Nicola Cornick - The Notorious Marriage

Into this charade walked the landlord, the pudding held high on a covered dish. There were footsteps in the corridor behind him but Eleanor did not notice, for she was too intent on a plan of escape. As the landlord came in, Sir Charles straightened up with an oath and in the same moment Eleanor stood up, swept the silver cover from the dish and swung it in an arc towards his head. It clanged and bounced off, throwing the startled baronet to the floor where he lay stunned amongst the remains of the blancmange. Eleanor staggered back, almost fell over her chair, and was steadied, astoundingly, by arms that closed around her and held her tight.

There was a moment of frozen silence. Sir Charles had sat up, the blancmange dripping down his forehead, a hunted look suddenly in his eye. Eleanor freed herself and spun around. Then the world started to spin around her. She grasped a chair back to steady herself.

‘Kit?’

It was undoubtedly her husband who was standing before her, but a strangely different Kit from the one that she remembered. His height dominated the small room and his expression made her insides quail. His fair hair had darkened to tawny bronze and his face was tanned darker still, which made the sapphire blue of his eyes gleam as hard and bright as the stones themselves. There were lines about his eyes and mouth that Eleanor did not remember and he looked older, more worn somehow, as though he had been ill. Eleanor stared, bemused, disbelieving, and unable to accept that he had appeared literally out of nowhere. She swayed again. The chair back was slippery beneath her fingers and she shivered with shock and cold.

‘Kit…’ she said, trying to quell her shaking. ‘Whatever are you doing here? I had no notion…I had quite given you up for lost…’

‘So it would seem,’ Kit Mostyn said to his wife, very coolly. His hard blue gaze went from her to the lovelorn baronet, who was showing all the spine of an earthworm and was still cowering on the floor, on the assumption that a gentleman would not hit him when he was already down. A smile curled Kit’s mouth, and it was not pleasant. Sir Charles whimpered.

‘So it would seem,’ Kit repeated softly. ‘I see that you have indeed all but forgotten me, Eleanor.’

Eleanor barely heard him. Darkness was curling in from the edges of the room now, claiming her, and she gave herself up to it gladly. She heard Kit mutter an oath, then his arm was hard about her and she closed her eyes and knew no more.

‘This is all most unfortunate.’ Eleanor had not realised that she had spoken aloud until a dry voice in her ear said: ‘Indeed it is.’

Eleanor turned her head. It was resting against a broad masculine chest, which she devoutly hoped was Kit’s since for it to belong to anyone else would no doubt cause even more trouble. His arm was around her, holding her with a gentleness that belied the coldness of his tone.

‘Drink this, Eleanor—it will revive you.’

Eleanor sniffed the proffered glass and recoiled. ‘Is it brandy? I detest the stuff—’

‘Drink it!’ Kit said, this time in a tone that brooked no refusal, and Eleanor sipped a little and sat up. Kit disentangled himself from her and moved over to where Sir Charles Paulet was standing near the door, brushing the remaining blancmange from his person.

Eleanor watched, hands pressed to her mouth, as Kit grasped the baronet by the collar and positively threw him out of the door, dessert and all.

‘Get back to London, or to hell, or wherever you choose,’ Kit said coldly, ‘and do not trouble my wife again!’

The door shuddered as he slammed it closed. Then he turned to Eleanor. She shrank back before the sardonic light in his eyes.

‘My apologies for removing your…ah…admirer in so precipitate a manner, my love,’ he drawled, ‘but I fear I have the greatest dislike of another man paying such attentions to my wife! Perhaps I never told you?’

‘Perhaps you did not have the time, my lord!’ Eleanor said thinly. She put the brandy glass down with a shaking hand and swung her feet off the sofa and on to the floor. She glared at him. ‘We scarce had the chance to come to such an understanding in the few days that we spent together! You were gone before we had exchanged more than a few words and I do not believe that any of them were goodbye!’

Kit drove his hands into his pockets. ‘I realise that it must have surprised you for me to appear in this manner…’

‘No,’ Eleanor said politely, ‘it is not a surprise, my lord, rather an enormous shock! To disappear and reappear at will! Such lack of consideration in your behaviour is monstrous rude—’

‘And I can scarcely be taken aback to find my wife in flagrante as a result?’ Kit questioned, with dangerous calm. His glittering blue gaze raked her from head to toe. ‘As you say, we meet again in unfortunate circumstances, my dear.’

Eleanor’s temper soared dangerously. Matters, she thought savagely, were definitely not falling out as they should. Her errant husband, instead of demonstrating the remorse and regret suitable for their reunion, was exhibiting a misplaced arrogance that she had always suspected was part of the Mostyn character. It made her want to scream with frustration. Except that ladies did not scream like Billingsgate fishwives. They endured.

‘Surely the point at issue is your want of conduct rather than mine, my lord,’ she said sharply. ‘I am not the one who has been absent for five months without so much courtesy as a letter to explain!’

Kit sighed heavily. ‘Eleanor, I sent you a letter—several letters, in fact—’

‘Well, I did not receive them!’ Eleanor knew she was starting to sound pettish but her nerves were on edge. ‘As for finding me in flagrante, surely you cannot believe that I am in this poky little inn by choice!’

‘Then you should arrange for your lovers to find somewhere more acceptable, my dear,’ Kit observed, his tone mocking. ‘I have searched for you in hostelries from Richmond to London, and there are plenty more that could offer you greater comfort!’

Eleanor felt the tears prick the back of her eyes. This was all going horribly wrong, yet she did not understand how to stop it. The anguished questions that she had wanted to ask ever since he had left her—why did you go, where have you been—remained locked inside her head, torturing her. She had been told that ladies did not question their husbands’ actions in such an unbridled manner and since Kit had not volunteered the information of his own free will she could scarcely shake it out of him. Eleanor struggled to master her anger and misery.

‘You misunderstand the situation, my lord,’ she said coldly. ‘If there have been others who have paid me attention during your absence, that was because you were not here to discourage them—’

‘And because you did not choose to!’ Kit said, between his teeth. His face darkened and Eleanor realised with a pang just how angry he was. ‘Do you know that all I have heard since I set foot back in England is that Eleanor, Lady Mostyn, is the Talk of the Town? The lovely Lady Mostyn, so free with her favours!’ His voice was savage. ‘They are taking bets in the Clubs, my lady—should Probyn be next, or Paulet? The wager is a monkey against Darke being your current lover!’

His fist smashed down on the table, making the brandy bottle jump. ‘Mayhap I am at fault for leaving you for all this time, but you have scarcely been pining in my absence!’

Eleanor turned her back on him. She could feel the fury bubbling up in her like a witches’ cauldron after a particularly uncontrollable spell. Here was Kit, firmly, demonstrably and absolutely in the wrong after deserting her with no word for five months, and here was she, being hauled over the coals for something that was not even her fault! She had already found herself trying to justify her presence in the inn with Sir Charles whereas Kit had barely mentioned his disappearance. Apologies, explanations…Clearly they were foreign to his nature.