The Lady Courts a Marquess (Ladies of Seduction #2)

Chapter Six

April 1813

“I am going to kill him,” Kitty fumed as she stalked past the piano in the music room, arms crossed tightly below her breasts. It was late afternoon, the sun already halfway dropped in the sky, and the time that she’d expected William home had come and gone hours ago.

Another hour of waiting. An hour of pacing. An hour of tension knotting up inside her belly as she’d rehearsed all of the words that needed to be said before this farce of a marriage went on another day.

I’ve had enough.

We both know this is over.

Neither of us is happy.

Why prolong the inevitable longer than we must?

She’d planned to discuss their divorce more than a week ago, but then she’d brought Jack home with her instead. The general chaos and upheaval that followed had quelled any conversations regarding their separation. After things had—somewhat—settled down, she’d woken yesterday determined to broach the topic with William over breakfast. But the letter on her dressing table, written in her husband’s neat, steady penmanship, had promptly ruined any such plan.

My Dear Lady Radcliffe,

A new business opportunity calls me away to a buckle factory in Bedford. If all negotiations go accordingly, I should return by breakfast tomorrow morning.

Yours,

William

A buckle factory.

He’d left her for a buckle factory.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. She certainly shouldn’t have been hurt. And it only served to further heighten her annoyance that she was both.

“Kill who?” Jack asked, glancing up from where she was crouched in front of the door in a pair of trousers and a shirt that Kitty had borrowed from one of the maids who had a son around Jack’s age and size. She had already sent Jack’s measurements to the modiste. A full wardrobe was expected to be delivered by end of the day filled with all of the garments a girl of Jack’s age should have been wearing. “And can I watch?”

“William, my husband, and no, you may not.” It wouldn’t be wise to have any witnesses. Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing over there?”

“Practicin’.”

“Doing what?”

“Pickin’ a lock.”

“Picking a—stop that at once!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. Heavens, she’d known children were exhausting from Lady Roanoke’s dreadful pallor after having three of them, but she had never imagined that being a mother would be this exhausting. It didn’t help that she was raising a future criminal.

Not, she corrected herself with a frown, that any formal commitment had been made pertaining to Jack’s future. And she wasn’t really her mother (if that were the case, she’d have already hired an army of governesses). But she had grown inordinately fond of the little wretch over the past week and a half. Most likely due to the fact that she’d needed to focus her attention on someone other than William and all of the ways a person could be killed without arousing suspicion.

At the moment, she was leaning toward a dash of crushed hemlock in his coffee. From what she’d read, it was quite painful. Agonizing, even.

It sounded delightful.

“If you’re practicing anything, it should be your embroidery,” she told Jack. “A lady of good breeding is expected to be well versed in the art of embellishing a handkerchief, bonnet, or linen.”

Jack scuffed the soles of her new shoes along the polished hardwood floor as she sulked her way to the nearest chair and slumped into it. “My mum never told me who my father is and I don’t have a bonnet. Just my lucky hat.”

“Oh, I had that thrown out.”

“ Ye threw out my lucky hat? ”

“It stank to high heaven. Besides, girls do not wear hats, they wear bonnets. Or caps. Or turbans. Like this,” Kitty said, pointing at the fabric wound around the crown of her head and adorned with a trio of dyed ostrich feathers that waved back and forth as she went to the front window for the hundredth time and searched in vain for William’s carriage. A carriage that should have, per his letter, returned nearly eight hours ago. Now it was closer to dinner than breakfast, and her patience had officially reached its breaking point.

“That’s ugly,” Jack huffed from behind her. “I want my hat back.”

“I am sorry to say that’s not possible.” And neither , she added silently, is the timely return of my husband.

Why did he bother telling her that he was leaving at all? To pretend that he cared? For what purpose? He didn’t love her. She sincerely doubted he ever had. Love—true love, lasting love—wasn’t supposed to hurt this much. It shouldn’t have hurt at all.

But it did.

It was a large, constant, gaping hole inside of her that she couldn’t fill. No matter how many useless pieces of jewelry she bought. No matter how many times she was introduced as the Countess of Radcliffe. No matter how many houses she could call her own. How painfully ironic that she had everything she’d ever wanted... yet the one thing that she’d never claimed to want—her husband’s love—was what she secretly yearned for most of all.

The bastard.

Hemlock was too good for him, she decided, drumming her fingers on the sill. Yes, death by a poisonous plant was a dreadful way to go. One moment you were enjoying your coffee and the next foam was dribbling out your mouth. Terrible, terrible. But it was too quick for her liking. If William was going to die, then she wanted him to suffer as she had suffered these past seven months.

Seven months spent being married to a husband who was in love with another woman.

“We’re going out,” she said abruptly, spinning away from the window with such force that her turban nearly came dislodged.

“Don’t want to go anywhere without my lucky hat,” Jack grumbled.

“That’s unfortunate, because we’re leaving. Now ,” she emphasized when her recalcitrant charge didn’t move. Ungrateful child. If she’d displayed even an ounce of hesitation when her father gave her a direct order, she would have earned a slap upside the head for her trouble. Just thinking about it made her skull throb. Which was why she generally didn’t. Think about it, that was.

All the slaps.

The hits.

Even a punch if Eriam Holden had been in a particularly foul mood.

It got worse, a hundred times worse, after Mara married her duke and fled the nest. With no older sister to take the blows, Kitty had endured them all herself. She’d courted William whilst hiding bruises, disguising her shameful secret with long gloves and pretty shawls, teetering between a future ripe with possibility and a present infested with rot.

Then along came Lady Alessandra Mountbatten, the woman William had been betrothed to.

The woman William had conveniently forgotten to tell her about.

The woman who was the start of their ruin.

“Jack, get up ,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m not about to leave you in this house alone for you to steal all the silver.”

Jack rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t steal the silver. Too heavy. I’d start with your bracelets.”

Kitty’s hand clasped reflexively around the circle of pearls she wore on her left wrist. “And that’s precisely why you’re coming with me.”

“Where are we going, anyway?” Jack asked as she trailed behind Kitty into the foyer. Golden sunlight streamed in through the windows on either side of the front door, dust dancing in the early evening glow. Accepting an emerald-green spencer jacket held out to her by an attentive maid, Kitty made fast work of the gold buttons lining the front of the bodice.

“To visit my sister,” she said grimly. “The Duchess of Southwick.”

*

In a stopped carriage a mile outside London’s muddy streets and skies filled with coal ash, William inwardly braced himself for what was to come. He could have ordered his driver to turn around and leave. It wasn’t too late, and no one would think poorly of him, because no one knew that he was here.

But he knew.

He knew all of the wrongs he had committed.

He knew all of the sins he would have to answer for when his judgment came.

And he knew that daffodils laid to rest on a grave was a pitiful substitute for life, but it was all he had left to offer the woman that he’d killed.

Tightly clutching the bouquet of flowers he had bought from a street vendor for two farthings, he climbed stiffly down from the carriage, gave the driver a curt directive to wait, and proceeded through the rusty front gate of a small cemetery.

Misshapen fieldstones stuck up through the earth in crooked rows. The last remaining testaments to people that time and the living’s memory had abandoned long ago. Some of the markers had names and dates, but most were worn smooth by the elements, a blank canvas of anonymity guarding a pile of decaying bones.

William went to the left, following the path of his own footsteps from when last he’d visited this sad, sorry little plot of land set back amidst rolling fields and country cottages. A breeze in from the east, blowing the long grasses and stringy weeds that had claimed the cemetery as their own. There was only one headstone that was not partially overgrown. Tall and straight, it stood slightly away from the rest. Guilt, as familiar as it was bitter tasting, lodged itself in his throat as he knelt down and read the letters engraved across the fieldstone that he’d ordered the mason to polish smooth before carving his betrothed’s name upon it.

Alessandra Louisa Mountbatten

April 29, 1792

September 05, 1811

Much beloved daughter

A shoot of milk thistle was beginning to grow in front of the gravestone. He yanked it out without mercy, ignored the twinge of pain when a thorn pierced his glove, and tossed it aside. Blood welled on the pad of his thumb, seeping through the leather, and that, too, was ignored. What was a drop of red when he’d found Alessandra in an ocean of it?

Stop , he ordered himself, as he’d already learned the hard way that thinking of that night did nothing but bring on more guilt. For what he hadn’t done. For the one he hadn’t saved. For why he hadn’t been there.

It was Alessandra’s birthday. There was no need to dwell on her death. That would come in September, when the leaves began to change and the wind whipped cold over the gravestones. Today, as penance for what he’d done, he would torture himself with the memory of how she had lived. Or at least, the time during which he had known her.

Alessandra’s grandfather, now deceased, had been a close friend of his grandfather, and long before she or William were ever born, the two men had conspired to join their families through marriage.

It should have been a simple enough affair. Lord Mountbatten had a daughter, and the Duke of Cumberland had a son. Two sons, really, except his direct heir was the only one he cared about. But then on the eve of the wedding, the Mountbatten heiress ran away with an actor, much to the general annoyance of Cumberland and the embarrassment of Mountbatten. The matter was never discussed again... until the heiress unexpectedly returned, sixteen years later, with a daughter of her own.

So their plan was revived and the daughter was promptly betrothed to be married to William’s uncle, as her mother had been before her, on the day she came of age. William’s uncle, who had always been more interested in racing and gambling than finding a bride, didn’t care enough to object, but right before they were finally to be wed, his uncle died. With William’s father already married, the only male heir Cumberland now had left to offer was his grandson. So the plan shifted again.

At first, William was resistant to the idea of marrying a woman he knew nothing about. A woman who had been promised to his uncle, until a short while ago. But unlike his father, he took his duty as heir to a dukedom quite seriously. Having failed to win the approval of his parents—you couldn’t win what was never offered—he was loathe to disappoint his grandfather. And so he agreed, with stoic reluctance, to marry Lady Alessandra Mountbatten.

A meeting was promptly arranged. In private, of course, as Alessandra was still officially in mourning for her dead fiancé, his uncle. The irony of which was not lost on William as he’d been ushered into the Mountbatten drawing room and was formally introduced to his new betrothed.

His first impression of his bride-to-be was not a necessarily favorable one.

Cloaked in black from head to toe, Lady Alessandra had appeared more like a pale wraith than a blushing bride as she’d curtsied before him. In spite of her undeniable physical beauty—ebony hair, delicate features, blue doe eyes behind a veil of wispy obsidian—there was a certain hollow quality about her. A brittleness that extended beyond grief.

When their gazes met, he found hers to be flat and discomfortingly empty. And while he hadn’t expected love at first sight (such a foolish notion was reserved for the pages of Byron and Shakespeare), he found himself searching for some kind of a connection as they took a turn around the room while their grandfathers watched from a distance. A mutual agreeableness, if nothing else. Except there was nothing agreeable to be seen in the wan, apathetic creature clinging listlessly to his arm.

Still, he understood duty.

The weight of it.

The burden.

His ancestors had fought bloody battles to win the lands that his family now took for granted. If they could do that, then surely he could marry a pretty young woman and produce a male heir. Besides, was it truly any great surprise that Alessandra was behaving in such a way? The poor thing had been betrothed to a man twice her age and was now promised to a total stranger, shifted from one lord to another like a piece of common chattel.

Never mind the rumors that the Mountbattens were... odd.

Or that Alessandra’s mother was said to have taken her own life.

If the Duke of Cumberland found her suitable enough to marry his only grandson, then she was suitable. That was that.

As they passed by a wall of books, William asked if he could fetch her a glass of lemonade. On either side of the towering shelves, sash windows guarded against a wet, dreary day while inside the drawing room a roaring fire caused an uncomfortable trickle of sweat to drip between the blades of his shoulders. His cravat felt unnaturally tight, and the toes of his boots pinched; tiny discomforts magnified a thousandfold by the tension that hung in the air, heavy and sickly sweet.

“No, thank you,” Alessandra replied, her voice as feeble and listless as the rest of her. “I am not thirsty. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to sit for a while. I did not sleep well, and I find myself on the brink of exhaustion.”

William didn’t doubt it. His future wife—how strange, to think of her that way... to think of any woman that way after having been thoroughly enjoying the life of bachelor until a week ago—appeared to be one breath away from collapsing in a heap of black muslin. He carefully guided her over to a matching set of armchairs upholstered in garish pink velvet and, resisting the urge to glance at the longcase clock in the corner, sat down across from her.

“How are you finding the weather?” he asked after a moment of silence that threatened to stretch into an eternity. A servant materialized with a pitcher of lemonade and while Alessandra once again declined, he nodded to indicate he’d like a drink. Preferably a drink far stronger than water and lemons, but there would be time for brandy later. Now, he had a fiancée to get to know.

Women were not foreign concepts to him. As a healthy, handsome, virile man with a title attached to his name, he’d never been short of feminine attention. But any previous relationships he’d had were solely of a sexual nature, one-night affairs that had ended in the morning or mistresses that had lasted the course of a few months. Aside from instructing his valet on where to deliver jewelry, communication hadn’t been a concept worth exploring. But a wife was different. A wife was a permanent fixture. Someone around whom he would plan his life. Someone who would become the mother of his children.

Except as he contemplated Alessandra, slouched in her seat staring aimlessly at the ceiling, he wondered if he’d trust her to raise a pet goldfish, let alone a baby.

“My lady... Alessandra...” He waited for her to look at him. “I understand that this must be a difficult transition for you. Having expected to marry my uncle, and then finding yourself engaged to me. But I shall endeavor to be a good husband to you. You needn’t worry on that account.”

“Worry?” Her fingers stopped tapping. “Oh, I’m not worried, Lord Radcliffe. I am ecstatic.”

He frowned, taken aback. “You are?”

“Yes. Yes, yes.” Her eyes took on an unnatural, eerie glint. Like a film of brackish water over a flat pond. “I dreamt of you, Lord Radcliffe. We were dancing. Dancing. Dancing. ”

From the corner of his eye, William saw Mountbatten rise from his chair. “Alessandra,” he began, lines of concern bracketing the corners of his mouth. “Alessandra—”

“Dancing,” she continued, mumbling the word like a chant as she spilled clumsily to her feet and began to turn in a circle. “Dancing. Dancing . DANCING!”

“My dear, that is enough,” Mountbatten said sharply.

“Dancing. We were dancing. Dancing—”

“ Enough. ” He grabbed his granddaughter’s wrist and yanked her arm down. Alessandra shrieked and William winced, as the pitch of her voice seemed high enough to shatter his glass of lemonade.

“Grandfather?” She stopped all movement all at once; a marionette whose strings had been cut. “When did you get here?”

Mountbatten whispered something unintelligible in her ear that caused her eyes to widen and her lips to part. She glanced past her father at William, smiled, and then without another word turned on her heel and flounced out of the room.

“You’ll have to excuse my granddaughter,” said Mountbatten. “On occasion, she is prone to airs of... excess. A trait she inherited from her mother, I’m afraid. Think nothing of it.”

Over the course of the next few weeks, Alessandra’s behavior—her “airs of excess”—became increasingly erratic. During a walk around the garden, she threw herself on the ground and refused to move unless William made the sun disappear, a feat he managed by draping his coat over her head and ushering her inside where she demanded all of the curtains be drawn.

On a short ride through the park, she went into a panic and claimed the horses were dragons. Had William not stopped her, she would have opened the door and jumped out, seriously injuring herself.

Then there were the five days that he could not pay her a visit at all, as she was stricken by a mysterious illness that prevented her from summoning the energy to even get out of bed. In lieu of a visit, she sent him a letter, but the words were nonsensical and the sentences rambling.

Despite Mountbatten’s repeated claims to the contrary, it was clear that Alessandra was not only mentally unwell, but unfit for marriage. Her fits of hysteria followed by periods of severe catatonia made it impossible for William to conduct a normal courtship. But when he raised his concerns to his grandfather, he was brushed away.

“She’s a female,” said the duke. “Show me a completely sane female and I’ll buy you an oceanfront townhouse in the Austrian Empire. That’s just how they are, William. Best get used to it.”

For the sake of duty, William tried.

But for the sake of honor, he could not marry a woman whose mind was so obviously fractured.

On the eve of his wedding, he arranged for an audience with his grandfather. And while the Duke of Cumberland looked on with marked disapproval, he explained that he and Alessandra would not be wed, but neither would he end the engagement, which would merely free Mountbatten to foist his granddaughter off on another unsuspecting lord, one who perhaps wouldn’t take her well-being into consideration. Instead, he was taking her to a private estate in the country. An estate with caretakers and doctors that discreetly watched over the troubled offspring of well-to-do families.

It wasn’t an asylum—he would never commit Alessandra to such a horrid place. But it was a home where she could rest, and hopefully get better, and not have to worry that her maidenhood would be traded away in a contract that would never serve her best interests.

“Mountbatten will be furious,” said the duke. “This will be the end of a decades-long friendship. You’ve disappointed me, William.”

“And I’m sorry for that,” he acknowledged stiffly. “But I would be sorrier if I went through with a farce of a marriage to a woman incapable of comprehending the vows she was committing herself to. Lady Alessandra doesn’t know what season it is on any given day. You know that as well as Mountbatten. And you had to have known that when she was betrothed to my uncle. So I, too, find myself disappointed. In the man that I thought you were and the grandfather I have spent my life idolizing.”

The next morning, he accompanied Alessandra to Kilmister Park. She hummed to herself for the entirety of the five-hour carriage ride, and when it was time to disembark, she stunned him by leaning forward, pressing her mouth close to his ear, and whispering, “Thank you.”

She was still humming when two nursemaids dressed in white ushered her inside.

“You’ll receive a letter once per month with a report on her progress.” The lead doctor, a tall, serious man by the name of Dr. Bainbridge, clasped William’s hand in a firm shake. “I make no promises in cases such as these. When the ailment is inherited, as this appears to be, we’re often left to manage the patient as best we can with no assurances of improvement. But I can assure you that Lady Alessandra will be comfortable here, and she will be safe. You may visit whenever you wish, day or night, to see for yourself. While patients are not permitted to leave without prior approval, visitors may come and go as they please.”

“I don’t want her to be subjected to any painful treatments.”

The doctor’s mouth thinned beneath the waxed bridge of his moustache. “I’ve long studied the effects of bloodletting, purgatives, and the like. The results are abhorrent and are the main reason why my colleague and I founded Kilmister Park. Our patients respond best to a calm routine, empathetic care, and therapies that range from music to art to gardening. Your betrothed will be looked after with the utmost respect and consideration for her delicate state.”

By all accounts, and as per the letters William received like clockwork at the end of each month, that was exactly what occurred. Once he was satisfied that Alessandra was settled into her new surroundings, he left London for Boston on a nine-month business venture that took him away from Mountbatten, away from the duke, away from his father, and away from any gossip. When he returned, he went first to visit Alessandra and found her to be in remarkably good health... with absolutely no memory of who he was.

“I like it here,” she told him, striking the ground with her bare foot to propel her swing higher. They were outside in the garden, where the nursemaids told her that Alessandra preferred to spend most of her afternoons. “The people are very nice, and the food is delicious. Especially the rose water macaroons. Rose. Toes.” Giggling, she swiveled her ankle. “Snows. Foes. El bows ...”

She was still rhyming when William took his leave. He’d have liked to retreat to Radcliffe Park, his newly inherited 200-acre estate in Hampshire, but a fresh London Season was calling, and as the Earl of Radcliffe, he was obligated to answer. After so much turmoil—his uncle’s unexpected death coupled with his father’s inheritance and subsequent gambling debts—the Colborne family needed a responsible representative.

Thankfully, the ton was unaware of his and Alessandra’s betrothment. It was assumed she’d gone on extended holiday to mourn the death of the late Marquess of Kentwood and no one in either family had seen fit to disabuse the gossip mongers of their speculation, as it was better for them to think that than to suspect the truth: Alessandra was as mad as her mother and the new Earl of Radcliffe had placed her in a manor for the mentally unwell.

Thus, he presented himself at the fourth ball of the Season as if nothing were amiss, strolling through the perfumed masses and sipping weak champagne as if he were just like any other bachelor in attendance. He warded off mothers keen to foist their daughters upon him whilst catching up with a few male acquaintances and accepted condolences for the passing of his uncle with a nod. Those prying for more information were subsequently ignored.

When the hour struck midnight, he was already looking for the nearest exit. But then, by pure, absolute happenstance, he cast his gaze across the ballroom... and he saw her.

A blonde vision in blue.

Their eyes met through the crowd, and in the time it took him to blindly set his champagne flute on a passing tray and make his way to her, William was captivated in a way he’d never been before. Not only interested, but enthralled . By her face. By her scent. By the way she purposefully flashed her ankle at him when she dropped into a curtsy. By the throaty vibration of her voice as she offered him her hand and then her name.

“Lady Katherine Holden.”

Three words, six syllables, and his life, as he’d known it before, as he knew it then, as he would know it to come, was irrevocably changed.

“I am sorry, Alessandra.” More milk thistle, spiny and sharp, stabbed William’s knees as he knelt and laid his bouquet of daffodils in front of her grave. If he’d loved her more, if he’d loved Kitty less, then maybe, just maybe... but no. That was an impossibility not worth dwelling on, as his love for his wife—as twisted and knotted up as it was—far exceeded whatever pitying affection he’d ever felt for his fiancée.

Still, the guilt remained, gnawing into his marrow with slicing little teeth, constantly reminding him of his failures.

As a grandson.

As a protector.

As a husband.

Setting his jaw, he rose to his feet and went to his carriage.

“To Mayfair, my lord?” asked the driver.

“Yes,” he said curtly. “To Mayfair.”

To home... and to a reckoning seven months in the making.