Seducing the Beast (32 page)

He already heard his wife, her commands shrieked out at Gregory, scoring the walls of his house. “I want these bed linens changed at once and these whorish clothes burned.”

Turning the last corner, he saw the door open, a somber Gregory standing there, eyes downcast as her orders rained down on his balding head. Gregory had never liked his master’s wife. In the same way the steward made no effort to conceal his fondness for that wretched, lying little chit of a captain’s daughter, he was equally unsubtle in his disdain for the countess.

Of course, his wife was not a likeable person, but neither was the Earl of Swafford.

“To what do we owe this honor?” Griff growled, striding into the chamber.

The countess sat on the bed, half-way through a long list of her demands, all of which, he had no doubt, Gregory ignored.

This was the last thing he’d wanted. Faced by the woman he hated, it only reminded him more painfully of the woman he’d lost; the comparison between the two was so marked, it was impossible not to acknowledge.

Her almond-shaped eyes were clear of any conscience, or any fear she might not be welcome. They swept quickly over his long form, taking in the muddied boots. She’d often commented on his lack of fashion, mocking him for dressing “like a peasant”. Today however, she held it back, quickly sliding her derision away.

“Gregory,” she said in a low, sultry murmur, “you may go.”

Griff laid a hand on the old man’s arm and advised him, quietly and firmly, to stay. “Whatever you have to say to me, you may say before Gregory.” He forced himself to face her. “I’d prefer a witness.”

She must be desperate, because she made no further argument. Instead she sat tall and prim, exclaiming with false jollity, “Are you not pleased to see me, my husband?”

“I ask again…why do you favor us with your presence, madam?”

The veins in her neck strained. Her wide, plump lips spread over her teeth, but her eyes never changed, never warmed. “Oh dear, I’d hoped for a sweeter reception. Have I not given you enough time to consider?” She rose from the bed and came toward him. “Can we not begin again, as husband and wife?”

“After eighteen years?”
Of misery
, he might have added.

Still she worked her ghoulish smile, but a sharp edge of bitterness invaded the silky pretense of a peace pact. “I hear you flaunt your common little mistress in front of the servants. Even the queen knows what keeps you down here. She took great delight in telling me the last time I saw her. They must wonder why you prefer that ignorant trollop to me. How do you suppose that makes me feel?”

The shoe was uncomfortable on the other foot, it seemed, and she could ridicule him as much as she liked, but he could not return the favor.

“I am busy,” he snapped. “What do you want?”

She inhaled through her teeth, a sudden rush of air drawn in and expelled with bitter rancor. “I am with child.”

“
What?
”

“Regrettably. Unless you want the world to know you for a cuckold, you will recognize it as yours.”

Speechless, he stepped around her, not wanting her too close, her fragrance stifling, nauseating.

“The child needs a father and you need an heir.”

He should have seen it coming, should’ve known. Of course this was not the first time for her. Disliking children, she suffered no qualms about ridding herself of the pregnancy with “cleansing powders”, but now older, with Gabriel married and on the verge of solidifying his place as heir to the Swafford estate, she must have decided to keep this one, to use it for what she could get out of her husband. She must imagine his pride would never bear the horns of a cuckold.

But he was a different man than what he’d been a few months ago. “The child is not mine, as you know.”

Her gloating perusal tracked him across the room. “You would deny your own heir?” She wanted to secure her future through the child and she thought him desperate enough for an heir to let it happen.

“This is ridiculous. We’ve not shared a bed in--”

“Wickes will tell a different tale.”

“Wickes?” He snorted. “Wickes, my dear, will not be telling any tales, not anymore.”

Glancing sideways to see her reaction, he was rewarded by the sallowing of her cheeks. He hadn’t suspected any collusion until she’d mentioned his manservant. Interesting.

“What have you done to him?” she demanded.

He lifted his shoulders in a lazy half-shrug.

And with that one subtle motion the balance shifted. For eighteen years she’d held power over him, knowing deep down inside he remained a fearful boy of seventeen, stifled by duty, anxious not to disgrace his dead father. It had given her a thrill to torment him, to push him as far as she could, with her lovers and her demands on his purse. But now the fear inside him was gone.

She sank back to the bed.

“Was he your lover?” he asked calmly.

“Good God no! Do you think me that desperate? You may consort with servants and stupid little whores. I have standards.”

He waited a beat, wondering how she would try to extricate herself from Wickes and his crimes. Like a rat on a sinking ship, she sought a way out, looking around with those empty, glassy eyes. She thought only of herself now, her own comfort, showing no more concern for the fate of Wickes, only for what he might have confessed. What purpose, exactly, was Wickes meant to serve? He sensed from the bracing of her shoulders, the clasping of her claws in her lap, there was more to this than immediately met the eye.

“Wickes will certainly provide no juicy witness testimony to our merry revels in bed, if that was what you planned,” he said slowly. “The child you carry cannot possibly be mine.”

“It’s too late now to be rid of it,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Believe me, I wish it were not. If I were a man, it wouldn’t matter. If I were
you
,” she spat the word, “with a bastard child to my name, no one would think twice. I could keep as many mistresses as I wanted and plant the countryside with little bastards. Because I’m a woman, I’ve done wrong.”

Were those tears in her eyes? How humiliating it must be for her to beg him for this mercy.

“Spare me your speeches,” he groaned. “I didn’t write the rules of the world.”

“I want us to start again. I want you to recognize my child as your--”

“You want too much and far, far too late.”

Her gaze, indignant and disbelieving, gave him ice burns. “Because of
her
? That little trollop with whom you’re temporarily obsessed? Good God, how can you shame me, humiliate me in this manner?”

As much as he wanted to put his hands around her scrawny throat, he controlled himself. “For eighteen years I tried to be civil to you. For eighteen years I put up with your demands. I paid for your servants, your clothes, the food on your table, even the horses you rode. And all I received in return was scorn and false rumor spread about me. Perhaps ’tis time we were both free of this marriage, abomination that it is.”

Too many words in one breath, each one loud, ringing inside his head. Surely it must do the same in hers. He couldn’t stop himself today. He’d had his fill. He wouldn’t suffer any longer, wouldn’t swallow another ounce of frustration. No more would he stand by and accept the mortification she and her cronies heaped upon him.

“You cannot be free of it,” she snapped.

“Oh yes I can!” he roared at her. “I am the Earl of Swafford and I’ll do as I please for once. As
I
please!”

He had never quite lost his temper with her before, because in the back of his mind there was the possibility it was his fault. Perhaps she was right to ridicule him as impotent. After all, she was the great beauty, condescending to let him share her bed. Yet now he knew the fault was not his. A certain other lady had taught him he was capable of giving and receiving pleasure. Today, therefore, he was emboldened, his manhood no longer called into question.

“You, madam, can be hoisted on your own petard. For years you’ve claimed me impotent. That’s grounds enough for annulment.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Oh now there was life in her eyes--ugly, misshapen, grotesque emotion. “The shame of it…the scandal….you would never…”

“Wouldn’t I? I’ve put up with the rumor for eighteen years. Why shouldn’t I get use out of it?”

Those full lips flapped emptily, words deserting her, until she gathered the torn shreds of her pride, tipped her head and purred savagely, “Your father will turn in his grave.”

“He might. Perhaps, after so many years, he’ll welcome the change of view.”

Her boy husband, the target of her ridicule and spiteful mockery, too afraid of upsetting the applecart, terrified of disappointing his father’s ghost, was no more.

“You can remain at Blanchard House,” he added firmly. “I’ll pay you an annual pension to cover your bills and not go beyond them. When the child is born, I’ll make arrangements with a good family in the country. Then you’ll be free of it. You and I will not talk again, or meet again. We will communicate only by letter on matters pertaining to that child. Good day to you.”

As he said this last, he put his hand under her elbow and dragged her up.

She resisted, her eyes wide. “And I am to be treated thus, cast aside, while you show preference for that whore. Are you mad? She’s nothing, a nobody!” She scoffed spitefully, “Apparently you like that. Is that why you couldn’t do it to me? I was not common enough?”

“You were not enough of anything, madam.”

She cursed at his absent mistress with filthy words. Little drops of spittle sat upon her broad, overblown lips, put there by each strident consonant.

“For your information,” he said evenly, “that woman you insult is the daughter of a respected sea captain, a good man who is also my friend.”

“Daughter of a seaman?” She sneered. “Certainly not high enough for a Swafford.”

“On the contrary, she is above me and beyond me. Whichever mischievous imp dropped her in my lap, I am eternally grateful to it.”

“She’s a little slack-jawed slut, who couldn’t string five words together when I met her.”

In the process of pushing her through the door, he stopped. “You met her?” he demanded. “When?”

“Weeks ago when I came here. Did she not tell you?”

He and Gregory exchanged looks, both puzzled and annoyed. Thinking back, Griff recalled Maddie’s odd behavior. Hiding herself away. Sulking.

“No,” he said steadily. “She didn’t tell me.” There were, of course, many things she didn’t tell, many secrets she kept.

Isabelle exclaimed in disgust. “She’s a peasant.”

“We’re all equal inside, whether we dress as prince or pauper.”

“She is not the same as me.”

“I believe we’ve already ascertained that much.” He paused. “Tell me one last thing. Was it Wickes’s idea or yours? Sadly, I lost my patience before I got the full truth out of him.”

Her proud lips parted, those cat-like eyes lengthened. “It was solely his idea. As he said, if you were dead you couldn’t deny paternity, could you? Of course, I gave you the chance of sharing my bed first…”

For a split second he was confused, having questioned her about a different crime and now hearing confession to another. He stared at her, working the facts through his mind, reading it now in her malevolent stare. She continued, “If you were dead, as Wickes said, that would improve matters. A little powder slipped into your drink…”

Always aware she hated him, he’d never thought her capable of murder. He’d underestimated his wife. She’d wanted him dead before she birthed her child, which she could claim as the rightful heir to the title, the estate and the Swafford fortune.

Suddenly he remembered Madolyn the night before she left, warning him about Wickes. He thought back to that night in London, the jug of wine left in the annex, and later, the sly way Wickes glared at the wine stain and the emptied jug, trying to measure how much was wasted, how much drunk.

Madolyn had saved him that first night with her clumsiness. The very next day, he’d taken her off into Dorset, thwarting any further plan Wickes might have had to poison him. No wonder the sniveling fellow was grumpier than usual when he’d arrived at Starling’s Roost with the boxes of new gowns. He must have wondered why the earl had disappeared from London with no warning.

His disgusted gaze returned to his wife’s quivering lips, bile rising in his gut.

“Then you were already pregnant when you came to Whitehall. When I declined your begrudging offer to fuck me, you decided to have me poisoned--a preferable option-- so you could still claim the child as my heir. If I was dead I could hardly protest, could I?” The truth came in like a great wave, clearing out the muddled ideas and doubts. “And you have the gall to insult that woman, who may be a sailor’s daughter but never meant to harm anyone or anything? Good God, you disgust me!”

She spat in his face. “I told you--it was Wickes’ idea. I never gave him permission to proceed. You can never prove I had any part in it.” Sadly, she was right. He couldn’t prove her part in his attempted poisoning. Not with Wickes silenced forever.

Slowly he withdrew a kerchief to wipe away her spittle. “Don’t ever let me hear of you within fifty miles of myself or anyone I care about, ever again.” He gestured loosely at her belly. “For the sake of that child, I let you go now. The child is innocent in this. You’ll remain free until the birth, but if anything happens to your child, you’ll be arrested within the hour. Now get out of my house and my sight.”

Instantly his shoulders felt lighter. As Gregory escorted her out and her screamed insults faded away, his spirits continued to lift until they were practically soaring. Striding to the window, he looked out on the smooth green lawns.

His breath caught, a sudden halting sound too loud in that empty chamber. With one hand, he wiped his face, quickly disposing of the hint of dampness which threatened his reputation.

“Sorry father,” he muttered wryly, “but you always wanted me to be a man.”

Today that’s exactly what he was--his own man. Heaven and earth suddenly seemed a lighter weight to move than the burden he’d shifted at long last.