“Get any nearer to me.”
She stopped cold, her mind registering the physical threat in his voice, refusing to believe it, her gaze searching his granite features.
“Ian,” she began, stretching her hand out in a gesture of mute appeal, then letting it fall to her side when her beseeching move got nothing from him but a blast of contempt from his eyes. “I realize,” she began again, her voice trembling with emotion while she tried to think how to begin to diffuse his wrath, “that you must despise me for what I’ve done.”
“You’re right.”
“But,” Elizabeth continued bravely, “I am prepared to do anything, anything to try to atone for it. No matter how it must seem to you now, I never stopped loving—”
His voice cracked like a whiplash. “Shut up!”
“No, you have to listen to me,” she said, speaking more quickly now, driven by panic and an awful sense of foreboding that nothing she could do or say would ever make him soften. “I never stopped loving you, even when I—”
“I’m warning you, Elizabeth,” he said in a murderous voice, “shut up and get out! Get out of my house and out of my life!”
“Is—is it Robert? I mean, do you not believe Robert was the man I was with?”
“I don’t give a damn who the son of a bitch was.”
Elizabeth began to quake in genuine terror, because he meant that—she could see that he did. “It was Robert, exactly as I said,” she continued haltingly. “I can prove it to you beyond any doubt, if you’ll let me.”
He laughed at that, a short, strangled laugh that was more deadly and final than his anger had been. “Elizabeth, I wouldn’t believe you if I’d seen you with him. Am I making myself clear? You are a consummate liar and a magnificent actress.”
“If you’re saying that be-because of the foolish things I said in the witness box, you s-surely must know why I did it.”
His contemptuous gaze raked her. “Of course I know why you did it! It was a means to an end—the same reason you’ve had for everything you do. You’d sleep with a snake if it gave you a means to an end.”
“Why are you saying this?” she cried.
“Because on the same day your investigator told you I was responsible for your brother’s disappearance, you stood beside me in a goddamned church and vowed to love me unto death! You were willing to marry a man you believed could be a murderer, to sleep with a murderer.”
“You don’t believe that! I can prove it somehow—I know I can, if you’ll just give me a chance—”
“No.”
“Ian—”
“I don’t want proof.”
“I love you,” she said brokenly.
“I don’t want your ‘love,’ and I don’t want you. Now—” He glanced up when Dolton knocked on the door.
“Mr. Larimore is here, my lord.”
“Tell him I’ll be with him directly,” Ian announced, and Elizabeth gaped at him. “You—you’re going to have a business meeting now?”
“Not exactly, my love. I’ve sent for Larimore for a different reason this time.”
Nameless fright quaked down Elizabeth’s spine at his tone. “What—what other reason would you have for summoning a solicitor at a time like this?”
“I’m starting divorce proceedings, Elizabeth.”
“You’re what?” she breathed, and she felt the room whirl. “On what grounds—my stupidity?”
“Desertion,” he bit out.
At that moment Elizabeth would have said or done anything to reach him. She could not believe, actually could not comprehend that the tender, passionate man who had loved and teased her could be doing this to her—without listening to reason, without even giving her a chance to explain. Her eyes filled with tears of love and terror as she tried brokenly to tease him. “You’re going to look extremely silly, darling, if you claim desertion in court, because I’ll be standing right behind you claiming I’m more than willing to keep my vows.”
Ian tore his gaze from the love in her eyes. “If you aren’t out of this house in three minutes,” he warned icily, “I’ll change the grounds to adultery.”
“I have not committed adultery.”
“Maybe not, but you’ll have a hell of a time proving you haven’t done something. I’ve had some experience in that area. Now, for the last time, get out of my life. It’s over.” To prove it, he walked over and sat down at his desk, reaching behind him to pull the bell cord. “Bring Larimore in,” he instructed Dolton, who appeared almost instantly.
Elizabeth stiffened, thinking wildly for some way to reach him before he took irrevocable steps to banish her. Every fiber of her being believed he loved her. Surely, if one loved another deeply enough to be hurt like this . . . It hit her then, what he was doing and why, and she turned on him while the vicar’s story about Ian’s actions after his parents’ death seared her mind. She, however, was not a Labrador retriever who could be shoved away and out of his life.
Turning, she walked over to his desk, leaning her damp palms on it, waiting until he was forced to meet her gaze. Looking like a courageous, heartbroken angel, Elizabeth faced her adversary across his desk, her voice shaking with love. “Listen carefully to me, darling, because I’m giving you fair warning that I won’t let you do this to us. You gave me your love, and I will not let you take it away. The harder you try, the harder I’ll fight you. I’ll haunt your dreams at night, exactly the way you’ve haunted mine every night I was away from you. You’ll lie awake in bed at night, wanting me, and you’ll know I’m lying awake, wanting you. And when you cannot stand it anymore,” she promised achingly, “you’ll come back to me, and I’ll be there, waiting for you. I’ll cry in your arms, and I’ll tell you I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, and you’ll help me find a way to forgive myself—”
“Damn you!” he bit out, his face white with fury. “What does it take to make you stop?”
Elizabeth flinched from the hatred in the voice she loved and drew a shaking breath, praying she could finish without starting to cry. “I’ve hurt you terribly, my love, and I’ll hurt you again during the next fifty years. And you are going to hurt me, Ian—never, I hope, as much as you are hurting me now. But if that’s the way it has to be, then I’ll endure it, because the only alternative is to live without you, and that is no life at all. The difference is that I know it, and you don’t—not yet.”
“Are you finished now?”
“Not quite,” she said, straightening at the sound of footsteps in the hall. “There’s one more thing,” she informed him, lifting her quivering chin. “I am not a Labrador retriever! You cannot put me out of your life, because I won’t stay.”
When she left, Ian stared at the empty room that had been alive with her presence but moments before, wondering what in hell she meant by her last comment. He glanced toward the door as Larimore walked in, then he nodded curtly toward the chairs in front of his desk, silently ordering the solicitor to sit down.
“I gathered from your message,” Larimore said quietly, opening his legal case, “that you now wish to proceed with the divorce?”
Ian hesitated a moment while Elizabeth’s heartbroken words whirled through his mind, juxtaposed with the lies and omissions that had begun on the night they met and continued right up to their last night together. He recalled the torment of the first weeks after she’d left him and compared it to the cold, blessed numbness that had now taken its place. He looked at the solicitor, who was waiting for his answer.
And he nodded.
36
The next day Elizabeth was anxiously waiting in the hall on Promenade Street for deliveries of both the newspapers. The Times exonerated Ian by splashing across the front page:
MURDEROUS MARQUESS ACTUALLY HARASSED HUSBAND
The Gazette humorously remarked that “the Marquess of Kensington is deserving, not only of an acquittal, but of a medal for Restraint in the Face of Extreme Provocation!”
Beneath both those stories were len
gthy and—for Elizabeth—deeply embarrassing accounts of her ridiculous explanations of her behavior.
The day before the trial, Ian had been shunned and suspect; the day after it, he was the recipient of most of an entire city’s amused sympathy and goodwill. The balance of the populace believed that where there was accusation, there was bound to be some guilt, and that rich people bought their way out of things that poor people hanged for. Those people would continue to associate Ian’s name with evil, Elizabeth knew.
Elizabeth’s status had altered dramatically as well. No longer was she an abused or adulterous wife; she was more of a celebrity admired by women with drab lives, ignored by women with no lives, and sternly frowned upon—but forgiven—by society’s husbands, whose wives were very like the woman she’d seemed to be in the House of Lords. Still, in the month that followed Ian’s acquittal, if it hadn’t been for Roddy Carstairs, who insisted she appear in society the same week the papers announced the verdict, she might well have retired to the house on Promenade Street and hidden behind its wrought-iron gate, waiting for Ian.
That would have been the worst possible thing she could do, for she soon realized that despite her belief to the contrary, Ian evidently found it easy to thrust her out of his mind. Through Alexandra and Jordan, Elizabeth learned that Ian had resumed his work schedule as if nothing had happened, and within a week after his acquittal he was seen gambling at the Blackmore with friends, attending the opera with other friends, and generally leading the life of a busy socialite who enjoyed playing as hard as he worked.
It was not exactly the image Elizabeth had of her husband —this endless round of social activity—and she tried to ease the ache in her heart by telling herself sternly that his hectic social schedule merely proved that he was fighting a losing battle to forget that she was waiting for him. She wrote him letters; they were refused by the servants at his instruction.
Finally she decided to follow his example and keep busy, because it was the only way she could endure the waiting; but with each day that passed it became harder not to go to him and try again. They saw each other occasionally at a ball or the opera, and each time it happened Elizabeth’s heart went wild and Ian’s expression grew more distant. Ian’s uncle had warned her it would be no use to ask Ian’s forgiveness again, while his grandfather patted Elizabeth’s hand and naively said, “He’ll come around, my dear.”
Alex ultimately convinced Elizabeth that perhaps a bit of competition would be the thing to bring him around. That night at Lord and Lady Franklin’s ball, Elizabeth saw Ian talking with friends of his. Gathering up her courage, she flirted openly with Viscount Sheffield, watching Ian from the corner of her eye as she danced and laughed with the handsome viscount. Ian saw her—he looked straight at her, and straight through her. That evening he left the ball with Lady Jane Addison on his arm. It was the first time in their separation that he’d singled out any woman for particular attention or behaved in any way except like a married man who might not want his wife, but who was not interested in amorous affairs either.
His action made Alex angry and confused. “He’s fighting the battle with your weapons!” she cried when Elizabeth and she were alone that night. “It is not at all the way the game is supposed to be played. He was supposed to feel jealous and come to heel! Perhaps,” she said soothingly, “he was jealous, and he wanted to make you jealous.”
Elizabeth smiled sadly and shook her head. “Ian once told me he’s always been able to think like his opponent. He was showing me that he knew exactly what I was doing with Sheffield, and telling me not to bother trying it again. He really does want to drive me away, you see. He’s not merely trying to punish me or to make me suffer a little before he takes me back.”
“Do you truly think he wants to drive you away forever?” Alexandra asked miserably, sitting down on the sofa beside Elizabeth and putting her arm around her shoulders.
“I know he does,” Elizabeth said.
“Then what will you do next?”
“Whatever I have to do—anything I can think of. So long as he knows there’s a possibility he’ll see me wherever he goes, he can’t put me entirely out of his mind. I still have a chance to win.”
In that Elizabeth was proved mistaken. One month after Ian’s acquittal Bentner tapped on the door to the salon where Elizabeth was sitting with Alexandra. “There is a man—a Mr. Larimore,” he said, recognizing the name of Ian’s solicitor. “He says he has papers he must hand to you personally.”
Elizabeth went pale. “Did he say what sort of papers they were?”
“He refused until I told him I wouldn’t interrupt you without being able to tell you why I must.”
“What sort of papers are they?” Elizabeth asked, but, God help her, she already knew.
Bentner’s eyes slid away, his face harsh with sorrow. “He said they are documents pertaining to a petition for divorce.”
The world reeled as Elizabeth tried to stand.
“I really think I could hate that man,” Alexandra cried, wrapping her friend in a supportive hug, her voice choked with sorrow. “Even Jordan is becoming angry at him for letting this breach between you continue.”
Elizabeth scarcely knew she was being consoled; the pain was so great it was actually numbing. Turning out of Alexandra’s embrace, she looked at Bentner, knowing that if she accepted the papers there’d be no more delaying tactics she could use, no more hope, but the anguished uncertainty would end. That at least would give her a blessed respite from a terrible, draining torment. Gathering all her courage for one last herculean battle, Elizabeth spoke, slowly at first “Tell Mr. Larimore that while you were having your dinner, I left the house. Tell him you checked with my maid, and that she said I planned to go to a play with”—she glanced at Alexandra for permission, and her friend nodded emphatically—“with the Duchess of Hawthorne tonight. Invent any schedule you want for me this afternoon and tomorrow—but give him details, Bentner—details that explain why I’m not here.”
Another butler, who was not addicted to mysteries, might not have caught on so easily, but Bentner began to nod and grin. “You want to keep him looking elsewhere so you’ll have time to pack and get away without his guessing you’re leaving.”
“Exactly,” Elizabeth said with a grateful smile. “And after that,” she added as he turned to do as bidden, “send a message to Mr. Thomas Tyson—the man from the Times who’s been pleading for an interview. Tell him I will give him five minutes if he can be here this evening.”
“Where will you go?” Alex asked.
“If I tell you, Alex, you must swear not to tell Ian.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“Nor your husband. He’s Ian’s friend. It would be wrong to put him in the middle.”
Alex nodded. “Jordan will understand that I’ve given my word and cannot reveal what I know, even to him.”
“I’m going,” Elizabeth confided quietly, “to the last place on earth Ian will think to look for me now—and the first place he’ll go when he really believes he needs to find me, or find peace because he can’t. I’m going to the cottage in Scotland.”
“You should not have to do that!” Alex exclaimed loyally. “If he weren’t so heartless, so unjust—”
“Before you say all that,” Elizabeth said gently, “ask yourself how you would feel if Jordan made it look to all the world that you were a murderess, and then he breezed into the House of Lords in the nick of time, after putting you through humiliation and heartbreak, and made it all seem like one big joke.” Alex didn’t reply, but some of the anger drained from her face; more as Elizabeth continued wisely, “Ask yourself how you would feel when you found out that from the day he married you he believed there was a chance you really were a murderess—and how you would feel when you remembered the nights you spent together during that time. And when you’ve done all that, remember that in all the time I’ve known Ian, all he’s ever done is to try in every way to make me happy.”
br /> “I—” Alex began, and then her shoulders drooped. “When you put it that way, it does give it a different perspective. I don’t see how you can be so fair and objective when I cannot.”
“Ian,” Elizabeth teased sadly, “taught me that the quickest and best way to defeat an opponent is to first see things from his viewpoint.” She sobered then. “Do you know what a post boy asked me yesterday when he realized who I was?”
When Alex shook her head, Elizabeth said guiltily, “He asked me if I was still afraid of my husband. They haven’t all forgotten about it, you know. Many will never believe he’s completely innocent. I made a terrible and lasting mess of things, you see.”
Biting her lip to hold back her tears, Alex said, “If he hasn’t gone to Scotland to get you by the time our baby comes in January, will you come to us at Hawthorne? I can’t bear the thought of you spending all winter alone up there.”
“Yes.”
* * *
Leaning back in his chair, Ian listened to Larimore’s irate summation of the wild and fruitless chase he’d been sent on for two days by Lady Thornton and her butler “And after all that,” Larimore flung out in high dudgeon, “I returned to the house on Promenade Street to demand the butler allow me past the stoop, only to have the man—”
“Slam the door in your face?” Ian suggested dispassionately.
“No, my lord, he invited me in,” Larimore bit out. “He invited me to search the house to my complete satisfaction. She’s left London,” Larimore finished, avoiding his employer’s narrowed gaze.
“She’ll go to Havenhurst,” Ian said decisively, and he gave Larimore directions to find the small estate.
When Larimore left, Ian picked up a contract he needed to read and approve; but before he’d read two lines Jordan stalked into his study unannounced, carrying a newspaper and wearing an expression Ian hadn’t seen before. “Have you seen the paper today?”
Ian ignored the paper and studied his friend’s angry face instead. “No, why?”
“Read it,” Jordan said, slapping it down on the desk. “Elizabeth allowed herself to be questioned by a reporter from the Times. Read that.” He jabbed his finger at a few lines near the bottom of the article about Elizabeth by one Mr. Thomas Tyson. “That was your wife’s response when Tyson asked her how she felt when she saw you on trial before your peers.”