The Unknown Wife

Prologue

‘I don’t want you to go out this evening. Stay home and spend some time with me and our children before they are put to bed.’

The woman might have been deaf for all the attention she paid to those beseeching words or the tall handsome man who had uttered them. Patiently he watched her from his study doorway as she teased abundant dark curls to drape alluringly over her elegant white shoulders. Her head turned this way and that as she assessed her reflected image in an elaborate hallway mirror.

‘For pity’s sake! Will you look at me? Answer me!’

The beautiful brunette swished about in a rustle of vermilion satin. ‘What is wrong with you tonight, Benjamin?’ she enquired. ‘Is Mrs Smith out of sorts? If you think I will oblige you with playing at happy families because your mistress is indisposed, you are more stupide than I imagined.’ Her head fell back, exposing a pearly throat, and her low-lidded eyes held a feline intensity as she looked at him. ‘Your chère amie might be unavailable, but my friend is not,’ she purred with insulting indifference. ‘Lord Ballantine is due any minute to take me to the opera.’

On hearing who was her escort this evening, her husband approached her with light, rapid steps and gripped a soft arm.

‘Your cicisbeo can wait…or move on to the next silly strumpet on his list. You are not to be Ballantine’s only conquest tonight, I’m sure. As for my mistress, she is not indisposed and would, as ever, be pleased to see me. Which is more than can be said for my lady wife.’ He closed his eyes, grimaced regret as an apologetic hand smoothed over pink pressure marks marring her fine skin. ‘It is time you and I attempted to put things right between us. The children are old enough now to sense this interminable disharmony. They did not ask to be brought into this world or live in such a bleak atmosphere.’

‘The children! Always it is the same. We should live our lives to please the children! Sometimes I wish I had returned to France. Chancing my fate on the tumbrils with my esteemed family might have been preferable to enduring your disgusting touch.’

Her husband smiled thinly, his fingers detached from her arm. ‘You? Enduring my disgusting touch? When was that, my dear? Tell me, can you really recall the last time you allowed me into your bed? I’m damned if I can remember enjoying my conjugal rights in five years.’

Beneath an impeccable maquillage the woman’s face whitened. ‘And I am damned, mon cher, if I can remember ever enjoying my conjugal rights. You have your heir,’ she breathed. ‘A daughter, too. Leave me be. I have performed all the duty I can or I will for you.’ She stepped past him, heading for the street door. By the foot of the stairs her pace faltered. ‘Why are you hiding there? Are you spying on your mama? Quick! Up to bed with you, this instant. Tomorrow you are back to school, and not a moment too soon.’

The small boy said nothing, merely fixed the woman with a velvet-brown gaze. She flinched beneath that unwavering, penetrating stare at the same moment his eyes slid past to watch his father through stripes of banister.

‘Upstairs with you now!’ The woman’s voice was strident with unease. ‘Do you want the school masters to be told you need a good lesson in manners and discipline?’

The boy’s eyes whipped back to his mother, but already he was overlooked, for a butler had portentously materialised in the hallway.

‘Lord Ballantine’s carriage awaits, ma’am,’ the aged servant informed neutrally.

’Méchant…’ the woman murmured beneath her breath with a slanting glance at her son. Whilst majestically draping a sable stole about her petite figure, she announced, ‘I am the daughter of a count whose august bloodline is centuries old, yet I have a son who is insolent and a husband who is too cowardly to punish him.’

‘And I am the son of an earl whose noble ancestry far outstrips yours, yet I have a wife who invites scandal because she acts like a common—’ The man’s lips compressed into a skewed line as from a corner of his eye he saw his son’s fingers clench on oak.

‘You are a younger son…a nobody…’ she mocked over her shoulder.

The butler hobbled to close the great doors, then merged tactfully into shadow. Just a waft of expensive French perfume hinted at a woman’s recent presence.

The man held out a hand. Within a moment crisp cotton was held away from bare feet as the boy padded over cold flags to his father and immediately curved against his hip. Long patrician fingers cradled a fair fragile head close to his waist. When he spoke his voice was hoarse with tears.

‘When you are a man, Etienne, choose your wife carefully. Reason and respect must reign. Marrying for loyalty or duty…or even love is unwise. Doing the right thing is often very wrong.’

Chapter One

Had he been anywhere but Ireland those limpid doe eyes attached to his quite solemnly, quite boldly, might have unsettled him. He had coupled with many women, in many countries, but Ireland? Curse it for a dank and dismal hell! He’d never before set foot on a squelching sod of it. And yet…and yet…squinting through lashes rimed with ice, through eyes filmed with cold, he could detect something familiar in the child’s face.

The child was still, looking back with quiet instinct, uncaring of the drizzling sleet sleeking his fair hair against his head. The stallion snickered, blew steam at the side of his pink-cheeked face. A hoof batting against the boy’s cap, catching ice on the ground, finally took the rider’s attention. Moments before the lad had hurtled into the road chasing the hat and laughing, for an icy blast had exposed his tender head. The gangly, tumbling figure had made horse and rider rear back and slew to the right, almost overturning them both.

A dark visage creased fiercely beneath the bite of the elements and its owner’s thoughts. But the man was glad now he hadn’t bellowed abuse, although the lad deserved scolding. He might have run him down and broken his own neck in the bargain. Brusquely the man flicked, then snapped, leathered fingers at the hat. Obediently it was retrieved with a childish peek at the softening snow. He wasn’t afraid. He smiled instead; a faltering curving of lips that arched blond eyebrows into a sleet-spangled fringe.

A broad, brown hand shot out and the cap was knocked clean of its freezing granules.

‘You should be careful. I could have knocked you flying. This stallion might have pulped a little chap like you.’

The boy was unabashed, just darting eyes enlivening a complexion drawn with cold. Dark features suddenly swooped close to his as the rider plopped the hat on the child’s soaking skull.

‘What’s his name?’ the boy asked, stroking the stallion’s flank.

‘Storm.’

‘What’s your name?’

The man seemed as though he might ignore the trembling wistful enquiry, and the small, bone-white fingers still on the flank of his sleek black mount. ‘It’s polite to say, what is your name, sir,’ he corrected tersely, but he began to introduce himself anyway. ‘Etienne—’ The rest was lost to a woman’s guttural Irish tone.

‘Mother Mary, did I turn me back for one minute to speak with Mrs O’Flaherty and find you gone. Now, what will your ma be sayin’ if she finds out all today’s mischief…an’— Faith! Look, you’re drenched through, so y’are…’ A woman clutching at her bonnet and dragging her cloak hard about her stamped over the unyielding street towards them. Grabbing at the lad’s hand, she tugged him gently backwards towards the shelter of shop doorways, roaring and making a fist for a cart that drove too snugly by him. There was no more than a sharp stare angled from beneath an awning of bonnet brim to acknowledge the stranger astride his powerful stallion.

Etienne watched as the boy trudged away stabbing the toes of his boots into frozen earth mounds formed by cartwheels. Clods were successfully loosened, tossed off the tip of his boots into the air. Far back in Etienne’s mind a childish reminiscence stirred, twitching his thin lips. He reined back, cursing for the hundredth time that he’d not taken the coach for hire at the Fiddle and Flute. But for the blacksmith failing to shoe the lead quick enough for him he would have been travelling in relative comfort towards Waterford. Now he felt unsettled, irritable, and he knew it wasn’t just to do with being wet, hungry and cold. An odd feeling that something portentous had occurred wouldn’t be shrugged off along with the ice burdening his caped shoulders. Settling his beaver low on his brow, he cursed and kneed the horse forward. It was just a child; an Irish peasant’s brat. The boy was nothing to do with him. He’d never before set foot in Ireland, he reminded himself as he sent his mount into a furious gallop.

‘Have you invited me here simply to watch me die of influenza?’

Connor Flinte, Earl of Devane, turned from the slurry obscuring the view through his mullioned window and grinned at the man entering his vast and cosy library. He watched his guest’s busy fingers despatching a shower of melting ice from his long dark hair.

Connor’s rapid step showed genuine welcome and affection as he closed the space between them to shake hands. ‘Is that any way to greet your host? Your long-lost comrade? Some carping gratitude for me fine hospitality, I’m thinking!’ Connor chided with liberal Irish charm and intonation.

‘Well, you have to admit, Con, this weather is appalling, even for February. Is Ireland always so…so damned wet?’

The Earl of Devane quirked an ebony eyebrow at him. ‘Wet? Get away with you. This is nothing. You should see it when the rains get here. Seriously, it’s good to see you, Etienne. Why did Gallagher not announce you?’ Connor frowned at the door. His conscientious butler was nowhere to be seen.

‘Oh, I told him not to bother. He seemed a bit flustered. Your porch roof is leaking; as I arrived he was organising the positioning of the buckets with a couple of footmen. It reminded me that the roof of Redgrave Park needs attention.’

‘Are you away from here and straight to Redgrave Park? Or have you a mind to stop off in Mayfair?’ Connor asked his former comrade-in-arms. ‘If you are going to London, I have an errand to beg of you. Would you deliver an urgent letter to my man of business in Cheapside?’

Etienne’s expression became decidedly wolfish. ‘Oh, I think I might detour through Mayfair en route to Suffolk. And of course I’ll be your post boy.’

‘How is Lady Avery? Still besotted with you?’ Connor asked with a mix of admiration and humour in his voice as he contemplated the beautiful widow who had been this man’s mistress for at least half a decade. Plenty of men as wealthy and influential as this one had tried to win her affections and lure her away. Nevertheless she remained steadfastly loyal to her Colonel even, so rumour had it, during those long months that he spent abroad on army duties.

‘I believe she’s very well,’ Etienne replied with a grin. ‘Judging from her last billet-doux, she’ll be delighted to see me. It would be churlish to disappoint her after six months’ absence.’ His smile sobered. ‘I should make it my business to see Miss Caroline Greenwood, too, before I set out to check on Redgrave Park.’

At Connor’s enquiring look he elaborated. ‘It’s time to think about a wife and heirs. Last time I was in town, I paid Miss Greenwood some attention. She seems amenable and is pretty enough. She doesn’t blush, stammer or giggle too often. I’ll want a decent hostess who is able to conduct herself properly. She’s young…about nineteen, I would guess. That apart, she fits the bill.’ He chuckled. ‘And her parents are more than willing to foot the bill. They’ve been hinting at a hundred thousand deposited in my bank account as the chit’s dowry. Her father has kept regularly in touch. Now I’m home for good I imagine they think I’ll take up where I left off. I expect I will.’

‘How very romantic,’ Connor murmured.

Etienne shot him a look from beneath thick dark brows. ‘What’s romance got to do with any of it?’ he countered in an equally sarcastic vein. ‘We’ve established that Lady Avery is just as fine as ever she was. My marriage won’t worry her.’

As though remembering his role as host, Connor indicated his guest should take a seat in a comfy fireside chair, positioned close to glowing coals. He drew his own armchair up to the lofty stone chimney-piece—so enormous was it, he could have put the chair down within the soot-stained cavern. With a weary sigh, Etienne dropped his tall frame into the cushions. One long muscular leg stretched out in negligent ease as his head lolled back to dent soft hide. A dark hand was thrust into a trouser pocket; the other accepted the crystal brandy balloon extended his way. A generous amount of amber liquid rocked alluringly within.

After the two men had sipped appreciatively, taken discreet stock of each other’s appearance, and found nothing spectacular to warrant a comment, Etienne turned his thoughts to the thing, or rather person, who did greatly intrigue him. With his dark eyes levelled on Connor, he drew his booted feet across the Aubusson and sat forward, forearms on knees. ‘If you want to talk of romance…well, you know I’m not here, risking pneumonia, on your account. Where’s that beautiful, tricky wife of yours? It’s about time I met her.’

At the mention of Rachel, Connor’s hard handsome features softened into a smile. ‘She’s visiting friends in the village with her sister. And your mother is due any moment.’

’My mother?’

‘Claudine’s recently been a house guest of the Ormondes. Did you not know?’

Etienne shrugged. ‘No. Ormonde is my father’s cousin on the paternal side. I’ve long known my mother has a soft spot for him.’

‘Do I detect an element of animosity?’

Etienne’s brandy balloon was virtually emptied in one gulp before he replied. ‘It makes no difference to me with whom she spends her time. We’re not close; you know that. It’s only ever been my grandparents cementing us together. And that’s another place I must go before I return to Suffolk: to Cambridge to see how they fare. They’re both in their eighty-second year, you know.’

Etienne avoided Connor’s sympathetic gaze. Eyes the colour of bitter chocolate focused on leaping flames to one side of him as he drained his glass.

‘How long can you stay, Etienne?’

Etienne speared him a look. What he read in his friend’s face made him chuckle. ‘I sense a man desperate for a little masculine company, even if he does have an urgent letter to be taken across the water to his attorney. Are you outnumbered by the ladies, Con?’

Connor looked a little abashed. ‘Actually, the letter’s not that important, but your company is. I thought, with apologies to Lady Avery, I might impose on you to stay at least a week and act as escort and charming man about town to your mother and my sister-in-law.’

Etienne collapsed into his chair and choked a laugh. ‘For God’s sake! How long have you been married? Too long for this! Three months—six at the most—is honeymoon time, you know. By my reckoning you’ve been leg-shackled more than a year and a half.’

‘I like my sister-in-law very much, but sometimes a man has a desire to spend time alone with his wife during the day.’

‘I do understand,’ Etienne soothed him with a grin. ‘And true friend that I am, I will be happy to oblige for a week. After that I have a desire to spend some time in London with Lady Avery…you understand?’

Connor grimaced a laughing response.

‘Lady Devane must be enchanting,’ Etienne said, admiration husky in his voice. ‘I can’t wait to meet her.’

Isabel Forrester stripped damp gloves from her long slender hands with a grimace. She vigorously shook them to dry them whilst answering a plea from her older sister. ‘I will come along to the drawing room, I promise. First I must see how Marcus is. He said he felt poorly this morning before breakfast. I worried about sending him to school at all in this weather. But he has a way of exaggerating when it suits him.’ She sighed expressively. ‘I wonder if Noreen has brought back more complaints from Father Maguire?’

Rachel agitatedly swung her bonnet by its strings, too excited by her butler’s news to pay much attention to her nephew’s condition. ‘Well, don’t be too long. Gallagher says that Colonel Hauke is already arrived. I believe he is very rich and well connected. I’ve seen him from afar a few times. It was a long while ago, but he made a good impression on me then. In fact, I judged him quite a magnificent specimen of a man.’

‘I’m sure, dear,’ Isabel humoured her wryly, knowing only too well Rachel was an incurable and persistent matchmaker on her behalf; on the behalf of any unattached lady who found herself in the vicinity of a bachelor of reasonable status and character. ‘But only think of the interim in which he has probably deteriorated quite remarkably. Bad teeth, thinning hair…’

‘If he is balding, you must sell him a pot of your hair restorer. He will propose before the day is out.’

Isabel smiled at that. She had concocted a hair lotion from her physic garden for a new mother in the village. The woman was delighted when her hair loss decreased. Isabel thought it more likely to be due to her health strengthening now the child was being weaned than any miracle cure derived from rosemary and lavender.

Aware that her husband was even now awaiting her presence in the library to welcome to Wolverton Manor one of his oldest friends, Rachel Flinte, Countess of Devane, relinquished her cloak and hat to the waiting footman. With a toss of her golden hair, followed by a pat to subdue several buoyant curls, she was off in the direction of the library.

‘Ma’am? It’s dinnertime, ma’am. Are you awake?’

The harsh Irish brogue grazed Isabel’s dreams, bringing her to bleary consciousness. She blinked herself awake to see Noreen Smith’s freckled, frowning face close to hers. With a rub to her heavy eyes, she turned over on to her elbow and