Mistress by Marriage (17 page)
When it was over, they lay side by side on the clipped grass. Caroline had pulled her nightgown down. Edward had pulled his pants up. The hazy stars winked down at them as they regulated their breathing and heartbeats.
“I met with Mulgrew tonight.” Edward’s words seemed foreign to him, as though the interlude with Caroline had robbed him of language.
“Oh?”
He heard the resignation. She expected her congé, and he would give it to her. Had to, for their own sanity. “He told me he had the matter of your safety at hand. He’s spoken to Pope and Douglass. They denied everything, of course, as one would expect. But Mulgrew is satisfied there is no longer any danger.”
“There’s always danger. A meteor could fall and strike us both dead.”
Edward blinked up at the stars. They seemed safely far away. “Or perhaps we could be devoured by wolves. Drowned in a trunk in the Thames. Flung down a cliff. Shot in a most uncomfortable place. Buried under the rubble in a disused mine. Have I forgotten anything else?”
He heard the smile in her voice. “Several. Never say you’ve been reading my books.”
“Of course not. Beth lives to tease me about my fictional demise.”
“I believe you were gored by a mad bull once.”
“Ouch. Why can’t you just slip poison in my port?”
“Done it.
The Dark Duke’s Dilemma
. One of my earlier efforts. It didn’t sell well. I’ve become progressively more bloodthirsty.”
The Dark Duke’s Dilemma
. One of my earlier efforts. It didn’t sell well. I’ve become progressively more bloodthirsty.”
Edward sought her hand and brought it to his lips. “Perhaps you’ll have a care from now on. While you may welcome my death, I should hate to have anything happen to you. Pope and Douglass may be warned off for now, but be careful.”
“I assume you’re leaving tomorrow?”
He dropped her hand gently back to earth. “Yes, Caro, it’s for the best.”
“I quite agree. Having you underfoot has been a trial.” She sat up abruptly, shaking her long red hair free from grass clippings. Before he could stop her, she swayed up and marched off to the back door. It would be the camp bed for him again for sure.
“Hell and damnation!”
“What’s wrong, Caro?”
“The blasted door is shut and I cannot get it open. Again. Did you not leave it unlocked?”
He hadn’t a clue. It had been such a struggle to open the series of locks, his hands shaking all the while. He hadn’t thought about anything more than fetching Caroline from the garden and giving her the lecture of her life. Instead he had fallen on her like a starved beast—a wolf—devouring
her.
But she was completely undead, a living flame of life who made his dull existence even more unbearable.
her.
But she was completely undead, a living flame of life who made his dull existence even more unbearable.
“Here, let me try.” He stood, fastening his trousers, walking barefoot across the little lawn. The knob wouldn’t budge.
“I’m sure we can rouse the servants.”
Caroline tossed her head. “No we can’t. Cameron’s room is in the front. Both the Hazletts sleep like the dead and snore to prove it. I told Cameron to do as Ben and Lizzie do—stuff cotton in his ears at night, else he’d never get any sleep. What are we going to do?”
Edward thought a minute. “What about the garden doors?”
Caroline folded her arms across her chest in a vain attempt to press her torn nightgown together. “Cameron nailed them shut just this afternoon. I heard him before Deborah Bannister came. He doesn’t trust me.”
“As well he shouldn’t. If you hadn’t done this mad thing, we’d be inside, sound asleep in our beds ourselves. You’d be snoring to rival Hazlett.”
“I don’t snore!”
“I’m afraid you do. Like one of the piglets at Christie Park’s home farm. I’ve had to listen to you all week.”
“I never asked you to listen! I don’t know why you had to sleep in my room anyway. You never did when we were married.”
“Of course I didn’t. A gentleman never sleeps in the same chamber as his wife. It isn’t done.”
Caroline shoved him into some shrubbery. “Isn’t done? Is that a Christie tradition? I know many couples who share the same bedchamber.”
So did Edward, but he was not about to agree with her. He liked his privacy. Needed it. Who wanted to tussle with Caroline all night long as she stole the covers and laughed in her sleep? Rubbed up against him like her damn cat, her cold feet on his calves? It was bad enough having to take breakfast with her in the morning, when she would prattle on about her plans for the day, never giving him a moment’s peace as he sipped his coffee, peppering him with questions he had no intention of answering. Treating the staff like long-lost friends, and the children as equals. Caroline knew no barriers, had no filters, was like a child herself. A spoilt one. He brushed the pollen from his shoulder. “There’s no need to manhandle me.”
She smacked his chest again. “There is every need,” she whispered furiously. “Thanks to you we’ll be trapped out here all night.”
“Wait just a minute! Whose bright idea was it to climb out a window?”
“I didn’t plan for the sheet to come undone. I would have been back in bed by the time you came home and you never would have known the difference.” She stomped away to sit back on the bench.
He followed. “You little fool. What if there had been intruders in the garden?”
“The garden doors are nailed shut. I just told you. I was perfectly safe.”
“A determined man could scale the wall, Caroline.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d have cause to regret them.
Her smile was quite feral. “Fine. Prove to me how determined you are.”
Edward straightened. “I have no need to prove anything to you. I’ve always kept my word. Done the right thing.”
“Oh? Coming to my bed after all these years was
right
? When you plan to get rid of me anyway? You are nothing but the basest villain, Edward. Being a wolfpack’s dinner is too good for you!”
right
? When you plan to get rid of me anyway? You are nothing but the basest villain, Edward. Being a wolfpack’s dinner is too good for you!”
“So now you want me to plunge to my death over a Mayfair garden wall.”
“I don’t want you dead, Edward, although who could even tell you’re alive? I just want you gone.”
“Your wish is my command,” he ground out. He’d show the little baggage. He headed for the spike-topped brick wall.
“Not that one. There’s no one home, remember? Bayard has bunked it. Serena on the other side might still be awake. Her gentleman keeps very odd hours. She has extra keys to my front door.”
“Even the new locks?” he thundered.
“She’d never hand them out to anyone but me or my staff. I trust her. We look out for each other on Jane Street.”
Good Lord
. He looked down at his bare chest and bare feet. Would the Janes look after
him
? If word got out, he’d be a laughingstock. It had only been because of his Christie-ness he was able to survive the scandalous denouement of his marriage. He had behaved with impeccable decorum, as if he’d not spent a year fighting like cats and dogs with his wife. No one save Will ever brought up the fact that he’d tucked Caroline away somewhere. Very few knew that the somewhere was Jane Street. How Neddie had figured it out was a mystery. If only his son had kept away, he’d not be standing there half naked.
. He looked down at his bare chest and bare feet. Would the Janes look after
him
? If word got out, he’d be a laughingstock. It had only been because of his Christie-ness he was able to survive the scandalous denouement of his marriage. He had behaved with impeccable decorum, as if he’d not spent a year fighting like cats and dogs with his wife. No one save Will ever brought up the fact that he’d tucked Caroline away somewhere. Very few knew that the somewhere was Jane Street. How Neddie had figured it out was a mystery. If only his son had kept away, he’d not be standing there half naked.
“Very well.” He tripped across a flower bed. Edward was tall, but the wall was taller. “I think if we can drag the bench over, I can boost myself up.”
Caroline was not much help. Her end of the iron bench kept slanting down until she complained she’d bruised her toes and had to sit down for a while. The dark gray sky had brightened sufficiently for him to watch as she rubbed her plump white feet. She was barefoot, too. She seemed unaware that her right breast was completely unrestrained by the torn negligee.
“Maybe we should just wait until dawn. It won’t be that much longer.”
“Coward.”
Edward bit back his retort. She was right. He was one. He couldn’t cut Caroline out of his life, yet couldn’t live with her. What was the expression? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. With a mere legal separation, he’d never be free of her, never be able to find a peaceful, normal woman to marry and help guide Allie to womanhood.
“Stand up. I’ll get it the rest of the way by myself.” With a grunt, he pushed the bench through some flowers, crushing the petals and causing their aroma to waft up in the night air. But nothing smelled as perfect as Caroline.
“You’re ruining my garden.”
“You’re ruining my life!” Edward snapped.
“Good, because you’ve ruined mine, you odious, impossible, horrible”—she paused—“man!”
“Is that the best you can do? Why not blackguard or scoundrel? Rogue or miscreant?”
“It doesn’t matter what you men call yourselves—you are fiends, every one of you.”
Edward hopped up on the bench, running his fingers on the jagged iron spikes. He pictured one puncturing his lung, the life draining out of him as Caroline stood below, tapping a bruised foot impatiently. “I’m not going to do this, Caro. We’re just going to have to wait for Mrs. Hazlett to light the stove in a few hours. She can let us in the kitchen door.”
“I’ll climb over then.”
“You certainly will not. Even if I could toss you over, you’d probably land and break your neck. This place is like a fortress. It’s a wonder there are not alligators in a moat.”
“I told you I was safe! But, no—you had to exert your Christie control and make my life a living hell.” She sunk down among the ruined flowers. “I rue the day my cousins ever took me to town. I would have been better off acting as an unpaid nursemaid for their brats than marrying you.”
“My understanding was that your cousin James had other plans for you.”
She looked up at him, her face stark. “Being his whore would have been preferable to being yours.”
Edward felt something unravel within. “Take that back.”
“Why should I? I’m nothing to you. Oh, you’ve strutted about all week acting Sir Galahad. It suits you to see yourself as a hero. But you’re cold, Edward. So cold you make my blood freeze. I don’t know how I could ever have thought I lov—” Her words stopped.
And his heart stopped, too, then started up with dizzying speed. He needed to get down off the bench before he fell but couldn’t seem to move his feet. “What did you say?”
She pulled up her bodice. “Nothing of any consequence.”
He stood rooted to the iron bench, its fancy curlicues cutting into his soles. Something swooped through the air—a bat, most likely. The silence in the garden made its own kind of noise, but he knew he’d have to interrupt soon—if he could find any words to say.
He clambered down from the bench and sat beside her. “If I’m so cold, why do you love me, Caroline?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know!” she cried. “It’s terribly inconvenient. I shall stop at once.”
He wanted to tell her he loved her too, but the words wouldn’t come. They had never tumbled out with ease. He hadn’t said them in years to anyone. But even unspoken, they were true, and she was right. It was terribly inconvenient, but he didn’t think he could stop loving her. Ever.
So this was love. It was nothing like the ballads and sonnets and psalms, or the comforting closeness he’d shared with Alice. It was sharp, as sharp as the iron spikes on the wall, as ruining as the crushed flowers beneath his arse. Caroline made his blood boil and his mind turn to mush. It was more than inconvenient—it was inconceivable that Edward Allerton Christie could love Caroline Louise Parker.
But he supposed he did. How else could he explain the past weeks of insanity? It was more than the craving of her warm body atop and beneath him, more than his appreciation of her still-dazzling beauty. More than his desire for dominance.
“Holy God,” he whispered.
“It’s too late to pray, Edward. It’s too late, period. You are right. We are completely incompatible. I want you to divorce me.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and sniffed.
“I cannot, Caro. I decided that weeks ago. I don’t even believe I can go through with a legal separation.”
“Edward, what are you saying?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think. I never can when you’re near.”
“Well, someone has to! You can’t keep reeling me in like a fish, then tossing me back. It’s unconscionable.”
“I’m sorry, Caro. I’m a cur.”
She nodded. “Yes, you are. A dirty dog. With bloodthirsty fleas and other assorted vermin.” She seemed satisfied with the analogy. He put his arm around her and she didn’t resist, putting her head on his bare shoulder. The warmth of her russet hair pricked his skin and stirred his cock.
“What are we to do?” For once in his life, his Christie confidence had completely deserted him.
“I’m sure I don’t know. Wait for Mrs. Hazlett to wake up.”
“Not about
now
. About our future.”
now
. About our future.”
“We haven’t got one, Edward. You of all people should know that.”
“I thought I did, but I’m not so sure. What if we try again?” He must be mad to suggest such a thing, but the words had tumbled out without a moment of Christie forethought.
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