London, December 1806
Three weeks before Christmas
When Lord Alexander Beaumont entered Whites that night the
entire room fell silent. No man would meet his eyes; their
gazes slid away to study the pattern on the carpet or the
brandy in their glasses. Throats were cleared, cuffs
inspected with startling intensity.
"Gentlemen?" He raised one quizzical dark brow. "Would
anyone care to enlighten me as to what is wrong?"
There was silence.
"Charles?" he prompted.
"Devil take it, Alex," his friend Charles Wheeler
complained, "I knew you would ask me."
"That's what friends are for, Charles," Alex said smoothly.
"Well?"
Charles stood up. He loosened his neck cloth, palpably ill
at ease. "Don't know where to start, old fellow."
"Try the beginning," Alex advised.
"Good luck, Charlie," someone said sotto voce.
"It's Lady Melicent," Wheeler blurted out. "Your wife."
His wife.
No one
ever spoke to Lord Alexander Robert Jon
Beaumont about his wife.
"Thank you, Charles," Alex said. "We may have been apart for
a couple of years now, but I am still aware who Melicent is."
Wheeler winced. Several men drew in their breath in sympathy.
"She's⦠She's written a book," Wheeler said. "Several books.
This is the most recent." He grabbed a slim tome from the
hands of a man at a nearby table and handed it to Alex.
"Steady on, Charlie," the man protested. "I was enjoying that!"
"Bentleyβ¦" Wheeler said in a warning tone. The man's eyes
flickered to Alex's hard face and he fell silent.
"'The Adventures of a Woman of Pleasure by Lady Loveless.'"
Alex read the gold lettering aloud. He flicked open the book.
"'Being naked and laid open to him kindled so great a
rapture in her that she lay in wanton pleasure waiting for
him to plunge his hugeβ'"
A great harrumphing and clearing of throats followed. Alex
closed the book softly and looked at his friend. "You are
claiming that Melicent,
my wife, is this Ladyβ¦
Loveless?"
"Yes! Don't call me out," Wheeler added as Alex took a
purposeful step toward him, murder in his eyes.
"Bentley bribed the publisher and found out that the
manuscripts are sent from someone called Mrs. Durham, from
Peacock Oak in Yorkshire.β¦" He made a pleading gesture. "You
know that was Lady Melicent's maiden name and that she
resides there now." He shook his head. "She has to be
stopped, Alex. She bases the characters in her books on
members of the
Ton and they are too accurately
portrayed for comfort." He gestured to Bentley again.
"Will's betrothal to Miss Flynn was ruined because there is
a scene in the book where a character called Bill Gentley
ravishes an actress in a box at the theater during a
performance!"
"We all know that happened," Alex said dryly.
"That isn't the point!" Bentley piped up.
"Bentley lost an heiress worth sixty thousand," Wheeler
said. "Lady Loveless's sources are impeccable. Which is why
she has to be stopped."
Alex tapped the book thoughtfully against the palm of his
hand. "She will be."
"What are you going to do?" Wheeler asked.
"I am going to Yorkshire," Alex said. He smiled at the look
of horror on his friend's face. "No need to fear, Charlesβit
is the north of England, not the North Pole."
"Yorkshire in winter," Wheeler spluttered.
"Yes," Alex said, "and I will take this with me." He raised
the book, and the candlelight gleamed on the gold-lettered
name, Lady Loveless, on the cover. "It will prove usefulβ¦
for research purposes."
"Devil take it, Alex," Bentley called, "I was reading that!"
But he spoke to thin air.
Lady Loveless indeed.
How very apt for his estranged wife.
Out in the street it was snowing, tiny flakes on the edge of
a cold east wind. Alex turned up the collar of his coat,
refused the offer of either a hackney carriage or a sedan
chair, and set off down the dark streets toward Cavendish
Square. Almost he relished the idea of a run-in with a
pickpocket or thief. It would at least relieve some of his
anger and frustration.
The wind stung his face. He felt cold inside as well, his
heart shriveled, encased in ice.
Melicent. He
thought of his bride on their wedding day. They had met for
the first time a mere week before. Melicent had been a
gangly debutante in her first season, with long conker-brown
hair and huge brown eyes. She had been impossibly shy and
seductively innocent. Even though Alex had been furious to
be forced into marriage by his father, the Duke of Beaumont,
he had tried not to blame Melicent.
He had been attentive to her throughout the wedding
breakfast, trying to draw her out, thwarted by her reserve.
Later that night he had consummated his marriage, treating
his young wife with gentleness and patience, but the
encounter had not been a success, for she had lain as still
and cold as a statue and he felt unfulfilled and empty
afterward. A few more unsatisfactory couplings had followed,
but after a fortnight or so he had not sought her bed or her
company any longer. Running the Beaumont estates had kept
him fully occupied; they were both wife and mistress to him.
He needed nothing more.
Occasionally he would appear at balls to squire Melicent in
a dance or two. His mother insisted on it and it silenced
the gossips and his own guilty conscience. He and his wife
had never spoken of their unsatisfactory marriage. It could
not be said that the two of them had drifted apart, he
thought now, for they had never come together in the first
place.
He was sure that no one, least of all Melicent, had guessed
at the fury that had burned him up inside. She would have
had no notion of the frustration and rage engendered by the
threats the Duke of Beaumont had used to force his younger
son into marriage. Alex's father had wanted to ensure the
succession and he had known that his heir, Alex's elder
brother, Henry, with his preference for men, would never
marry. The duke had therefore blackmailed Alex, threatening
to deny him the right to run the Beaumont estates if he did
not wed. Alex had loved Beaumont with a passion from the
moment he was born. The lands and the people were his life.
He was the only one in the family who cared a rush for them.
His father could not have chosen a more effective weapon.
The weight of the book in Alex's pocket brought his thoughts
back to Melicent and reminded him that she might have been
an untutored virgin when first they had married, but that
she had certainly gained some experience from
somewhereβ
or someoneβin the meantime. The anger
kindled in him once again. How could Melicent, with her
sweet, honest eyes, her generous smile and her patent
innocence, have become Lady Loveless, the shameless purveyor
of erotic literature? It seemed impossible.
They had been married for two years and it was a month after
the Duke of Beaumont's death when Melicent had told him that
she was going to Yorkshire to care for her mother and that
she would be staying indefinitely. Her own father had died
the previous year, her mother was an invalid and Melicent's
feckless young brother Aloysius was running wild.
They had quarreled for the first time in a married life
previously marked by indifference. Alex had forbidden her to
go. He could see now that he had been driven by pride; it
was one thing for him to treat Melicent with careless
unconcern, but quite another matter for her to defy him. And
she
had defied him.
"You don't want me!" she had said bitterly, her belongings
scattered about her as she hastily packed a portmanteau.
"You have never needed me. Mama does."
He had not heard another word from her in two years.
Now
she would be hearing from
him. He
would go to Yorkshire and confront his errant wife. He
paused. No. He would go to Yorkshire and
seduce his
errant wife according to the style laid down by Lady
Loveless. He would expose her for the wanton she must surely be.
Peacock Oak, Yorkshire
Two weeks before Christmas
Lady Melicent Beaumont put down her pen and rested her chin
on the palm of her hand. It was impossible to concentrate
when she could hear her mother's querulous tones floating
down from the room above:
"I want Melicent! Where is she? And where is the doctor? I
told you to send for him hours ago! I feel as sick as a
cushion, and if he does not come soon I am like to perish
here and now in my bed! No, do not build the fire any
higher, you foolish woman! It is far too hot in here and is
positively smothering meβ"
Melicent sighed. She could not have blamed Mrs. Lubbock very
much if she was tempted to take the pillow and squash it
firmly over her mother's face. Mrs. Durham, a hypochondriac
whose imaginary illnesses were always so much worse than
anyone else's, had taken to her bed when Melicent's father
had died and she had made everyone dance attendance on her
ever since. It had taken Melicent only a few short weeks to
realize that her mother was a tyrant. Unfortunately by then
it was too late to turn back. After her last, dreadful
quarrel with her husband she would not, could not, creep
back to London with her tail between her legs. And so she
was trapped here in Peacock Oak, in the little
grace-and-favor house provided by a distant cousin, the
Duchess of Cole; trapped in this drab existence with her
ghastly mother and her idle brother and a very
long-suffering servant.
"Miss Melicent is working, ma'am," she heard Mrs. Lubbock
say with stolid patience. The housekeeper was a treasure,
unflappable and fortunately impervious to insult. "She has
sent for the doctorβ"
"I will not see him!" Mrs. Durham was becoming shrill.
Melicent sighed.
She reread the lines she had just written.
"'BorwickHall is built in late seventeenth-century style
with decorative plasterwork in the drawing-room.β¦'"
She sighed again. The style was very dry. Mr. Foster, the
antiquarian for whom she worked, disliked flowery language
in his architectural guides, and so her prose was dull
enough to send even the most devoted country house visitor
to sleep.
Mrs. Lubbock's heavy tread sounded on the stair and then the
housekeeper knocked softly on the door of the study.
"Begging your pardon, Miss Melicent, but your mama is
refusing to see the physician. I sent for Dr. Abbott, but he
is out on a call and his wife said she would send his
nephew, who is here to help him over Christmas, it being the
time that many people fancy themselves ill, so Mrs. Abbott
saysβ¦"
Mrs. Durham's bell rang sharply, simultaneous with the heavy
knocker sounding on the front door. A wail came from upstairs:
"Lubbock, where are you?"
Melicent rubbed her eyes. They felt tired and gritty from
writing in the afternoon's gray winter light. She really
should have lit a candle, except that candles were expensive
and she could not afford the luxury.
The knocker sounded again. Evidently the doctor's nephew was
an impatient man.
Mrs. Durham's wailings intensified.
"Please go up to Mama, Mrs. Lubbock, and see if you may calm
her," Melicent said wearily. "I shall explain to the new
doctor that Mama cannot see him at present. I expect that
Dr. Abbott warned him of Mama's caprices, but I do not doubt
that he will still be annoyed, having come all this way for
nothing."
Mrs. Lubbock lumbered back up the stairs and Melicent stood
a little stiffly, wiping her ink-stained fingers on her
brown worsted skirts. There was no time to check her
appearance in the mirror. The hallway was cold. In winter
they kept a fire only in the drawing room for visitors and
in Mrs. Durham's bedroom, which was often unhealthily
stuffy. The rest of the house felt like a cold larder in
comparison. Mrs. Lubbock's fingers turned red and
chilblained in the kitchen. Melicent kept a hot brick at her
feet when she was working, but even so her hands sometimes
became too cold for her to write.
She opened the front door. A blast of cold air swirled into
the hall, bringing with it a powdering of snow. The day was
even more inclement than Melicent had imagined. Dark gray
clouds lowered over the roofs of Peacock Oak.
She could barely see the gentleman standing in the shadow of
the porch, other than to acknowledge that he was very tall
and broad shouldered. The spiteful wind clipped her ankles
and set her shivering, and she stood aside quickly to allow
him entrance.
"Please come in, sir," she said. "You must be Dr. Abbott's
nephew. Thank you for coming so promptly, although I fear
you had a wasted journey. Mama will not see visitors today."
She could not quite keep the exasperation from her tone, no
matter how she tried. "Indeed, it is very bad of her to put
everyone to so much trouble, particularly when she knows we
cannot afford to payβ" He stepped into the light and she
turned to look at him properly for the first time. For one
long, agonizing moment her mind refused to accept the
evidence of her eyes.
"But you are not the doctor!" she said foolishly. "You areβ¦"
Her voice dwindled to nothing.
The gentleman raised one dark brow in mockery, then bowed
elegantly.
"Your husband," he said. "Indeed I am."
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