a clean break now, before she realized she’d married a worthless, weak man whose only attribute was an ability to act decisively, whether or not it was the best decision.

If he was strong enough to tear his heart out for her good, why wasn’t he strong enough to do it without feeling as though his life was over?

This was truly hell.

“That … that
heathen
!” It was the worst thing she’d ever heard her father call someone, and it seemed to suit the situation now.

Although she doubted heathens, despite what her father might have thought, could be so cruel.

Italy. Scotland.
Anywhere but where I am
, was the gist of it.

Her cheeks burned as she recalled what they’d done the night before. How she’d presented herself to him, literally, on the supper table, like a morsel to be devoured. Which he’d done, thoroughly, and she’d thoroughly enjoyed.

“Bastard.” She went to the wardrobe and flung the doors open. The gorgeous array of gowns seemed to mock her, seemed to cry out,
He didn’t really care. He didn’t really care
.