Contracted as His Countess Page 20

‘I am not sure what I ever did to deserve this of Aylmer—perhaps my father caused him harm in the past,’ Jack said, as though carrying on an ordinary conversation over the teacups. ‘I would not be surprised. But I am at a loss to understand why you should dislike me quite so much.’

  ‘I do not... I... Jack what are you talking about?’ There was ice in the pit of her stomach. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘I had thought that what you proposed to me, what your father had so carefully constructed, was a fair exchange. After all, he was a gentleman, you are a lady. One would think one could trust your word. A wife and my lands back for me and, for you, a husband of his choosing and the family and status you wanted.’

  ‘Yes,’ Madelyn agreed. ‘Exactly that.’

  ‘How long did you think you could keep me distracted with your kisses and your smiles and your imitation of an affectionate wife? It was very good, I have to tell you. I was quite taken in, quite sure that you were becoming fond of me. Fool that I am.’

  ‘But I am. Jack, I love you.’

  ‘Very good.’ He applauded, three slow handclaps. ‘If you had said that a few hours ago on the lake shore, I think I would have believed you.’

  ‘But it is true.’ The ice was chilling her entire body now.

  ‘Don’t, Madelyn. Don’t make it worse with more lies. I thought I was agreeing to an exchange, but what I was doing was walking into a trap, one baited with rotten meat.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She sat down, unable to stand, let alone go to him. ‘I know the estates are not in as good a condition as they should be. My father was careless, did not pay them the attention they needed. But we can make the neglect good.’

  ‘Really? What with, might I ask? Not with that damn castle of yours and its land and its treasury of valuables because that is all in trust, is it not? And not with any ready cash or investments either, because you spent all that on settling debts and paying off mortgages before their time and meeting loans that had years to run. I have my estates, thank you, Madam Wife. I have my estates in tatters and not a penny piece to restore them with.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘I did it for the best,’ Madelyn said, fighting for composure as the truth sank in. Jack only cared about the land and the money. He had not grown fond of her, let alone come to feel anything stronger. ‘My father never settled accounts until he had to and I did not want to leave tradespeople and shopkeepers out of pocket. I believed he was a rich man, that the loans and mortgages were just his way of making money go further.’

  ‘I imagine he was a rich man until he started to restore that confounded castle,’ Jack said, pacing. ‘When I first saw it I wondered at the cost of repairing the walls and that great expanse of roof to such a high standard. It should have made me suspicious, but I trusted you. There is a saying that if something is too good to be true then it probably is. I should have thought of that.’

  ‘You are very angry,’ she said, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

  ‘There is no need to worry, Madelyn. I will not shout at you because I remember that you fear that and I am not my father. I will not take out my anger on my family.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Such as it is.’

  He turned on his heel, went through into his own chamber, and Madelyn heard him speaking to someone. Then the key turned in the lock.

  Jack is shutting me out of his room, she thought, dazed. Closing the door between us.

  She felt like weeping, but her eyes were dry and tears had never done any good before. She wanted to run to him, plead with him to understand that it was her ignorance and desire to do the right thing that had caused this, not spite or some kind of ploy to take what she wanted at his expense. But Jack thought she had lied and deceived him, that he could not trust her, and that must have struck at every one of the half-healed wounds left by his upbringing and his situation.

  * * *

  Dinner was an ordeal. Jack behaved as though nothing was wrong between them. Madelyn wondered whether Mr Lyminge and Mr Paulson noticed anything, but Jack had always been formal and reserved in his manner towards her in their presence, so she thought not. She did her best to appear normal but it was clear that the two men were worried about what they had found, were aware that there must be a strain between husband and wife.

  She rose after the dessert course, leaving a dish of almond custard and fruit untouched. ‘Goodnight, gentlemen. I will not join you for tea later—I have a slight headache.’

  As the footman closed the door behind her she turned and walked along to the study, waited until she heard the man close the door to the staff area behind him, then slipped out and tiptoed into the small breakfast room that adjoined the dining room. There was a connecting door and she put her ear to the panel. She could hear almost everything.

  ‘...could see the books relating to Castle Beaupierre...have a better idea...course,’ Mr Paulson was saying.

  ‘The agreements...separate.’ Jack sounded weary, as though they had chewed over this before, again and again.

  ‘There is no reason...that anything is amiss, other than Lansing taking Lady Dersington’s instructions...vigorously.’ That was Douglas Lyminge.

  ‘Bloody fool, should have consulted.’ That was clear enough. So were the grunts of agreement from the other two men.

  Madelyn tiptoed away and went to her bedchamber, surprising Harper who was tidying up. ‘I will undress, take down my hair and put on my robe. I have a headache.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ Harper, who had the tact to keep silent, moved soft-footed around the room, putting away Madelyn’s clothes, finding her nightgown and wrapper and then, as she sat at the dressing table, unpinning her hair and brushing it out.

  Madelyn took off her earrings and her bracelet, caught the necklace as Harper unfastened it and sat with the glittering gems in her cupped hands. She had worn the diamonds that evening, some instinct making her choose the most modern, least controversial of her jewellery as though that might somehow please Jack.

  I could sell these, she thought.

  They were a bequest from her mother, not something that her father had bought. She sat up straighter, seized with an idea. Surely she must own other things of value that were not covered by the trust. Certainly there were odds and ends of jewellery, some silver that had come from her mother’s family that her father had locked away because it was eighteenth century in date and he disliked the Baroque style.

  What else had been squirreled away in the attic and store rooms deemed unworthy of her father’s vision for the castle?

  The diamonds pooled on the dressing table and Madelyn almost rose to run downstairs and tell Jack that they had a source of ready money. Then she sank back. He would not react well, she realised. It would hurt his pride to think she had been scratching around trying to find things to sell. It would need some thought about how to manage it in a way he would accept.

  ‘Lock these away, please, Harper, and then I will not need you again this evening.’

  Depressed again, Madelyn paced restlessly about the room. Perhaps Jack would forgive her. He was a civilised man, a gentleman. He would not hold a grudge, she thought. Possibly he would not even mention it to her again, but simply withdraw into himself and deal with all the business of the estate without talking to her about it.

  That was the kind of marriage she had been expecting, but now, now that she knew that she loved him, suspected that he had been growing to love her, it felt like a tragedy. Eventually, she climbed into bed, blew out the candle and tried to sleep.

  * * *

  She must have dropped off eventually. Madelyn lay in the dark, eyes open, and wondered what had woken her. She felt puzzled, she realised, as though she had been dreaming about some complexity, some riddle. Wide awake now, she sat up against the pillows and tried to recall. Mr Lansing...that had been it. Mr Lansing in her dream had been in his room surrounded by teeter
ing piles of ledgers, his hair stuck full of quills.

  ‘It is very complex, you understand...very complex...’

  But it wasn’t. Or it should not have been. Madelyn reached for the striker and lit the candle. Lansing was hiding something. He had been uneasy, shifty almost. There was something wrong—and he had held on to the books, not sent them to Paulson and Mr Lyminge because he had said they related only to the lands and property in trust.

  She swung her feet out of bed and reached for her wrapper. She would go and wake Jack, tell him that in the morning they must go down to Kent and confront Lansing. The bare boards were cold on her warm feet and the shock jerked her fully awake. What if Jack thought this was an excuse, that she was trying to blame Lansing for her own decision to cheat him?

  Lansing must be confronted, made to give up the books, but he would hide behind the trust—she knew that. He’d argue that Jack had no right of audit and by the time they had fought that to a standstill he would probably have been able to cover his tracks. But he could not refuse her and he knew she would not have the knowledge to discover what was wrong.

  But she did know an expert and one who would help her.

  ‘Rooting out the discrepancies in the books, dealing with incompetence and corruption. Fascinating...’ Richard’s voice at the masquerade, telling her about his new life.

  Her desk was in the corner of her chamber and she wrote swiftly, outlining the problem, but not telling Richard of Jack’s anger and accusations, only that she needed to gain access to the books before Lansing could change anything.

  If you can help me, do not come to the house openly. Send me a note on your arrival at the Dersington Arms.

  She could only hope Richard did not refuse on the very reasonable grounds that her husband could provide transport and an accountant, even if he could not demand to see the books himself.

  With the letter addressed she went back to bed and lay awake, wondering if Jack was ever going to forgive her for her actions, even if she gave him proof that they had been meant for the best.

  * * *

  Madelyn looked drained and he knew that he probably appeared just as bad. Jack managed not to look at his reflection in the glass. He had tossed and turned for most of the night, listening for sounds from the bedchamber next door, but there was nothing. No loud sobs, at least. He felt enough of a brute without that on his conscience.

  At about three in the morning, when he had been jerked fully awake by the sound of her moving about, he wondered if he should simply accept what she had said, make the effort to believe her, to trust blindly. Would he be a fool, a man blinded by feelings he was half-afraid to acknowledge and gulled by his wife?

  At five, standing at the window and watching the morning sun bring the neglected grounds to life, he admitted to himself that he had fallen in love with Madelyn. And she either hated him now for his lack of trust and anger or she was smiling behind a mask of indignation at his discomfiture. But he had to learn to trust somehow and if it was not with the woman he loved, then with whom?

  Now he watched his wife over the breakfast table as she made polite, stilted, conversation with Lyminge, who looked acutely uncomfortable at being in the middle of domestic tension and was probably itching to escape back to the company of Paulson, who was apparently taking his breakfast in his room.

  Madelyn finished reducing a bread roll to crumbs, pushed away her coffee cup and stood up.

  Jack reached the door before her. ‘I would like to speak with you. We will not be disturbed in the study.’

  ‘Very well, my lord,’ she said, her voice colourless.

  She stood in front of the desk as though expecting him to take his seat on the other side and deliver a lecture and looked up, colour flooding her face, when he took her hand and turned her to face him.

  ‘I should not have lost my temper with you yesterday. I apologise. I accept that you had no idea what effect paying off the debts and loans would have.’

  He had expected her to smile, to look relieved, happy even. Instead, she bit her lip, then said, ‘On what grounds have you come to believe that?’

  ‘On no grounds. I have none. But it seems to me that I should be able to take my wife’s word on any matter.’

  ‘I see.’ She nodded slowly, then raised her head to look into his eyes, her own darker than he had ever seen them. ‘It is a matter of principle, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jack smiled, although it was difficult under that steady gaze. This was not what he expected and he did not understand.

  ‘That is very trusting of you.’

  ‘I thought I should make the effort.’ That had not come out quite as he meant it. ‘We are married now.’

  ‘And there is no going back,’ she said carefully, as though each word was eggshell thin and might break. ‘So we must make the best of it.’

  ‘Exactly. I do not expect this is the last...misunderstanding we will have.’

  Madelyn sighed. ‘No, I am quite sure it is not. Is that all?’

  She’d caught him off balance, trying to decide whether it would be wise to kiss her now and tell her he loved her. With that cool question it was clear that a kiss would not be wise, let alone a declaration. There had been no hope he could detect that perhaps he would kiss her, not the faintest glimmer of that joy he had seen in her face only yesterday.

  Had he been wrong and she felt nothing for him, had intended to cheat him and was even now despising him for apologising weakly for assuming the worst? Or had he hurt her so badly that he had crushed that spark and would never be able to fan it back into life again?

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, that is all.’

  He sat down at the desk after she had gone and stared blankly at the portrait of his grandfather that he had found banished to the attic and had rehung so he was working under that honest, kindly gaze. The old Earl had loved his son, refused to see what manner of man he was, even as the evidence piled up before him. Was he as blindly trusting as his grandfather had been?

  Jack made himself relax, let his mind wander, collecting random memories as they floated past. Madelyn, pale with nerves, yet determined to make her proposal. Madelyn in her garden surrounded by fragrance and an exquisite world she had created with care and love. Madelyn, trembling as she came apart in his arms and then the look in those clear eyes as she came back to herself and saw him watching her.

  He would trust her. He would put faith and love before cold reason and caution and, if it broke his heart, then he would have to live with the pain.

  * * *

  Madelyn had the grace of courage, Jack thought, watching her at dinner that night. She did not sulk, she did not show him a sullen or resentful face, nor give any hint of triumph that he had apologised. If the smile she wore did not reach her eyes and if she was focusing all her attention on Lyminge and Paulson, then he was certain he was the only one who noticed.

  She was working on her embroidery when they joined her in the drawing room and she presided over the tea tray and kept a conversation going in a way that made him realise how hard she had studied with Louisa Fairfield. He had never complimented her on that, he realised. In fact, had he done anything to make her feel warmly towards him other than pleasure her in bed? he wondered.

  He gave her half an hour after she retired before he followed her upstairs and listened after he dismissed Tanfield and sat in his robe, paring his nails. Madelyn was talking to Harper—he could hear the low murmur of voices through the connecting door, then the sound of the door onto the landing closing. Bed had been the one place where they had always been in harmony—he would see if that would work its magic again.

  Madelyn was sitting at her dressing table when he unlocked the connecting door. She looked up, her thoughtful expression becoming blank. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘Tonight is not... Not a good time in the month.’

  It took him a moment to re
alise what she meant. ‘Of course,’ Jack said meaninglessly. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Madelyn said as he closed the door again. This time he did not lock it.

  * * *

  ‘Anything of any interest in the post?’ Jack asked the table at large over breakfast the next morning.

  Correspondence was beginning to come in quantity for his two employees as they sent for reports from the home farms and stewards at the various estates and wrestled with leases and other legal documents.

  ‘The usual things,’ Lyminge said, flicking over his pile, and Paulson nodded agreement.

  There were two letters beside Madelyn’s place. Jack had told himself from the beginning that he was not the kind of husband who insisted on reading his wife’s correspondence and he was not going to begin now, but as though in answer to an unspoken request she slit both seals.

  She glanced at one. ‘An old friend who missed the wedding.’ Then she opened the other and peered at the closely crossed lines. ‘Lady Fairfield. She has bought a... Oh, a pug. And is calling it Albert. It has bitten one footman and the butcher’s delivery boy, but she says it is adorable. I find that hard to believe.’

  Jack’s correspondence appeared to consist entirely of bills. ‘It is a matter of discipline,’ he said. ‘She needs to train the creature to be civilised in the house.’

  Madelyn glanced down to her side, her lips tight, and Jack guessed that Mist was pressed close against her leg. She must have thought he was annoyed because the little dog had come with her into the breakfast room.

  ‘As Mist is,’ he added and was rewarded by a faint smile.

  ‘Will you be going out today?’ Madelyn asked and Jack realised it was probably the first topic of conversation that she had initiated since they had made love on the lake shore. ‘You said something yesterday about the woods to the north.’

  ‘Yes. I shall probably be out well past luncheon. I will ask Cook to pack me some bread and cold meat. It may be possible to fell several acres for timber, so I am meeting the owner of a sawmill to discuss the suitability of the trees.’