The Sherbrooke Bride (16 page)

Unaccountable twit.

He scooped her up in his arms, saying even as she tried to push away from him, “Just shut up and hold still. I will take you to the chamber pot. No, keep your damned mouth shut.”

“You will leave.”

“Not until you're back in bed.”

She subsided because she doubted she could get back to bed without his assistance. She should have rung for Tess. Douglas left her behind the screen. She managed, but it was difficult for her, knowing that he was standing just on the other side of the screen. He was so close and he could hear everything. It left her body nearly paralyzed.

When she emerged, finally, he made no remarks. He picked her up again, continued to remain thankfully silent until he'd tucked her under the covers in her bed.

“There, that wasn't quite such an appalling degradation, was it? You did take rather a long time with the chamber pot, but—Do you think you can sleep again or would you like some laudanum?”

“Go away.” She gave him a brooding look, realized that she wasn't behaving well, and said in a voice that was as stiff as her back, “Thank you for helping me. I'm sorry I woke you. I'm sorry I hit that chair and that it bumped the desk and made the ink pot fall and the ink ruin that beautiful carpet. I will replace the carpet. I do have some money of my own.”

“Do you now? I find that difficult to believe. Your precious father didn't have a bloody sou. Both you and Melissande left your homes without a dowry. You don't even have an idea of the settlement your father made with Tony, do you? For that matter, you don't even know if I'm going to give you any sort of allowance at all. Hell, if I do give you an allowance, and you graciously replace the carpet, why I'll still be paying for the damned rug after all.”

“No you won't. I have thirty pounds with me. I have saved that amount over the past four years.”

“Thirty pounds! Ha! That would replace a chamber pot or two, not a carpet of value.”

“Perhaps it can be cleaned.”

Douglas looked over at the ruined carpet, its exquisite pattern black as soot. “Yes, and perhaps one of Napoleon's ministers will throw a cake in his face.”

“Anything is possible.”

“You're too young to realize that idiots continue to survive in this world. Go back to sleep. You are absurdly confident and it is annoying.”

So much for making her a happy woman, Douglas thought as he marched back into his bedchamber. How could she act so spitefully? What the devil was the matter with her? He'd been the perfect gentleman, the devil, he'd probably saved her life with the fine care he'd given her and what was his reward? She hated him. She told him to leave her alone. She destroyed one of his grandmother's favorite carpets.

Douglas fell asleep with the acrid taste of anger on his tongue.

 

It was Friday morning. Alexandra ordered Tess to dress her after she'd bathed. She still felt a bit weak, but nothing she couldn't deal with. It was time for her to leave. She was buoyed by righteous resolve and she prayed it would last until she was gone from Northcliffe Hall.

He'd rejected her. He'd treated her as if she were naught but a bothersome gnat, a sexless encumbrance.

She'd destroyed his grandmother's lovely rug.

He'd laughed at her thirty pounds. He had no idea how difficult it had been to accumulate that thirty pounds, penny by penny, hoarding it.

Not only had he rejected her when she'd been fool enough to attempt the disastrous seduction, he'd only cared for her because there'd been no choice.

It was a litany in her mind. It was something she would never forget. She stoked anger and resentment because it was better than the annihilating pain of his disinterest in her, his distaste of her.

She had failed, utterly, to win him over, to show him that she could suit him nicely, that she could and would love him until the day she passed from this earth. What had he meant about giving her an allowance? She quashed that inquiry; he'd not meant anything.

He still wanted Melissande. Everyone knew that he still wanted his cousin's wife. He still spoke of butchering Tony on the field of honor though nothing had come of it yet. Alexandra had heard the servants gossiping about it. Ah, and how they speculated and wondered.

Douglas hadn't come near her again after their one skirmish at dawn. She was glad of it. Her sister had visited twice, both times standing a good ten feet away from her and looking delicately pale in her concern. Alexandra had remembered Tony's kiss during her sister's second visit, and said, “You appear to like having Tony kiss you.”

To her surprise, Melissande lowered her head and mumbled, “He is most outrageous sometimes. I cannot always control him. It is difficult to know what to do.”

Control, ha! Melissande had met her match. “But you seem to like it.”

“You don't know, Alex! You can't imagine what he does to me—to my person!”

“Tell me then.”

“So, the earl hasn't bedded you. Tony rather hoped that he had. It would make it all so very legal then and we could leave and go to London.”

“No, it wouldn't make it legal at all. Douglas said he could do just as he pleased to me, and our marriage could still be annulled.”

“But if you got pregnant—”

“Douglas said that he can easily prevent that.”

“Oh,” said Melissande, who was now frowning ferociously. “But Tony insisted that—” She broke off, and her glorious eyes were narrowed slits, diminishing her beauty but making her all the more enticing for it.

“But what does Tony do to you?”

Melissande waved an impatient hand. “It isn't proper that I tell you what goes on. Tony is a madman and he insists upon ordering me about and then he does things that he really shouldn't do but the way he does them, well . . . However—” Again, she fell silent, and Alexandra was left wondering if what went on between a husband and wife wasn't to be devoutly wished for. She'd asked no more questions. Melissande had left, somewhat routed, and Alexandra found she was coming to believe that Tony was the perfect mate for her sister. She wondered how Douglas would have treated Melissande were he married to her. She doubted he would ever be nasty to her.

It didn't matter. There was nothing more for her here. She was well; she had no intention of having Douglas recognize that she was well, and allowing him to be one to take her back to her father. She would not allow him to serve her that final indignity.

She didn't deserve it. She deserved a lot of things, for she had been part of his betrayal, but she didn't deserve the kind of humiliation he would dish out. She would dish it up to herself, with no assistance from him. She pictured her father's face in her mind when she arrived at Claybourn Hall, alone, kicked out, soon-to-be-annulled. It was an appalling picture, but it was better than the one with Douglas gloating as he stood beside her, telling her father
that she wasn't adequate, that he didn't want her, would never want her. She didn't want to think of what the lost settlement would mean to her father. In any case, there was nothing to do about it. She'd tried.

She waited until she knew that Douglas had ridden out with his estate manager, a man whose name was Tuffs, then made her way confidently downstairs. She paused, hearing Tony speaking to Hollis.

“I wish Ryder hadn't left before we discovered Douglas and Alex were missing. He was trying to help Douglas get his brains unscrambled.”

“I agree,” said the stately Hollis. “But Master Ryder is gone and there are none to assist His Lordship, save you, my lord. Has His Lordship, ah, ceased yet to demand your guts on a platter?”

“No,” Tony said. “Hell, I grow tired of remaining here trying to make Douglas see that Melissande isn't at all the sort of wife who would suit him. Stubborn blighter! Why can't he see beyond her beautiful face to her altogether self-indulgent nature? I think it time I took my wife away, Hollis, to Strawberry Hill.”

“I have come to understand that Lady Melissande would prefer London, my lord.”

“So she would, but she will prefer differently when she comes to understand what it is I wish her to want.”

If Alexandra thought it strange for a peer of the realm to speak with such intimacy to a butler, her brief stay at Northcliffe Hall had taught her differently.

“Perhaps it would be best for you to depart, my lord. Ah, but His Lordship's humors are so uncertain. I am concerned about Her Ladyship.”

“I too, Hollis. But her illness at O'Malley's cottage—I can't help but feel it was a good thing. Douglas seemed affected, and he did care for her intimately. An excellent idea of yours that no one go back with O'Malley to the cottage.”

Alexandra backed up a step. She didn't want to hear any more about intimacy or the machinations of Douglas's staff. She wasn't sure that Tony wouldn't try to stop her from leaving. Or Hollis, for that matter. Or Mrs. Peacham. She chewed on her lower lip, trying to figure out what to do.

Then it occurred to her that none of them dared touch her. They could rant and rave, but even Tony, easygoing, and an immense rogue with unlimited loyalty to his cousin, despite his ultimate poaching in Douglas's nuptials, wouldn't dare to lock her in a room, and that is what it would require, for she would not remain willingly.

She was still, and at this moment, the Countess of Northcliffe. She could do whatever she pleased. Only Douglas could stop her and he wouldn't. Still, because she wasn't completely daft, she waited until Tony drove out with Melissande. She'd heard Melissande say to Mrs. Peacham, excitement in her lovely voice, that he was taking her to Rye, a town of wondrous historic importance. “Yes, Mellie,” Tony had said fondly, kissing her temple, “Rye was chartered in 1285. Edward the First, you know. It's lovely and I'll kiss you again on the cliff walk.”

At one o'clock on Friday afternoon, Lady Alexandra, soon to be the discarded Countess of Northcliffe, armed with one valise and her own thirty pounds, walked firmly out the front door of the hall.

Hollis stood slack-mouthed in the entranceway, all his most convincing arguments exhausted in
the dust, and with no discernible effect on Her Ladyship.

Mrs. Peacham was twisting her black bombazine skirts.

The earl was riding at the eastern end of the Sherbrooke property, inspecting two tenants' cottages that had suffered badly in the heavy rainstorm.

What to do?

Hollis tried again. “Please, my lady, you must wait. You aren't well enough yet to travel. Please, wait for the earl's return.”

“I shall walk if you don't have a carriage fetched this instant, Hollis.”

Hollis was very tempted to let her walk. She wouldn't get very far before the earl caught up with her. Damn the boy! Hollis couldn't be certain that he would go after her. He had the first time, but now? Why hadn't he come to grips with anything? He'd been foul-tempered with everyone since his return from O'Malley's cottage. Hollis didn't blame the countess. He put the blame squarely on the earl's shoulders. He deserved to be whipped. “All right, my lady,” Hollis said at last, nearly choking on the bitter taste of defeat. He instructed a footman to have a carriage fetched from the stables and he also instructed the footman to have one of the stable lads search out the earl. “Have the lad find him quickly, else I'll have his ears in my mutton stew!”

Ten minutes later Alexandra was settled in one of the earl's carriages, John Coachman instructed to take her home. Her single valise sat on the seat opposite her. She was leaving only with what she'd brought with her.

Life wasn't going at all well.

When John Coachman suddenly pulled up the team at a shout from another carriage, Alexandra poked her head out the window to see what was happening.

She came face to face with an older woman who had the look of the Sherbrookes, a woman who simply stared at her, as gape-mouthed as Hollis had been.

A young face appeared, a quite lovely young girl who said happily, “Why, are you Douglas's new bride? How wonderful, of course you are! I'm Sinjun, his sister. This is marvelous! You are Melis—no, no, you are the other sister! Welcome to the Sherbrooke family.”

Alexandra looked skyward. Her luck, which she'd thought was on the rise, she now saw plummeting to earth, and soon her face would be rubbed in the dirt.

The other woman, doubtless Alexandra's soon-to-be-annulled mother-in-law, sniffed with alarming loudness, and said, “I don't understand why you are still here. You shouldn't be out visiting tenants for it is not your responsibility. You are nothing compared to your sister, from all I have been told. You are nothing at all out of the ordinary. My son would never have selected you.”

Alexandra felt the clout, but she said calmly, “You are certainly right about that. Your son doesn't want me. I am not visiting the tenants. I am leaving. No, don't say it. I am delighted to give you the pleasure of my departure.”

She was on the point of telling John Coachman to continue, when the door to the other carriage opened and the young girl jumped to the ground. “Do let me ride with you!”