Betrayal Page 8

  Splendid.

  ~*~

  Tension made the muscles in Ash’s neck and shoulders rock hard. Impatiently, he fumbled with his gloves, dragged them off. His hands clenched into fists.

  It seemed fantastic what Fred had told him. Fantastic. Utterly removed from reality.

  He slapped the gloves against his thigh.

  Surely there was no reason to believe...

  He leaned his head back.

  Why should...

  No, no, it must be a misunderstanding.

  He shot upright, drummed his fingers against the soft leather of the seat.

  Yes, a misunderstanding.

  But how could it be?

  His nerves were strung tighter than bowstrings when the carriage finally rumbled down the drive that led to Ashburnham Hall. Never had the drive seemed longer than at this moment!

  The coach had barely halted when, not waiting for a footman, Ash flung open the door and jumped to the ground. Long strides carried him through the front door Jones had opened for him, and into the entrance hall.

  “Where?” he bit out, flinging his gloves at the man, but not bothering to remove his coat.

  “Lord St. Asaph’s room, my lord.” The butler’s voice was as unemotional as always. Nothing betrayed the fact that the house was in turmoil. Must be in turmoil. How could it not?

  Ash took the steps to the upper level two at a time, his steps lengthening when he strode down the hallway. Servants hovered outside the boy’s room. They whispered agitatedly among themselves, yet immediately quietened when they spotted him.

  Mr. Cobbett stepped away from the group. “My lord.”

  But Ash didn’t pay him any heed. He pushed the door to the room open—and froze.

  Time seemed to come to a standstill. All sounds receded, except for the drumming of his heart.

  The woman who sat at the boy’s bed turned her head—and all he could think of was how beautiful she was.

  He reached out one hand to steady himself against the doorframe when his knees threatened to buckle.

  Even after all these years her beauty still cut into his heart. Even when she was wearing her hair in a severe knot and her silks had been replaced by a coarse brown travelling dress. She was not spent and wasted, as he had often imagined her to be. No, her hair had neither lost its shine, nor her cheeks their bloom. And her lips...

  If only...

  He felt sweat form on his forehead.

  Helplessly his gaze fastened on the two young faces next to her, eerily similar, even though one of them was pale and wan except for the feverish blotches on the cheeks, while the other was wearing a familiar glower. It was this boy who now stood, his hands forming fists. “What the devil have you done to Finn?” he growled—and with sudden insight Ash realised that only now his heir had returned home.

  ~*~

  “I am sure he didn’t mean to sound as if you were personally responsible that Finnian broke his arm and collarbone,” she said, sitting in his drawing room and pouring tea so calmly as if she had never done anything else in the past seventeen years. How could she be calm? Didn’t she know the extent of his anger? She should be cowering away from him!

  He had often imagined what it would be like to meet her once more.

  How she would cry—and she had never cried prettily, which suited him just fine. Her tears would wash away all of her superficial beauty and reveal the ugly truth underneath. When she would beg forgiveness at his feet, he would stand over her, unmoved by her sniffles, knowing she was utterly in his power at last. And then this terrible pain inside him would finally ease and he could banish her forever from his home and from his thoughts.

  But never had he imagined this: that she would sit in the drawing room, pouring tea—calmly, composedly.

  “They met in Florence and decided to switch places, you know,” she now said—and like a fool he could only stare at her, his tongue bound, his brain numb.

  Alone with her again after seventeen years.

  Dazed, he slumped down on the settee. His hands dangled between his knees.

  His countess had been replaced by a prim and governess-like woman, and yet, most unnerving, in the woman she had become, he could still see the ghost of the girl he had once adored. Madly, completely.

  Until she had betrayed all vows and honour. Until she had betrayed him.

  God, how he had once loved her. He had worshipped the ground on which she had walked and she... and she...

  His hands tightened into fists.

  She shot him a sharp look. “Do you feel unwell? It must have been a shock for you to—”

  “As great a shock as finding out my wife has slept with—” Abruptly he stood and, turning his back on her, walked to the window. His biting response had turned into a pitiful display of weakness. She, on the other hand, displayed none.

  What a damn, numb-brained fool he was!

  His fingers twitched with the urge to grab the teapot, the delicate cups, and hurl them across the room. Shatter her damned composure together with the china, watch the tea spread on the delicate, expensive wallpaper while the colour would drain from her face. Roar and shout and bang his fist on the bloody table...

  Not seeming.

  He rubbed his palms against his thighs. The Earl of Ashburnham did not indulge in such disgraceful fits of passion. Just look where it had led him the last time! Wearily, Ash leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window-panes, forcing his brain and tongue to work, his tone to even. “How did you find out about the boys?”

  “The strawberry mark.”

  Damn her, her voice was still as cool as a cucumber. Even though he had seen her wince when he had thrown his barb.

  Angrily, he half turned to look over his shoulder. “Which strawberry mark?” he bit out.

  Her eyebrows lifted, a horribly familiar movement.

  His stomach heaved. How should he concentrate on this inane conversation when everything about this situation was wrong, wrong...

  ...like a song out of tune...

  Cold sweat formed on his brow as his mind’s eye conjured up a picture of her sitting at the fortepiano. He could almost hear the music as her slim fingers danced over the keys, beckoning him, enticing him.

  “Gareth’s, of course,” her voice cut through the assault of his memories.

  “Gareth’s,” he echoed, stupidly. Desperately, he tried to cast off the lingering cobwebs of the memory that clouded his brain.

  Gareth’s.

  He had never thought of the boy in terms of his Christian name, so it took him a moment to figure it out. “St. Asaph, you mean?” He frowned. “And he’s got a strawberry mark on his person?” How peculiar.

  Ash didn’t like the way she regarded him. “On his belly. I used to blow kisses on it when he was little.” She bit her lip, then shrugged lightly. “I should have known earlier, though. They are very different from each other, Gary and Finn are. I am sure you must have noticed the changes, too.”

  Ash rubbed his forehead. Of course he had. But he had thought his heir had finally seen reason and his education had borne fruit. What a numbskull he had been.

  He shook his head.

  Gary and Finn.

  How easily she said those names. But then, was it any surprise when there could be no doubt that they were her sons?

  A fresh wave of anger swamped him and, curiously, envy.

  Impatient with himself, he straightened. “Well, then—”

  The door was thrown open. “Ashburnham, whatever has got into you to dash—” The dowager countess came to an abrupt halt when she spotted Georgina. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a fish on dry land. Then, “You!” she screeched. “How dare you show your face in this house again?” Lady Ashburnham’s face took on a mottled colour and a vein ticked at her temple.

  Alarmed, Ash crossed the room to her side. “Mother...”

  “What is the meaning of this, Ashburnham? What is this... this creature doing
at Ashburnham Hall?”

  He took her elbow to guide her to the settee. “Calm yourself, my lady. It—”

  She trembled beneath his hand. “That little hussy. Has she slunk back to sink her claws into you once more?” Her hand reached up to cup his jaw, yet the next moment she spun around towards Georgina, her eyes glittering in a way he had never seen before. “This time you will not get away so lightly,” she hissed.

  Her cheeks pale, Georgina stood. “It might be better if I took my leave now.”

  Now, finally, her composure had cracked, Ash thought with satisfaction. Now he could see the strain on her face, the lines that bracketed her mouth, making her look old and haggard. But—

  Take her leave? All at once, a vice seemed to grip his middle. “Where?” he snapped, then felt colour creeping up his neck as he realised he must sound like a stuttering dimwit. A breath expanded his chest, yet he still couldn’t shake this horrible pressure off. “Where are you going?” he forced out, hating himself for asking, but unable to simply watch her go.

  She gave him a withering look, before she walked to the door with calm dignity, her back ramrod straight. And despite everything, he admired her for her dignity. “I’m staying at the Ash Tree Inn. I’ll be back tomorrow to look after Finnian,” she said over her shoulder in that deucedly controlled voice. And then she was gone.

  Gone.

  Something tore at his heart.

  “Finnian?” the dowager countess stuttered. “What is she talking about, Ashburnham?—Ashburnham!” She gripped his arm, hard, but all he could think about as he stared at the now empty doorway was how much he was tempted to run after Georgina.

  After the woman who had once been his countess, his wife, his very heart.

  Chapter 9

  She returned early the next morning, as she had said. At Ash’s orders, Jones showed her into the breakfast parlour, where Ash made a great pretense of studying his newspaper. Calm and composed—ha! He could do calm and composed, too.

  He stood when she entered, as if she were still a proper lady. He was an Ashburnham, after all. And an Ashburnham ought to be a proper gentleman at all times.

  She wore her hair in the same severe fashion, but at least her dress was a bit more colourful than the dull brown of the day before. For some unfathomable reason he hated seeing her in drab clothes.

  Heavens, one could think he was turning into a raving lunatic! Hadn’t she brought this all down on herself? Indeed, it was only fitting that she should wear drab clothes to remind her of her station, of all she had thrown away. He ought to rejoice in those drab clothes; yes, he ought.

  “Won’t you take a seat?” To his chagrin his voice sounded choked, as if he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Hastily, he indicated a chair, hoping she hadn’t noticed his vocal slip. Calm and composed. Calm and composed.

  He managed to lift his lips in what might pass as some semblance of a cool smile. “Have breakfast with me,” he heard himself say.

  Have breakfast with me?

  Where had that come from?

  Ash resisted the urge to crumble his newspaper and fling it onto the table. What an utter ninny he was, he thought in disgust.

  She remained standing, her hands loosely clasped in front of her. “I have already had breakfast. Thank you. I’ve only come to see Finnian.” For a moment her knuckles shone white. “I wouldn’t want to intrude...”

  So she wasn’t quite as self-confident as she wanted him to believe. Good, he thought nastily, she has absolutely no right to feel self-confident. “Intrude?” He raised his brows and said mockingly, “Pray, on what? As you can see, both my mother and the boys are indisposed this morning.”

  She took a step forward. “Gareth? Is he... He has not fallen ill, too, has he?”

  “Hardly!” Ill? St. Asaph? Ash barely managed to suppress a snort. The boy had the constitution of a farm horse! Indeed, he should have smelled the rat as soon as the other boy had not tried to escape the confines of the sickbed the very day after the accident.

  The accident...

  Ash still shuddered to think of that moment when a footman had entered his study to inform him that there had been an accident involving his son. One of Ash’s tenant farmers had found St. Asaph lying on the ground, unconscious, his face grazed and bloody, his arm at an unnatural angle.

  It had been the morning after the boy had learnt the truth about his mother. Yes, later that evening a message had been sent from the stables that the young master had ridden out and had not yet returned. Ash had thought it a mere immature prank—let the boy stay out the whole night and pout if he so wished.

  Only he hadn’t, of course. He had been thrown off his horse and had spent the night lying bleeding and hurt in some ditch.

  For the first time in his life Ash had had to face the fact that he might lose the boy he had raised as his son—it had happened to other men, after all. An accident, a fatal sickness... How easily was a life snuffed out! And for the first time, Ash had felt fear for St. Asaph.

  He himself had overseen the transport of the boy back to Ashburnham Hall. The doctor had arrived shortly afterwards, had set the arm, bandaged the boy’s upper torso, and assured Ash that his heir didn’t seem to have sustained any life-threatening injuries. The man left laudanum for the pain and promised to look in again the next day.

  But things had been not that easy, for St. Asaph had developed a fever, and the doctor had been quite at a loss as to its origin. After a thorough examination of the boy, he had come to the conclusion that it couldn’t be an inflammation of the lungs—Lord St. Asaph was breathing too easily for that. “A nervous shock, perhaps,” the doctor had ventured, looking at Ash inquiringly.

  Yet Ash had only shrugged, even though he had known, of course. A knowledge that seemed to burn a hole into his insides. But at one point or another, the boy would have had to face the nasty truth about his mother anyway; the dowager countess had been right about that.

  Normally, St. Asaph was a very robust boy, and Ash wouldn’t have thought that anything could upset that farm-horse constitution.

  Rouse that formidable temper, yes.

  But shock the boy into a nervous fever, no.

  Only it hadn’t been St. Asaph, of course, but that other boy—Finnian.

  And now St. Asaph had deemed it necessary to hover over his brother as if he were the lion mama, and Finnian the lion cub that needed protection. Though protection from what, Ash failed to see. He gritted his teeth. “St. Asaph has sent for—”

  The door burst open.

  “Mama!”

  And there was the boy himself, as belligerent as ever, glowering at Ash before he hurried to his mother to kiss her cheek. “I saw you from the upstairs window. Where have you been?”

  Curious how her expression suddenly softened—as if she were still the young girl Ash had adored. But that girl, he reminded himself harshly, had never existed in the first place. She had only been an illusion. The illusion of a lovesick youth.

  With a disgusted snort, Ash sat down again. Gentleman-like behaviour be damned.

  “Why,” she said, answering St. Asaph’s question, “I went back to the inn.”

  Ash watched his heir’s scowl intensify. The boy thrust out his chin. “I don’t see why you have to stay at that inn, when Ashburnham Hall sports such a vast number of bedrooms.”

  She touched his arm. “But we’ve talked about this, Gareth. Surely you see how... awkward it would be for everybody involved if—”

  “You want to spare them?” St. Asaph’s face flushed with anger. “When they told Finn the most filthy lies about you?”

  Ash frowned. What cheek! And what a fool he had been to believe for even one moment that the continental tour might have had a positive influence on the boy. Indeed, as far as he could tell, the complete opposite was the case: in whatever unfavourable circumstances the mother had lived, they had induced St. Asaph to become even more obstinate and rebellious. “Pray, don’t forget whom you are talki
ng about,” Ash said coldly.

  But St. Asaph didn’t even spare him a glance so intently did he concentrate on his mother. “Do you know what they’ve said? Do you?” His voice rose perceptively.

  Ash gritted his teeth. No control. The boy had no control whatsoever. A damned loose cannon, that’s what he was.

  He watched as his former wife put her hands on St. Asaph’s shoulders as if to calm him down. “Gareth...”

  Such a pretty scene: the caring mother, the outraged son. Ash’s nostrils flared. Naturally, she would play the innocent; she was such a consummate liar.

  The boy gripped her wrists, his eyes wild. “Finnian told me everything,” he continued hoarsely. “They said... they said that you were unfaithful.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  Flinging the newspaper across the table, Ash stood. “Because that’s the truth, boy.” He had quite enough of this disgusting little charade, of being slandered in his own home. He was not the one who had done wrong. He was the damned victim of a pack of lies, of betrayal and deceit.

  St. Asaph swung around. “They’re lies!” he yelled, hands clenched into fists. “None of it can be true!”

  Ash braced his hands on the table and took a deep breath. He would throttle the boy. Truly he would.

  Yet before he could even open his mouth, her voice rang out. “Gareth! You will stop this at once.” She stepped around the boy until she stood between him and Ash. “Whatever happened between Lord Ashburnham and me in the past, you will still show the earl proper respect.”

  “But—”

  “No.” Her voice was as stern as her ridiculous hairstyle.

  The boy’s expression turned mutinous. “But this is what caused Finn’s fever. They did this! They told him all these lies, which upset him so much that—”

  “Gareth, this is quite enough.” She took his shoulders and turned him around, even though he tried to resist her. “You will go upstairs to your brother, where I will join you presently.”

  “But—”

  She gave him a small push. “Go!” Sullenly, he stomped to the door.