Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore
Chapter 15
Outside her bedchamber windows at Lucian’s house, the black silhouettes of London’s chimneys pointed at the crimson sky, emitting curls of smoke like pistols that had just been fired. Nightfall was close. He would be here soon, and the churning, nauseous pressure in her belly increased with every heavy tick of the clock. But it had been impossible to stay in her childhood home, the place where her own father had betrayed her.
After sending Bailey away, she had switched on every lamp in the vast room and begun brushing out her hair in a futile attempt to soothe herself. The gaslight gave her reflection in the vanity table mirror a sickly yellow pallor, and she regarded herself with wretched amazement as she worked the brush. Had her face always looked so girlish, so soft? Was it any wonder people believed they could do with her as they pleased—such as pawning her off like a prize calf? This was still a common enough fate for women of her age and standing, but perhaps she had fancied herself exempt. Fatal vanity on her part. Her family deemed her entirely expendable. Well, not entirely—she was worth half price of a railroad investment. She gripped the brush handle tight enough to strain her bones. The wedding ring broke the light and winked at her, evilly, derisively. The white-gold symbol of her childhood dream was to be degraded to a permanent reminder of her stupidity, then. Her hair crackled and rose, and the coil of violent emotions in her stomach twisted and thickened. She gathered her locks over one shoulder and saw that her fingers were shaking.
The rap on the door slammed her heart against her ribs.
In the mirror, her eyes were huge.
She was still wearing her day dress, high-necked and thickly ruffled down the front. Better protection than a delicate nightgown, considering the confrontation to come. She forced a deep breath, and another. The knock had sounded on the door to the hallway, not the one to Lucian’s bedchamber.
“Enter.” It came out hoarse.
From the corner of her eye, she saw her husband, looking unfamiliarly polished in proper black-and-white dinner attire. A dinner invitation obtained courtesy of the Greenfield name? Acid welled from her stomach, nearly making her choke.
She had meant to face him on her feet, but she couldn’t rise from her chair; she sat staring straight ahead with her pulse racing away in her neck as he approached. He halted behind her. His hand hovered briefly, as if to caress her left shoulder, and she glimpsed the heavy gold band of his wedding ring. Unlike most men of her acquaintance, Lucian had decided to wear it beyond the wedding day. To gloat? She wondered if he saw a ticket to power whenever it caught his eye.
“Harriet, I—” She peeked at his reflection and found his dark brows pulled together in a frown. “I spoke harshly to you this morning.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and procured an ornate, oblong box. A case for a bracelet or necklace. He leaned over her to place it next to the collection of perfume flasks.
“Thank you.” Her hands remained tightly clasped in her lap.
He was too close, muddling her senses with his scent and the heat of his body. And untried as she was, she still recognized the look on his face in the mirror: a muted version of his expression when she had been naked and under him on the bed. Want. He was here because he wanted his wife, perhaps later tonight—and the pretty box on her table fulfilled his side of the bargain. She felt at once tense and soft, hot and cold. Had this day never happened, she might have wanted him back. She had felt an attraction whether she wished it or not. She had become familiar with the strong planes and angles of his face, and had secretly begun to find him handsome, which possibly sprung from the possessive notion that as her husband, he was hers in a unique way, and hers alone. Now the thought of his touch made her shiver with cold revulsion.
He noticed, and straightened, watching her intently now. “You went out today.”
“I did, yes.” She was breathing too fast.
“Without Carson.” His tone was calm, not unfriendly.
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Have him escort you the next time—it’s not safe for you otherwise.”
The hypocrisy. The greatest threat to her well-being was currently himself. The flash of indignation brought her to her feet, and she turned to him. “I visited my parents.”
His eyes revealed no emotion, but an alertness came over him and subtly tensed his shoulders. He might be an unfeeling liar, but like an animal, his instincts were finely attuned to the faintest signs of trouble. She suspected it was how creatures like him survived.
“I know now,” she said, unable to stop. “I know.”
“Know what?”
“About Plasencia-Astorga.”
“Very well,” he said after a pause. “It was hardly a secret.”
“You bought me.”
Her inclined his head in concession. “Why not call it a bride-price? It’s not uncommon.”
“At half price!”
He blinked. “I can assure you that substantial sums were involved.”
Her breathing became labored. “I cannot condemn you for taking what was on offer,” she said unsteadily—the offer was entirely Julien Greenfield’s responsibility. “However. What I must know is whether you manufactured the opportunity for a sale.”
He was not so blasé now. He was holding himself too still. “Explain your meaning.”
“The kiss,” she said. “The kiss—it wasn’t a coincidence that it took place in a room with large two-way mirrors behind which a crowd happened to be waiting.”
Mr. Matthews must have known, too. If she hadn’t been so lovely, so naïve, so shocked, she would have suspected it the very moment it had happened in the gallery.
“I don’t recall stealing the kiss from you,” Lucian said. He was as expressive as a stone.
“You didn’t,” she said bitterly.
“Nor did I prolong it against your will.”
“You didn’t. My own foolishness compelled me to give it freely.”
“Therefore—”
“Please.” She gripped his forearm. “Please set aside your cruel ways for once and tell me the truth: have you finagled the situation? If you don’t confirm my suspicions, I shall forever question whether I imagined it and it shall drive me utterly mad over time.”
He glanced down at her white hand clutching at his sleeve. A muscle worked in his jaw as he deliberated, and finally, he looked her in the eye. “I arranged for the situation,” he said. “Then I took the opportunity when it presented itself.”
The room was swirling around her in a shrill stream of colors.
“How could you be certain a kiss would take place?” she managed. “And at that very moment? With an audience behind those mirrors?”
“I wasn’t,” he said, impatient now. “How could I? But at the very least, we would’ve been observed talking together, and I had planned to further those impressions over time. The kiss just brought everything to a conclusion quickly.”
“You should have stepped away,” she said thinly, “just should have.”
“To what end, when I wanted your hand?”
“I see.” Her voice came from afar, grotesquely distorted. “I presume our union is but one step on the ladder of your social climb.”
He glowered and plucked her still-clinging fingers off his arm. And made as if to leave.
“Where are you going?” Her hands were on her hips; from somewhere came the urge to yell like a fishwife.
He looked back over his shoulder. “You know all you wanted to know.”
“Why me?” she cried. “It was my life with which you tampered.”
“Because,” he said, “you made yourself available. Repeatedly.”
It knocked the air clean from her lungs. She tried to breathe and couldn’t. She pressed her hands below her breasts. Nothing. Panic turned her cold, as if she had just been thrown hard from her pony and lay staring blindly at the sky, desperately trying to drag air into her stunned lungs. He hadn’t set a trap because a sudden bout of mindless desire had compelled him to steal her; no, he would have snatched any available, unsuspecting woman of her station stupid enough to amble into his path …. Finally, a breath.
“I want this marriage annulled,” she said.
Her words hit him square between his shoulders and he halted abruptly. When he turned back, his thoughts were written plain on his face: their marriage had not yet been consummated—she was free to leave him without much complication indeed. His expression darkened, and her vision wavered. The presence of the vast bed behind her pressed to the fore of her mind. She backed away on shaky legs. “If you force me, I will scream.”
He took a step toward her, but stopped. “Force you,” he jeered softly. “But yes. You would think that.” His voice was icy enough to freeze a sea. “I don’t go round violating women, Harriet.” His gaze swept over her with such contempt, she felt his disdain in the pit of her stomach. “So I suggest we don’t consummate this marriage until you come to me,” he said. “And you’ll make it so clear that you are willing, even the kind of brute you take me for could not mistake it.”
He left, and the chamber door fell shut behind him with a bang.
A high-pitched noise wailed in her ears. In a state of detachment, she thought she should probably fall onto the bed and sob. But she didn’t move, and her eyes were dry. He had confessed. It confirmed her role as a silly pawn, but it brought a measure of calm—a cold, brittle calm, but it at least allowed her think. She went to the vanity table and opened the jewelry box he had gifted her. A bracelet, two fingers wide, comprised of four strands of golden chains linking pearls and gemstones. Elegant, yet whimsical. The dull light couldn’t dim the rich blue of the sapphires and the glow of the rubies. In the sun, the piece would have shimmered beautifully on her wrist, complementing her coloring perfectly, and the woman she had been five minutes ago would have felt a great twinge of misery in her heart for all the things that could have been. Now, she only saw opportunity. She had never paid attention to the price of things, but she was still aware that she was holding a small fortune in her palm and that the gems and pearls could probably be pried without too much effort from their gold settings. Jewels—a woman’s portable bank account since the beginning of time. Or at least ever since they made it difficult for wives to hold money and an actual account in their own name. It was why they bartered their favors or turned a blind eye in exchange for necklaces and rings and diamond hairpins, and endured being called little magpies for hoarding trinkets. Her trinkets would keep her in good stead all the way to southern France.
The corridors rushed past in silence as Lucian put distance between himself and his wife’s bedchamber. If you force me, I will scream. He wanted to punch a wall. He hadn’t intended for her to find out, and now he knew why: it was ugly as hell. It had sliced any friendliness between them to ribbons just when he had realized it was something he might want. And he’d have her only when she approached him for it? He’d now wait for the next one hundred years to be inside his wife—when the whole purpose of this damned marriage had been the production of Greenfield grandchildren …. Just then he caught sight of himself in the large mirror on the wall across from the entrance doors, his snarling visage a feral sight beneath his disheveled black hair.
“Well, fuck me.” His first official social function at the exchequer, and he looked like a demon.
“Matthews,” he roared.
His voice was still reverberating off the walls as Matthews hurried from one of the corridors. “Sir?”
“Tell Nicolas to get the two-in-hand ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell Carson to keep an eye on Mrs. Blackstone’s chamber door—if she leaves, he’s to escort her.”
Matthews’s brows pulled together before he schooled his expression to neutrality. “As you wish, sir.”
“And have a tray brought to her from the kitchen.”
He had time to control his temper during the carriage ride to Westminster. Julien Greenfield awaited him in the pillared reception room of number ten Downing Street, masking whatever grudge or lethal loathing he might still nurse against his son-in-law with a jovial demeanor. He had the cheek to ask about Harriet’s well-being as if he cared, and Lucian lied straight to his face that she was doing just fine. The dinner was a success; Greenfield introduced him to Prime Minister Gladstone, who also happened to be chancellor of the exchequer, and they took each other’s measure under the pretense of discussing the latest upheaval in the British wool market, forever caused by Americans imposing outrageous import tariffs on British wool while trying to flood the British market with lower-quality but vastly cheaper wool. But frankly, he gave no damn about wool tonight, and by the time he’d boarded the coach again, his jaw ached from consistent clenching. Lifelong ambitions were coming to fruition as planned, and here he was feeling in a black mood the moment he entered his house. He changed from his dinner attire into his exercise clothes, went to saddle his roan, and took course to East London.
He returned to Belgravia a few hours later, his face and body sore and his mood still foul. He scrubbed himself in the shower, and after half a bar of soap, the water circling the drain still seemed tinged with gray. All the mirrors were blind when he finally emerged from the cubicle.
In his study, he went directly to the drinks cabinet and indiscriminately picked a bottle. His right hand protested the motion with a dull ache. Bare-knuckle brawling and drinking—he could just picture his wife’s disapproving face. One can take a lad out of the squalor, but not the squalor out of the lad. He took the bottle—whisky, an Oban of good vintage he now saw—to one of the armchairs by the fireplace and settled down with a groan. Squalor or not, he was too old for fights in damp, dim, smoke-filled basements. No one had openly questioned his sudden presence at Macintyre’s establishment tonight, but as he had dodged and thrown punches until the floor was slick with blood and sweat and spit, he had felt the room vibrate with speculations. He had wondered whether they’d steal his horse, leaving him to deal with muggers when crossing Whitechapel on foot. He had realized that he thought like a toff and didn’t belong in places like Macintyre’s anymore. So he had caught a mean upper cut, and still tasted blood.
A knock sounded on the door, too firm to be his wife. “What.”
Matthews stood on the doorsill, as usual in his suit. “Sir—you have a visitor.”
He straightened. A caller close to midnight was always bad news. “Who is it?”
“Lord Ballentine. He is at the back entrance—here is his card.”
Odd. Ballentine hadn’t called on him in years. “Bring him here. Matthews—”
“Sir?”
“Has Mrs. Blackstone eaten?”
Matthews’s face was unreadable. “Every morsel.”
A few minutes later, the viscount’s tall, wide-shouldered form appeared in the doorway. His expression was suspiciously pleasant as he meandered in while surveying the study, the stacks of yellowing magazines, the map, the battered desk, the monetary and fiscal policy timeline. “Blackstone,” he said. “How quaint you have it here.”
“What’s your business, Ballentine?”
“I came to congratulate you on your recent nuptials.” Ballentine’s gaze traveled from Lucian’s raw knuckles to the bruise on his jaw. “You look splendid. Married life seems to suit you.”
“I could go another round, ye ken.”
His lordship raised his hands in surrender. He had a vested interest in keeping his pretty features exactly as they were—one of the reasons he’d always left the dirty work to Lucian during past undertakings. Like the diamond stud sparking on his right ear, Ballentine distracted with a garish glimmer from an impenetrable surface. He was the living embodiment of all the things despicable in a man: privileged from birth, easily amused, and hedonistic, a modern-day male Marie Antoinette, except no one was truly inclined to lop his head off—he was just so terribly charming. And apart from Aoife, he still came closest to what Lucian would call a friend ever since their paths had crossed in a den of iniquity ten years ago.
He gestured at the empty chair across from him. “Take a glass. Have a seat.”
“Believe me,” said Ballentine as he poured himself a drink and stretched out his long legs to reveal absurdly patterned socks, “your lack of enthusiasm over my visit is entirely mutual. However, given the choice between your wrath and that of my lady …”
“Your missus sends you?”
“Of sorts.”
Lucian scoffed. “A hen-pecked libertine—pathetic.”
“Former libertine,” Ballentine said amicably. “I’m hopelessly devoted now.”
Had rumors about Lucian’s marriage troubles made the rounds already? Appalling, how preoccupied he was with the matter of gossip about his person when until recently he had been free not to give a damn.
“As you know, your wife called on my fiancée today,” Ballentine said.
He gave a grunt of acknowledgment, when in fact, he hadn’t known that. He needed a word with Carson.
The nobleman gave him one of those bland smiles that hid multitudes. “My betrothed now has a bee in her bonnet about the state of her friend’s happiness.”
“That so?”
A grave nod. “She thinks she detected a lack of honeymoon exuberance in Mrs. Blackstone.”
When Lucian replied, his voice was icy. “Are you here to meddle with my marriage?”
“Good God, no. No, I’m here for old times’ sake. In the capacity of a friend.”
“The same capacity that made you send me a wedding-night manual?” Which hadn’t even worked.
Ballentine winced. “In my defense, that was not my idea.”
“Were you forced at gunpoint to send a telegram, then?”
Ballentine’s silence drew out.
“Hell,” Lucian said. “You were forced at gunpoint.”
The viscount shrugged. “There was a fair chance a dainty Double Derringer would have come into play,” he said, “but the more potent and immediate threat was Lady Lucinda withholding her favors for the duration of the holidays unless I sent something your way, so what was a man to do?”
What indeed. “Your purpose,” he repeated.
Ballentine swirled whisky in his glass. “Lady Lucinda has a habit of inspiring rebellion in her fellow women. And she is very protective of Mrs. Blackstone, so I reckon she may have done a good deal of inspiring this afternoon.”
Grand. The whole half-price debacle had fallen on fertile ground, then. A tension started up in his temples, the dull throb in rhythm with the pulsating pain in his jaw. “So you’ve come to warn me about mutiny.”
“Well—”
“You think I need help with handling my wife—again.”
Ballentine made a stupidly innocent face. “I’d never.”
Lucian leaned abruptly forward. “Marriage is a simple affair unless you overcomplicate it. She’s mine. What can she do, eh? Where will she go?”
His lordship was nodding along, his half-lidded gaze deceptively lazy. “Of course.”
Lucian drained his whisky to the dregs. “There’s nothing wrong with that approach.”
Ballentine shrugged. “Not at all. But …”
“But?”
“She could, in fact, go places.”
He stilled. “Tell me.”
“I know nothing concrete,” Ballentine said. “Just that Lady Lucinda can make women disappear when they don’t wish to be found. And Mrs. Blackstone is such a lovely, whimsical, overly trusting creature and it would be unforgivable if she endangered herself while, say, traversing the continent on her own.”
His hand tightened around the empty tumbler and fresh pain spiked hotly through his abused tendons. Ballentine was an arrogant git, and the familiarity with which the libertine spoke about Harriet annoyed him, but the accuracy of Ballentine’s intuitions was rather unrivaled—he wouldn’t have lent the man money otherwise. Well, he had ruffled his wife’s feathers all right, and he was traveling to Drummuir the morning after next and couldn’t keep an eye on her. What to do, lock her in her room for days? Send her back to her parents? He uttered a profanity that would have shocked a less depraved man. The nobleman just nodded sagely. For a long moment, they sat watching the leaping fire as the burn of the whisky spread through their veins.
“An odd concept, wives,” Ballentine finally said.
Lucian said nothing.
“Like no other, they inspire in a man the desire to please them,” Ballentine continued. “Pesky, this urge to see them happy, but there we have it—care nothing for their happiness, and you’re hurtling toward a cold, cold hell of your own making.”
Lucian pushed the Oban away instead of pouring some more. “If you had proper concerns for her welfare, you’d not be here warning me,” he said. “You’d be helping her run off.”
Ballentine chuckled. “Not as long as I owe you money.”
He’d be leading the heist, the liar. Though even he couldn’t tell with Ballentine; the man lied as smoothly as he spoke the truth. He had witnessed it firsthand when they both had tried to squeeze business from the demimonde as adolescents. They had joined forces for a while, extracting secrets from intoxicated noblemen during debauched nights in secret back rooms and gambling hells only to sell the information or use it for blackmail. Ballentine had been in charge of opening doors to inner circles with his pedigree, his angel face, and his silver tongue. Lucian had enforced ultimatums or dealt with this or that fellow’s henchmen. This had literally sullied his hands, but Lucian had always felt the viscount had done the dirty part, with him slithering among his own like a snake, and seducing and lying so beautifully. It was why he’d never fully trust the nobleman. He did, however, believe the part about the angry wives he’d just heard. He needed a plan. But what was forming at the back of his mind might well send him to cold hell without a detour.