Читать книгу Silk And Seduction Bundle 2 - Louise Allen, Christine Merrill - Страница 18

Midge was breathless by the time she emerged from the belt of woodland that bordered the road, but pleased with herself for coming out not a quarter of a mile from Shevington Village. Even if she was a failure at everything else, there was no denying she had a good sense of direction!

It did not take long to find the inn, either, since Shevington was barely more than a handful of buildings clustered around the crossroads.

She grimaced at the inn sign, depicting a woman in Tudor dress, her severed head laying at her feet, then walked through an archway broad enough to admit mail coaches, into its bustling stable yard. From the crowd standing outside the office, and the two floors suggesting an abundance of rooms for hire, she deduced it held a strategic position on the routes between Dover and London.

She sidestepped the queue, and went directly to the man presiding behind the bar in the public coffee room.

‘Excuse me, but I believe you have a man staying here by the name of Stephen Hebden?’

The landlord gave her a withering look, which reminded her she was not wearing either a coat or bonnet. Her long-sleeved, high-necked gown had looked perfectly respectable when she had put it on that morning. But since then, she had torn open the top buttons, wiped her nose on the sleeve, soaked the hem dashing through long grass, and scooped up a considerable amount of foliage on her headlong flight through dense woodland.

‘Nobody by that name here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ll do instead, darling.’ He leered, leaning over the bar, his beery breath gusting into her face.

Midge drew herself up to her full height, knowing her only defence would be her attitude.

‘How dare you speak to me like that,’ she snapped, imitating her aunt at her most frosty. ‘The man I am looking for is my brother. He sent word that he needed to see me urgently.’ She made a brief movement to indicate that very urgency accounted for the state of her clothes.

The landlord’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t s’pose by any chance this brother of yours has long, black hair and wears an earring? Looks like he could be a Gypsy?’

‘Yes! That’s him!’ she cried. All that mud and leaves stuck to her skirts had done some good after all. She obviously looked like the kind of person who lived outdoors.

‘Room four,’ the barman said, ‘up them stairs—’ he jerked his head to a narrow staircase that rose from a corner of the bar ‘—and along the corridor to the end. And I hope you’re going to be able to settle his shot,’ he added sourly, ‘if he sticks his spoon in the wall.’

She had not imagined Stephen could be that ill! Thank heaven she had come to him so soon after the twins had alerted her to his distress. Not, she admitted to herself guiltily, as she scurried across the bar and up the stairs, that it had been concern for him that had driven her here. But for whatever reason, she was here now, and she would do whatever she could to help.

She knocked gently on the last door at the end of the corridor, and when she got no reply, lifted the latch and tiptoed inside.

The curtains were drawn, making the chamber gloomy, but from the glimmer of light that spilled in over her shoulder from the passage, she could make out the form of a man sprawled out on top of the bed.

He was only wearing his breeches. And holding his crumpled shirt over his face.

‘Stephen,’ she whispered, shutting the door softly behind her and making her way across to the bed. From a new tension that seized his body, she could tell he knew she was there, but he made no sound. She reached out her hand to check for fever. But before she could touch him, his hand shot out and he grabbed her wrist.

‘What do you want with me?’ he snarled through clenched teeth, as though even the act of speaking caused him pain.

‘To help you if I can,’ she replied. He moaned, and let her go, pressing the shirt more firmly over his eyes. ‘I know you probably only came here to cause me trouble…’

A ragged laugh escaped his pale lips. ‘I am already paying for what I planned to do to you. You can leave now.’

Instead of leaving, Midge went to the bell pull and tugged hard. She did not care what he thought of her. She would not abandon a chance acquaintance in an inn where nobody cared for anything but how his bill was to be paid, let alone her only true blood brother.

‘Tell me what you need,’ she insisted, pulling a chair up to the side of the bed.

‘Nothing,’ he spat, his eyes still fast shut. ‘Nobody.’

Tentatively, she laid her hand on his shoulder. His body was warm, but not burning as though he had a fever.

‘I can tell your head hurts,’ she said. He could not bear to open his eyes, though he had deliberately darkened the room, nor speak above a hoarse whisper. ‘I am going to order some coffee,’ she said briskly. She did not usually have much sympathy for men who drank themselves into such a state. But he had nobody else to take care of him.

And there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

Nobody else who needed her.

When the chambermaid arrived, she ordered coffee and some oil of lavender so that she could bathe Stephen’s temples with it. The maid looked past her at Stephen’s prone body.

‘How you plan paying for it?’

Midge took a breath, and counted to three before answering. ‘I am Viscountess Mildenhall. I am certain that, should my brother not have the money on his person, a bill presented to the estate will be settled without question!’

The maid pursed her lips. ‘Starting up again is it? Only ‘twas the countess herself used to meet her fancy men here before.’ She smirked, then lowered her voice, leaning in as though sharing a confidence. ‘If’n you don’t want this getting about, dearie, you need to bring the readies next time.’ She sauntered off down the corridor, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

Midge shut the door, appalled by the chambermaid’s assumption she was here to embark on a clandestine affair, and to learn that the twins’ mother had, indeed, taken lovers. In this very inn! When it was so close to Shevington Court. And so very busy. She must have been determined to inflict as much pain and humiliation upon the earl as she possibly could.

Though, having endured that unwarranted attack this morning, Midge grudgingly admitted she could actually understand what had driven her to take such a drastic form of revenge.

‘You have ruined your reputation in this locale by coming to me,’ grated Stephen from the bed. She turned round, to see him staring at her, an unfathomable expression on his face.

She shrugged. The locals would have seen Monty’s carriage passing by this inn on his way to London. They might very well assume she had taken the first opportunity after her husband’s departure to fly to the bed of her lover.

The earl, she grimaced, most certainly would!

‘I do not care,’ she said defiantly. The earl had already decided she was wanton, without a shred of evidence. Accused her of crimes she would never have dreamed of committing, judging her on hearsay about her parents and condemning her to solitary confinement in her room.

What was one more crime, to add to all the other charges? She knew she was completely innocent!

‘You are my brother. And that is all that matters to me.’

He stared up at her, his eyes dark with suspicion and hostility. But presently, he shut them, and said, ‘Sometimes, I get some relief if my sister runs her fingers through my hair.’

Midge crept back to the bed, her heart bounding with hope. She stood quite still for a few seconds, gazing down at the proud, shuttered face, and then, taking all her courage in her hands, set her fingers to his temples, and swept them firmly across his scalp to the crown of his head. He heaved a sigh that was almost a groan. But he did not push her hands away this time. Again and again she ran her fingers through his dark, luxuriant hair, until she saw his great scarred shoulders sag into the pillows, as though he was letting go of some oppressive weight. It was only then that the import of his words struck her. He had another sister. One with whom he was on intimate terms. One that he went to, when he was ill.

‘My sister,’ he had said. Not ‘my other sister.’

She stopped working on his scalp, imagining a girl who looked just like him. For somehow, she knew this other sister of whom he spoke came from his mother’s people. The people he felt he belonged to. Else why would he take such pains to emphasize his origins? He could easily have cut his hair fashionably short. Nor was there any need to sport such a large, showy gold hoop in his left ear. Or wear clothes that were so colourful and cut in such an exotic style.

Stephen carried on breathing steadily, and she saw that the furrow between his brows was gone. He was asleep. She pulled his shirt from his slackened grasp, shook it out and draped it over the back of a chair, wondering if there had been anyone to do as much for Gerry in his last days.

The thought of Gerry sent an immense wave of grief crashing over her. And now that there was nothing more for her to do and nowhere else to run, she found the urge to break down and weep impossible to withstand any longer. She clenched her fists, and went over to the window which had a broad sill, upon which several frayed and rather greasy cushions were scattered. She took one and sat down, drew up her knees and buried her face in it. If she could no longer contain herself, the least she could do was muffle the sound of her sobs, so that she did not disturb Stephen. From time to time, she raised her head long enough to glance across at him. But nothing roused him. Not even the return of the chambermaid with the coffee, though not the lavender oil. Midge shrugged fatalistically. Sleep was probably the best remedy for whatever ailed him anyway.

She gulped down the coffee herself, between sobs, then drooped her way back to the window seat. She meant to keep watch over Stephen, but she could hardly keep her eyes open. Though that was not surprising considering she had hardly slept a wink the night before. And today, instead of taking her customary nap to make up for it, she had spent the afternoon smashing pottery, hiking across country and providing landlords and chambermaids food for gossip. And the bout of weeping had drained her of what little energy she’d had left.

She rearranged one or two of the cushions to pillow her head, and settled into a more comfortable position, feeling like a dish rag wrung out and hung limply over a line.

And woke with a start when Stephen reached over her, to yank the curtains open.

‘Good morning,’ he said dryly.

Midge rubbed her eyes, then winced at the pain that shot down her neck when she tried to move her head. The cushions she had so carefully arranged the night before were scattered all over the floor, and she had woken with her face wedged against the windowsill.

‘Morning?’ she repeated groggily. It seemed impossible, yet the sluggish grey light of a new day was definitely oozing through the grimy windows.

Stephen stalked to the washstand, poured water into a basin, and nonchalantly began to wash himself. Her shocked eyes roamed his naked torso, her heart welling up with pity. She had seen battle scars on her husband’s body, so she recognized the suffering that all those criss-crossed silvery lines represented. If she had not known better, she would have thought he had been a soldier. A bullet had most definitely caused the ragged wound on his shoulder. It was so very like the one that Monty bore.

‘Why did you come?’ said Stephen, his back still towards her as he reached for a silver-handled razor.

Midge did not pause to think about her answer. She had been bereft and alone, and he had sent for her. ‘I have nobody else.’

‘What of your wealthy husband?’ Stephen sneered, wielding the razor with frighteningly lethal speed.

‘Gone to London.’

He dipped the razor in the water, rinsing away the soap.

‘And what now?’

‘I suppose,’ she said hesitantly, ‘you wish me to leave now you are well again. Though…’ she pushed at one of the cushions with her toes ‘…you came down here to see me. Did you not? You must have had some reason for seeking me out.’

Oh, how she wished he would say he had regretted causing trouble for her at the wedding. And that, because he was her brother, he wanted them to be on good terms again!

But his face, as he turned to her, was harsh, not repentant.

‘I wanted to know about what was said at the wedding.’ When she frowned in confusion, he said impatiently, ‘About your mother. That she told your stepfather to search for me. That when she heard I had died in the fire…’ He turned abruptly, snatched up his shirt and dragged it over his head.

‘She made me think she cared for me,’ he snarled, jerkily doing up his shirt. ‘That she thought of me as her son. And then she tossed me out like a piece of rubbish as soon as my father died!’

Midge leapt to her feet. ‘She did not! When our father was murdered, she became very ill. Her father, my Grandpapa Herriard, came and took her back to his house to look after her. He was the one who sent you away. By the time she was well enough to come to the nursery to see us all, it was too late. You weren’t there any more.’

She sat back down abruptly, her head spinning alarmingly.

‘She begged him to tell her where you were,’ she said quietly, leaning back and drawing in deep breaths to try to stave off the faintness. ‘But he would not!’

‘You remember all that, do you?’ He sneered. ‘What were you, about four years old?’

She shook her head, closing her eyes. ‘I only remember flashes of things from back then. Being lifted out of my bed in the middle of the night, mother weeping, and then the misery of the nursery at Mount Street. Missing my mother, and—’ she opened her eyes and looked straight at him ‘—you.’ Stephen’s absence had left a great gap in her life. A gap that nobody else had really ever been able to fill ever since.

‘You were the one I always ran to,’ she said sadly. ‘I remember that.’ She also remembered trotting after Hugh Bredon’s sons in the same way she had used to follow after her adored Stephen. And being shocked to find her new big brothers did not automatically pick her up and cuddle her until she felt better. It had seemed like a long time before Rick had gradually begun to respond to her need for affection. Gerry had followed his oldest brother’s example, eventually. Though Nick…

She pushed those unfavourable comparisons away, returning to the matter at hand. ‘And then you were gone. And father was gone. And I was not allowed to go near mother—’

‘At least she kept you!’ he spat. ‘Have you any idea what it was like for me, being sent to that place for children nobody wants? They told me I should be grateful for being taken in and fed, since my parents and friends had deserted me. Grateful! And every time I ran away and tried to get home, somebody would drag me back, and they would whip me in front of all the other boys and make me wear a red letter R pinned to my jacket!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Midge whispered, horror struck. How could anyone have been so cruel to a child that clearly needed love and reassurance? A boy who had just been ripped from the place he had been taught to believe he belonged? The scars on his body were as nothing compared to the scars that experience must have seared into his soul.

‘There was a fire,’ he said. ‘You said, outside your fancy church, that you wondered if that had been a lie, too. Well, it was not! The chaos it caused gave me the chance I needed to escape.’ He held out his hands and looked at the open palms for a brief second, before clenching them into fists and raising his dark head to glare at her again.

‘Where did you go?’ She looked at the hoop in his ear and the silver bracelet that adorned his wrist, and thought she knew the answer. ‘You found your way back to your real mother’s people.’

Something flashed across his face. ‘Not immediately.’ The expression settled into one so bitter, Midge knew she was not going to like what he was going to tell her next. ‘I had to survive by begging and stealing for a long time before I found my way back to anyone who would offer me a home.’

‘I am sorry,’ was all she could think of to say. Though it was not enough. ‘So sorry,’ she said again, as a single tear slid silently down her cheek.

‘So, you maintain she married an old man because he said he would search for me?’ He laughed. The unexpectedness of the sound, harsh and cold, made her flinch. ‘But you and I both know he would not have given me a home. Had he found me. He would have taken one look at the wild thing I had become, and thrown me straight back in the gutter.’

Midge could not deny it was a possibility. Not now she had seen through Hugh’s facade to the coldness at his heart. He might well have said whatever he had deemed necessary to make Amanda marry him, so that he could have control of her fortune and his boys would have a loving mother. But he had not been much of a father to her.

‘What does it matter now, what he might or might not have done?’

‘What does it matter?’ he exploded, his rage a tangible force she could feel battering her. ‘I was torn from my home. Forced to live in a way you cannot possibly begin to imagine! And now, I—’ he pulled himself up short. Drawing himself up to his full height, he threw his shoulders back and declared, ‘I came to your wedding to spoil your day. Don’t you know that? Don’t you hate me for it?’

‘No.’ Midge looked him straight in the eye as she delivered that truth. ‘And you have no reason to hate me, either.’ She felt more tears sting her eyes. Stupid tears, that, since she had become pregnant, seemed to threaten at the least surge of emotion within her. ‘None of what happened to you was my fault, Stephen. I missed you. I have missed you all my life.’

Stephen’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you expect from me, Imo? That we can play at happy families again? As though these years, all the injustice of it, had never happened?’

Midge lowered her head, burying her face in her hands as she saw that that his life had been so harsh, he had been so convinced that everyone he had cared for had betrayed him, there might be no getting through to him. The embittered man who stood before her now was a complete stranger to her. The loving little boy she remembered was gone forever.

He was lost to her. As lost as Gerry.

‘I do not expect anything from you, Stephen,’ she sighed wearily. ‘But I would like to ask you a favour.’

His face took on a sardonic cast that was very discouraging, but Midge decided she might as well ask anyway. He could only say no. And then she could simply walk back to Shevington Court and face the music.

‘I came out yesterday in such a hurry, I forgot to bring any money. And I need to go to London.’

She needed to see Nick. He was the one person on earth who must, surely, miss Gerry as much as she did. With whom she could mourn the loss of that laughing, carefree young man. Oh, she knew it was a forlorn hope, considering the coldness he had exhibited towards her after Hugh’s death, but any kind of hope for shared fellow-feeling was better than the certainty of the total isolation she would face on returning to Shevington Court. And she knew, too, that the earl would not permit her to travel anywhere for quite some time. If Stephen would not help her out…she choked back a sob, lifted her head and gazed up at him imploringly. Just a few days with Nick, that was all she was asking for. A few days away to come to terms with everything.

‘Will you take me there?’

‘Take you to London,’ he echoed. ‘After so short a time, you are ready to leave your husband? Or are you chasing after him?’

She flinched at the very notion she would demean herself by pursuing a man who had only ever feigned interest in her, and a chilling smile slashed across his face.

‘If you are so set on ruining yourself, who am I to stand in your way? I will settle up and order a carriage. It will be my pleasure to take you to London.’

‘Yes,’ she said, regarding him sadly. ‘I thought it would.’ For Stephen did not care a fig for her reputation. In fact, the blacker he could make things look for her, the better pleased he would probably be.

Midge dozed in the coach, nearly all the way to London, while Stephen rode alongside on his magnificent black stallion. It was only when they drew up outside a house in Bloomsbury Square that she realized she had not made her intentions plain.

‘I meant to ask you to take me to my stepbrother’s lodgings,’ she said as he opened the coach door.

His face closed. ‘So, all that talk about missing me, wanting me to be part of your family, was just words! I might have known you were just using me!’

‘No,’ she protested. ‘It is not like that…’

But he was striding away, shouting to the coachman to take her wherever she wanted to go. He mounted the steps of his house, and the door banged shut behind him.

Only then did she see that for all Stephen’s apparent hardness, something about what had passed between them at the inn must have touched him. Because he was furious that she had not intended to make her stay in London with him.

She sank back into the squabs, reeling at her capacity for doing the worst possible thing on any given occasion.

But late that same night, Midge was back at Stephen’s house, banging in desperation on the front door. If she had truly alienated him, she had no idea what she would do!

The dark-skinned servant who opened the door was garbed in green, though Midge had never seen the like of the cut of his coat before. And he wore a turban wound round his head.

While she gaped at him, he said impassively, ‘State your business.’

‘I need to see Stephen. Please.’ When he did not give a flicker of response, she added, ‘I am Imogen Hebden. His sister.’

The Indian servant stood back and waved her into the hall. When she had entered the house, he closed the front door behind her and led her into a small parlour, in which a fire crackled cheerfully in the grate.

‘I shall go and tell Stephen Sahib that you are here,’ he said before melting away.

Midge made straight for the fire and sat on the chair closest to it, toeing off her sodden shoes. When she had put the dainty satin slippers on the day before, she had assumed she would only be sitting on a sofa all day, or at most, going down the stairs to dine. She had not thought she would tramp through woodland, take a coach to London, and then spend hours walking the streets. The soles had worn through hours ago. And then it had come on to rain, and she had not known whether it was worse to have shoes full of holes, or no coat or bonnet to keep out the wet. She felt, and was sure she looked like, a half-drowned rat, with her hair plastered all round her face and down her neck. She was surprised the servant had let her in. None of the houses she had ever visited before employed servants who would have shown in a woman in her condition without question, and sat them down in front of a fire.

She heard the door to the hall open again, and when she looked round, Stephen stood in the doorway, jacketless, his waistcoat still unbuttoned. He had brushed his long hair neatly back off his face. And removed his earring. And the quality of the evening garments was so fine, the style of what he was wearing so conventional that all in all, she decided, once he had donned a jacket, he would not look out of place at Almack’s.

‘What is it now?’ he demanded brusquely as he stalked across the room towards her. ‘What do you want?’

‘I—’ she swallowed nervously, and got shakily to her feet ‘—I am sorry to be so bothersome, but I need a place to stay for the night. Nick said…Nick said…’ As her mind went back over the painful interview she had just had with her stepbrother, the room seemed to tilt around her. Just as the floor began to swim upwards towards her face, she felt Stephen’s strong arms catch her, and she found herself lying, not face down on the hearthrug, but rather more decorously, upon a sofa.

She rather thought she must have fainted completely for a few seconds, because Stephen was pressing a drink into her hands, and she had no recollection of him going to fetch it.

‘When did you last eat?’ he demanded, his brows drawn into a scowl so tight she imagined he could very easily give himself a headache, without having to drink a single drop of brandy.

‘This morning. At the inn,’ she confessed. Stephen had been insistent that they breakfast before setting out. And although the last thing she had felt like doing was eating a mouthful, so anxious was she that word of her whereabouts might already have got back to Shevington Court, and someone would come to haul her back in disgrace, she had remembered how effectively Pansy’s remedy for nausea had worked the day before. That plate of toast had kept her stomach calm all the way to London.

‘You are wet through,’ he said. ‘What has happened to you? Why are you not with this other so-called brother of yours?’

‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘he did not think it would be at all proper to have a married woman staying in his lodgings. Especially one who looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards.’ She pushed a hank of wet hair off her face, and took a hefty swig of her brandy as her mind went back over that painful scene.

‘I do not begin to understand what you thought you might accomplish by coming here,’ Nick had said icily.

When she had began to stammer that it was because of the letter he had sent, he had pokered up, and stated, ‘Germanicus is dead. There is nothing you can do about it. And if you think I am going to let a woman looking like that—’ he had scathingly eyed her dishevelled appearance ‘—into my rooms then you are very much mistaken. I have prospects now, you know, Imogen. And I am not going to put my future at risk by letting you drag me into whatever scandal you are brewing. Now, I suggest you take yourself off back to your marital home, where you belong, and stop behaving like some kind of tragedy queen. I shall call on you there, at a more conventional hour.’

‘You will do no such thing!’ she had shouted at him, furious with herself for persistently refusing to admit how exactly like Hugh his middle son was. Totally self-centred and cold-hearted. All Hugh had cared about was books. And all Nick cared about was his career.

And she would rather die than go crawling to Monty’s house in Hanover Square! She had immediately discounted any thoughts of returning to her aunt and uncle, too. Though her aunt might be sympathetic to her plight, her uncle was bound to be furious with her for coming up to London on an impulse, and alone.

‘I shall go and stay with my true brother,’ she had spat at Nick. Well, he had been upset that she had not intended to in the first place, hadn’t he?

‘Yes, that’s right, the one who is half Gypsy. But let me tell you this,’ she had said, jabbing Nick in his bony chest with her forefinger. ‘He is twice the man you are. Ten times!’

Nick’s thin lips had twisted into a sneer. ‘The way you look I am sure you will fit right in with his camp on Hampstead Heath, or wherever they happen to be.’

‘He,’ she had boasted, ‘has a very large house on Bloomsbury Square, as it happens.’ And with her nose in the air, she had turned and clattered down the dingy communal staircase of the cheap lodging house where Nick had rooms.

It was not until she had got into the street that she remembered she had no purse. She would have done anything rather than go back into Nick’s rooms and beg for the means to procure a cab. Besides, it was not that far. The coach Stephen had hired had not taken a quarter of an hour to take her to Nick’s lodgings.

And so, in high dudgeon, she had set out to walk to Bloomsbury Square.

But those dratted indoor shoes! Ruefully, she rubbed at her wet and blistered feet. She had been limping before she had reached the first corner.

Stephen’s gaze followed her movements. When he saw the state of her feet, he drew in a breath.

‘I have to go out soon. It cannot be avoided. But Aktash will see to all your needs,’ he said, crossing to the bell pull and tugging on it. ‘You shall have shelter for the night. You stayed with me all night. You did your best to look after me. Now I do the same for you. And we are even,’ he said fiercely. ‘In the morning, we will discuss what your next move should be.’

Midge almost burst into tears again. She was safe, for now. But, oh, the problems she was going to have to face in the morning! Why, oh, why could she never think before charging off on one of her wild exploits? No wonder Monty was sick and tired of her. She was sick and tired of herself.

‘What do you mean, she has disappeared?’

Monty glowered at his father, completely at a loss to understand how Midge could have vanished from a house that was teeming with so many servants.

‘Somebody must have some idea where she is!’

Pansy, who had been summoned the moment Monty arrived at Shevington Court, wrung her hands. ‘It wasn’t till this morning, when I saw her bed had not been slept in, I got worried. Well, you know her routine. I only go up to her room now if she summons me special, excepting to take her breakfast up and help her dress for the day.’

Cobbett cleared his throat. ‘I believe I was the last person to see her, my lord,’ he admitted guiltily. ‘When I took up her post.’

Monty drew in a deep breath, stifling the urge to hit the poor fellow. It was not his fault that nobody had organized any kind of search party. Ever since Pansy had reported her missing, everyone seemed to have begun blaming everyone else. It was a wonder anybody had actually had the presence of mind to send for him at all.

‘I had not yet instructed the staff to organize a watch on her movements,’ admitted the earl. ‘She was too quick for me. It is the way with women like that. You made a serious error of judgement, thinking you could tame Framlingham’s daughter.’

‘What?’ Monty whirled round to stare at him. ‘What are you insinuating?’

‘Am I not making myself clear enough for you?’ He sneered. ‘I had already caught her trying to sneak down to the stables, the minute you had gone. I put a stop to that, you may be sure. Told her I knew what she was about!’

Monty shook his head impatiently. ‘Midge gave me her word she would not go riding—’

‘Not four-legged beasts, perhaps. But there are other attractions to be found in the stables for women like her.’

It was all Monty could do not to fly at the dirtyminded old man, casting aspersions on Midge’s character, with servants present, too! Clenching his fists, he growled, ‘Do you mean to tell me you accused her of plotting to seduce one of the grooms? Is that it? I would not have thought even you could stoop so low.’

The earl collapsed into his chair, his face growing pale. ‘You should have been here to keep her under control,’ he said querulously. ‘I should not have to deal with such a termagant.’

‘Gave you back as good as she got, did she?’ said Monty with satisfaction. ‘Good for her!’

‘I should have known you would somehow ruin my plans for the next generation of Claremonts,’ muttered the earl peevishly. ‘Bringing a creature like that to Shevington. I am supposed to have complete peace and quiet!’

‘Well, don’t worry!’ snapped Monty, turning on his heel. ‘Once I find her, you may be sure neither of us will be returning to this benighted place!’

Muttering under his breath, Monty took the stairs to their suite two at a time. He did not know what he expected to find when he got there. It was just that that was where he pictured her. And the last place anyone had seen her.

When he strode into their sitting room, the first thing he saw was the vase, which she had taken such pains to save, lying smashed to pieces in the fireplace. So many pieces—it must have been hurled to the ground with some force!

Midge had been furious. And who could blame her? His father was the outside of enough.

And far more unstable than even he had suspected. The earl had been so pleased Midge was pregnant. Monty would have thought that would have been enough to protect her from falling foul of one of his father’s irrational outbursts.

Apparently not, he thought bitterly, nudging at some of the larger pieces of pottery with the toe of his boot.

Then something else caught his eye. A single sheet of writing paper. He picked it up, scanned it swiftly and screwed his eyes shut against the clipped, formal language informing her of her stepbrother’s death.

My God! He sank to the sofa, his head in his hands. Just when she had needed him most, he had not been here. He had gone running off to London, in a stupid attempt to preserve his own pride.

But what good was his damned dignity if he had lost her?

He could picture how it must have been. The scene with his father, and then getting news like that. She must have been beside herself to have hurled the vase into the fireplace with such force. And then what? Knowing Midge, she had probably gone charging off without giving a thought to where she was going. Unless there was some particular spot on the estate she had grown fond of. Where she might go to find some kind of solace.

But then, why had she not returned at nightfall?

His stomach clenched as he pictured her stumbling down the main stairs, weeping…running out into the woods she loved so much…falling…lying injured and so badly hurt she was unable to rise. And he cursed himself for not spending more time with her. For working so hard to prove himself worthy of the position he would one day fill. For putting his father’s demands before her needs. Now the only people who might know where she might have gone were the twins, with whom she had spent the majority of her time.

The twins! His father was sending them away, any day now, but they had not gone yet.

Shooting to his feet, he charged along the corridor and up the stairs to the set of rooms in the attics they inhabited.

They looked up from where they were kneeling on the floor packing their trunks, when he burst in upon them.

‘Do you know where she might have gone?’ he blurted.

They both looked at the screwed-up piece of paper he was still clutching in his hand.

‘Doesn’t it say in her note?’ said Jem, at the exact same moment Tobe said, ‘Just like our mother.’

‘What?’ Monty looked from one to the other, in complete bewilderment.

‘We’re sorry, Vern,’ said Jem, getting up and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.

‘She betrayed us, too.’

‘Getting us banished from Shevington, coz there’s only room for one baby in the nursery!’

‘And then running off with her fancy man!’ said Tobe indignantly. ‘If she was gonna do that to you, there was no need to get us sent to school!’

‘She has not run off with a fancy man!’ Monty protested. ‘She must have met with an accident. She is out there somewhere.’ He waved his arm towards the window that overlooked their beloved woods. ‘Does she have a favourite place? Somewhere she would go if she was upset?’

The twins looked at each other and he could see some message pass between them, before Jem looked him straight in the eye and declared, with touching sympathy, ‘Vern, we told you, she’s gone to the Silent Woman to meet her fancy man!’

‘Hanging around here for days, he was.’

‘And she pretended she didn’t want to see him.’

‘But as soon as you left, she went straight off after him like a shot!’

A new fear gripped Monty as he recalled the dreamy expression on her face, the night he had assaulted her on Lady Carteret’s terrace. Her insistence it had been produced by thinking about some other man. How, a few days ago, she had thrust a letter into the flames and lied about its contents. And how her face had closed up when he had forbidden her to go to London with him.

He strode towards the window, running the fingers of one hand through his hair, whilst crumpling the letter from her stepbrother in the other.

He was constantly running up against the spectre of that Other Man!

But surely, Midge would not just run out on him? She was too honest, too direct to behave in such a sneaky way. And now that she was expecting, too…hell, she knew how much this child meant to everyone at Shevington!

No, he could not believe she would be so deliberately cruel. She did not have a cruel bone in her body.

And what was more, he could not believe she could have made love with him with such wild abandon, if any other man was of the least importance to her. She was not the wanton his father painted her! Why, when he thought how embarrassed she became whenever he attempted to take their lovemaking to a new level…

He rounded on the twins, his eyes narrowing. For some reason, they were lying to him.

‘Tell me what has really happened,’ he growled, seizing each of them by one ear. ‘Or so help me I will make you rue the day you were born!’

‘Ow, stop it!’

‘Let go!’

‘Not until you tell me the truth!’

‘We have! We have! She’s gone to the Silent Woman!’

‘She must have,’ whined Tobe. ‘We took the message from the man on the black horse, and then we saw her running off in the direction of the village!’

‘Man on the black horse?’ he said, abruptly letting them go. ‘There really was a man asking to see her? What,’ he asked, dreading their answer, ‘exactly does he look like?’

‘Like a Gypsy,’ said Jem without hesitation.

‘Yes, he’s got an earring and a dagger in his boot and everything!’

A chill tied his guts into a knot as he saw, finally, why she had not come back.

He had not been able to believe Midge could be unfaithful. But he could believe that, in her naiveté, she had gone running off to meet Stephen after the dreadful day she’d had! For she had no idea how dangerous the man was.

Because he had never warned her.

He had thought he was shielding her from distress by not telling her how the fiend had abducted Marcus Carlow’s wife. He had not wanted her upset by learning how the devil had plotted to ruin Stanegate’s sister Honoria, either.

But when he thought of the silken noose Stephen had sent her, as a warning of his intentions, his stomach turned over.

Dear God, if any harm came to her…

With a face like thunder, he thrust the twins aside and made straight for the stables. She had already been in his clutches for over a day. But he would find her.

And heaven help that Gypsy bastard when he did!