Chapter Five
Bloomsbury, London
Half-past one in the morning
Mark stared at Stella, barely curtailing the rage that threatened to swamp him like a rogue wave. “Are you mad? Have you completely lost all your senses? Shropshire? Why would you even consider him?”
“He’s a duke!”
“He has the pox!”
The red flush that had colored Stella’s face since he had barged into her bedchamber drained away like the first pint of a drunkard. Wide eyes and a gaping mouth stared back at him. “How was I to know?”
Mark jerked an arm toward the door. “You might have asked your maid, since everyone but you in this bloody town knows it! Or actually looked at the cock he fucked you with!” His fury made his arm shake and he dropped it to his side as he took two more steps toward her.
With a yelp, Stella backed away, stumbling over the stool at her dressing table and thudding to the floor, landing on her backside. “Don’t hit me!”
Mark smeared both hands over his face, then through his hair, trying desperately to tamp down the fury that had consumed him since he had seen Shropshire—a duke in title only since the man had lost all his worldly goods at the tables—saunter into Stella’s backstage dressing room and later out the front door of this house.
His house. Mark steeled himself, forcing his voice calm.
“I have never and would never hit you. But you . . . you have no idea what kind of damage you may have wreaked. Now get up off the floor and explain yourself. Start with how long you have been fucking the man.”
Stella scrambled to her feet, clutching her dressing gown around her body.
She sidled toward the bed, bracing herself against one of the posts of the headboard.
“Two”—she swallowed hard—“two weeks.” She blinked rapidly, then muttered, “Three. Maybe three.” She held up a hand in protest before he could reply.
“But he went to Mrs. Phillips’s Warehouse.
We used a sheath. French letters. Just like you and I do.
I swear to you!” She curled her arm against her chest, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I swear!”
Mark squeezed his eyes shut. “You addle-pated ninny, those barely stop a baby, and sometimes, clearly, not always that.” He glared at her again. “Is he the only one?”
She chewed her lower lip.
So. No.
I have been an absolute fool.
He rolled his shoulders as he looked around the room.
Mark had spent so many delightful hours here, reveling in Stella’s charms, basking in the idea that he had found a safe—“You had better pray you have not given me this. Better yet, you had better pray he did not give it to you. It is a truly awful way to die.”
“How do you know—”
“I have been at war, woman!” He stopped, pulling in deep breaths, trying to rein in sudden, unexpected memories that flooded his mind, streaming out of his fury.
He clenched his fists at his side, his voice low.
“I have seen horrors not even people in the Rookeries have known. You cannot conceive of the destruction, the pain . . .”
He thought it impossible, but Stella paled even more. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
He shook his head, still stunned by what had happened. “Well, I will not be in your bed ever again. And you should prepare to not be in this house any longer.”
She stiffened. “You are evicting me?”
“I have no choice. It is my house, and you have made it notorious. Your dallying with Shropshire is already on the books at White’s.”
“It can’t be!”
“Oh, but it is, my dear. And we had an arrangement, which you have now forfeited. Go live with your mother or ask Shropshire for a set of rooms—oh, that’s right, he has no money.
You certainly chose wisely.” Mark despised the cruelty in his voice, but he could not fight both his anger and the deep betrayal he felt.
Or the loss of the misguided trust he had placed in this woman over the years.
The mother of his child.
His throat closed, and he coughed, fighting to regain his breath.
Stella stepped forward. “What do you mean, no money? He’s a duke!”
Mark almost laughed at her naiveté, something he would not have thought of her.
“He is also an inveterate gambler. He lost most of the title’s wealth five years ago and has been selling the properties since.
He has a bare set of rooms not far from here and a seat in Parliament due to his title.
No heirs. The title will revert to the crown when he dies.
Which will be not too long from now, if the rumors are true. ”
She sank down on the bed. “What have I done?”
Mark sighed. “You have been as big a fool as I have.”
Stella looked up at him, eyes pleading. “Olivia . . .”
“I will take care of Olivia. And your mother, if she gets ill again. I meant it when I said you might go live with her, because at least then there will be some money, along with your wages. But our association is ended. I will give you until the end of the month to vacate this house.”
“I do not think I can live with my mother. She does not know about”—she waved a hand around the room—“this.”
“Then do what you can. But I can be no part of it.”
Her normal color returned, and she looked down at her hands, apparently resigned. “What will you do with the house?”
“I am not sure. Clean it. Rent it. Sell it. I will decide later.”
“The jewels?”
“They are yours to keep. They could help support you.”
“But my maid—”
“I will keep her on until I make a decision about the house. If the new tenant or owner does not need her services, I will provide a reference, so she does not have to say she worked for you unless she wishes to.”
Her voice turned bitter. “How thoughtful.”
Mark held his tongue. Stella could be as acrimonious as she wished, but they both knew she had created this drama, and he could have easily chucked them both out on the street this very day.
After a moment of silence, he gave a sharp nod.
“Very well. I will ask Matthew’s man of business to check in when you are gone. Goodbye, Stella.”
He turned and headed down the stairs, snatching his top hat from the table near the door and jamming it onto his head.
“Lord Mark?” The soft voice came from the doorway of the small parlor at the front of the house. He turned to see Stella’s maid, a wisp of a girl with brown curls peeking from beneath her cap. She clutched her hands over her stomach, fingers twisted in the cloth of her apron. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “Clara, is it?”
She bobbed her head.
“Do not fret. This will not be visited on you.”
She gave a long sigh, tears filling her eyes.
“Mark, please!” The wail echoed down the stairs and through the front hall. Clara winced.
Damn it, Stella.
“Take care of her,” he muttered to the maid, then he left, striding out the door and onto the pavement.
He made his steps as long and heavy as he could, his boots pounding the hard surface beneath them.
His anger, no longer a blasting flame, simmered deep within, a burning that drove him on.
His cloak swirled around him as he pushed through the fog moving in off the river, and his vision tunneled, his thoughts a chaotic miasma.
Even now he could be ill with the beginnings of the ton’s most dreaded illness.
Many of the elite men carried the scourge of syphilis, and his own brother had warned him when Mark’s internal terrors from the war had turned him from the gentlewomen who wanted him to spend the night to paid companions—and Stella.
Matthew had even reminded him of the adage so truthful in this age: “One night with Venus; a lifetime with Mercury.” But mercury, the supposed cure for the pox, often caused more damage than the disease.
In France, in the rural areas that never knew medical aid, he had seen what the pox did to people over the years, the horrors it wreaked on mind, body, and spirit. The agonizing deaths.
Why could you not have left well enough alone?
Blindly, Mark turned his steps away from Embleton House and toward Covent Garden.
He would never be able to sleep tonight, and this fury needed to be exorcised.
An obvious solution awaited, deep in the bowels of one of the worst parts of the city.
Gentility, nobility needed to give away tonight to the rawness of physicality.
The boxing ring called, as did the wagers circling it.
It would be a rough night.
*
Monday, 18 July 1814
Sculthorpe Manor
Half-past eight in the morning
Epworth looked at the lone stocking a long time, glancing between it and Judith. “You lost it? At the theater?” The disbelief in her voice spoke volumes and tweaked Judith’s lingering touch of guilt. Epworth knew she had not misplaced a stocking.
“I think I must have had too much ratafia.”
Epworth’s eyes narrowed, the sharp cockney coming out in her words. “You don’ like ratafia. Never touch the stuff.”
“Well, any port in a—oh, let us forget about the stocking.” She snatched the remaining one from Epworth and rolled it around one hand.
“It is gone and that is that. Let’s get me dressed.
I want to see my boys, then breakfast, and I need to be at the modiste’s by eleven.
I want to go to the park after luncheon. Is the countess awake?”
Epworth grinned, then motioned for Judith to sit at her dressing table. Judith tucked the stocking into one of the drawers as Epworth began to brush out her hair. “At half-past eight? Possibly but unlikely. Although his lordship did ask for breakfast to be on the sideboard by nine.”
Judith examined her nails for splits or cracks, then picked up a wooden tool from the table and began pushing back her cuticles.
“He probably has some sort of business to attend to. I heard our steward is coming in from the country house. Apparently, the crops are not faring well in this cooler weather.”