CHAPTER FIVE
At home, Anna discovered that her husband had emerged from hiding, and was working—so Wilkins informed her—in his study.
Wilkins was not wearing livery, but his dark suit looked respectable, if a touch too loose on his scarecrow frame. His auburn hair had been neatly pomaded. “Very good,” Anna informed him as she handed over her cloak. “Mind you, next time I return, you should not volunteer information until I request it. But otherwise, I am pleased: you opened the door promptly, and you appear to be sober.”
The boy beamed so vigorously that she found herself momentarily startled by how young he looked. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m trying, I swear it!”
His accent was curious; she could not place it. “Where are your people from, Wilkins?”
“Lincoln, ma’am.”
“Your accent doesn’t sound northern to me.”
“Oh—no, ma’am. My parents were from Lincoln, but I was born in New South Wales.”
Jeannie had started up the stairs, and Anna caught her maid’s shocked glance from the landing above. This was, indeed, a notorious origin.
Clearing her throat, she said gently, “You will not bandy that abroad, Wilkins. Some ignorant visitor might mistake you for the child of convicts.”
Wilkins looked taken aback. “I—well, ma’am, I . . .” Frowning, he nodded and clasped his hands behind him. “I’m from Lincoln,” he said firmly. “Only Lincoln.”
“Quite right.” Cheered by her salubrious effect on the staff—which only highlighted the pathetic nature of Lockwood’s failure to intervene with them earlier—she turned on her heel and made for the study.
She opened the door without knocking. Lockwood was at his desk, scribbling something. “I thought you were off to Tiger Bay,” he said absently.
“Tiger Bay? A curious name.”
The sound of her voice worked a change on him. As he looked up, she saw how the ease went out of him, the line of his shoulders subtly stiffening.
A strange pang ran through her. They had not been enemies. Their marriage had been, in the broadest outlines, one of convenience—but they had liked each other very much.
Liked, ha! That had not been the word she’d used privately, in the days leading up to their wedding.
But she’d been a fool. And then he’d proven so: he’d abandoned her.
She reminded herself of that, reaching by habit for her anger, which made a durable shield against any stray whims that wished still to grieve. To grieve, one must lose something real—and she had not lost anything but her own illusions about him.
“Good afternoon,” he said, laying down his pen but not rising from his seat. “Was there something you needed?”
“Yes. An appointment with your cousin Stephen. Preferably a dinner, or something friendly and casual in appearance.”
His smile faded. “My cousin.”
“Yes.”
“For what purpose?”
Irritation prickled through her. “We have a business matter to discuss.”
“Concerning?”
“Why do you care?”
He rose. “Why do you hesitate to answer?”
His soft voice sent a peculiar chill through her. Not understanding it, she frowned.
“How remarkable,” she said. “You spent three years traipsing the world without a care for your properties. Not a single letter, not a line of inquiry. But now you wish to know all the details?”
His lips turned, but it was a dead smile, not to be trusted. “I am reforming,” he said as he came near. The wolf’s look was back in his eyes, flat and cold.
She found herself taking a step backward to seize hold of the door handle, though she could not follow why her instincts were suddenly screaming at her. “Well, that’s very good of you. But you may limit your reform to your own business, not mine. If you don’t wish to answer me, I will simply write to him myself—”
He slapped the flat of his hand against the door behind her, boxing her in place. She stared at him in mute astonishment.
“Tell me,” he said, “why you need to speak with him.”
Her heart was tripping. She dragged a breath in through her nose. “A simple question, that’s all.”
“Go on.”
“Some railway company has leased a stretch of land that includes Clachaig—the beach my islanders use to come and go from Rawsey. They’re advertising a new railway, and I need assurances that the route won’t cut off my islanders’ access to the beach. Otherwise the nearest harbor will put them half a day farther from market, and I’ll lose half the farmers to the mainland.”
“Ah.” He slouched, his posture becoming raffish. “Rawsey. Of course.”
“Yes, Rawsey. Some of us stick by our commitments.”
“And you think Stephen is involved in this railway?”
“No,” she said. “It’s some man named Roy. But Stephen is in the railroad business. And this company—I can’t actually locate Mr. Roy, or anyone save the stockbrokers who are selling shares in it. I thought your cousin might know him. Does that satisfy you?”
He stared at her for a long moment, as though—infuriating thought!—judging whether she was truthful. “I’ll ask him about the railway,” he said finally. “But you will not write to him, or seek him out in public. Do you understand?”
“Oh, won’t I? What on earth is wrong with you?” She slipped out from beneath the bracket of his arm, sidestepping deeper into the room. “First you propose separate households, then you disappear for two days, and now you fly into a jealous rage when I propose to meet a man? Your own cousin, no less! If you think you can dictate my doings, you’ve run mad, Lockwood.”
Their eyes locked. A muscle ticked in his square jaw; he raked his hand through his brown hair, leaving the bleached ends mussed. And then, on an audible exhalation, he dropped his hand and said, “Forgive me.” Now came the other smile in his arsenal, wide and lopsided and charming and—all at once—as unconvincing as the other one. “We can certainly invite him to dinner, if you like. It would be . . . delightful.”
His moods were more mercurial than a Scottish spring day. What was his real face? She felt certain that she had not seen it since her arrival. None of his smiles were genuine.
But his dark mood, a moment ago . . . his bizarre, leashed rage . . . that had felt real.
He seemed to catch the flavor of her uneasy regard, for his effort to persuade her intensified. All cheerful ease, he fell into a nearby chair, adding a generous wave to indicate its partner. “Sit,” he said. “Tell me of your day.”
She did not want to sit. A new possibility seized her brain: mercurial moods. False faces. These abrupt shifts in personality. The sudden disappearance.
Madness could account for all of it. Had his mind somehow snapped on their wedding day?
He’d seemed quite sane when he’d left the cabin—furious, but in full possession of his faculties. But perhaps, on deck, something had happened. He had hit his head, or . . .
“What is it?” he asked. No doubt her face made a strange picture.
“Why did you go that night?”
He sat back, his smile fading. “Which night?”
“You know which night.”
“Ah.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Must we retread old ground? It’s rather tedious.”
“We never tread it in the first place.” Her voice sounded shaky. She cleared her throat. Why this was so difficult to ask, she could not say, but she felt as though she were flaying off pieces of her own skin as she forced herself to speak of it. “You left me. Without a note. Without a word. In the middle of the night.”
“Yes,” he said after a pause. “Dramatic timing.”
Here was why it hurt. His flippancy, his casual mockery of a matter that had caused her more hurt than any wrong ever done to her before or since—
No. She took a deep breath. She would not let him hurt her. He didn’t deserve that power. “Yes,” she said flatly, “dramatic timing. But tell me: what prompted it? We quarreled, I know—”
His laughter rasped. “That is one way to put it.”
“But to leave as you did—” She swallowed. “Do you know, I thought you had gone overboard. I—” Did he truly deserve to know this? “I ordered the captain not to leave the harbor. He tried to refuse, but I made such a scene—I screamed, I railed . . .”
He was staring at her fixedly, his face impassive. “Most impressive, I imagine.”
This knot in her throat would not be swallowed. She recognized it. In the weeks after his disappearance, it had nearly choked her to death. First it had been grief. Then it had turned into humiliation, then rage.
She finally sat. Her legs trembled. She looked at her hands, knotted together in her lap. Her knuckles were white. She’d thought she had gotten over this bit. This . . . sense of betrayal.
And shame.
“What a fool they must have thought me,” she said, making her voice hard and bright. “Making them circle the harbor for hours. We finally docked again—the other passengers were complaining. And then we got the news. You were spotted leaving the ship before we ever sailed.” She made herself look up at him.
A queer surprise thumped through her. His eyes glittered as though—as though—
But no, it was only her imagination. For he gave her a smile, cool and sharp, and she realized that she was still, in some small way, that stupid foolish naïve little girl who had imagined this man capable of warmth, of real laughter, of the possibility of love, or at the least, human feeling, perhaps even tears.
But the man before her had dry eyes, and malice in his smile.
“What a fuss,” he said. “I am sorry to have caused it. A boy’s pride, you know. In retrospect, I should not have left the ship.”
These regrets should have meant more to her. They bordered on the apology she had so desperately, furiously wanted.
But they were not enough. She felt parched inside, bruised and dry. “So where did you go,” she asked dully, “when you left?”
He took a long breath. “To the tavern on the quay. I was angry. I thought a whisky would soothe my temper.”
“And then?”
He scratched at the knee of his trousers. “And then, what?”
She ground her teeth together. He was not as dull witted as he was playing. “Then, was it the first whisky or the second that made you think, ‘Why, I shan’t go back. I will leave my newlywed bride on that ship, and go on a separate adventure of my own.’ ”
He flattened his hand on his knee, the movement abrupt and somehow violent. “Do you care?”
“What do you mean?” She sat forward, all but hissing. “You deserted me. How could I not care? Was I meant to go on, by myself? To sail without you, to not wonder what had happened, to simply say, ‘Oh dear, I seem to have lost my husband somewhere. Tra-la-la, Paris will be lovely!’ ”
He did not move a muscle. “Is that not what you did?”
“No! Are you not listening? I did not go to Paris! I did not sail with the ship! How could you imagine—”
“Then where did you go?”
She caught her breath. “Where else? To the island.”
“To the island,” he said quietly. “Not, say, to the authorities. Not to the police. You went to Rawsey. Yes, I see how heartbroken you were.”
Why, he was accusing her. How dare he! “Oh yes,” she said. “I did think of going to the authorities. Imagine it: me at the police station. ‘I seem to have misplaced my husband.’ And the inspector: ‘Why, where was he last seen?’ And my reply: ‘Storming off the ship, in a temper, with a letter of credit giving him access to my accounts, which he had used not hours before to withdraw five hundred pounds sterling!’ ”
He smirked. “Quite a speech.”
“Isn’t it? What a pity I didn’t share it. They could have laughed me out of the station, and then run to the newspapers, where some cartoonist might have drawn a picture of a cow carted to slaughter, the bucket of milk having already been drawn!”
“God save your pride,” he murmured.
“You are a beast! Do not try to paint me the villain. You were the one who left. You were the one who took a quarrel and turned it into a feud. I won’t apologize for not having prostrated myself. Your estates are in the black now: you should be on your knees thanking me for not having razed and salted the lands, to show you how much I care.”
A silence fell, in which her loud breathing, and his utter stillness, seemed painfully vivid counterpoints. At last he looked away from her, to his hand on his knee, which tapped out some silent rhythm, ragged and quick.
“All right,” he said. “I think that’s enough.”
“No. You were going to tell me why you ran like a coward. I am still waiting.”
His gaze sliced up, glittering. “Very well. What would you prefer to hear?”
“The truth.”
He sighed. “The truth is never satisfying. The truth is either too plain to make sense, or too bizarre to be believed.”
“What does that mean? Just tell me why you left!”
He stared at her a long moment, in which she saw the pulse ticking in his throat. His eyes, those eyes that had caught her attention across a crowded room in Fort William one night, were lambent gold, like honey held to the light, darkly and thickly lashed, beautiful, a liar’s eyes: they could seem fevered and fierce even when behind them lay only falsity, shallowness, and cheap calculation.
“I was attacked,” he drawled. “Ambushed. Bundled off the quay. Taken south. And placed on another ship, bound for New South Wales.”
For a moment, the ticking of a nearby clock filled her ears as his words played and replayed in her head. With each pass, the tone of his voice—indifferent, casual, somehow bored—became more significant.
Even he was tired of his lies.
She rose. “Well. Yes. That would be pleasant to believe.”
He laughed. “Pleasant? Why not say amusing?”
She crossed her arms. “You had a better sense of humor once. Or do I misremember? But I should pity you for—”
“No,” he spat, startling her—but then, when he stood, he was smiling again, and she decided she had mistaken his tone. “Pity, darling, is the very last thing I look for. I can assure you of that.”
“Contempt, then? May I offer that, in exchange for your gammon?”
He spread his hands, a conciliatory gesture. “Come up with a better story, and I’ll gladly sign my name to it.”
She nodded tightly. “This is impossible. I see it now.”
“What is impossible?”
“Attempting to find some way to get on with you.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers, rocking slightly on his feet. “As I said, separate households can be arranged.”
“No.” She took another deep breath. “There are two reasons I came to London, the first being business. The second—well, I would not call it pleasure. Another piece of business, then, but one that involves you.” She had tried to put it out of her mind, hoping that they would find some way to rub along together first, some more pleasant foundation on which to proceed.
But clearly that would not happen. So, like no doubt many of her female ancestors, she would suffer through the task with teeth gritted.
“And what might that be?” asked her husband, his head tipping slightly, allowing a boyish lock of blondish-brown hair to slip across his brow.
She hesitated.
His properties could go to the Devil from now on. But her own she would not bequeath to her nearest cousin. Gerald Wallace was a naïve and citified clergyman, who would entrust the estates entirely to paid stewards, who might plunder them and leave the tenants starving.
As the Countess of Forth, what she needed was an heir of her own body, whom she could raise and train in the proper care of the family’s legacy.
As a woman, she wanted a child. She wanted a child more than anything; someone of her own, who would always be hers.
Alas, the rub: her marriage had been conducted according to English law, which had recently made divorce far easier. No longer did a man require parliamentary dispensation to cast off his wife. All he required was proof of her adultery and a judge’s approval.
Lockwood would not have her properties in a divorce, for they were entailed to the earldom of Forth. But it seemed to her that the courts might grant him a good chunk of her fortune. After all, every judge in the world was a man.
Indeed, only one way clearly existed to get an heir, and to ensure that she retained the moneys to provide for a child, and her properties, and the tenants thereon.
“A separate household won’t suit,” she said. “Not until you’ve given me an heir.”
He blinked. “An heir.”
She felt her face flame. “It’s like talking to a parrot! Yes, a child, Lockwood! Must I remind you of the specifics of our union? I did not marry you simply to get hold of Isle Rawsey. I require an heir, and alas that I cannot get my own self with babe—a man is sadly necessary!”
A peculiar look came over his face. His lips twitched, and he reached up to touch his mouth, as if to confirm that yes, he was trying not to laugh. “Still blunt,” he said, but she barely heard him through the sudden roar in her ears. Amuse him, did she?
She grabbed the back of her chair, because she needed something to throttle and it would serve in lieu of his throat. “Listen to me!” She pounded the chair legs in time to each syllable: “You—are—useless. I would do better to advertise in a public tavern for a sire!”
His smile faded. For a moment, she thought she had gotten through to him.
But then, with a shrug, he said: “As you wish.”
She goggled, truly shocked. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it!” If only the divorce laws had not changed, she would have gladly gotten herself bellyful, long ago! Not every man proved as eager to run from her as this one.
But she would not explain his advantage to him. “I could never bring an illegitimate child into the world.” His smirk made her narrow her eyes. “It is your duty, Lockwood.”
He laughed, an incredulous sound, and raked his hand through his hair. “Never in the history of womanhood—”
He fell abruptly silent as she stepped around the chair and grabbed his wrist. Beneath his undone shirt cuff, a dark inky pattern encircled his wrist.
“What is this?” she asked.
He was tremendously tense. She could feel the fine tremors racing through his body, the fierce flexed force of his resistance to them. Deeply puzzled, she peered up into his face.
His expression was full of some terrible intensity, instantly veiled as his lashes lowered. “It’s a tattoo,” he said. “What else?”
A tattoo! “Where on earth did you get it?”
He pulled free of her. “Elsewhere.”
He no longer wore cologne. But this close, she recognized the smell of his skin. It made her heart trip.
God above. This was the second time now that proximity to him had caused her belly to stir. Her standards should have been higher. But the old attraction yet lived.
Well, it would make things easier.
She released him and strode to the door. But as she opened it, another thought occurred. “I will not have a drunkard for my child’s father,” she said as she turned back. “Nor will I risk disease. You will not bed another woman, or drink to excess, until the deed is accomplished. Do you agree?”
His lips parted. Why, she had astonished him into silence. Good!
“To that end,” she said crisply, “since I can hardly trust you not to run off again, much less to refrain from your natural deviancies, I mean to know your whereabouts at all hours of the day—starting now. Are we agreed?”
A smile started at the corner of his mouth—a dark smile that spread very slowly. “On one condition,” he murmured.
She would not let him see how that smile unnerved her. “What condition? Let me hear it.”
“In the bedroom,” he said, “I set the rules.”
Her grip tightened on the door handle, the brass carving cutting into her palm. “I—I require a child,” she said. “I will not tolerate any oddities that do not lead to that end.”
His laugh was soft. “Good, a challenge. I like that.”