The Romantic (14 page)

Eventually her composure broke. So did his heart. He remembered touching her arm in impotent reassurance, battling the impulse to take her in his arms and swear an oath to provide salvation.

While she cried out her heart, images finally entered his mind, showing what she described and all the details she avoided telling. A terrible fury raged in him. He almost strode from the chamber to find a gun to go kill the bastard.

Instead he had hidden his outrage and enumerated her choices like the damned, logical, dispassionate servant he was supposed to be. He made sure that she understood that doing nothing meant living in hell, however. A hell that would only get worse.

“Now that you know this is not normal, any cooperation will count against you later, should you try to divorce,” he explained.

Her eyes widened. “I am sure no court would think any woman would cooperate, Mr. Hampton.”

“There are women who enjoy such things, madame.”

“There are? You do not think that Anthony would claim that I… that I…”

“He undoubtedly would.”

She almost cried again. Instead a new resolve entered her eyes. “Then I must get away, mustn’t I?”

“I think that is clear. Let us consider your choices in that regard.”

There were damned few. She could try to divorce him, claiming adultery and cruelty. A divorce through Parliament would leave her free to remarry, but women almost never succeeded in obtaining them. Worse, any parliamentary action would be preceded by two trials: first a church divorce, and then a civil proceeding against Glasbury.

Divorce
“a mensa et a thoro”
through the church alone would not permit remarriage for either of them, but she stood a better chance there. The judges were growing more lenient in matters of cruelty. A woman no longer had to prove her husband had done life-threatening violence. But such a divorce would leave an earl without a son, and that detail might badly affect her chances, even though it should not.

“Either way would be very public,” she said. “I have read how the testimony is printed in the papers. All of it, no matter how sordid. Even the
Times
loves the spectacle and profits handsomely from it.”

“I think that your circumstances warrant accepting the embarrassment, Countess.”

“My family will be caught up in it. No matter what my justification, they will be hurt.”

“Your brothers will bear it for you.”

“But Charlotte… she is still a child. It will badly affect her chances of a good marriage when she comes out. The family finances are not good, and if she is tainted by such a scandal…”

He could not lie to her, much as he wanted to. He could not promise that her younger sister would not be hurt.

But his heart yelled in rebellion at the way her objections became steps away from the protection only divorce could bestow.

“To be safe, you must divorce him. If you only leave him, you are at his mercy.” He said it more severely than he intended. “At any point he can sue to have his conjugal rights restored. He does not even have to sue. He can force you to return to both his home and his bed and no one will stop him.”

“There must be a way to ensure he never does that. There is, isn’t there?”

There was.

He had bargained hard when he went to Glasbury. He had pushed the man as far as he dared, then pushed farther. When the meeting was over he had handed Pen the half-victory she had chosen. Not freedom, but sanctuary.

A sanctuary now threatened.

He left the stable, cleaned off his boots, and washed his hands. He strode through the house. Out on the terrace he looked at the beach. A blue dot stood on a strip of sand.

His anger was not entirely altruistic. It was partly, perhaps largely, the frustration of a man who wanted a woman so much he would have her any way he could.

She had lived for a long time in the keep they had built years ago. It had served her well. He could not blame her if she wanted to try and repair its walls, rather than ride out to meet the enemy.

Compared to the safety she had found in that fortress,
the chance to have an affair of convenience with her friend and solicitor would not carry much appeal at all.

He went down to the beach and joined her.

“Cleo is still in Yorkshire with Mrs. Kenworthy,” he said. “I will take you to her.”

chapter
10

H
aving decided to make the journey, they prepared for it at once.

Julian rode his horse to the nearest town, Billericay, to hire a gig so he could collect Pen and her trunks. The plan was to secure her a room for the night in a safe place in the town, while he returned to London. There he would find a woman to travel as Pen’s companion, to preserve respectability.

They decided to stay in small inns until they reached Yorkshire, and to travel under false names. She would be Mrs. Thompson and Julian would be her cousin, escorting her to a wedding in the Lake District.

After Julian left, Pen walked through the cottage, realizing that she would be a little sad to leave. She had rediscovered an old friendship here, one that had become obscured over the years. Mr. Hampton had become Julian again, and she would always remember this retreat as the place where that had happened.

She collected her treatise from the desk. When she got
to Billericay she would post it to Mrs. Levanham. Then her comments could be compared to the ones others had made, and a final draft prepared. The lessons she had learned from the disaster of her life might make a difference for other women someday.

Up in her chamber, she set about packing her trunks. She was finishing with the large one when she heard Julian return. The sound of wheels came down the lane, then the thump of the kitchen door from below.

She tucked the last few items in her trunk and went to him.

Halfway down the stairs, she halted abruptly. Alarm immobilized her.

She could already see the legs of the man who waited.

The garments were not Julian’s.

The boots paced toward her, and the rest of the man came into view. Her stomach sickened.

Glasbury smiled up at her. “Welcome back to England, my dear.”

Panic swelled in her head. She half-turned to run and hide, even though she knew there was no place to go.

“Come down, Penelope.”

She battled to hide her horror. He enjoyed seeing that too much, and she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing what he did to her.

He stood right at the base of the stairs. He would not move as she descended. That forced her to brush against him as she took her last step and aimed around him.

He grabbed her arm. “No kiss? After all this time?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“I would like a kiss, my dear.”

She glanced out the window. He had not brought his
state coach. No insignia marked this one. Only the coachman tended it, and he was not in livery. “Ask one of the horses to kiss you. If it refuses, you can enforce your prerogatives with impunity.”

“Not only on horses, Penelope. On all that I own.” He pulled her closer and pressed a kiss on her lips.

Her stomach heaved. She held in the bile and jerked her arm free. He let her go, but his expression said it was his choice, not hers.

He paced around the kitchen, viewing it with distaste. “So Hampton tucked you away in this hovel. It was annoying to have to track you down. It would have been simpler if he had just told me where to find you.”

“I insisted he not do that. How did you find this place?”

“I merely learned what property he owns, and had my people check it. When they reported last night that a woman was living here, I knew it was you.” He peered into the next chamber. “Has he been staying here with you?”

“He has been in London. No doubt many people can attest to that.”

He went to the garden door and gestured. When the coachman lumbered in, the earl pointed to the stairs. Glasbury strolled into the library while his man went up for her trunks.

Pen followed the earl, desperately glancing around for any evidence that Julian had recently been here, hoping she could hide it before the earl’s gaze took it in. She had not been alone with Glasbury since she left him, and she was terrified. A visceral tremor shook all through her.

“This is such a crude place. No servants. No comforts.

You will be much relieved to be back on Grosvenor Square, I am sure.”

“I am not going back to Grosvenor Square.”

“Of course you are.”

“Not willingly.”

“Your will does not concern me. Only my rights do. If you show the grace and obedience to which you were bred, I will be kind. If you force me to drag you out by your hair, I will punish you.”

Punish.
He liked that word. He caressed the sound with his voice as he spoke it. He gazed at her with his slack mouth in a cruel smile. His eyes reflected memories of punishments of the past.

“Why now, Anthony? After all these years, why are you so determined to have me return now?”

“You broke our agreement.”

“I did not.”

“The world thinks that you did. So do I. Also, I received a letter last spring. An anonymous one. It included a copy of an odd treatise, written by a deranged woman raving against marriage.” He looked at her as if she were a stupid child. “Did you really think that I would stand by and allow you,
my wife,
to publicly condemn my right to control my family and household?”

“There is not one word in that document about you.”

“Every damn word is about me.”

“Force me back and I will still publish it.”

“I assure you that you never will.”

It sounded like a threat. A chill slid up her spine.

He had gotten harder over the years. Crueler. The attempts at hiding his inclinations seemed to have been abandoned. It had been a mistake to ignore him all this
time. In pretending he did not exist, she had lost sight of what he was becoming.

“I refuse to believe that you will risk the scandal I can create simply because you do not want that pamphlet published.”

He smiled again. She had never liked his smiles. Even when young and excited over the proposal from an earl, she had not cared for that earl’s smiles.

“I do not seek your return only for that reason. It is one of many. Most significantly, my nephew is now on his third wife, and none of these women has borne him a child, nor have any of the plantation slaves. The problem, I think it is safe to say, is not with all those women but with him.”

“It must infuriate you to know that the new law means that those slaves will now be freed, and no longer available to test the breeding abilities of the men in your family. You so enjoyed your visits to Jamaica. You managed such a journey last year, didn’t you? Perhaps that will sustain you for a while.”

“There will be compensations for the situation on the estates. They will not resolve the inadequacies of my nephew, however. When you left, I convinced myself that through him the succession would continue in an acceptable manner. Now it is once more left to me. And to you.”

His expression softened. For a moment he appeared beseeching, even sad. “Come back and give me my heir, Penelope. Give me the son that your vows promised.”

“I am astonished that you throw vows at me, as if your position is one of moral superiority. I left because you lacked basic human decency. If you want me back, you
will indeed have to drag me by the hair. But be prepared that I will let the world know what you are.”

He chuckled and shook his head. He sighed. “You are such a stupid cow. As I explained to your blackmail-monger, few will believe you, even if you get a chance to speak of it. No one will care now anyway. All of that is long in the past.”

“There are others who know. It will not be my voice alone.”

“None of my people will speak against me. My control of them is complete, no matter what new laws are passed.”

He walked toward her. She startled, and backed up. He kept coming until she was trapped against the window.

“Your trunks are in the carriage. Come, my dear, it is time to go home.”

“No.”

He reached for her. She tried to dart away, but he caught her forearm. His grip closed tightly.

“I had hoped we could do this with some dignity, but I see not. It would have been better to deal with this in our home, but this cottage will do. It is private enough.”

His fingers clutched so hard that her eyes watered. He appeared indifferent to her pain. Almost bored. She had long ago learned to recognize the signs that said otherwise, however, and she saw them now.

The vague flush on his neck. The heavy lids of his eyes. He enjoyed hurting people.

She gritted her teeth and refused to cry out. His grip got worse and worse until her whole arm was on fire.

“The years have made you rebellious. Too much freedom does that with dull-witted people of inferior nature.

It is easily remedied, however. Your will is a flimsy thing. We both already know how quickly it can be bent and broken.”