Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (21 page)

“That isn’t unusual.” 

Heathgate’s courtship of his marchioness was rumored to have progressed upon very peculiar lines. One day, Trent might ask Ellie what she knew of those particulars. 

“I wasn’t a callow lad, just down from school,” Trent countered. “I should have been more cautious of any scheme that had my father’s approval, but Paula had money, and Wilton has all but bankrupted the earldom.” 

“So you married well for the sake of your progeny.” Heathgate steepled his fingers, while out in the garden, shouts and shrieks suggested somebody had been taken captive. “Or thought you did.” 

“Oh, the money was real.” Trent rose and went to the window, but the children—the pirates—were nowhere to be seen, though a bed of pink roses was in riotous bloom beneath the window. “I’m comfortably fixed, my children comfortably fixed, and with Wilton buttoned up at the family seat, my siblings need not worry, either.” 

“A happy ending, then.” Heathgate remained seated while Trent wondered what Ellie was doing at that moment. Did little Andy play pirates? Did she have anybody to play pirates with? 

“Not a happy ending for Paula.” Trent tried to focus on the flowers, which bore a resemblance to vine gracing his pergola. “Paula was unhappy for most of our marriage.” 

For every single day and night of their marriage, even on those occasions when she was overcome with hilarity out of all proportion to the moment, she hadn’t been well. 

“Some people are determined to be miserable,” the marquess observed. “I was once among their number, though I hardly knew it.” 

“Paula wasn’t merely miserable. She was unbalanced, ill in her spirit. All she wanted of me was children, and that preferably if I could arrange for an angel to visit her for purposes of conception rather than my lowly, human self.” 

Trent cast around for polite phrases, while Heathgate—magistrate, reformed rake, and veteran papa—made no effort to fill the ensuing silence. 

“Paula loathed my touch but begged me for more children.” Trent longed to breathe the roses through the sparkling glass of Heathgate’s mullioned window. “She cried the entire time, every time, but insisted it was what she wanted. At first she sought to give me my heir and spare, and that was enough—more than enough, as Darius will likely wed, particularly did I ask it of him.” 

He paused, again giving Heathgate a chance to cut him off, but when the silence only stretched, Trent slogged on. 

“I relented because Paula must have a daughter, she said, to love and protect, and thank God in his mercy we had Elaine, and then when Elaine was six months old, she rejected the breast. Paula was devastated, and the begging started again.” 

“For another child?” 

“For another child.” Trent grabbed on to his composure, hard, hating even a recitation of the drama that had been his married life. “My father suggested I beat my wife, not because she’d learn her place, but because she might enjoy it enough to become biddable. I’ve never been so revolted by my patrimony.”

Which, given his patrimony, was saying a great deal. 

“Does this imply your wife might have confided in your father?” 

Heathgate’s reputation as a rake prior to his marriage had reached even Trent’s ears, and his question bore only curiosity—no shock, no revulsion. 

“Paula very likely did confide in Wilton, for he can be charming when it suits him.” Trent pressed his forehead against the cool panes of glass, while an entire morass of uncomfortable emotions threatened, and the brandy decanter whispered to him from the sideboard. “She importuned my brother to get a child on her, and when Darius told me that, I realized my wife was not sane.” 

“He told you this?” 

“He was concerned she’d take her begging elsewhere, anywhere.” Trent had to pause again. Had to slow his breathing by force of will. “That would not have been safe for Paula. From that point, I had her not simply carefully attended, but watched. All was handled respectfully. On her bad days, her outings were curtailed, because the coach horse had thrown a shoe, her maid had a megrim, or one of the children was starting a sniffle, but Paula soon grasped that her wings had been clipped, and her decline was precipitous.” 

Loud, hysterical, and precipitous.

“Physicians?” Heathgate’s quiet voice sounded near Trent’s shoulder, but Trent remained where he could see the summer flowers. 

“They suggested bleeding, or private estates with trained assistants, but I didn’t want Paula to leave my care. She was vulnerable and dangerous, both. I was afraid to leave her alone with her own children and afraid to keep them from her entirely, so I sought to manage her. I undertook a balancing act, between cajolery, a drop of laudanum in her tea, hoping for the good days, and maintaining appearances. Throughout all of this, I came to understand she could not help herself.” 

Until she’d helped herself in the only fashion left to her. 

“And then she died,” Heathgate said, gently, kindly even, but the words still had the power to constrict Trent’s breathing and make the roses waver in his vision. 

“I thought we were finding the routine best suited to keeping her safe, and at least not…miserable. She grew to like the pattern of her days, or I thought she did, and while I relied on slipping her a few drops of laudanum on the bad days, Paula seemed to be settling down. Then the baby started cutting teeth, and Paula became worse than ever.”

Out on the high seas, laughter graced the morning air, while Trent had lost sight of shore. 

“I wanted Lanie weaned,” he went on. “Not only because her mother occasionally took laudanum, which made the baby sleep a great deal, but because I didn’t want Paula to unduly influence children who might already share her excitable tendencies. So I made the decision to wean the baby when those teeth appeared, and the baby seemed ready.” 

“The physicians supported this course?” 

“They did. I consulted different experts, for both Paula and the baby, and their opinions were unanimous.” 

“What did you do?” 

“I kept Lanie in the nursery and increased Paula’s few drops to a few more. At first, it seemed to work, though I never meant it as more than a temporary measure.” 

“One develops a tolerance for opium, or a dependence, I believe.” 

Trent hunched in on himself. “One can. Paula must have seen her companion dosing her tea and tried to wean herself. She accused me of taking Lanie away because of the laudanum, and in a sense she was right.” 

“You took the child away because of the symptoms that required the laudanum. Nobody would quibble with a mother making occasional, limited use of a tonic.” 

Trent swallowed back the anger and pain knotting in his chest. At that moment, was Ellie napping in her fanciful bed? Digging among the flowers? Taking tea in the nursery with Andy, because a mother, a good mother, occasionally did?

“Somehow, some goddamned how, Paula found the strength to refuse the drug. She wanted her baby back, and I would not allow that unless I was in the room with them. This went on for days and nights, for I don’t know how long, until she seemed to accept defeat. She became docile, then vacant, alarmingly so, and then quieter still.” 

Heathgate said nothing for a long time. “Overdoses can be accidental,” he offered at length. 

The marquess had hidden reserves of compassion, but Trent shook his head. “Her death wasn’t an accidental overdose—no laudanum was involved directly—but you can see why her family would blame me?” 

Heathgate shifted to stand beside him. His scent was a complex, expensive sandalwood blend that made Trent want to open the window so the simpler fragrances of the summer garden could fill the room.

“Her ladyship’s family could attribute motive to you for ending her life, I suppose. You married a crazy woman and couldn’t make her sane any more than her family could. At least you didn’t pawn her off on some soon-to-be-titled, unsuspecting stranger. She’s lucky you didn’t beat her, have her discreetly confined among strangers, or send her home to her parents.”

Whatever else was true, Paula had been in no wise
lucky
.

“You don’t understand, Heathgate.” Trent turned to face his host. “If Paula’s tendencies were inherited, then somebody, her mother, her older brothers, her dear papa, might be as unbalanced as she. When she was motivated, she could appear as blithe and charming as any young lady of good breeding. To appearances, her family is equally normal and likeable. And yet, in what passes for lunatic logic, I am the murderer, and I deserve to die.” 

Heathgate’s lips pursed, as much a display of surprise as anybody likely saw from his lordship. 

“If your children, yours and Paula’s, are safely off visiting your sister, then the time to strike has come. Interesting theory.” 

“Particularly when anybody with a spare shilling could have learned from my town house staff I wasn’t coping at all well this spring.” 

“Can you hire a Runner?” 

“To make inquiries in Hampshire,” Trent surmised. “I can, but do I bring my children home or leave them summering in Kent?” 

“Bring them home. In the first place, we might be chasing our tails on this Gothic theory of murderous in-laws, and in the second, the children, and your attachment to them, could well be what will keep you safe. Then too, a man has a need to impersonate a sea monster on occasion.” 

Trent smiled weakly, grateful for the cool reason, the fillip of humor, and the underlying understanding from a man who might have been appalled. 

“Come admire my roses,” Heathgate said. “We might stumble across a band of pirates, but even if we’re not that fortunate, you could see a specimen Lady Rammel might put to use in your gardens.” 

Heathgate needed time to think, in other words, which Trent would happily grant him.

“You met with Lady Rammel?” Trent let himself be ushered out onto the terrace. 

“Had breakfast with her, and what a treat she is. If my marchioness had known what a treasure Rammel was hiding in our back yard, Felicity and Lady Rammel would be thick as thieves by now—or pirates.” 

“Lady Greymoor has made a condolence call.” Gentlemen must keep one another informed when it came to the ladies’ maneuverings, after all. 

Heathgate cut a path across the gardens. “Felicity will do the same and likely dragoon my cousin Lady Amery along, and even our mutual neighbor Lady Westhaven.” 

“August company. Are they kind?” Had Heathgate asked his lady to rally this support for Ellie? 

“You are protective of Rammel’s widow?” 

He would give up his life for her. “Cut line, Heathgate. Of course I’m protective of her. Rammel was a selfish, dog-kissing bore, his lady has no family of her own, and she’s in an interesting condition.” 

His lordship’s smile was fleeting. “She’s protective of you, too. Told me I’d best catch Philadelphia Soames and tie him to a chair for a week, or she’d know the reason why. These are my hybrid crosses and among them, my favorite is this little peachy-pink wonder here.” 

The marquess was tall, dark, and he would have been handsome, except his features had a saturnine, condescending cast, and those eyes of his… But when the man referred to anything—especially a rose—as “peachy-pink,” and when his gaze kept straying to the corner of the property toward which his children had disappeared, Trent had to revise his opinion. 

“So you liked her. Lady Rammel, that is?” Trent asked. 

“She reminded me of my dear wife.” Heathgate snapped off a rose and handed it to Trent. “I know of no higher compliment.” 

Peachy-pink, indeed. Trent sniffed the delicate bouquet of the flower and looked into its throat. The color at the center was the exact same luscious shade as an aroused woman’s—

“One more question on our earlier topic,” Heathgate said as they turned for the stables. 

“I won’t like it.” 

“I’ll hate asking it,” Heathgate agreed, strolling along among his flowers. “On your wedding night, was your wife a virgin?” 

“Brutally insightful.” Trent cast back, but memories were interrupted by the implications of Heathgate’s question. If Paula had had a lover… 

“If her affections had been intimately attached elsewhere, it would explain her disgust of you.” Heathgate spoke as if discussing a planned arrangement of daisies and irises. “Also her desire for children, to justify her marriage when she loved another, and to cover up her dallying.”

“She knew what to expect,” Trent said, the words dragged from him. “I recall being relieved, and I encountered no…physical resistance.” 

Heathgate paused, which meant the conversation remained out of earshot of the grooms in the stables up the path. “Sometimes no resistance is detectable, or a considerate mother will have a midwife see to the matter before the wedding night.” 

Every one of Heathgate’s attempts to provide a normal, reasonable explanation for the state of Trent’s married life only made the memories more corrosive.

“Paula had been crying before I joined her on our wedding night, though she tried to hide it. She knew what to expect.” 

“In a theoretical sense?” 

The man was relentless, for which Trent had to both loathe and admire him. “I wish that were so, but in hindsight I’d say her knowledge was of the act.” 

“So our circle widens,” Heathgate concluded. “Best send that Runner, or I’ve an investigator who might have time to see to the matter. If Paula had a lover, you need to know who he was and what he’s doing now.”