Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Head held high and shoulders back, Ariadne made her way across the bustling street. Three well-dressed young gentlemen stood outside the apothecary and glanced at her as she entered.
She felt their gaze sear over the back of her neck even after she closed the store door behind her. She dared not look behind her as she was well aware of why they stared so intently at her.
The rumors of her ruination by Lord Moreland had reached their pinnacle, and despite Ariadne desperately clinging to the hope that some other scandal would come along and the ton would put this behind them, the way the newspaper kept on at dragging her name through the mud, it was apparent they would not.
It seemed to grow worse with every passing day, and she could not wait to leave this town very soon. She approached the apothecary, who stood behind the large wooden counter, and smiled at him.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she greeted the man. “I need a bottle of laudanum, please.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” the clerk bowed.
The past few days had been ripping; the rumors were getting too much for her to stomach, and what pained her was that they were not rumors; they were the truth.
Who is spilling my secrets?
The bell on the door chimed as she stepped outside, and as she waited for the street to clear before she walked to the waiting carriage. She heard whispers.
“If Moreland tupped that, do you think anyone can?” One of them snickered.
“For shame, Westley,” another said. “You’ll have to ask the husband and the brother paramour for permission.”
“Is that the path to her underskirt?” the third guffawed, and Ariadne’s jaw dropped in shock at his vulgar words.
She crossed the street and headed into the carriage, trying to stifle the urge to scream and cry at the same time. She stepped inside and instantly shuttered the shades, then sunk to the squabs and clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a cry or utter pain.
While listening to the crude jokes about women the lords spurned while having the last meal inside the White Chamber, Cedric thought about the words Isolde had said, that men and women were treated very differently and unfairly so.
The more notches men collected on their bedpost, the better, but if a lady was caught passing a man she didn’t know on a public street unchaperoned, she was crucified.
“I have to say, you are a very lucky man, Your Grace,” Lord Steepleton said to Cedric.
He frowned, “What the devil are you talking about?”
Lord Steepleton’s lips curled. “I mean no offense. But you must be aware of the rumors of your brother and your wife, yes?”
“My private affairs are not to be discussed,” Cedric answered, his fingers tightening into fists.
“Perhaps not, but they are discussed,” Lord Steepleton pointed out. “Tell us, Your Grace, did your brother truly get to the goalpost before you?”
“This is not a suitable conversation,” Pollock interjected, his eyes narrowed. “Move on, Steepleton.”
“So, your brother did tup your wife before you,” Lord Steepleton suggested, his dark eyes sparkling with malice and sadism.
Cedric got up and circled his table, “I warn you, Steepleton…”
“Your threats may work on others, but they certainly don’t work on me, Cedric,” he said. “If I had known Lady Ariadne was such a light-skirt, I would have attempted to woo her myself. Perhaps I still can.”
Cedric’s blistering fist connected with an audible crack against the man’s jaw and flung Steepleton five feet into the tables behind him, crushing small tables and sending glasses shattering to the ground.
The lords shouted in shock, and a moment after, Steepleton’s cronies flocked around the fallen figure.
Flexing his stinging knuckles, Cedric calmly returned to his seat and his drink. He didn’t flinch when Steepleton got to his feet, and someone pressed a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.
“Bastaaaardd!!” Steepleton spat at Cedric while holding the bloodied cloth to his nose.
“I wanted you,” he replied. “You didn’t listen.”
“Come on, Steepleton,” one of the men glared at Cedric, “You need to see a physician.”
While the three men hustled the wounded lord out of the room, Pollock came to sit across Cedric, his lips tight in disapproval. “You know this will not help your case.”
“I do,” he said. “But I will not abide by anyone disrespecting my wife.”
Pouring out a drink, Pollock said, “I am not going to lie, Holloway, this does look bad. And paired with the rumors that still linger about your first wife, people will have a lot to say. Do you have a plan for fixing this?”
“Aside from finding the bastard who is behind running these scandal snippets and prosecuting the skin off his ass,” Cedric grunted.
“Not much. People are going to say what they want to say. They will still speculate that I had her killed, they will still deny that she had a mile of lovers, and they will disparage me for being too blinded by love to stop it.”
“Did you ever find out who that man she was about to run off with?”
Silently, Cedric shook his head. “And I may never well.”
A grandfather clock chimed ten at night, and Cedric realized he’d had enough; it was time for him to go home. He stood and collected his coat from the back of his chair and donned it. “It’s high time I go home.”
“Godspeed,” Pollock lifted his glass.
Entering his rooms at a touch beyond midnight, he peeled his jacket off, expecting to find Ariadne already asleep. Dropping the coat over the back of a chair, he looked over—and found the bed empty.
A quick look into her room, and he found that it was deserted as well. Frowning, he headed to her drawing room and spotted the bright light coming from under the door.
He knocked and pushed the door open to find her seated at her table, her eyes fixed on the newspaper before her. She cursed under her breath, as he knew what it said. How long had she been here?
“Ariadne—”
“Scandal erupts in Holloway Estate,” she read out tonelessly. “On the day of her wedding to Lord Moreland, she was jilted at the altar.
“Records from the lady’s father’s estate show a step over ruination, a bankrupt viscounty, and a viscount suddenly missing. As we know, the good lady was to marry Lord Moreland, a union that would pull her family out of destitution, vanished the moment the lord slipped away from the church.
“We can only assume that with the precarious situation the lady found herself in, the duke married her out of pity. Whatever the situation, the result is clear: the good lady’s name is now synonymous with ruin.”
Cedric strode over, took the paper, and ripped it in two before balling it and lobbing it into the fire. “To hell with what they say, Ariadne.”
She looked at him, her eyes covered with a sheen of unshed tears; she gazed up at him just as her chest began to heave. Circling the table, he plucked her from the chair and took her over to the loveseat.
A sickening feeling churned in his gut as he saw the bruising on his knuckles. He went to hide them, but before he could do anything, something warm trickled on the side of his neck. Another teardrop followed, landing between his collar and skin.
“Please don’t cry,” Cedric cupped her jaw with one hand, his thumbs wiping clumsily at her tears. “Damnit, I’m so sorry…”
It unleashed a tempest within her, and she began to weep. Surely had had a handkerchief somewhere and belatedly remembered that he had one in the jacket in the other room.
God, the tears seemed never-ending, her chest gulping for breath as her eyes and cheeks were flushed. There was nothing for him to do except to scoop her into his arms.
His embrace was too tight, the buttons of his waistcoat jamming into her cheek, but he stroked her back, murmuring bits of nonsense against her hair. When the tears subsided, he only felt her hot breath on his skin.
“The bounder behind these scandal sheets is not worth your tears,” he said. “Despite how it started, we’ve grown from that. You’re not only my wife in name, Ariadne. I love you,” he said.
The declaration halted her, and her head snapped up to him. “W—what?”
“I love you,” he admitted. “I love you so much that it terrifies me. I did not think I’d get to love anyone again, but I realized I never really knew what love was.”
“What do you mean?” She sat up and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Love shouldn’t feel like you’re an acrobat at Vauxhall walking on a tight rope blindfolded,” he said while softly rubbing circles on her back. “That’s how I felt in my first marriage. It’s not how I feel about you.”
“I never—” she bit her lip. “—I never thought I’d hear those words.”
“You don’t have to say th—”
“I love you too,” she said, then softly shook her head. “I am in love with you.”
He kissed her, just a simple lock of the lips, before he pulled away and asked, “Feeling better now?”
“Yes,” she said shyly. “Thank you.”
He reached out, brushing his knuckles against her cheek, his touch mesmerizingly sweet. “Let’s get some sleep.”
As they retreated to his bedchamber and he shucked off his clothes, slipping into between the sheets while Ariadne shed her robe and joined him in one of her soft, silky nightgowns. She was quiet and only watched as he settled on the pillow.
“Cedric…” Her voice was tremulous. “I think I need to go to my mother’s for a while. I think it's best that I leave London for a while until this scandal dies away.”
He’d never expected that, but he understood it. “Emily and I will miss you.”
She rested her head on his chest, “I’ll tell Emily goodbye in the morning and try to explain the situation. I don’t know what I’ll say yet, but I’ll find the words.”
Shifting, he reached for her face, but her eyes landed on his knuckles. He started to turn his hands over, to hide these deformities at least, but Ariadne grabbed hold of them.
He felt her slim fingers trace gently over the broken skin. “What happened here?”
“Pay it no mind. I heal quickly,” he said, still unable to meet her gaze.
Her fingers coasted over the bruises, while her eyes were down, “Do you—is it—”
“What do you want, Ariadne?” he growled. “Tell me.”
She wetted her lips. “I want you to make love to me before I go.”
His eyes darkened, his pupils edging out the light. His gaze dropped to her lips, and his throat worked. A magnetic force pulsed between them, his head lowering toward hers, and he slanted his lips over hers.
“You don’t have to ask me twice, sweetheart.” He murmured while he grasped the edge of her nightgown. “Tell me what you want?”
Ariadne stirred as weak dawn sunlight, cocooned in warmth, her cheek pressed against a hard chest. Cedric.
Leftover sensations of their slow, tender lovemaking last night still lingered in her body.
The pleasurable tenderness between her legs, the tender spots on her neck, and the slight burn of beard-abraded skin.
She was reluctant to move, and while she second-guessed her decision to leave the city, she knew it was the best thing to do then. She closed her eyes to soak up the small comforts she would soon leave behind her.
The easy surges of his breathing told her he was still asleep.
Even so, his arm kept her trapped against his side, and she snuggled in closer, taking the opportunity to admire him.
As her gaze roved over his powerful form, she recalled his tender concern for her last night, and her heart gave a silly hiccup.
A frantic knock came on the door, and she sat up while Cedric stirred. When the knocks persisted, she slipped out of bed and donned her robe to answer the door.
Mrs. Grimes was pale as death. “Your Grace, Emily is gone.”
Frowning, Ariadne asked. “Gone how?”
The governess swallowed, “She is nowhere in the house, her window is open, and her drawers look rifled through. I fear she’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” Cedric roared, and a chair clattered to the floor as he dragged his dressing gown off it and flung it on.
He blew past the governess and ran to Emily’s room with Ariadne a few steps behind him. He slammed the door in and looked around the room wildly, at the wide open windows and the fluttering curtains.
Spinning, he shouted for a footman, whom he ordered, “Get every spare hand and search every inch of this house and the grounds.” He ordered. To Mrs. Grimes, he asked. “Why did you think she had been taken?”
“We found both of her nursemaids drugged, Your Grace,” Mrs. Grimes said. “They are still unconscious .”
“Did you find a note?” Cedric demanded.
“No, sir,” the governess said.
Ariadne, however, found herself drifting around the room, numb on her feet. Who would have taken the poor girl? Why would they have taken Emily at all?
Her eyes landed on the book she had read from last night, a fairytale about a child princess taken from her home by fairies. A piece of paper was sticking out from the middle of it.
Opening the book and keeping the place, she looked down at the note, written in slashing black hand.
Send your wife for your daughter. The Southwark Cemetery, midnight. Two days’ time. She must come alone; if I see one policeman, the bastard child dies.
“Cedric,” her voice was faint and weak as she handed the note over. “She really is taken.”
He started at the note long enough that Ariadne got worried for another reason. She rested a hand on his arm. “Cedric? What is it?
He swallowed. “Southwark Cemetery.” His tone was hoarse.
“What of it?”
His eyes were pained. “That is where Helena is buried.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Why—why would he ask me to meet him?”
Cedric clenched the note in a tight fist. “To make sure I lose everything I love.”