The Undoing Of A Lady

CHAPTER NINE

July-2 weeks later

FLORA WAS OUT OF BREATH as she approached High Top Farm. She was nervous and she also felt hot and flustered, for the night was humid and the air itself seemed too thick to breathe. The last shreds of twilight were fading from the night sky and no moon or stars showed. Away on the horizon there was a flicker of lightning.

Flora shivered. Only the direst necessity could have prompted her to come out alone at night, especially on a night like this when there was something strange and elemental in the air. She had been to High Top three times since the day of her canceled wedding a month ago. On the first occasion she had hidden from sight and had watched Lowell working in the fields. He had glanced in her direction on more than one occasion and she had had a lowering feeling that he knew she was there, but he had not broken off his work to come over and speak with her. On the second occasion they had had a short conversation and she had pretended that she was passing during a walk on the hills. She had known that Lowell had not believed her even though he had not challenged her and she had blushed extremely red.

On the third occasion he had told her bluntly not to call again.

Flora paused by the five-barred gate that led into the farmyard. Lights showed in the kitchen. She had seen the interior of the farmhouse on her last visit, when Lowell had drawn her aside from the curious eyes of his farmhands and had then proceeded to tell her in no uncertain terms that she was not welcome at High Top. The kitchen had been exactly as she would have imagined it; neat, clean, functional and lacking the feminine touch. She had longed to pick a posy of summer wildflowers to soften the bare acreage of the wooden table. She had felt strange when she had realized that she had never been in a kitchen before. At home it was the realm of the servants and her mother had never permitted her to visit there.

The gate opened silently to her touch for it was well oiled. She would expect that from Lowell Lister for he kept his farm running smoothly and efficiently. Flora found that she was tiptoeing toward the door, trying to avoid making any sound, and that struck her as amusing for in a moment she would knock-assuming that her hands did not shake too much-and would alert Lowell to the fact that she was there, and then she would have to explain…The nervousness pressed on her chest again, making her catch her breath.

He would think her mad.

He would think her desperate, which she was.

Several dogs barked loudly inside the house and suddenly the door was thrown wide and they streaked out into the yard, circling and barking aggressively. Flora gave a little scream. She did not like dogs. They frightened her.

“Meg, Rowan, here to me!” Lowell’s sharp command subdued them and they slunk back to his side with a wary eye still on the interloper. For that was what she was, Flora thought. She did not belong here.

“Miss Minchin?” There was incredulity in Lowell’s voice as he held up the lantern and the light fell on her face and pooled around her. “What the devil are you doing here at this hour?” His tone quickened. “Has there been an accident? Is something wrong?”

“No,” Flora’s teeth were chattering. “I needed to see you.”

Lowell looked exasperated. “Miss Minchin…Flora, this is ridiculous. I told you last time. You must not come here.”

“Well, I am here,” Flora said, with more bravado than she was feeling, “and I am not going until you hear me out.”

They stared at one another for a long moment whilst the dogs circled and growled and then Lowell gave a frustrated sigh and stood aside to permit her to precede him into the house. He did not invite her to sit down. The dogs slunk off back to their box.

Flora wrapped her arms about her as she stood in the neat little kitchen. There were the remnants of a meal of bread and cheese on the table and a pitcher of ale. She wondered how much Lowell had drunk. Not enough to make him receptive to her suggestions, she thought. He looked all too sober, standing there with a mixture of anger and resignation in his eyes, running one hand impatiently over his tawny fair hair as he waited for her to speak.

“I know what you are thinking,” she said suddenly. “You think that I am here because I have developed a tendre for you and now I am following you around in a most embarrassing way.”

“Haven’t you?” Lowell said abruptly. “Aren’t you? Just because I was foolish enough to take pity on you that morning of your wedding.” He sounded savagely annoyed with himself.

Pity. Flora felt shaken, naive, but she was not going to waver now.

“That is neither here nor there,” she said. “What I am here for is to make you a proposal. I need someone to marry me and I want it to be you.”

She was aware that the words had come out all wrong, but it was difficult for her to keep calm under the scrutiny of Lowell’s cool blue gaze. He is going to refuse me, she thought, and the panic welled up in her throat.

“Why?” Lowell said after a moment. He paced across the kitchen, his boots sounding loud on the red tiled floor. He shot her a look. “Are you pregnant?”

“No, of course not.” Flora could feel her whole body blushing. She knew perfectly well how such a situation might occur; she had simply not done it herself. “I haven’t…I don’t…I’ve never…”

“I didn’t think so,” Lowell said. There was a half smile on his lips that made Flora think that he, on the other hand might have a great deal of experience.

“Then why suggest it?” she snapped, pride overcoming her embarrassment. She turned away from him. This was all going wrong already. She might have known it would never work. She did not even know why she had thought to propose marriage to him. She barely knew Lowell Lister and now it seemed that pity had been his overriding emotion toward her. She clenched her fists tightly at her side, wanting to leave-preferably through a large hole in the floor that could just open up and swallow her-but Lowell was between her and the door.

“So if you are not pregnant, Flora-” Lowell’s drawl seemed to have become even more pronounced, sending hot shivers along her skin “-then why would you urgently require a husband?”

“Because in six weeks’ time I will lose half of my dowry to Tom Fortune,” Flora said, glaring at him, “and since I am to lose control of my money one way or the other I would rather it be to a man I chose rather than to a blackguard like that.”

Lowell inclined his head. “Sound logic.”

“Thank you,” Flora said huffily.

“So any man would do?” Lowell pursued.

Flora could see another trap yawning. Her temper tightened. “No, of course not! I chose you.” She shot him another look. “Do you need me to flatter you and say why?”

Again that half smile twitched at Lowell’s lips. “I think I do,” he said, “for believe me, you would make the worst farmer’s wife in the world, Flora.” He looked at her and under his appraising glance Flora felt her body prickle with mortification.

“How do you know I would be bad at it?” she challenged. “I haven’t tried yet.”

“You are completely unaccustomed to living under straitened circumstances,” Lowell said. “You have no idea how to work.”

“Circumstances would not be straitened if we had my fifty thousand pounds,” Flora said. “Neither of us would need to work.”

“I don’t want to play at farming like a gentleman,” Lowell said, the contempt dripping from his voice. “I need to work hard, Flora. I want to.” He came close to her and she could smell the summer scent of cut grass on him, mingled with something else more primal that seemed to cause a hollow ache in her stomach.

“You’re a lady,” Lowell went on. “You know nothing of rising at five in the morning, winter as well as summer, to light the fires and clean the house and milk the cows and make the cheese. You know nothing of working in the fields until your bones ache or riding to market to sell the fresh produce or of plucking a chicken for the pot.” He turned away. “You are no use to me as a wife, Flora.”

“Very well, then,” Flora said. “I am not going to beg.” She certainly was not going to stay to hear any more. She had evidently made a grave miscalculation in thinking that Lowell would want to marry her for her money if for nothing else. No one she knew had ever turned down a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. It was extraordinary.

She walked toward the door, but when she got there she stopped and turned back. Lowell was watching her, his face quite expressionless, his jaw set hard.

“You asked why I chose you,” Flora said. “I chose you because I thought you were lonely.” She gestured toward the box where the dogs lay curled around each other now, snoring peacefully. “What self-respecting farmer allows his working dogs to sleep in the house?” she said. “You must need the company.” She put her hand on the latch, preparing to leave.

“They are a damn sight less trouble than taking a lady to wife,” Lowell said.

Flora turned back and looked at him. He sighed, and ran a hand over his hair again, then pushed a chair out from the table with his foot. Flora accepted the unspoken invitation to sit and Lowell poured her a beaker of ale, taking the seat next to her. After a moment she tried the ale. It tasted vile. She almost spat it out.

“I don’t make fruit juices,” Lowell said, “elderflower and blackcurrant and the like. My mother did.” He looked at Flora. “Perhaps she could give you some hints. Or perhaps not.” He sighed. “She has just taken the journey you want to do in reverse. She’s a lady now, thanks to my sister’s money and her grand marriage. She would never in a thousand years understand why a lady would want to be a farmer’s wife.”

“I’m not a lady,” Flora said. “My father made his money in trade and my grandfather was a walking-stick maker. Ladies look down on me.”

Lowell laughed. “Now that I do understand.” He sobered. “Even so, you have never had to work for a living.”

“It’s true that I have never had to work,” Flora said, “but I am willing to try.” Her heart was pounding, absolutely thundering in her ears, at the thought that Lowell might even be considering her proposition. It made her wonder whether she had assumed he would reject her and so she had never really been prepared for the shock of his acceptance.

Lowell took her hand and turned it over, his work-roughened fingers abrasive against the softness of her palm. “I can see that you’ve never worked,” he said as his fingers traced gentle circles over her skin.

Flora had a sudden overwhelming image of what his hands would feel like on the rest of her soft, pampered body and almost fainted. She took a gulp of ale to steady herself. It tasted slightly less vile this time.

“Is there someone else that you would rather wed?” she blurted out. “Lizzie Scarlet used to flirt with you, though she is married now. Today,” she added, in some surprise, for she had only just remembered that Lady Elizabeth and Nat Waterhouse had wed that very morning in the private chapel at Scarlet Park.

“Lizzie flirted with everyone,” Lowell said. “It meant nothing.” His tight expression eased a little. “I thought that might have been why you came to find me tonight,” he added. He glanced at her with his blue, blue eyes and Flora felt the cool shivers ripple over her skin again. Outside there was a sudden flash of lightning, livid against the hills. The crockery on the dresser rattled at the crash of thunder and the dogs woke up and barked until Lowell hushed them.

“Why…? What?” Flora had jumped, too, at the cacophony of noise. She felt confused. “What did you think I came here for?”

“For consolation,” Lowell said. He was still holding her hand. “Because Nat Waterhouse is married.”

“Oh,” Flora said, looking at their linked hands. “No.”

“Just no?” Lowell sounded amused. His thumb was rubbing gently over Flora’s palm in distracting strokes.

“I…um…” Flora blinked. A hot, heavy feeling was beating through her blood. “I like Lord Waterhouse,” she said, “but I didn’t choose to marry him the way I chose you.”

There was a moment’s stillness broken by another huge crash of thunder and a sudden engulfing downpour of rain, hammering on the roof of the farmhouse. Flora met Lowell’s eyes and saw that the amusement was still there, but behind it was something bright and intense and breathtaking. Flora found she was shaking. She withdrew her hand from Lowell’s rather quickly and took refuge in the beaker of ale.

“I am glad,” Lowell said. “It made me angry to think that you only sought me out for comfort.”

“I told you,” Flora said, “I want to marry you so that I don’t have to give Tom Fortune half my fifty thousand pounds.”

“Oh, yes.” Lowell was smiling. He stretched, muscles rippling, hands behind his head. “I remember.”

For some reason the panic that had filled Flora earlier now came back with a vengeance and she jumped to her feet. “I must go,” she said. “It is late and my parents think me abed and I cannot afford to be seen out alone at night.”

“You cannot go yet,” Lowell said. “You will be soaked before you go five paces. Wait until the rain stops,” he added, “and I will escort you back.”

“You can’t,” Flora said. “If someone saw us together-”

Lowell stood up. He was so close to her, his presence so strong and powerful, that Flora tried to take a step back and bumped into the dresser.

“You are not walking back on your own at night,” he said. He cupped her face between his hands. There was an expression in his eyes of tenderness and exasperation and it made Flora go weak at the knees.

“You could marry anyone you wanted,” Lowell whispered. “You are beautiful and rich and sweet and brave…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Why me, Flora?”

Flora braced herself against the dresser and looked up into his face. No more prevarication, she thought, no more pride, no more excuses.

“When you found me that day,” she said, “the day I canceled my wedding, I felt as though I had been given a second chance. Up until then I had not really lived. Oh, I had gone to balls and parties and gone shopping and paid visits and given the servants orders and done a hundred and one things that ladies-” she emphasized the word “-of my age and class have done before me, but I had not done a single thing that had made me glad to be alive.” She swallowed hard. “I do not wish to sound ungrateful,” she said. “The possession of money is an enormous blessing, but I do not wish to live off my fortune forever, doing something and nothing, sitting in my drawing room, entertaining my friends and wondering when my life is going to start until I have the vapors out of sheer frustration.” She looked at Lowell. His eyes were moving over her face as though he was committing her to heart.

“And then I saw you,” she said. “The day that I was given a second chance.” She cleared her throat. “I had seen you before, of course, at the assemblies and in the village, but I thought…” She paused. She could hear her voice trembling and she knew she had humbled her pride and the rest of her words came out in a rush before she lost her nerve. “I thought you had so much life and vitality and passion and I wanted that. I wanted that passion so much I was prepared to come here today to pretend to buy you with my fifty thousand pounds-” She stopped. One look at Lowell’s face told her there was no point in continuing. And the strange thing was that she knew it was not because he pitied her, as he had claimed when she had first arrived. He wanted her. She could see it in his face and feel it, even though he was not touching her. But…

“I’m sorry, Flora,” he said, and his eyes were full of pain. “I cannot marry you. You think that you would be able to adapt to life as a farmer’s wife but you have no real idea of what that means. I know you would not be happy. It would be too different and in the end it would tear you-and us-apart.”

Flora drew back. She felt sick and tired to have tried and failed, but more than anything, she felt disappointed.

I will not cry, she thought. He does not deserve me.

“At least I was willing to try,” she said huskily. “I was wrong about you, Lowell Lister. I thought that you had courage as well as passion, but in the end you were not even prepared to take a risk.”

And she turned away and walked out of the house and into the storm without a backward glance.

LIZZIE SAT BY THE WINDOW and looked out at the rain-swept street. It was late and the village was deserted, as silent as the grave. Lizzie had never lived in Fortune’s Folly itself and she had thought at first that she might enjoy having the bustle and activity of the village all around her but this silent night seemed dark and quelling. Nat had taken a short-term lease on a town house called Chevrons that was let by a lawyer who had gone to Bath for the winter and had decided to remain there. The Duke and Duchess of Cole had rented the property when they had been trying to find a suitor for Lydia the previous year. That had ended badly, Lizzie thought, and now her marriage had barely got off on a better footing.

Lizzie had no idea how long Nat planned to stay in Fortune’s Folly, because he had not discussed it with her. As she had sat alone that evening she had come to realize, slowly and a little painfully, that she and Nat had talked about nothing of significance at all and she had no idea about any of his thoughts and plans. In fact, Lizzie thought bitterly, they had barely seen each other during the two weeks of their formal betrothal. The morning after Tom’s orgy, Nat had taken her to Drum Castle to stay, most respectably, with Miles and Alice. Nat had also arranged Sir Montague’s funeral, which had been a miserable affair with very few mourners. Tom had failed to turn up and even the servants had had to be bribed.

And then Nat had left Fortune’s Folly for London, to make whatever arrangements were required for the wedding. Lizzie, left behind and fretting over all the uncertainties in her future, had spent the time exactly as she had spent the rest of her life up until that point: riding out on the hills, visiting her friends, shopping in Fortune’s Folly and avoiding Alice’s perceptive questions on how she felt about her impending nuptials. In some ways it had felt as though nothing had changed at all but in other ways it was a terrifying time as she had waited, her life seemingly suspended, for Nat to return.

She and Nat had married that morning in the chapel at Scarlet Park with her cousin Gregory, the Earl of Scarlet, as one witness and some official from the Chancery as the other. The match had been rushed through as a favor to Nat and to her cousin, who had considerable political influence, and Lizzie had felt completely ignored in the process. None of her friends had been invited to attend and when Lizzie had protested about this Nat had told her that her cousin the Earl had requested a private ceremony and, as they were trespassing on his hospitality, she could have no say in the arrangements. Lizzie had felt as though Gregory Scarlet had hushed the whole thing up because he was ashamed of her-as indeed he might well be.

After the ceremony there had been a cursory wedding breakfast hosted by the Countess of Scarlet, a bossy, sharp-natured woman who had given the impression that Lizzie was creating a vast amount of trouble for her long-suffering relatives. The countess’s gaze had repeatedly flickered over Lizzie’s stomach as though she was trying to assess whether she was enceinte or not. Lizzie had lost her temper and had said sweetly that dear Charlotte should not concern herself because she was sure she was not pregnant, and was that not a mercy since she had only been married for two hours? The countess had hustled her two young daughters away at that point, covering their ears and looking at Lizzie as though she was the source of a major contagion.

Lizzie had found it odd and nostalgic to be back in her old home and yet to feel it was no longer familiar to her, her father’s somewhat risqué paintings and sculptures gone from the walls and everything stifled in dark and somber colors. Nothing could have spelled out more clearly for her how her old life was closed to her once and for all. She had no place at Scarlet Park and now she no longer had a place at Fortune Hall, either, so where did she belong? She was not sure; nor did she know what sort of life she and Nat could forge together.

They had returned to Fortune’s Folly in the afternoon of the wedding and Nat had promptly disappeared without telling Lizzie where he was going. Lizzie had sat alone in the unwelcoming surroundings of the Chevrons drawing room and had wondered what on earth to do with herself now. She had been on the point of going out for a walk simply to banish the blue devils when Nat had returned, carried her up to bed and made love to her, and then equally promptly had informed her that he was spending the evening with Dexter, discussing the latest developments in Sir Montague’s murder case. Apparently he was going to rejoin Miles and Dexter on the investigation. He had been brusque and impersonal and Lizzie’s pleasant feelings of sensual languor had fled and she had sat in the big bed and watched him dress speedily and efficiently. She had felt bewildered and lost. For a moment, lying there with Nat, she had been able to pretend that they were like any other newlywed couple. Nat’s departure with no more than a hurried kiss ripped that illusion apart and left a hole within her for the despair to flood in. Leaving her alone on their wedding night spelled out more clearly than any words the fact that he had married her to fulfil his responsibility and protect her reputation. Now his duty was done.

Was this what marriage was about? Lizzie wondered. Did Dexter habitually leave Laura sitting around on her own whilst he went out to do whatever it was that gentlemen did? Would Miles have abandoned Alice on their wedding day to go out to his Club? She thought not but she was not sure. And what was she supposed to do in the meantime? The house required no running because Nat had hired the servants along with the property and it already functioned like well-regulated clockwork. Was she supposed to sit in the drawing room and read, or, God forbid, embroider something? Suddenly she did not seem to know anything, nor did she have anyone to ask. Laura, Alice and Lydia had all sent messages of congratulation on her marriage and Lizzie fully intended to call on them in the morning, when, no doubt, the rest of Fortune’s Folly society would also call to hear about her wedding to Nat. They would all be expiring with gossip and curiosity. Tonight, though, she was alone and she was bored and she felt neglected and not a little afraid.

I don’t like being married, Lizzie thought, drumming her fingers irritably on the windowsill. I knew it would not work and I was right. My husband is already ignoring me after only twelve hours of married life. He behaves as though he were still a single man. I have no notion what he plans for our future, when we will go to Water House to meet his family, where we will live, what shape my life will take. I should have thought about this before; I should have talked to him.

I should not have married him.

The thoughts, so jumbled and painful, made her realize how distant she was from Nat and how, in the aftermath of Monty’s death and in her desperation to escape Tom, she had allowed Nat to take all the decisions almost unchallenged.

She looked outside at the puddles of water lying on the cobbled street and the sky lightening in the west as the thunderstorm receded. A solitary carriage rumbled past, breaking the silence. A shadowy figure in a black cloak slipped by so quickly that Lizzie wondered if she had imagined seeing it. Who could be out on a night like this?

“I wish mama were here to advise me,” she thought. There was a hot lump in her throat and suddenly she felt very young and very small. “No, perhaps I don’t, because she was not very reliable. But I wish she were here simply to reassure me.”

She sat very still. The ticking of the clock was the only sound in the entire house, the only indication that anything was alive beneath the stifling weight of soft furnishings. Perhaps when we have a house of our own I might decorate it, Lizzie thought. She could not touch Chevrons, despite finding the decoration fussy and ugly, because it was let with the furnishings. The frustration and the fear gripped her again. What was she supposed to do with herself? And why had she not thought about this before? She was trapped, and this time she could not run because she was married and she would not repeat her mother’s pattern. That was the one thing on which she was determined.

She had been married for less than a day and her husband was out carousing with his cronies. It simply was not appropriate for Nat to marry her and then go out and leave her behind as though she was a part of the furniture, just another commodity that he had acquired, a little wife waiting patiently at home for him when he deigned to return.

The anger flamed through Lizzie, hot and reassuring. She preferred it to the cold grip of the fear and panic. This is my wedding day, she thought, fanning the flames of her own indignation. I will not sit at home, alone and disregarded. If Nat wishes to go out that is his affair but I shall do likewise.

She went over to the drawing room door and flung it open. Immediately the door to the servants’ quarters opened, too, and Mrs. Alibone, the housekeeper, emerged, moving smoothly and silently as though she had oiled wheels beneath her prim black gown. There was something a little sinister about Mrs. Alibone, Lizzie thought. For all her apple-pink cheeks and neat white hair and kindly expression she was so efficient she seemed almost mechanical.

“Good evening, madam,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Alibone,” Lizzie said. “Please ask the coachman to have the carriage ready. And please send my maid to me. I am going out.”

Mrs. Alibone’s eyebrows rose smoothly into a gray fringe of hair. “Out?” she said. “But madam, you are in deep mourning! It is not appropriate for you to go out in the evening, least of all without your husband.”

“It is my brother who has lost his life,” Lizzie said sharply. “I don’t see why I should lose mine, as well. And why should I cease to be a person in my own right when I wed?”

“Then I will have your black crepe gown laid out if you insist, madam,” Mrs. Alibone said, her nose twitching with disapproval.

“No, thank you,” Lizzie said. “I require my silver silk evening dress-and the Scarlet Diamonds. I intend to make an impression.”

“I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU TO be free on your wedding night, old chap,” Dexter commented as Nat joined him in a quiet corner of the Granby’s taproom. “How is Lady Waterhouse?” he added. “I am surprised that you were able to tear yourself away from her.”

“Lizzie is fine,” Nat said. He took a long, appreciative mouthful of ale and settled back on the bench. “She is very tired,” he added. “It has been a long day for her. I left her reading quietly at home.” By the time that he had left the house, Lizzie had been dressed and sitting in the drawing room at Chevrons, flicking through the Lady’s Magazine. It had been a sight that had pleased Nat and had made him feel very content-his demure wife rising from the bed where she had just pleasured him most satisfactorily and then taking up her books or her sewing to sit quietly at home. It seemed that he had tamed his vixen and she would be the perfect wanton in the bedroom but a paragon of wifely virtues out of it. Indeed, Nat had begun to think that perhaps Lizzie had it in her to be the calm, decorous wife that he had desired all along. Perhaps she would surprise him. Maybe their marriage would not be the disaster he had predicted.

Perhaps all Lizzie had needed was a settled home and a secure background. Nat was proud that he had been able to give that to her. She had certainly been a great deal quieter and more malleable in the weeks preceding their wedding. She had accepted his proposal without further argument, she had agreed to all the arrangements he had made and she had been remarkably reserved and quiet.

Dexter was looking at him a little quizzically. “If you say so, old chap,” he said. “It doesn’t sound much like the Lady Elizabeth Scarlet we all knew before, but you must know her best. She is your wife, after all.”

Nat nodded. He reflected that the past couple of weeks had gone exceptionally well. From the moment he had rescued Lizzie from Fortune Hall on the night of Tom’s orgy he had been completely focused on doing what he had to do to protect her, to secure her fortune and to pay off Tom’s blackmail. Today had been the culmination of all his work. He had married Lizzie, thereby saving her reputation, gaining her dowry and in some indefinable but deeply satisfying way, putting matters right. He had paid off her brother with a draft advanced by his bankers. He had been able to keep safe the secret of his sister Celeste’s sexual indiscretions. He had shielded his family from harm, which had been his prime concern from the very first. He was entitled to feel satisfied with his efforts. Everything was safe, everything was ordered again. He had done his duty.

Nat took another mouthful of ale as he silently congratulated himself. Once Sir Montague’s murder case had been successfully resolved, he thought that he would take Lizzie to Water House to meet his family again. She had known his parents when she was younger and had even been a friend to Celeste during his sister’s first London season, for Celeste and Lizzie were of an age. Perhaps Lizzie would be pregnant by the time they went to Water House. Perhaps she already was. She had not mentioned that she had had her courses in the six weeks since they had first made love. A beautiful, dutiful wife and an heir…Nat felt remarkably expansive. He gestured to one of the inn servants to refill his glass and the conversation turned to the murder case.

Nat’s good humor lasted for precisely two hours.

“Excuse me, my lord.” By the time one hundred and twenty minutes had passed Nat had consumed several pints of the excellent local ale and was feeling very mellow. Then one of The Granby servants approached discreetly and slipped a note into his hand. It was short and to the point, clearly written in haste.

“Please come to the card room as quickly as possible. Lizzie is here and there is a problem. Alice Vickery.”

Nat frowned. He had been aware that The Granby was hosting one of its fortnightly assembly balls that night. When Sir Montague had died it had been suggested that the program of entertainment in the village should be canceled for the summer as a mark of respect, but Tom had promptly vetoed the idea because he wanted the income that the balls and other social events brought. Nat knew he was traditional in such matters but he realized that he was shocked to think that Lizzie would attend a ball only three weeks after her brother’s death. Disquiet stirred inside him. He knew that Lizzie frequently behaved unconventionally and chose to do precisely as she pleased, but surely that should all have changed now that she was his wife? He had thought that she had understood that and had settled down in her new role. Perhaps his earlier optimism had been premature. The mellowness that had possessed him was draining away now and he felt exasperated with himself for his complacence. Evidently he had imagined matters to be how he wanted them rather than seeing them as they really were. How foolish he had been to picture Lizzie sitting quietly at home when she had never done such a thing in her life.

“Is something wrong?” Dexter asked, brows raised.

Nat crumpled the note fiercely in his hand. He looked at his friend’s face and then sighed. “Lizzie is apparently here at the assembly, in the card room, and Alice has asked me to join them. There appears to be some sort of problem, so I can only imagine that she is gambling.” He got to his feet.

“If Miles and Alice are present they will be keeping an eye on Lizzie,” Dexter said reassuringly, getting up, too.

Nat knew that Dexter was right but he admitted to himself that the last thing he wanted was for their friends to witness any discord between him and Lizzie. They were all so happy in their own marriages that he felt hopelessly lacking. Dexter and Laura had practically fallen in love at first sight, years before, and although the road to marriage had proved decidedly bumpy for them they were now incandescent with bliss. Miles was even more irritating because he had been the sternest opponent of marriage imaginable, had cynically denounced love as nothing more than a fig leaf to make lust appear more acceptable, and had even tried to blackmail Alice into marrying him so he could have her fortune to save him from debtors’ prison. Yet here he was now, the most sickeningly uxorious of husbands and desperately in love with his wife. It made Nat feel ill with envy because he had a depressing feeling that he and Lizzie would never achieve the sort of deep understanding that was blossoming between Miles and Alice. True, he had married Lizzie under different circumstances, primarily those of finance-his-and reputation-hers-and as such they could not really expect to experience the dizzy heights of love. He had run through that sort of emotion in his salad days anyway, with Priscilla Willoughby, and had no inclination to suffer it again. No, he had wed Lizzie out of duty and desire. Yet despite telling himself that his reasons for the match was perfectly adequate, somehow he felt perfectly inadequate in the face of his friends’ wedded happiness.

And now it seemed that his wilful wife was already behaving very badly indeed, just as he had feared she would…

Nat quickened his pace from the taproom down the stone corridor, round a corner, through a doorway and into the Granby ballroom, his temper rising at each step as he wondered what on earth he would find when he caught up with Lizzie. A country-dance was taking place in the main assembly room. It was very calm and decorous. Nat looked around but he could see neither Lizzie nor Alice nor Miles. Alice’s note had mentioned the card room. Nat skirted the dancers and strode through the doorway, past the long table that groaned under the weight of refreshments. He could already see a crowd in the card room. They were pressing close around one of the tables and a feverish atmosphere was in the air. As Nat and Dexter entered, Miles Vickery pushed through the throng toward them. Nat grabbed his arm.

“What’s happening?”

“Lizzie is playing Three Card Monte with Tom,” Miles said tersely. “He challenged her for the Scarlet Diamonds.”

“What?” Nat froze.

“Tom challenged her,” Miles repeated. “He said the diamonds should have been his because he was the elder. Lizzie said their mother had expressly left them to her but she would play him for them, the best of three games. So far they have won one each.”

Stifling a curse, Nat cut his way through the crowd about the table. Lizzie looked up as he pushed his way to the front. She was wearing a concoction of silver net, scandalously low cut, and her auburn hair was piled up in a diamond clasp on the top of her head. She looked ethereal and fey. Her green eyes were smoky and slanted and when she saw Nat her mouth curled in the smile that always did strange things to Nat’s insides, turning them molten with lust. There was a champagne glass by her elbow and she looked more than a little cast away for her cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes glittered. The Scarlet Diamonds, a necklace that the late Earl had given to his wife when first they were wed, lay sinuous and gleaming on the table between her and Tom.

“Good evening, my love,” Lizzie said brightly. “I hope you are enjoying your wedding night.”

“I’ve come to take you home,” Nat said. He clamped down on his anger. He was very conscious of the silence in the room, of everyone watching them, but more than anything else, he was aware of Tom Fortune’s triumphant, mocking gaze. So Tom had not been content with relieving him of a draft for twenty-five thousand pounds earlier in the day, Nat thought savagely. Tom’s greed was uncontrollable. He always wanted more.

Lizzie’s eyes had narrowed at his words. “But Nat, darling,” she said, “I am having such a lovely time! You cannot make me go home now!”

“Don’t spoil sport, Waterhouse,” Tom drawled. “Can you not afford a trifling twenty grand for a necklace now that you have Lizzie’s money-and more besides?” His dark, insolent gaze told Nat exactly how much he would disclose if he was pushed and Nat felt a bolt of fear. He had thought the matter of the blackmail settled, but now he realized just what a fool he had been; blackmailers were never satisfied and if Tom breathed a word of Celeste’s disgrace…Suddenly Nat’s ordered world lay teetering on the brink of disaster again.

“I don’t see why you assume I will lose, Tom.” Lizzie pouted. She shuffled three cards with expert precision, two black and a red queen, and laid them facedown on the table. “You know I have the luck of the devil.”

“When it comes to cards, perhaps,” Tom said, smiling at her, his eyes empty of affection, “though not, I think, in your choice of men.”

Nat made an uncontrollable movement of anger and Lizzie’s bright green gaze rested thoughtfully on him for a moment before it flickered back to her brother.

“Find the lady, Tom,” she goaded, “and the diamonds are yours.”

Nat’s body was tight with tension. Tom looked up at him again, malice in his eyes. “Find the lady indeed,” he murmured. “A relative of yours is she, Waterhouse?”

Nat felt Miles shift beside him and felt rather than saw the quizzical look his friend bent on him but he kept his eyes fixed on Lizzie now. Her face was pale, her eyes narrowed on the cards as she waited for Tom to choose. Her fingers tapped her half-empty champagne glass.

Tom put out his hand and turned a card. It was the seven of spades. Lizzie gave a delighted little squeal and clapped her hands. “I win!”

There was a smattering of applause from their audience.

“You’re worse than a card sharp,” her brother said sourly, vacating the table. “How the hell do you do these tricks?”

Lizzie picked up the necklace and fastened it around her neck. It rested on the upper curve of her breasts, where it flashed fire and ice with each breath she took. Nat dragged his gaze away with difficulty and caught the look of challenge in Lizzie’s eyes.

“Who’ll play me next?” she demanded, looking around. Once again the smile curved her lips and the lust kicked Nat hard in the groin. How could Lizzie make him so angry and yet so hot to have her? It was not a comfortable feeling and yet he could not resist it. It was as though she infected him with her own madness, driving him far beyond the rationality that normally governed his life. Well, if he had to play by her rules this time then so be it.

He grabbed a chair.

“I’ll play,” he said.

A ripple of shock ran around the group of onlookers and Lizzie’s eyes widened in surprise.

“I did not think you approved of gaming,” she said.

“I don’t,” Nat said. He sat back, undid his jacket and loosened his cravat.

Lizzie took a long gulp of the champagne. Nat watched her throat move as she swallowed. The diamonds danced and glittered about her neck. She picked up the pack of cards and started to shuffle it again.

“Basset?” she said.

“Piquet.”

Lizzie shrugged one white shoulder. “Whichever you prefer. The stake?”

“You,” Nat said. “You coming home with me. To our bed.”

Again the group of onlookers rippled with scandalized shock and some moved away, Dexter, Miles and Alice amongst them. Lizzie looked up at Nat, her eyes wide and very bright with the excitement and wildness he had come to recognize. “You’ll lose,” she warned.

“No, I won’t,” Nat said.

Out of the corner of his eye Nat could see that Alice was clasping Miles’s sleeve and speaking to him urgently. Miles’s face was grim, but after a moment he shook his head and they left the card room, Alice throwing one troubled, backward glance at Lizzie. Nat felt the tension tighten within him, straining the muscles across his shoulders, drawing the material of his evening jacket taut. His entire attention was riveted on Lizzie, on the way the silk and net of her gown clung to each line and curve of her body, on the provocative rise and fall of the diamonds at her breast, the slender flick of her fingers as she dealt the cards. Their gazes locked. Hers was vivid and excited and challenged him so that the blood burned fierce within him.

“You have always been a poor card player,” she taunted.

“I have been an indifferent one,” Nat said. He held her gaze with his, intense, direct. “Perhaps I will surprise you.”

“You frequently do.” Lizzie bent her head over her cards and promptly won the first two parties. Nat won the third, then the fourth and the fifth. He could see that after a lapse in concentration Lizzie was trying very hard now, her lower lip pressed between her teeth. Most of their audience had wandered away now in search of fresh entertainment. There was only Lizzie and him left, swept up in their tight little circle of mutual tension and desire. The longer the game ran the more his lust drove him. He was determined to win, and to have her.

“You should not have drunk all that champagne,” he said. “It undermines the concentration.”

Lizzie shot him an irritated look. “You should drink more and then perhaps you would not be such a stuffed shirt.”

“Why the necklace?” Nat said. “Why gamble something that is so important to you?”

She flicked him another look over her hand and put a card down. “Why not? What does it matter?”

“It’s worth twenty thousand pounds.”

Her head was bent, the candlelight playing on the golden, bronze and red strands in her hair.

“It isn’t always about the money,” she said.

“No,” Nat said. “It’s about the fact that your mother gave it to you and that you value inordinately anything that connects you to her.”

She shot him a very sharp look at that. For a moment she looked afraid. Her hand stilled on the cards. “How do you know that?”

“Because no matter what everyone else says of her, you have always idolized her.”

He saw Lizzie swallow hard. Her lashes hid her expression from him. “I miss her.”

“So why gamble away something of value that she left to you?” Nat persisted. “It makes no sense.”

Lizzie slapped a card down onto the pile and leaned forward, her green eyes pinning him with their anger. “Sense! What sense is there in loss? I lost my mother-am I supposed to value a necklace in her place?” She sat back, the anger leaving her as swiftly as it had poured out. “I lost both my parents,” she said. “I lost Monty. None of them were perfect, but they were more valuable than this.” She touched the necklace with her fingertips and it caught the light and blazed with rainbow colors.

“Is that why you came out tonight?” Nat asked. “Because you felt lonely and you wanted to gamble to pass the time?” He could not understand her and with a moment’s surprise and pain he realized that he never had. He had never really tried; she had just been Lizzie and he had indulged her moods and had laughed at her wildness, but now everything seemed different because she was his wife, and he was baffled as well as dazzled by her. Everything that should have been simple-their marriage, his life-suddenly seemed intolerably complicated.

“I was bored.” She played her hand faster now, throwing the cards down as though she did not really care. “It was my wedding night and I was lonely. What about you?”

“I had business-”

“Oh, well.” Lizzie smiled at him, mocking, the smile not reaching her eyes. Her words stung him like tiny thorns. “That makes it all right, then. When men say they have to deal with business it is so important that it excuses all, does it not?”

“You’re angry,” Nat said.

“You’re perceptive.” Her expression was contemptuous. “It is our wedding night, Nat Waterhouse. You gain fifty thousand pounds from me, you have me in your bed-” her gaze, burning and intense, reminded him of how that had been “-you take the things you want,” she continued, “and then you go out on business and leave me alone. You treat me like a possession and then you behave like a single man.” She threw her cards down in a gesture of disgust. “I have carte blanche and no picture cards. I suspect you win.”

“Four games to your two.” Nat looked at her. “You should have declared earlier. You’re reckless.”

“Clearly,” Lizzie said. “How exciting for you to be proved right.” She stood up and the silver net dress rustled softly as it slid over the lines and curves of her body. She looked ice-cool and composed whilst Nat felt so hot he was burning up. It maddened him that she could provoke him and his body would respond to her so violently even when his mind rebelled against the hold she had over him.

“Come with me,” he said roughly. He stood up. “We are going home.”

She looked him up and down slowly like a queen appraising a peasant. Even the tilt of her chin was haughty. Her gaze rested disdainfully on the bulge of his enormous erection. “Home?” she said. “You’ll never last that long. You want me too much.”

Nat was afraid that she was right. He wanted to make love to her here on the card room table or against the wall or anywhere that would soothe this unbearable ache in his body. His desperate arousal was all he could think of. He grabbed Lizzie’s wrist, careless of who was watching.

“I won, so…”

“So you claim your prize.” Lizzie was smiling though her eyes were still cold. He wanted to kindle a matching heat in her, to master her and force a response. He pulled her to him and kissed her. He was not the sort of man to kiss a woman in the very public surroundings of the Fortune’s Folly assembly rooms but one touch of her lips, cool and firm, and he forgot where they were. He almost forgot who he was. He kissed her hard, tasting the champagne on her tongue and the sweet taste that was Lizzie herself and he did not stop kissing her until the Master of Ceremonies approached them to say that their carriage was waiting and if they could leave at once it would be much appreciated because they were creating a public disturbance.

Lizzie was proved right. In the carriage Nat stripped the silver dress off her, leaving her in nothing but the diamond necklace, and took her there and then on the seat, whilst the coach drove around the village in circles until they had finished. Lizzie smiled her cool smile in the summer darkness and her naked body glistened equally as cool and pale and the sight of it just seemed to fire Nat’s lust all the more. He lost himself in her whilst deploring his lack of control. Afterward he felt sated but not happy and Lizzie was silent and withdrawn from him, and the doubts that had shadowed his mind earlier in the evening came back and would not be banished. He had feared that marriage to Lizzie would be a disaster and whilst their lovemaking might be spectacular he was starting to see that his misgivings might be justified. There was some devil of unhappiness that drove Lizzie and he did not understand why, and whilst he wanted to help her he did not know how.

When they finally reached Chevrons he took Lizzie to bed and made love to her again, trying to banish the demons, and then he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking only when his valet brought in the hot water and threw the curtains wide. The bed was empty and Lizzie had gone. Nat felt a strange pang of loss.

Lizzie was already in the breakfast parlor when he went downstairs. She was wearing a dress of pale green trimmed with black lace-her concession to mourning, Nat presumed-and she looked exceedingly pretty except that there were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her hair was ruthlessly restrained in a matching green bandeau and she was picking at a piece of toast and honey as though she detested the sight of it.

Nat took a cup of coffee, dismissed the footman and went to sit across from her. He knew he had to speak to her but there was such a strong reserve about her that it seemed to make it impossible to find the right words.

“I trust that you are well this morning?” he said, knowing even as he spoke that he sounded stilted. Lizzie raised her blank, green gaze to his and he had the oddest sensation that there was nothing behind her eyes at all, no thought, no feeling.

“I am quite well.” She sounded as distant as the slightest acquaintance.

Nat cleared his throat. “About last night-”

“I suppose I should apologize for embarrassing you,” Lizzie said. She did not look up from her plate. “I apologize.”

“No,” Nat found himself saying. “No, I don’t want an apology.” He ran a hand over his hair in an agitated gesture. “I just want to know why you did it, why you went out, why you felt you needed to gamble with Tom?”

Her gaze flickered to his face and then she looked away again. “Because I am wild and ungovernable,” she said ironically. “Have you not always said so?”

“Yes, but-” Nat struggled. This, he knew, was not the real answer. There had to be more to her behavior than a simple impulse to be scandalous, yet she offered no explanation. He shook his head, baffled.

“I do not understand why you do these outrageous things,” he said. His mind went back to the previous night. What was it that she had said?

“It is our wedding day. You gain fifty thousand pounds from me, you have me in your bed, you take the things you want and then you go out on business.”

“I am sorry I left you alone last night,” he said. “I should have thought that it was our wedding night and-” He stopped as she turned her face away.

“It does not matter,” she said. She spoke very quietly.

He had the impression that it mattered a great deal but she was refusing to acknowledge it.

“I should apologize for the way that I treated you, too,” he said. “I wanted you and I was not gentle. I had forgotten you have little experience-”

Lizzie shrugged a shoulder with what seemed to be indifference. “You did not hurt me or shock me,” she said. “I am more shocked to discover that we have such a physical affinity when there is nothing else…” She stopped, biting her lip. “Excuse me,” she said, rising to her feet.

Nat put out a hand. He knew that this unsatisfactory conversation should not-could not-end here. There was something very wrong and too many things unsaid to let it go. He could feel his marriage slipping, sliding, down a slope toward the inevitable disaster he had predicted for it. He did not know how to stop it even though he desperately wanted to do something.

“Lizzie,” he said.

She paused and looked at him and once again her gaze was totally blank and Nat felt frustrated and confused as though he had somehow lost her even though she was standing right in front of him.

“I know there is something wrong,” he said. “Lizzie, talk to me.”

Her eyelashes flicked down and a hint of color stole into her cheek. “There is nothing wrong,” she said. “I am perfectly fine.”

“Are you?”

For a moment he caught a flash of the most abject misery in her face and then she raised her chin. “I am going into town,” she said. “I wish to visit the circulating library. I hope that meets with your approval?”

“Perfectly. Of course.” Nat shook his head slightly at the abrupt change of subject. “I shall be working today,” he added. “Dexter has asked me to rejoin him and Miles in the investigation into your brother’s death and there is much to do.”

Lizzie nodded and went out and a moment later Nat heard her speaking to Mrs. Alibone and the sound of her step on the stairs and then all was quiet. Nat finished his breakfast in silence, trying to distract himself with the morning copy of the Leeds Intelligencer, and wondered why he felt worse than before.

CHAPTER TEN

THEY WERE THE TALK of the town. Nat Waterhouse and his blazing, unconcealed lust for his wife-and hers for him-were the on dit of Fortune’s Folly. Lizzie felt wretched.

She had been the center of gossip many times before and it had never troubled her and if she and Nat had been happy and scandalous together, then the salacious chatter of the village would have meant nothing to her. But they were not. She could not deceive herself. She and Nat were not happy because they wanted different things. He was quite content to use physical passion as a substitute for real intimacy. He wanted nothing more than a dutiful wife in the house and a wanton bride in his bed, whereas she wanted everything: his desire, his love, his very self. In a very short space of time she had learned that the extremes of sensual delight had nothing to do with true love. It was a hard lesson for such a hopeless romantic as she had turned out to be and it made her miserable for with Nat’s lust she also wanted his love and he could not even begin to understand that. When he had apologized for leaving her alone on their wedding night and had asked her what was wrong she had felt helpless, for if he could not see how could he ever understand? She did not want to have to explain to him that it hurt her feelings to be left alone on a night that should have been special and wonderful and just for them. She did not want to have to explain the gap between her romantic imaginings and the reality, and to see his look of incomprehension and feel his pity. She did not want to have to tell him that she loved him heart and soul, and that she now realized she should never have married him because to him she was no more than another responsibility. Certainly she could not tell him that when they made love it broke her heart because it was so passionate, so exciting and yet ultimately so shallow without love.

Lizzie had a cup of chocolate at the Pump Rooms, bought some red ribbons and a new pair of fine kid gloves at Mrs. Morton’s shop and then went to Mr. Tarleton’s circulating library just as she had said she would. The day was fine and bright and the village was busy and she was aware of-but felt strangely isolated from-the stares and whispered asides of those she passed. It was evident that her escapade at the card tables the previous night was already common knowledge, as was Nat’s ravishing of her in the carriage. There were sly winks and smiles that made Lizzie feel all the more miserable.

She felt exhausted, sore from the demands of Nat’s lovemaking but unhappy more from the emotional distress of suppressing her love for him. Her body ached and her mind felt cloudy and dull. She wondered if a hot spa bath would ease her but the thought of taking one seemed too much work. It had been difficult enough to dress that morning.

She looked along the row of books and tried to decide which one to choose. Reading would be good. It would soothe her troubled mind and give her something to do all day. Only she could not seem to decide on a title. All she could see was Nat’s face before her that morning. She knew he had tried to reach out to her, to bridge the gap that was widening between them all the time despite the intimacy of their physical relationship. She had not been able to respond to his attempt. She was too tired now and she felt too battered and bruised emotionally to make further effort. It was as though she had encased her feelings in ice now and could feel nothing anymore.

She sat down on one of the comfortable armchairs that Mr. Tarleton had placed in an alcove for the benefit of the library’s clientele and stared blankly into space. Last night had been frightening. She had been so unhappy, racked with unexpected grief for Monty and haunted by her memories of the loss of her family. She knew that she had deliberately allowed that misery to turn to anger against Nat because anger and wildness were more familiar to her and more easy to deal with than the deep dark well of grief that reminded her of the last time she had lost all that was dear to her. So she had gone out and behaved badly, drinking too much again and allowing Tom to provoke her into gambling the necklace and then she had taunted Nat and vented her anger and resentment on him. She had welcomed his desperate lust for her because she wanted whatever he could give. And yet somehow what he could give simply was not enough. What she wanted was his love-but that was not on offer.

The murmur of voices roused her. Priscilla Willoughby was on the other side of the bookcase. Lizzie recognized her light, drawling voice and also Lady Wheeler’s fluting tones; Lady Wheeler who not so long ago had flattered her and fawned on her and was now busy ripping her character to shreds.

“Did you hear the on dit? Yes…totally shameless…drinking gallons of champagne and gambling her jewelry, and her brother only dead a few weeks, though no one really mourns him…”

I do, Lizzie thought. Perhaps I am a fool but for all his faults, I miss Monty. I must be the only one who does.

“It amazes me that Nathaniel married that little hoyden.” There was a spiky edge to Priscilla’s dulcet voice. “Though it is no surprise to me that she behaves so badly. Her mother was nothing but a high-class whore. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lady Waterhouse herself had had several men before she wed-John Jerrold for one…”

“Poor Lord Waterhouse,” Lady Wheeler said again, sounding excited at the thought of Lizzie’s supposed indiscretions. “Yet he seems to desire her for I heard…” Further furtive whispers ensued, “Yes…In the carriage…Absolutely scandalous…And to think I always imagined that he would much prefer a well-bred wife like Flora Minchin, or you, Priscilla.”

“Nathaniel is not thinking with his head at the moment,” Priscilla snapped. “All men are the same, led by what is in their breeches.”

“Priscilla!” Lady Wheeler sounded faint with outrage. Priscilla Willoughby moderated her tone.

“Lord Waterhouse will regain his senses soon enough once his lust has worn thin. Then he’ll see that little wanton for what she really is.” She laughed. “He certainly cannot love her. He was hopelessly in love with me back in his salad days. He told me I am his perfect woman.” She sounded very smug. Lizzie could see her now through the gap between the bookcases. She was dressed in pale lilac with a huge straw hat with lilac ribbons framing her face. She looked cool and glacially composed. “He wrote me endless love letters, you know, Margaret, pouring out his feelings for me.” She gave her little tinkle of laughter. “I think he is still more than a little in love with me now, to tell the truth!”

Lizzie stood up abruptly, catching her sleeve on the shelf and sending a stack of books tumbling to the floor. Both Lady Willoughby and Lady Wheeler turned, as did all the other occupants of the library. Lady Wheeler flushed an embarrassed puce but Lady Willoughby stood quite still, a little, triumphant smile on her lips.

“Lady Waterhouse! I did not see you there.”

“Indeed?” Lizzie said. She met Priscilla Willoughby’s scornful gaze and tried not to feel young and vulnerable. “I was interested in your reflections upon the male of the species, Lady Willoughby,” she continued. “Clearly you have had sufficient of them to make a study.” She nodded abruptly to them and walked out of the door into the hot street. The sun beat down on her head and the light was so bright it almost blinded her. She had forgotten a bonnet or a parasol. She felt hot and dizzy.

Love letters, Priscilla Willoughby had said. Nat, that most practical and unsentimental of men, had written Priscilla Willoughby love letters. She was his perfect woman, well-bred, refined and a lady to the bone. What had the letters said? Had they contained all the words that Lizzie herself wanted to say to Nat and had to keep penned up inside.

I have loved you always…

I will love you to the end of time…

Had Priscilla kept them tied up with ribbon, hidden in a box? Or had she valued Nat’s love so little that she threw them away or burned them or simply left them to flake into dust?

Perfect Priscilla, Nat’s ideal woman…Lizzie could discount some of Lady Willoughby’s words for the jealous spite they most certainly were, but in one case she was horribly afraid that Priscilla might be right. The deep feelings and emotions-the love-that Nat would have for a woman like that would endure far longer than the lust he had for Lizzie. One day his desire for Lizzie would burn itself out, for it was too intense to last and had no deep foundation. And then there would be nothing left at all…

Lizzie found that she was shivering despite the heat of the day. She walked slowly along Fortune Row, largely oblivious to the crowds of people out enjoying the summer sunshine. She sat down on one of the benches in the gardens and stared blankly into space. She had no idea how long she was sitting there for until a shadow fell across her and a voice said, “My lady asked me to deliver this to you, ma’am.”

Someone dropped a letter into her hand and Lizzie looked up to see the retreating figure of a maid dressed in a neat uniform. The girl did not look back. Lizzie looked down, puzzled, at the paper in her hand. It looked old and worn and it was not addressed to her-it was addressed to Priscilla Willoughby.

Understanding broke on her then, and with it a sharp barb of pain. Perfect Priscilla had not wanted her to be in any doubt that Nat really had written her those love letters, so she had sent one to Lizzie to read for herself. It sat there on her lap, tempting her to open it and to make her misery complete. It was tied with pink ribbon and the ink was faded and pale and Lizzie’s fingers itched to unfold it and see the words that her husband had written to another woman, a woman he had loved. She touched the faded ribbon and tried to resist the urge to unfasten it.

She would not read it. She would not torment herself.

She flicked the letter off her lap and onto the path, where a passing lady skewered it with her parasol tip and walked on without even noticing. It gave Lizzie some satisfaction, and when large drops of summer rain started to fall and the ink began to run she felt even better. Soon, she thought, Priscilla’s love letter would be no more than pulp. Except that there were no doubt plenty more where that had come from.

She walked home through the rain and ran into the house, soaking wet, to find that Nat had returned for luncheon and was standing discussing household matters with Mrs. Alibone in the hall. Both of them stared at her, with her bedraggled hair and drenched gown, and Lizzie burst out laughing at their identical looks of surprise and disapproval.

“Madam is an Original,” Mrs. Alibone said to Nat, in tones of disapproval as Lizzie scampered past, up the stairs to change. “My former mistress the Duchess of Cole had very particular ideas on the behavior of young ladies-”

“I would not take Her Grace as a model of good behavior,” Lizzie commented over her shoulder. “She tended to try to murder those she disapproved of, didn’t she? Something of an overreaction…”

She laughed as Mrs. Alibone drew herself up as though she had starch in her spine.

That evening Lizzie and Nat went out to a musicale at the assembly rooms. Alice and Miles were there and various other members of Fortune’s Folly society, and Lizzie smiled until her face ached, and chatted, and laughed but later she could not remember a single thing that she had talked about. Priscilla Willoughby sat across the room, dazzling in pale pink, and smiled at Lizzie like a fat cat that had eaten a particularly delicious saucer of cream, and when Lizzie got home there was another love letter, this time tied with scarlet ribbon, waiting for her. Lizzie put it on the fire and went to bed.

She woke in the night with a low pain aching in her belly and she knew at once what it meant. Six weeks without her courses and she had started to think, started to hope, that she might be expecting a child. Her mind had tiptoed around the edges of the thought because she had still been afraid to face it head-on, but alongside the anxiety had been flickers of excitement and tiny sparks of expectation as each day had passed. Now, though, the hope and the excitement were extinguished in one huge flood of despair. It came from nowhere, ambushing Lizzie with its force and power, racing through her in an unstoppable tide, until she had to stuff the pillow into her mouth to prevent herself from crying aloud. The tears were flooding down her face and she pressed herself deep into the warm embrace of her bed, seeking comfort blindly. Nat was in the chamber next door-he had not come to her room that night-and a part of her wanted to run to him. She wanted so much the comfort he could give her. She wanted him to know instinctively that she needed him and to come to her. But the door remained obstinately closed and Nat’s absence only seemed to underline the distance between them, and Lizzie’s stubborn refusal to let others see her grief prevented her from seeking him out.

She stayed in bed the next day and the one after, pleading a sore throat, which was something that conveniently could not be disproved. Nat took one look at her wan face and said he was sure she was right to rest, and kissed her cheek and went out. He brought her flowers that evening, rich red roses from the gardens that smelled heavenly and made her want to go outside into the fresh summer air. He seemed anxious for her but Lizzie felt too tired to talk. She was puzzled, for her courses had never interfered with her life before-they had been trifling inconvenient things, but she had never experienced this lassitude. She fell asleep with Nat sitting beside her bed and awoke in the middle of the night to find him gone.

On the evening five days later when Lizzie finally got up out of bed, Nat took her to the subscription ball, evidently hoping it would lift her spirits. Lizzie drank too much and danced three times with John Jerrold and tried not to mind that Nat partnered Priscilla Willoughby, who looked stunning in amber silk.

“You look blue-deviled, Lizzie,” Alice said to her the next day as they shared a cup of tea at the Pump Rooms.

“I have the headache,” Lizzie confessed. “I had too much wine again last night.”

“Why?” Alice asked bluntly.

Lizzie turned her teacup around and around in her hands. She had been asking herself the same question. “It makes me feel better,” she admitted after a moment. “I feel so sad, Alice, and I do not understand why. The wine takes the edge of the pain away, at least for a little.”

“And then you wake up feeling worse,” Alice said. She shook her head, exasperation and sympathy mixed in her gaze. “Lizzie, you are in grief. You are mourning for Sir Montague and for all the things that you have lost. Be gentle with yourself.” She leaned forward. “Have you told Nat how you are feeling?”

Lizzie shook her head slowly. “I told him I had a sore throat.”

Alice’s expression twisted. “Lizzie-”

“I’m not pregnant,” Lizzie said suddenly. The words tumbled out of her, impossible to quell once she had started. “I’m not pregnant, Alice, and I wanted to be so much. I did not realize how much I wanted a baby until I knew there was not to be one.” She knotted her fingers together. “I thought it would be a terrible thing to happen, but now that it has not…” She stopped as a tear plopped into the dregs of her tea.

“Oh, Lizzie,” Alice said. Her tone was so soft. She put a hand over Lizzie’s clenched ones. “Lizzie, I am sorry. I was not sure, that day at The Old Palace, that it was what you truly wanted.”

“Neither was I.” Lizzie sniffed, scrubbing at her eyes with a furtive hand so that the other tea drinkers in the Pump Rooms would not see her tears. Her unhappiness felt like a shard of glass wedged in her throat. “I wanted it so much, Alice,” she said. “I still do. And at least then there would be something binding me to Nat.” She looked up and met the arrested expression in Alice’s face. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I know you and Miles are blissfully happy, but not all of us are so blessed.”

Alice squeezed her tightly clasped hands. “You and Nat were friends not long ago, Lizzie,” she said. “What happened?”

“It all went wrong when I fell in love with him,” Lizzie said sadly. “I don’t know why, but I cannot talk to him now. He feels like a stranger.” She bit her lip. “I should never have married him. I knew it would be a disaster.”

“Talk to Nat,” Alice said. “Tell him how you feel-”

“No!” Lizzie straightened up. “I can’t, Alice,” she said more quietly. “Am I to tell him I love him and lose my pride as well as everything else?”

“Pride is a cold comforter,” Alice said. She sighed sharply. “Truly I think Nat is almost as big a fool as you. He must be the only person in Fortune’s Folly who cannot see that you are in love with him. I am inclined to give him a piece of my mind!”

“Don’t!” Lizzie grabbed her hand. “Please, Alice. Don’t. Leave it to me.” She looked away. “I will talk to him in my own good time. I am not ready yet. My feelings are too raw.”

“All right.” Alice looked at her and sighed again. “But please be careful, Lizzie. You frighten me. So much has changed for you recently. It is no wonder you feel cast adrift.” She looked at her. “What are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

“I have no idea,” Lizzie said. The hours stretched before her, empty and dull. What had she done with her time before she married? For a terrifying moment she could not even remember.

“Lady Waterhouse. Lady Vickery.” Priscilla Willoughby had paused beside their table and was now looking down her perfectly proportioned nose at them. “How charming to see you both here.” She bared her teeth is a smile. “And how well you have fitted into local society, Lady Vickery. But then of course-” she flicked an imaginary speck from her gloves “-Lady Membury once told me that you were the cleverest maid she had ever employed.” And she nodded and moved on.

Lizzie was halfway out of her seat, consumed with rage and disgust, her own concerns forgotten, when Alice grabbed her arm.

“Lizzie, no!” Alice hissed.

“I have had enough of that spiteful bitch!” Lizzie said.

“Yes,” Alice said, her hand tightening on Lizzie’s arm, “but a fight in the Pump Rooms is not the answer.” She pulled her friend back down into her chair and poured another cup of tea. Lizzie, shaking with fury, was astonished to see that Alice’s face was quite calm and her hand quite steady.

“I do not know how you can be so serene,” she began, then stopped as Alice met her eyes and she saw the bright fury there was there.

“I am not,” Alice said, “but I refuse to give Lady Willoughby the satisfaction of seeing that she has angered me. She wishes to provoke me into an ill-bred display simply to prove her point. Well, I will not oblige her.”

“No,” Lizzie said, subsiding. “Of course you are right.”

“Revenge,” Alice said, very precisely, “is far better than an overt display of anger.”

Lizzie sat forward, her attention caught. “What did you have in mind?” she said.

“I HEARD THAT LADY WILLOUGHBY sent her apologies tonight,” Alice whispered to Lizzie in the interval at the al fresco concert on Fortune Parade that evening. Miles and Nat had gone to fetch refreshments and she and Lizzie were sitting beneath an awning in the warm evening sunshine, and listening as the orchestra tuned up for the second half of the performance.

“She claims to be suffering from a headache but the servants say she has contracted a dreadful skin complaint. Apparently she itches, and the…um…intimate areas itch the most. It is the latest on dit.”

“How awful,” Lizzie said, shuddering. “Do they have any idea what could have caused it?”

“No,” Alice said. “It is quite a mystery.” She examined her programme. “Oh good, the Bach cantata is next.” She lowered her voice again. “I have heard, though, that the juice of the Buckthorn Alder can be very itchy if it is accidentally rubbed against the skin.”

“I heard that, too,” Lizzie said, nodding to Lady Wheeler and Mary as they passed by on their way to their seats. “Particularly if it is accidentally absorbed into one’s undergarments.”

“But of course that could never happen,” Alice said, smiling angelically as Miles and Nat rejoined them, “for that would necessitate the juice getting into the laundry water and how could that be?”

“Only by the most extraordinary accident,” Lizzie agreed. “Perhaps if she had received a gift of something like lavender water that she believed was from an old admirer…” She cast Nat a sideways glance under her lashes but he was talking to Miles and fortunately not attending. “Did they say how long it was likely to be before Lady Willoughby recovered?” she asked.

“Several days, I believe,” Alice said, shaking her head.

“Really?” Lizzie said. “How terrible.” Her eyes met Alice’s and they smiled, conspiratorial as a pair of schoolgirls. It felt good to be wicked, Lizzie thought; good to take revenge on Priscilla Willoughby, who so richly deserved her comeuppance. She doubted that Priscilla was the sort of woman to be routed for long, however. It would take more than a bottle of doctored lavender water to vanquish her. Like the evil witch in the fairy tale she would surely be back for revenge.

Lizzie glanced at Nat and tried to erase the knowledge of his love letters to Priscilla from her mind. It had all been a very long time ago, she told herself. Nat might not love her but he no longer loved Priscilla, either. He could not. Nevertheless her jealousy of the woman who had once held her husband’s heart was difficult to ignore. All those letters, all those declarations of love, all the words and the emotion that she wanted and was denied…The music started again and Lizzie fixed her gaze on the orchestra and tried not to care too much.

THE FOLLOWING DAY NAT had left the house before Lizzie had even woken up.

“His lordship has been called away on urgent family business,” Mrs. Alibone murmured, when Lizzie came down for breakfast. “He did not wish to wake you but asked that I let you know he hopes to be back this evening.”

She slithered out of the room like a snake leaving Lizzie feeling fretful and cast down. Why could Nat not have taken her with him to Water House? It was several years since she had seen his family. Was he ashamed to have married her? He had been absent so often lately that they barely felt married anyway. And why had he not left her a note rather than leaving a message with Mrs. Alibone, whom she hated? The housekeeper, with her sharp tongue and prying gaze, made her feel as though she was a prisoner in her own home.

Lady Wheeler and Mary called that morning, full of barely concealed curiosity as to how the investigation into Sir Montague’s murder was proceeding. Lizzie thought that Mary looked dreadful. Her face looked drawn and sallow, her body was twitchy, fidgeting, utterly unable to keep still whilst her mother gossiped and chatted and accepted a second cup of tea.

“One wonders if Sir Thomas will be next,” Lady Wheeler said fretfully as she stirred in three spoonfuls of sugar. “I am hoping no one will murder him, for he has been quite attentive to Mary and it would be a feather in her cap to catch him and become Lady Fortune.”

“Tom is hardly a suitor I would wish on any of my friends,” Lizzie said. “If I tried for a week I doubt I could name a single good quality that he possesses.”

“Well at least Mary would be wed,” Lady Wheeler said, with a sharp look at Lizzie that suggested that since she had managed to secure an Earl she should be a little more understanding of a mother’s ambition. “Ever since Lord Armitage’s defection Mary has been sadly out of spirits,” Lady Wheeler continued, “moping around, sighing and sobbing, until it quite tries my patience-”

There was a clatter as Mary dropped her teaspoon against the china cup. Lizzie saw that her hands were shaking and her brown eyes were full of tears.

“Mama-” Mary whispered.

“I hear that Sir Thomas has also called on Miss Minchin,” Lady Wheeler said, ignoring her daughter’s anguish, and speaking of her as though she were absent rather than sitting next to her, “so Mary has a rival there, I suppose, though Flora is only a banker’s daughter rather than Quality.”

“I think it is probably the quality of Flora’s fortune that appeals to Tom rather than her breeding,” Lizzie said, rising to her feet. She smiled at Mary who managed nothing more than a grimace in return. “I pray you will not get your hopes up, ma’am,” Lizzie continued. “Now that my brother has discovered, like Monty before him, that he can fleece his villagers for all manner of taxes I doubt he will bother to tie himself down in wedlock. He is not temperamentally suited to it.”

“Well, it is most inconsiderate of him,” Lady Wheeler said, taking the hint at last and moving toward the door, “especially when there are so few eligible gentlemen left in town. For what are we to do with Mary now?”

“Leave her in peace, I suggest,” Lizzie said, pressing Mary’s hands as they parted in the hall. She watched Lady Wheeler and her daughter walk away down the tree-lined avenue, Lady Wheeler’s bonnet bobbing as she lectured her daughter and Mary dragging her feet and falling behind like a recalcitrant child.

When Sir Montague had first introduced the Dames’ Tax, Lizzie remembered, Lady Wheeler had been one of the most vocal opponents, objecting to Sir James’s attempts to buy a suitor for his plain daughter. That had all changed when Lord Armitage had jilted Mary; it was as though she was damaged goods now and her mother could not get rid of her quickly enough. There were a lot of unhappy people in Fortune’s Folly as a result of Sir Montague’s revival of the medieval taxes, Lizzie thought bitterly. So many of the things that had happened since the previous summer were a direct result of his money-grubbing ways, not least his own death.

Nat had not returned by the afternoon, nor sent any message, so Lizzie went out riding alone, over the moors and down toward Fortune Hall. She wanted to see her old home, even though she knew it would leave her aching with a nostalgia for the way things had once been before Monty had had his head turned by money and Tom had proved himself such an out-and-out scoundrel. There had been a time when they had all rubbed along together well enough, yet something had gone wrong along the way and now Monty was dead and Tom had gone to the bad and even as she looked at the ancient manor house drowsing in the sun, Lizzie knew that that part of her life was over for good.

She was turning away to take the track for Fortune’s Folly village when Tom stepped out of a field gate on her left and startled her so much that she pulled on Starfire’s reins and the mare almost reared as a result. Lizzie calmed her automatically as Tom leaned casually against the gate and looked up at her, a smile that was not quite nice curling his lips.

“Well, if it isn’t my cardsharp of a little sister,” he said. “What brings you in this direction, Lizzie?”

“I was just taking a ride,” Lizzie said. “How are you, Tom?”

“I’m better than some, certainly,” Tom said. He straightened. “Priscilla Willoughby for one. She asked me to give you a message, Lizzie.”

Lizzie raised her brows. “Lady Willoughby is a friend of yours, is she? I might have known.” She tilted her head on one side. “I imagine the two of you would deal very well together, with so much malice in common.”

“We have an arrangement,” Tom said indifferently.

“Is she to become the next Lady Fortune, then?” Lizzie asked, with perfectly calculated innocence.

Tom laughed. He put a hand on Starfire’s bridle and stroked the horse’s nose gently. It was one of the odd things about Tom, Lizzie thought, that he adored his dogs and his horses and yet was without compassion when it came to people.

“I hardly think so,” he said. “I am not wealthy enough to tempt Priscilla and I am not sure I wish to marry such a slut anyway.” He looked up. “Don’t play games with her, Lizzie. She’s much more experienced than you are and she could hurt you badly.”

“And you are warning me out of the goodness of your heart?” Lizzie asked. She found she was not unduly shocked to hear that Tom and Lady Willoughby were lovers. She remembered John Jerrold saying that he suspected that Priscilla was a great deal less respectable than she pretended to be. She wondered if Nat knew. Most probably he did not. In his mind Perfect Priscilla was probably pickled forever as the flawless, ideal wife. And Lizzie knew she could never tell Nat the truth because it would merely look like jealousy talking.

Tom laughed again. “Hardly that.” He looked up at her, narrowing his eyes against the sun. “There are things you don’t know, Lizzie-things about that oh-so-worthy husband of yours. That’s what I want to tell you.”

Lizzie’s hands tightened involuntarily on the reins and Starfire side stepped. Tom grinned to see his barb strike home. “Your Achilles’ heel,” he said softly, “your love for the undeserving Earl of Waterhouse.” He shook his head. “You’re a great girl, Lizzie-I admire you, I really do. In so many ways we are so alike, but you are too, too naive.”

“Don’t bracket me with you,” Lizzie said. “I may be wild, Tom, but I’m not a callous, heartless bastard.”

“More fool you,” her brother said calmly. “You’ve given your heart to the wrong man, Lizzie.”

“You’re boring me with all this talk of love, Tom,” Lizzie said. Her heart had started to thunder. She felt mortified. The thought of Tom and Priscilla Willoughby laughing over her innocent love for Nat, perhaps as they lay in bed together, made her feel sick. How had Tom known? Could everyone see how she felt? Were her emotions too transparent, her vulnerability evident to everybody? Everybody except Nat…

“What are you going to tell me?” she said, affecting ennui so that Tom should not see how much he was upsetting her. “Is your big piece of news that Nat was once Priscilla Willoughby’s lover?”

As soon as the words were out she wondered if Tom was actually going to tell her that Nat was still Priscilla’s lover and she felt a lurch of horror and a fresh wave of sickness engulf her. But Tom was shaking his head.

“I’m sure she would wish it,” he said, “but no. I’ll spare you that torture at least, Lizzie.” His eyes were full of mocking amusement as he dealt out scraps of malice like playing cards.

“What I was going to ask,” Tom said casually, “was whether you knew that Cousin Gregory Scarlet paid Nat to marry you?”

Lizzie stared at him whilst the sun poured down through the shifting leaves and the birds sang and she could not seem to hear them properly because there was a buzzing in her ears.

Paid to marry you…Paid to marry you…

“A dowry,” she said, through stiff lips.

Tom was shaking his head. “A bribe, Lizzie. You know how stuffy Cousin Gregory is. He had heard you were becoming much too much like our mother.” He paused. “The drinking, you know. You have a reputation for it. And the flirtations with unsuitable men…Very undignified and unbecoming to the ancient and great name of the Earls of Scarlet.”

“You’re a fine one to talk of conduct unbecoming,” Lizzie said. She felt cold, skin deep, bone deep.

A bribe…Nat had been bribed to marry her…

“It’s different for men,” Tom said complacently. “I won’t be labeled a drunken doxy.”

“No,” Lizzie said, “just an arrogant, insufferable, hateful sot.”

Tom laughed with the pleasure of hurting her. Lizzie knew he was enjoying it. She could see it in his face and yet she seemed powerless to resist his provocation.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to retaliate against me,” he said cheerfully. “At least I won’t be bought and sold like a piece of meat as you were.” He stepped closer, staring up at her. “Cousin Gregory sold you, Lizzie, with an extra few thousand to sweeten your dowry, and Nat Waterhouse bought you because he needed the money.”

Lizzie had heard enough. She dug her heels into Starfire’s side and turned the horse so sharply that she knocked Tom flying. Lizzie pulled back and Starfire reared and for one satisfying moment Lizzie saw the genuine terror on her brother’s face as the horse’s hooves came down toward him. At the last moment she turned again so the horse pirouetted in the most perfect piece of dressage. Tom scrambled to his feet, swearing horribly, and Lizzie looked down at him.

“I never understood your need to hurt people, Tom,” she said. “We were close once, you, and me, and Monty. Where did it all go wrong?”

She did not wait for his reply. She rode off toward Fortune’s Folly and left Tom standing in the bridleway staring after her. She could feel the venom in his look and her heart bumped against her ribs with the effort not to cry.

Bought and sold like a piece of meat…

A bribe…

A drunken doxy, just like our mother…

Gregory Scarlet had not wanted anything to do with her from the moment that he had inherited from her father and now all he cared about was preserving the good reputation of the Scarlet name. And Nat had agreed, for the money…For the money…The words drummed in her head with every beat of Starfire’s hooves.

When she got back to Chevrons she rubbed Starfire down herself and fed her. Being in the stables with the horses soothed her. It was one of the few things from her past life that was a constant. The house was quiet when she went in. A supper for one was laid on the table in the dining room.

“Lord Waterhouse returned whilst you were out, my lady,” Mrs. Alibone said. “He is dining at the Oyster Club tonight and said not to expect him back until late.”

Nat was out. Of course he was. He was always out, the husband who had been bribed to marry her. He was working, or he was visiting his family, or he was with his friends…Lizzie felt sick with misery that Nat did not choose to spend his time with her. But then it was money and duty that had forced them to wed, not love.

She stripped off her riding gloves and slapped them down on the table. The decanter on the sideboard seemed to beckon to her, the wine glowing red in the evening sunshine. One little drink would take the edge off her misery.

A drunken doxy, just like our mother…

With a sudden violent sweep of the hand she sent the decanter tumbling onto the floor. It smashed into the skirting board and broke, spilling wine across the carpet. Mrs. Alibone slid back into the room so swiftly Lizzie wondered if she had been lurking outside the door polishing the keyhole.

“Madam!”

“An accident,” Lizzie said. “I do apologize for the mess. I’ll tidy it up-”

“Madam!” Mrs. Alibone sounded even more outraged at the thought of her mistress cleaning. “You certainly will not!”

Lizzie sighed. “Very well. Thank you, Mrs. Alibone.” She glanced at the table with its lonely dinner setting. “Pray tell Cook not to bother with dinner. I shall go out.”

Mrs. Alibone raised her brows. “Out? Madam, you cannot! It is not the Done Thing!”

“Yes, I can,” Lizzie said. “I am going out without my husband. Again. Shocking, is it not?”

And she ran up the stairs to get changed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I WILL BE MAKING your cousin Mary an offer of marriage tomorrow morning.” Tom Fortune lay sprawled in his chair in the study at Fortune Hall. His shirt was hanging loose and his trousers were unbuttoned. He was enjoying the ministrations of Priscilla Willoughby’s skilful mouth and equally clever hands and was feeling very mellow. Being pleasured by a veiled woman was proving extremely erotic. Priscilla had refused to let him either see her or touch her because the skin complaint she was suffering had left her with a terrible rash. Tom thought it hilarious that Lizzie had apparently inflicted such humiliation on his vain mistress. Priscilla seemed to find it less amusing. In fact Tom suspected that the only reason she was here and was prepared to indulge his vices as usual was because she wanted something from him in return.

“I tried to seduce Mary,” he continued. “I wanted to make sure she would be obliged to wed me.”

“What happened?” Priscilla’s mouth brushed his cock in the lightest and most tantalising of touches, her cunning little tongue circling him, flicking and delving. Tom shivered with enjoyment.

“She ran from me like the startled virgin she is,” he said. “I do believe she was terrified. Stephen Armitage cannot have had her when they were betrothed. Or perhaps he did-perhaps that was why she took fright.”

Priscilla’s mouth tugged on him and he groaned. “At least you were spared the appalling tedium of having to make love to her,” she murmured. “Do you think she will accept you?”

“I’ll make sure she does,” Tom said. His mind was starting to splinter with pleasure. He really did not want to talk, could not talk. But Priscilla kept accompanying her attentions with questions; questions it was becoming more and more difficult for him to concentrate on.

“Did you speak to your sister?” she asked, fondling him, stroking until he thought he would burst. “Did you?” Suddenly she bit him, not quite gently.

“Ow! Yes!” Smarting, Tom almost pushed her away, but already she was soothing the hurt, laving it away with her tongue and he started to relax again as renewed pleasure swept away the pain. “I told her about Waterhouse being paid to wed her,” he gasped, shifting in his chair to aid Priscilla’s movements. “She was very distressed, though she hid it well.”

“Good.” Priscilla rewarded him with the subtlest and sweetest of caresses. “She is an evil little witch and she deserves to suffer for what she did to me.”

When Tom had first heard about the doctored lavender water he had been filled with admiration for Lizzie-and contempt for Priscilla in believing for a moment that Nat Waterhouse would have sent it. Now, though, as Priscilla urged him to the most exquisite climax, he was not inclined to do anything other than agree with whatever she said.

“I think,” he panted, “she is suffering very much indeed.”

“Good,” Priscilla said again and he heard the satisfaction in her voice and thought she was smiling as she teased him over the edge, and he came with a triumphant shout and the release rolled over him leaving him spent and almost-almost-regretful that he was to marry Mary rather than her cousin.

NAT HAD BEEN DISAPPOINTED not to see Lizzie before he had come out. Mrs. Alibone had said that she had gone riding and Nat had been glad of it for he knew that riding was one of the things that made Lizzie very happy. He wanted her to be happy and manifestly she was not. He could not understand why things seemed so different from how they had been before he and Lizzie wed, but evidently they were and it was his task to discover why and to solve the problem. That was what he had been doing from the first: solving the problem of Celeste’s disgrace, solving the problem of Lizzie’s lost reputation, protecting his family, trying to make all well again because he cared deeply for them all and, devil take it, dealing with problems was what men did. It was the most damnable thing that everything seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket rather than sorting itself out. His father was dangerously ill, Tom Fortune was circling and threatening further blackmail, Lizzie was grief-stricken and seemed wilder by the day and under the circumstances the July meeting of the Oyster Club, a most exclusive gentlemen’s dining club with very restricted membership, excellent food and ample wine, was exactly what Nat needed to help him forget for a few short hours that the rest of his life was in chaos.

He reached for his glass. They served wine in half pint glasses at the Oyster Club and that always loosened men’s tongues. It was Nat’s task, along with Dexter and Miles, to listen for anything that might throw some light on the Fortune murder case for they were lamentably short of leads. No one appeared to have seen or heard anything on the night that Monty Fortune had died, other than a vague rumor of a masked woman seen flitting about the village. There had been the argument between Monty and someone else several nights before his death but again, no one had seen the other person or could identify them. They were making little progress, and yet in cases of this kind something usually gave in the end. It was a matter of patience and endurance, rather like his marriage.

Further down the long table, Nat could see Dexter and Miles talking to various acquaintances. The Club was eclectic, membership comprising local businessmen, professional men and gentry. The food arrived, the famous oysters that gave the Club its name followed by a prime beefsteak. Nat started to relax and tried not to think about Lizzie, left at home. For some reason the image made him feel edgy. The last time he had left her alone in the evening she had gone out and almost gambled away the Scarlet Diamonds. The village was still talking about it. It was surely impossible that she could do anything else even remotely as outrageous but he was painfully aware that they had never really discussed the matter properly, had not really talked about anything of importance in the last few weeks because Lizzie seemed so locked in her grief that he could not reach her and he knew he had used his work as an excuse not to try as hard as he should…

Some sort of disturbance was taking place at the other end of the room. Servants were seen scurrying in all directions, diving for cover. He heard masculine voices exclaim:

“I say! Lady Godiva!”

“What ho! What a filly!”

Men were standing now, craning their necks to see, raising their glasses in a toast. The dazzling lights of the chandeliers shone in Nat’s eyes and he blinked, completely unable to believe what he was seeing.

A woman on horseback was coming up the sweeping staircase. The horse’s hooves made no sound on the thick red carpet and the soft jingle of its harness was the only noise as the whole banqueting hall fell silent. The woman was young and she sat very tall and straight in the saddle, moving gently with the motion of the horse. There was a little smile curving her lips and a wicked spark in her green eyes. Her long titian hair tumbled in glorious array over her shoulders and down to her waist. Her white thighs gripped the horse’s side as she urged it up the staircase.

Nat’s brain refused to accept the evidence of his eyes.

She was stark naked.

Her lissom, pale skin looked like alabaster. One small but perfectly rounded breast peeked from beneath the cascade of her hair, the nipple pink and pouting from the ministrations of the cool night air. The other breast was hidden, but the auburn strands of her hair seemed only to emphasize its tempting curve. Her hands were holding the reins in her lap covering what little was left of her modesty.

Nat heard the men around him draw in their breath sharply as they saw what he saw. And what he saw was his wife, the new Countess of Waterhouse, and she was completely nude, displaying herself in all her wanton beauty in front of the assembled company of the Oyster Club.

Nat’s first response was complete denial. This simply could not be Lizzie. Not even she would do something so outrageous, so scandalous. The room spun about him and he closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them and the world steadied, Lizzie was still there and she was still very, very naked in front of forty extremely appreciative gentlemen. She was riding along the corridor now, toward the big balcony windows and there was a very indiscreet rush of men in her wake.

Swift on the heels of Nat’s disbelief came shock, sharp and sickening, and a mixture of fury and mortification. Men were smacking their lips now, eyes bulging from their heads, the coarsest of jests on their lips. Coarse jests about his wife. They were looking on his wife with lust. No doubt they all wanted to ravish her senseless. And Lizzie herself, provocative, triumphant Lizzie, was smiling at them alluringly, enjoying the admiration and the attention.

Nat watched as Lizzie approached the open doors of the balcony window. It was a good twelve-foot drop to the ground and a ripple of apprehension spread about the room as the assembled company took in her intention.

“Thirty guineas says she will make it!” One enterprising gambler declared, slapping his coins down on the table.

“Fifty against!”

The crowd jostled for the best view.

Nat pulled himself together and strode toward his wife. “Elizabeth!”

His voice was perhaps a little less authoritative than he might have desired, whether from anger or shock or a combination of emotions. Whatever the reason, Lizzie ignored him completely and walked the horse up to the edge of the balcony.

There was a moment’s pause and then they jumped, horse and rider united in a most elegant and perfectly executed leap down to the street. Nat-and everyone else-was afforded the most perfect view of Lizzie’s pert, rounded buttocks and the quickest, tantalizing flash of the crease between her thighs. A concerted sigh ran through all the men in the room, and then the place erupted into chaos as they abandoned the landing and ran down the stairs to see if both horse and rider had survived the jump. Nat ran, too, down the staircase and out into the warm, damp night, torn between fear and an anger so intense he had never experienced it before. Men were pushing and shoving to get a view and as Nat ruthlessly cut his way to the front of the crowd he saw Lizzie trotting demurely away down the street. The lamplight gleamed on the pale skin of her bare back and buttocks and on the lovely curves and hollows of her body. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.

“I say! How marvelous!”

“Splendid creature!”

Nat felt the relief rip through him followed swiftly by ungovernable rage. He saw Miles approach him and then his friend put a hand on his arm and started to speak but Nat did not seem able to hear him. He shook Miles off violently and set off down the street in the direction that the horse had gone. He could still hear the sound of hoofbeats echoing through the night air.

She had gone too far this time.

The blood roared in his ears. What had he been thinking to leave Lizzie alone again? How could he have been so foolishly smug and complacent as to think that she might sit quietly waiting for him, when she was no doubt bored and lonely and so like a child throwing a tantrum she had to do something completely outrageous? This was Lizzie Scarlet, the wild, headstrong, wilful miss who was no more likely to change and reform than her gray mare would turn to a roan gelding. Nothing could excuse this behavior-not Lizzie’s grief nor her misery nor her anger. The truth was that she was spoiled to the bone and she was never going to change. She had made him a laughingstock and proved publicly that their marriage was a sham and a debacle.

The anger threatened to devour him whole. How many years had he known Lizzie? How many times had she pulled a trick that was, if not as appalling as this one, then disgraceful and scandalous and undisciplined? When she had been no more than Sir Montague’s naughty little sister it had not mattered. He had laughed, and shaken his head over her wildness whilst thinking privately that she was a hoyden who had been dragged rather than brought up. Now, suddenly, it mattered terribly. Everything was different because she was his wife.

Nat found that he was running down the Fortune Street, following the faint, fading rap of hooves until he came to the mews at the back of Chevrons. His breath was coming in short, sharp bursts. His blood fizzed with rage and tension. He stormed into the stables and came up short to find Lizzie there, calmly rubbing her horse down. She was wearing a loose dressing robe now, though her feet were still bare, and the fact that she was clothed now only seemed to incense Nat further. For some reason he had expected her to run and hide from him, and her blatant refusal to back down, to accept blame, to beg his forgiveness for her dreadful behavior, was the last straw. And in that moment he realized with appalled horror that he was hugely, hopelessly and unbearably aroused. He looked at the saddle lying on the floor and thought of it pressed between her thighs, and barely managed to repress his groan.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. She stood there, the brush in one hand, her face set and pale. In her eyes was a sparkle of rage that met and matched his.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” she said pertly. “It was the most perfect jump. Starfire-” she patted the horse’s neck “-is all spirit and no fear.”

All spirit and no fear.

Nat realized that he was almost too insane with rage and arousal to speak. He took Lizzie by the shoulders and pushed her roughly ahead of him out of the stall and into the hay store next door. The door of the stall banged behind them and the horse shifted. Nat caught sight of one of the grooms out in the yard, his face a picture of shock and speculation. No doubt he had seen Lizzie ride in, naked and shameless. Nat did not know why that should worry him particularly when every other gentleman in the county had just seen her displaying herself with abandon, but somehow it did. He slammed the door of the storeroom in the groom’s face, shot the bolt and turned to his wife. He grabbed the neck of her robe and wrenched it from her so that she was once more standing naked in front of him.

“And you think that this is the appropriate attire for riding?” His voice shook so much he could barely force out the words. “And in front of every one of my friends and acquaintances?”

Her chin came up. She made no attempt to cover herself. Once more her bright auburn hair covered her shoulders and tumbled over her provocative little breasts and she put her hands on her hips. “No doubt they envied you,” she said, her gaze going to the immense bulge in his pantaloons.

“No doubt they thought you a whore and wanted to have you on the banqueting table,” Nat said. The mere thought of any other man possessing her-or even wanting to possess her-drove him to insanity. “Was that what you wanted?”

The fury sparked again in Lizzie eyes. She threw the brush at him. He ducked as it sailed over his head.

“Bastard!” she said. “I hear my cousin bribed you to marry me. All that talk of honor and saving my reputation and caring for me-” Her voice broke. “Oh, I knew you needed the money, too,” she finished bitterly. Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly with each gasping breath she took. “At least you were honest about that. But you had my dowry for that. You did not need for Gregory to sell me to you, as well-”

Nat made a grab for her, but she slithered from his grip, lithe and slippery, and snatched the riding crop that was on the table. She held it out toward him like a weapon.

“Don’t touch me or I’ll hit you! I mean it!”

“Lizzie,” Nat said. “Please…” He made a desperate final grab for his control. “Can we talk about this?”

In response she brought the crop down on his arm, the pain so jarring he caught his breath.

“Keep away from me!”

“All right,” Nat said, the fury whipping through his blood. “If you want to play it like this.”

He did not recognize the jumble of lust and fierce violence and frustration within him. It felt as though he had been propelled far beyond his normal self by feelings and emotions that were completely uncontrollable and absolutely alien to his nature. He grabbed the end of the crop and used it to drag Lizzie toward him. She wriggled her arm free again and brought the crop down hard against his buttocks. The sensation, the pleasure and pain, burst through his body in an explosion of sparks. His cock jutted fiercely. He groaned. She did it again, with a wicked flick of the wrist and he froze as even more intense feelings racked him. A third time and he almost came where he stood. He tore the crop from her hands and snapped it in half, throwing the pieces into a corner. She did not take the opportunity to run away. She stood in front of him, her eyes and the tilting smile on her lips, taunting him.

“I warned you,” she said.

“And I’m warning you.” Nat was panting. “Parading yourself before all those men…I am the only one who can have you.”

She shrugged an insolent shoulder. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it-the sex and the money. Well, if you want me you’ll have to take me.”

Even as he reached out to her she whirled away from him and ran for the door. She was quick, but now he was quicker. He caught her by the upper arms and spun her around so that her bare back was against the rough brick wall of the store. He yanked her head back with one hand tangled in the silken tresses of her hair and ground his mouth against hers and in return she bit his lip hard and he tasted blood.

This was madness, this frenzied, desperate need he had for her. He knew it and the fact that it was so far removed from his usual rational demeanor filled him with equal measures of despair and arrant desire. He did not understand why he felt driven by the need to tame her but he grabbed one of the leading reins from the table and looped it about her wrists, dragging them above her head and securing the leather over a jutting metal hook. The expression in her eyes when she realized that he had restrained her was feral. She kicked out at him but he brought his body in close to her, trapping her flailing legs between his thighs. She writhed and wriggled now to no avail.

“Lizzie,” he said. They were close, staring into each other’s faces, her breasts touching his chest as they both panted for breath. And then that impudent smile twitched her lips again.

“Nat,” she said. “How far would you go?”

“As far as you,” Nat said. “Further.”

The dare was in her eyes. “You think so? Try me. Test me. Take me.”

Her words snapped the last of Nat’s control. He ran his hands down her body, over the breasts that had so tormented him with their pert, pouting beauty when she had flaunted them in the face of every man in Fortune’s Folly.

Take me…

Now at last he could pinch and squeeze and suck on her until she cried out and arched to his mouth, satisfying himself with both her submission and her eagerness. He could part the silken softness of her thighs and find the slick center of her and feel the way that her body closed about his marauding fingers just as it would squeeze him to an excess of pleasure and lust. He could run his thumb over the nub of her and revel in the way that she twitched and jerked in her bonds, and the way in which he could demand this response from her and she would give all she had because she was as desperate as he.

“You should not have provoked me,” he said against her mouth whilst his fingers still invaded her, sliding, stroking. “You did not understand what would happen.”

Her eyes were a slumberous green from sensual arousal now, her lashes a dark flicker against her cheek, her lips parted on each needy breath.

“Oh, I understand this well enough,” she said. “It is the only thing between us that I do understand.” She writhed. “Finish me. Please. I don’t mind begging.”

Nat shook his head. “Consequences,” he said. He twisted his fingers inside her a little and heard her gasp.

“I’ll come anyway,” she said, “just to spite you.”

“And then you’ll come again,” Nat said, kissing her in such gentle counterpoint to his words, “and again until I say you can stop.”

She did come then, against his hand. And again, still restrained, at the insistence of his lips and tongue, and then he could wait no longer and unfastened her bonds and tossed her down into the pile of hay. He held her with one hand whilst he freed his shaft with the other. He lowered his mouth to hers again and she kissed him back, as insatiable as she was angry, her hunger as violent as his own. He was so hard by now that he thought he might explode, simply shatter. She pulled up his shirt, scoring his back with her nails, biting his chest and shoulders. There was no gentleness in her touch. She wanted revenge and it hurt. And when she dug her fingers into the stinging marks that the crop had made on his buttocks he spread her and plunged into her with hot, ruthless strokes and came immediately, shouting her name. Lizzie screamed and her body arched and convulsed about him. It was over in seconds.

Afterward, when he had recovered a modicum of strength, Nat wrapped her in the tattered remnants of her gown and carried her into the house. Her body felt soft and compliant in his arms, her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed. The edge had gone off Nat’s anger now but he felt bruised and tired yet still unsatisfied. He hunted that satisfaction and fulfilment all night long, seeking oblivion in Lizzie’s body, driving her to wild peaks of pleasure, making her climax again and again until she was spent. He woke her simply so that he could touch her at will and do whatever he wished with her pale, tantalizing body. She did not refuse him once. He lay with his shaft buried deep within her, hard and hot, for several hours, not moving, resisting the twitch and spasm of her body about him as though determined to show he could resist the power she held over him. He felt as though he was in a dream in which he pursued something so elusive that it was forever within reach and yet it slipped away from him just when he thought he had captured it. Even when he took her for the final time the pleasure overwhelmed him only to ebb away and leave him exhausted and empty, deprived of whatever it was he sought.

Nat fell asleep trying to puzzle out what it was that he was searching for and awoke as the summer dawn broke into the room in all its shimmering golden glory. He turned instinctively to search for Lizzie’s warmth and found the bed empty. The corresponding barrenness inside him seemed to deepen and grow. He felt at the same time scoured clean of the anger of the previous night and yet even more hollow and lonely than he had before. And he felt shocked. Shocked with himself and appalled at what he had done. He could not escape the thought that his marriage, for all its extremes of physical pleasure, was a complete disaster in other respects and he did not know what to do to put it right. He did not even know where to start.

Where was Lizzie?

Nat’s apprehension started to increase. Last night…Last night he had been intolerably angry with his new wife, so furious and possessive and distraught that he had taken her and used her. He had probably frightened her or given her a disgust of him. Lizzie was wild, his perfect physical match; she aroused in him emotions that he had never dreamed he possessed and that made him forget to be gentle. He had been so incensed that he had made no allowances for her relative youth and lack of experience.

Guilt twisted his gut. She had run from him now just as she had after that first night in the folly. On the thought he got up, grabbed his dressing robe and went to the door that connected their rooms. It was locked.

“Lizzie?” He rattled the handle. “Lizzie!”

He went out into the corridor and was about to try the other door into Lizzie’s room when he heard a step behind him.

“May I be of assistance, Lord Waterhouse?”

Mrs. Alibone was standing in the corridor behind him, wearing a long black dressing gown of formidable respectability, a candle in one hand. “If it is locked I could fetch the spare set of keys,” she continued. Her eyes were bright with prurient excitement and suddenly Nat felt sick.

“No,” he said. “Thank you.” He was not having the housekeeper intruding into Lizzie’s room and perhaps finding her distraught, in floods of tears. It was bad enough that the entire household knew that Lizzie had ridden out naked the night before-and that when they returned he had ravished her in the stables. There would be plenty of talk without providing a sequel. Suddenly, despite his anger the previous night, he felt desperately, feverishly protective of Lizzie.

“Thank you, Mrs. Alibone,” he said pointedly, when the housekeeper made no attempt to leave, “you can go now.”

Only when Mrs. Alibone had slid silently away did he turn the handle. By now he was shaking. The door was not locked, but Lizzie’s bed was neat, turned down for the night but untouched.

Nat snatched his clothes, dressing haphazardly in shirt and pantaloons, and managing-just-to drag on his boots without the assistance of his valet. He ran down the stairs, through the waking house and out into the garden.

Where was Lizzie? Where would she run?

Almost as soon as the words formed in his mind he saw her, sitting on the wooden swing under the wide spreading branches of an ancient apple tree. She was swinging very slowly backward and forward. Her head was bent and the early-morning sun burnished the deep auburn strands of her hair, setting them alight. She wore a bright yellow gown that looked fresh and pretty. Nat felt some strange sensation squeeze his heart as though it were clenched tight inside a fist.

She had not run from him after all. Despite everything she was still here. The relief overwhelmed him.

He moved toward her across the dew-drenched grass. A blackbird sang in the tree above her head. The scent of roses was on the air. Then Lizzie looked up and the misery he saw in her green eyes made Nat’s heart clench again, this time in shock, for it was stark and painful to witness.

“Lizzie,” he said. “Sweetheart-”

She stood up and let the rope of the swing slip from her hand.

“This has to stop, Nat,” she said. “I cannot bear it any longer.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

LIZZIE HAD WOKEN before the dawn, when the very first call of the birds had broken the quiet of the night and the very first rays of the sun had barely started to lighten the eastern sky. She had been profoundly glad that Nat had not stirred when she slipped from the bed. She had known she had to get out of the house, into the fresh air, to breathe, to think.

In the peace of the early morning she had sat in the garden and thought about the disaster that was her marriage. She had been so angry with Nat last night for his mercenary acceptance of Gregory Scarlet’s bribe and even more so because he had not told her about it, and he had been equally angry with her for her wildness and her outrageous behavior. They had been pushed as far apart as the poles. That such mutual fury had erupted into equally mutual desire had not surprised her in the least. That was the way that it was between herself and Nat.

That was the only thing there was between herself and Nat.

And it was not enough for her.

Oh, she knew that sex without love was possible. Hundreds, thousands of people had sex without being in love with one another and evidently Nat was one of those people who had no difficulty in separating out the two things. She was not. And now, finally, it had broken her heart and she knew she could never do it again.

She looked at Nat now as he approached her across the grass. He was in no more than shirt and breeches and he looked casual and disheveled, as though he had pulled on his clothes carelessly. The breeze flattened his shirt against his muscular torso and ruffled his dark hair. He looked troubled and harried, and the love she had for him pounded through Lizzie with every beat of her pulse. She knew it was a catastrophe to feel like this but she could not help herself. She could not deny her love or fall out of love with Nat simply because he was unable to return her feelings.

Last night she had wanted to be able to provoke him and to know that she could rouse a response from him. She had done so. But this morning she faced the hard truth that it was not the response she wanted. She wanted to know him properly, to feel as close to him emotionally as she was physically. She wanted his love, and he could not give that to her. Each time they made love it became more difficult for her to hold back her feelings because although she could respond to him and take pleasure-great pleasure, she admitted-in the act, it left her feeling cheated and desolate, more acutely aware than ever that outside their bedroom they barely spoke.

“This has to stop, Nat,” she said. “I cannot bear it any longer.”

She saw the expression of bewilderment deepen on his face. “I don’t understand,” he said.

No. And she could not explain to him, not completely, because in doing so she would lay her feelings beneath his feet and he would crush them, not deliberately, for she was sure that he would never seek to hurt her on purpose, but simply because he could not match her love for him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am sorry about last night. I was very angry and upset to discover that you had taken money from Cousin Gregory to marry me. It made me behave very badly.”

Nat rubbed his forehead. “I am sorry, too,” he said. “I treated you very badly. Your anger seems to fuel mine and then it is madness between us.”

Lizzie chose her words with care. “I think that we need to get to know one another better,” she said. “We have barely spoken since we wed. It feels as though we are strangers to one another now. And until we have resolved our difficulties I feel we should not sleep with each other again.”

The look of bewilderment on Nat’s face was replaced by a rather comical look of horror. If Lizzie had not felt so wretched she might even have laughed.

“Not sleep with one another?” he repeated.

Trust a man to pick up on that point first, Lizzie thought. “Not have sex with one another,” she elaborated. “A sex ban,” she said, warming to her theme, “like the Lysistrata in Ancient Greece. No touching, no kissing until we know one another better.” Her classical education had been somewhat neglected-in fact, her entire education had been somewhat neglected since governesses had not stayed long at Scarlet Park and even less time at Fortune Hall-but she had a vague recollection of a play in which the women had withdrawn their sexual favors.

“Lizzie, we have known one another for nine years,” Nat said. “It is not as though we are strangers to each other.”

And you do not really know me at all, Lizzie thought, nor do I know you. She started to walk slowly across the lawn toward the house.

“I realize that,” she said, “but for almost all our acquaintance I was no more than Monty’s little sister to you, and you…”

You were like a hero to me.

He had been. Nine years older and with all the glamour that age and experience could bestow, he had always seemed out of her reach.

“There is a vast gap between the friendship we had before,” Lizzie said, “and being husband and wife.”

“Many people who marry are practically strangers to one another when they wed,” Nat said. “It is accepted.”

Lizzie thought of Flora Minchin. Flora and Nat had been virtual strangers who would have wed and perhaps Nat would have been more comfortable with a wife he did not need to know well. All he had wanted was someone who was rich and could one day fulfill the role of Duchess of Waterhouse with aplomb. Instead he had got her, rich, it was true, but a complete hoyden.

“I know,” she said. “Unfortunately I cannot live like that.” She looked him in the eyes. “It makes me unhappy to give myself to you with such abandonment and yet to feel so remote from you the rest of the time,” she said. “It feels wrong to me. I need to know you better, Nat. I need time.”

I need to try to make you love me…

She trembled a little at the thought. Perhaps she was mad even to imagine that she could turn his caring and his desire for her into something deeper and more profound. She did not know; all she knew was that she owed it to herself to try and that she was determined that she would give them this chance.

“I understand that you might need time to adjust to your new situation,” Nat said. “This is strange for you and new, and you are young and have experienced so much loss lately…” He stopped, frowning more deeply. “If I hurt you last night…”

Lizzie knew that he thought she was shocked at the physical demands he was making on her and so she was withdrawing because she needed time to come to terms with them. In an odd way, although he had misunderstood her reasons, she loved him all the more for trying to give her what she wanted even when he did not understand.

“You did not hurt me,” she said, “but I do need some time. I am sorry. It is true that I am in mourning and I feel very angry and resentful all the time and that is why I go a little mad and do such scandalous things…” She stopped. She knew that one day soon she would need to talk to him about all the pent-up anger and frustration and misery that was inside her or it would poison everything. This morning her hurt was too fresh and new to try, and she felt so weary, but she would explain as best she could very soon.

“Will you do it for me, Nat?” she appealed. “Will you try to know me better, do things together, talk to one another?”

She could see that he still did not understand why she needed it to be this way but that he could also see how passionately it mattered to her. He took her hand and she tried not to shiver with hope and longing.

“Very well,” he said. “I know you are angry and unhappy.” The lines about his eyes eased as he smiled a little. “Indeed I would have to be blind not to have noticed and I am sorry that I have been angry, too, and not more patient with you.”

Lizzie felt almost winded with love for him in that moment. “You would have to be a very complaisant husband indeed not to be infuriated by my behavior,” she whispered, and he smiled at her again, looking tired and sad, and she wanted to soothe that sadness away.

“Would you like to go riding with me later-take a picnic, perhaps?” Nat said. “We could make a start on getting to know one another better.”

“I should like that very much,” Lizzie agreed, smiling with dazzling pleasure. A tiny seed of hope was unfurling in her heart, so new and delicate that she was almost afraid to put too much trust in it.

Nat’s thumb moved gently over the smooth skin on the back of her hand. “But this idea of not touching,” Nat continued. “Perhaps you could reconsider?”

Lizzie looked up at him. The soothing movement of his thumb and the warm clasp of his hand on hers were very seductive. She was tempted to compromise. But that way lay danger and weakness. In no time they would kiss and then they would make love again and she would be back where she had started having lost the chance to win the thing that she so desperately desired, Nat’s love.

She removed her hand from his. “I am sorry,” she said. “No compromises.” Despite herself, her voice came out a little huskily from the effect of his proximity. Nat heard it and immediately his eyes narrowed to a predatory gleam.

“You will be the one who breaks the terms first,” he said softly.

“No, I will not,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, you will because you have no patience.”

Perhaps, Lizzie thought, he knows me better than I imagined. But I will show him.

She smiled into his eyes. “I’ll wager I do not.”

Nat smiled straight back at her and Lizzie felt her head spin. This was different. This was new. Her husband was flirting with her. Nat Waterhouse, whom she had known since she was eleven years old, who had viewed her as the rather troublesome little hoyden whom he was always extracting from scrapes, was actually flirting with her.

This is the bit we missed out, Lizzie thought suddenly. We never had a courtship. We went straight from a rather strained friendship to an even more strained marriage and there was no time to adjust. But now we can change that…

Suddenly she felt light-headed with excitement.

Nat took her hand again and kissed the palm and Lizzie snatched it away from him. She could feel the imprint of his lips on her skin and curled her fingers over the place where the kiss had been. “You are cheating already!” she protested.

“I’ll wager you lose, sweetheart,” Nat said. “I will see you at breakfast.” He strolled away across the grass and Lizzie watched him go, her heart suddenly lifting. He had never called her sweetheart before that morning. He had probably never thought of her in that way. Of course Nat had no idea that she was gambling on far more than he was, on the chance of his love, but suddenly she thought this wager with her husband might prove a great deal more fun than she had imagined.

“SO,” LAURA ANSTRUTHER SAID, “you rode naked into The Granby Hotel, you quarreled passionately with Nat-”

“I’m guessing that you then made love even more passionately,” Lydia put in slyly.

“And now you are refusing to sleep with him again until he falls in love with you,” Alice finished.

“That’s about the sum of it,” Lizzie said. She looked around the circle of her friends. “Well? Do you think I am mad?”

They were sitting in Laura’s library later that morning and the summer sun was streaming in through the long windows. Alice and Lizzie had been into the village and brought back the news and gossip for their friends and now they were taking tea, all except Lydia who was eating a pickled egg.

“I can’t help it,” Lydia said defensively, catching Lizzie’s grimace as she reached for the jar, “I developed a taste for them a few months ago and now I cannot stop. It’s not my fault-being enceinte has given me a liking for all manner of strange food.”

“The vinegar smells horrid,” Lizzie said.

“It tastes wonderful,” Lydia said, beaming as she popped another egg into her mouth.

“No, you are not mad,” Laura said to Lizzie, patting her hand, “but I do think you are very brave in risking your heart like this. I’m surprised that Nat agreed,” she added.

“Well of course he thinks that I am shocked by his demands on me,” Lizzie said, coloring a little. “And he did not precisely agree. He sees it more as a wager and thinks I will lose.”

“And meanwhile he will be falling in love with you,” Alice said.

“If he does not-” Lizzie began. She had not allowed herself to think what might happen if she set out to win Nat’s love and failed. Presumably life would feel as desolate as it did now, only worse.

“He will,” Laura said. “You have had men falling at your feet for years, Lizzie.”

“And the one that I want, my own husband, is indifferent to me,” Lizzie said. “There’s some irony in that.”

“Nat is not indifferent to you,” Laura said thoughtfully. “He cares deeply. He has always been there for you, Lizzie, for as long as you have known him. What he has not done yet-” she paused thoughtfully “-is to let that regard for you grow into love. But I think he is close and now that you have changed the rules of the game, well…” She smiled. “We shall see.”

“There is a horde of people approaching up the lawn,” Lydia commented, peering out of the library window. “Whatever can they want? There is Mrs. Broad, and Mrs. Morton from the dressmakers and the haberdasher and the milliner and the florist-”

“And Mrs. Lovell the solicitor’s wife, and Mrs. James the doctor’s wife, and my mama, and the servants from Fortune Hall-” Alice said.

There was a thunderous crash at the front door as the first of the visitors applied themselves to the knocker, then there was a babble of voices and then Carrington, Laura’s aged butler, staggered into the library followed closely by about forty people.

“A number of ladies from the village wish to speak with you, Mrs. Anstruther,” Carrington shouted, over the tumult. “There is Mrs. Broad and Mrs. Morton and-”

“Pray don’t feel you must announce everyone, Carrington,” Laura said hastily as the butler looked as though he was about to expire with the effort. She raised her hand.

“Ladies, please!” The room fell obediently quiet. “What may we do for you?” Laura added.

“You’ve had the news from the village?” Mrs. Lovell asked, quivering like a greyhound. “We’ve only just heard-Spencer, Sir Montague’s valet, has been found murdered!”

Lizzie gave a gasp. She exchanged a look with Laura. “That is terrible,” she said. “I am so sorry-”

“No one liked him very much anyway,” Mrs. Broad said, pushing to the front of the crowd. “He was always full of airs and graces. But the word is that someone mistook him for Sir Thomas and murdered him by mistake.”

Lizzie could not quite repress a laugh. “Oh dear, I see. Poor Spencer.”

“But that’s not why we’re here,” Mrs. Broad said bluntly. “We need your help. Sir Thomas is a complete bastard, begging your pardon, milady, and we have to stop him. He’s only been the squire for two minutes and he’s eaten my chicken and he’s taxing the shopkeepers to raise money to buy all his fancy clothes and pay for his fancy women-” Here there was a rumble of agreement and discontent from the shopkeepers of the village. “And we thought Sir Montague was bad, but Sir Thomas is worse! Why, he’s levying a tax on death now, taking half our goods when we die. None of us can afford to live and now we can’t afford to die, either!”

“Then it seems in our interests to protect and support one another and to make sure that no one else dies for a start,” Lizzie said.

“Aye,” Mrs. Broad said darkly, “unless it is Sir Thomas. I’ll string him up with my bare hands, so I will!”

Once again there was a murmur of anger and discontent from the villagers and Lizzie remembered Dexter saying that before he was murdered, Sir Montague had received death threats and had been in danger. Clearly Tom had not heeded the example that had been made of Monty and it was tempting simply to allow the villagers to lynch him. Lizzie sighed. She supposed that Nat would not approve of mob justice, nor would Dexter, or Miles for that matter, despite the fact that they all detested Tom, too. And in her heart of hearts she did not want Tom to die, cad though he was.

“What are we to do?” Mrs. Morton asked. “This cannot go on.”

Lizzie looked at Laura, who was smiling gently at her. “Alas there is very little that I can do in this state,” Laura said, gesturing toward her hugely pregnant belly, “but I think that you will take up my mantle admirably, Lizzie.”

“I’ll help you,” Alice added. “On behalf of Laura and Lydia, and everyone else…”

Lizzie looked at Lydia, who was sitting with quiet dignity in her chair, Lydia who more than anyone deserved revenge on Tom. “Do it, Lizzie,” she said.

Lizzie looked back at Laura again. Laura nodded slightly.

“All right,” Lizzie said, suddenly feeling the weight of responsibility. “The first thing I am going to do is to write to the Prince of Wales to see if he can intervene in this matter of the ancient laws. He was a friend of my father and so he may be disposed to help us-”

“The man’s a fool,” Mrs. Broad said trenchantly.

“That’s treason,” Mrs. Morton pointed out.

“It’s still true,” Mrs. Broad said.

“Ladies,” Lizzie said, holding up her hand, “it may be true and it may be treason but if the prince can help us that is good enough for me.”

Several people muttered their agreement.

“To get a response will take some time,” Lizzie continued. “So in the meantime I suggest a series of…” She paused. “Countermeasures against my brother which will, I hope, stop him in his tracks for a little while. Meet me at the river at four this afternoon and we shall begin.”

“What on earth do you plan to do, Lizzie?” Alice said when the ladies had filed out with a pledge to meet later and Carrington had tottered in with more refreshments for the four of them.

“I mean to hit Tom where it hurts,” Lizzie said. “What are his favorite things?”

“Clothes and women,” Lydia said.

“Quite,” Lizzie agreed. “His wardrobe and his collection of pornography.” She turned to Laura. “Do you know if Dexter and Miles are occupied today? I would rather not be interrupted in what I plan to do.”

“If Spencer has indeed been murdered then I imagine they will both be very busy indeed,” Laura said. “Poor man-terrible enough to suffer the fate of murder, but to be murdered by mistake?” She sighed. “Anyway, I am sure the coast is clear.”

“What are we going to do?” Alice asked.

“We are going to break into Fortune Hall,” Lizzie said. “We are going to steal Tom’s clothes and his pornographic books and we are going to destroy them in full public view.” She laughed. “We are going to make him suffer for what he has done to everybody.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS A VERY HOT afternoon. Four o’clock saw Nat strolling through Fortune’s Folly village with Miles Vickery, discussing the latest development in the murder case.

“We’re very little further forward,” Miles was saying. “The murder of Spencer must surely be linked to that of his master and the gossip that he was murdered by mistake for Tom could well be true, but once again no one saw anything except for another mysterious sighting of a masked woman last night.”

“At least we know it wasn’t Lizzie,” Nat said, lips twitching, “unless she combines murder with naked riding.”

“Yes…” Miles cleared his throat. “Um…I hope that everything is all right between the two of you?”

“Perfectly, I thank you,” Nat said. A few hours ago, he thought, his response might have been very different. Now, however, he had cause to hope.

“Because every man who was there last night views Lady Waterhouse with the utmost admiration and respect,” Miles continued.

“Doing it too brown, old fellow,” Nat said.

“Well,” Miles said, “they view her with…ah…appreciation and admiration. She does have the best seat on a horse of any woman in the county,” he added slyly.

“That’s more like it,” Nat said. He laughed. He found that he was looking forward to seeing Lizzie later and taking a picnic out onto the hills. They would talk. He would explain to her about Gregory Scarlet’s contribution to her dowry and he would try to understand the anger and grief that drove her and then, perhaps, their marriage might not be such an unmitigated disaster after all.

“I wonder why all the shops are closed,” Miles said, staring around at the shuttered windows along Fortune Street.

“I heard that Tom Fortune was taxing the shopkeepers heavily,” Nat said. “Perhaps this is their way of protesting.”

“And what is that crowd doing on the bridge?” Miles said. “What on earth is going on?”

“There’s a fire!” Nat said, scenting smoke on the air.

They quickened their steps and found themselves on the bridge over the River Tune. The crowd was good-tempered and allowed them to push their way through. Miles leaned over the parapet and the breath whistled between his teeth.

“Hell and the devil!”

Nat was a second behind him and it took him a moment to see what was happening. On the riverbank, Mrs. Broad and Mrs. Morton were tending to a bonfire, feeding it with sheets of paper from a large folio. Meanwhile in the river it looked as though someone was doing their washing, for piles of clothes were floating on the water. They were caught on the stones of the riverbed, they adorned the overhanging branches of the willow trees and they flapped in the current like banners. Those items that broke free were floating away under the bridge and some enterprising villagers were scooping them up at the other end and making off with them.

“Those are good-quality garments,” Nat said, spotting a gray velvet jacket and a red-and-gold embroidered waistcoat as they bobbed past. “A bit showy for my taste, but surely too good to throw in the river.”

“That depends on why you would be destroying them,” Miles said, grinning. A piece of charred paper from the bonfire fluttered past and he made a grab for it. “I say, look at this!”

Nat squinted at the page. It carried some lurid illustrations and some even more explicit text in French. “That…That looks like a dildo!” he spluttered, pointing at one of the pictures. Immediately someone in the crowd snatched the paper from Miles’s hands and pored over it and the pitch of excitement seemed to rise even higher.

“Tom Fortune’s collection of pornographic writings,” Miles said, trying not to laugh. “Oh dear, I know he spent a lot of money on that folio.” He pointed. “Look. I think we have found the perpetrators of this outrage.”

Nat looked. In the river shallows, their skirts hitched up to their waists, the water lapping about very shapely legs, stood Lizzie and Alice. They were laughing together. Lizzie’s head was thrown back and her red hair tumbled from its ribbon and she looked exhilarated and very happy. Nat’s breath caught to see the vivid excitement in her face. He glanced at Miles, who was watching Alice with a little smile playing about his mouth.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

Miles cocked an eyebrow. “Join them,” he said. He pulled off his jacket, unfastened his stock, passed them to a helpful bystander and ran down to the river.

That had not been quite what Nat had meant. Vague thoughts of reading the Riot Act, dispersing the crowd and rescuing Tom’s clothes if not the pornography, had been jostling in his mind with the thought that what Lizzie had done was very probably illegal. Then he saw Miles leap into the water and grab Alice about the waist and kiss her with a great deal of enthusiasm. The crowd cheered and Lizzie tilted her head and looked up at the bridge and her eyes met his.

For a long moment they stared at one another and Nat could see apprehension creep into Lizzie’s eyes and all the joy seemed to drain from her and she started to wade clumsily toward the riverbank. Nat had an odd feeling inside then and it seemed of prime importance to reach Lizzie and reassure her and put that irresistible smile back in her eyes. He climbed quickly onto the parapet and the crowd gasped and Lizzie turned and stopped, looking at him wide-eyed as he teetered on the very edge of the bridge.

And then he jumped and the last thing he thought before he fell was to wonder just how deep the river was, and that it would probably have been a good idea to check first.

LIZZIE GRABBED NAT AS he rose, spluttering, to the surface, and dragged him into the shallow water. Her heart was pattering with a combination of nervousness and shock.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked, anxiety for him making her sound as shrill as a fishwife. “Are you mad? You could have killed yourself!”

Nat was laughing. “It’s a hot day and I needed to cool down.” He pushed the soaking hair back from his face and caught her about the waist, holding her close to him. She could feel the heat of his body through his drenched clothes and the beat of his heart against hers. Relief filled her that he was unhurt and with it a strange weakness that made her legs tremble. Nat tightened his grip and bent his head to kiss her. Lizzie held him off with her palms against his chest.

“No! Remember we have an agreement!”

Nat glanced up at the bridge where the crowd was cheering and whooping. “Damn the agreement,” he said. “You’ll disappoint our audience and they are so proud of you. I am so proud of you.” He gave her a brief, hard kiss, then drew back and looked at her, his gaze intent on her face. His eyes were blazing with triumph and possession and it made her feel weaker still.

“Nat-” she began, but the words were lost as he kissed her again, this time with a thoroughness that had the crowd shouting approval and left Lizzie utterly shaken. She clenched her fingers in his soaking shirt and held tight as the world spun.

“This isn’t like you,” she whispered when his lips finally left hers. “I thought you would be angry with me. I have committed an offence against the law. You do understand that, don’t you?” Her brow creased as Nat simply smiled at her. “What has happened to you?” she whispered.

Nat silenced her, kissing her for a third time until she forgot the crowd, forgot that they were standing in a river, forgot everything except for Nat. It felt different, though she could not quite explain how, but there was excitement in it as well as gentleness, and an eager anticipation. His hands were warm on her through the drenched gown and the sun was hot and the crowd loud and Lizzie thought her head was going to burst with the blazing sensation of it. When Nat let her go he touched her cheek gently and his gaze moved over her face like a caress.

“Remember that we are to go out riding together this evening,” he murmured. “I promise to behave.” He looked down at his soaking pantaloons and laughed. “I suppose I had better go and change.”

He splashed off through the shallows and Alice came over to Lizzie, her blue eyes alight with amusement. “Well! If that is what happens when you deny Nat your bed I think I might even try the same thing with Miles!”

“I thought he would be angry that we had broken the law, but he said that he was proud of me,” Lizzie said, watching Nat as he hauled himself up onto the bank. His hair was sleek and dark with water and his clothes clung to his hard, masculine body and merely looking at him made her feel very hot and bothered.

“Miles once said that when you deny yourself something you really want, you only end up wanting it more,” Alice said. She gave Lizzie a speculative look. “You have taken away Nat’s certainty, Lizzie. You have changed the rules. It is making Nat think, and making him work for what he wants.” She laughed. “It’s about time. Don’t give in. Bring him to his knees!”

“I will,” Lizzie said, thinking of the evening ahead and feeling a burn of anticipation. “I won’t give up now.”

THAT EVENING THEY RODE up onto the hills and spread their picnic on a blanket beneath an ancient oak tree that sheltered the remains of an old shepherd’s hut. They talked and Nat preserved a scrupulously respectable distance from Lizzie whilst at the same time never taking his eyes from her for a moment. There was a tense thrill in the pit of Lizzie’s stomach as they talked, a prickle of eagerness along her skin, an excitement that seemed very new and achingly sweet and that made it seem inordinately difficult for her to concentrate.

“I have written to the Prince of Wales about the problem with the Fortune’s Folly medieval laws,” Lizzie said, as she sat looking at the view across the hills. “He was a friend of my papa and so I hope he will help our cause.” She rolled over onto her stomach on the rug and propped her chin on her hand. “I discovered a document in Laura’s library that relates to the Charter of the Forest. It was written soon after Magna Carta and it supports the rights and privileges of the common man against his lord and it struck me that if we can invoke it against Tom we might be able to overturn the Dames’ Tax and all the other taxes-” She stopped, for Nat was looking at her with a very whimsical smile on his lips.

“What is it?” she demanded wrathfully.

“You,” Nat said. “Now that you have a cause you are like a woman inspired-”

Lizzie slapped at him. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not,” Nat said. “I’ve thought for several years that you needed-” He stopped.

“Needed what?” Lizzie said curiously.

“Something to do, I suppose,” Nat said. He laughed. “Some focus for all that untrammeled energy and vitality you have. It is no wonder that some women have the vapors out of sheer frustration at the constrained nature of their lives.”

“Society is so foolish in what it approves of as appropriate or not in a woman,” Lizzie agreed. “I have always found it intensely annoying.”

“I had noticed,” Nat said wryly.

“I had not expected you to feel like that,” Lizzie said, plucking a blade of grass and chewing it. “I mean I did not think you would want me to be occupied other than as a conventional wife and mother. I thought you had very decided notions on the role of your wife and that I do not exactly conform to them.”

“I can change my attitude-even if I am stuffy and old-fashioned,” Nat said. He sounded rueful.

“You are not always so conventional and proper,” Lizzie said. “Sometimes you are equally as wild as I.”

Their gazes locked, Nat’s dark and heavy with sudden desire. The heat sizzled through Lizzie’s blood, scalding her.

Kiss me, taste me, touch me…

Awareness, vivid and intense flared between them. Lizzie found she had already moved closer to Nat on pure instinct and need alone, and hastily drew back. This was no way to go on if she was to stick to her resolution.

“I suppose that when I have a home of my own I will be able to grow into the managing female I was always destined to be,” she said quickly.

“I know that you do not like Chevrons very much,” Nat said, surprising her. “I should have consulted you about where we lived, I suppose. I confess that I did not think of it. All I could think of was that I had to marry you, save your reputation, get you away from Fortune Hall and from Tom and-” He stopped abruptly.

“You wanted to rescue me,” Lizzie said softly. “It is what you do.”

Nat looked at her. There was gentleness in his eyes and something else, something that looked oddly like confusion.

“I suppose I always have done,” he said slowly, “and yet there is more to it than that, Lizzie…”

Lizzie held her breath and waited, aware of the silence, aware of the warm breeze through the summer grass and aware of the hammering of her heart. Had Nat’s feelings for her started to change, as Laura had predicted they would? Was he beginning to see her differently, to see beyond the need to protect and defend to a love that was greater than that, all encompassing, taking heart and soul? There was certainly an arrested look in his eyes as he watched her but when he did not speak she rushed in to fill the silence, too nervous to let it lie between them.

“I sometimes think that the Fortune family must be cursed,” she said with a little shudder. “Monty murdered and now Spencer as well, supposedly in mistake for Tom, and Tom himself only a hairsbreadth from madness…”

“Tom isn’t mad,” Nat said, a harder tone entering his voice. “He is no more than a dangerous scoundrel who has been given too much license to misbehave.” He caught Lizzie’s hand and turned it over to press his lips against the vulnerable skin of her wrist. “I feel I owe it to you to catch Monty’s murderer, Lizzie,” he said. “And I admire you very much for what you are doing in standing up to Tom. So do the people of Fortune’s Folly. Someone had to take your brother on and who better than you?”

“Because I am equally badly behaved?” Lizzie said.

Nat laughed. “Because you are the only one with the nerve to match him.”

Once again their gazes held. Lizzie’s pulse raced against the touch of Nat’s lips and his expression tautened as he felt her tremble. He leaned forward to kiss her and she rolled away from him.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Keep back! You promised not to try to seduce me.”

Nat laughed again, ruefully this time, and released her. “All right. You’re safe with me.”

“I doubt it,” Lizzie said, feeling delightfully unsafe, “but I trust your honor as a gentleman.”

Nat groaned. “A pity.”

“We are talking,” Lizzie said. “Please, Nat.”

Nat’s expression sobered. He turned on his side so that he could look at her properly. “I know,” he said. “There is much to talk about.” A frown touched his brow. “Last night you accused me of taking your cousin’s money as a bribe to wed you.”

Some of the bright pleasure went out of Lizzie’s day. “Tom told me,” she said, haltingly, looking away from Nat and out across the vast bronze and green expanse of the moors. “He said that Cousin Gregory paid you to marry me because he thought I was a disgrace to the Scarlet name and wanted rid of me.”

Nat shifted uncomfortably. “It wasn’t really like that, Lizzie.”

“Did he give you money?” Lizzie pressed. “Did he, Nat?”

When Nat looked up and met her eyes she already knew the answer.

“He did,” she said tonelessly, “and you didn’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Nat said again. “Lizzie, sweetheart-” He reached for her, but let his hand fall to his side as she turned her head away. “Gregory suggested he should add to your dowry, that is all,” he said. “God knows, he has done nothing for you since becoming Earl of Scarlet.”

“So he thought to make everything right with money,” Lizzie said bitterly, “and ease his conscience.” She sat up suddenly, fiery and indignant. “Did he say that I was a disgrace to the Scarlet name?” she demanded. “Did he say I was like my mother?”

“No!” Nat said. “If Tom told you that then it was only his malice.” He caught her arm. “Don’t listen to Tom, Lizzie,” he said. “Whatever he tells you he is only trying to hurt you. He takes the truth and twists it with his spite. Promise me you won’t listen to him.”

“All right,” Lizzie said. She was puzzled at the tone in Nat’s voice. For a moment he had sounded almost desperate. “I know Tom is a liar and a scoundrel,” she said. “I’ll try not to let him hurt me again.”

She felt Nat relax. He slid his hand down her arm to entwine his fingers with hers and she did not move away this time. The evening sun poured down on them, warming Lizzie’s skin, making her sore heart ease a little and helping her feel content for the first time in weeks.

“Nat,” she said slowly.

“Hmm?” Her husband made a sleepy sound of enquiry.

“If ever anything like this happens again,” Lizzie said, “will you tell me? You arranged the wedding and chose us somewhere to live and you make all these plans without reference to me but I am your wife now.” She smiled. “I know that many men do not see the need to consult their wives on any matter, but I do not take kindly to that.”

“I had noticed,” Nat said. He sat up. There was a rueful light in his dark eyes. “I am sorry,” he said. “This is new for me, too, sweetheart.”

Lizzie touched his cheek. “In return I promise I will try not to react so badly to things in future by gambling away a fortune or taking my clothes off in public.”

Nat gave a strangled laugh. “Perhaps if you could discuss that with me first as well…”

“Yes,” Lizzie said. She allowed him to draw her down into the circle of his arm and lay with her head pillowed comfortably on his shoulder.

“You need have no fear for your virtue,” Nat whispered against her hair. “I only want to hold you.”

“I am not sure that I have any virtue left after all the things that we have done,” Lizzie admitted softly. She wriggled closer into his embrace and lay listening to the strong beat of his heart.

“Ah, Lizzie…” Nat’s fingers brushed the hair gently back from her face, twining the soft auburn curls about his fingers. “Don’t say that. In so many ways you are the sweetest, bravest and most admirable woman.”

“And you are evidently quite deceived in my character if you think so.” Lizzie held her breath. There was a note in Nat’s voice she had never heard before, a mingling of tenderness and admiration and something else she did not yet dare name as love.

“Don’t say that,” Nat said again. He did not smile. “I saw you looking after Monty the night he returned so drunk from the Wheelers’ dinner.” His mouth set in a thin line. “I have often thought how little you have been spared by Monty and Tom-” His tone hardened still further, “And your parents. Things you should not have had to see or endure…All the people who should have cared for you and instead they hurt you and left you to fend for yourself.” His arms tightened about her. “It offends me deeply.”

“That was why you were always trying to protect me, wasn’t it,” Lizzie said softly, glancing up at his unyielding face. “Do you remember when I first came to Fortune Hall and Tom was always teasing me and you stood up for me even though I knew it irritated you because you were so much older and really did not wish to be bothered with a tiresome little hoyden…”

Nat laughed. “Even then you had more courage than either Monty or Tom. Do you remember when they made you walk along the edge of the battlements and you did it without a murmur, even though you were terrified of falling? And then Monty tried and almost fell in the moat?”

“Serve him right,” Lizzie said. “He always was a bully.” She sighed. “It was kind of you to tolerate me following you around like a shadow.” She turned within the curve of his arm and pressed her lips to the line of his jaw. “You are a kind person, Nat Waterhouse. You are always seeking to help people-” She broke off as she saw a flash of undeniable pain in Nat’s eyes.

“What is it?” she said.

“I don’t always succeed,” Nat said.

Lizzie frowned. “I don’t understand.”

There was silence for a moment. Held close within Nat’s embrace, Lizzie could sense tension in him and some kind of conflict, deep and painful. She pressed closer, wordlessly offering comfort with the warmth of her body and the touch of her hands and after a moment Nat let out a sigh.

“I had another sister,” he said. His voice had a rough edge. “Celeste had a twin. She died.”

Lizzie was shocked. In all the time that she had known Nat, she had never heard mention of another sister. He had not talked of her. Neither had his parents nor Celeste. Lizzie kept very still and quiet, waiting for Nat to continue, hoping that at last he might see her as a person he could confide in and draw strength from rather than another responsibility, another burden he had to carry.

“She was called Charlotte,” Nat said. “There was a fire at Water House one night when the girls were about six years old. I saved Celeste.” He cleared his throat. “I could not save Charley, too.”

“Nat,” Lizzie said. She could hear his pain now, as raw as when it had first struck. It was an echo in Nat’s voice and it was in the taut way in which he held her hard against him. “I had to choose,” he said. His voice was so low now that Lizzie could barely hear him. “I tried to carry both of them but they were terrified, too frightened to keep still. Charley slipped from my grasp. I had to let her go to save Celeste.” He shook his head a little, a lock of his hair brushing Lizzie’s cheek as he moved. “Even now I can remember the lick of the flames at my back and the heat of the banister under my hand and the smoke in my throat, so thick and choking. It was such a long way down the stairs…” He stopped. “I tried to go back for Charley but they would not let me. They said that I would die, too.”

Lizzie did not speak. She knew that nothing she could say could soothe him. There were no words. She held him close and felt the evening sun envelop them in its warmth and gradually she felt Nat relax a little as that unbearable tension seeped from his body and the tightness of his arms eased about her and he pressed his lips to her hair as though he would never let her go.

“I failed, Lizzie,” he said. “I never want that to happen again.”

“You saved Celeste,” Lizzie said, looking at him. “That was no failure.”

“Which is why I cannot-” Nat bit off whatever it was he was going to say and although Lizzie waited with unaccustomed patience, he did not speak again.

“You cannot…what?” Lizzie asked after a moment.

“Nothing.” For a moment Nat’s gaze was blind. “Just…don’t make me out to be more honorable than I am, Lizzie.”

He turned his head and gave her a lopsided smile. Despite the reassurance, Lizzie felt chilled. It felt as though despite opening his heart to her he was now keeping something back. A distance had opened between them. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, he resented the situation that his honor had placed him in when it had obliged him to marry her.

“That first night we were together,” she said, her voice falling. “When we were in the folly…It was all my fault. I should never have provoked you so.”

“You did not understand what you were doing,” Nat said, a little roughly. “I did. It was my fault, not yours.”

“I did know,” Lizzie said honestly. “At least I knew in theory if not in practice. I pushed you too hard. I did it on purpose. I always go too far.”

“You do seem to have a talent for it,” Nat agreed, but his voice was gentle. Out of the corner of her eye Lizzie saw his lips curl in a smile that made her stomach drop with longing.

“In my defence,” she added, “I had no notion that you had such an odious habit of losing your temper.”

Nat laughed. “You have known me for years, Lizzie,” he said. “You must have known I am notoriously short-tempered.”

“I never really noticed it before,” Lizzie confessed. “Oh, I knew that you could get angry with me sometimes, but I also knew that if you became all cross and stuffy with me you would come round eventually because-” She stopped. She realized that she had almost said:

“Because you loved me,” meaning it in the sense of the acceptance and easy tolerance that had characterized their relationship previously. She had taken Nat’s friendship for granted. With a pang of misery she realized how much she had lost when she had blown that relationship and all its certainties apart.

“Because we were friends,” she amended. She sighed. “Oh, Nat, I am so sorry. I have been so thoughtless and careless and as a result everything has changed and sometimes I wish-” The vehemence in her tone startled her. “I wish that matters were back the way they were before and we could have that uncomplicated friendship again.”

Nat loosed her and sat up, and she immediately felt cold as the evening breeze tiptoed gooseflesh along her skin. The sun was sinking now, pink and gold in the western sky, but suddenly the air was chill.

“Do you?” His voice was neutral, his expression unreadable. “We can’t go back, Lizzie.”

“I know,” Lizzie said. She clasped her knees to her chest, curling up for both comfort and warmth. “I know,” she said again. “It is merely that so many things have changed for me and I miss the old certainties.”

Suddenly she jumped to her feet, wanting to banish the blue devils before they spoiled the evening.

“There are some things that are the same as they were before,” she said. “I can still ride better than you.” She jumped up onto Starfire, laughing down at Nat as he scrambled to his feet. “I’ll race you back home.”

She won, but only just.

Nat kissed her good-night at her bedroom door that night. He trapped her against the panels of the door and held her with the press of his body against hers and she could feel his arousal and the control he was exerting over himself and the knowledge of her power was more heady than the best champagne.

“You’ll break first,” Nat said, against her mouth. “You know you want me and you have no patience to wait for the things you want.”

“I will not give in first,” Lizzie said. “You underestimate me. And you are cheating again,” she added, as his mouth trailed teasing kisses along the line of her throat. “You are not supposed to kiss me or even touch me.”

“I can compromise,” Nat said, easing back from her, “but only so far.”

Lizzie lay in bed and looked at the connecting door between their two rooms. She thought of the insight Nat had given her into his past and the terrible burden he carried about his sister’s death. He must know in his own mind that he had saved Celeste’s life and yet in his heart there would always be the reminder of the impossible choice; he could not have saved both girls at once and so he bore the guilt for the one he had failed. It seemed the most desperately, damnably unfair weight for a man to bear.

She wondered what else Nat had been going to tell her. Perhaps it had been something else to do with Celeste. Perhaps she should have pushed him a little, made him talk? But it had taken him nine years simply to tell her what had happened at Water House that night. She could not force him to confide more, not now when everything was so fragile between them. Despite Nat’s withdrawal she still felt a spark of hope that he was starting to see her differently. She did not want to spoil matters by giving in to her usual haste and impatience.

Lizzie stared hard at the connecting door. She knew it was not locked tonight and that it constituted the most terrible temptation but she had not come this far to give in on the first night. She could excuse herself, of course, if she did choose to go to him-she could argue that after Nat had laid his emotions bare she was offering him her comfort and love. Yet although she ached to be in his arms some spark of stubbornness held her back. They had started to build something different, something stronger between them. She would not undermine it now.

To her surprise she slept well and woke feeling refreshed and happy. Nat’s haggard face and surly bad temper at the breakfast table, in contrast, suggested that he was feeling neither.

“Did you not sleep well, my love?” Lizzie said, bright as a daisy, as she poured the coffee.

Nat scowled. “Not a wink.”

“I am sorry,” Lizzie said.

“I doubt you are,” Nat countered. He slapped his newspaper down on the table with unwonted force. “I am going out.” He glared at her. “Not because I want to, but to keep my hands off you, madam wife.”

He had thought that she would succumb. Lizzie felt hugely pleased with herself. “Be sure to be here later to escort me to the subscription ball,” she said sweetly, “or I may have to ask someone else.” She popped a cherry from the fruit bowl into her mouth.

Nat’s gaze dropped to her lips. He scowled. “I’ll be here.”

“Oh good,” Lizzie said and she tilted her face up for an oh-so-chaste kiss on the cheek, and smiled as her husband slammed out of the house in a very bad mood indeed.

“EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT, old fellow?” Dexter Anstruther asked mildly as Nat joined him at The Old Palace ten minutes later. “You look as though you had a rough night.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Nat snapped. “Why is everyone so damnably interested in my welfare at the moment? First Miles, now you-” In truth he felt the complete opposite of fine. Hours of lying awake confidently expecting Lizzie to come through the connecting door had been superseded by hours of surprise and chagrin that she had resisted followed by hours of struggle to subdue his bodily impulses. If Lizzie would not weaken and come to him then he was damned if he would give in and go to her. She had wanted this ludicrous sex ban anyway and he was all of two days into it and feeling as primed as a callow youth with no self-control. It was ridiculous. It was embarrassing. He had gone for months without a woman before he married Lizzie and now he did not appear to be able to last a single day. She was driving him mad-in a different way from the usual.

Yet, despite his physical torment Nat found he had other images in his mind now, not simply the deeply tempting ones of making love to Lizzie. He remembered Lizzie in the river, laughing joyously with Alice as they destroyed Tom’s fine clothes, taking revenge on him on behalf of the people of Fortune’s Folly; he saw her racing ahead of him on Starfire, her hair flying in the breeze, skilful, fearless, the best and most breathtaking rider in the county. And he remembered Lizzie curled up against him on the picnic rug, his arms about her and his cheek against her hair as he did the one thing he had never imagined he could ever do and shared with her his deepest regrets and misery over Charley’s death. He had felt so close to Lizzie then, drawing strength and comfort from her instead of seeing her always as a duty, someone to be protected along with his parents and Celeste. His entire perspective had shifted in that moment as he acknowledged that Lizzie’s courage and generosity of spirit was not simply there for her friends or her unworthy brothers but that she had blessed him with it, too. It felt strange, it felt unfamiliar, but it was warm and loving and he had felt cold for so long…

“Dexter,” he said, shifting slightly in his chair. “This marriage business…Devilish tricky, don’t you think?”

“Devilishly so,” Dexter agreed, without a single betraying quiver of his lips.

“What’s the secret?” Nat pursued.

“Damned if I know,” Dexter said. “I’ve been doing it less than a year. Communication, perhaps,” he added thoughtfully. “Honesty,” he added.

Nat shifted again. Honesty…

He had not told Lizzie about Tom’s blackmail of him over Celeste. He had almost blurted it out last night when they had been so intimately entwined, heart to heart, but something had made him draw back. It was too soon. Lizzie’s emotions were so tangled at the moment with loss and grief that Nat was sure any further proof of Tom’s cruelty and vice could only make her feel a great deal worse. And though they were growing closer, he and Lizzie, talking and sharing secrets, he still felt that she had to be protected from Tom. He had to take care of her. He could not risk damaging the delicate, precious steps that he and Lizzie were taking. When she was stronger he would tell her. But he could not do it now. It would hurt her too much.

Nevertheless, Nat found that it made him feel uncomfortable to be keeping secrets from Lizzie, especially now when they were drawing closer in a different way that he could not quite define. The picture of wild Lizzie Scarlet that he had had in his mind for so long, Monty Fortune’s little sister, was becoming overlaid with another. Not the silken temptress who had seduced him that first night, nor the scandalous Lady Waterhouse who was the talk of Fortune’s Folly. This Lizzie defended the people in the village when Tom rode roughshod over their rights. This Lizzie had not run from him when they had quarreled so badly but had stood her ground. This Lizzie was a force to be reckoned with, growing to be a woman whom Nat could suddenly see would have all of Laura Anstruther’s impressive authority one day. This Lizzie was admirable and courageous as well as lovely and seductive…Again he felt an abrupt shift in perspective, as though he were seeing Lizzie with different eyes. The memories of nine years fell away and with that came an equally sudden and overwhelming surge of feeling that had nothing to do with wanting her in his bed but was a tangle of love and protectiveness and sheer blazing joy that she was a part of his life…

He was still gasping at the physical shock of it when there was a sharp tap at the door and Miles walked in. Nat jumped and became aware that Dexter had been watching him with quizzical amusement. He wondered what on earth had been showing on his face.

Miles’s news, however, gave him no further time to consider his feelings. “There’s a lead,” he said briefly. “An anonymous tip-off about the masked woman seen in the village on the nights that both Monty and Spencer were murdered. The message was left for me at Drum this morning. Dinmont said that a maidservant delivered it.”

“Anonymous?” Nat said, frowning. “That could be nothing more than spite.”

“I know,” Miles said, unfolding a note from his breast pocket and handing it to Dexter, “but even so, we cannot ignore it.”

Nat watched as Dexter read the note, glanced at Miles and then dropped his gaze to the paper again. There was an odd silence.

“What is it?” Nat said. “Who do they say it is?” He had a strange premonition. “Not Lizzie?” he said. Shock, anger and protectiveness engulfed him, overwhelming in its power. He felt stunned with the force of his feeling for her.

But Dexter was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not Lizzie. It’s Flora Minchin.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LIZZIE WAS CROSSING the street on her way from Chevrons to visit Laura and Lydia at The Old Palace when she saw the small crowd that was gathered outside Mr. and Mrs. Minchin’s townhouse. Previously it had troubled Lizzie slightly that she and Flora were such close neighbors now. They had never been friends-indeed, Lizzie had always thought that Flora was the most irritating pea-brained creature imaginable, a feeling she could now admit a little shamefacedly might have sprung from a certain jealousy. Even so, when she saw the crowd she almost hurried past. Then she heard the screams from inside the house, a sound that was easily defined as Mrs. Minchin having the vapors, and despite herself she paused.

“What on earth is going on?” she asked Mrs. Lovell, who was one of the many people milling on the steps outside.

“Flora’s the one who murdered Sir Montague and Spencer, his valet,” Mrs. Lovell said importantly, her face alight with excitement. She loved a good scandal. “She was the masked woman! Only fancy! They’ve come to arrest her now-Lord Vickery and Mr. Anstruther and your husband.”

Lizzie screwed her face up. “Flora a murderer? Don’t be absurd. She couldn’t kill a fly!”

Mrs. Minchin’s screams intensified, then one of the maids came running from the open door of the house wailing and wringing her hands in her apron. “Please will someone fetch the master?” she cried. “Madam is in hysterics and they’re taking Miss Flora away and I don’t know what to do!”

“Oh, this is ridiculous!” Lizzie hurried up the steps, grabbed the maid by the arm and hustled her back into the house, slamming the door in the faces of the avid crowd. Inside, the sounds of Mrs. Minchin’s screams were so penetrating that they echoed off the walls. “Get the stable boy to fetch Mr. Minchin,” Lizzie said in the girl’s ear. “Run along now. Quickly!”

“But the mistress-” the maid began.

“I’ll deal with her,” Lizzie said. She went into the parlor. Mrs. Minchin was sitting on the sofa, her bulk quivering with every scream. Another maid was waving burnt feathers ineffectually under her nose. Lizzie pushed her out of the way and slapped Mrs. Minchin’s face. Mrs. Minchin’s blue eyes, so like Flora’s own, opened wide and then she gulped and fell completely silent.

“Smelling salts,” Lizzie said, grabbing them from the table and pressing them into the maid’s hand. “Make her lie down and then fetch her a cup of tea when she is calm.”

“Flora!” Mrs. Minchin wept, trying to rise.

“I’ll help Flora,” Lizzie said, pushing Mrs. Minchin back down on the seat. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I promise.” The matron collapsed into tears.

“She’ll be all right now,” Lizzie said, squeezing the maid’s arm. “Sal volatile, then tea.”

She hurried out of the room. There were voices in the drawing room and as Lizzie ran down the corridor, Dexter emerged through the doorway with Flora following him. Flora’s face was utterly blank, a terrible white mask, her blue eyes fixed and staring. As Lizzie watched, Flora stumbled over the edge of the carpet and almost fell. Lizzie rushed forward and grabbed Flora’s cold hands in her own, steadying the girl.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” she said wrathfully, steering Flora back into the drawing room and turning like a tigress to confront Miles and Dexter and Nat. “Can’t you see she’s terrified? Let her sit down!” She steered Flora to a chair and gently eased her into it. “Why did you all have to come and frighten her?” she added furiously. “One of you would have been quite sufficient!” She chafed Flora’s hands. She could feel the other girl shaking. “It’s all right,” she said, in an undertone. “Don’t be frightened.”

Flora’s scared blue eyes fixed on her face. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Of course not,” Lizzie said stoutly. She drew up another chair and put her arm about Flora.

Nat touched Lizzie’s shoulder. “No one wants to frighten her,” he said softly, “but she won’t tell us where she was on the nights in question, Lizzie.”

“Well, go away and leave me with her, then,” Lizzie said. “Give me five minutes. Go and make some tea or something. I am sure Mrs. Minchin could do with it.”

Nat smiled at her and for a second Lizzie felt something tug deep inside her.

“Thank you,” Nat said softly.

“Now, Flora,” Lizzie said as Nat shepherded the others out and closed the door gently, “I am sure you haven’t done anything wrong, but if you won’t explain what you were doing that night, I can’t help you.” She paused. “Have you been slipping out at night, Flora?”

There was a pause and then Flora gave a little jerky nod of the head.

“So you did go out,” Lizzie said, keeping her voice very steady. “Where did you go?”

Flora bit her lip and did not reply. She looked stricken and miserable.

“I suppose,” Lizzie said gently, “you went to meet a man?”

Flora’s gaze came up sharply to meet hers. “I wasn’t…I didn’t…” Her face crumpled. “It wasn’t what you think,” she said, her voice strengthening. “The first time, I went to ask him to marry me but he turned me down. Then-” she hung her head “-I went just to…just to see him really. I needed to see him, but he sent me away.”

Lizzie caught her hand. “You’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back,” she said, swallowing a very hard lump in her throat.

“Yes,” Flora said. She sighed. “It hurts.”

“I understand,” Lizzie said, with feeling. “Who is it, Flora?”

The other girl didn’t reply, her blue eyes sweeping Lizzie’s face as though weighing whether she could trust her.

“Listen,” Lizzie said quickly. “I know that you and I have not been friends, Flora, but I do want to help you. We need to persuade this person to vouch for you or you might be arrested-” She felt Flora shudder. “If you tell me who it is,” she said carefully, “I’ll speak to him and I am sure he will help you.” She was not actually sure at all, but what else could she say? At the least, the man, whoever he was, could not be married if Flora had gone to propose to him, a feat which gave Lizzie a great deal of respect for her. She wondered who on earth could have turned down Flora and her fifty thousand pounds.

“It is Lowell Lister,” Flora said with a gulp before bursting into tears. “I can’t help it, Lizzie,” she added, crying all over Lizzie’s spencer, as Lizzie hugged her closer, “I love him so much and he won’t marry me because he doesn’t want my money-”

“He must be the only man in Fortune’s Folly who doesn’t want to marry an heiress,” Lizzie said. “He probably loves you, too, but thinks he is being noble. The idiot,” she added.

Flora gave a little hiccuping giggle and sat up. “Oh dear. And now he will think I am trying to entrap him.” She squeezed Lizzie’s hand. “Will you speak to him and explain? He likes you.”

“I’ll ask Alice to speak to him,” Lizzie promised. “Lowell thinks I’m spoiled-and he could be right,” she added fairly, “but Alice is lovely and will help you and Lowell respects her. Everything will be all right, Flora.”

“Mama and Papa won’t like it,” Flora said. “My reputation is ruined-”

“Not if Lowell marries you,” Lizzie said.

“But he is a farmer and they are such snobs,” Flora said with a sigh.

“He is also the brother-in-law of a lord,” Lizzie said, smiling. “I think that is the bit they will be concentrating on.” She urged Flora to her feet. “Do you want to go and lie down?”

“No,” Flora said, straightening up. “I must go to Mama.” She gave Lizzie a spontaneous hug. “Oh, Lizzie, thank you. I didn’t think I liked you-” Her eyes filled with tears again.

“Go on,” Lizzie said, laughing. She pushed Flora out the door and watched her scurry down the corridor and into the parlor to her mother. Nat and Miles came out of the dining room and Lizzie grabbed Miles’s arm.

“Could you send to fetch Alice? I need her to speak to Lowell.”

Miles and Nat exchanged a glance. “Lowell?” Miles said.

“Flora loves him,” Lizzie said, lowering her voice. “He is the one she has been slipping out to see.”

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Nat said.

Lizzie gave him a speaking look. “Oh please-her reputation?”

“I’ll go and find Alice,” Miles said. He smiled at Lizzie. “You are a miracle worker.”

He went out, and Nat caught Lizzie’s hand and drew her back into the drawing room. “Thank you,” he said softly. “That was very kind of you, Lizzie. I didn’t think you even liked Flora.”

“I didn’t,” Lizzie said. She looked up into his dark eyes. “I was jealous of her,” she whispered. “What you said that night in the folly was true, Nat. I was spoiled and envious and I wanted you for myself. I can see that now.”

Nat’s hands tightened on hers. He drew her closer. There was an intent look in his eyes that seemed to make the world spin. “Lizzie,” he said. “Your honesty is very humbling-”

“What the devil is going on here?” Mr. Minchin burst into the room. “There’s a restless crowd outside and my wife and daughter crying all over one another in the parlor and I hear some rumor that Flora is to be arrested-”

“There’s nothing to worry about at all, sir,” Dexter, at his most deferential, appeared behind him. “We believe that some malefactor laid false evidence against Miss Minchin, but it is all sorted out now.”

“I’ll have the law on them!” Mr. Minchin swelled alarmingly.

“We are the law,” Dexter said smoothly, “and we will deal with it, sir.”

Mr. Minchin’s gaze fell on Lizzie and his high color died down a little. “I hear you were the one who sent for me, ma’am,” he said gruffly. “Tended to my wife and daughter, too. I must thank you.”

“A pleasure,” Lizzie said. She freed herself from Nat’s grip, very aware that he was watching her all the time. “Perhaps you should go and comfort them, Mr. Minchin? I know they will be grateful that you are here.” She put a hand on his arm. “I think that you might also start to come to terms with the fact that you are likely to have Lowell Lister as a son-in-law,” she added gently. “He’s a very good man.”

“Lister?” Mr. Minchin gave a start. “He’s a farmer!”

“A rich and very well connected one,” Lizzie said brightly.

“Lister,” Mr. Minchin said again, his tone of voice altering. “A gentleman farmer. Yes, I see. I wondered what was wrong with Flora.”

“It should be all right soon,” Lizzie said. She smiled at him warmly.

“I can’t see Flora as a farmer’s wife,” Nat said as Mr. Minchin bustled off to the parlor.

“She’ll manage,” Lizzie said. “She is nowhere near as stupid as she looks.”

The door crashed open and Lowell strode in, followed by Alice and Miles.

“That was quick,” Lizzie said.

“I found him in the street,” Alice said. “He had already heard the rumors of Flora’s arrest and was on his way here.”

Lowell ignored them all, walked straight into the parlor, and without a word grabbed Flora and started kissing her.

“And that,” Lizzie said, laughing, “is how a York-shireman deals with these situations.” She turned to Nat, Dexter and Miles. “You had better go and find your informant. For my part-” she shot Nat a look “-I would ask Priscilla Willoughby. She is a troublemaker and she, too, has been creeping about the streets at night, so I understand. And while you are at it,” she added, “you could ask her to give Tom an alibi for the night of Monty’s murder. I think you’ll find it was Priscilla he spent the night with, not Ethel.” And she smiled with enormous satisfaction to see Nat’s expression of blank astonishment.

THERE WERE TWOon dits at the Fortune’s Folly assembly that evening. First there was Miss Flora Minchin’s betrothal to Lowell Lister. The happy couple were present that night, danced a scandalous four dances with each other and could barely take their eyes from each other.

“Mr. and Mrs. Minchin seem very satisfied with Flora’s choice,” Lizzie said mischievously to Alice as they watched the newly betrothed pair in the quadrille. Flora and Lowell were so busy staring into each other’s eyes that they were a step behind everyone else. “Can it be that you have already done a great deal of work in smoothing things over with them, Alice? I know Mrs. Minchin was dubious of the connection until you and Miles stepped in to point out the benefits of the match.”

“We did what we could,” Alice said, lips twitching. “I love my brother a great deal and hope he will be happy, but I do not envy him his snob of a mother-in-law.”

“I think Flora and Lowell will deal together extremely well,” Lizzie said. “She really is a remarkable girl-she gives the impression of being quite, quite stupid and yet she has extraordinary resolve.”

“Lowell is totally besotted,” Alice said, shaking her head. “I never thought to see him like this. He told me that he fell in love with Flora the first time she came to High Top on the day her wedding was canceled. He was absolutely determined to refuse her because of the disparity in their situations, but as soon as he heard she was in danger of arrest he realized what a fool he had been. Even so-” she sighed “-I do think Flora will have some difficulty in adapting to life as a farmer’s wife. She has lived a pampered life. It won’t be easy for her.”

“What about the other on dit?” Lizzie said, her eyes sparkling. “Poor Lady Willoughby-such a sudden and unfortunate departure from Fortune’s Folly!”

Lady Wheeler had paused at their table a moment earlier, Mary in tow, to say that Priscilla Willoughby had been called away most urgently on family business.

“Such a dreadful pity,” Lady Wheeler had fluttered. “Dear Priscilla was having the most splendid stay here in Fortune’s Folly.”

“So we had heard,” Lizzie had said sweetly. “Lady Willoughby’s nighttime excursions were becoming the talk of the village!”

Lizzie had seen Mary’s gaze jerk up to hers at the words, but Mary had not spoken and Lizzie had thought that she looked even more pale and sick than she had before.

“Who would have thought that illness would strike Lady Willoughby’s family so abruptly?” Alice agreed now. “Did Nat say anything about his interview with her?”

“Only that he was glad she was leaving,” Lizzie said. “I asked him if he were utterly disillusioned that his paragon of virtue had turned out to be a strumpet instead.”

“Lizzie, you did not!” Alice clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Yes I did,” Lizzie said unrepentantly, “and he said that he had not cared for her in years and would rather have a wilful minx to wife. So I think-” she cast her eyes modestly down and traced a finger over the struts of her fan “-that my plan may be working.”

“It sounds as though it may,” Alice agreed.

“So then I told him that was merely a line to persuade me back to his bed,” Lizzie went on, “and he said-”

“Enough!” Alice said, holding up her hands.

Lizzie laughed. “All right. Where can Miles and Nat have got to with those ice sculptures? They will be quite melted.” She scanned the room, catching sight of Mary Wheeler, who was speaking to Viscount Jerrold but looking as miserable as sin.

“Poor Mary,” she said. “What can be the matter with her? Do you think she is ill? She looks ever more sickly by the minute.”

Nat and Miles returned at that moment and placed a bowl of strawberries and ice before their wives. The ice was indeed melting in the heat of the assembly rooms and Lizzie pushed at it unenthusiastically with her spoon.

“Come and dance with me, since you have no interest in the dessert I specially procured for you,” Nat said, smiling.

“Dancing is another thing like card-playing at which you are indifferent to bad,” Lizzie said, pretending to sigh as they took their place in the set of country-dances, “but as I am your wife I feel I have to comply. It is my duty.”

“You seem less than eager to do your wifely duty in other ways,” Nat pointed out with an expressive lift of his brows.

“And you accuse me of a lack of patience!” Lizzie marveled. “Truth to tell, I enjoy making you wait. It means that you talk to me more.”

“I enjoy talking to you,” Nat said.

“You sound surprised,” Lizzie teased. “We were friends once, Nat. We used to talk a lot.”

“Yes,” Nat said, and Lizzie could hear a shade of discovery in his voice, “but not like we do now. It feels different. I feel different…”

The movement of the dance took her away from him then and Lizzie felt as though she was as light as thistledown. Everything was changing; she could feel it in the air and the tingle in her blood.

She danced only once with John Jerrold, who remarked whimsically that the next on dit would surely be how unfashionably in love Lord and Lady Waterhouse were with each other.

“I seem to have missed my chance,” he drawled.

“You never had one, Johnny,” Lizzie said pertly, but his words warmed her. It was true that Nat had seldom shown much desire to dance with her in the past; he had sometimes squired her to the assemblies but had had little interest or aptitude for the dancing. Now, though, he danced with her several times and showed no desire to leave her side in between. It was extremely pleasurable to have his undivided attention, to feel him watching her, to exchange the lightest and briefest of touches with him, touches that shimmered through her whole body leaving her breathless and happy.

It was raining later when they came to leave, steamy summer rain that made the cobbled square in front of the assembly rooms smell of dust. Sir James and Lady Wheeler were bemoaning the fact that they had walked to the ball.

“I had no notion that it was going to rain this evening,” Lady Wheeler said, looking as though she was taking the weather as a personal affront. “James does not have even so much as an umbrella to protect us with and our evening cloaks will be soaked-”

“Here, take my umbrella,” Lizzie said, holding it out to Mary, who was nearest and was standing huddled in the doorway. “Nat and I will manage perfectly well without-” She stopped at the look on Mary’s face. The girl was shaking and white and as Lizzie impatiently waved the umbrella at her she recoiled as though it were a snake.

“You know, don’t you?” she whispered. Her eyes were huge and terrified. “You’re trying to trap me!” And then she gathered up the skirts of her evening gown in both hands and ran away down the darkened street, the soles of her evening slippers slapping in the puddles.

“Mary!” Lady Wheeler called. “Mary, come back here at once! You’ll ruin your gown! What on earth is she about?” She turned to Sir James. “What has got into that girl lately?”

Lizzie turned to Nat. “What was that about?” she said blankly.

“Lizzie, let me see that,” Nat said abruptly, taking the umbrella from her hands and holding it up to the light. He shot her a look. “Is this yours?”

“No,” Lizzie said, puzzled. “It belonged to Monty. I took it with me when I left Fortune Hall. It unscrews here-” she pointed to the chased silver engraving around the handle “-and I think he kept a brandy flask inside. You know what Monty was like…Oh!”

She stopped as Nat turned the silver band at the neck of the umbrella and it came apart in his hand. Lady Wheeler screamed and recoiled, much as her daughter had done only a moment before, for protruding from the handle was a knife, long, wickedly pointed and stained with blood.

“No!” Lizzie said, comprehension breaking over her with the force of a storm. “Mary!” She caught Nat’s sleeve. “Why would she murder-” She broke off in stunned disbelief. “She cannot have done!”

Nat was staring down the darkened street in the direction that Mary had run. Lady Wheeler was screaming and looked as though she was about to faint and people were rushing from the assembly room doors out into the road to see what the commotion was all about.

“I have to find her,” Lizzie said suddenly. Her heart was pounding. She felt dizzy. “I need to know what happened.”

“No! Wait!” Nat grabbed her tightly. She could feel the tension in his hands as he held her. “Don’t go,” he said. “It could be dangerous.”

“But this is Mary,” Lizzie argued. She did not want to believe it. “Mary couldn’t hurt a fly, least of all Monty! This must be some terrible mistake, or else it was an accident. I need to find her, help her-”

“No,” Nat said again. “Lizzie-”

Lizzie slid out from beneath Nat’s hands and sped off down the street.

“Lizzie!” Nat bellowed. She could hear his running footsteps behind her, but she did not check. She had to find Mary. Could it have been her friend who had taken Monty from her, the brother who was so vain, so selfish and so monumentally dislikable, and yet whom against the odds, Lizzie had loved? Could Mary really be the culprit? Of course, she thought wildly, Mary had not known, had not understood, how important Lizzie’s small family had become to her when she had lost so much. She had hidden her affection for Monty and Tom well beneath a laughing veneer that made light of their faults when really she had had such a tenacious fondness for them because they were all she had had…She ran, driven by anger, driven by loss, her grief suddenly as wild as an animal tearing at her chest.

The rain was harder than she had thought, stinging her cheeks, whipping the hair into her eyes, blinding her. The night was thick with cloud and hot, as though they were being smothered under a blanket. Where had Mary gone? Lizzie dived down an alleyway toward the river, hearing Nat crash into something behind her and swear ferociously. And then suddenly she saw the slight, hurrying figure before her in the fitful light of the street lanterns.

“Mary!” she shouted, and the figure turned and Lizzie saw the pale blur of her face and the wide staring eyes, before Mary ran to the edge of the bridge and disappeared into the chasm of water below.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“MARY! No!” Lizzie ran down to the river, stumbling in the darkness, her feet slipping on the wet stones. She could see a shape in the water, tossed on the current like a piece of wood, a face, an outstretched hand…She plunged into the river, gasping as the shock of the cold water hit her, buffeted by the current, the mossy stones slipping beneath her feet as she stretched desperately to reach Mary. She grabbed at her, caught her arm and pulled with all the strength she had. The sodden material of Mary’s gown ripped beneath the clutch of her fingers but then they were out of the grip of the current and they landed in a panting heap on the wet stone at the side of the river. Mary was as slack as a doll, as though all the strength had suddenly left her. And with it went all Lizzie’s furious anger and misery, leaving nothing but numb despair.

“Why?” she said. “Why did you do it, Mary?”

Mary looked up. Her face was dull, wet and pale. “It was his fault,” she said.

“Whose fault?” Lizzie wanted to shake her. “Monty’s?” she demanded.

“Stephen left me because of him,” Mary said. “It was all his fault. He brought that trollop back from London and Stephen left…” Her head was bent, the water dripping from her dark hair in rats’ tails.

Lizzie frowned, shaking her head in disbelief. “You blame Monty for Stephen Armitage jilting you? What madness is this? Lord Armitage ran off with a courtesan-”

Mary’s face crumpled into excruciating pain and misery. “It was his fault,” she repeated. “He brought her here.”

There was, Lizzie supposed numbly, a desperate sort of logic to Mary’s thinking. It was true that Sir Montague had brought Louisa Caton, Miles Vickery’s former mistress, from London in an attempt to sabotage Miles’s betrothal to Alice. Instead of forcing Miles and Alice apart, Monty’s actions had ruined Mary’s future for it was her fiancé who had run off with the lightskirt. But to hold Monty to blame…

“He ruined my life,” Mary said now. “I loved Stephen with all my heart.” She looked up, her eyes suddenly bright with anger. “And then he had the audacity to propose to me himself!”

“Monty did?” Lizzie was dumbfounded.

“We quarreled about it,” Mary said. “I went to Fortune Hall to beg him not to make me a formal offer because I knew that my parents would insist that I take it. But Sir Montague only laughed at me and on the night of our dinner he renewed his attentions. So I knew I had to do something to prevent him from asking my father’s permission…”

“So you killed him,” Lizzie said dully. She rubbed her forehead hard. A headache was building behind her eyes. “And Spencer?” she said. “What had he done to hurt you?”

“I thought he was Tom,” Mary said, emotionlessly. “I made a mistake.”

“And Tom had done…what?” Lizzie pressed. Mary’s reasoning seemed both mad and ruthless at the same time. She had lost her judgment, almost lost her mind, and yet she sounded so sane. It was terrifying.

“He wanted to marry me, as well,” Mary said simply. “He tried to force himself on me. He disgusts me.” She shuddered. “And I know that Stephen will come back for me in the end, you see. I love him and I know he will give up that lightskirt and come back…” Mary stumbled to her feet. Her eyes were closed, her expression glazed and she seemed totally unaware of her surroundings. She took a step backward, missed her footing, and even as Lizzie reached out to grab her the water claimed her for a second time. Lizzie’s hand met empty air and by the time she had scrambled to the edge of the river, Mary had already gone. Lizzie ran out into the stream, careless for herself, careless of the danger, but there was no sign. And suddenly she found herself in danger of losing her footing, too. The river ran fast and deep beneath the bridge and the roar of it was in her ears and she could see nothing but the black shifting mass as it tumbled past her. For one brief, terrifying moment she teetered on the edge, feeling the current trying to snatch her away, and then Nat caught her arm in an unbreakable grip and half carried, half dragged her into the shallow water and out onto the bank. She was breathing in sobbing gasps and clung to him, her arms about his neck, and although she could not see his face she could feel the seething anger in him but something else in his touch, as well.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her breath was coming in sobbing gasps. “I could not save her. I was not quick enough.” She turned her face into Nat’s neck and breathed in the scent of him and the deep reassurance and strength that went with it, and felt safe at last.

She felt the anger in Nat melt away as his arms tightened about her and he buried his face against her wet hair.

“Oh, Lizzie.” His voice was muffled. “You will never stop, will you? You will never stop doing these mad and willful and dangerous things.” But though he shook her, he was gentle, and she knew he was exasperated but there was anguish and relief in his voice and in the way he held her.

“I had to try,” she repeated, teeth chattering, her whole body convulsed with shivers as Nat carried her up the bank and onto the street. “Even though she killed Monty and Spencer. She told me, Nat…” She shuddered again. “They both wanted to marry her, Monty and Tom, but she was so desperately in love with Stephen Armitage that she could not bear it. She thought Armitage would come back for her.” She turned to look over Nat’s shoulder and for the first time saw the lanterns and heard the voices of people down by the river. Miles came up and Nat said: “Any sign?” But Miles shook his head and his face was grim.

“I’m taking you home now,” Nat said.

Alice came with them. By the time they put Lizzie to bed she was shaking and shaking with what felt like a fever. The lights were too bright and swung about her head like fireworks. She felt as though she was burning up.

“She’s taken an ague, my lord,” she heard Mrs. Alibone saying to Nat, in tones of the deepest disapproval, “and what can one expect, jumping in the river like a hoyden? Fine behavior for a countess! First that disgraceful incident with the horse and now this…I was never so shocked in my life! I am not sure that I can work in a household where such things go on!”

“Then I suggest that you find employment elsewhere, Mrs. Alibone,” Lizzie heard Nat say in clipped tones. “No one speaks of my wife like that.”

“I think it is shock and reaction,” Lizzie heard Alice say, after Mrs. Alibone had bustled off to pack her bags, buoyed up on a wave of righteous indignation. “Lizzie is as strong as an ox.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Nat said. Lizzie thought he sounded anxious and she wanted to reassure him, but her limbs felt weighted in lead and her head so heavy she could not lift it, could not speak.

She knew that Nat was true to his word. She knew that he was there through all the fever and the nightmares that followed when she dreamed of her mother running away down the corridors of Scarlet Park, and of Monty striding across the gardens of Fortune Hall that had once been his pride and joy, when she saw Tom’s mocking face before her eyes and she thought she heard a baby crying, and she cried out herself in her anguish of all she had lost. She sensed Nat beside her and knew that she spoke to him and heard him reply, though afterward she could never recall what they had said. But his presence comforted and calmed her and eventually she fell into a deep sleep.

On the third day she woke feeling better, clearheaded and hungry, and found Alice sitting in the chair beside her bed.

“Nat will be so sorry not to have been here,” Alice said, closing the book she had been reading and putting it aside on the table. “He has stayed with you the whole time, Lizzie. I do not believe he has slept at all. He only left you today because he needed to talk to Dexter and Miles to tie up the loose ends of the case.”

“I know.” Lizzie smiled drowsily. “I know he was here. I felt it.” She wrinkled her brow a little trying to remember. The images were faint but the feeling of warmth, the confidence in knowing that Nat had been with her, persisted. “I spoke to him, I think,” she said, “though I do not remember the words…”

“You told him how sad you were not to be carrying his child,” Alice said, after a hesitation. “He asked me about it, Lizzie, and I had to admit that I knew. I think he was shocked both at the depth of your distress and the fact that you had not spoken to him about it.” She stopped.

“It was wrong of me to hold so much back.” Lizzie turned her head and looked at Alice’s troubled face. “Yes, I told Nat so little of how I was feeling-about Monty’s death, about our marriage, about the baby…I kept it all bottled up inside me but it was like an explosion-as fast as I pushed it down it jetted up again. All the anger and the grief and the unhappiness had to find a way out.” She looked at the bars of sunlight moving across the ceiling above her bed and felt a deep peace. “I don’t feel like that any longer,” she said. “It has all gone now.” A shadow touched her heart. “I do not suppose there is any news of Mary?”

“None,” Alice said, standing up. “I am so sorry, Lizzie.”

“I tried to help her,” Lizzie said. Her voice caught. “Even though she had taken Monty from me. She was so hurt, Alice, so damaged and twisted and unhappy.” She shivered. “I did not know love could be so destructive.”

“I will go to fetch you some food,” Alice said. “Now Mrs. Alibone has left I am afraid that the house does not function with anywhere near the same efficiency, but it is nice not to have her sinister presence lurking behind every door!”

After Lizzie had eaten the soup and bread that Alice brought she made her friend go home, for she thought that Alice looked exhausted. She lay a little longer in bed, watching the shadow patterns on the wall, and thought about how much Nat must care for her to have sat by her bedside and how she hoped deep in her heart that he loved her. She was sure she had felt his love for her; felt it in his presence beside her, heard it in his words, experienced it in his gentle touch.

Tonight, she thought. Tonight I will go downstairs and we will dine together and talk, and I will tell Nat I love him. Perhaps she had already told him when she had been in her fever. She was not sure, but she wanted to be honest with him and tell him openly of her feelings now. And the more she thought about it the more she hoped, stubbornly, optimistically, that Nat really did love her, too, or at least that there was the chance that what he felt for her would grow and mature into love. Just as her love for him had changed from the childish infatuation of her youth, so she was almost sure that Nat’s feelings for her had also undergone a change in the past week or so. She clung tenaciously to the belief and felt her faith in him like a spark of fire spreading warmth through her body.

After a little while she slipped out of bed. She chose her gown with particular care, shivering a little with sensual anticipation as the green silk slid over the crisp material of her bodice and petticoats. Her skin seemed alive to every touch, anticipating Nat’s hands on her later. They would talk and then they would make love, and this time it would be different, with all that wild passion transformed into something even more blissful because of their deepening feelings.

The maid arranged her hair, restraining the auburn corkscrew curls with a silver clasp. Lizzie dismissed the girl, took one final glance at herself in the looking glass, drew a shawl around her shoulders and was about to go downstairs when she heard the front door open and the sound of voices in the hall.

“Must you trouble me with this now?” That was Nat, his voice cold and hard and very angry. “I’ve told you, Fortune, that you will have no more money from me. It stops here.”

“My dear chap.” Lizzie recognized Tom, smooth, amused, in a parody of an English gentleman. “Nothing was further from my mind. Your little sister’s shocking secret is safe with me, I assure you. I am sure she and your parents have suffered enough-and indeed, you have paid handsomely for her indiscretion, have you not?”

Lizzie froze, willing the stairs not to creak beneath her feet. The shock blasted through her body leaving her weak. Tom had been blackmailing Nat-and Nat had paid him? She could not believe it. Not Nat, who had always been dedicated to honor and integrity. Nat would never pay a blackmailer. He would see him damned first. It was not possible. And yet, and yet…Lizzie’s mind spun. Tom had made some reference to Nat’s sister Celeste. Tom must have ruined Celeste, debauched her perhaps, and was threatening to make the news public. It had happened before, with Lydia. Perhaps Celeste might even be pregnant, which would account for why she had been hidden away at Water House these months past. And of course under the circumstances Nat would pay to keep Tom quiet and preserve Celeste’s secret. What choice did he have if he was not to parade her disgrace before the world and destroy his sister’s reputation and his parents’ lives? It was no wonder, Lizzie thought, that Nat hated Tom. But why had he not told her? Had he not trusted her to keep the secret of his sister’s scandal?

With a sick feeling of dread and a bleak sense of disappointment Lizzie remembered the moment when Nat had confided in her about the fire that had taken Celeste’s twin and his own guilt that he had not been able to save her. Was this the secret Nat had been keeping from her? He had come so close to telling her, but then he had drawn back. Lizzie felt a dull pain spreading through her at the thought that Nat had hesitated to trust her.

But Tom was speaking again and Lizzie leaned closer over the banister, straining to catch his words even as her heart thundered so loudly she was afraid it would give her away; even when she was not really sure that she wished to hear any more.

“No, it is not Celeste who concerns me now,” Tom was saying. “It is Lizzie. I have noticed-we all have-how tragically fond she has become of you, Waterhouse. It won’t do, old chap. It won’t do at all, not when you married her under false pretences.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Nat’s voice was clipped, furious. “What are you insinuating?”

Lizzie heard Tom’s voice grow louder. He must have moved closer to the door. Each word was now devastatingly clear.

“You haven’t told Lizzie, have you?” Tom said. “You haven’t told her about my blackmail because that would necessitate explaining to her that you married her for her fortune simply so you could pay me.”

“Lizzie knows that I needed money,” Nat snapped. “I made no secret of it.”

“But not that you took her and her money for revenge,” Tom said softly.

“That’s nonsense and you know it.” Was that a thread of hesitation in Nat’s voice now? Lizzie heard his tone change and felt the icy trickle of fear down her spine.

“Is it?” Tom said smoothly. “I don’t think so. You saw the opportunity to pay me back for my blackmail, didn’t you, Waterhouse? You knew that under the Dames’ Tax I would get half of Lizzie’s money if she did not wed before September. That is my right as Lord of the Manor. So you snatched Lizzie from under my nose, stole her dowry from me and then used it to pay me off!” He laughed. “That is the sort of unprincipled trick that I would pull. I almost admire you for it, except that you swindled me of my fair share of Lizzie’s cash, damn you.”

There was a silence, a long, damning silence. Lizzie waited for Nat to refute her brother’s words, for surely they could not be true. Nat would never have used her to get revenge on Tom. She could see now that he had needed her money to pay Tom and protect Celeste, but surely he had acted out of honorable motives.

And yet he had not told her about the blackmail. He had not trusted her.

The words slithered like cold, black poison through her mind and with another pang of icy grief she remembered Nat’s words to her that evening of the picnic, when he had begged her not to listen to Tom, not to believe anything Tom said…

Tom had been the one to tell her the truth about Gregory Scarlet, a truth Nat had kept from her. And now she realized that Nat had been afraid because he had known Tom might tell her the truth about her marriage, too. Nat had promised her that there were no more secrets, but now there was this. He had lied.

Nat had paid Tom off using her dowry.

The thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.

She felt cold and doubting, not wanting to disbelieve Nat’s integrity and yet suddenly facing the fact that he was not the man she had thought him.

“You must not tell her,” Nat said, and Lizzie felt sick and dizzy to hear the words that confirmed Nat’s guilt. “You must not tell Lizzie, Fortune. I don’t want her to know the terms of our agreement. Not ever.” He sighed “What do you want this time for your silence?” He sounded tired.

Lizzie sagged against the banister, her fingers clenched tight on the smooth wood. So it was true. She would never have believed it if she had not heard Nat’s words for herself. But it was true. Nat had seen her as his opportunity to revenge himself on Tom. He had just admitted it. That was why he had not confided in her about the blackmail-because she would have realized he had paid Tom with her dowry. She would have realized that he had used her.

Lizzie sat down heavily on the stairs. In the beginning, when she had seduced Nat and he had offered her the protection of his name, she had been sure he had been acting out of honor. She still believed it now, though her faith in him was battered and tarnished. It was the same honor that had prompted Nat to protect Celeste and pay Tom’s price. Nat was not a bad person; he was not like Tom, motivated by nothing but greed. But then Monty had died and Tom had refused his permission for the wedding and Nat had seen the most perfect opportunity for revenge. He had outwitted Tom by getting Gregory Scarlet’s agreement for the match. He had taken Lizzie’s dowry and in doing so not only had he denied Tom his share under the Dames’ Tax but had also rubbed Tom’s nose in it by paying him the blackmail money from his sister’s fortune. It was neat, it was cunning, it was the perfect revenge. And she had been the instrument of it.

“I want the Scarlet Diamonds,” Tom was saying. “They should have been mine anyway and it’s the least you owe me for stealing my share of Lizzie’s dowry. I almost won them off her that night at the gaming tables. So if you give them to me now I’ll say nothing to her about the small matter of you using Lizzie and her dowry for revenge.”

There was a pause and Lizzie realized that she was holding her breath in the hope that Nat would still refute the allegation and tell Tom he loved her, that he had married her because he cared for her and not to settle some score. But then Nat said:

“I cannot give it to you now. Lizzie is in the house-I need more time…Tomorrow…” And Lizzie’s heart sank like a stone and she drove her nails into the palms of her hands to prevent herself from crying.

“Tomorrow, then,” Tom said. Lizzie heard him laugh. “That seems a fair bargain, Waterhouse. We have divided Lizzie up, you and I, to our mutual satisfaction now. Bought her, sold her, split the money.”

Somehow Lizzie got herself back up the stairs and into her bedchamber, closing the door with shaking hands. She felt cold through and through, teeth chattering, hands shaking as though she had an ague again.

Bought and sold, bought and sold…

What price now her pitiful hopes that Nat was starting to love her in the same way that she cared for him? She could see just how futile and sad her dreams had been. Her naïveté felt so painful. Nat might have cared enough for her to give her the protection of his name and wed her to save her reputation, but his prime desire had always been for her money and now she knew why. Blackmail and revenge…

She felt wretched and betrayed and she could not, she could not stay here and pretend she had not overheard that damning conversation, nor could she challenge Nat and hear him repeat the truth to her face and experience the hurt of it all again. It would destroy her. Her love for Nat had been ripped apart by what she had heard; it had been so devastated that she no longer knew how she felt.

She dragged out some writing paper and her inkpot but she was shaking so much that she spilt the ink across the skirts of her green gown and mopped it up clumsily with her handkerchief. Then she paused. What could she say? It all sounded so pitiful:

I have loved you for so long.

I wanted someone who loved me for myself alone.

Better simply to go with it all unsaid.

She knew she was running away again but this time she could not stop herself. She took nothing with her. She could not seem to think clearly enough to know what she needed to take. She heard Tom leave and Nat go into his study and she crept down the stairs and out to the stables and she took Starfire with no tack and rode off into the night, still in her green evening gown.