Betrayal Read online

  He shuddered.

  Even now his mind shied away from that “after.”

  But alas, the ghosts had already risen to mock him, taunt him. The expression on her face that last time in his study. Milky-white skin, shock that he had seen through her masquerade, through all her scheming and lies. Large as saucers her eyes had been.

  Her eyes...

  Ash’s stomach dropped. For a moment he had to lean his forehead against the smooth wood of the doorjamb.

  He couldn’t remember the colour of her eyes.

  Some unknown, unwanted feeling constricted his throat, almost as if the vanishing of this particular memory was a keen loss. Fool. Fool. What did it matter what the colour of her eyes had been?

  Better to focus one’s attention on the events that unfolded in the music room than to reminiscence about a past that could never be changed, think of dreams that had all shattered so long, long ago.

  “—can’t possibly say, my lord,” Ash heard the housekeeper stammer.

  The boy’s expression tensed. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

  Ash fully expected him to jump up and challenge the housekeeper, demand to know why should not have mentioned his mother. For Ash had never told the boy the truth. It would have been too cruel. Yet the truth had haunted Ash himself. Sometimes he had been able to forget for a few days, even weeks, but it was the sight of St. Asaph himself that served as a cruel reminder of what had happened all those years ago.

  The pain.

  And the betrayal.

  Ash’s fists tightened.

  St. Asaph turned towards the piano, and for a moment or two ran his finger along the lid. “So, this was my mother’s instrument?” he asked, his voice unexpectedly controlled.

  “Oh yes, my lord.” Mrs. Cornwell took a step nearer and touched the gleaming black surface with a wistful finger. “It was a wedding present from your father.”

  And what a fool he had been.—Ash closed his eyes.—A stupid young fool, so besotted with his wife, so happy about the joy she had showed over the instrument, he had never seen what had been right under his nose all this time.

  His eyes snapped open.

  God, I should have ordered that thing to be made into firewood! Ash thought savagely. Or, better still, I should have hacked it to pieces myself! And destroy all that sweet, deceitful music inside. The music that had so often lured him into the music room, where his wife had been waiting for him, a sweet, deceitful smile on her face.

  Oh yes, she had known how to play him and play him well. Like an obedient lapdog he had come to her every time, slavering for her affection in the most embarrassing, disgusting manner. He had made it easy for her to lead him about the nose. Stupid, stupid fool!

  Through the haze of his anger, Ash heard Mrs. Cornwell ask, “Where did you learn to play, my lord?”

  “Oh...” The boy’s fingers glided over the keys, strung together a few notes that screeched along Ash’s nerves. “I met somebody while we were in Florence.” His shoulders hunched up. “A boy. He showed it to me. Nothing special, you know? Just...” And then he played—a silly, little melody, really, but one Ash knew only too well. Each note sharper than a whiplash, stinging his flesh and his soul.

  “Enough!” He stormed into the room, towards the instrument. “Enough!” And slammed the lid shut, not caring that he almost trapped St. Asaph’s fingers. The bang of wood on wood clashed with the housekeeper’s shriek.

  Breathing heavily, Ash leaned in on the boy and thrust his face into his. “You will never touch this again,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Is that understood?”

  All colour had fled St. Asaph’s face, so his eyes seemed unnaturally dark.

  “Understood?” Ash snapped.

  Very slowly, the boy nodded.

  “Good.” Abruptly, Ash straightened. With measured steps he walked out of the room—and never once looked back.

  ~*~

  How could he have known St. Asaph would raise the topic again at dinner that evening, in the presence of the dowager countess? She was talking about the tea al fresco Sir Henry would be hosting in honour of his youngest daughter in the following week. “I have advised Sir Henry not to invite the Simmerlys.” She cut a dainty piece off her meat. “The presence of Miss Simmerly would decidedly ruin dear Amelia’s prospects. Not that the Simmerlys are better situated than Sir William, as we all know, yet it can be expected that a belle like Miss Simmerly would turn all the young men’s heads with her beauty.”

  Ash made a noncommittal sound. Neither of the young misses interested him, so what did he care which George or Harry married them in the end?

  His mother pursed her lips. “Men’s heads are so easily turned by mere beauty.”

  Ash stiffened. Was that a rebuke directed at him? Or had the events of the afternoon sensitised him unduly? Still, his cutlery clattered on his plate. “I beg your pardon?”

  His voice clashed with another one. “Was my mother beautiful?”

  For a moment Ash wondered whether something was amiss with his hearing. Had he just imagined... He couldn’t have—could he?

  Stupefied, he stared at St. Asaph.

  Lady Ashburnham was similarly afflicted, but then the disbelieving surprise slowly ebbed from her expression, replaced by the mottled colour and furrowed brows of fury. “How dare you mention that woman in my house?” she whispered. “How dare you?” Her voice trembled.

  Picking at his food, St. Asaph stared at his plate. A frown marred his boyish, smooth forehead, yet when he spoke, his voice was astonishingly even. “I just... wondered. Given that there is no painting of her anywhere at Ashburnham Hall.” And then he raised his head and looked at Ash, an unspoken challenge in his grey-blue eyes.

  For one moment, Ash did not recognise the boy he had raised as his heir, did not recognise that controlled, even voice, which could smoothly lead a thrust to the heart.

  And from where stemmed this sudden curiosity about a woman nobody had talked about in Ashburnham Hall for seventeen years? Never mind she was the spectre that haunted the place. Put up a painting of her? The thought alone made Ash shudder with revulsion.

  “Don’t be absurd, St. Asaph!” he forced out between gritted teeth.

  The dowager countess, though, took the matter more to heart. “A painting?” Her voice rose to a furious shriek. “A painting? How dare you, you ungrateful brat!” She stood, shaking with outrage.

  “My lady.” Ignoring the churning of his stomach, Ash infused his tone with authority. After all, a spectacle at the dinner table was the last thing anybody could wish for, especially with the servants still present.

  He tried to catch his mother’s eye, but to no avail. She had her unwavering stare fixed on St. Asaph, who, Ash noted with exasperation, sat on his chair, composed and as cool as a cucumber. He even had the audacity to open his mouth for another verbal thrust.

  “I only wondered why there is no painting of my mother to be found here. After all...” He licked his lips. “She is the countess.”

  “The countess?” A dark vein pulsed across the dowager countess’s forehead. “You... you...” The colour stood high in her face, and sudden fear gripped Ash’s heart.

  “Mother!” He stood and hurried to her side, took her elbow.

  “I—”

  “Shut up, boy,” Ash snapped at St. Asaph. “Have you not wreaked enough damage for one day?” And quite suddenly he loathed the boy, loathed him with all his heart. Loathed his very existence, the proof of past deceptions and betrayal. “Shut up,” he growled. With satisfaction he saw some colour seep from St. Asaph’s face.

  But yet again, the boy opened his mouth. “I don’t understand.” He spread his hands, his expression registering earnest puzzlement.

  Ash gritted his teeth.

  Such pretty innocence.

  All lies.

  Nevertheless, his mother’s next words send chills down Ash’s back.

  “Then it is past time that you do understand, is it not?”
>
  “Mother...” Ash’s grip on her arm tightened. “Don’t!”

  She shook him off. Her eyes glittered as she put her hands on the table and leaned forward. “So you want to hear the truth, my boy?” Her rouged lips twisted into a parody of a smile. “The truth—”

  One last time, Ash tried to stop her. “Don’t! Truly, this is not necessary, madam!”

  Yet inexorably, she continued, “The truth is that your mother never deserved the honor of becoming Lady Ashburnham.” She straightened, and her smile subtly changed—as if this all was something she had been waiting for for years. “Because your mother, my boy, was a filthy little liar—and a whore.”

  “No.” A mere whisper.

  Ash turned his head.

  The boy was leeched of all colour. Shock had widened his eyes, made them seem darker. Two black holes in a pale face. Ash almost pitied him. How uncomfortable it must be to learn such truths about one’s mother, even if she had been absent for all of one’s life.

  The dowager countess raised her chin. “Oh yes.” For one moment Ash almost thought she relished this. “Your mother has longed ceased to be anybody’s countess. Ashburnham made sure of that when he divorced her. And do you want to know why?”

  St. Asaph shook his head. “No.” Another weak whisper. Nothing left of his former bravado.

  “He divorced her for adultery.”

  Sighing, Ash rubbed a hand over his forehead. As much as he wished his mother had kept silent about the whole sorry affair, he supposed it was better in the long run that the boy finally knew the truth. Or at least parts of it.

  A chair scraped across the wooden floor.

  Ash looked up in time to see St. Asaph scramble to his feet in undignified haste. His face was pasty white. “I don’t believe you.” Once more, only a whisper. But then his voice gained strength. “I don’t believe a word of what you’ve said!”

  And with that he turned and fled from the room.

  Later on, a footman would inform Ash that the young master had taken a horse and gone for a ride. When the boy did not return by the time darkness fell, Ash thought it a childish prank. No doubt, St. Asaph was hiding somewhere on the estate and pouted.

  Of course, by then it was already too late anyway.

  Chapter 5

  The summer had almost passed, yet the heat still lay over the country like a suffocating blanket. At the Villa under the Linden Trees, all shutters had been half closed—a wooden armour against the glare of the sun. Nevertheless sweat stained the top of Herrn Renner’s neckcloth and darkened the hair at his temples. It made him look, Georgina mused, deliciously hot and rumpled as he sat there in the drawing room and gave Frau Else a detailed account of the latest orders and sales over her three o’clock cup of coffee.

  It was over a month ago that he and Georgina had followed Dr. Neuburg’s invitation and had driven to Frankfurt in Frau Else’s carriage to view the treasures of the new naturalist society. On the way to the big city, they had left the glass panels of the carriage doors open so the breeze could whisper pleasantly over their faces, before they had inspected the building plans for the new museum in Frankfurt. In addition, they had duly admired shards of ancient pottery and a collection of sparkling minerals. Beaming proudly, Dr. Neuburg finally showed them the famous stuffed birds that were kept at his house for the time being. Herr Renner certainly appeared to be fascinated by the display, yet the host of small black eyes of glass staring vacantly into space unnerved Georgina. What was more, many of the birds had fallen victim to insects, and their damaged, moth-eaten plumage presented a sorry sight indeed. But still, this was not the worst.

  It was the discovery of a lifeless puffin among the other birds that sent a chill down Georgina’s spine. The call of the seagulls echoed in her head as she was transported back to the windy cliffs of Cornwall, where she had stood so long ago and watched puffins play. She could almost taste the salty air again, feel the soft, thin layer of grass under her feet, while overhead the seagulls cried, alarmed at the sight of the two human intruders. Her hand tingled from the feeling of the hard male fingers engulfing hers, skin pressed to skin, his thumb drawing lazy circles over her wrist. With bittersweet pain she remembered the giddy joy that had filled her and mingled with the languid stirring of renewed desire. How she had surprised him when she had slipped a hand around his neck to draw his head down for a kiss, which had quickly turned wild and hot and quite indecent.

  And while Georgina stood in a stuffy room in Frankfurt, surrounded by dead birds, she remembered how, in that night so long ago, she had made her new husband tremble beneath her on the bed of the Cornish inn. She even remembered how the smell of freshly pressed linen had mingled with the sharp musk of desire, how this had unleashed a wild and wanton creature living inside her, feasting on the hot look in her lover’s eyes.

  She must have made a sound of distress because Dr. Neuburg and Martin Renner turned to her with worried frowns on their faces. So she forced a smile on her lips and hurried to assure them that she was fine.

  But, of course, she wasn’t.

  Once the floodgate had been opened, there was no escape from the memories that rose to the surface of her mind as giant sea monsters rise from the depths of the oceans to swallow up the unwary seafarer.

  She remembered his helpless moans of pleasure during that night so long ago, the feeling of his sweat-slicked skin pressing against her inner thighs and her palms. His voice had been hoarse when he had finally begged her to take him.

  As she now stood in that stuffy storage room in Frankfurt, the lifeless birds seemed to swirl around her in a grotesque roundelay, intertwining her past and present. The small, plump robin brought back memories of the summers of her childhood and youth, the lush green and the vibrant colours of the small pleasure garden surrounding her parents’ house, the old abbey she had left so long ago. Her very own Garden of Eden, which she had been forced to abandon when the spell of innocence had been cruelly destroyed.

  Then there was the white face of the barn owl, its smooth outlines destroyed by moths, the eyes two jet-black, dull marbles. Yet in front of Georgina’s inner eye it spread its wings and flew away, over wide, open fields, a noiseless ghost in the soft, grey light of dusk. How often had she stood and watched its brethren fly across the gently rolling hills before she had walked towards the golden lights of the ancient mansion at the edge of the lake, where water lilies bloomed, white and pure. And when she had entered his study, he had looked up, a smile spreading across his face until he seemed to glow from within.

  “How I missed you,” he would say. “Do you know how much?”

  “No, I’m not sure,” she would answer. “How much?”

  And he would rise and walk towards her with slow, measured steps, so self-assured as if he were Apollo himself, while delicious warmth spread through her and made all of her limbs tingle. He would stop in front of her, so close she could smell him, the starch of his shirt, the woodsy cologne he preferred, and underneath—the dark, alluring scent of the man himself. He would lean his head down until his breath tickled over her cheek, until he could whisper into her ear with a voice softer than velvet, “Allow me to show you...”

  By the time Herr Renner and Georgina finally left Dr. Neuburg and drove back to the Villa under the Linden Trees, a headache had tightened around her forehead like a band of steel.

  She spent that night staring into the darkness of her room while she battled with her inner demons. This time, she had to fight hard to force all the bitter memories of a golden past back to where they belonged: to a place so deep within her that she could pretend they had never been real in the first place. That those days filled to the rim with love and happiness had been nothing but an idle dream. The past was best forgotten, she had learnt long ago. She could not let it taunt her into regrets and fruitless longings. For if she did, it would surely claim her sanity and destroy all she had fought for.

  Instinctively, she knew that if she ever gave the memories fre
e rein, her deepest, darkest secret, her fiercest regret would rise to the surface as well. Seventeen years ago it had made her heart shrivel in her breast and had turned it into an aching black lump of misery. Such misery that she had not been able to look at her son without bursting into tears. She had eventually learnt to conquer the pain, as one learns to live with a severed limb. Afterwards she had never dared to dwell on this particular pain, this particular loss, for fear of being sucked back into the maelstrom of utter misery. She would not be able to climb out of it a second time. Instead, it would swallow her whole.

  No, it did not do to indulge in memories.

  And so Georgina did what she had so often done before: she went to bed and tried to forget.

  By the next morning, she might have had dark rings under her eyes, but she had regained her equanimity. The past was over and done with; it was no longer important and held no more power over her. Perhaps Frau Else had been right when she had urged her to look forward. And all at once, Georgina had been most eager to replace the past with new and happier memories.

  And she did—like now, when she was sitting in Frau Else’s drawing room and furtively feasted her eyes on Martin Renner. She couldn’t help the smile as she remembered how, three weeks ago, she had allowed him to accompany her to the fair on the banks of the Main in Höchst on their day off. At one of the stalls, he had won a marzipan rose for her and had presented it to her in the most charming fashion. And when they had later walked back to the villa, her gloved hand had rested in the crook of his arm and she had been able to feel the hardness of his flesh underneath her fingertips. So many years since a man had offered her his arm—was this the reason why his nearness had affected her so? Or was it because of her newfound determination to live in the here and now, and to leave the past filled with bitter memories behind her?

  Whatever it was, her heart had fluttered like that of a small animal, beating much too fast, while she had smiled much too often. He had smiled, too, she remembered, such a charming smile that lit up his dark eyes. They had crinkled at the corners when he told her about the exploits of her son. How Finn had enraged Herrn Weidel when he had stacked the bales of fabric disorderly. “Calico to the silks—I swear poor Weidel was about to have the vapors. And calling young Finn to task didn’t quite produce the desired results either.”