The Heart Denied (18 page)

"
You
go! They are
your
friends!"

Belting his dressing gown, Thorne gave her a curt nod. "Very well, I shall. I leave you to your Rosary, my lady. Good day."

* * *

Thorne slipped into his wife's deserted chambers and crossed to the unmade bed, where he took a small bone-handled dagger from his waistcoat pocket. First pricking a finger with quick precision, he bled several drops onto the bottom sheet, wiped his finger clean, and flipped the counterpane over the stain.

Below stairs, he told the housekeeper to dismiss the chambermaid. "Tomorrow," he cautioned. "Not a word to the wench until then."
Time enough to spread word that the master and mistress have shared a bed,
he thought with savage bitterness.

He bade farewell only to Jennings, helped the coachman with his bags, and was soon on his way down the Northampton road. He was determined not to look back, certain he'd find no one watching at any rate. But as the coach rounded the last bend, just before the forest obstructed his view, he could no longer resist.

She was there. Alone at a third-floor window, her mobcap and apron bright white in the sunshine, she stood watching the coach, one hand on her growing belly.

"What, he's business in London again?"

Hidden behind the half-open larder door, Elaine Combs stopped chewing a mouthful of cheese and perked up her ears.

"Aye, so I hear," Hillary answered Susan. "Sudden-like. Her ladyship stayed behind. Doesn't want to attend the house party alone."

"She's a timid one, all right."

"Not
that
timid," Hillary countered, a sly note entering her voice.

Susan gasped. "Do ye mean to say...?"

"Aye!"

Elaine stood stock-still, the empty cheese-crock forgotten in her hand.

"The chambermaid says the master's bed was untouched," Hillary went on in a lower voice, "and the mistress' mussed
quite
more than usual--with color on the sheets!"

Susan's reply was lost, drowned out by the crash of crockery on the larder floor.

* * *

Arriving at the Townsend estate near Chigwell outside London, the welcome Thorne received from Richard Townsend and his parents, Sir Dennis and Lady Townsend, nearly restored his good spirits. Gwynneth's Aunt Evelyn was ill and needed her, he lied with all the regret he could muster. Richard Townsend escorted him to his appointed guestroom.

"You can rest before tea, nothing doing 'til then at any rate," Townsend assured him. "Only half the guests have arrived. Better to take cover at any rate, my little sister has been to and fro on the lookout for you all morning. I think she was just as anxious for a look at her competition. Now she'll have you all to herself, God help you."

Thorne laughed. It felt wonderful to laugh; how long had it been? The thought of tall, reedy, sixteen-year-old Bernice, with her violet-blue eyes and fiery curls and the spattering of freckles across her impertinent nose, flying about the house as she waited for him to appear, was enough to rid him of any bad humor. "Bernie" had insisted since the age of twelve that she would marry him.

Escorted to a room he'd never seen, Thorne inwardly winced at the overtly feminine boudoir apparently chosen with his new bride in mind, though the view from the windows drew him as always. Eyeing the wide, silver ribbon of river wending through the valley, he heard a knock at the door.

"Sorry to disturb," Townsend said when Thorne opened the door, "but tea's delayed an hour to accommodate late arrivals. Can you spare a moment?" At Thorne's nod, he ducked in with a quick backward glance. "Bernie," he said with a comical grimace.

Smiling, Thorne closed the door, and the two men sat down.

"Neville, old chap, you look dreadful."

"Tact was never your strong suit."

"Sorry. You don't look well. What's the matter? Is it Lady Neville? Has she had another, ah, spell?"

Thorne knew he'd paused too long when he saw the purposeful gleam in Townsend's eyes; now there was no escape.

"Shall I pour a dram?" Townsend rose without waiting for a reply and went to the sideboard.

Thorne took the bottle he handed over and poured for them both. "Gwynneth is well. I must plead exhaustion for my pallor, what with the harvest and a new wife as well."

Townsend smiled. "Ah, so your bride
is
at fault. We should all be so fortunate to suffer such exhaustion."

Both men jumped at a loud rapping on the door.

"Richard? I know you're in there! Mama says to come at once, she needs you to move the settee in the Grindall's room. Come, now!"

Footsteps sped from the door and faded away.

Townsend stood up and drained his glass, then made a mocking bow in the direction of the door. "I'm off," he said wryly, "at little Miss Hooligan's command." He looked heartened by Thorne's smile. "'Til tea, then."

At the door he turned a cryptic look on Thorne. Sounding oddly apologetic, he said, "Get some rest, man. You're going to need it."

* * *

Tea, the eastern ritual Thorne had borrowed from the Townsend family, was served in the parlor for the women, while in the gaming room the men discovered heartier fare of meat pies and honey cakes with a token pot of tea and several pitchers of ale.

"
I
say 'tis time the Drakes handed over the reins in Amersham to new blood," Sir Dennis grumbled to Sir Kenneth Clifton. "What say you, Neville?"

Thorne eyed his ill-placed ball on the billiards table. "There will be a movement for it in Parliament, sir, but I doubt it will come to much. Not this session, at any rate." He angled his stick and shot off the bank, missing the leather pocket by a hare.

"Egad, Neville." Townsend approached the table with a look of relish. "If you'd only wagered your horse on this game."

Thorne eyed him skeptically. "I can't imagine why you'd want that devil of a beast back in your stables. We've yet to explain his attack on the groom."

"Yet you ride him still," Townsend countered. "What say we have him on the table before the week is out?

"I'll consider it." As his friend blasted a ball into a pocket, Thorne added with a wry grin, "But it won't be a billiards table."

* * *

"And tell the ladies, Bernice, what you are learning," Lady Townsend coaxed.

"The piano-forte," her daughter grumbled, frowning over her tangled embroidery.

"Perhaps you could play us a piece from your lessons?"

"I'd rather not, Mama." Bernice looked up with an angelic smile, only to see an expression that would have plastered most young ladies to the wall.

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she walked to the stool, spread her skirts and sat down, then straightened her back and poised her hands over the keys.

* * *

"What in bloody hell is that?" Sir Dennis barked, in the gaming room.

"Need you ask?" Townsend quipped. Thorne grinned.

"My cousin, no doubt," guessed a young man named Granville. "Poor Mistress Dearbourne shall have a heart attack straightaway, though how she can be shocked at anything Bernie does..." He shook his head.

"Rather unorthodox," agreed Mister Dearbourne, "A lively tune, though."

Sir Dennis chortled.

To no one's apparent surprise, the piece ended as abruptly as it had begun.

* * *

Entering the dining room early, Thorne found most of the male guests standing around with apéritifs in hand. At a table set to the side of the main table, Bernice Townsend sat laughing and arguing with three male cousins.

Thorne winked at Townsend, then approached the table and bowed as the gangly redhead looked up to see him for the first time since his arrival.

"Thorne!" Springing up so fast that Granville and the other boys nearly fell over themselves getting to their feet, Bernice embraced Thorne, something she'd never dare do if her mother were watching. "Oh, you look lovely!" she cried, stepping back to admire him at arm's length.

Returning the compliment with a laugh, Thorne saw Townsend shake his head and smile.

"But what is this I hear," Thorne murmured near Bernice's ear, "of your expulsion from not one, but
two
,
young ladies' schools?"

Bernice glared at her brother, then gazed sweetly back at Thorne. "I should much rather be at home, where a 'young lady' can climb trees and ride and fish. Stitching and weaving are impossible, I shall have a seamstress when I am married. Besides, Papa insists Richard's old tutor is sufficient for my education."

"Nothing to do with keeping an eye on you," Thorne teased.

Behind Bernice, one of the cousins yanked on her skirt, and without batting an eye she swung her heel backward into his shin. "Papa," she allowed over the groans and titters behind her, "is a sly old fox."

The sound of feminine voices and laughter swelled from the hallway, and everyone turned as a bevy of women led by Lady Townsend poured through the doorway in a billowing sea of silks and laces.

One head rose above the others, its stunning face framed in coils of in raven-black hair. As Thorne froze, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing, the head turned, and his gaze locked on the dark, sultry eyes of Caroline Sutherland.

* * *

As his fog cleared, Thorne found himself seated for supper next to Caroline.

"No doubt you're thinking," she said below the hubbub of conversation, "that I should be at home. Mourning."

He glanced down at her gray silk frock, an apparent compromise with the customary black, its modest fichu a hopeless strategy to hide her voluptuousness.

"If I'm thinking at all," he said, eyes darting away around the table, "'tis merely that I'm surprised to see you."

"Particularly as you thought I'd be home, mourning," she countered. "I rest my case."

"Practicing law now, are you? Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it, Madam Barrister--you are no mind reader. Townsend never said he'd invited you, is all."

"I see. And does he generally submit his guest list for your approval?" She turned away to pass some gravy.

"You know bloody well what I mean," Thorne muttered. "I'd no idea he'd even consider-"

"Inviting me," she supplied, taking up her fork. "Particularly as I should be at home, mourning."

Thorne felt a tic in his jaw; it seemed she had the advantage in every situation.

"Where is Gwynneth?" she asked, far too casually.

"In Seagrave. Evelyn is ill."

As dessert arrived, conversation rose to a dull roar punctuated by a debate between Sir Kenneth and Sir Dennis over contested elections.

"But Papa," Bernice called out from her table, "just the other day, you said it would be a bloody good-"

"Quiet, child!" Sir Dennis barked. "Women have no say in this matter."

An immediate argument ensued at Bernice's table, her voice as strident as the boys' voices until one of them made an unsociable noise and sent the rest into gales of mirth. At the main table, flatware danced as Sir Kenneth made his point with a hammering fist.

"Oh, indeed!" Mistress Dearborne clutched her throat and plucked her fan from a sleeve with the finesse of an illusionist, then waved energetic blasts of air onto herself and Thorne in the process. "I shall
faint
from all this dissent!" she declared, the relish in her voice belying any cause for concern.

"You've known this family for some time," Caroline said from his other side. "Are they always this colorful?"

Thorne chuckled. "
There's
a tactful epitaph. They're downright barbaric at times," he admitted, "excepting Lady Townsend. I find them all delightful, and if I thought they could be convinced to live at Wycliffe Hall, I'd have asked them long ago."

"Spoken by a man in need of a family," Caroline said softly, then touched his sleeve. "Forgive me, I spoke without thinking."

Thorne smiled crookedly. "'Twas your due. I've spoken out of turn a time or two myself."

"We're only human, my lord," she said, a suggestive note in her chuckle before she sobered. "You and Gwynneth shall soon have your own family at any rate."

"Will we?" Biting his tongue, Thorne tasted blood.

Townsend came innocently to the rescue, dragging Caroline into a conversation with Miss Victoria Clifton, daughter of Sir Kenneth and Lady Clifton. Caroline drew the girl out, encouraging her obvious attraction to Townsend, whose face soon turned red as his hair.

Crystal rang out as Sir Dennis tapped a spoon on his goblet. "Gentlemen, join me in the library for a glass and a cheroot. Ladies, we'll meet with you presently in the drawing room for some music. Only those with talent," he said with a sidelong glance at Bernice, "will be asked to play."

Townsend coughed to cover a chuckle while Granville gleefully nudged Bernice. Not to be outdone, she neatly tripped him as they left the dining room.

Lady Townsend played music and recited poetry in the drawing room; then Bernice and her cousins performed an outrageously funny skit. While the audience applauded, Thorne slipped out the door, hoping to escape unseen to his room for a brandy before turning in early.

And found the very person he wanted to escape in the hall.

"I'm glad to catch you alone," Caroline said, drawing near. "I've something to ask."

He tried not to stare at her mouth. "Ask away, then."

"I'm wondering why Gwynneth hasn't answered my letters."

Dragging his eyes off her full, carmine lips, Thorne met Caroline's searching gaze.

"Something isn't right," she said, her voice softly urgent. "And you, Thorne. You look...haunted."

He managed a crooked smile. "Haunted?"

"Yes. I'd expected to find you fat and jolly. Married life generally suits men like you."