Christine Merrill - Regency Surrender - Wicked Deception

‘But you are still so weak,’ she said. She cast a sidelong glance at the crutches in the corner and wondered if their kiss in the hallway had given him this burst of energy.

‘It is not as if I intend to walk the distance,’ he informed her. ‘A carriage ride will be no more strenuous than sitting in a Bath chair. The air of the journey will likely do me good.’

‘The doctor—’ she said plaintively.

‘—lives closer to the old manor than he does to this one. And do not tell me that the stairs will be unfamiliar, or the rooms inconvenient. It is the home I grew up in and I know each step of it. It is also a damned sight smaller than this cavernous place of my brother’s. It feels like I must walk a mile here, just to get from bed to breakfast.’

His words stopped her objections. ‘You did not always live here, in the duke’s manor?’

‘Heavens, no.’ William shook his head and smiled. ‘Mother did not like the old house at all. It had been fine for ten generations of Bellstons, but she wanted a ballroom and a grand dining hall. It is good that she did not live to see Adam nearly burn the place to the ground a few years ago. She would have been appalled. But that is another story.’

‘How long ago was that?’ she asked, trying to suppress her excitement.

‘The fire?’ he asked.

‘No. The building of the new manor.’

‘A little less than fifteen years,’ he said, taking a moment to count on his fingers. ‘In the end, it was a sensible decision. I am able to stay on the family lands without living in my brother’s pocket. The two manors are close enough to share the stables, the ice house and the gardens.’ He grinned. ‘I have all the advantages of being a duke and none of the responsibilities.’

Fifteen years. Her father had been dead for twenty. If there were clues to be had about the murder or the missing diamonds, she had been searching the wrong house for them. Surely they must be at the old manor, the place where she would soon be living.

‘I think you are probably right, then,’ she said, trying not to sound too excited. ‘A change will do you good.’ And it would give her an opportunity to search the rooms there that she had not already seen. When she found a way to get the information to him, Montague would be pacified. It would give her time to think of a next step that might keep Margot safe from his threats.

It also meant that she would be alone with her husband. There would be no duke and duchess to fill the days and evenings spent in company with him. The odds increased that his memory might return, or she would let slip some bit of the truth that could not be easily distracted by turning it to another subject.

But when darkness fell, there would be no reason for them to talk at all. As she had on the previous evening, she felt a strange anticipation, like the stillness in the air before a storm.

‘You will like it,’ he said, mistaking her silence for more understandable worries. ‘Just wait. You shall be mistress over your own home. In no time at all, you will have arranged everything to suit yourself and we shall return Adam and Penny’s hospitality.’

Her own household. What a strange idea. While she had experience in managing servants for Mr Montague, she had seen the way they looked at her, half in pity and half in disapproval, as though it pained them to take their instructions from the master’s whore. Now she was to be the lady of a manor and no one would doubt that it was her proper place. If the situation weren’t so dire, she might have been excited at the thought.

Once they were underway, it appeared that William was right about his need to make the move. As she sat in his side in the carriage, she could see his mood lightening with each turn of the wheels. He stared out the window so intently that she almost thought he was avoiding her gaze. At last, he said, ‘It is good to be coming home again. There is much about the current situation that is strange to me. Having to deal with it in my brother’s house made it no easier.’

‘They have been very kind to me, during our stay there,’ she remarked.

‘I would expect nothing less of them,’ he said. ‘But when we married, I am sure it was not our intent to live out the remainder of our lives in someone else’s house.’

‘True,’ she agreed.

‘We are barely out of our honeymoon, are we not?’ It was a perfectly innocent remark and a logical reason to wish to be alone together. But they both fell silent at the thought.

‘We have not known each other long,’ she answered. ‘And it has been a very unusual few months.’

They both fell silent again.

He took a breath and began again. ‘I will be frank with you, since it makes no sense not to be. I do not know you, as a husband should.’

‘Your accident...’ she said, searching for a way to explain the perfectly logical absence of romantic memories.

‘Is in the past,’ he finished for her. ‘I do not remember you. But if we are to be married, it does no good for me to be dwelling on that fact. I... We...’ he amended. ‘We must move forward with what is left. And it will be impossible if we continue to avoid each other, relying on family and friends to fill the gaps and sleeping on opposite sides of a closed door.’ Then he exhaled, as if it had taken an effort to state the obvious.

‘It was you who sent me away,’ she reminded him, careful to keep the censure from her voice. If they had truly been married she likely would have been hurt and angered by his rejection. But the sensible reaction was the one most likely to reveal her lies.

‘I was wrong to do so,’ he replied. ‘If we are married...’

‘If?’ she countered.

‘Now that we are married,’ he corrected, ‘we must accept the fact that the last six months change nothing. I have spoken to my brother and I do not think an annulment is possible.’

How could one dissolve a marriage that did not exist in the first place? She ignored the real question and chose another. ‘Did you wish to cast me off, then?’

She could see the change in his face, as he realised how cruel his words had been. When he spoke again, it was after some thought. ‘If I did, it was unfair of me, just as it was when I sent you from my bedroom. When we arrive at the house, I will instruct the servants to place your things in the room beside mine, for the sake of convenience. But from this point forward, I expect you to share my bed.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ When Montague had informed her of her future, he had done it with a similar lack of passion. She had been foolish to imagine, after a kiss or two, it would be any different with this man.

Beside her, Lord Felkirk swore under his breath. ‘I did not mean it to sound like a command.’

‘You are my husband,’ she said, with as much confidence as she could manage. ‘I have promised to obey. It shall be just as you wish and I will do my best to give you no reason to be unhappy.’

Apparently, she had failed in that already. He was frowning. Despite his earlier excitement, he looked no happier when they reached the house. ‘My home,’ Will said in a tired voice, and waited for her comment.

She was not sure what she had expected, but it had not been this. It was not the thoroughly modern manor that the duke inhabited, with its large windows and perfectly matched wings. The old manor still held traces of the fortress it had once been. On the left, a square tower ended in wide crenellations. There was nothing left of the right tower but a low wall of grey stone to mark the edge of the kitchen garden. Though a Gothic stone arch remained around the iron-bound front door, the rest of the main building had been rebuilt of brick by some misguided architect of another century.