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As she clutched at her wildly beating heart, Cressida saw her own hopes mirrored in the expression on his face and her heart surged with love and longing.
“Justin!”
They both turned at the cry, checked by its note of desperation, and Cressida felt her joy turn to confusion then cold, blind fury as the figure at the end of the passage ran towards her husband and Miss Mariah threw herself into Justin’s arms.
Justin did not push her away. He did not unclasp her fingers, which gripped him behind his neck. He did not step politely away. No, his expression changed from passion to something curiously deeper in a response that quite clearly conveyed to Cressida how much this woman meant to him. Mariah. Madame Zirelli. The woman who had been Justin’s mistress before he’d married Cressida.
In the moment that the truth revealed itself, Cressida traded hope and happiness for the sorrow of all the world’s betrayed women. She would have preferred anger to the heartbreak that consumed every hope for happiness she’d ever allowed herself. What a fool she’d been to have missed the truth that had been staring her in the face. The woman to whom Justin had turned during these long months when Cressida had not wanted him had indeed been his old mistress, as Catherine had insisted.
“Oh, Justin!” Miss Mariah repeated in a tone so heartfelt that Cressida’s stomach roiled and she felt the bile, excoriating and bitter, burn her throat.
Miss Mariah was apparently unaware of Cressida standing a few yards farther up the passage, her limpid gaze encompassing only Justin as she clasped his shoulder, pulling him down for her kiss, her greeting revealing a depth of feeling between them that went beyond friendship.
Or anything a wife would condone.
Heaving in a wrenching breath, Cressida brushed the tears from her eyes and picked up her skirts, ignoring her husband’s imploring call as she gathered speed, all but running along the corridor and out into the street where her carriage was waiting.
As she pulled in her trailing skirt she heard his desperate cry from the top step of the portico.
“Cressida, come back!”
She rapped on the roof, signalling impatiently for the coachman to go.
“Cressida, it’s not what you think. Talk to me—!”
He was at the carriage door, grasping the handle, while she gasped her anger and outrage to John the coachman in one imperative command that he obey her and whip up the horses. Hunched up in the carriage, numb and trembling with shock, she dared not look out through the window in case the sight of Justin, pleading and confused, staring after her in the street, caused her to weaken her resolve and turn back.
She’d accepted that Justin had a very good reason for being at Mrs Plumb’s. No, she hadn’t questioned that at all. At every turn she’d given him the benefit of the doubt before challenging her greatest fears in order to give herself once more to him.
What a fool she’d been.
Justin would follow her and try to make her believe some concocted story but right now she needed to talk matters over with someone who knew all about straying husbands.
Chapter Eight
The moment Catherine received her, Cressida realised her error.
For a start, the house was in darkness. She’d hoped to find her cousin up and playing cards, or recently returned from an evening out and full of post-revelry cheer.
Instead, a glowering Catherine appeared at the top of the stairs, an enormous muslin cap covering her elaborately dressed hair and a shawl thrown hastily over her nightgown.
“Good Lord, Cressy, do you know what time it is?” she demanded. “Unless Justin has thrown you out I’ve not the patience to listen to tales of Thomas’ teething woes.”
Cressida swayed at the bottom of the stairs, the fury of her anguish over recent events turning to indecision. She’d not come for a sympathetic hearing for there was scant kindness in Catherine at the best of times, but she’d not expected such a vituperative greeting.
Oh Lord, what had possessed her to seek out Catherine? It was Justin she should be speaking to, not her viperish cousin. She was bound to Justin for life and, if he could explain his way out of this or persuade her out of her misery enough to enable her to forge ahead, a happiness only temporarily wounded was more than most wives could hope for under such circumstances.
With a brittle smile she half turned. “I beg your pardon, Catherine, and apologies for disturbing you. I’ve decided to return home, after all.” Gathering up her skirts she turned back towards the door, unable to shake the image of the woman she’d considered her friend, cosily making up to her husband at Mrs Plumb’s…
For a moment she thought she was going to be sick.
Catherine seemed only then to take in the extraordinarily daring cut of Cressida’s gown for her eyes widened then gleamed as Cressida turned, gasping at the sound of a vehicle drawing up in apparent haste by the front door.
“My, my, Cressy, love…marital dramas!” Her cousin hastened down the stairs and took her arm, leading her back from the door. “You’ve come to the right place. I apologise for my rude welcome but I’m never at my best when my slumber is disturbed.”
“Then I shan’t continue to disturb you,” Cressida said, dignified while she prepared for Justin’s entrance. At least he’d valued her sufficiently to make coming after his wife his priority. Recalling a
gain the familiarity of gesture and caress between the two who, it must be borne in mind, each had known the other intimately before Cressida had even met her husband. She clenched her teeth. Not only had she been deceived, but she’d also been made a laughing stock, and by a woman she’d considered her friend. It only proved how naïve and credulous she was.
