“Marcus,” she called in the soft, throaty voice that never failed to arouse him. Despite his anger and torment, he felt his c*ck stir. “Come to bed, darling. I want you to hold me.”
Traitorously, his feet moved toward her. By the time he reached her, he had removed his coat and waistcoat. He stopped at the edge of the bed. “How was your day?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
She stretched, the movement of her legs pulling down the sheet so that her torso was exposed through the thin shift she’d worn to sleep. He grew hard, and hated himself for it when his thoughts drifted to the secrets she kept. Nothing could temper his response to her. Even now, his heart struggled to forgive her.
Wrinkling her nose, she said, “Truthfully? It was one of the most horrid days of my life.” Her mouth curved seductively. “But you can change that.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about your day instead. It was certainly better than mine.” Pulling back the covers, she silently invited him to join her. “Can we have dinner in our rooms tonight? I don’t feel like getting dressed again.”
Of course not. How many times would she want to dress and undress in one day? Maybe she hadn’t undressed at all. Maybe St. John had merely pushed her skirts up and …
Marcus clenched his jaw and willed the image away.
Sitting on the bed, he yanked off his shoes. Then he turned to her. “Did you enjoy your trip into town?” he asked casually, but it didn’t fool her.
Elizabeth knew him too well.
She made a great show of sitting up in the bed and fluffing the pillows into a comfortable pile. “Why don’t you simply say what you mean?”
He tore his shirt over his head, then stood to remove his breeches. “Did your lover not bring you to orgasm, love? Are you anxious for me to finish what he started?” He slid into bed next to her, but found himself alone. She had slipped out the other side and stood at the foot of the bed.
With hands on her hips, she glared at him. “What are you talking about?”
Marcus leaned back against the pillows she had so recently arranged. “I was told you spent some time with Christopher St. John today, in my carriage with the curtains closed. He gave you a touching kiss goodbye and an open welcome to call on him for anything you might need.”
The violet eyes sparked dangerously. As always, she was magnificent in her fury. He could barely breathe from the sight of her.
“Ah so,” she murmured, her lush mouth drawn tight. “Of course. Despite your insatiable appetite for me, which often leaves me sore and exhausted, I find I still require further sexual congress. Perhaps you should commit me?”
Turning on her bare heel, she left.
Marcus stared after her, agape. He waited to see if she would return and when she did not, he pulled on his robe and followed her to her room.
She stood by the hall door in her dressing gown, telling a maid to bring up dinner and more headache powder. After sending the servant away, she slipped into her bed without looking at him.
“Deny it,” he growled.
“I see no need. You are decided.”
He stalked over to her, caught her by the shoulders, and shook her roughly. “Tell me what happened! Tell me it’s false.”
“But it’s not,” she said with arched brow, so damn collected and unruffled he wanted to scream. “Your men related the events exactly.”
He stared at her in shock, his hands on her shoulders beginning to shake. Afraid to do violence, Marcus released her and clasped his hands behind his back. “You have been meeting with St. John and yet you won’t tell me why. What reason would you have for seeing him?” His voice hardened ruthlessly. “For allowing him to kiss you?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer his questions. Instead, she asked one of her own. “Will you forgive me, Marcus?”
“Forgive you for what?” he yelled. “Tell me what you’ve done! Have you taken a fancy to him? Has he seduced you into trusting him?”
“And if he has?” she asked softly. “If I’ve strayed, but want you back, would you have me?”
His pride so revolted at the thought of her in the arms of another man that, for a moment, he thought he would be violently sick. Turning away, his fists clenched convulsively at his sides. “What are you asking?” he bit out.
“You know very well what I’m asking. Now that you are aware of my duplicity, will you discard me? Perhaps now you’ll send me away. Now that you no longer want me.”
“Not want you? I never cease wanting you. Every damned moment. Sleeping. Waking.” He spun about. “And you want me too.”
She said nothing, her lovely face a mask of indifference.
He could send her to the country with his family. Distance himself from her …
But the mere thought of her absence made him crazy. His ache for her was a physical pain. His pride crumbled beneath the demands of his heart.
“You will stay with me.”
“Why? To warm your bed? Any woman can do that for you.”
She was only an arm’s reach away and yet her icy demeanor had her miles from him.
“You are my wife. You will serve my needs.”
“Is that all I am to you? A convenience? Nothing more?”
“I wish you were nothing to me,” he said harshly. “God, how I wish you were nothing.”
To his amazement, her lovely face crumpled before his eyes. She slipped from the bed and sank to the floor. “Marcus,” she sobbed, her head bowing low.
He stood frozen.
She wrapped her arms around his legs, her head resting on his feet, her tears slipping between his toes. “I was with St. John today, but I didn’t stray from you. I could never.”
Near dizzy with confusion, he lowered himself slowly to the floor and took her in his arms. “Christ … Elizabeth …”
“I need you. I need you to breathe, to think, to be.” Her eyes, overflowing with tears, never left his face. Her hand moved to cup his cheek and he nuzzled into her touch, breathing in her scent.
“What is happening?” he asked, his voice hoarse from his clenched throat. “I don’t understand.”
She pressed her fingertips to his mouth. “I will explain.”
And she did, her voice breaking and faltering. When she fell silent, Marcus sat stunned.
“Why didn’t you confide in me before?”
“I didn’t know the whole of the story until this afternoon. And when I did know it, I couldn’t be certain how you would react. I was afraid.”
“You and I, we are bound.” He caught her hand and held it to his heart. “Whether we will it or no, we are in this together—our life, our marriage. You may not have wanted me, but you have me all the same.”
There was a rap at the door. Marcus cursed, then stood, pulling her up with him. Opening the portal, he accepted the dinner tray. “Tell the housekeeper to make preparations to pack.”
The servant bowed stiffly and left.
Elizabeth frowned at him, her porcelain skin pinked from crying. “What are you about?”
Setting the tray aside, he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the sitting room to his room. “We are retiring to the country with my family. I want you out of London and tucked away for a while until I can make sense of this muddle.” He closed the door behind them. “We have been concentrating on St. John. I felt secure enough staying in Town when he was the only perceived threat. Now I have no notion of whom to suspect. You are not safe here. It could be anyone. Someone we invited to our betrothal ball. An acquaintance who comes to call.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“But what of Parliament?” she asked.
He shot her an incredulous glance as he shrugged out of his robe. “Do you think I care more about Parliament than I do about you?”
“It is important to you, I know that.”
“You are important to me.” Moving to her, he loosened her dressing gown and pushed it to the floor, then divested her of her shift.
“I’m hungry,” she protested.
“So am I,” he murmured as he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“I agree, leaving London would be wise.” Eldridge paced in front of the windows, his hands clasped behind his back, his tone low and distracted.
“There was no way to know,” Marcus said softly, understanding how difficult it must be to learn of a traitor in their midst.
“I should have seen the signs. St. John could not have eluded justice all these years without some assistance. I simply didn’t want to credit it. My pride wouldn’t allow it. And now, perhaps there is another among us, maybe more.”
“I say the time has come for us to be more persuasive with St. John. So far, he is the only individual who seems to know anything about Hawthorne or the bloody journal.”
Eldridge nodded. “Talbot and James can see to him. You see to Lady Westfield.”
“Send for me if there’s a need.”
“I probably shall.” Eldridge sank into his chair and sighed. “At the present moment, you are one of the few men I can trust.”
For Marcus, there was only one man he could trust to care first and foremost for Elizabeth, and when he left Eldridge, he went straight to him, and told him everything.
William stared down at Hawthorne’s book in his hands, and shook his head. “I never knew of this. I was not even aware that Hawthorne kept journals. And you.” He raised his gaze. “Working for Eldridge … How alike we are, you and I.”
“I suppose that is why we were once good friends,” Marcus said without inflection. His gaze drifted around the study, remembering when he had sat in this very room and arranged marriage settlements. So long ago. He stood, and prepared to depart. “Thank you for guarding the journal.”
“Westfield. Wait a moment.”
“Yes?” He paused midstep, and turned about.
“I owe you an apology.”
Every muscle in Marcus’s body stiffened.
“I should have heard your version of events before passing judgment.” Setting the book aside, William rose to his feet. “Explanations are perhaps worthless at this point, and in the end they are just excuses for why I failed you as a friend.”
Marcus’s anger and resentment ran deep, but it was a tiny spark of hope that prompted him to say, “I would like to hear them, in any case.”
William tugged at his cravat. “I had no notion of how to feel when Elizabeth first mentioned her interest in you. You were my friend, and I knew you were inherently a good man, but you were also a scoundrel. Knowing my sister’s fears, I thought you two would be a bad fit.” He shrugged, a sign not of nonchalance, but of sheepishness. “You’ve no idea what it is like to have a sister. How you worry for them, and want to protect them. And Elizabeth is more fragile than most.”
“I know.” Marcus watched his old friend begin to pace nervously, and knew from experience that when William moved so restlessly, he was in deadly earnest.
“She was mad for you, you know.”
“Was she?”
Snorting, William said, “Bloody hell, yes. She went on and on about you. And your eyes, and your blasted smiles, and a hundred other things I did not care to hear about. That is why, when I woke to her tearstained missive about your indiscretion, I took it to be true. A woman in love will believe anything her lover tells her. I assumed you were beyond redemption for her to run off as she did.” He stilled, and faced him. “I am sorry I assumed. I am sorry I did not go after her, and talk some sense into her. I am sorry that later, when I knew I had done you an injustice, I did not come to you and make amends. I allowed my pride to dictate my actions, and I lost you, the only brother I have ever known. I am most sorry about that.”
Marcus sighed inwardly, and walked to the window. He stared out at nothing, wishing he could give some glib rejoinder to defuse the tension. Instead, he gave the moment the attention it deserved.
“You are not entirely to blame, Barclay. Neither is Elizabeth. If I had told her about the agency, none of this would have happened. Instead, knowing how she longed for stability, I hid it from her. I wanted to have everything. I did not realize until too late that what I wanted and what I needed were two different things.”
“I know it is my commitment to Elizabeth that brought you here today, Westfield, but I want you to know that I am equally committed to you. If you ever require a second, I will not fail you again.”
Marcus turned, nodded, and welcomed the chance presented to him. “Very well, then,” he drawled, “we can call it even, if you forgive me for stealing Lady Patricia from you, although I think we both agree that your offense was greater.”
“You stole Janice Fleming, too,” William complained. Then he smiled. “Although I thrashed you for that one.”
“Your memory is faulty, old chap. It was you who ended up in the trough.”
“Good God, I forgot about that.”
Marcus twirled his quizzing glass by its ribbon. “You once took a dunking in the Serpentine, too.”
“You fell in first! I was attempting to assist you when you pulled me in.”
“You would not have wanted me to drown alone. What are friends for, if not to suffer together?”
William laughed. Then they shared a grin, and an unspoken agreement to truce. “Truly. What are friends for?”
Chapter 20
It was late afternoon on the second day of travel when they arrived at the ancestral home of the Ashford family. The compelling castle-like appearance of the massive mansion gave mute testimony to the perseverance of Marcus’s lineage. Turrets rose at varying heights across the great expanse of the stone exterior that sprawled for some distance to the left and right of the front door.
The three carriages and luggage cart slowed to a stop. Instantly the front door of the mansion flew open and a multitude of servants in Westfield livery descended the steps.