The Plain Bride by Chasity Bowlin

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

They had reached Bath after three long and miserable days in the carriage. The rain had slowed their progress terribly on the first day, and on the second day, Althea had been so ill that she could barely move from the bed. Now, reaching the city, with its picturesque hillside views and endless array of classically inspired structures in the soft shades of creamy Bath stone, she wished she could be more excited about the change of scenery.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my lady,” Sarah said.

The house was in the Royal Crescent. A note had been delivered from Sinclair’s solicitor the morning before she left, along with letters of credit and a significant amount of coin for the journey. Given how they’d parted, his thoughtfulness in seeing to her comfort on the journey was something of a shock. But, then, he had what he wanted, she supposed, at least ultimately.

Recalling how upset he’d appeared, she could only assume it was a matter of inconvenience. He was a man with lusty appetites, after all, and having a willing wife at his disposal, given that his lover had a husband to whom she was bound, would likely have made life simpler for him. She’d been unwittingly fulfilling the role of mistress for him, offering a place that he might slake his lusts when the woman he truly desired was unavailable.

Just thinking it, those hateful words turning over and over in her mind, hurt so terribly that it robbed her of breath. She let out a soft gasp as she wrapped her arms about herself.

“Is it the babe?”

Sarah’s strange question penetrated the haze her mind. “Babe?”

“My lady, you were ill all day yesterday and most of this morning. You’ve not had your courses since you come to London, which was more than a month back. Unless you had them right before you come to London… Well, what else could it be?”

She swayed, not because of the coach’s movement, but because what the girl had said to her rocked her so deeply. The thought had not occurred to her. She’d been so lost in the passion, and then in the terrible betrayal, counting the days had been the furthest thing from her mind.

“Oh, dear lord. Oh, dear, sweet lord,” she murmured.

“Oh, I though you knew!” Sarah cried in alarm.

“I hadn’t thought. I hadn’t even dreamed.”

“His lordship will be very happy, I think,” the maid offered. “Perhaps this will help to bridge the gap—”

“I don’t want him to know. Not yet. If he knows, he will come here, and I cannot face him, Sarah. Not now. I don’t have the strength,” she admitted brokenly.

“What did he do, ma’am? I can’t think what might have been so awful!”

“He loves another,” she admitted. “He loves another, and through my own foolishness, I love him.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I can’t believe it. He’s so very different with you, ma’am.”

“Is he? Because he confided in her, Sarah, about things that should have been personal and private between us. I can’t forgive him for leaving my bed and going to her. But, more than that, I can’t forgive him for sharing with her the details of our personal agreements. What purpose could he have had for doing so, other than to reassure her of his affections for her? Or to aid her in humiliating me?”

“Perhaps there’s another explanation.”

“I can’t think of one. I wish I could. If I could, I might have hope,” she admitted.

“I’ll keep your secret, my lady. But secrets such as that can only be kept for so long.”

“I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

The maid nodded, and they lapsed into silence.

The enormity of it, the very idea that she might have his child growing inside her, was only beginning to sink in. It was a double-edged sword. While having a connection to him that could never be broken was a balm to her shattered heart, his absence in their lives would be a daily reminder of his betrayal, and that pricked at her pride and renewed her anger again. She could feel the bitterness welling inside her.

“I must find a way to forgive him,” she whispered. “I cannot hate him forever. I cannot let my anger fester as it is now. It will devour me alive.”

It had takenhim three days to reach Boston Spa. Three days to think about what had transpired, to replay it again and again in his mind. Those three days had also given his temper time to settle, but that was doing nothing to ease the hurt. She had hurt him. It was something no one had managed to do in a very, very long while. The last person to do so, in fact, had been Charlotte. Her rejection of him immediately following his father’s passing, though heaven knew it had been for the best, had hurt him, despite his relief at not having to be the one to reject her.

He’d thought then, mistakenly, that it would restore her if he were to break their engagement. But as the years had progressed, he’d watched her flit from one affair to the next, always coming back to him when she needed help with her scandal-courting family after her husband had washed his hands of them. That was when he’d seen the truth of Charlotte. She loved no one but herself, and the great love affair he’d built for them in his mind had been naught but a fairytale.

And he’d never dreamed to feel anything for Thea, save for relief at her absence. At their first true meeting, when he’d finally managed to crawl out of his cups, he had expected her to be a teetotaling harridan who would make his life hell. Instead, she’d been sweet, naive, funny, endearing, passionate… Still a harridan, at times, but one with whom he could have easily coexisted in what he could only describe as happiness. In truth, happiness was something he barely had a passing acquaintance with. Yet, in one fateful evening tainted by Charlotte’s presence, all that had vanished.

It didn’t take a great deal of intelligence to realize that he had greatly underestimated his former lover. Charlotte didn’t want him, but she didn’t want anyone else to have him. Like a spoiled child with a discarded toy, he thought bitterly. He would own that his gullibility regarding her blackened nature was a contributing factor. But a greater contributing factor, to his mind, was that Thea hadn’t trusted him. She had taken whatever Charlotte might have said to her at face value and never considered that there might be another alternative. She’d displayed, with remarkable aplomb, just how little faith she had in him.

There was a quieter voice in his mind, one that he did not wish to listen to, that reminded him how very little reason he’d given her, or anyone else, to have faith in him. But he was indulging in self-pity, and that sort of brutal honesty about his own failings did not allow him to wallow with the sort of enthusiasm he preferred.

Dismounting in front of Rosedale, he looked at the chipped mortar and clogged gutters. The house wasn’t falling apart fast enough to suit him. And in his current state, a bit of destruction would be a welcome reprieve.

Bending forward, he retrieved a large stone from the graveled drive and hurled it with both force and accuracy. It crashed against the window of the morning room, a room he rarely had reason to occupy. The glass shattered, and the wind billowed the sheer curtain inside. Strangely satisfying, he picked up another stone and repeated the gesture.

By the time he’d shattered every pain of glass in that window, the servants were standing on the porch, watching him with a strange mixture of curiosity and fear. No one knew what to make of him in that moment, and no doubt, they were all wondering what had become of their erstwhile mistress.

“Lady Mayville has elected to retire to Bath for the remainder of…well, forever,” he offered with a grim facsimile of a smile. “I’ll be in my study. Bring me brandy.”

“A glass, my lord?”

“A barrel.”