Abruptly he turned back to the desk and picked up the pile of bills again, tapping them against his palm. Judith certainly didn't count the cost when it came to her personal expenditures. She was beautiful and passionate in bed and he paid her well for it.
Why in God's name did he resent it? He was a generous man and always had been. Money had never concerned him-his fortune was too large for it ever to be an issue. And yet, as he looked through his wife's bills, saw what she'd spent on her wardrobe, he could think only of how different it must be for her now, after all those years of living from hand to mouth, of making over her gowns and wearing paste jewelry, of living in cheap lodgings… of pretending publicly that she had access to all the things she now had at her fingertips.
A house in Berkeley Square, a country estate in Berkshire, an unassailable social position… She must congratulate herself every moment of every day on how well her strategem had succeeded.
Marcus drained the claret in his glass and refilled it. Since Waterloo, they'd skimmed the surface of their relationship. There had been no further mention of the encounter in the taproom. And no reference in their lovemaking to his continued precautions against conception. Socially, they obeyed convention and went their separate ways. Except during the quiet, private hours of the night. Then the needs of their bodies transcended the bleak recognition of the true nature of their partnership, so that he would wake in the morning, filled with a warmth and contentment, only to have it destroyed immediately with the full return of memory.
She never talked of her past and he never asked. In all essentials they remained strangers, except in passion. Was that enough? Could it ever be enough? But it was all he was going to have, so he'd better learn to be satisfied.
He put his glass down and left the book room, still holding the sheaf of bills. The yellow drawing room was a small salon upstairs, at the back of the house. Judith had laid claim to it immediately, eschewing the heavy formality of the public rooms: the library, main drawing room, and dining room. He opened the door, to be greeted by a light trill of feminine laughter; it was abruptly cut off as the three women in the room saw who had entered, and for an instant he felt like an intruder in his own house.
"Why, Carrington, have you come to take a glass of ratafia with us?" Judith said, quirking her eyebrows with her habitual challenge.
"The day I find you drinking ratafia, ma'am, is the day I'll know I'm on my way to Bedlam," he observed, bowing. "I give you good afternoon, ladies. I don't wish to intrude, Judith, but I'd like to see you in my book room when you're at liberty."
Judith bristled visibly. She hadn't yet succeeded in moderating her husband's autocratic manner. "I have an appointment later this afternoon," she fibbed. "Maybe we could discuss whatever it is at some other time."
"Unfortunately not," he replied. "It's a matter of some urgency. I'll expect you in-" He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. "-within the hour, shall we say?"
Without waiting for her response, he bowed again to his wife's guests and left, closing the door gently behind him.
Judith seemed to have a natural talent for making friends, he reflected, and the door knocker was constantly banging, female trills and whispers filling the corners and crevices of his previously masculine-oriented house. Not only women either. There were men aplenty, anxious to play cicisbeo to the Marchioness of Carrington. Not that Judith had so far stepped out of line with her courtiers. Her flirtations were conducted, as far as he could see, with the light hand of an expert. But then that's only what he would expect from an expert.
As he reached the hallway, the door knocker sounded. He paused, waiting as the butler greeted the new arrival. "Good afternoon, Lady Devlin."
"Good afternoon, Gregson. Is her ladyship at home?" The visitor nervously adjusted the ostrich feather in her hat.
"In the yellow drawing room, my lady."
"Then I'll go straight up. There's no need to announce me… Oh, Marcus… you startled me."
Marcus regarded his sister-in-law in some puzzlement. Sally's complexion was changing rapidly from pink to deathly white and back again. He knew she tended to be uncomfortable in his company, but this degree of discomposure was out of the ordinary.
"I beg your pardon, Sally." He bowed and stood aside to let her pass him on the stairs. "I trust all's well in Grosvenor Square." He waited with bored resignation te be told that one of his nephews had the toothache or come down with a chill.
To his surprise, Sally looked startled and, instead of launching into cne of her minute descriptions of childish ailments, said, "Yes… yes, thank you, Marcus. So good of you to be concerned." Her gloved hand ran back and forth over the banister, for all the world as if she were polishing it. "I was hoping to see Judith."
"You'll find her in her drawing room."
Sally almost ran up the stairs, without a word of farewell. Marcus shook his head dismissively. He didn't object to Jack's wife, but she was a pretty widgeon with no conversation. Judith seemed to like her, though. Which was interesting, since he'd noticed that his wife didn't suffer fools gladly.
"Sally… why, whatever's the matter?" Judith jumped up at her sister-in-law's precipitate entrance.
"Oh, I have to talk to you." Sally grasped Judith's hands. "I don't know where to turn." Her eyes took in the other two women in the room. "Isobel, Cornelia… I'm at my wit's end."
"Good heavens, Sally." Isobel Henley examined a plate of sweet biscuits and took a macaroon. "Is it one of the children?"
"I wish it were as simple as that." Sally sat down on a sofa, gazing tragically around the room. Her usually merry blue eyes glittered with tears. She opened her reticule and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy scrap of handkerchief.
"Have some tea." Practically, Judith filled a teacup and passed it to her sister-in-law. Sally drank and struggled to pull herself together. She put the cup back on the table and took a deep breath.
"I've been racking my brains for three days until I think my head is about to explode. But I can't think what to do." The scrap of lace tore under her restless fingers.
"So tell us." Cornelia Forsythe leaned forward, patting Sally's hand reassuringly. Her lorgnette swung into her teacup, splashing her already slightly spotted gown. "Oh, dear." She dabbed ineffectually at the spots. "I was perfectly clean when I left the house."
Judith swallowed a smile. Cornelia was a large, untidy woman who never seemed in control of her dress, her possessions, her hair, the time, or her relationships. She was, however, possessed of a quick wit and an agile brain.
"I don't see how, unless you can put me in the way of acquiring four thousand pounds by tomorrow morning."
"Four thousand?" Judith whistled in the manner she'd picked up from Sebastian. "Whatever for?"
"Jeremy," Sally said. Her younger brother was an impoverished scapegrace. "I had to lend him four thousand pounds or he'd have been imprisoned for debt in the Fleet and now I have to get my money back. But what else could I have done?"
"Your husband?" Cornelia suggested.
Sally looked at Judith. "Jack might have helped him, but you know what Marcus thinks of Jeremy."
Judith nodded. Marcus had no tolerance for the dissipated excesses of young men with breeding and no fortune. He was inclined to declare that a career in the army was the answer for all such young fools. Either that, or politics. Judith didn't disagree with him. The reckless and undisciplined pursuit of pleasure was as alien to her as the man in the moon. However, saying so wouldn't help Sally at the moment.