Chapter Twelve
What can one expect from a pig but a grunt.
“Is everything to your satisfaction, dear? I hope you’re not unhappy?”
Aideen stabbed her liver-tinged sausage and wrinkled her nose.
Unhappy.
That was the understatement of 1815. No, she wasn’t unhappy. She was utterly fuming.
Five days ago, she may have answered Meghan differently. Indeed, she may have even simpered that she was stupendously ecstatic. Now she didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the wrongdoings of her husband. She severed her stringy bacon ruthlessly.
But for starters…
He never dined with her.
He was always out.
He’d spoken to her exactly once.
Bleary-eyed, she had awoken after the wedding night to a stern dictate about bolting her shutters at dusk.
Not being her sharpest at first light, she’d had no witty retorts or scowling reproofs. She’d simply gawked at him, as he’d stood there, all tidily dressed for the day in deepest black, with eyes as aloof and unblinking as a lizard’s.
She recognised such tactics – use dictates to undermine one’s foe. Or wife.
Onto other misconducts…
He’d not visited her bed again.
Deuced man, he’d even locked their adjoining door. A trifling endeavour, of course, as Uncle Seamus had gifted her with a lock-picking device, but it was the intention that mattered.
He ignored her.
And even if they did happen to pass in a hallway, he treated her as if an inanimate object. She’d tried to speak but he’d hurried on, feigned deafness or glared – sometimes all three. She had no wish to live in his pocket, but a “Good Morning, my duchess” might be appreciated once in a while.
He had a man following her.
“Meghan, have you noticed a young, well-built chap lurking around?”
Her mother-in-law helped herself to an extremely runny egg – even the white dashed around.
“Oh, you’ll get used to that. Alex has had a guard trailing me for years. I pretend not to notice the poor fellow, but I often wish to invite him in for tea, especially when it’s raining.”
Aideen harrumphed. She didn’t actually mind the guard – a useful precaution with her husband’s work, but he hadn’t even asked.
Narrowing her eyes, she glared at a portrait of the duke high on the wall, which equally returned her scowl to the breakfast table.
Each night, she’d heard him enter his room extremely late, and then there’d followed all that sloshing noise. It wasn’t a bath – wrong splash – and it wasn’t merely some ewer and basin. It sounded as though he had a personal raincloud in his chambers.
But he never came near her door.
How could she speak to him if he was never here? Ask him if they could possibly attend an event together? Or dine together? Or read? Anything really…
Of course, she knew he was busy spying on people and dealing with matters for the Crown, and that had consoled her until she’d learned from Jack that her husband had attended Lady Rowe’s ball on Tuesday…alone.
Why hadn’t he invited her?
And where were all the other society invites? Post seemed to disappear before she arose.
Was he…ashamed of being seen with an Irish upstart?
The duke had also informed the butler to refuse all house calls until “the duchess had settled in.” But she didn’t feel the need to settle in. The Quinlan household in Ireland was on the large size and she’d been organising that well enough since she’d been old enough to give orders – so around eight years of age, she recalled. In addition, the dowager duchess had been a wonder, calling in for breakfast and chatting about duties and so forth.
Boredom was not the problem as Meghan also had a surprising amount of charities which she patronised, and Aideen was only too happy to help, especially as they focused on hospitals in deprived areas rather than ladies sewing blankets.
No, she was…lonely, used to a busy home full of Uncle’s hounds and relations popping in for home-distilled whisky.
The one caller had been Jack, whom she’d seen more than her husband in the last week. He’d been for tea, for a sherry and taken her to Gunter’s.
She glowered. Perhaps a duchess’s married life was supposed to be like this.
Separate. Cold. Unaffectionate. Lonely…
“Meghan? Did you and your late husband spend much time together?”
“Gracious, yes. He was quite modern and liked to involve me in the accounts and so forth. And we always dined together. And walked together. And rode together. And then the evenings…”
“Oh.”
A caring sage-green gaze drifted her way. “He’s acting a bacon-brained buffoon, isn’t he?”
Spluttering coffee, she nodded.
“Hmm. Plunkett, his man of affairs, will be arriving for their meeting at five today – happens every Thursday. Alex then has a brandy to recover. I suggest you corner him then, when he’s mellowed.”
“But…” Aideen hesitated.
Beneath the fuming was a deep sadness. Now he’d sated his lust, he didn’t want anything to do with her. Bored with his wife after one night – it didn’t say much for her attractions.
Maybe her father was right: her unladylike conduct gave a disgust, her boldness a repellence.
Meghan stood, sauntered over and then leaned on the table in a very un-duchess-like manner. “Aideen, you are beautiful, warm-hearted and such delightful company. It is Alex that is the dullard. And if it is any consolation, he is being a monster to all and sundry. I heard tell he even lost his temper with Lord Winterbourne at Lady Rowe’s ball. He also cut Lady Lucas in the street for waving at him, and apparently his response to Lord Studland when the poor man queried after his welfare in White’s was most ill-mannered. It’s all the gossip.”
Aideen frowned. Yes, Rakecombe had a reputation for being a bit callous, but all this did sound a smidgeon more ill-tempered than usual.
“You are under his skin, Aideen, scratching away.” Meghan leaned closer. “Keep scratching, dear. Dig deep. Or…” She pulled back. “…pish to the lot of them and we’ll go to Egypt. I do so like donkeys and can quite imagine us traversing the sands with some handsome Ottoman Sultan as guide.”
∞∞∞
Rakecombe quaffed his brandy and itched his jaw.
Plunkett had left a half hour earlier with his tail between his legs, and Rakecombe knew he’d have to apologise for his foul mood. But dammit, nothing felt…right.
It was the search for Stafford, of course. It caused him sleepless nights and hence his discipline to wither.
This morning, he’d also met with Rainham, and since there appeared to be no leaking of the list of informants, it was now being presumed that Stafford and the documents were no longer of this earth.
Winterbourne and himself had been assigned other tasks, but something stirred maggots in his brain. A niggling doubt.
Via Bluey, he’d discovered that Stafford had been involved with a woman whilst undercover in Paris. Had she persuaded him to become a turncoat? Betray his country? Was a woman his downfall?
Sighing, he clonked his head against the high-backed chair, exhaustion probably accounting for his bad humour.
God forbid, he’d even had to act contrite with Winterbourne, which had been akin to peeling his fingernails back. The marquess had behaved irksome, asking why Aideen wasn’t with him at the Rowe’s ball, and he’d vented his lack of sleep on the fellow who’d solely smirked and mumbled about cherry itches.
Of course, he should have extended the long-standing invite to his wife, but it was too soon.
He knew he couldn’t look at her without…needing.
Not that she was the reason he couldn’t sleep, obviously, but when he did manage a few hours, his dreams ranged from downright erotic to strangely deviant: Aideen tracing the D on his shoulder with her tongue whilst her slender fingers pleasured him; Aideen tied to the four-poster covered in cherries…
Lust alone could explain those dreams but the one about her modestly reading to him in bed was downright perverse.
If he kept away long enough, the lust would dissipate. One night ought to have been enough, surely.
A knock on the door and he bade them enter – probably Rawlins as he’d asked for some fruit, the only item edible in this house.
Briefly he speculated if his duchess had noted the cuisine. Now his mother was no longer head of the household, maybe Aideen would give that chef the heave-ho.
It wasn’t Rawlins.
His wife entered before closing the door behind her. April was a sparse month for fresh produce, but some stored apples filled the fruit bowl she held.
Had Eve come to tempt him?
“Duchess,” he acknowledged. Keep it formal and all would be well.
“Alexander.”
He swallowed. Did she have to call him that? Did she know what it did to him? He gulped brandy, drinking in her presence after successfully avoiding her for five days.
A sweet peach dress swathed her body, with a bronze-coloured shawl draped about her shoulders. That coal-black hair was fixed in a loose coil and a few ringlets framed her face and cascaded over her bosom. Pretty as a bloody picture.
Three years ago, a French spy aptly named The Red Temptress had tried to seduce him for information, but she’d left without success, complaining that he was a joyless, phlegmatic, bloodless, English stone and coincidently…not a spy.
The woman had been outstandingly beautiful and skilled in flirtation, but she had nothing on Aideen.
Beyond doubt, his wife could have him leaking secrets like a rusty bucket if he wasn’t careful.
With swinging hips, she placed the bowl on the table and twirled a ringlet. He slitted his eyes – what was the minx up to?
“I should like to attend the Miltons’ masquerade ball two nights hence.”
“No.”
That ball skirted the very edge of propriety. A fair few guests were Cyprians, and most could have been, they behaved so badly. The rest weren’t much better, even if they were from the scions of high nobility… And in addition, he himself was due to attend that ball in order to rendezvous with a certain Sir Phineas as he’d served in France with Stafford and might have information on this Frenchwoman.
Being a priggish duke and all that, it was not an event Rakecombe would normally grace with his presence, but needs must. Sir Phineas had wanted to meet somewhere he wouldn’t be recognised – where better than a masquerade?
“No?” his wife queried, black eyebrow raised in blatant haughtiness. That was his trick, but she did it very well.
“No. Rakecombe stock do not attend such scurrilous events. It’s not respectable, my little leprechaun.”
Ire flashed in her eyes. So, she didn’t like that appellation; he must use it more often.
“Why are you English obsessed with leprechauns? And I’m not little.”
“Compared to me you are. Little and delicate.” And fragile. So breakable. So precious.
She stalked over, and he forced his lips to steel, limbs motionless, even his eyelashes stilled.
What if his life was different? What if she’d come to simply talk about the day? He’d tug her to his lap and hold her tight. Share an apple.
But no temptation was worth a life.
“I wish to attend a ball and dance.”
“Go shopping instead.”
“I have already been shopping.”
Yes, Plunkett had mentioned that – to his account book’s detriment. “The theatre then,” he said in his best dismissive tone.
“Who with? We have been married five days and didn’t even have a honeymoon. It would seem a little odd if I attended events on my own. They’ll say…”
Yes, he knew. They’d say the duke was bored already. That they would live their lives like half the ton did. That his marriage was no more than a forced farce to a nobody. “And would they be wrong?”
A gasp escaped her whilst guilt and self-hatred gathered low in his belly.
He very nearly stood, very nearly pulled her to him, but he forced his mind to Gwen, her green eyes shocked in death. He imagined Aideen, all fire extinguished in the quick draw of a cold blade.
“Ask Winterbourne to attend you,” he drawled, closing his eyes to the torment within. “You enjoy his company and I keep tripping over the bloody man wending his way here to pant at your feet.”
“May the devil make a ladder from your spine,” she snarled, and he inwardly smiled. He adored her curses and hadn’t heard one for a while. All felt tranquil as she hissed her anger – his little hellcat would never cower beneath his snubs.
Oh, how he needed…
He shook his head. “Indeed,” he continued, “why not assign him the green bedchamber since he’s here so often.”
Aideen leaned over the desk, and he waited for the adroit retort but it seemed she had decided on a differing tactic.
Fingers brushed his jaw where it had been itching earlier, and he willed the hairs on his arms not to rise.
She licked her lips and he hooded his eyes to prevent her from seeing his reaction. It couldn’t have been successful as she did it again.
“I think, Alexander,” she purred, twiddling another ringlet, “I’ll assign him the master suite, for all the time you spend in it.” The hand removed itself from his jaw and she plonked an apple on his desk. “After all, it’s easy to rob an orchard when no one’s guarding the apples.”
She sashayed from the room, still clutching the bowl of fruit, and slammed the door behind her.
He glared at the solitary apple. It was mouldy and had holes in it.
Eve had gotten her revenge on mankind.