Jane Feather - Virtue

"Charlie? Are you telling me that you have involved my cousin in this deception… this betrayal?" His eyes were great black holes in his white face.

"Not exactly… I mean, I did ask him to procure the invitation but I didn't tell him why." She stared at him, her hands pressed to her burning cheeks, devastated by what she had said, by what he was entitled to feel.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Get out of my sight! I can't trust myself in the same room with you."

"Marcus, please-" She took a step toward him.

He flung out his hands as if to ward her off. "Go!"

"Please… please try to understand, to see it just a little through my eyes," she pleaded, unable to accept her dismissal, terrified that if she obeyed him, the vast gulf yawning between them would become infinite.

He took her by the upper arms and shook her until her head whipped back and forth and she felt sick. Then his hands fell from her as if she were a burning brand, or something disgusting that he couldn't endure to touch any longer. While she stood dazed in the middle of the room, rubbing her bruised arms, he stormed out, leaving the door swinging open.

Judith crept into a deep chair by the fire and huddled into it, curling in on herself, racked with deep shuddering spasms of devastation.

She didn't know how long she'd been crouching there like some small wounded animal in emeralds and spider gauze and satin before Marcus returned.

He stood over her and spoke with a distant politeness. "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I didn't intend to. Come upstairs now, you need your bed."

"I think I'd rather stay here, thank you." She heard her voice, as stiffly polite as his.

Marcus bent and scooped her out of the chair. He set her on her feet. "Must I carry you?"

She shook her head and started out of the room. Neither of them could endure such physical contact tonight-not with all the rich, sensual memories embedded in such a touching.

She walked ahead of him up the stairs and into her own room. Marcus turned aside through his own door.

Judith lay awake through the last remaining hours of darkness. She stared upward at the canopy over the bed, her eyelids peeled back as if they were held open with sticks, her eyeballs feeling shrunken and dried like shriveled peas. Despite a bone-deep bodily fatigue and total emotional exhaustion, she couldn't imagine sleeping. She lay straight-limbed in the bed, the sheet pulled up to her chin, her body perfectly aligned on the mattress, feeling the throbbing bruises on her arms where Marcus had held her and shaken her as the only truly alive parts of herself.

There ought to have been a sense of completion: The long dark road to vengeance had been traveled. Sebastian was in possession of his birthright and whatever depredations Gracemere's profligacy had worked upon the estate,

Sebastian would work to put right. George Devereux was avenged; his children had a place in the world he had been driven from.

There ought to have been a sense of completion, of satisfaction. But there was only emptiness. Where there should have been gain there was only the greatest loss. What price vengeance when set against the loss of love? She had tried to have both and what she'd won was ashes on the wind.

Except for Sebastian, she reminded herself. Sebastian could now have the love of his Harriet, now that he had something to offer her. Sebastian could retire to the country and fulfill his bucolic dreams. And for herself…?

The only thing she could do for Marcus was to remove herself as gracefully as possible from his life. There was no legal impediment to such a disappearance. She would tell him so as soon as she could. On which melancholy decision, she managed to fall asleep just as the sun came up.

She awoke at midmorning, rang for Millie, rose and dressed in desultory silence. "Is his lordship in, do you know, Millie?"

"I believe he went out after breakfast, my lady." Millie brushed a speck of lint from the sleeve of a blue silk spencer before holding it out for her. "You're looking a trifle fatigued, my lady," she observed with concern. "A little rouge might help."

Judith examined herself in the glass. Her eyes were dull and heavy in a pallid complexion. She shook her head. "No, I think it would just make things worse." She fastened a string of coral around her throat and went downstairs to the yellow drawing room.

"Mr. Davenport left his card an hour ago, my lady." Gregson presented the silver salver.

"Thank you, Gregson. Could you bring me some coffee, please?"

Sebastian had scrawled a note on the back of the card: Why aren't I jubilant? I feel as if we lost not won. Come to me when you can. I need to talk to you.

Judith tossed the card into the fire. She would probably be feeling the same as her brother even without the catastrophe with Marcus. The intensity had been too great to leave one feeling anything but drained. And she needed Sebastian now as she'd never needed him before.

"Lady Barret, my lady," Gregson intoned, entering the room with a tray of coffee.

Judith saw Agnes's face as it had been last night, a mask of rage and hatred. Her heart jumped then seemed to drop into her stomach. She opened her mouth to tell Gregson to make her excuses, but Agnes walked in on the heels of the butler. Her face was almost as pale as Judith's.

"Lady Barret." Judith bowed, hearing how thin her voice sounded. "How kind of you to call. Another cup, Gregson."

"No, I don't wish for coffee, thank you," Agnes said. She didn't return Judith's bow but paced the room, waiting for Gregson to finish pouring Judith's coffee.

When the door closed on the butler, Agnes swung round on her daughter. Her eyes blazed in her face, where two spots of rouge burned in violent contrast to her pallor. "Let us take off the gloves, Judith. I don't know how you did it, but I know what you and your brother did last night."

"Oh?" Judith, struggling for calm, raised an ironic eyebrow. "And what was that?"

"Somehow, between you, you cheated Gracemere." Agnes's voice shook and her pallor had become even more pronounced. Her hands trembled and she clasped them tightly together. "You ruined him!" Her voice was a low hiss and she advanced on Judith, who stepped back, away from the force of this vengeful rage.

"He would have ruined my brother as he ruined our father," Judith said, a quaver in her voice. There was no point in denying the truth with this woman, who seemed somehow to know everything anyway. Unconsciously her hands passed through the air as if she could thus dispel the enveloping evil miasma.

Agnes laughed, a shocking crack of amusement. "Unlike you and your brother, your father was a weak fool. He had no idea how to stand up for himself… or to hold onto what he owned."

Judith stared at the woman. Even through her fear and outrage, she recognized the truth of what Agnes had said. But she had always assumed exile and poverty had destroyed George's stability and willpower. Agnes was implying that it had an earlier genesis. "What do you know of my father?" she demanded. "What could you possibly know of the life he led?"

Agnes laughed again and abruptly Judith turned from her. "Get out of my house, Lady Barret."

"I'll leave when I've said what I came here to say, Judith." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper, but each word had bell-like clarity in the still room. "You will pay for what you did… you and your brother."

"Oh, I am paying," Judith said softly, almost to herself. "You don't know how much." Then her voice strengthened. "But my brother will now enjoy his birthright. Sebastian will take his happiness with both hands now. His happiness and place in the world is assured."

"He will pay," Agnes reiterated with a cold certainty that sent renewed chills up Judith's spine.