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“Nicholas?” she said softly. “Nicholas, is it very bad? Why...?”
“Ask Newbury your questions, for God’s sake, and let me go back to my meditations,” he said roughly, and left her, walking carefully until he was able to let himself down to the almost reviving coldness of the stone floor again. She wanted this. Standing there with every contour of her body outlined in the orange light for them all to see— although Charles had no doubt seen her naked body often enough for it to be no novelty. Any minute now, Brown would come up behind her and look at Newbury for a signal before he raised his arm, and then she, no doubt, would scream and he... Why had she done it? Why hadn’t she let things be at this late stage when it hardly mattered? Newbury had been right all along, of course, and he’d been the fool. But Christ, what did it matter now? If they’d begun with him, they might as well finish with him, and there was no point in her making herself a goddamned martyr for his sake.
“Well?” Newbury said silkily. “You are tolerably comfortable at least?” He noticed from the corner of his eye that Brown had moved up quietly, and he smiled; and noticing his smile, Alexa’s teeth bit into her lip for an instant as she looked at him with a fixed kind of concentration
that almost threw him off until he seized on something he had been mildly curious about ever since he had been reminded how much like his bitch-mother she was. “By the way, our mutual friend Embry pointed out to me recently that there is a decided resemblance between you and the Dowager Marchioness. Do you know your parentage?”
If he had not asked a question she would have asked one of him that would have led to the same reply she meant to give him—in front of too many witnesses for him to be able to evade. And yet in a certain part of her mind she had wondered what might happen if she did not speak at once but waited to see how terrible it felt to feel a leather thong against taut, bare skin, punishment for all the torture she had made him suffer. Perhaps, most of all, to find out what Nicholas might or might not do. But now?
“I know my parentage very well,” Alexa said in a steady voice. “Although I did not know who my real father was until recently. But why do you ask?”
“Idle curiosity.” They had brought in chairs for him and for Charles, and the Marquess lounged back in his, still smiling. “Are we distantly related by some chance? It might add a decided piquancy to what takes place tonight, I think.”
This time she had to take in a deep breath before she was able to answer him without a change in her voice. “Not distantly related, I am sorry to say, my Lord Newbury, but far too closely for my liking at least. My grandmother, your mother, did not tell you, then?”
“Tell me—? Ah, my clever little bitch, if you think to put me off by crying ‘incest’ as you announce you’re one of my bastards by a whore I’ve encountered, I should tell you that you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve always made sure, before I’ve done with a woman, that she will not bear any fruit of mine, at least—as I will do with you when I’ve done with you.”
Alexa saw his eyes flicker and sucked in her breath again, this time with a feeling of panic. Thank God she managed not to scream when she felt a streak of liquid fire wrap itself around her hips, although the breath she expelled sounded like a sob.
“Ah,” Newbury said smilingly, “and now do you think you might change your story? Because no matter whose bastard you are, my dear, you are certainly not mine.”
“I’m not your bastard! Was Victorine Bouvard your legal wife, as the marriage certificate in my possession testifies, or did you always make a habit of marrying a second wife while the first was still alive? Do you remember that you had a daughter by my mother, poor soul, and that she was christened Alexandra Victoria after the Princess of Kent? Or was it more convenient, perhaps, to let my mother believe you had been killed in Greece, so that you could marry the daughter of a Duke and breed your bastards off her?”
“Someone... Curse you, bitch! Someone has told you all this! Solange! Yes, Solange! Confess it!”
“I might confess to anything, I admit, if I’m beaten hard enough, but it’ll do you and your family no good when the documents that prove what I say are produced! Do you remember Harriet Howard? Martin, who was her brother? A sketch portfolio? A book of poems with an inscription to your beloved ‘Rina’? A signet ring bearing your crest outlined by diamonds? Gavin Edward Dameron, Viscount Dare, presently Marquess of Newbury. And how I’ve hated the thought that you of all men are my father! I can only think of you as Newbury, you know. Does that make incest any easier to stomach, my lord?”
The silence that followed was almost a tangible tightness that seemed to expand and swell until it seemed as if the small space that enclosed them all was filled to smothering point before it was abruptly broken by a burst of jarring laughter.
“Por Dios!” Nicholas Dameron said. “And now I could almost feel sorry for you, Newbury. It seems as if the women of your line are even more cunning and vindictive than the men! Do you find yourself hoist by your own petard?”
There was a second or two after that when no one was certain of what Newbury, who had remained white-faced and staring as if he had turned to stone, might do when he rose very slowly from his chair. Alexa’s heart had begun to thump almost painfully again when he said in a very soft voice to Brown, “Give me the whip.” And then, when the man stared at him as if he was still in a mesmeric trance, he almost snarled, “Give me the damned whip, I say!”
“You can easily persuade her to tell you where she has hidden all those papers,” Charles said in an urgent, almost gloating voice. “Whip her a few times and she’ll crack. And after we’re married and she’s safely locked up in the place Belle-Mere told me of, there’ll be no more danger of scandal, will there?”
“Ah yes, my mother,” Newbury said in that same quiet voice. “My clever, scheming, vindictive mother. It would be much like her to... Sit down again, Charles. And be silent unless I speak to you, yes? And Nicholas, perhaps I shall yet have to teach you that in some cases silence has its virtues. You understand, I hope.” The only sign that the Marquess had come close to losing his control showed in the harshness of his breathing in the stillness that held them all again until he let down the rope through the pulley himself,- and taking up his heavy cloth cloak, threw it roughly over Alexa’s suddenly cold body. “Here, cover yourself! And now you shall repeat this story of yours and answer my questions, and I hope for your sake that you have the correct answers. But first, tell me what you meant earlier when you said that my—that the Dowager Marchioness knew everything?”
The Marquess of Newbury showed no loss of his usual composure as he casually handed his silk hat and his coat to the sleepy butler at his mother’s house in Belgrave Square; and his manner was just as politely distant as he dropped his gloves and cane on a table before turning away to. stand with his back to the fire.
She had greeted him with a sarcastic lift of her eyebrows and a trace of irritation in her voice as she said, “My dear Gavin. Such a surprise on a night like this, and at such an hour! Darley tells me that you noticed a light in my room...?”
“Ah yes. I was dropping Alexandra—Lady Travers, that is—off at her house when I saw it and thought you might still be up.”
He smiled at her in a manner that actually made her slightly uneasy, so that she snapped: “Alexandra, is it? I should have thought that your nephew would be the one to escort her home. Or did you have other news to give me? Because if not—it has been quite a tiring day for me and I am planning, as you know, to leave for Spain the day after tomorrow. Please come to the point, if you will.”
“Ah, but the point, my dear mother, is that I do not think you are going to find it convenient to be leaving for Spain when I am counting on your help with all the tiresome preparations for a wedding. In fact, I thought you might wish to give a small prewedding reception here, and then arrange for the reception after the ceremony itself to be held at my residence. You have always been so good at arranging things, after all.”
For once he had managed to surprise her. The Dowager actually stopped rocking back and forth in her chair to frown up at him before she said crossly, “Wedding? It’s too late at night for me to be interested in solving riddles. Whose wedding can you possibly be speaking of?”
“You don’t mind if I help myself to some of your excellent brandy, Mother?” Without waiting for her answer, he had already opened the sideboard and was pouring out a drink of her best Napoleon cognac for himself, with a deplorable lack of manners. What had got into him? She was not comfortable with this new mood of his, nor with the strangely measuring way in which his eyes seemed to study her and almost force her to repeat her last question, this time with unconcealed irritation.
“Whose? Why your granddaughter’s, of course. To Embry. She insisted upon him as her choice of a bridegroom, I’m afraid. Although it seems only just, don’t you agree, that my daughter should be the next Marchioness of Newbury?”
“And when did all this take place, and since when have you interested yourself in such things?” the Dowager cried petulantly. “ I should have been told if Helen had changed her mind about breaking off her engagement to Embry, and you should also have informed me that you had decided to set him free. Unless...” She sat up straighter in her chair and her eyes began to brighten. “Unless you finally had the truth from both of them? Ah, is that why you’re really here? To tell me that you finally did as I suggested and forced matters?”
“Dear, clever, inventive mother.” The Marquess raised his glass to her in a mocking toast and sipped from it pensively before he lowered it and said: “I suppose that you could, if you would, say that I contrived almost by accident to force matters. To force secrets, rotten with worms and maggots, out into the open to be examined. But as to your earlier question—did I not say my daughter? Your granddaughter? Helen, poor girl, is only one of my three bastard daughters by my bigamous wife, as you always knew, dear Mother. I was speaking of the wedding that is to take place between my legitimate daughter and my only heir. I thought you would have guessed already, unless your age is beginning to muddle your thinking. It would be a pity if that should happen or you should make me think so, in case I should have to commit you to the exclusive sanitarium you recommended to my nephew Charles for his future wife’s lodging. Ah!” His sudden cold laugh made the Marchioness, who had never been frightened in her life, suddenly cringe back in her rocking chair and lick her dry lips as he came a few steps closer to stand gazing down at her before he said mockingly: “But why do you suddenly look so white, ma belle-mere? We both know you do not possess a conscience, so it cannot be that, can it? Well then? You are not usually speechless, and I had been looking forward to hearing some comments from you since you are so good at planning. Just as you planned for my removal from my wife and my child and for my extended stay in Turkey; and as you planned so cleverly for poor Victorine with the help of the Howards. And again for Embry to be punished and warned to conform to what you dictated, just as
I was; and for me to take and use my own daughter in the same fashion as you know and encourage me to use my whores! The list is almost endless, is it not? You do not wish me to tire us both by going on, do you? My bitch-whore-mother?” “You cannot speak to me so! How dare you! And all on the word of a cunning bitch who means to use us all? If she’s your daughter—you could have bred her on Solange—don’t you see it all, and how they’ve planned to dupe you? There was no wedding certificate. That poor foolish creature who claimed you married her could not even prove it. Gavin, you are too easily led by your emotions. If you were not you’d see that everything I’ve done was for your good! Look where you are now—the position you hold in the government, the way you are respected. If I had not made sure that you were protected from certain of your foolish mistakes, you would be...a nobody! Nothing, and nowhere, do you understand? You are the Marquess of Newbury, and the name means something— -family means something! With a little French upstart... Hah! People who are weak need somebody to lead them, my dear Gavin, and you were a weakling until I decided you should be made stronger. And now, be good enough to leave my house so that I can seek my bed, for I do not choose to entertain you any longer. Why don’t you go across the street and let that little bitch you call your ‘daughter’ accommodate your moods for a change?”
