DESPITE JEM’S EUPHORIC welcome, Jack found himself nervously pacing Belle’s parlor while his enthusiastic emissary went to fetch his mistress. Would she receive him? Or send Jem back with a message that they had nothing further to say to each other?
He was formulating the outlines of a counterattack, should the latter prove true, when the parlor door opened.
Even before he turned toward it, he sensed her presence.
In the next instant, the sight of her filled his eyes, the beauty and dearness of her washing over him with the force of a Channel tide breaking onto a Dover beach. For a few seconds he was beyond speech, content to breathe in the air that carried her distinctive lavender scent.
She stood watching him, her calm eyes and expression less face giving him no clue to her feelings. Then, belatedly remembering his manners, he swept her a bow. “Lady Belle, ’tis a pleasure to see you again.”
“Captain Carrington,” she said, extending her hand and allowing him, to his delight, to kiss her fingers. He had to struggle to make himself let them go.
She must not hate him completely if she’d agreed to receive him, but he couldn’t bear to begin without discovering exactly where he stood with her.
“I wasn’t sure you would come down. Does this mean you’ve considered forgiving me?”
A slight smile curving her lips, she motioned him to a chair. “It would be a great deal easier to believe you a villain, but after examining events in a calmer frame of mind, I found there was nothing to forgive. Lord Rupert had every reason to twist the truth. And…and you were correct. To believe that you deceived me, that what we shared was only a sham, would be a sin against both your honor and my heart. I expect I owe you an apology.”
As those sweet words filled his ears, relief and gladness welled up from deep within him. ’Twas better, far better than he’d dared hope. He wanted to fall to his knees and beg for her hand that very moment. Reining in that desire, he replied, “Having you believe me is enough.”
“That what we had was true and honest does not change the fact that our…interlude had to end. Nor can it be repeated, as you must realize. So—why did you come?”
She might believe him, but she still meant to send him away. Begging all the angels of heaven to lend him their most persuasive words, he said, “To tell you a story. About two sisters and their mother, forced after the death of the father to give up their home and travel to the distant cousins who promised to take them in.”
Though her calm expression did not change, he heard her quick intake of breath, saw her hands clench the fabric of her skirts. “Should I go on?” he asked.
She hesitated, not meeting his eyes. “If you must.”
“During the trip, the mother fell gravely ill. The elder sister sent the younger one to the cousins’ house with their maid and remained to tend her mother, who died a week later, leaving her virtually penniless and alone—except for a gentleman who had broken his journey at the inn to escape a winter storm.”
He paused, but Belle said nothing. Her gaze fixed on the window, she sat perfectly still—except for the thumbs rhythmically stroking the muslin of her skirts.
“Helpful throughout the mother’s illness,” Jack continued, “this gentleman insisted on paying the girl’s expenses at the inn and the costs of the mother’s burial. He then convinced her that it would be better for her to accompany him home and wait there while he contacted her family and requested that someone come fetch her.”
He paused again, but still Belle remained silent. Finally he said softly, “How long was it after Bellingham took you from the inn before you realized he had no intention of restoring you to your family?”
For a few heartbeats longer, Belle sat as immobile as the Three Graces carved into the marble of the mantel. Then she closed her eyes, a single tear slipping down her cheek.
Unable to stand it any longer, Jack went to her and drew her into his arms.
He held her while her shoulders shook with silent sobs, his heart pierced by anguish at her grief and fury for the vile deception that had been perpetrated upon her. Finally she took a shuddering breath and pushed away.
“I should not have gone with him, I suppose. But he seemed so sincere, and truly I was destitute. I’d spoken to the landlord about serving in the taproom, but…but the way the men looked at me after Mama died made me uneasy.”
She knuckled the last of the tears from her eyes. “Bellingham did contact my cousins. They told him that, having lived with him at his hunting box for several weeks by then without a chaperon, my reputation was ruined. As I had disgraced my name, they…they no longer wanted me. I was dead to them, and they would tell my sister I’d succumbed to the same illness that took Mama. So I stayed with Bellingham because I had no place else to go.”
She exhaled a gusty breath. “Would you fetch me a glass of wine, please?”
“Of course.” Jack went to the side table, frowning as he poured them each a glass. The innkeeper’s wife told him a gentleman had come back later to commission a tombstone for Belle’s mother, offering a hefty extra sum if they would set one up nearby with the daughter’s name. The man had left another sack of coins with instructions to tell anyone who might inquire that both women had died.
He’d believed that gentleman to be Bellingham. But might it have been Belle’s cousin instead? Before he mentioned anything to her, he would need to find out.
After taking a sip, Belle said, “I suppose I might as well tell you the rest. After I discovered that my…my family no longer wanted me, I begged Bellingham to let me go into service. He refused, saying that a girl as lovely as I, unprotected by family and friends, would soon be preyed upon by some lecherous man, and this his conscience simply couldn’t allow. Remembering the way the men had looked at me at the inn, I believed him.”
“Conveniently for Bellingham,” Jack said, though he had to acknowledge the truth of her protector’s warning.
“He told me some other solution would present itself. Meanwhile, his attentions became more and more marked, until one day he declared he had fallen in love with me the moment he saw me at the inn. Since he was already married, he could not offer me his name, but I would make him the happiest man on earth if I would consent to become his…paramour.”
Belle took another sip, her eyes once more focused on the far distance. “I resisted, of course, begging him to let me serve his household in some other fashion. But he said his wife, who detested him, would eventually hear of it and seize the first opportunity to get rid of me behind his back. Every day he swore his love anew, vowing to cherish and protect me until the end of his days, if I would just grant his most fervent desire. As time passed, he began saying that, unless I came under his protection, there would be no place for me in his house and he would be forced to send me away. Finally, in despair at losing my family and rationalizing that if Bellingham loved me, it would be less a sin, I…I agreed.”
“What else could you have done?” Jack asked.
She raised haunted eyes to him. “Something. Anything. For a time, I tried to convince myself that I’d come to love him, too—perhaps to justify to myself complying with all he taught me to do to serve his pleasure. Until one night, he used me so publicly, so shamefully, that I could no longer blind myself to the fact that he cared only for the lust I could satisfy.”
“At Vauxhall,” Jack said.
Her gaze sharpened. “So you know of it, too?” When he nodded, she gave a bitter laugh. “I ran away that night. Mae happened by me at the river, about to cast myself in, and persuaded me to come with her. Bellingham didn’t locate me until several days later. Claiming he’d been too foxed to realize what he was doing, he begged my forgiveness, said no one but the handful of witnesses would ever learn what had happened that night. Promised he would never do such a thing again.”
“And you believed him?”
“No. I suppose I’d known from the first that his pretty words were a lie, but couldn’t bring myself to face the truth. Vauxhall forced me to confront what I’d become. A whore—just a whore, no better than the harlots plying the Covent Garden street corners. I hated us both for it.”
“Yet you went back to him. Because by then, you truly had no other choice?”
“So Mae tried to tell me, in addition to urging me to take advantage of his penitence to extract the maximum benefit in gold and jewels. But I’d have thrown it all in his face—except that he found another, better way to force my compliance. In my darling, innocent sister.”
“How could he affect her life?” Jack demanded.
“My cousins had accepted her on sufferance, he said, intending to make her their unpaid drab. To prevent that, he’d been sending them money—blood money for having seduced me, I suppose—to guarantee she would be treated as a daughter of the house. He threatened to cut off funding her if I did not return and resume our…relationship.”
So Bellingham had used a child to control her—just not his own, though that didn’t much mitigate the infamy of the act. Not until his first rush of rage faded did it occur to Jack that this description of her sister’s position in her cousins’ house did not match what Catherine Germayne had told him of her uncle Thaddeus and aunt Mary.
Or had the arms with which they’d welcomed her been eased open by a judicious application of Bellingham’s coin? After all, her relations had recently managed to fob off the inconvenience and expense of presenting her onto an obliging neighbor.
’Twas another mystery he must solve before discussing the matter with Belle.
“Once again, you were forced to remain,” he summed up.
“Yes. Though this time, I made demands of my own. I promised myself I would connive until I accumulated wealth enough to support Kitty myself, and then I would leave him and never look back.”
“But Bellingham made sure that never happened?”
“Not exactly. A year ago, my solicitor advised me my financial reserves were now sufficient for me to maintain both myself and Kitty. When Bellingham realized he could no longer use her to hold me, he threatened to shoot himself if I left. After I laughed in his face, he seized a pistol, though his valet deflected the shot so it merely grazed his shoulder.”
“Good Lord!” Jack exclaimed. Was the man mad? Or had he become so obsessed by Belle he could not contemplate living without her? Despite his contempt for Bellingham, Jack couldn’t help feeling a reluctant sympathy.
“Whether he would truly have killed himself,” Belle continued, “I was never sure. If he did, though, I would be implicated, and for Kitty’s sake, I couldn’t risk that. But from that moment, I forbade him to touch me.”
“And he agreed?”
Belle shrugged. “I gave him no choice. I hoped he would quickly tire of the arrangement and set about replacing me. Instead, it seemed to make him even more anxious to keep me under his control. In any event, he scarcely allowed me out of his sight. May heaven forgive the blasphemy, but his death was a blessed relief. After almost seven years, I was at last free. And Kitty, having grown into the young woman I’d prayed she’d become, is now in London, taking her rightful place in the world. She is lovely, isn’t she?”
Jack started. “Why do you ask me?”
Belle smiled, her expression this time wistful. “I saw you riding with her in the park.”
“I thought ’twas you I’d glimpsed in the fog! But I’d been missing you so, I told myself I’d only imagined it. Only imagined the resemblances I saw in the face of Catherine Germayne.”
“So you do know her.”
“She seems to have become my sister’s best friend. As I learned more about her, the similarities in your appearance and mannerisms—there are many, you know—combined with the parallels between what she relayed about her life and the bits and pieces you had told me, convinced me there must be a link. So I rode to the inn to find out.”
Belle’s eyes widened. “You will not expose the connection, surely! ’Twould ruin—”
“No, I shall say nothing unless—until—you wish it.”
“Thank you. I hope one day to be able to reveal myself to her, though ’tis unlikely she will wish to acknowledge me. You have spoken with her at length?”
“Yes. I’ve accompanied her and my sister, Dorrie, on several excursions.”
“Oh, do tell me about her! What she speaks about, her interests and her accomplishments. Please!”
Though Jack was much more interested in discussing what the knowledge he’d pieced together and Belle had just confirmed meant for the two of them, he was not proof against the longing in her eyes. Having finally penetrated the mystery that had driven him practically from the moment he’d met her, he could wait a bit longer. Until he’d offered her the few observations he’d garnered and that she so clearly craved to hear about the sister she’d sacrificed so much to protect.
“She’s an excellent horsewoman. Soft of voice, keen of mind, and witty—much like you. An excellent performer on the pianoforte, too, my sister says.”
“Her dowry is handsome, as I have reason to know.” Belle lowered her eyes, her tone diffident. “She will make some fortunate gentleman an excellent wife, will she not?”
It took him but an instant to catch the implication. “So she shall. Some other gentleman, Belle. There is only one woman I wish to marry, and it is not your sister, pretty and accomplished though she be.”
Her chin jerked up, her eyes searching his. “You cannot mean…”
“’Tis exactly what I mean. When I left you at Bellehaven, I’d resigned myself to do what duty and my intention, before I met you, indicated—to look for a well-bred, intelligent, compatible lady to make my wife. Over the past weeks, I have met dozens who fit that description. But none who warms my heart like you do or—” he paused, brushing his finger over her lips, that simple action sending a shudder through her frame and his “—who awakens my senses simply by walking into a room. No other lady inspires me with the desire to swing her in circles or denude the landscape of wildflowers to make her a bouquet. I love you, Belle. You are the only well-bred, intelligent, compatible lady I want.” He pushed off the sofa to go down on one knee before her. “Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide. “You are serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“But…but you can’t have considered! ’Twould be disastrous—”
He put a finger to her lips. “I have considered. The lady I love at my side, or a marriage of convenience to a woman to whom I could never pledge more than respect. My happiness versus the superficiality of social acceptance.”
“Do not despise what has always been yours.”
“I don’t discount it—but neither do I prize it above all else. Once what happened to you becomes known, you may find that social acceptance is not beyond the realm of possibility for you, either. But whether that proves true or not, I’m no more a creature of London than you, Belle. I mean to live at Carrington Grove. We could be happy there. Please, say you will let us try.”
“And are you willing to gamble your family’s position on the unlikely possibility that society might forgive me my past? The future of your innocent sister?”
She had struck the one weak link in his argument. “No,” he admitted with a sigh. “Though I intend to do my utmost to persuade you to marry me, I do not propose for us to wed until Dorrie is safely settled. I know you prize your independence. Life has given you little reason to place any trust or confidence in men of our rank. But for the few months until Dorrie marries, will you promise to at least consider my proposal, Belle?”
She gazed at him, regret, exasperation—and longing—in her eyes. “’Tis preposterous.”
“Indeed.”
“I ought to refuse you outright.”
“Perhaps you should. After all, I’m not of whole mind. You now occupy too much of it for me ever to be whole again—without you at my side. Have pity on this poor, doomed sufferer…and say yes.”
She was wavering, he could tell. And so in one swift movement he reached to cup her face and kissed her.
He remembered the times—too many times—on campaign when the supply wagons had fallen behind the troops, when they’d hunted hares and foraged for roots and berries to sustain them. But in his leanest days, he had never hungered for anything as much as he had for this kiss.
He’d meant it to be a gentle, respectful salute. But apparently she’d missed him, too, for almost immediately her arms came up to encircle his neck, her nails biting into his back, her mouth opening to his and her tongue plunging in, as if she could not taste him deeply enough.
Her unexpectedly passionate response instantly overwhelmed the tight rein he’d been maintaining over his simmering senses. After weeks without her, it took every ounce of his soldier’s control to keep himself from laying her back on the sofa, popping open his trouser buttons and thrusting them into the intimate contact she seemed to crave as much as he did. Arms wrapped around her, his hard length sheathed within her, making them both complete.
Hands fisted and neck corded with the strain of caging the desire roaring through him, he broke the kiss, shaking as he pushed her away and waited for his voice to steady enough for speech. “P-promise me.”
He felt gratified that her breathing took just as long to control. “I…I’ll consider it. But only after your sister is married. And only if your family agrees.”
That was enough, more than he’d dared hope for. “So be it.” He gave a ragged laugh. “Given how anxious I am to claim you as my bride, I shall have to hurry Dorrie’s young man to the sticking point. And once her engagement is announced, I shall haunt your door until you accept me just to clear your entryway of my carcass.”
“Perhaps it is just as well that I shall soon be returning to Bellehaven.”
His enthusiasm dimmed. “When? And why must you go?”
“I always meant to spend this Season at Bellehaven. I’ve worked for too many years to insure Kitty’s success to risk having some sharp-eyed, scandal-minded ton gossip tumble to the resemblance between us, as you did.”
“But I noticed only because I was looking for it.”
“Nonetheless, ’tis a chance I’m not prepared to take.”
Disappointed though he was, Jack could understand her caution. “Leave if you must. But you should expect me at Bellehaven soon, prepared to be my most persuasive!”
Her eyes held a tenderness that made his heartbeat speed like drums beating the advance. “But now you must go before someone sees you and realizes I am in London.”
He captured her hand and kissed it. “I shall go because you ask it—and because I can now look forward to the day when I shall never have to leave you again.”
She smiled, but did not reply in kind. He told himself not to be disappointed, that what she’d said to him thus far was more than sufficient.
“Goodbye, Captain Carrington,” she said as he bowed himself to the door. “My dearest Jack.”
His heart warmed with delight at that addendum. But as he reached the threshold, he couldn’t help pausing to pose one last question. “Do you love me, Belle?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes and she hesitated. He damned the yearning that had compelled him to ask, pushing her to a declaration she might not yet be ready to make.
He should give her time, let her adjust to the idea of wedding him. Keep her secrets, prove himself worthy of her trust and confidence. He was about to tell her to disregard the question when she softly said, “Yes.”
Dizzy euphoria made his ears ring, as if a battery of nine-pounders had fired right behind him.
“Then anything is possible.” Bowing once more, he walked out.