He laughed and reached out for his glass, realized it was empty, and set it back down with exaggerated care. “Wouldn’t take her back,” he said. “Out of the question. Unthinkable. No man would do such a thing and keep his self-respect.”
“I suppose not,” Arabella said.
Mr. Hubbard lurched suddenly to his feet. “Fresh air,” he said. “Must go for a walk. Wish I could feel my legs.”
Arabella looked around her as he stepped from the box. She had almost forgotten her own troubles for a few minutes. Sometimes it did one good to realize that others suffered even more than one did oneself. She felt desperately sorry for Mr. Hubbard. From her few conversations with him, she guessed that before his wife had deserted him, he had been a gentle and good-humored man. Now he was bitter and cynical and unforgiving.
Sir John Charlton was talking with Mrs. Pritchard and Lady Harriet’s sister and brother-in-law quite close beside her, while Theodore stood outside the box with Lord Farraday and her husband. Her sister was deep in conversation with Lady Harriet. Frances seemed quite unconcerned with either Sir John or Theodore. It seemed strange to see her seemingly quite unaware of the handsome gentlemen surrounding her.
Arabella focused her gaze on her husband as he stood talking, half-turned away from her. She was mortified to remember just how eagerly she had hurled herself into his arms and felt safe and happy. She had hugged him and poured out her tale of fright into his ears as if he were her best friend in all the world. And she had allowed him to hold her and soothe her.
She had let him kiss her!
It was humiliating too to recall how she had stood in terror on the dark side path, unable for a whole minute to persuade herself to move, wanting and wanting him, almost crying for him. Not for Lord Farraday or Theodore, either of whom was more likely to be close enough to rescue her. Not even for her mother, on whom she had relied all her life for protection. But for her faithless husband, who did not want her at all, who would not dream of calling on her to satisfy any of his needs.
It really was quite demeaning to be a helpless female, Arabella decided. She did not like the feeling at all. She wanted to teach herself courage and independence. It was amazing how in less than one month she had come to rely so heavily on his lordship. It must not continue. She must harden her heart against him. If she continued to need him, she would end up forgiving him before she knew what she was about and accepting his interpretation of what marriage was all about. And she must never do that. What he had done was unforgivable, and his way of life was unacceptable.
She must hold firm. She had felt downright ill all of the previous day, imagining that he had gone to his mistress and was consoling himself in her arms for their quarrel. And all of this day she had felt no better. He had made it so very clear that morning that he had no intention of changing his ways and that he did not feel shame at what she had discovered. Of course, it all really did not matter to her at all. It was no concern of hers any longer how he spent his time or with whom. She had divorced herself from him emotionally even if she could not do so in fact.
But it still hurt, for all her determined efforts not to care, to look at him now, to see his handsome person, so familiar after three weeks of marriage, and to think of him holding another woman as he had held her a short while before, murmuring soothing words into her hair. Kissing her. Doing those things with his mistress that she, Arabella, had come to enjoy.
Lord Astor came to sit next to his wife before the fireworks display began. He set his chair a little behind hers so that his presence would not inhibit her pleasure and so that he might watch her delight without feeling obliged to make conversation with her.
And Arabella truly was entranced. She did not think she had seen anything quite so enchanting in her life. She sat rapt in her seat, leaning forward, totally unaware of her surroundings, as light and sound flashed and roared around her. If only Mama and Jemima could be there to see it too! Frances, Lady Harriet, and her sister were applauding and exclaiming with delight, but Arabella did not hear them.
She felt as disappointed as a small child when the treat was over and the night around her fell relatively quiet and dark again. And she was disoriented. She did not know where she was for a moment. She felt an instant’s panic that she was alone again. There was no one on either side of her. She leaned back in her seat and turned with a little cry of alarm.
“I am here, Arabella.”
And truly she was comforted by the low, steady voice and the warm hand rubbing against the back of her neck. She stared into her husband’s eyes and felt all the despair of being married to a man she could not—and must not—forgive.
“I never saw anything so splendid in all my life,” she said brightly to the occupants of the box. “I do thank you for inviting us, my lord.” She smiled at Lord Farraday.
“I think you have me to thank, Bella,” Theodore said with a grin. “Lord Farraday wished to make sure that I saw as much as possible of London while I am here.”
“Then thank you, Theodore,” she said, smiling gaily back at him.
Lord Astor was shaken. During the brief seconds when Arabella’s eyes had looked into his, they had been raw with pain. And he knew, without the comfort of the defenses he had put up earlier that day and the day before, that he had put that pain there and that it would remain there as long as he continued with his chosen way of life. The rawness would disappear with time. Perhaps even the pain. But something would die with them.
It lay within his power to kill the gentleness and brightness in Arabella as surely as he had already killed her innocence.
He did not want that responsibility. He did not want the introspection and the soul-searching his marriage was bringing him.
She had felt very small and precious in his arms earlier. He had wanted to fold her into himself, to protect her against all the evil of the world. He had wanted to kiss away all her fears, swear that he would not allow anything to harm her for the rest of her life.
Yet he was the evil in her life. How could he protect her when he was her worst enemy?
He wished he had known a month before what he now knew about marriage. He would have turned all his fortune over to Arabella’s family and taken himself off to the farthest corner of the earth sooner than be tempted to enter the respectable state of matrimony.
Lord Astor handed his hat and cane to Ginny’s butler the following afternoon and showed himself into the sitting room while the servant went to inform her of his arrival. He must get his life back to normal, he had decided that morning. Arabella would grow up and learn to accept what could not be changed. She was out visiting with her sister and his aunt that afternoon.
“Geoffrey!” Ginny always made a theatrical entrance. She came through the door now, both hands extended. She looked as beautiful as ever. Her very distinctive perfume reached him before she did. “How lovely to see you again. I was just thinking about you and longing for you.”
He took her hands and jerked her roughly into his arms. “Have you?” he said, his mouth already seeking hers. “I will have to find out just how much, Ginny.”
“Ah,” she said, wriggling in his arms in a way that she knew from experience heightened his desire to fever pitch, “I love you when you are hungry, Geoffrey. Will you come straight to my bedchamber?”
She was as beautiful, as voluptuous, as skillfully enticing as she had ever been. She lay naked on her bed, touching him, caressing him, crooning to him, moving her body against his, offering herself with an abandon that went beyond the desire to earn her generous salary. She used every skill and trick that experience had taught her would render him mindless with the need to drive out his passion in her.
