CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They walked out of the lecture hall into a bright, fresh day. A scudding breeze ruffled women’s skirts and lifted the hats off men’s heads, carrying them away through the sunshine.
Anna felt electrified, edgy and restless. Two women had approached her in the lobby, offering their cards and thanking her for her incisive questions. “You routed him,” the blonde had laughingly told her, but that was not true. Such was his reputation that in a week’s time, few people would remember his brief embarrassment.
But Anna would remember how she had spoken, and how concise and informed she had sounded, despite the pounding of her heart and the color in her cheeks. She would not forget that lesson.
“My tigress wife,” Liam said as they started down the pavement. He was still grinning. “Sir Montgomery will flinch from the next redhead he sees.”
She laughed. “I think . . . yes, I think I will contact that publisher again. The manuscript will require updating, of course—but I think I would be glad now to undertake whatever publicity they might require.”
He lifted her hand, delivering a kiss to her gloved knuckles that caused a group of young matrons, passing with their package-laden footmen in tow, to beam at him and then regard her through lowered lashes, appraising, perhaps, what she had done to deserve such gallantry.
What had she done? Only been herself—spoken her mind—in public, at last. And her husband rewarded her for it with kisses. Elated, she pulled him to stop by a bench bathed in sunlight. “Thank you, Liam.”
The light shaded the tips of his hair to the color of honey and glimmered in the long lashes that framed his amber eyes as he tilted his head. “For what?”
“Accompanying me today. Your presence gave me courage.”
With a quick sideways tug of his mouth, he denied it: “Nonsense, you’ve courage to spare. My presence had no role in that.”
It wouldn’t, from now on—not now that she had found her voice. But she had needed him by her side today in order to discover it. “No, it’s true.” She hesitated, feeling suddenly oddly shy as she sat down on the bench. Another gust of warm wind swept over them, fluttering through the edges of his hair, and causing the children playing in the park behind them to shriek with delight. “You make a very fine husband, you know.”
The bleakness passed over his face so quickly that someone else might have missed it, or doubted their own eyes, for he recovered immediately, with a swift and lopsided smile. “Oh?” He sat onto the bench beside her. “Very fine, you say? And here I’d always thought I’d fumble it.”
“I never feared so.” She bit her lip. Before the wedding, before you vanished, before I leapt to the wrong conclusions and cursed you as a wastrel. “When we met, I had been looking for a husband for two years. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No,” he said quietly. She could not see his expression—he had turned away, ostensibly to gaze out at the parade of pedestrians, fresh from the shops on Regent Street. But that sight also made a handy excuse for a man who did not wish to meet his wife’s eyes.
What were these moods? Until she learned how to pierce them, she suspected she would continue to find herself suddenly alone, although within arm’s reach of him.
“Well, it’s true,” she continued, pushing the words past the nervous knot in her throat. “Moira warned me that if I didn’t lower my standards, I would need to build a man from clay. I had started to fear she was right—and then came the Camerons’ party. I had almost declined to attend—did you know that? I wanted so much to be on Rawsey.” The memory suddenly amazed her. “Why, we might never have met, had I—”
“Fate,” he said flatly.
“Yes, fate.”
“Has a rather dark sense of humor, doesn’t it?”
She stared at his profile. “I am grateful for that fate, Liam.” Was he not so? Had everything that come afterward ruined the wonder of what preceded it? “That I met you, that we—”
“So generous.” He faced her, his posture somehow braced, as though against a strong wind. “Your judgment is too generous, I think. How many weeks have we spent together, in these four years of marriage? You may wish to reserve your praise until you can be certain I deserve it.”
“I am certain. Liam, what happened—it does not change who you are.”
“No,” he said softly. “That isn’t true, Anna. I am much changed. You are blind if you deny it.”
The hairs lifted at the back of her nape—a visceral response, perhaps, to the shadow that passed over them as a cloud scudded overhead.
“You are changed,” she said. “Very well. But I . . .” She could not say she would not have wished it otherwise. “I am tremendously happy with you.” That much was true. “That, I do know. And you cannot argue with what I feel.”
His smile looked effortful as he offered his arm to her. Heart sinking, she let him help her up—but as she rose, a man stepped up to them.
In his pinstriped suit, with his dark hair slicked down, and a gold watch chain snaking across his waistcoat, Stephen Devaliant was dressed for some business appointment and had the harried air of a man who was running late. “What a delightful coincidence,” he said.
“Oh, indeed. Delightful,” Liam drawled, releasing Anna’s arm to offer his hand.
She bit back an instinctive protest. She did not want him even to touch his cousin.
Devaliant, for his part, smiled and clasped Liam’s hand, though the breeze immediately forced him to let go, in order to catch the brim of his tall hat.
The day would be ruined if they did not walk away. But Liam resisted the subtle pressure that Anna exerted on his elbow. Devaliant, for his part, squared his shoulders and stood tall, as though braced against the buffeting of pedestrians who streamed by them—a young courting couple, an aged matron with a manicured poodle, several plain-dressed clerks marching in single file, boxes in their arms. “I was just thinking of you,” he said.
“Indeed?” said Liam. “With so many other matters to occupy you?”
“Ah, if you mean that trifling inconvenience concerning the new law, that is why I employ solicitors. No, I much prefer to think on pleasanter things—good jokes, amusing ironies. You see why you came to mind.”
She felt Liam’s muted surprise. His cousin’s animosity was no longer veiled.
“And Lady Lockwood—a fine surprise to see you in our fair city!” Stephen offered his hand to her, which she pointedly ignored. With a little laugh, he withdrew it. “My wife had mentioned you’d come to town, but I’m amazed you’re still here. I wouldn’t have imagined there was anything to keep you.”
“Oh, I find a great deal to recommend this city—barring the rare blight one might encounter in public.”
Devaliant showed his teeth, neat and white. “Yes, quite true. The city feels too small at times, does it not? For instance, I find myself followed everywhere by the same shambling group of hooligans. I think your husband knows them. Associates of his from abroad, no doubt.”
He was baiting her, trying to find out what she knew. She kept her cool smile affixed to her lips. “How curious. Paranoia, they say, is a symptom of decline. You might wish to make an appointment with your physician.”
“A fine idea,” he replied smoothly. “Coz, I’m certain you must have some miracle worker to recommend. You look remarkably well, considering your recent trials.”
Anna stiffened. Was that an allusion to the poisoning?
Liam obviously assumed so. “I would be glad to recommend him,” he said easily. “But even his powers are limited, and I don’t think you’ll stand in need of him much longer.”
In the brief ensuing silence, the two men locked eyes, and Anna began to fear that a public bloodletting was imminent. “Liam,” she said nervously, “shall we visit Hatchards before we—”
“By the way,” Devaliant interrupted, his pale gaze spearing her. “I do hope you didn’t take my wife’s rebuff too sorely. Her heart is very tender—I fear she would try to feed every waif who crossed her path. For her sake, I’ve instructed her to draw the line at dogs and their hoodwinked wives.”
She felt Liam’s arm harden to iron. “Enough,” he growled.
“What was that? Did you bark?”
“Spare us your nonsense,” Anna snapped. “We will bid you good day, sir.”
“Oh yes, of course, I would hate to interrupt your loafing in the park. Really, coz, I would wonder at you idling here like a common beggar, but I expect the fresh air still seems a novelty to you.”
Liam made some violent abrupt movement, which Anna checked by catching his arm again. “Not here,” she said urgently. “Not in public.”
“Oh, has he told you to expect better in private?” Stephen laughed. “Don’t believe him. So far all he’s managed is a parliamentary debacle organized largely by his friends. That, and a few rumors that my admirers know better than to believe—and a passel of confused creditors, irritated to find their time wasted when they realize I’m well in the black. I assure you, none of it has spoiled my sleep.”
“It isn’t your sleep I intend to ruin,” Liam said.
“Goodness!” Stephen made a mocking show of ducking, lifting his hands to shield him from some threat overhead. “Not another round of dunning—I couldn’t bear it!” Straightening, he grinned. “You could ram a hundred bills through Parliament, Liam—you could rip up every yard of my company track from here to Inverness. You still wouldn’t manage to bankrupt me. I recommend you try the old-fashioned route: a bullet, say. But perhaps the floggings crippled your aim?”
The dead look that came into Liam’s eyes sent a chill through her. His mouth turned in a slow half smile. “I am going to enjoy this,” he said very quietly.
Was Devaliant’s aim to bait him into a public murder? Alarmed, Anna said, “Step away from us. Now.”
“Or what?” Stephen smirked. “Will his knees buckle? My boots are rather dusty—they could do with a spit shine.”
There was no possible misinterpretation of this remark. He knew the precise details of what had been done to Liam.
As she felt her husband shudder, some queer red cloud enveloped Anna, violent and disembodying. It took control of her, lifted her hand. Her palm slammed into Stephen’s jaw, a solid blow that reverberated up through her shoulder.
He caught her wrist, his grip crushing as he yanked her against him.
“Careful,” he whispered in her ear. “I enjoy correcting female impertinence.”
She tried to yank free, with no luck. Wildly she turned to look for Liam.
He was staring in their direction, his jaw rigid, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Liam,” she gasped, but he seemed not to hear her. Devaliant squeezed harder, and she swallowed a pained grunt as she shoved the blackguard’s shoulder. “Let me go! Let—”
Liam seized his cousin’s arm and wrested it off her. Devaliant stumbled back, clutching his wrist and smiling.
“And to think you were once an athlete! I suppose torture does slow a man’s reflexes. Or is it your brain that got mangled?”
“I will see you dead,” Anna spat.
“You’d have a better chance at it than he would.” Devaliant’s contemptuous gaze flicked to Liam as he wiped his hand on his trousers. “Woof, little coz,” he said, etching a mocking bow before he turned and walked away.
Liam stared after his cousin with a strange, stricken look. After a moment, tentatively, Anna touched his arm. He flinched and sidestepped. “Enough,” he said roughly.
“Enough of him, to be sure.”
He looked at her, but his eyes were glassy, and she had the impression that he was seeing something else entirely. “He’s right.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard him.”
She bit her lip. So, Stephen knew what had been done to him. What difference? Stephen’s opinion did not matter a whit. That was what she wanted to say.
But in truth, she understood that it did make a difference. To fathom that Stephen knew the details of Liam’s degradation, his torture, was a fresh cruelty, salt in an unhealed wound.
“He’s loathsome,” she said. “Nothing he says is worth—”
“No. You don’t follow. He could have . . .” He pushed out a sharp breath. “He could have snapped your neck, Anna. While I stood there, he—” He abruptly ceased to speak. Setting his fist against his mouth, he shook his head once, sharply. His knuckles looked white.
His anguish seemed outsized to the cause. “He was never going to hurt me, Liam. He was only trying to frighten me. I wasn’t in any danger—”
His hand slipped away, revealing a horrible smile. “Ask, then.”
“Ask what?”
“Ask why it took so long for me to come to your aid.”
“I . . .” Remembering his strange, frozen posture, a pit opened in her belly.
No, she did not want to ask about that. “You were wise to hesitate. He was baiting you. He wanted you to make a public scene—”
“Stop.” His terrible smile vanished, leaving his face stark, his eyes hollow. “Don’t take pity on me.”
“Not pity.” She crossed her arms, miserable. She did not know the right thing to say.
“He is right,” Liam said softly. “My brain is mangled.”
“Oh, come now—”
“You’ve seen it before.” His voice strengthened. Grew cool and clinical. “At Hanover Square Rooms, for instance. And the first night you came to my rooms—after I bedded you. You saw the start of my panic.”
“I . . .” Suddenly fearing what her expression might reveal, she turned away toward the street. He had behaved oddly in those instances. But that did not mean his brain was damaged. “You’ve been through a trial, Liam, and it’s no wonder if you need time to heal from—”
His voice came so close by her ear that she jumped. “You did not want a drunkard’s child, Anna. Would you want the child of a madman?”
Panic made as sharp a spur as anger. She whirled on him. “I will not discuss nonsense! Your child—that is the child I will have. Drunk or mad or double headed, it makes no difference. But I won’t hear you recite your cousin’s words as though they had a lick of truth in them. Listen to yourself! He showed his hand today, and all you can talk of now—”
“He showed his hand,” he said softly, “and I had always thought that when he did, mine would be ready to strike. Instead, I watched him maul my wife.”
“I was not mauled.” But that was not the right thing to say, either. He was looking past her again, his expression remote.
“You should go back to Rawsey, I think.”
And now they were back to that? “Don’t give him this victory, Liam. Please.”
He exhaled, glancing back to her. For a moment, as his haunted gaze locked with hers, she thought she would be able to reassure him, after all. “He is nothing,” she said fiercely.
But then his gaze seemed to shutter. His expression smoothed, and his lips turned in a false, charming smile as he offered his arm.
“Come,” he said. “We’ll go find the coach.”
His mask was in place again.
His cousin could be vanquished. But his mask, she did not know how to breach.
For the first time all afternoon, she at last felt truly afraid.