Chapter Seventeen
T essa paused once more in her pacing across the drawing room to glance out the window of Lord Bentley’s townhouse at the wide avenue below. Her heart fell.
There was no sign of Chase.
The longcase clock on the stair landing chimed out eleven. Most of the morning was already gone, yet he hadn’t arrived as she’d expected.
“Where are you, you frustrating man?” she ground out, casting one more glance up and down the street as far as she could see, then turned away from the window on a harsh exhalation, to return to pacing.
Only pacing was working to burn off her nervous energy and frustration. She’d long ago given up on reading and embroidery, her unwanted book left open on the card table and her needlework a discarded mess of knots on the floor beside the chair. Even the small tea tray that Cook had sent up after Tessa had failed to touch a bite at breakfast, with its pretty little lavender shortbread biscuits and lemon cakes, sat untouched on the tea table.
She bit her bottom lip. He should have been here by now to apologize for what happened last night in the carriage. After all, he was a gentleman, no matter how irredeemable he claimed his soul had become. She knew better. He might be a bit rough on the outside, caring as little for niceties and propriety as he ever had, but she had glimpsed his vulnerabilities and knew his soul wasn’t black.
“Just a bit tarnished,” she muttered.
But a polishing would start with his apology and her forgiveness.
She’d already planned out the conversation she wanted to have with him. How could she not, given that she hadn’t slept a wink last night? After fleeing back into the ball, relieved to not see Robert anywhere in the crush—because she couldn’t have borne pretending she was happy to see him—she’d convinced Lady Bentley that she had a terrible headache and needed to leave. Immediately. She’d been easily believed, but then, her distraught expression and tear-filled eyes had been real. So Lady Bentley sent her explanation and apologies to Renslow via a footman and escorted her home, where Tessa promptly fell into her bed. Oh, eventually, she cried herself to sleep, but she didn’t know if it was from Chase’s rejection or her anger at herself for wanting him.
She’d planned the meeting all very carefully. When he arrived to ask her forgiveness—because he was still a gentleman, after all—she would pretend she couldn’t care less if he were there or not, that last night had meant nothing to her. Nothing? La! It had been the most thrilling evening of her life, with every inch of her feeling alive and electrified. But she’d die before she let Chase know how he’d made her feel, that she’d felt beautiful when she was in his arms, that she’d felt wanted… truly wanted for the first time in her life.
Instead, she planned to be as apathetic as possible, then coldly rebuke him for daring to think she cared about what had happened. If he apologized, she’d refuse to accept it—at first—to make him curse and cry.
Well, perhaps not cry , exactly. He’d been a soldier, after all, and soldiers never cried. But she’d make him feel remorseful, certainly, and shame him into remaining in England, if not into loving her.
Loving her… That was the worst of all. Because she knew she loved him. Most likely she always had, since the day they’d met. Just as she knew there was no help for it because Chase would never let himself love her in return.
A knock came at the door.
Tessa caught her breath and wheeled around so fast she startled the footman. “Yes?”
“You have a visitor, Miss. I’ve—”
“Show him in,” she ordered breathlessly. “Please.” And with that, went all hope of playing the conversation cool and controlled. Blast it.
The footman gave her a deferential bow and disappeared back into the hallway. Tessa didn’t move except to wring her hands in front of her as she stared at the doorway. Oh, dear God, he’d arrived…
A minute later, the footman reappeared at the door and gave a half-bow as he announced, “Mr. Robert Renslow.”
Her shoulders fell. So did her heart. The man who strode so confidently into the room, with a beaming smile for her, wasn’t at all the one she wanted.
“Darling.” Robert hurried across the room to her, not noticing the way she stiffened when he squeezed her hands. “I’ve come with wonderful news.”
She couldn’t bear hearing his good news about some improvement or expansion at his factory, the kind of news he’d always shared with her in the past. Never about his family or friends, never about any kind of charity work—never about anything that truly mattered.
So she pulled her hands away and reached for the shawl she’d tossed over the settee back, feeling suddenly cold. “And here I thought you’d come to find out why I left the ball last night.” She wrapped the shawl over her shoulders. “And if I were all right this morning.”
“I know why you left the party. I received Lady Bentley’s note.” With a frown, he reached down to pick up her needlework and set it on the tea table. “You had a terrible headache, and given the noise and heat of that crush, I don’t blame you. You were in the retiring room attempting to tough it out, then in the gardens trying to take fresh air for—what?—an hour before you had no choice but to leave.”
She dropped her gaze to the rug and mumbled, “Something like that.”
“As for being all right this morning”—he returned to her and leaned down to place a kiss to her forehead—“you must be feeling better, or you wouldn’t have told the footman that you were accepting visitors.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “And how happy I am that you were waiting for me.”
Guilt pricked the backs of her knees.
“I was greatly disappointed not to be able to escort you home, I’ll admit, and finish the evening as planned. But it all worked out well.” His eyes gleamed. “If a bit delayed.”
That was an odd comment. “What do you mean?”
“My news.” With open excitement, he took her arm and led her to the sofa, then helped lower her to the cushions. He sat next to her and took her hands in his. “Last evening, at the ball, I asked Greysmere for permission to marry you.”
Tessa held her breath.
Misreading her reaction as worry, he squeezed her fingers. “He gave us his blessing.”
Thank God she was sitting down, or she would have fallen to the floor. “His…blessing?” Her mind reeled with confusion, and rejection tightened her chest so hard that it hurt to breathe.
“I had wanted to propose to you last night after I’d escorted you home, but you left before I had the chance to speak to him. But all that matters now is that Greysmere gave his blessing.”
She pulled her hands away as the implication of his words hit her like a slap. “You spoke to him after I’d left?” After she’d disappeared from the party…after Chase had held her and caressed her in the carriage. After he’d broken her heart. Although from the way her chest ached with brutal pain, perhaps he’d left just enough of it intact to finish the job this morning.
“It was a hard-fought negotiation, I’ll admit.” A look of self-pride glowed on his face as he leaned back against the sofa. “But I’m a keen businessman, and in the end, I persuaded him.” He gave a low chuckle. “If we acquire a special license and marry quickly, I’m certain he’ll even walk you down the aisle before he leaves England.”
Hell. Her wedding day would be an absolute hell…being handed off to marry a man she didn’t love by the only man she suspected she ever would.
Yet something wasn’t at all right about what Robert was telling her. “I need to speak to Chase directly about this.” She pushed herself to her feet and hurried to the window to cast another desperate look down on the avenue, hoping beyond hope for any sign of him. Nothing.
Robert slowly rose from the sofa. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to marry me.”
Guilt consumed her as she turned to face him. “I do . I just…” Her voice trailed off, unable to find the right words to explain the roiling emotions warring inside her. Her shoulders slumped. “I just know Chase too well, and he isn’t the kind of man to stand on such old-fashioned traditions as granting permissions for marriage, certainly not without discussing it with me first.”
“Perhaps because he knew how happy it would make you and so had no reason to consult with you.”
Or because he wanted to make his rejection of her so thorough that it would cauterize her heart against ever wanting him again. The thought was jarring…and not beyond what Chase might do in a misguided attempt to protect her from himself.
She shook her head and blinked hard to fight back the threatening tears. “I want to hear him give his blessing in person.” No, she needed to hear him say it, so he could do exactly as he’d planned and shatter her heart so completely that it would never love him again. “I expect him to call on me today. He can tell me then.” She swallowed hard to clear the knot from her throat. “And then you and I can start planning our wedding.”
“Greysmere won’t be visiting you today,” Robert corrected. “He’s gone to Salterton.”
She cocked her head, confused, certain she’d misheard. Salterton was a little fishing village of not more than two hundred people located about a day’s ride further west along the coast. Not at all the kind of place a man like Chase would willingly go, even if he wanted to avoid her. “Why would he go there?”
“Because I sent him.”
“Pardon?”
“My negotiations, remember?” He helped himself to one of the shortbread biscuits on her tea tray. “At first, Greysmere was reluctant to give his permission. I think he was concerned about your lack of dowry and my unwillingness to provide a sizeable dower because of it.”
No. Chase had never cared about money. That, too, struck her as wrong.
“But then I played my ace.” He smiled around the bite of shortbread and said between chews, “His dead duchess.”
Tessa felt her blood turn to ice, certain her face had paled.
“I had suspected I’d need leverage for negotiating the marriage contract with Greysmere. So after you told me about what happened to his wife and child, how their bodies were never found, I hired a former Bow Street man to investigate.” He popped the rest of the biscuit into his mouth and mumbled, “Had him search along the coast all the way from Torquay to Eastbourne for any reports of unidentified bodies from the storm three years ago. It seems that drowned bodies washing ashore is a common occurrence along that stretch of the coast, so much so that many are just put into unmarked graves in the corner of some country churchyard by whatever local vicar is willing to hold a funeral without compensation.” He flicked the crumbs off his fingers. “I told the runner to search for information regarding any young women or boys who matched the descriptions I gave him.” He returned to the tea tray as if to reward himself for his thoughtfulness by selecting a tiny cake. “Surprised the deuces out of me when he actually found one.”
Tessa pressed her clenched fist against her chest to force her heart to keep beating.
“A woman washed ashore on Sandy Beach just after the shipwreck.” He took a testing bite of the cake. “Your age, your size, but with blonde hair… They took her to Salterton and buried her.” He made a face and set the rest of the cake down, then wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Of course, my investigator couldn’t be one hundred percent certain. Only Greysmere can confirm the details, which is why he immediately left the ball after I spoke with him, and then, I assume, from Cuillin at first light this morning. But the information was enough to convince him to accept my proposal to you.”
“You… bribed him?” Her voice was little more than a hoarse rasp.
“Leveraged my position,” he corrected smugly and reached for another biscuit. “He had something I wanted, and I had something he wanted. It was a simple trade.”
Oh, dear God—she was going to be sick! “I can’t believe you did that,” she whispered, barely louder than a breath. “How could you do something so thoughtless?”
“Thoughtless?” He halted in mid-reach. “I knew the man would want to know that his wife’s body was found so he could give her a proper burial in the family churchyard. I thought it would put his mind at ease.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know that he was very eager to receive the information.” He dropped the biscuit back onto its plate, now unwanted, and faced her. “I did it because I want to marry you, and I knew that information would keep him from interfering in our marriage by distracting him.”
The cruelty of what Robert was suggesting stunned her. “Chase would never interfere.” Although, even as she said that, she desperately wanted him to.
“For God’s sake, Tessa! He’s already tried to. When I first asked him last night, he refused permission.” Robert scowled. “Said he would forbid our marriage, in fact.”
Her foolish heart skipped with hope. “He did?”
“He probably thinks I’m not good enough for you,” he grumbled.
Robert knew nothing at all about Chase to assume such a thing. What Chase cared about was protecting her, the way he’d failed to protect Eleanor and Thomas. Including from men who didn’t love her.
“But what I cannot understand are your hesitations. You’ll not find a better match for a husband than me. That’s not bragging. That’s simply a fact, and we both know it.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if addressing a misbehaving child. “So you have to decide what you want, Tessa—to become my wife, or to become a spinster.”
In the silence that followed, she could hear the pounding beat of her heart tick off the seconds with him…the interminable seconds that would eventually lead to minutes, then hours, then days, and years. She had a fleeting vision of the rest of her life as his wife in year after loveless year, piling into themselves like Russian nesting dolls.
“I’m so sorry, Robert,” she whispered. “It was never my intention to wound you or mislead you, and I know that marriage to you is more than I should hope for, given my position. You are a good and kind man, truly, even if your intentions are misplaced.” Her vision blurred from hot tears. “But I think…I’d rather be a spinster.”