“You hide behind that chair, but if I wished, I could pick it up and fling it across the room. I could take you to the floor and have you now, darling, and all your cries would be of delight.” His thumb slid up and caressed her lips, and for the first time he smiled, a rapierlike smile of pernicious resolve. “But that would be too easy, so have a seat.”
3
Hannah felt the stroke of Dougald’s fingers on her face and stared at his grim, savagely satisfied features. All trace of the youthful, charming pirate had disappeared, leaving her confronting a brute so intent on vengeance and so puffed with importance he threatened her with subjugation and tyranny.
But if he was no longer the smiling daredevil, neither was she the soft-spoken innocent.
Wrapping her fingers around his wrist, she moved his hand away. “Be polite and I’ll sit. Threaten me again, and I’m off to find Mrs. Trenchard and my supper.”
He blinked as if he’d not heard such a contemptuous response in a great many years.
“Step back,” she repeated.
He did, one single short step away from the chair.
Interesting. During the whole time she had lived with him, he had never, ever done anything she suggested or demanded, not even step backward to give her some breathing room. As far as he was concerned, he was always right, and he had cajoled or kissed or ignored all of her appeals and complaints. Now she wondered…had he learned compromise? Was he humoring her? Or had she learned to speak with such a voice of command that he actually listened?
Although, truth to tell, he still stood too close. But she would be satisfied with even so small a gain. Lifting her arms, she pulled the long hat pin free. “It was a long trip, and I find I’m feeling peckish. Please call for a meal.”
He watched her body greedily, as if her raised arms had allowed him to view her naked glories rather than the formidable black wool of her winter cloak. She wasn’t shivering anymore, she noted; the rush of anger and the uncomfortable brush with ancient passions had warmed her, and she was glad to place the hat on the side table and set about making herself comfortable. She unwrapped her soft wool muffler and removed her gloves, and stacked them atop the hat. Then, one by one, she slid the buttons of the cloak free.
“A simple repast will suffice,” she said pointedly.
Dougald didn’t seem to hear, hadn’t even moved. He stared at her bare hands, at her long neck, and most of all at her face, his gaze lingering as if to compare the memory of what she had been with what she had become.
About that, Hannah had no illusions. In her youth, Dougald had told her repeatedly how very much he loved the silky glide of her blond hair, the brown eyes with that startling slant and the smooth skin with that faint hint of toast. She looked, he had said, like an Egyptian goddess.
But it had been nine years since last he’d seen her, and the past three years of hard work had truly wrought changes. Two white hairs hid among the blond strands—she’d found them after a particularly difficult month which involved a seduced governess, an indignant lord, and a swift marriage. Despite the best efforts of her devoted cook, she had lost the plumpness that had given her face its sweet roundness. And as she strode from classroom to classroom, from market to town house, her lush, pampered form had grown sleek and wiry.
So when she slipped her coat off her shoulders, she held it and waited to see what he would say.
He said nothing. He just looked without expression.
Surprisingly enough, she found his indifference lowering. Not that she wanted to reanimate his fiery threat, but she had thought Dougald would always respond to her. Apparently, in some well-hidden part of her soul, she still nourished the hope that he meant his vows of eternal passion.
Tossing her coat across the back of a settle, she said, “As I eat, we can talk.”
“About what do you wish to speak, dear wife?”
“You can tell me how you discovered my whereabouts. You can tell me what your life has been.” Most important—“You can tell me what plans you have made for me.”
He lifted his chin and looked at her with such arrogance, she might have thought him a lifelong lord. “I will tell you what I wish to tell you. No more.”
How she hated that arrogance! How often she’d had to face it in her dealings with the aristocracy! So she treated him with the same impatience she had found effective against other, more insolent noblemen. “Piffle. What good will you achieve by hiding the truth from me?”
“What will I achieve? Why, my own satisfaction, of course.” He bowed, walked to the door, and opened it. “Charles.” He spoke the word with that faint slur the English used when pronouncing the French name. “Charles, Miss Setterington is hungry. Tell Mrs. Trenchard to bring food.” He glanced back at Hannah. “Bring a lot of food.”
So he had noted her spare figure. Shutting the door, he leaned against it and observed her once more. “Please.” He indicated the chair. “Sit.”
As long as he got his way, he would play the polite host. Very well; she would remember why she had taken a job in Lancashire. She in turn would play the polite guest and hope that this farce did not assume the proportions of a tragedy.
Seating herself, she rubbed her chilly fingers before the flames. “Charles is still with you.”
“Of course.” He strolled across the drawing room, but he took no pains to hide his vigilance. “Where else would he be?”
“In hell, one would hope,” she said pensively. The valet had been devoted to his master, and as long as she made Dougald happy, she had been tolerated. But always Charles had made it clear that her demands for attention and respect were the rants of an immature child.
“You haven’t changed a bit. You still cherish that unreasoning aversion to Charles.”
She almost rose to the bait. Almost. Catching herself, she settled herself back into the comfort of the cushions and nodded to him. “As you say, my lord, but Charles knows my face. What explanation have you given him? That your murdered wife has risen from the grave?”
“Charles knows.” Dougald loosened the buttons on his formal coat.
“Knows what?”
Slipping his arms free, he walked toward her. She flinched backward, and he stopped. He smiled down at her with a hearty display of white, even teeth. He flung his coat on the settle over the top of hers.
A plague upon him for frightening her, and the more fool she for allowing him to see her skittishness! Tightly, she smiled back at him and watched as he seated himself. The chair was too close, allowing only a few feet of separation between them, bringing into the air a sense of stifling intimacy. He could observe her in the firelight and candlelight; with very little effort he could reach out and touch her. If she weren’t careful, he would touch her, and her skin would flush and her blood heat, and how long could she conceal her body’s response from him? “Charles knows what?” she repeated.
“Everything.”
“Of course,” she said bitterly. “You would never keep a secret from Charles.”
“Yes.” He loosened the buttons on his black-silk waistcoat. “I would.”
Alarm rioted through her veins. His white shirt was shut to his throat, his cravat and collar securely fastened, but the sight of him making himself comfortable recalled other times. Earlier times when she sat on his knee and opened his clothing and to his chest and dark curling hair, and he would have to lock the door to keep out any intruders…she took a shuddering breath. She never thought she would say such a thing, but thank God for Charles and the incoming meal!
Cautiously, she asked the first of her questions. “How did you find me?”
“The money.”
She bit her lip. She had been afraid of that. “The money I sent to pay you back for my education?”
“For that reason, I am grateful for it.” He didn’t look grateful. He looked incensed. “As for the cash, it was given to charities.”
“I didn’t care what you did with it. I had sworn I would pay that debt someh
ow, and when I could, I did.”
“And I told you a wife does not reimburse her husband as if he were a dependent.”
“I owed you,” she said stubbornly. “I was supposed to pay you with children and companionship, and I did not.”
“Yet.”
That one short word hung like a sword over her head. Did he imagine she had learned meekness in the years she’d been away? Or was he simply willing to call forth the fullness of the law to force her to return to him as his wife?
Moreover, no matter how she wished to, she couldn’t board the train and ride away. Not just because he would stop her. He would, of course, but she had outwitted him before and although it would be more difficult this time, she could do it again.
No, she had a mission in Lancashire. She had to stay here until she’d found what she sought. So she sparred with Dougald and hoped that when she escaped him she would do so unscathed. “So that is your plan for me? That I should become your wife once more and give you children and companionship?”
“My wife is dead, or so they say. How ever would we explain that?”
He hadn’t answered her question. Wretched man, he was determined to make her wiggle like a worm on a hook. “A great many things would have to change before I once again took my place as your wife.”
“I agree, but I daresay what you think and what I think should change are entirely different things.”
“What you and I thought about anything was always different, my lord. To that we can attribute the failure of our marriage.”
“Dougald Pippard does not fail.”
“There.” She pointed at him. “That’s exactly what I mean. To you, this marriage is yours and yours alone. Never mind that I make up the other half of it.”
Dougald observed the finger pointed at him, and with a lazy flip of the hand, said, “You are quite correct. Better that I had said, ‘Dougald Pippard and his wife do not fail.’”
That was not better, and he knew it. “I am not simply a part of you, indistinguishable from your being,” she said. “I have a name.”
“Indeed you do. Mrs. Dougald Pippard. Or rather I should say—Lady Raeburn.”
“Hannah,” she said through gritted teeth. “My name is Hannah.”
He ignored her. “In the eyes of the law, you are indistinguishable from me. Mine to do with as I wish.”
A threat again. Not physical this time, but a threat nonetheless. Always before, he had manipulated, maneuvered and intimidated her into the place he wanted her to occupy. Either he had decided subtlety was wasted on her, or the years had hardened him. “I was never yours to do with as you wished. If you for one moment imagined that, then I must again say it is no surprise that our marriage failed.” She waited with what she thought was admirable calm for him to denounce her.
Instead, he said, “Lord Ruskin did warn me you had become a no-nonsense woman filled with resolution. It would appear he was right.”
“Lord Ruskin!” Hannah blurted. “How…why…when did you speak to Lord Ruskin?”
“Which of your questions would you like me to answer first?”
Dougald had spoken to Lord Ruskin. Dougald had confessed…heaven only knew what, and now he sat like a great, vengeful lump, smiling at her with a disturbing twist in his smile. She leaned forward and glared. “You make me want to box your ears.”
He opened his arms and waited for her to try. But she was not so foolish, and at last he allowed his arms to sink to his side. “I believe you went to your friend Lady Ruskin, told her that you had a payment you wished to make to a certain Dougald Pippard of Liverpool, and without explaining why, asked if she could do so to protect your identity.”
He knew it all. Despite her best efforts, he had traced her through her friends—and, if she knew Dougald, he had made matters most unpleasant for Charlotte. But Charlotte was a woman of resolution. “Lady Ruskin is one of my dearest friends, and I do not believe for a second that you succeeded in intimidating her.”
“Not at all. Charlotte…or rather, Lady Ruskin, is a most agreeable female.”
His intimate use of her first name gave Hannah pause.
“In fact, she completely complied with your need for secrecy, and even funneled the monies through her mother-in-law, a certain Lady Bucknell.”
“Lady Bucknell?” Hannah thought of the beauteous, gracious Adorna who had so readily agreed to buy the Distinguished Academy of Governesses. Had she been motivated by more than self-interest? “Lady Bucknell told you where I was?”
“No, no.” He scoffed as if the conversation should be crystal-clear rather than a maze through which he deliberately led her. “I received the moneys. I traced your payment to Lord and Lady Bucknell’s London account. I went to Lord Bucknell at once, thinking really rather vile things about the two of you.”
Hannah winced.
“He was incredibly insulted.”
Hannah thought of Adorna’s proper, stiff-necked husband. “I have no doubt of that.”
“But as soon as I explained that I was your husband—”
“My husband.” Hannah clutched the material over her racing heart. “You told Lord Bucknell that you were my husband?”
“Of course.” As he observed her distress, that smile again twisted Dougald’s lips. “He traced the payment to Lady Ruskin, and so the two of us went to Lord Ruskin.”
“Lord Ruskin knows we’re married?” Hannah came to her feet. This was what she feared. “Charlotte knows.” Charlotte Darumple and Miss Pamela Lockhart had started the Governess school with her.
“Yes. Charlotte knows.” He observed her as if he’d been anticipating the pleasure of telling her how well and truly he had her surrounded. “But she trusts you implicitly. She insisted there must be a reason for you to run away and not return. She defended you quite hotly.”
“Of course she would. She’s…how long have they known?”
“Several months.”
“They knew when I went down to the baby’s christening. They never said anything.” She searched her mind for any hint of censure. Perhaps from Lord Ruskin, but he didn’t approve of her independence. The man sincerely believed each woman should be wed, and of her friends he had been the one most determined to find her a suitable mate. It had taken Charlotte to rein him in. Charlotte, who allowed her husband to rule as king of his home and his business. Charlotte, who controlled him with the strong hand in a velvet glove. But Charlotte…when Hannah had seen her, she would have sworn Charlotte was her usual dear self. And she knew. All the time she knew. Heaven only knows what she had been thinking.
Hannah paced away from the fire. “They still told you where I was.”
“Lord Ruskin told me where you were. He was quite appalled by our situation.”
“Of course he was. He thinks men are God’s gift to the feminine gender, that women should be appropriately grateful. If not for Charlotte, he would be insufferable.” She stared down at Dougald as he lolled in his chair, then walked away. If she didn’t, she truly would try to box his ears, and she was not so foolish as to think he would suffer such an insult without retaliation. “Charlotte will have told Pamela.”
“Pamela would be Lady Kerrich, I presume.”
She turned on him and her voice rose. “Is there no one in England you didn’t confide in?”
“I believe it is only Lord and Lady Bucknell, Lord and Lady Ruskin, and Lord and Lady Kerrich who know the truth. That is not so many people when compared to the whole population of England.” He pointed out the fact calmly, as if the knowledge would pacify her.
Pacing back to the fireplace, she gripped the mantel so hard the carved marble cut patterns into her palms. “Those are my friends.”
“A close and loyal circle.”
Her friends, especially the ladies Pamela and Charlotte, who now knew she hadn’t confided the most significant facts of her life. No doubt they were confused, and perhaps hurt by her lack of faith in them. And…and she couldn’t go to them for succor.
/>
As if he read her mind, he said, “Even if you were to find some way to leave Raeburn Castle—and I assure you, that wouldn’t be easy—to seek shelter with your friends would cause friction in their marriages. I don’t think you want that.”
Of course, he was right. “I shouldn’t have sent you the money. No good deed goes unpunished.”
“It wasn’t a good deed,” he said with deadpan composure. “You were taunting me with your still-undiscovered existence.”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Lie to yourself if you must, Hannah, but you knew that money would set me on the trail. Even without your friends’help, I would have found you.” He leaned back, steepled his fingers before his face. “How could I not? You started a school. A very successful school for governesses, teachers and companions.”
“I hoped you wouldn’t still be looking,” she mumbled.
“Another lie. You knew I would never give up so easily.”
All right. So she had known that sooner or later he would find her. And maybe in the depths of her mind she had thought it would be easier if she didn’t have to take the initial steps. To find him, call on him, justify her escape from him, then try and justify her lengthy absence when she knew they had to somehow resolve the issue of their marriage. Her skin crawled at the thought of that interview, and yes, perhaps she had imagined the shock of seeing him without warning would offset the preliminary worry. But he…he didn’t have to point that out in such a hateful manner. “I see my mistake now,” she said coldly.
“Very much too late. You had disappeared so effectively I had found no trace of you for eight years.” He showed her the number with his fingers. “Eight years, Hannah, and I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
“I sent word!”
“Once! I had a letter once from London telling me you were well and not to worry.”
“If I had written you more, you would truly have traced me.”
“You were my wife. Of course I would have traced you! Instead I paid through my nose to a detective to watch for you. Do you know how many times I rushed to London, hoping against hope you’d been found, only to be cruelly disappointed?”