“We can leave this very morning.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then tomorrow,” he declared with an easy smile.
“We shall see,” she murmured, thinking she would certainly be well gone by tomorrow. Without him.
The day passed slowly, the howling wind outside making her glad for the cozy warmth of their room.
Griffin Shaw might deem himself ready to travel, but his injury clearly still plagued him. Even without the laudanum she offered him—and which he declined—he slept off and on throughout the day, waking only when she roused him to change his bandage and at the arrival of their meals. The piping-hot smell of yeasty bread instantly worked to revive him.
He ate heartily, using his bread to sop up the remains of his thick stew. She couldn’t help but stare as he licked the juice off his thumb, reminded afresh of his primitive nature and oddly intrigued. Even when he licked his thumb, he managed to look…handsome. Unnervingly so.
“You’re finished?” he asked, looking up and eyeing her empty bowl.
She nodded, as always wishing there had been more. And yet accustomed to the lingering pangs of hunger.
She ate well when at Jane’s or Lucy’s. Or when she braved the sneers and speculation and attended a party or ball. Something she only did when the pantries at home were woefully bare and she did not want to take food from the mouths of Cook or the others. An occasional evening on the Town could be tolerated for them.
He craned his neck to peer inside her bowl. “I’ve never met a female who could eat faster than me.”
Standing, she gathered their trays, annoyed with herself. Hunger. A weakness she couldn’t banish. The gnawing ache never seemed satisfied.
They spoke little the rest of the day. When night fell and a new serving girl—it appeared the garrulous Molly had been called away on some family matter—cleared their dinner trays, Astrid bided her time, waiting for him to drop asleep again.
She had contemplated adding a dose of laudanum to his drink, but the prospect reminded her of another night long ago when she had doctored someone else’s drink…and lost herself in the process. A shiver trembled down her spine.
She couldn’t bring herself to do such a thing again. She regretted that she ever had.
She waited, sitting stiffly in the chair she had once again moved back to the window, needing the distance now more than ever considering that he was no longer mindless with fever but a vital, virile man.
When he at last surrendered to sleep, she rose from her chair and moved about the room silently, scarcely breathing, keeping one eye on him as she gathered her things to leave.
Slipping out the door, she resisted the overwhelming urge to look over her shoulder, to sneak a lingering glance.
Looking back never made sense. Only sentimental fools looked back, longing for what could never be and what never was.
Chapter 6
Her heart beat hard against her ribcage as she took step after slow step up the creaking stairs of the boarding house. She wore her hood low over her face even though she had left the worst of the chill outside. Several eyes watched her ascent, prompting her to shrink deeper into the confines of her cloak. Why she bothered to hide she could not be certain. No one in Dubhlagan knew her. No one would take special note of her arrival or departure.
At the top floor, she counted the doors on her right, stopping when she reached the third. John had spent half the day tracking down Bertram to this lodging house, to this very room. She had waited at an inn, her thoughts, strangely enough, on the stranger she had left behind rather than her long-awaited reunion with her husband.
Griffin Shaw. A strange breed of man, to be certain. A man with honor. A man that stirred emotions within her that she had no business feeling. For some reason, in his presence, she had felt like a woman again. She hadn’t felt that way in years.
An odd sense of guilt plagued her for leaving him the way she had. Almost as though she had abandoned him. Silly, she knew. He was plainly equipped to care for himself. And yet she felt like a thief stealing away in the night. It was almost as though they had been bound. As though he had cursed her with those absurd words. And she had failed him in leaving. Brilliant. Another soul she felt she had failed.
Still, relief coursed through her that she had not confessed her true purpose in Scotland to him.
The shame of her husband’s abandonment did not rest solely with Bertram. True, he had fled prosecution for his crimes and left her to face penury and cruel gossip, but she was, quite simply, the wife he had seen fit to leave. The abandoned wife. That much she knew, felt. That much Society had made plain to her.
She would have loathed seeing pity fill Griffin Shaw’s eyes. Or worse, scorn.
Facing the door, a violent urge to run, to flee, seized her. Fortunately, her determination ran stronger…and curiosity. Curiosity to see the husband whose memory had grown dim over the years. There were days she forgot the exact color of his eyes. She knew they were blue, but knowing and remembering were separate beasts.
At that thought, another man’s eyes came to mind, a shade of blue so pale they glowed as though lit from within. She could not imagine ever forgetting them. Or him.
She knocked briskly, the sound tinny in the narrow corridor. She glanced left and right, almost expecting to see others emerge from their rooms at the sound.
A slight noise carried from the other side of the door—a tinkling of glass perhaps—before the door cracked open.
Dark blue eyes, flat as a still night sea, stared out at her.
“Yes?”
Astrid lifted her chin, letting the hood fall back. “Bertram,” she greeted, glad for the evenness of her voice.
His eyes widened at the pronouncement of his name, reminding her that he went by another name. Another identity. The memory burned through her, made her fists curl at her sides.
Thrusting his head out into the hall, he looked left and right before snatching her by the arm and dragging her into the room.
“What the devil are you doing here?”
Tugging her arm free, she surveyed him from head to foot, murmuring coolly, “And good evening to you, too. You look well. A little older, but I suppose that is what time does. What the years will bring.” Her gaze lingered on his prominent paunch. “You look…hearty.” For some reason that fact provoked her ire. “I cannot convey my relief to know you haven’t suffered hunger like I have these many years, husband.” She stressed the final word, letting it hang in the air.
His face reddened and a muscle near his eye twitched. He ran a finger over the flesh there, rubbing it fiercely. “Have a care what you say. The walls are thin.”
“Indeed.”
She moved farther into the room, undoubtedly the most lavish accommodations in the establishment if the four-post bed with its brocade counterpane and wood-carved fireplace were any indication. She wouldn’t have guessed such a room existed in the provincial town.
Her gaze flicked back to Bertram, eyeing his green silk dressing robe. “It appears you’ve done well for yourself.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze skeptical. “And you haven’t, I presume?” His tone rang out with a petulance she remembered—had heard him assume when his grandmother rebuked him for his lack of responsibility. Astrid had forgotten how very much like a child he could be. Moody and difficult, given to tantrums and pouts when life failed to meet his expectations. Scarcely a man, she realized. Certainly not a husband to mourn.
“You left me with nothing,” she reminded him, drawing air through her nostrils, fighting to maintain her composure when she wished for nothing more than to bring her palm violently against his face. For all he had done. For all he failed to regret doing. “Nothing bar scandal of course.”
His eyes assessed her with bitter appreciation. “You mean to say you found no protector during my absence? No one to feed and outfit you in proper fashion?”
“No,” she spit the word out, marveling that he knew her so little he thought she would sell herself so that she might wear pretty gowns. She supposed if it came down to outright starvation, she would have done what she must. Heavens knew women before her had resorted to such measures, and she hardly considered herself stronger or in possession of more dignity than they.
“Then you’re far stupider than I thought.” He stared at her for a long moment before tossing back his head with harsh laughter. “Still such a prig, I see. Time hasn’t altered that.” He angled his head as if summoning a distant memory. “As I recall, diddling you was rather a chore. You never could figure out what to do.”
She fought to suppress the stinging heat his words triggered…and the memory. He had made it clear she was a disappointment from their first night together. She blinked long and hard, recalling him moving over her, his actions rough and without rhythm, heedless of the pain involved in that first coupling. She could still smell the moist rush of brandy-soaked breath on her cheek. Hear the harsh grunt of his voice. Can you not do anything besides lie there like a corpse?
Her eyes blinked open, fighting back the memory of that long-ago wedding night—her introduction to sex and precisely what sort of husband her father had chosen for her.
Thoughtless, selfish, more child than man.
Heat licked her cheeks. Emotion rose high in her chest. She fought it back, stuffing it back down where she stored other futile feelings.
“Ironic,” she muttered, “I always felt it was something of a chore, too.”
“Pity,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You could have been so much more…exciting.”
His eyes raked her with a sad sort of admiration. “Only you never relaxed, never let yourself accept pleasure.”
“Yes, if I had been more like you, I might have exchanged honor in pursuit of pleasure and self-fulfillment, too.”
“Always such a righteous one, weren’t you? Never a misstep.” Clearly, he did not miss the reference to his crime of forgery.
Astrid flushed, thinking of the many mistakes she had made in her life. “I don’t claim to be a saint, but come now, Bertram.” She tsked her tongue. “Stealing another’s identity? Bigamy? I didn’t think even you capable.”
He plopped down in a plush wing chair and threw his arm along the back, unmoved to learn that she knew of his matrimonial plans.
“I’m a realist, m’dear. The monies brought from selling off your jewelry could not be expected to last forever. When opportunities fall in my lap…well, it was fate. Only a fool would pass up such a chance.” His eyes narrowed on her. “It could be quite a profitable venture for you, too.”
“How is that?”
Bertram waved about him. “My fiancée is the daughter of the heir to a prosperous and powerful clan in these parts. Why, when I became engaged to Petra, her father saw that I was moved into this room. Out of respect.”
“What are you saying?”
“My good fortune can be yours,” he explained, his hands fluttering with energy. “Once married to Petra, I can supply you with funds.” At her silence, he continued, “And freedom.” Squeezing a gold band from his finger, he tossed it to her.
She fumbled to catch it in her hand. Studying the familiar ducal crest, she murmured, “Your signet ring.”
“It’s been in my family for generations. Take it home with you as proof of my death. Once I’m declared dead, you are free.”
Free.
Free of the constant strain of trying to keep the Derring holdings afloat—the derelict countryseat, the cavernous townhouse in Mayfair.
She could walk away from it all, wash her hands of it—of him—and let some distant cousin claim the Derring’s endless yawning maw of debt. She would be free.
For a few moments, she continued to weave the fantasy in her head, imagining herself retiring to some country cottage. Perhaps giving music lessons or providing some other genteel service in which to support herself.