The Bride's Necklace (16 page)

“All women are innocent for a time.”

But Percy seemed unnerved by the fact. He cleared his throat. “You must be tired. The hour grows late. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

She might be a little tired, but she was no longer sleepy. She wanted to tell him that she liked it when he kissed her and she wished he would do it again.

Instead, she merely said, “Sleep well, my lord.”

He reached over and touched her cheek. “You as well, my love.”

Cord received two messages the following morning, one from Percival Chezwick, informing him that Miles
Whiting was returned to London, the second from Colonel Pendleton with the news that the time to free Ethan had come.

Cord debated whether to inform Victoria of her stepfather’s return, but the knowledge would better prepare her should the two of them chance to meet. In the end, he summoned her into his study and handed her Lord Percy’s note.

“Harwood is here?” she said from where she stood on the opposite side of his desk.

Cord came round and took hold of her hands. They felt colder than they should have. “It’s all right, love. If the bastard comes within a thousand yards of you, he’ll have to deal with me.”

But for the next few days, he would be gone, sailing to France with the hope he would finally be returning with Ethan.

It was a far longer journey than before, sailing round the most westerly point of France, then turning south to the rendezvous point near St. Nazaire. He didn’t like leaving Victoria that long, not with Harwood in London.

“Just be careful,” he said to her. “While I’m gone, I want you to stay close to the house. I don’t trust Harwood and I don’t want you anywhere near him. I want you to be very careful.”

“I’ll be careful…if you promise you will be careful as well.” She had asked to accompany him, then demanded, then begged.

“The middle of a war is no place for a woman,” he had said. “I want you safe, and if you think, even for a moment, of disobeying me and somehow stealing aboard that ship, I swear I shall lock you in your room for the balance of the Season.”

Ignoring the mutinous look on her face, he tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “I don’t want you hurt, love. Can’t you understand that?”

Something flickered in the green of her eyes. Her hand came up to his cheek. “I don’t want you hurt, either.”

Cord glanced away, the soft words moving him more than he would have liked.

He forced himself to smile. “Then I shall have to be extremely careful to return to you in one piece.”

They talked a little longer, Cord explaining the plans he and Rafe had made, the danger Ethan and Max Bradley would be facing once they left the prison and tried to reach the coast. Tomorrow night, he and Rafe would sail for France.

This time, he prayed his mission would not fail.

She didn’t like staying at home while her husband sailed into danger. Still, he was right. As she and Claire had learned firsthand, a ship in time of war wasn’t a place she wanted to be.

Besides, with Harwood in London and her husband out of town, it occurred to her that she had been given the perfect opportunity to return to Harwood Hall in search of her mother’s diary.

“You’re going to Harwood?” Seated next to her on a sofa in the Blue Room, Claire’s blue eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am perfectly serious. I am telling you so that should the rare possibility occur that something might happen, you would know where to look for me.”

Claire worried her lip. “I don’t know, Tory. I don’t think you should go. What if Harwood leaves London
and goes back to the hall or finds out that you were there?”

“He has only just arrived in the city. He won’t be going home that soon.”

“You can’t know that for certain.”

“Even if he does go back, Greta or Samuel will warn me of his arrival.” The two were trusted servants who had worked for her family since before Miles Whiting had inherited the title. “They hate him almost as much as we do.”

“Lord Brant will be furious if he finds out.”

“He isn’t going to find out. Gracie has agreed to help me. She and I are going to visit her friend, Mary Benton, in the country. Grace’s hobby is stargazing. She knows the names of the constellations and all sorts of other things, and Mary shares her interest. In truth, only Grace will actually be going to see her. I will be leaving the coach halfway there and heading off to Harwood Hall.”

“Grace has agreed to this?”

“Of course.”

“Grace is as mad as you are.”

Tory laughed. “It will work.”

“I hope so.”

Tory hoped so, too. But no matter what happened, this was the chance she had been waiting for—the chance to prove Harwood had murdered her father—and she wasn’t about to let it slip away.

Cord’s ship, the
Nightingale,
sailed the following night, and the morning after his departure, Tory told Mr. Timmons that she would be accompanying Grace Chastain to visit a friend in the country. An hour later, she boarded the Chastains’ coach and the two of them bowled out of the city.

Seated across from her on the tufted velvet seat, Grace plucked a piece of lint from the skirt of her cream muslin gown.

“They were glad to get rid of me,” she said, a dark look on her face. “They always are.”

Tory couldn’t help feeling sorry for her friend. While Tory had been blessed with a loving mother and father, Grace had been shipped off to boarding school and for the most part ignored.

“Surely your parents love you. You’re their daughter.”

Grace lifted her eyes to Tory’s face. “I’m my mother’s daughter. My father—Dr. Chastain—isn’t really my father.”

For a moment, Tory just stared. Infidelity was a common occurrence among the upper classes, but she never would have guessed Grace’s mother would do such a thing. “Surely that can’t be true.”

“I’m afraid it is. A couple of days ago, I heard them talking. My father had been drinking. He had lost a lot of money at the gaming tables. He started yelling at my mother. He said that if she hadn’t behaved like a…like a whore he wouldn’t have been forced to raise her bastard daughter.”

Tory’s heart squeezed for her friend. How would she have felt to discover the man she had known as her father was another man entirely?

Grace looked up and there were tears in her eyes. “All those years, I wondered why I couldn’t make him love me. Now I know.”

“Oh, Gracie.” Tory leaned over and hugged her. She could feel Grace trembling and her heart went out to her. “It doesn’t matter,’ she said firmly. “You’re the same person no matter who your father is.”

Grace dragged in a shaky breath and leaned back against the squabs. “I suppose I am. The truth is, in a way I’m glad he isn’t my father. I just wish I knew who my real father is.”

“Perhaps your mother will tell you.”

“Perhaps. If I ever work up the courage to ask her. The trouble is I’m not really sure I want to know.”

They said no more on the subject. Her friend’s parentage didn’t matter to Tory, and she believed that Grace was strong enough to handle the truth of her birth. As Tory had said, she was the same young woman, no matter who her real father was.

They rode for most of the day, Grace excited to be traveling to the country, since her stargazing was much limited by the soot-darkened, often cloudy skies of London. At a crossroads in the little town of Perigord, Tory bid farewell to her friend. She spent the night at the Black Dog Inn, a place she had stayed with her family when they had traveled to London, and caught the mail coach to Harwood Hall the following morning.

By late afternoon, she was inside the familiar walls of her family home, the servants pleased to see her, especially Greta, the housekeeper, and Samuel, the butler. She swore them to secrecy about her visit and they vowed to see that the others kept their silence as well.

Even if the baron discovered she had been there, he wouldn’t know she was looking for the journal, and by then Tory would be long gone.

It was good to see old friends, but the search itself progressed with agonizing slowness, since she kept thinking of new places to look.

Unfortunately, when the following morning arrived and it was time to return to London, she had nothing to
show for her efforts. Greta alone knew she was there in search of the journal, though not the reason she wanted it so badly. Her disappointment must have been obvious. On the morning of Tory’s departure, Greta appeared with a suggestion.

“Perhaps your mother, God rest her soul, left the journal at Windmere.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that. I’ll try to go there next.”

“Or she could have left it in the town house.”

Her head snapped up. She hadn’t considered the small residence in the city that her family had used only rarely. “Do you think she might have? She and Father never spent much time there. I hadn’t really considered…”

“Your mother and father didn’t go there often, but your stepfather always enjoyed life in the city, especially during the Season. He and your mother were there just before your mother fell ill.”

“But the baron sold the town house to Sir Winifred Manning. How would I get in?”

Greta shrugged her thin shoulders. “I just thought I’d mention it.”

“I’m glad you did.” Tory gave the aging woman a hug. “Thank you, Greta.” Her spirits somewhat revived, she set out to catch the mail coach and returned to the inn to wait for Gracie, who would be there the following day.

They arrived in London early in the evening.

It was just her bad luck that Cord was waiting when she got home.

C
ord paced his study. He had expected Victoria to be there when he arrived home late that afternoon. He was exhausted, more weary from his failure to rescue Ethan than the sleepless hours he had spent at sea.

On arriving at the rendezvous point off St. Nazaire, instead of finding Ethan, a battered, beaten Max Bradley had tumbled over the rail, spilling blood and water onto the holystoned deck. He carried a lead ball in his shoulder and a bad gash on his face.

“The captain escaped from the prison just as we planned,” Max had wearily told them. “We made it nearly to the coast before they caught up with us. We gave them a bloody good fight. Then one of them shot me. They thought I was dead or I wouldn’t be here now.”

“And Ethan?” Cord asked, his stomach in knots.

Bradley released a shaky breath as the surgeon Rafe had had the foresight to bring along worked over him. “He’s alive. They’ll haul him back to prison. He’s made an enemy somewhere. I don’t know who it is.” He
winced at the needle and thread being pulled through the cut on his forehead. “They’re determined he won’t escape.”

“So it’s over,” Cord said darkly, his hands biting into the back of the wooden chair next to Bradley’s bunk.

“I didn’t say that.” Max managed a crooked smile. “It isn’t over till Max Bradley says it is and that time has yet to come.”

The words made Cord feel better, but not much.

He tried to push his worry away and instead think of Victoria, imagining her slim arms around his neck, her slender frame pressing against him as she comforted him with her womanly warmth. He imagined the way she would fuss over him, trying to make him feel better, imagined carrying her upstairs and making love to her, using her welcoming body to forget what Ethan suffered.

Instead, when he walked through the door, Timmons had informed him that his wife and Grace Chastain had gone to visit one of Grace’s friends in the country. The butler wasn’t exactly certain when her ladyship would return.

Cord stopped pacing and sat down at his desk. He tried to fix his mind on the stack of paperwork piled on top, but he couldn’t concentrate.

Where was Victoria?

He had told her to stay close to home. He had warned her that Harwood was in London. Had something happened? Was she in some kind of trouble?

Shoving back his chair, he got up from the desk and started pacing again. The hands of the gilded clock on the mantel read seven in the evening when he heard voices in the entry and knew his wife had returned.

Cord walked out of the study, his strides lengthen
ing in proportion to his anger. He caught sight of Victoria, smiling at Timmons as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and his fury threatened to explode.

He stopped a few feet from where she stood and lounged back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest.

“So, you are returned.”

In the midst of untying her bonnet strings, she spun at the sound of his voice, her hat flying off into the corner.

“You…you are home. You got back to London sooner than I expected.”

“So it would seem.”

The butler bent and retrieved her hat and stoically handed it over.

“Thank you, Timmons,” she said.

“That will be all, Timmons,” Cord said curtly, then waited impatiently for the man to depart. He turned a hard look on his wife. “Is this the way you obey my orders? Heading off to God knows where is your idea of staying close to home?”

“I—I…the opportunity came up rather unexpectedly.”

“Is that right?”

“I didn’t realize you would be upset.”

He grabbed her small tapestry overnight bag and inclined his head toward the staircase, indicating he would carry it up for her. Victoria brushed past him, hurriedly climbed the stairs and headed down the hall into her suite.

She turned as Cord walked in behind her and firmly closed the door.

“What of Ethan?” she asked, changing the subject,
trying to sound casual—without the least success as far as Cord was concerned.

“His efforts to escape were a dismal failure. My cousin remains locked up in France.”

She started toward him. “Cord, I’m so sorry.”

He held up his hand, stopping her in place. “Why did you disobey my orders? Why did you leave when I told you to stay at the house?”

“I didn’t…didn’t really think you would mind. Harwood was in London, after all. What safer place for me to be than out of the city?”

He frowned. There was something in her expression…. “Who was it again that you visited?”

“An acquaintance from school. Mary Benton. She and Grace are chums.”

He didn’t like the way her gaze wouldn’t quite meet his. “Benton…Benton… Would Mary be Richard Benton’s daughter? Or perhaps she is Robert’s child, Richard’s cousin.”

She swallowed. “Mary is Simon’s daughter. Simon is related to both Robert and Richard, but I am not…not quite sure how.”

“I see.” He saw, all right. He saw that his wife was lying. “I find that extremely interesting, as there are no such persons as Robert or Richard Benton. I just made them up.”

Her face went utterly white. “I—I must then be mistaken.”

Cord strode across the room, gripped her shoulders and dragged her up on her toes. “You are lying, Victoria. If there is a woman named Mary Benton, you were clearly not with her. Where were you? I want the truth and I want it now.”

She looked up at him, her eyes big and round, then the stiffness went out of her shoulders. “All right, I’ll tell you the truth if you promise you won’t get angry.”

He clamped his jaw down hard, set her back down on her feet. “I am so angry now it is all I can do not to throttle you. Tell me where you have been.”

Looking as though she wanted to bolt, she nervously moistened her lips. “Harwood Hall.”

“Harwood Hall! That isn’t possible. You can’t be that insane.”

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds. The baron was in London. It was the perfect opportunity.”

His temper was raging. He worked to pull himself under control. “You disobeyed my direct instructions and left the safety of the house to hie off to Harwood Hall—the very viper’s nest itself? I cannot credit why in God’s name you would do something so utterly hare-brained as that.”

Her chin went up. “Because Miles Whiting killed my father. Or at least I am convinced that he did. I found my father’s ring hidden among my mother’s possessions. He was wearing it the day he was murdered. I believe the baron took it from my father the day he was killed and my mother somehow found it. If she did, there is every chance she wrote about it in her journal. That’s what I was looking for at Harwood Hall. It is the only way I can prove that he is guilty.”

Rage still pumped through his blood as Cord mulled over her words. He remembered Victoria speaking of her father’s murder, telling him she hoped to see the man responsible pay for the crime. She hadn’t mentioned she believed the baron was that man.

As insane as traveling to Harwood was, Victoria was certainly brazen enough for such a scheme. She had stolen aboard the
Nightingale,
hadn’t she? Still, Rafe’s words whispered through his head.

There have been rumors about your wife and Julian Fox.

“So…you traveled to Harwood unaccompanied? How did you get there?”

For a moment she looked uneasy and his suspicions returned.

“I went by mail coach. I knew the road well. I had traveled it a number of times when I was a girl.”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “With your parents, Victoria! Not by yourself!” His temper was heating up again. “Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in? An attractive young woman on the road alone? There are footpads and highwaymen on those roads, just lying in wait for a morsel as tempting as you. You could have been ravished, perhaps even killed. I ought to lock you up in your room and throw away the key!”

“Nothing untoward happened, my lord. As you can see, I am home now, unharmed and in perfect health.”

“And the journal? Did you find it?”

She shook her head. “As it was not at Harwood, likely it is somewhere at Windmere.” Her mother’s family estate. She had spoken wistfully of the place on several different occasions.

“If it is, it will have to stay there. If you even think of haring off again, I swear I shall thrash you within an inch of your life.”

She dutifully bowed her head and lowered her eyes, but a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Dam
nable woman knew he wouldn’t lay a hand on her, though on occasions such as these, he was sorely tempted to put her over his knee.

“Say you are not angry,” she said, looking up at him from beneath a thick fringe of lashes.

He was, but less so. Then she moved closer and all he could think of was the soft look on her face and the feel of the gentle hand she rested against his cheek. Desire curled through him…and something else he refused to name.

“You must be exhausted. Why don’t you lie down and take a nap before supper?” She eased his coat off his shoulders, beginning to fuss over him as he had wanted so badly for her to do. “Let me help you undress. In a little while you’ll feel better.”

He let her remove his white piqué waistcoat. When she started on the buttons on the front of his shirt, he caught her hand and pulled her into his arms.

“I’ll lie down if you will join me.”

She glanced toward the door. “I’ve been away. There are matters I should attend.”

He wished she hadn’t reminded him. Recalling the danger she had put herself in reignited his temper. The painful erection her soft body aroused did the rest. “You’ll stay if I say so, and I do.”

Spinning her around, he began to unfasten the buttons on the back of her dress. A few minutes later, he had her beneath him and he was inside her. She was making those sweet little mewling sounds he loved, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

If only he could keep her naked and in bed, he wouldn’t have to worry. She arched toward him, urging him on, and he bent his head and kissed her, began
to surge deeply inside her. At least for a while, his body would take control and his mind could rest.

For a while, at least, he wouldn’t be consumed with thoughts of the troublesome creature he had wed.

Cord was ignoring her again. For the first few days after his return from France, he had been brooding and bad tempered, burdened by yet another failure and consumed with worry for his cousin. He had buried himself in his work and she had let him, hoping he would come to terms with something he was helpless to change.

That had been two weeks ago. During the entire time, she had spent every night home alone. She was sick unto death of sitting in the drawing room embroidering, or couched in the library reading a book. When her sister dropped by for a visit, Tory voiced her complaints and Claire urged her to once again join their evening activities.

“In a way it is funny,” Claire said. “You are tired of sitting at home and I grow weary of going out.”

“I wouldn’t be tired of staying home if my husband didn’t spend the whole night locked up in his study. Half the time, I think he has forgot that I exist.”

Claire smiled. “He didn’t forget the night of the Tarringtons’ ball. I saw the way he looked at you. He was green with jealousy. He looked as if he meant to ravish you right there.”

As she thought of what had happened in the linen closet, Tory’s face heated up. “What do you know of ravishment? Have you and Percy…have you finally made love?”

Claire’s smile slid away. “We have engaged in foreplay.”

Tory nearly choked on the sip of tea she had taken. “Foreplay?”

“That is what they call it in the book.”

“You’re speaking of a man fondling a woman’s bosom…and other things.”

“Mostly the other things haven’t happened yet, but last night he caressed my breasts. He says they are quite wonderful.”

Tory grinned. “You won’t have long to wait now.”

“That is what I am hoping. We are traveling to Tunbridge Wells for a week to take the mineral waters. Perhaps it will happen then.”

“Lord Percy is extremely shy. You have told me he worries about your innocence. Perhaps he is afraid that once he starts making love to you he won’t be able to control his passions.”

Claire set her cup down in her saucer. “You really think so?”

“From what you have said, I would say it’s a strong possibility.”

“If that is so, what should I do?”

Tory sipped her tea, mulling the question over. “I think you should tempt him. Drive him mad with desire, then tell him you want him to make love to you. At that point, there’ll be no way he can resist.”

Claire began to smile. “I am ready to become Percy’s wife in every way. I shall do it! Percy says the estate he had let is quite large. A small number of guests have been invited. You and Cord could join us. I should like to have you near in case something goes wrong.”

Tory sighed. “I should love to go, dearest, but Cord will never agree. He is always too busy.”

“Then you must come by yourself. I would have
ever so much more courage. I would only have to think, Victoria would not be missish, and my fear would go away.”

Tory pondered the notion. She was tired of Cord’s inattention. They were newly married, but except when they made love, he treated her as if she didn’t exist.

“All right, I shall come.”

Claire excitedly hugged her. “Oh, Tory, thank you ever so much.”

And if Cord didn’t like it, he could simply pack his bags and come with her.

Cord didn’t like it. Not one little bit. The sale of the Threadneedle property had stalled after his last meeting with the owner and he needed to see the matter resolved. But it was obvious Victoria was determined to go, whether or not he went with her.

In the end, he grudgingly conceded to joining the house party for a couple of days, though he couldn’t afford to spend the five full days Victoria would be gone.

Cord sighed. In truth, he would love to take a break from the grueling hours he’d been putting in since his marriage. Aside from his determination to add to the earldom’s coffers, he spent extra time working to avoid what he really wanted to do—spend more time with Victoria. He was attracted to her mind as well as her luscious little body, which didn’t bode well, as far as Cord was concerned.