Judith felt sick. Her body was one tightly clenched muscle and the nausea rose in her throat. This had never occurred to her. All this time, he believed she had deliberately led him on, offering the wiles of a wanton, in order to trap him with her virtue.
"No," she said, her voice barely audible. "It's not true. I never thought of my virginity when I was with you. I thought only of you… you must remember how diat was… how it is now," she said in passionate appeal to the passion they shared. "How could you believe I could pretend to feel for you in that way? I don't know how one would pretend it." Tears clogged her throat and she forced them down.
Marcus barely heard her. He moved a hand in harsh dismissal. "You are a consummate actress," he said. "And I've watched you perform once too often. And what an amazing piece of good fortune, it must have been, when Francis and the others turned up so opportunely. It set the seal on the trap perfectly, didn't it?"
"No," she whispered again. "No, it wasn't like that." But her heart was leaden, and she was filled with tears of pain and bewilderment, and suddenly the fight went out of her. She bowed her head in defeat.
"You will now listen to me very carefully," Marcus was continuing. He articulated each word with a slow emphasis that served as much to keep a rein on his rage as it did to increase the force of his speech. "Since, for better or worse, you are my wife, you will begin to behave like my wife. You're not to be trusted, so I shall take responsibility for correcting your faults myself. From this moment on, outside this house, you will play only whist and limited loo. From now on, I shall watch you: every move you make." He began to count off on his fingers. "You will accept no engagement without my express permission; and you will enter a card room only in my company; and if I ever find you seated at any table other than a loo table or a whist table, then I shall oblige you to leave immediately, regardless of the embarrassment this will cause you. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes," Judith said softly. He was going to make a prison of their marriage with himself as her jailer.
"Furthermore," he continued coldly, "you will ask for my approval before you buy anything. I shall want to know what you wish to purchase, why it's necessary, and its cost. I'll then rule on whether you may do so or not. You'll not take advantage of me ever again, Judith." There was a bleakness in his voice now, and he turned away from her, going to the long French door and pulling aside the curtain, gazing out into the starless night.
He heard the door close quietly and knew that Judith had left the room. He could hear his voice, the harsh, punitive statements, the bleakness of betrayal beneath the cold fury. They faced a lifetime together… a lifetime of misery for both of them. And now he wished more than he had ever wished for anything that he'd never set eyes on her. Because knowing her from now on could only bring intensified pain. He had begun to love her, but he'd been loving a chimera.
He refilled his brandy goblet and tossed the mellow golden liquid down his throat in one swallow, then he went up to his own apartment. A sleepy Cheveley jumped up from a chair beside the fire. "I trust you had a pleasant evening, my lord."
"I don't remember passing a worse," Marcus replied, wearily. The valet dosed his mouth and devoted his single-minded attention to the task of putting his lordship to bed.
Next door, Judith sat on the bed, waiting. She had sent Millie to bed as soon as she'd come up and had then locked the door behind the maid, before turning the key on the connecting door. Now she listened to the soft shufflings and footfalls from next door, waiting until she heard Cheveley bid his lordship good night and the door close on his departure.
She sat hunched over the woman's pain in her belly and the shank of despair driven deep into her soul. There was no future here. The life Marcus had just decreed couldn't be lived by either of them.
The line of yellow beneath the connecting door vanished as Marcus extinguished his bedside candle. Judith stood up, straightening her aching body with a low moan. She removed her evening dress and put on a riding habit, treading softly about the room, opening drawers and armoires with exaggerated care. Into a small valise, she packed her hairbrushes, nightclothes, tooth powder, and a change of clothes. It would do to be going on with, and anything else she needed, she would buy later.
She knew only that she could no longer stay under the same roof as Marcus. Leaving him so precipitately would ruin everything with Gracemere, but she could see no option. Sebastian would understand and they'd come up with an alternative plan.
But never had she felt so desolate, or so at a loss. She couldn't stay with him, but why then was leaving him as agonizing as peeling away a layer of skin?
Delicately she turned the key and let herself out of the room; In the corridor, where a dim light came from a single candle in a wall sconce, she paused, listening. The only sounds were the creaks and rustles of the sleeping house. She crept down the stairs, still hunched over the dragging pain in her belly, and turned down the passage leading to the book room. This was not an exit to be made through the front door.
She opened the French doors and stepped into the garden, closing them quietly at her back. The gate in the wall led into the mews. Horses whickered, hooves shuffled on straw as she moved in the shadows across the swept cobbles of the yard. The stablehands wouldn't start
work for another hour and Judith had the sense of being the only human awake in the whole of London town. It occurred to her that it was perhaps foolhardy to walk the streets alone in the dark hour before dawn, and her hand closed over her pistol.
It was less than a ten-minute walk, however, to Al-bemarle Street, and she saw no one. Sebastian's rooms were on the ground floor, and she stood on tiptoe to tap at the window. If she had to use the knocker the landlord would answer the summons and it would be hard to explain herself at such an hour. She raised her hand to tap again, when the front door opened. "Come in, Ju," Sebastian whispered. "How did you know it was me?" She slipped past him into the dark passageway.
"Somehow I was expecting you," he replied, picking up her valise and gesturing to the sitting room. "I didn't wake you, then."
"No, I was waiting for you." He set down her valise and examined her carefully. "You look the very devil. Brandy?"
"Please." She threw off her cloak and drew off her gloves. "Thank you." Cradling the glass in her hands, she went to the hearth, where the ashy glow of the embers of the dying fire put out a modicum of heat.
Her brother took kindling from the basket beside the grate and tossed it onto the embers. A reassuring hiss and spurt of flame resulted. He straightened, regarding his sister with sharp-eyed concern. She sipped her brandy, stroking her stomach in an unconscious gesture he recognized as the fiery spirit warmed her cramping muscles. "You're not feeling too well," he stated.
She gave him a wan smile of agreement. "To add insult to injury."
"So, what did he do?"
"How did you know…? Oh, did you tell him?"
"He wanted to repay me for your turn-out. I told him you'd paid for it yourself. He made the correct deduction. Carrington's no fool, Ju."
"I never took him for one," she said. Bleakly she recounted the scene in the book room, leaving nothing out. Sebastian listened in grim silence. It occurred to him that his brother-in-law had shown about as much sensibility as a herd of rogue elephants.
"So where do you want to go?" he asked, when she'd fallen silent.
"Some small hotel, perhaps."
"In London?"
"Yes, but in an unfashionable part; somewhere where I won't run the risk of meeting anyone I know on the street."