“If you’ve come to tell me Molière is in a temper, you’ll find I’ve no sympathy to spare.”
“No, my lord, though he has locked himself in the pantry with a dish of peaches à la Condé. I came to inform you that her ladyship has left?—”
“Left!” He froze. She’d broken their blood oath already?
“To walk in the garden. I only mention it because, with talk of secrets and dead men, I insisted her ladyship take a pocket pistol.”
Suspicion flared, an old pattern he couldn’t break. “Did she take her coat and bonnet? Are her clothes still in the armoire? For heaven’s sake, Mrs Boswell, did she pack a valise?”
His mind raced through possibilities, none of them good. The image of her alone on the road, unprotected, twisted his gut.
“She’s taking the sensory walk in her nightgown and wrapper. It was my suggestion. I thought time alone might ease her mind.” Mrs Boswell hesitated. “She should still be in the garden. If you’re quick, you might see her from the window.”
Mrs Boswell hurried away before he could call her back.
He didn’t wait to argue. He was already moving, taking the back stairs two at a time. The room at the end of the upper corridor, once his grandfather’s beloved art room, offered the best view of the gardens.
The fountain stood beyond the glass, a monument to past debauchery, and he forced himself to banish the memory of naked revellers cavorting during the summer solstice.
Instead, he searched the paths for her—his wife—for the soft billow of muslin, the glint of copper hair, movement among the roses.
His breath caught when she stepped into view, her wrapper drawn close, her hair a glowing cascade that brushed the pale curve of her neck.
Something tightened low in his chest. He told himself it was concern, the need to ensure her safety. But the truth settled like heat beneath his skin, a fire crawling through every inch of him.
She bent to smell the lavender, and the sight near undid him. The delicate grace of her hand. The sensual flare of her hips. Hell, he had no right to want her. Yet his body had ceased to care about rights or reason.
He pressed his palm to the glass, the chill doing little to temper these confounding urges. Lust was a devil.
Then movement beyond the topiary caught his eye, a lone figure approaching the fountain, just as his wife stepped into the clearing, blissfully unaware she was being watched.
Or was she?
Was this all a ruse?
A planned arrangement?
Had he been played for a fool from the very beginning?
He pushed away from the window and strode for the door. The corridors blurred as he descended, his boots striking hard against the marble floor.
Something made him run.
He avoided the gravel path and cut across the grass, the truth the only lure now.
The murmur of voices near the fountain made him slow and slip behind the tall topiary hedge. He recognised the woman speaking to his wife, for arrogance coated every word.
“It’s obvious Gabriel is using you to hurt me,” Miss Bourne said, her tone sharp with spite. “You should visit the vicarage and speak to the vicar. There’s every chance the marriage is a sham. I heard a rumour the register was faked. A prop for appearance’s sake.”
Gabriel was about to march into the clearing and put the woman in her place, but Olivia proved she could hold her own.
“And yet Gabriel proposed before you returned to Islington. I went with him to fetch the licence. It was my name he called in the throes of passion last night.”
Miss Bourne’s light chuckle made his stomach roil.
“You don’t need to pretend,” she said. “You sleep in separate rooms. You with the peacocks, him in his hideaway.”
Damnation. Who the devil told her?
