The coach pulled away as dawn lit the sky, turning the wet streets of London pink for a few brief moments. The color of hope, and love.
He turned away, banishing the ridiculously sentimental thought. Instead, he wished the young lass well, whoever she was.
He had his own problems to face. He retraced his steps until he stood in front of the grand façade of Bray’s elegant town house.
But the letter was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTERFOUR
Thomas Ellison, Earl of Bray, thundered along the hallway that led to his wife’s apartments. Her maid ran behind him, running to keep up, no doubt terrified by the string of curses he’d let fly when she came to his study to summon him.
He’d been reading a rather interesting letter when she knocked. There had been an unusual break-in the night. A perfume bottle had been broken, but the magnificent Bray necklace had been left untouched on her dressing table. According to the footman who reported the incident to Bray when he rose this morning—since no one would dare to wake the earl unless the house was about to burn down around his bed as he slept—a thin plank of wood was found in the countess’s chamber, the exact width of the drawer in the little table, along with a single letter bearing the Prince of Wales’s seal. It hadn’t taken Ellison long to figure out what had occurred. He had a number of drawers with secret panels himself, though none had been touched. Whatever the thief had wanted had been in his wife’s possession. The footman presented the letter to him on a silver tray, along with a tattered length of blue ribbon. Once he read the letter, addressed to his wife, and written in the kind of intimate language that left no doubt of an affair, Bray realized there must have been other letters, tied with the ribbon, perhaps from different lovers.
He read this letter over again, and yet again, scanning the tender lines written in the prince’s all too familiar hand. How many times had he received notes from Prinny, written on the same gold-embossed stationery, inviting him to come to a rout, or a dinner party, or an evening of gaming?
Bray’s first impression had been awe. Elizabeth had attracted the Prince of Wales? After the second reading, he’d realized he’d been cuckolded. After rereading the letter a dozen times, he was furious at the betrayal of his wife, and the royal prick who professed to be his friend. He wasn’t the only lord the prince had put in this position. Other powerful men had been made fools by the prince in the same way. Those men had never been able to hold their heads up quite as high after their cuckolding. Nor were they able to demand satisfaction from the prince for his sins. They simply had to live with it. Bray was not that kind of man. He would have his revenge, somehow. He’d been plotting it when Elizabeth’s maid arrived.
The girl opened the door of his study nervously, and dipped a deep curtsy and stayed there, not daring to rise. “Her Ladyship has taken too much laudanum, my lord. May I send for the doctor?” she asked.
He stared at the letter in his fist. “No.”
She looked up, her country cornflower blue eyes wide. “But—” Her argument died on her lips as he abruptly got to his feet, let the chair of his desk crash to the floor behind him. How dared she argue with him? It wasn’t as if this was the first time Elizabeth had drugged herself insensible with laudanum. She used the drug with such frequency that Bray had forbidden the servants to send for the doctor when the countess had one of her “spells,” as they called them. The doctor had been coming every week for the past six months, and each time he brought more laudanum with him. It was Bray’s opinion that it was the medicine that was causing his wife’s problem. When the quack diagnosed the countess with a condition he called “frantic dyspepsia,” Bray had thrown the man out of the house with his own two hands.
He pushed past the cowering maid and strode down the hall, and now the maid was running behind him to keep up. Was she afraid he might hurt her mistress? She should be.
He didn’t bother to knock when he got to his wife’s bedroom. He simply threw open the door. He slammed it behind him, right in the maid’s face, probably taking the skin off her nose, if her squeal was any indication. Good. If he found the chit had been gossiping about his wife’s addiction, he’d do worse. He couldn’t abide gossip. And now there was the letter, or letters, perhaps. How many people knew the truth?
He came to a stop beside the bed, his mouth twisting in disgust at the sight of his countess. “Elizabeth.”
She barely seemed aware of his presence, a lolling of her head the only indication that she’d heard him at all.
“Elizabeth!” he bellowed, and her eyelids cracked open to reveal glittering, unfocused eyes. The black pupils drifted upward, exposing the whites as her head dropped back onto the pillow.
He slapped her. She cried out and raised slack arms to shield herself from another blow, but he picked up the laudanum bottle instead and threw it against the wall where it shattered, the brown liquid staining the silk wallpaper with long copper ribbons.
“Please, Ellison, my nerves—” she whimpered.
“There’s nothing wrong with your nerves!” he growled. “Sit up and explain yourself at once, or I’ll pour cold water on you. Your maid wants me to send for a priest since I won’t allow the doctor to come.”
“My letters—did she find them? Oh, where could they have gone?” She threw her wrist over her eyes, her mouth twisting in ugly paroxysms of anguish.
He felt no pity. “Is this what you mean?” he demanded, holding up the crumpled letter. Her face flushed, and he could see that she knew exactly what it was.
“It was a long time ago,” she pleaded, her fingers scrabbling uselessly over the pink satin counterpane. “I only wanted Sophie to have the very best—”
“What did you do?”
She sobbed, turning her face away from his. “I was seduced. I had no choice!”
He felt disgust rise in his gorge. “You’re my wife, Elizabeth, my countess. I married you to get an heir, alegitimateheir. You dared to betray me with the Prince of Wales, Fat George, a man I considered my friend? Did the two of you laugh as you cuckolded me, when you lied to my face? A horrible thought struck him. “Is Sophie even my child?”
She didn’t answer his question, but he knew by the way her eyes widened and her face reddened.
“No,” he managed, his throat closing.
She reached for his hand. “I did it for you, to gain his favor!” He pulled away before she could touch him. She sank back on the bed and shut her eyes, her hand falling limp by her side. “You didn’t love me, Ellison, but he made me feel wanted. He wrote me love letters and poems. Hewooedme. You never wooed me.”
“Wooed you?” He stared at her in bafflement. She was an earl’s daughter, had come with land and a huge dowry. He’d married those facts as much as the woman before him. The land and money brought him comfort that she had never offered.
