“Forgive me,” he said in the darkness. “I’m sorry if you were troubled by what you saw.”
“Why would I be troubled?” she asked in a taut voice. “What Lord Warren does is none of my affair.”
“I wanted you to see, Aurelia. I wanted you to realize Warren is not the virtuous swain of your dreams.”
She turned and stared at him. “You knew he would be there?”
“All of them were there, grasshopper. August and Arlington too.”
“But you took me there to see
him
, not them. You took me there to see...that.” Her voice rose along with the heated color in her cheeks. “You said we ought to go so I could see the two of us aren’t so different. It was all a false premise, a lie.”
“No, I wanted to show you that too. Please, don’t be angry. I was tired of you being…deceived.”
“Deceived by whom?” she snapped.
She pursed her lips and looked back out the window. He rubbed his forehead and thought about joining her on the other seat. He wasn’t sure he’d be welcomed.
“I wish you hadn’t done this,” she said a moment later. “You might have just told me.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me unless you saw him for yourself.”
“And so you took me into that room and humiliated both of us! Honestly, Hunter, how petty and childish. Lord Warren must be furious. I doubt he will remain your friend.”
“I don’t care about his friendship so much as I care about losing you.”
“Losing me? I’m right here,” she said, throwing up her hands.
“Losing you to
him
,” he barked. “You still care more for him than me.”
“I most certainly do not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Ridiculous. Petty. Childish.
Such flattering words. He didn’t care what she thought of his actions tonight. He had done what he must to cure her of her infatuation. He hadn’t done any more than any husband might do.
Aurelia stared from the window a long while in silence. “I have been very foolish about the world,” she said when she finally spoke again. “I thought most men were like my father, men with honor and good morals. But most men are like those men at the party, I suppose. No one ever told me. I didn’t know.”
“There are plenty of men with honor and good morals,” Hunter said. “But your Lord Warren is not one of them.”
“He’s not
my
Lord Warren. He never was. And I don’t know how you or I should judge him, considering the things we do.” She bit her lip hard, plucking fitfully at the edges of her gloves. “I have no room to look down on anyone. I suppose I am no better than those giggling, slatternly women back there.”
“Yes, you are,” he said sharply. “You’re the Marchioness of Townsend. You’re my wife, as much as you love another.”
“
Loved
another.”
“Still, you loved him. Yesterday, the day before, you loved him, before I revealed to you who he truly was.”
She glared at him. “What do you mean to say?”
He waved a hand. “Nothing. I mean to say nothing.”
“You think I’m a slut. A whore who lusts after other men. Is that it?”
“Aurelia, don’t.”
“You made me this way,” she cried. “You wanted me to be wanton.”
“Yes, for me! Only for me. I never meant you to get wet in the quim at the thought of bedding my goddamned friend.”
His wife stood with the carriage in full motion and cracked him hard across the face. He grabbed her hand before she could hit him again and pulled her against him. She struggled as he held her by the wrists. “That was foolish.”
“You’re foolish,” she said, her lips inches from his. “You don’t understand anything about how I feel. You’ve never tried to understand.”
“I understand everything,” he replied in a flinty voice. “I have always understood from the bitter start. I saw the looks you gave Warren across the table last evening. You appeared as besotted as you ever were. Perhaps that’s why you’re so angry right now. Perhaps that’s why you fled the party as if the devil’s own hounds were at your heels.”
“I fled because he disgusts me, and you disgust me too.”
“Ah, my dear.” His grip tightened on her wrists. “I’m sorry to learn I disgust you. It didn’t seem so last night, or the night before.” A raging ache burned inside him, an ache of hurt, an ache of loss. He didn’t want to share her affections with any other man, especially a man he called a friend. He didn’t want to share her body, her lusts, her desires. She may not love him, but she was his, damn it, and he wouldn’t let her forget it. In a blind fit of heat, he gathered up her skirts, holding them beneath the arm he had wrapped about her waist.
“No,” she said. “Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.”
“I will touch you. You are
my
wife, not Warren’s nor anyone else’s.
Mine
.” He drove his fingers within her, and found her copiously wet. “I disgust you, do I?” he mocked as she cried and fought against him. “Even so, you’re primed and ready to be fucked.”
“No, I’m not. Stop this.”
He ignored her, reaching between them to unbutton his breeches. His arm tightened at her waist as she struggled. He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away and instead he tasted tears on his lips.
“You’re hurting me,” she said as he thrust another finger up inside her. “I don’t want you, not like this. Not angry and vengeful.”
“Just close your eyes and pretend I’m Warren,” he snarled in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. She pushed at him as he positioned himself, and then she threw back her head and let out a blood-curdling scream.
That scream at last brought him to his senses. His groom was slowing the carriage, undoubtedly troubled by the noises coming from the passenger compartment. He couldn’t have been half as troubled as Hunter.
He released his wife. She backed away from him, pulling down her skirts and smoothing them in a jerkily frantic way. “I said not to touch me.” Her voice trembled, rasping and low, as if the scream had taken all the sound out of her. “I don’t want you to touch me. I want you to leave me alone.”
Hunter stared at her, still half in shock at what he’d done. “I’m sorry, Aurelia. I shouldn’t have—”
She held up a hand when he moved to comfort her. “Don’t. Please.” She huddled in the corner of the coach, trembling, her eyes wide and tearful. It was the same look she’d given him on their wedding night. Were they back to that? The distrust, the loathing?
And it was all his fault.
He banged on the wall above his head to signal the groom to stop. It took only a few seconds for the carriage to roll to a halt but to Hunter it felt like an eternity as Aurelia stared at him in that haunted way.
“I shall comply with your wishes,” he said, standing to disembark. “I will leave you alone. I pray you will go home to Somerton and try to forgive me for what just occurred. I was…not myself.”
She began to weep again, copious tears he had caused through his jealousy and temper. “You’re leaving?” she asked in a wretched voice, peering out the door into the dark countryside. “Where will you go?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. He only knew he couldn’t bear to stay in the carriage with her after the way he’d frightened her. The way he’d hurt her. He shut the carriage door and called up to his man.
“Take Lady Townsend home. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Whether he would walk home, or walk back to Wroxham’s, or wander the countryside in a fog of self-hatred for several more hours, he didn’t know. His groom raised a questioning brow but didn’t gainsay his master. After a short pause, he flicked the reins and continued on, the carriage lantern bobbing along until Hunter couldn’t see it any longer.
He was left with his own torturous thoughts in the middle of Berkshire, under the blanket of a vast, oppressive night.
Aurelia sat at the window in her room, looking out at the courtyard. Late morning sunlight gleamed off the cobblestones. Now and again one of the manor’s servants went out on some errand, as if it were a normal day. She supposed it was, only her husband had hurt her past bearing and then deserted her, so things did not feel normal to her.
She was not within the special window seat he’d made for her, because it reminded her too much of earlier days when they were in harmony with one another. If only Lord Warren had never come to visit. If only Townsend had not thought it necessary to dampen her feelings toward the man. But that was her fault, because she couldn’t govern her attraction and be a proper, faithful wife. She had screamed at her husband in the carriage last night, and slapped him, and he...he had tried to take her against her will.
She turned from the window and pressed a handkerchief to her eyes. That part of it had been so ugly and frightening. She had already felt such guilt over his accusations, and then to be grabbed and violated in that way. No matter that he had stopped and released her, and said he was sorry. By then, the emotional damage had been done. How could she trust him now? How could she feel safe?
And for God’s sake, where was he? She’d felt nothing but relief when he alighted from their carriage in the middle of nowhere, but now, in day’s harsh light, she felt twinges of worry that grew with every hour.
From far off, she saw a rider approach. Hunter had not had a horse, although he might have borrowed one from a neighbor. Or it might be someone else, bearing unfortunate news. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop imagining Hunter in a ditch somewhere, or in a flooded culvert, floating face down. If he had come to harm, she couldn’t live with herself. But as the rider entered the courtyard she saw it was neither her husband nor a stranger.
It was Lord Warren.
She absolutely could not receive him. She could not. But when the chambermaid tapped at the door to ask if she was at home to the Earl of Warren, she turned from the window and said, woodenly, that she would receive him in the main drawing room, because she understood that if the two of them did not exchange words now, they would never exchange words again.
She went downstairs at once, before she lost the necessary courage to see him. Her eyes were puffy and her clothing rumpled, but it couldn’t be helped. When she entered the drawing room, she found him standing beyond the fireplace, in the far corner, as far from her as it was possible to stand. In contrast to her, he looked immaculately turned out, his dark blue coat without a wrinkle, and his pure white linen crisply starched. He held his gloves and hat, as if he expected to be thrown out at any moment.
He made a polite bow, which she acknowledged, but she couldn’t move a step closer to him, and she couldn’t seem to smile.
“I understand Lord Townsend is not at home,” he said when she didn’t make any move to welcome him. “Thank you for allowing me to speak with you. I will not impose upon your courtesy for long.”
She crossed to sit on a divan in the middle of the room, for fear her legs wouldn’t hold her. She did not invite him to sit, and so he didn’t.
“Lady Townsend,” he began in a tight and rehearsed fashion, “I must offer my deepest regrets for the scene you stumbled upon last night. If I had known—”
“I didn’t stumble upon it. Townsend took me there because he wanted me to...to see you.” She laced her fingers together in her lap. “It was entirely my own fault.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, only stood back in his corner looking awfully brittle. “Your own fault? In what way?”
She must not cry. She absolutely
could not
cry. She lowered her head and pressed her palms against her eyes. “It humiliates me to say this. Well, you have been humiliated too, so I suppose I owe you the explanation. As a younger woman, in my naiveté, I conceived an abiding admiration for you. I imagined myself, well...very much in love with you, as silly as that seems.”
Somehow she managed to look over at him, her face flaming like a bonfire.
He looked stricken, or perhaps embarrassed on her behalf. “I confess I had heard something to that effect after you and Townsend married.”
“And so I suppose my husband wished to weaken my feelings toward you. Although, in truth, I never would have acted on them. Those feelings had lately begun to fade.”
It was an excruciating moment. Lord Warren made a low, miserable sound.
“I can only be proud that you esteemed me once, but I’m glad such feelings have faded. You understand now that I was never worthy of your admiration. Perhaps it’s best Hunter showed you the truth, even in such a shocking way.”
“I don’t think it’s best,” she said. “It’s only made me sad.” She looked away from him, her emotions in disarray. “I had come to conceive a great affection for my husband, and I would never have been unfaithful. So it matters not what type of man you are to me, not anymore.”
He was silent a long while. At some point, he switched his hat from one hand to the other, then gave her an implacable look. “No matter the reason, he shouldn’t have taken you there. It was no place for a lady. I grieve for the loss of your innocence.”
Aurelia gave a bitter laugh. “My innocence? You know your friend, the man I’m married to. Do you think he’s left me with even a shred of my former innocence?”
Lord Warren crossed to stand before her. “You must be straightforward with me,” he said in a strained voice. “Do you find your situation here unbearable? It did not seem so when we saw you together. You appeared content with one another.”
“We were content with one another. The truth is, I was very happy with my husband until you came to visit.” She gazed into Lord Warren’s clear blue eyes, the eyes that used to set her aglow. They no longer did. She missed her husband. She was so worried about him. “I’ve been terribly foolish,” she blurted out. “I hurt Townsend’s feelings. I hurt his pride by taunting him. I told him plainly so many times that I wanted you instead, that you would have been a better husband. I never realized until last night how much he took my words to heart. Until he…”
His gaze sharpened as she choked back the words. “Until he what? What has happened between you and Townsend?”
She could never tell him what had happened in the carriage, not in a thousand years.
“Your eyes are red from crying,” he persisted. “What did Hunter do?”