Virtue

27

Marcus walked back to Berkeley Square. Whatever reasons Judith had had for involving herself with Gracemere initially, she'd been perfectly capable of extricating herself from trouble. Judging by the half-full wineglass, she'd left in haste, and she must have made some considerable scene if her putative host hoped she wasn't going to return.

But why the hell had she been with Gracemere in the first place? Had she been defying her husband for principle's sake? But that didn't make sense-they'd resolved the issue amicably as far as he remembered. She'd agreed to do as he wished if he moderated his dictatorial manner. So why would she persist in cultivating such an acquaintanceship. No, it was much more than that. Acquaintances didn't dine tete-a-tete. So why?

The old serpents of mistrust began to wreathe and writhe in his gut, and he felt cold and sick. Did he know her at all? Had he ever known her? Had she colluded with Gracemere to wound him? But if that was so, why had she left her dinner companion against his will? Perhaps she hadn't expected seduction. His ingenuous wife had believed an invitation to a clandestine dinner to be completely innocent? Impossible. There was nothing ingenuous about Judith; she was far too worldly to fall for such a fabrication. But perhaps Gracemere had led her to believe the invitation was different-not a private party but one in company she knew. And when she'd discovered the truth… This explanation was more plausible, and he began to feel a little comforted. And then he remembered how she'd lied to him that morning-a party with her women friends. The serpents hissed and acid betrayal soured his mouth.

Judith was standing at her window, looking down on the square, when he came in sight of the house. She had been waiting for him, knowing what she had to do. She had known that Gracemere was capable of ruining a man with cheating and lies. She knew he was capable of running off with another man's fiancee. But this evening she had glimpsed the depths of maleficence that outdid anything that she already knew. A clandestine rendezvous was one thing, but to pick such a place for the kind of woman he believed Judith to be was evil beyond anything. Somehow Marcus was to have been injured by Gracemere's plotting and Marcus's wife had been just a tool. Judith was now convinced of it. Was Marcus to be somehow confronted with the information of his wife's rendezvous? Confronted and humiliated? Was it to be made public perhaps?

She stood at the window with her arms crossed over her breasts, still feeling weak and shaky after her violent vomiting but knowing that unless she could circumvent Gracemere's ulterior motive, she might just as well have yielded to seduction. If a public scandal was to be made, the simple fact of her willing presence in such a place with the earl would be sufficient cause.

She was going to have to tell Marcus the whole. If he heard it from her lips, he would be forewarned and forearmed. The thought of what she risked by such a course filled her with dread.

Marcus disappeared from view as he climbed the steps beneath her window.

She went out to the hall at the top of the stairs as Marcus was admitted to the house, then she sped lightly down the stairs toward him.

"Marcus, I need to talk with you."

He looked up, and despite the gall and wormwood of his suspicions, his eyes anxiously raked her face. She was pale and tense, but other than that, as far as he could tell seemed quite well.

"Did you enjoy your evening?" he asked, unsmiling as he handed his cloak and gloves to Gregson. Until he decided how to deal with the situation, he would pretend he knew nothing about it.

Judith shook her head dismissively. "Could we go into your book room? I have to talk to you. "

Surely she wasn't going to tell him? A thrill of hope coursed through him. "It's a book-room matter?"

"I believe so." She was clasping her hands tightly, her expression one of painful intensity.

Marcus knew he wanted her confidence now more than he had ever wanted anything. Only her honesty would have the power to erase the suspicions, defang the serpents of mistrust. But just in case he was wrong, he continued the charade. "Oh, dear." He managed a faint smile of rueful comprehension at this choice of venue.

His book room seemed to have become the arena for discussion of all potentially explosive issues. "Could it wait until morning?"

"I don't think so."

"Very well. Let's get it over with, whatever it is."

Judith led the way. The candles were extinguished but the fire was still alight. She relit the candles while Marcus tossed a log onto the embers.

"Am I going to need fortification?" He gestured to the decanters on the sideboard.

"I imagine so. I'll have a glass of port also."

Marcus filled two glasses, watching as Judith bent to warm her hands at the fire, its light setting matching fires aglow in the burnished ringlets tumbling about her face.

"I have a confession to make," she said eventually, turning to face him, her pallor even more marked. "I'm afraid you're going to be very, very angry."

She was going to tell him. He kept the joy from his expression and said evenly, "I'm duly warned. Let me hear it."

"Very well." She put down her glass and squared her shoulders. "It's about Gracemere." She paused, but Marcus said nothing, although his eyes had narrowed. He sipped his port and waited.

Quietly she told him how she had played piquet with Gracemere, what the stakes were, and where he had taken her that evening. "I'm afraid he intends to create some scandal that would humiliate you," she finished. "I had to tell you… warn you. I couldn't bear you to hear it from anyone else."

She fell silent, twisting her hands against her skirt, her expression taut with anxiety as she waited for his response.

"You recognized the place for what it was?" His voice was level, and his eyes had not left her face.

She nodded. "As children we spent some time in similar establishments… but that's another story."

"You must tell me sometime," he commented calmly. "You didn't stay very long tonight, I gather."

"No, I put mustard in my wine and made myself very sick," she said. "It's a trick I've used before to get out of a ticklish situation." A gleam appeared in her eye, a hint of the customarily mischievous Judith. "I'm afraid the earl was rather put off by the results."

The Earl of Gracemere's disgruntlement was now explained. Against all the odds, laughter bubbled in Marcus's chest. "You vomited?"

She nodded. "Prodigiously… mustard has that effect. It's also very wearing," she added. "I still feel weak and shivery."

Marcus asked his most important question. "Am I to be told why you've been cultivating Gracemere despite our agreement that you would hold him at arm's length?"

Judith bit her lip. This was where it became tricky. "There is something I wasn't intending to tell you-"

"Dear God, Judith, you have more layers than an onion!" Marcus interrupted. "Every time I think I've peeled away the last skin and reached some core of truth and understanding, you reveal a dozen new layers."

"I'm sure you've never peeled an onion in your life," Judith said, momentarily diverted.

"That is beside the point."

Judith sighed. "I know that it was Gracemere who took Martha from you-" Marcus's sharply indrawn breath stopped her for a minute, but when he said nothing, she continued resolutely.

"Gracemere told me, as an explanation for why you held him in such enmity. I wanted-" She paused, casting a quick look up at him. His expression was impassive, neither encouraging nor threatening.

"I wanted to know something about Martha," she rushed on. "You wouldn't talk of her… except that once in the inn at Quatre Bras, and then you said you never wanted to talk about her again. You said she was my antithesis in every way, and I wanted to know what she was like-what that meant. It was almost an obsession," she finished, opening her hands in a gesture appealing for understanding.

Marcus stared, for the moment unable to respond. Feminine curiosity! Was that all it was? Judith simply wanted to know what her predecessor had been like? The simplicity of the answer confused him. It seemed too simple for someone as complex as Judith. And yet it was perfectly understandable. He had been adamant in his refusal to discuss that aspect of his past.

"I've never liked Gracemere, Marcus," Judith said when he remained silent. She was thinking fast now, and the distorted truth tripped convincingly off her tongue.

"I've never trusted him either, which is why I took the mustard. But I didn't think it would do any harm to cultivate him long enough to satisfy my curiosity. He was playing with me. I knew that. And I thought, so long as I knew it, I'd be able to play along without anything serious happening. I'd find out what I wanted and that would be that. I didn't intend to hurt you… I… oh, how can I convince you of that?"

He scrutinized her expression for a minute, then nodded slowly. "I believe you. Did he satisfy your curiosity?

Judith shook her head. "There wasn't time. Once I realized what he was up to this evening, I had to move quickly."

Marcus turned to the fire and threw on another log. When he spoke, his voice was businesslike.

"It's true that Martha fell in love with Gracemere. It's true I think that had I been more attentive, she wouldn't have done so. I grew up with her. Her family's estates marched with my own, and it had always been assumed, from the cradle almost, that we would unite the two estates. I saw no reason to question the plan, but neither did I see any reason to pay Martha any particular attentions on that account."

A log slipped in a shower of sparks, and he kicked it back with a booted foot. "I amused myself in the manner of most young sprigs with too much money and not enough to occupy them. Martha was a meek dab of a girl, a little brown mouse."

He glanced across at Judith, who was all burnished radiance and luster despite the events of the evening. "You and she are chalk and cheese," he said. "Both physically and in temperament. Martha was meek and easily influenced. The perfect prey for someone like Gracemere, whose pockets were always to let and who spent his time dodging bailiffs and the Fleet prison. But he's of impeccable breeding, has considerable address and a honeyed tongue when it suits him. They eloped, putting me in the guise of a loathsome suitor forced upon an unwilling woman."

He turned his back to the room, leaning his arm along the mantelpiece, staring down into the rekindled fire as the memory of that time flooded his mind as vividly as if it were yesterday.

Martha's father had been a sick man, and she'd had no brothers. It had fallen to the hand of the jilted fiance to go after the fugitives and bring Martha back before they joined hands over the anvil. He'd found them very quickly. Gracemere had had no intention of immediately taking Martha to Gretna Green.

She'd been a battered, gibbering wreck when he'd come up with them. Her lover, desperate to ensure there would be no possibility of annulment, had raped her within a few hours of their flight. Ruined, and possibly pregnant, Martha had had no option but to accept as husband the only man likely to offer for her.

"I backed out of the engagement with as much grace as I could muster," he said in the same level tones, giving no indication of the violent swirling of the age -old rage- a rage that had led him to thrash Bernard Melville to within an inch of his life.

"And nine months later Martha died giving birth to a stillborn child. Gracemere inherited her entire fortune except for the estate which her father left to a nephew. He was determined that Gracemere shouldn't take that… for which I can only be grateful, having been spared such a neighbor."

He looked up, his eyes unreadable. "Does that satisfy your curiosity, lynx?"

Judith nodded. But in truth the curiosity that had been a convenient fabrication was now reality. Marcus was leaving something out; she could hear the gaps in the story as if he'd underlined them. And she could feel the deep currents of emotion swirling behind his apparently bland expression. However, she had no choice under the circumstances but to accept what he'd said without question. The ease with which she'd managed to deceive him was somehow harder to endure than the deception itself. He now trusted her enough to believe her lies.

"I don't know why I needed to know so badly," she said. "It happened a long time ago, after all."

"Yes, when you were a little girl of twelve," Marcus responded with a dry half smile.

"Are you very angry?" Judith regarded him somberly. "You have the right, I freely admit it." Marcus frowned, pulling at his chin. Her confession seemed to have made all the difference to his feelings. "No, I'm not angry. You put yourself in a highly dangerous and compromising situation, but you managed to extricate yourself neatly enough. However, I'm disappointed you didn't feel able to ask me your questions. I would have thought matters were running smoothly enough between us for that."

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, Judith thought, hearing the hurt in his voice. She couldn't possibly enter into any discussion about why she hadn't felt able to share her invented curiosity with him. She offered him a slightly helpless shrug of acceptance that he acknowledged with a resigned shake of his head.

"What are we going to do if Gracemere does decide to create a scandal?" She changed the subject.

Marcus's expression hardened. "He won't." It was a sharp, succinct statement.

"But how can you be so sure?"

"My dear Judith, don't you trust me to make sure of it?" he demanded in a voice like iron. "Believe me, I am a match for Gracemere."

Judith, looking at the set of his jaw, the uncompromising slash of his mouth, the eyes like black flint, didn't doubt for a minute that her husband was more than a match for Gracemere, or anyone else who might decide to meddle in his affairs.

And where did that leave his wife? His lying, conniving trickster of a wife. A shudder ripped up her spine, and she crossed her arms, hugging her breasts, staring up at him in silence.

His expression abruptly softened as he saw her shiver. "You need to be in bed," he said. "An evening spent hanging over the commode is enough to exhaust anyone." A smile tugged willy-nilly at the corners of his mouth as he imagined the scene. He could almost feel sorry for Gracemere. He picked up her discarded wineglass and handed it to her, saying lightly, "Be a good girl and finish your port, it'll warm you."

Judith's responding smile was somewhat tentative, but she obediently finished the wine and found it comforting in her sore and empty belly.

"Upstairs now." Marcus took the glass from her. "I'll come up later, when you're tucked in."

"I seem to need to be cuddled," Judith said in a voice that sounded small.

Marcus put his arms around her, holding her tightly against him, feeling her fragility. "I'll hold you all night," he promised into her fragrant hair. "I'll come as soon as Millie's helped you to bed."

He held her throughout the night, and she slept secure in his arms, but her dreams were filled with images of things cracked and broken under a tumultous reign of chaos.