CHAPTER ELEVEN
A noise awoke Anna.
She sat up in bed, her breath coming quick as some nightmare faded from her mind. The fire in the grate burned low; no noise came from the connecting chamber.
Lockwood had deposited her home, but had not come inside—informing her, with cold courtesy, that he was wanted at the club to discuss some bill. She did not believe him, of course. By the newspapers’ accounts, he appeared in Parliament these days only to cast votes for his party, and his withdrawal from his former, more vigorous role in the debates kept everybody puzzled but her.
He was useless now. Living off her money, throwing parties and buying things, and not much else. He had gone to his club to get drunk, no doubt. But the noise that had woken her had not come from his rooms. When she crossed on silent feet to open the door, she found his bed empty, the sheets neatly tucked.
She stood in silence, conscious of the drumming of her heart, until she was certain she had imagined the noise. She turned back for her rooms—
It came again: a distant yell, abruptly cut off. And then, equally dimly, what sounded like cheers.
It was coming from below. Were the servants brawling? She would sack the lot of them, Lockwood’s objections be damned. She strode back into her room, taking care not to wake Jeannie in the dressing room as she added a wrapper to her nightgown, and then a heavy cloak over that.
Carrying a candle with her, she made her way down the stairs. In the entry hall, a familiar boy lay snoring on the marble tiles. The reek of liquor wafted up from him.
“Hey,” she said, and when that did not wake Wilkins, she gave him an ungentle nudge with her foot.
He jerked awake and leapt to his feet in one simultaneous motion—an impressive trick, but not the reason she stepped backward. His cravat had come unwound. A ropy scar encircled his throat.
Somebody had tried to hang him.
He goggled. “Ain’t—ain’t it late, ma’am?” He scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Beg pardon, I didn’t think—I was listening, I swear! Had somebody knocked—”
“Enough.” Her tone emerged too sharply in her effort to mask her shock. “Regardless of the hour, you are not to sleep on the job. Much less on the floor!”
“I—yes, ma’am.” His bow was a respectable effort, but undone by his half-swallowed belch. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”
She doubted that. But she found herself reluctant to scold him. He looked so remarkably young—nineteen or twenty at most. Yet that scar looked old, silvering. Somebody had abused him terribly when he was but a child.
He shifted, clearly made uneasy by her study of him. “Some warm milk might help,” he said. “If you can’t sleep. I could go fetch it for you.”
“That is not the job of the night porter,” she said sternly. “But . . . Wilkins, I do wonder—”
A raucous cheer came from the interior, causing Wilkins to blanch.
“Yes, that,” she said. “I do wonder if you might explain it.”
“Ah, ’twas probably a dog. Ever so many strays in—”
Another cry interrupted him. A snippet of hoarsely shouted song. Anna lifted her brow, daring him to persist with this nonsense about dogs.
He blew a breath through flattened lips and shrugged. “Some of the staff, ah, they’re—given to singing hymns before bed.”
“Right.” Shoulders squaring, Anna turned for the hall.
“Ma’am!” Wilkins came scrambling up on her heels. “Ma’am, it’s no sight for you!”
“Praising our Lord and savior? Nonsense. It sounds quite wholesome.” As Anna stalked through the corridor, the sound died away again, the thick Persian leader cushioning her footfalls. The hall was paneled in burgundy brocade, and fitted at intervals with long mirrors that reflected the flickering light of brass candelabra. It felt Gothic tonight.
The first door Anna opened revealed the darkened front parlor; the next, Lockwood’s book-lined study. The third uncovered the abandoned gallery.
She turned full circle, frowning. That brawling noise—there it came again, from inside the walls.
Ah! There was another door, cleverly disguised as part of the woodwork. She hunted for the handle.
“Ma’am, I’m telling you.” Wilkins sounded miserable. “It wouldn’t be fit for you. He thinks you’re asleep, he wouldn’t want—”
The door opened, revealing a stone-walled passage that pitched sharply downward, and a set of rough wooden stairs.
Her breath caught as the sound came more clearly now. A man was groaning—in pain.
Someone was being tortured in the cellar!
She was not prone to melodrama. But as she turned to face the alarmed servant, that scar gave her awful ideas. “Your throat,” she said tightly. “Who did that to you?”
Wilkins flinched, then groped hastily for the ends of his cravat. She had embarrassed him.
Alas, it seemed more important now to have an answer to the unthinkable question roiling her brain. “Was it my husband who did it?”
He recoiled. “Why—God save you, ma’am, from such a thought!” Head tipping, he gave her a marveling, appalled look. “Lock saved me, he did!”
Lock? What a wondrously informal mode of address for a servant. “Is that so?”
“Aye, that’s right, from the very noose itself!”
This notion suggested a dozen equally ludicrous possibilities. “You mean to say that the Earl of Lockwood rescued you from some criminal—”
“He wasn’t no criminal. He was the bloody chief!”
This outburst clarified nothing. “The chief,” she said flatly.
“Aye, of the prison camp!”
“The . . . prison camp.” He might have been speaking Greek. That odd accent made him difficult to follow. “What, a—a prison camp in New South Wales?” She blinked. “Do you mean a penal colony?”
“Whatever you call it,” he muttered. “If it wasn’t for Lock, I’d be dead—we’d all be dead by now—”
“You mean to say you met Lockwood in a prison camp. In a penal colony.”
She expected him to laugh. He was young and had a drunkard’s sense of humor: poor, very poor.
Instead, the color drained from his face. He studied her intently, then stepped backward. “I . . . forgive me, m’lady, I misspoke.”
“Oh, don’t stop now,” she said coolly. “I am most interested to hear how the Earl of Lockwood came to rescue you from—execution, was it? In a prison?”
The boy looked hunted suddenly.
“I—I must go watch the door.”
He fled the way they had come. She moved to follow him—and the shouts from below resumed, calling her attention back to the ominous darkened stairs.
A pity she’d never had a taste for Gothic novels. She felt certain that they would contain a great deal of useful advice for a woman in her situation. They would probably advise her against walking down a darkened stairway in her deviant husband’s house, particularly when it sounded as though someone were being strangled below.
The scientific method, on the other hand, discouraged leaping to assumptions. A theory should be tested before subscription to it.
She exchanged her candle for a nearby candelabra—heavy enough to serve as a weapon, in a pinch—and held it before her as she descended the stair.
• • •
It was no cellar at the bottom, but some kind of complex labyrinth of interconnected chambers. A bare and clean-swept hall, lit by gas fixtures set into iron brackets, led past doors that opened onto a series of neat accommodations, more barracks than bedrooms. Narrow cots, walls covered with newspaper cuttings, daguerreotypes and tintypes, rude sketches—the maids and housekeeper were lodged above, so these must be the quarters for the male staff.
Anna’s steps slowed. It was not proper for her to tour this area. But there, ahead, through that door, appeared to be a small shooting gallery—an odd thing to locate in the staff area. And farther ahead came the source of the noise, which had grown wild, suddenly—grunts and groans and a series of staccato thumps.
“Oh!” cried an unfamiliar voice, young and hoarse and male. “That’ll do it!”
She stepped around the corner and beheld a sight of savagery: two men attempting to beat each other to death, ringed by a dozen rapt male onlookers.
For a moment, amazed by the ferocity of their leaping, kicking attacks, she did not register their faces. The next second the taller one pivoted toward her, his opponent’s throat locked between his forearm and bicep, and she found herself gasping: it was her husband.
Horror washed over her like an ice bath. She stepped backward. There was no intelligence in Lockwood’s eyes. An animal glaze blurred his features. His victim cursed, heels scrabbling for purchase, hands clawing at Lockwood’s arm, and Lockwood’s grip seemed only to tighten.
The hair lifted on her nape, a response to the instinct of danger. The air was hot, moist, scented with sweat and blood. She retreated another step toward the corridor, her breath coming tight and fast. He was killing that man. He was the danger.
Someone would die. She had to stop it. “Stop this,” she said, but her voice was trembling, and nobody seemed to remark it.
Lockwood’s opponent found his footing suddenly. He was wolfish blond with cold dark eyes, and moved as fast as a cat: he launched himself backward, slamming Lockwood into the wall, then broke free with a violent twist that caused the onlookers to hoot. Pivoting, he fell into a crouch, his fists lifted. One of the rings glinting on his fingers—Anna squinted—looked to bear a crest.
“Not dead yet, eh?” he said in a mocking Oxbridge drawl. “Try again.”
Lockwood wiped sweat from his brow, leaving a smear of blood behind, then flashed a savage grin and came off the wall. The men fell into a prowling deadly dance, circling, feinting and jabbing. Lockwood’s fist connected—the blond staggered, then rebounded, landing a solid blow to Lockwood’s jaw. Now they clashed, pummeling each other—the blond threw an elbow at her husband’s face. Dirty move! Anna choked back a cry of protest when it connected. Lockwood lurched backward, and the rascal swiveled to kick him. How dare he! She lunged forward—
A hand caught her arm, gripping firmly. “Patience now,” said an old man, his mustache a luxuriant drooping white, yellowed by tobacco at its edges. “They’ll be done with each other soon enough.”
Lockwood had gotten free of the assault and advanced now with teeth bared.
“Nonsense,” Anna spat. The old man looked too respectable to attend this show—his suit was modest but neat, and he carried a top hat crushed under his arm. He looked like someone’s grandfather, kind gray eyes and deeply lined cheeks. “Who are you? Why aren’t you stopping this?”
“The name’s Francis Smith. And why should I stop it?” He quirked a white brow at her, then nudged up his spectacles to take a squinting look. “Here, allow me . . .” He gently pulled the candelabra from her grip. She had forgotten she still held it.
A cry from the crowd jerked her attention back to the fight. Men were a brawling species. In her childhood, Anna had watched her male cousins scrap over any number of stupid offenses. But this was something different. They were savaging each other.
“Just a friendly boxing match,” the old man said cheerfully.
Boxing! Hardly! Anna knew that sport. It had rules, and a system of point keeping. No scorekeeper would have been able to judge this brawl—nobody was even trying to keep points. Furious, she looked over the crowd. Half of them were strangers—the rest were the same men who slunk about this house at all hours in livery. They were cheering, these hooligans posing as house staff, chanting Lock, Lock! as though he were not their employer, but merely their champion, an animal masquerading as a civilized human being—
“Go on upstairs,” suggested Francis Smith. “No place for women here.”
No place for women? This was her house! She had paid for every inch of the interior! “Stop this!” she shouted.
A couple of onlookers casually glanced over, then rapidly looked again, their expressions startled as they inched away from her. One unfamiliar gentleman, lifting a dark brow, offered her a suggestive smile, then a wink.
But the two brawling brutes paid no heed. Their jabbing had transitioned into heavy, deadly blows. Lockwood struck out with an open palm, driving it straight into the other man’s nose.
She choked back a cry of shock. The blond stumbled back into the wall, clutching his face, blood gushing through his fingers.
“Oof,” said Francis Smith, wincing with sympathy. “Broken nose. Most unfortunate.”
But the injury did not give the blond man more than a moment’s pause. He lowered his head and charged Lockwood, smacking into her husband with a thud.
“Stop!” she screamed.
The two men grappled, clutching each other as close and fiercely as lovers, their feet clawing for purchase as they turned. They were too well matched. “They’re going to kill each other,” she whispered.
“Better dead than an easy mark,” said Smith.
His lunatic calm snapped her temper. She seized the candelabra and stepped forward, swinging for the blond brawler’s head.
The impact jarred her bones. She heard Lockwood’s startled curse as the other man dropped to the floor, his dark eyes rolling back, then closing.
The room went silent.
“Well,” Lockwood said, on a ragged hoarse laugh. “Victory to the countess, in one.”
She glared around the room, taking in each and every face as she set down the candelabra. “Get out,” she said. “All of you.”
Mutters rose—a dark, unhappy sound. The servants slunk out. Two well-dressed men, one of them the cheeky rogue who had winked at her, came forward to fetch the fallen fighter. “Breathing,” said that one. “Smith? You’ll set this, I hope.”
“Oh, indeed.” This remark came from directly beside her. The old man picked up a leather bag—a medical bag, it looked like.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked in disbelief.
“Something of the sort,” he said. “But never on Saturdays. Sundays, very rarely.”
“And you did not try to stop this?” Her outrage made her voice crack.
“Stop it? Dear, why would I? How else to keep their skills sharp?”
She turned away from him in contempt and dismissal, hot barbs on her tongue for her fool of a husband. But he had pulled himself off the wall. Grabbing his crumpled coat from the corner, he made his way out the door.
She caught up to him in the hallway. He looked barbaric—his hair disordered, his eye already blackening, the smear of blood across his cheek vivid against skin turned parchment pale.
He acknowledged her only with a brief irritated glance. “You should be asleep,” he said, and mounted the stairs.
She followed hard on his heels. “You are shameless,” she said. “Demented!”
As they emerged into the hall, he seized her by the elbow to pull her aside so his friends could hustle past. His grip caused some electric thrill to dance over her skin. She pulled away, appalled by herself. He smelled of sweat and violence—what a thing to make her heart trip!
“I demand an explanation,” she said through her teeth.
Lockwood slammed the hidden door, then leaned his weight against it. “That area below,” he said flatly, “does not concern you. Nor does anything that transpires there. Do you understand?”
Her face flamed. “You are brawling for pleasure for the entertainment of your staff. And those other people—who were they? Thugs and goons—”
“A baker,” he drawled as he hunted through his jacket. “A butcher, a candlestick maker.” Out came a handkerchief, which he used to wipe the blood from his face before tossing both linen and jacket aside. “It does not concern you, Lady Forth.”
“This is my house. I will not allow—”
“Go back to Scotland if you wish to play the master.”
Was this his answer to everything? “I will go in my own good time, and not a second beforehand.”
“Oh?” He stepped toward her. He was looming. Trying to frighten her now!
She straightened her shoulders and glared. Or tried to. But her wayward gaze slipped out of her control, dipping down his body. His linen shirt, sweat soaked, clung as closely as a second skin to his upper body. His pectorals were heavily developed, his abdomen banded with muscle. He looked like a man who regularly had done hard labor.
Perhaps, between the two of them, she was the more deranged. For his wildness, the scent of sweat and blood, suddenly riveted her, like a tuning fork calling her baser senses into a sudden ringing clarity. Here was the sight she’d been denied.
Without quite knowing what she intended, she pressed her palm flat against his belly.
He flinched. He felt so hot beneath her touch. She looked up into his face, her own belly turning liquid. His gaze burned as he watched her, a slight cruel smile turning the corners of his mouth.
Her fingers smoothed across his damp shirt, the hard muscle beneath it, and she heard his breath quicken. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said softly.
He stepped into her fully, crushing her against the door. “You should be,” he murmured.
Her eyes closed. The heat of him seemed to be enfolding her; each breath felt harder to draw. She could barely manage her next words: “I am your wife. Tell me . . .”
But his mouth swallowed the rest of her words. His kiss was punishing, openmouthed, consuming. She clung to his hard waist and kissed him back, tasting the wildness in him, wanting more, more, more—
He ripped free, speaking into her ear: “Here?” His voice was rough. “In the hall? Is that where you would like it next?”
Anyone could come along. She should have felt mortified. But where he pressed against her, she felt the proof of his readiness. It made her knees weak.
“Better here than blindfolded, I reckon.” God help her, it was true. She wanted to see him, to see what she felt pressed against her now.
His hand caught her chin, tilted up her face so he could take a narrow inspection of her features. “So impatient,” he said raggedly. “One wonders if you came to London with something to hide.”
She stiffened. The insinuation—that she carried a bastard in her belly, and was looking for a way to trick him into fatherhood—was intolerably offensive.
He saw her temper, and smirked as he released her.
“Wait,” she said, “I’m—”
“You will not go into the rooms below again. I will have your word on it.”
“You won’t have it. I want to look at your head. Is that man really a doctor? He should—”
“I will have your word,” he growled, “or set Wilkins to guard you.”
“Wilkins! The convict you saved from hanging?”
A flinch moved over his face. She pounced.
“You said you wanted a grand adventure—was that your notion of grandness? Sailing to Australia to find criminals to serve as your house staff?”
For a moment, his expression remained so remote that she thought he had not heard her, or had no intention to reply.
But then, all at once, he burst into laughter—laughing so forcefully that he leaned back against the wall to wipe tears from his eyes. As the laughter went on, it became somehow horrible, unnatural.
A chill moved through her. She stepped forward, wanting to touch him, but for some reason afraid now to do so. “Why are you laughing?” she whispered.
He had bracketed his eyes with one hand, which he now lowered to show her his smile—no humor in it, but something sharp and dark and cutting.
“I like this theory of yours,” he said. “Very swashbuckling. Let me see if I have it straight: I left you in a temper. I purchased passage to New South Wales. Then I proceeded to go ’round liberating prisoners. Oh yes, quite credible. Pity it took so long to gather them all—I should have placed an order by post.”
The ice in his voice stung her. “Have you some other explanation? That man said you rescued him from the gallows!”
“Is that what you want? Will an explanation convince you to leave me in peace?”
She snorted. “A fine start. Then might come an apology—ha! A groveling and extensive apology, in which you go down on your knees and beg for—”
“No.” He spoke flatly. “I will not go on my knees for anyone. But an apology, yes, you will have it. I am very sorry, Anna. I know it must have been shocking to find me gone. What a blow to your vanity. Why, you must have wept for a day or two at least.”
She stared at him, a dozen curses on her lips. But all of them were too good for him. “A day or two. Is that what you think?”
“Come now. We never claimed to love each other, did we? A marriage of convenience, wasn’t it?”
She swallowed hard. “Was it, then? I had begun to . . .”
No. She would not admit that.
His mouth twisted. He looked beyond her, though there was nothing to see. His pupils were dilated, consuming his irises; he looked like a man locked in darkness. “I am sorry.” He took an audible breath before meeting her eyes again. “If I could go back in time to change what happened, I would do so.”
It was not enough. He sounded indifferent. “I don’t accept your apology.”
“That is your choice, of course.”
She bit her lip, hating the sudden wave of misery that engulfed her. Why should she care? He clearly didn’t. He had no interest in her forgiveness; why, then, should she ache?
It was not for him she ached, but for the man she’d once imagined him to be. The secret dreams she’d woven around him—those were the losses she still mourned, despite her best efforts to forget.
“Fine,” she said. “You have apologized. Now you will explain. How did you end up with a half-hanged servant?”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he shrugged. “All right. You want it? Here it is: the night we were married, you and I quarreled, and I left the ship.”
Her heart tripped. “Yes.” He was going to tell her now, at last. “You left. You went to the tavern on the quay.”
“I never made it there.” His gaze shifted from hers, fixing on a spot just over her shoulder. “They came out of nowhere. Struck me on the head and bundled me into a vehicle.”
She blinked. “What?”
“When I woke, I was blindfolded. We were moving rapidly. Then—ether, I expect, something that knocked me out. I have few memories of the journey.”
Again with this ridiculous story? “Come now.” What kind of joke was this? His delivery was so monotone, his expression opaque. “You’re saying you were kidnapped.”
“Yes.”
Her skepticism sharpened her voice. “By whom?”
“Hired men.”
She snorted. “Hired by whom?”
His gaze sliced to her, sharp and direct. “Does it matter? I thought you wanted to know how I ended up with convicts as servants.”
There was more than one convict on his staff?
She crossed her arms, deeply uneasy now. If this was a prank, he did not seem to be enjoying it. “Go on, then.”
He nodded. “When I came to my senses again, I was being loaded onto a ship. A prison bark, bound for the colonies. A man was being removed from the bark—I slipped him my signet ring. I know not what became of it, but clearly he did not take it to the authorities. I found out later I had been traded for that convict, and his name was the one the crew knew me by.”
“I don’t . . . follow.”
He lifted a brow. “Are the words unclear, or the story itself? I am speaking as plainly as I know how.”
She felt herself redden. He spoke so coldly, as though every question she asked sank her further into his contempt. “You can’t expect me to believe this claptrap.”
He shrugged. “Probably not. The crew on the prison bark also found it difficult to believe. I learned quickly to keep my mouth shut, and let them call me whatever name they liked.”
She swallowed. That he was not trying to convince her made the story more chilling. It almost sounded like . . . truth.
She cleared her throat. “Then what? When did they realize their mistake?”
His smile was faint. “If they did, I was never informed. The journey took six months. It’s farther even than Indochina. Very rough seas. And cholera broke out. By the time we arrived at Botany Bay, half the convicts were dead.”
This was horrid. Cruel. Anger whipped through her. “Stop this. It’s not amusing.”
As though released by snapped strings, he turned to reach for the hidden door. Like an automaton, no feeling in him.
She caught his arm. His skin felt as hot as a branding iron. The hall felt icy, but new sweat was beading on his brow. “You must think me mad to believe this nonsense.”
His cold gaze dropped to her hand, fixing there until she let go. “You wanted the explanation, Anna.”
She wavered, then sank back against the wall. “Very well.” How far would he take this dreadful yarn? She crossed her arms again. “Finish it!”
He pivoted back, his shoulders squaring as he stared down at her. “Botany Bay, where the prisoners were unloaded. I spent a handful of weeks there. Then a very few of us were moved farther inland, to a camp called Elland.”
“A penal colony,” she said, to be clear.
“It was, once.” His color looked wan, almost corpselike, his lips taking on the bluish cast of the gaslight. “By the time we arrived there, it had been closed and rehabilitated into a private work camp attached to the local mine. We served as labor in that mine. That is where I spent the next two years.”
She opened her mouth once, twice. This was poppycock, of course. “And then?”
“And then the camp came to an end.”
“You escaped, I suppose? How convenient.”
His smile was cold and brief. “I put an end to the camp.”
A tremor went through her. She remembered suddenly how he had looked, boxing downstairs. The animal fury in his face. “Wilkins said . . .” She would not fuel this twisted fantasy he was developing for her. And yet . . . “He said you saved him from the gallows.”
He leaned back against the opposite wall, his posture casual as he shrugged. “Every man in this household was with me at Elland.” His consonants were beginning to slur—perhaps he had knocked his head. “Every man here saved each other, more than once.”
She realized that her hands were twisting together at her waist. Her fingers ached from the force of her grip. “You can’t expect me to believe this.”
He shrugged again, a drop of sweat dripping from his brow, and watched her—levelly, steadily, with an unreadable gaze. His eyes looked so dark, like windows to a nightmare. The wall supported his weight, but did not help his balance: he was swaying slightly.
She had a choice, she realized. She could dismiss this lunacy and conclude he was mad—or else a brilliant and bizarre liar, willing to invent improbable nightmares to avoid telling her his true itinerary over the last few years.
Or . . . she could believe what he said. Nausea boiled through her at the prospect. “If this were true, then you . . .”
Did not abandon me.
The selfishness of the thought made her wince. That was the least of what this story meant.
He seemed to misunderstand her grimace, for he shrugged before wiping his brow. “Yes, precisely. It’s pointless.”
“I—what? What do you mean?”
“You came here for the man you married. But that man—” His voice cracked. He took a long breath, blinking hard, before continuing. “That man is dead, and I have no interest in resurrecting him. His life—you, the vows we made to each other—I am done with them.”
She had no notion of how to decipher such nonsense. She felt as dizzy, nauseated, as he looked. “Liam, I . . .”
He did not wait for her to finish. He opened the door to return downstairs—but did not make it a step before he collapsed.