Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught
For Ian that was no problem at all; he was always busy. Elizabeth solved her problem by agreeing, at the urging of some of the ton’s most influential old guard, including the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne, to join in a charitable endeavor to build a badly needed hospital on the outskirts of London. Unfortunately, the Hospital Fund Raising Committee, to which Elizabeth was assigned, spent most of its time mired down in petty trivialities and rarely made a decision on anything. In a fit of bored frustration, Elizabeth finally asked Ian to step into their drawing room one day, while the committee was meeting there, and to give them the benefit of his expertise. “And,” she laughingly warned him in the privacy of his study when he agreed to join them, “no matter how they prose on about every tiny, meaningless expenditure—which they will—promise me you won’t point out to them that you could build six hospitals with less effort and time.”
“Could I do that?” he asked, grinning.
“Absolutely!” She sighed. “Between them, they must have half the money in Europe, yet they debate about every shilling to be spent as if it were coming out of their own reticules and likely to send them to debtors’ gaol.”
“If they offend your thrifty sensibilities, they must be a rare group,” Ian teased. Elizabeth gave him a distracted smile, but when they neared the drawing room, where the committee was drinking tea in Ian’s priceless Sèvres china cups, she turned to him and added hastily, “Oh, and don’t comment on Lady Wiltshire’s blue hat”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s her hair.”
“I wouldn’t do such a thing,” he protested, grinning at her.
“Yes, you would!” she whispered, trying to frown and chuckling instead. “The dowager duchess told me that, last night, you complimented the furry dog Lady Shirley had draped over her arm.”
“Madam, I was following your specific instructions to be nice to the eccentric old harridan. Why shouldn’t I have complimented her dog?”
“Because it was a new fur muff of a rare sort, of which she was extravagantly proud.”
“There is no fur on earth that mangy, Elizabeth,” he replied with an impenitent grin. “She’s hoaxing the lot of you,” he added seriously.
Elizabeth swallowed a startled laugh and said with an imploring look, “Promise me you’ll be very nice, and very patient with the committee.”
“I promise,” he said gravely, but when she reached for the door handle and opened the door—when it was too late to step back and yank it closed—he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Did you know a camel is the only animal invented by a committee, which is why it turned out the way it has?”
If the committee was surprised to see the formerly curt and irascible Marquess of Kensington stroll into their midst wearing a beatific smile worthy of a choir boy, they were doubtlessly shocked to see his wife’s hands clamped over her face and her eyes tearing with mirth.
Elizabeth’s concern that Ian might insult them, either intentionally or otherwise, soon gave way to admiration and then to helpless amusement as he sat for the next half-hour, charming them all with an occasional lazy smile or interjecting a gallant compliment, while they spent the entire time debating whether to sell the chocolates being donated by Gunther’s for £5 or £6 per box. Despite Ian’s outwardly bland demeanor, Elizabeth waited uneasily for him to say he’d buy the damned cartload of chocolates for £10 apiece, if it would get them on to the next problem, which she knew was what he was dying to say.
But she needn’t have worried, for he continued to positively exude pleasant interest. Four times, the committee paused to solicit his advice; four times, he smilingly made excellent suggestions; four times, they ignored what he suggested. And four times, he seemed not to mind in the least or even to notice.
Making a mental note to thank him profusely for his incredible forbearance, Elizabeth kept her attention on her guests and the discussion, until she inadvertently glanced in his direction, and her breath caught. Seated on the opposite side of the gathering from her, he was now leaning back in his chair, his left ankle propped atop his right knee, and despite his apparent absorption in the topic being discussed, his heavy-lidded gaze was roving meaningfully over her breasts. One look at the smile tugging at his lips and Elizabeth realized that he wanted her to know it.
Obviously he’d decided that both she and he were wasting their time with the committee, and he was playing an amusing game designed to either divert her or discomfit her entirely, she wasn’t certain which. Elizabeth drew a deep breath, ready to blast a warning look at him, and his gaze lifted slowly from her gently heaving bosom, traveled lazily up her throat, paused at her lips, and then lifted to her narrowed eyes.
Her quelling glance earned her nothing but a slight, challenging lift of his brows and a decidedly sensual smile, before his gaze reversed and began a lazy trip downward again.
Lady Wiltshire’s voice rose, and she said for the second time, “Lady Thornton, what do you think?”
Elizabeth snapped her gaze from her provoking husband to Lady Wiltshire. “I—I agree,” she said without the slightest idea of what she was agreeing with. For the next five minutes, she resisted the tug of Ian’s caressing gaze, firmly refusing to even glance his way, but when the committee reembarked on the chocolate issue again, she stole a look at him. The moment she did, he captured her gaze, holding it, while he, with an outward appearance of a man in thoughtful contemplation of some weighty problem, absently rubbed his forefinger against his mouth, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. Elizabeth’s body responded to the caress he was offering her as if his lips were actually on hers, and she drew a long, steadying breath as he deliberately let his eyes slide to her breasts again. He knew exactly what his gaze was doing to her, and Elizabeth was thoroughly irate at her inability to ignore its effect.
The committee departed on schedule a half-hour later amid reminders that the next meeting would be held at Lady Wiltshire’s house. Before the door closed behind them, Elizabeth rounded on her grinning, impenitent husband in the drawing room. “You wretch!” she exclaimed. “How could you?” she demanded, but in the midst of her indignant protest, Ian shoved his hands into her hair, turned her face up, and smothered her words with a ravenous kiss.
“I haven’t forgiven you,” she warned him in bed an hour later, her cheek against his chest. Laughter, rich and deep, rumbled beneath her ear.
“No?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll repay you if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I think you already have,” he said huskily, deliberately misunderstanding her meaning.
Shortly afterward, they returned to Montmayne to spend September in the country, where it was cooler. For Ian, life with Elizabeth was everything he ever hoped it could be, and more. It was so perfect that he had to fight down the nagging fear that things could not go on like this—a fear which he tried to convince himself was mere superstition brought on by the fact that two years ago fate had snatched her from him. But in his heart, he knew it was more than that. His investigators had not yet been able to find a trace of Elizabeth’s brother, and he lived in daily dread that hers would succeed where his had not. And so he waited to discover the extent of his offense against her and her brother, knowing he was going to have to beg her forgiveness for it, and that—in marrying her without telling her what he did know—he was as guilty of duplicity as he was of her brother’s abduction.
In the rational part of his mind, he knew that by having Robert tossed aboard the Arianna, he had spared the hotheaded young fool a far worse fate at the hands of the authorities. But now, without knowing what fate had actually befallen him, he couldn’t be certain that Elizabeth would see his actions in that light. He couldn’t see them in that light himself anymore, because now he knew something he hadn’t known at the time: He knew that her parents had been long dead by then and that Robert had been her only buffer against her uncle.
Fear, the one emotion he despised above all others, grew apace with his l
Blissfully unaware of all that, Elizabeth continued to love him without reservation or guile, and as she grew more certain of his love, she became more confident and more enchanting to Ian. On those occasions when she saw his expression become inexplicably grim, she teased him or kissed him, and, if those ploys failed, she presented him with little gifts—a flower arrangement from Havenhurst’s gardens, a single rose that she stuck behind his ear, or left upon his pillow. “Shall I have to resort to buying you a jewel to make you smile, my lord?” she joked one day three months after they were married. “I understand that is how it is done when a lover begins to act distracted.”
To Elizabeth’s surprise, her remark made him snatch her into his arms in a suffocating embrace. “I am not losing interest in you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he told her.
Elizabeth leaned back in his arms, surprised by the unwarranted force of his declaration, and continued to tease. “You’re quite certain?”
“Positive.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked in a tone of mock severity.
“I would never lie to you,” Ian said gravely, but then he realized that by withholding the truth from her, he was, in effect, deceiving her, which in turn, amounted to little less than lying outright.
Elizabeth knew something was bothering him, and that as time passed, it was bothering him with increasing frequency, but she never dreamed she was even remotely the cause of his silences or preoccupation. She thought of Robert often, but not since the day of her marriage had she permitted herself to think of Mr. Wordsworth’s accusations, not even for an instant. In the first place, she couldn’t bear it; in the second, she no longer believed there was the slightest possibility he was right.
“I have to go to Havenhurst tomorrow,” she said reluctantly when Ian finally let her go. “The masons have started on the house and bridge, and the irrigation work has begun. If I spend the night, though, I shouldn’t have to go back for at least a fortnight.”
‘I’ll miss you,” he said quietly, but there was no trace of resentment in his voice, nor did he attempt to persuade her to postpone the trip. He was keeping to his bargain with the integrity that Elizabeth particularly admired in him.
“Not,” she whispered, kissing the side of his mouth, “as much as I’ll miss you.”
32
Her mind on the list of provisions she was reading, Elizabeth walked slowly along the path from Havenhurst’s storage buildings toward the main house. A tall hedge on her right shielded the utilitarian buildings from view of the main house where the masons were working. A footstep sounded behind her, and before she could turn or react, she was grabbed round the waist and dragged backward, a male hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream of frightened protest.
“Hush, Elizabeth, it’s me,” an achingly familiar voice said urgently. “Don’t scream, all right?”
Elizabeth nodded, the hand loosened, and she whirled around into Robert’s waiting arms. “Where have you been?” she demanded, laughing and crying and hugging him fiercely. “Why did you leave without telling me where you were going? I could kill you for worrying me so—”
His hands gripped her shoulders, moving her away, and there was urgency on his gaunt face. “There isn’t time for explanations. Meet me in the arbor at dusk, and for God’s sake don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.”
“Not even Bentner—”
“No one! I have to get out of here before one of the servants sees me. I’ll be in the arbor near your favorite cherry tree at dusk.”
He left her there, moving stealthily down the path, then vanishing into the arbor beside it after quickly glancing in both directions to ensure he hadn’t been seen.
Elizabeth felt as if she’d imagined the whole brief encounter. The sense of unreality stayed with her as she paced across the drawing room, watching the sun set with nervewracking slowness, while she tried to imagine why Robert would fear being seen by their loyal old butler. Obviously he was in some sort of trouble, perhaps with the authorities. If so, she would ask Ian for advice and help. Robert was her brother, and she loved him despite his faults; Ian would understand that. In time, perhaps both men would come to treat one another as relatives, for her sake. She stole out of her own house, feeling like a thief.
Robert was sitting with his back against the old cherry tree, moodily contemplating his scuffed boots when Elizabeth first saw him, and he stood up quickly. “You didn’t happen to bring food, did you?”
She’d been right, she realized; he was half-starved. “Yes, but only some bread and cheese,” she explained, taking it out from behind her skirts. “I couldn’t think of a way to carry more out here without causing someone to wonder whom I was feeding in the arbor. Robert,” she burst out, no longer diverted by such commonplace needs as food, “where have you been, why did you leave me like that, and what—”
“I didn’t leave you,” he bit out furiously. “Your husband had me kidnapped the week after our duel and tossed onto one of his ships. I was supposed to die—”
Pain and disbelief streaked through Elizabeth.
“Don’t say that to me,” she cried, wildly shaking her head. “Don’t—he wouldn’t—”
Robert’s jaw clamped down, and he yanked his shirt out of his waistband, jerked it up, and turned around. “This is a souvenir of one of his attempts.”
A scream rose up in Elizabeth’s throat, and she pressed her knuckles against her mouth, trying to stop it Even then she felt as if she was going to vomit “Oh, my God,” she panted, looking at the vicious scars that crisscrossed almost every inch of Robert’s thin back. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
“Don’t faint,” Robert said, clutching her arm to steady her. “You have to be strong, or he’ll finish the deed.”
Elizabeth sank to the ground and put her head against her knees, her arms clutched around her stomach, rocking helplessly to and fro. “Oh, my God,” she kept saying over and over at the thought of his torn, battered flesh. “Oh, my God.”
Forcing herself to take long, steadying breaths, she finally brought herself under control. All the doubts, the warnings, the hints, crystallized in her mind, focusing on the proof of Robert’s battered back, and an icy cold stole through her, numbing her to everything, even the pain. Ian had been her love and her lover; she had lain in the arms of a man who knew what he had done to her brother.
Leaning a hand against the tree, she stood up unsteadily. “Tell me,” she said hoarsely.
“Tell you why he did this? Or tell you about the months I’ve spent rotting in a mine, dragging coal out of it? Or tell you about the beatings I got the last time I tried to escape and come back to you?”
Elizabeth rubbed her arms; they felt cold and numb. “Tell me why,” she said.
“How in hell do you expect me to explain the motives of a madman?” Robert hissed, and then with a sublime effort he got himself under control. “I’ve had two years to think about it, to try to understand, and when I heard he’d married you, it all came clear as glass. He tried to kill me on Marblemarle Road the week of our duel, did you know that?”
“I’ve hired investigators to try to find you,” she said, nodding that she knew part of it, unaware that Robert had gone more pale than before. “But they thought you tried to kill him. ”
“That’s garbage!”
“It was—conjecture,” she admitted. “But why would Ian want to kill you?”
“Why?” he sneered, tearing into the bread and
Elizabeth drew a shaky breath. “What do you mean to do?”
Robert leaned his head back and closed his eyes, looking tormented. “He’ll have me killed if he learns I’m still alive,” he said with absolute conviction. “I couldn’t take another whipping like the last one, Elizabeth. I was on the brink of death for a week.”
A sob of pity and horror rose in her throat. “Legal charges, then?” she asked, and her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “Do you mean to go to the authorities?”
“I’ve thought of it. I want it so badly I can hardly sleep at night, but they’d never take my word now. Your husband has become a rich and powerful man.” When he said “your husband” he looked at her so accusingly that Elizabeth could scarcely meet his haunted eyes.
“I—” She lifted her hand in helpless apology, but she didn’t know what to apologize for, and tears were starting to blur her eyes and impede her speech. “Please,” she cried helplessly. “I don’t know what to do or say. Not yet. I can’t think.”
He dropped the bread and wrapped his arms around her. “Poor beautiful baby,” he said. “I’ve lain awake nights scared out of my mind for you, trying not to think of his filthy hands on you. He owns mines—deep, endless pits in the ground where men live like animals and are beaten like oxen. That’s where he gets the money for everything he buys.”
Including all the jewels and furs he’d given her, Elizabeth realized, and the need to vomit was almost overwhelming. She shuddered repeatedly in Robert’s embrace. “If you don’t bring him up before the magistrates, what will you do?”