Page 11 of Beguiling the Baron

Chapter 7

Hal picked up a chisel and applied it to the stone, then struck hard with his mason’s hammer. A chip flew off and grazed his cheek, but he relished the pain.

Pain proved he was alive. Pain proved he was still paying Mary back for all the harm he had done to her.

The sound of steel on stone echoed about the chamber, its stridency at odds with the dark, silent chill of the folly tower. Hal’s mouth quirked—here he was, challenging the ghosts again, spirits whose inimical eyes had, it seemed, watched him all his life.

He’d believed himself accursed from the age of seven. That was the year his pony tossed him into a dry ditch and put him in bed for a month, thus terminating all his pleasures for what seemed like a lot longer. Seven was also the age he began to believe in ghostly nuns, evil witches, headless horsemen, and spirit animals, any number of which could be imagined haunting the echoing passageways of Foxleaze Abbey.

Hal brushed at the grit adhering to his chest. Soon he would resemble a phantom himself, covered in white dust, with only his eyes visible through the crust, wild and staring. How fortunate it was to have the river running through the Foxleaze estate. A way not only of mortifying the flesh but of cleansing himself.

On the whole, he had grown out of those childhood fears. Or perhaps the ghosts had ceased to torment him because he’d attempted to live an exemplary life. He’d spoken out against slavery, voiced his opinion about the Corn Laws, and criticized the government for using agitators to infiltrate those amongst the lower classes who were campaigning for reform. Having won their trust, the agitators represented them all as Jacobins and a threat to national security.

Campaigning for the downtrodden was all well and good while he was the heir to Foxleaze, but his responsibilities increased monumentally when he came into the title. This led to more misunderstandings with his wife, primarily because he had no time to ensure any disputes between them were amicably settled.

Hal winced as he recalled the years immediately preceding Mary’s death. He hated himself for growing dourer, quicker to anger. Presents and promises were given in lieu of his attention, but it sometimes struck him he and his wife were leading such different lives, they might as well not be married at all. And they’d seemed to argue all the time.

As he lined up the chisel for another blow, Hal recalled how he’d deliberately stay up late poring over his papers so he could avoid deciding whether or not to go to her bed. Inevitably he ran the risk of censure either way.

Gradually rumors began to circulate Mary had taken a lover.

Possibly more than one.

At first, Hal thought it was simply a case of political rivals—men with no moral scruples whatsoever—trying to disquiet him and send him running back to the country.

And go back he had, eventually. Only to find his wife in a precarious state of both mind and health. She’d obstinately refused to talk to him about it or give him the name of the physician she was seeing. When he found the small bottles of mercury in her jewelry box, the cruel truth had hit him with the force of a charging bull.

Syphilis.

He struck another blow at the marble, the base this time, so he could vent his rage without damaging his more delicate work. There must have been something he could have done to prevent her developing this awful malady.

If he hadn’t left her so much on her own . . .

Then had come the fateful day when he’d been at the top of the folly, attempting a sketch of the Mary he remembered, young, fresh, and beautiful. She’d come out to speak to him—for what reason, he never discovered—and he watched her halting progress across the lawns, sorrowing at how thin and awkward she was compared with that lively diamond of the ton she’d been when he first met her.

In retrospect, he should have gone down to see what she wanted. But anger had gripped him, anger that she’d thrown away everything they’d ever shared together and made herself sick into the bargain, and anger at himself for letting it happen.

It took her a long time to reach the top of the folly, and by the time she’d emerged onto the roof, her face was pale and oily with perspiration, her chest heaving raggedly from her exertions.

Her mouth had formed a pinched, disapproving line when she saw him watching her. “I disgust you now, don’t I?”

“Not at all. I’m sad for you. I want you to be well again. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

This had been a bone of contention between them ever since he’d discovered how ill she was. It was his belief she should be pampered, remaining in bed, attended by the best physicians in the land, with himself and Polly paying regular visits to stop her from getting bored.

She had stubbornly refused to accept his advice, going about her household tasks with an obsessive ardor he’d never seen in her before.

Mary had glared back at him, her red-rimmed eyes dark with malice. “I have no intention of wasting the short time I have left simply lazing in bed.”

She’d hobbled toward him. Her legs were tightly bandaged to contain the incipient ulcers, making it harder for her to walk. She often complained the bandages were so tight, her feet went numb.

He’d put down his sketchbook and resigned himself to a tirade. He could read in her face that he had, yet again, unwittingly done something heinous. But her gaze fell on his sketchbook, and before he could stop her, she lurched forward and grabbed it.

“What have you been drawing? Oh!”

Too much the gentleman to snatch the book back, it would have been childish of him to fight her for it. And what, after all, did he have to hide? His artistic skill was good, and he’d made dozens of sketches and paintings of his wife in the early days of their marriage.

She turned her back on him and examined the drawing on which he’d been working. Then, glancing over her shoulder, she gave him a look which froze him to the marrow and began systematically tearing the sketch to pieces, dropping the scraps of paper between the crenellations of the folly, where they wafted down like feathers on the breeze.