The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

He still wanted Melissande. Everyone knew that he still wanted his cousin’s wife. He still spoke of butchering Tony on the field of honor though nothing had come of it yet. Alexandra had heard the servants gossiping about it. Ah, and how they speculated and wondered.

Douglas hadn’t come near her again after their one skirmish at dawn. She was glad of it. Her sister had visited twice, both times standing a good ten feet away from her and looking delicately pale in her concern. Alexandra had remembered Tony’s kiss during her sister’s second visit, and said, “You appear to like having Tony kiss you.”

To her surprise, Melissande lowered her head and mumbled, “He is most outrageous sometimes. I cannot always control him. It is difficult to know what to do.”

Control, ha! Melissande had met her match. “But you seem to like it.”

“You don’t know, Alex! You can’t imagine what he does to me—to my person!”

“Tell me then.”

“So, the earl hasn’t bedded you. Tony rather hoped that he had. It would make it all so very legal then and we could leave and go to London.”

“No, it wouldn’t make it legal at all. Douglas said he could do just as he pleased to me, and our marriage could still be annulled.”

“But if you got pregnant—”

“Douglas said that he can easily prevent that.”

“Oh,” said Melissande, who was now frowning ferociously. “But Tony insisted that—” She broke off, and her glorious eyes were narrowed slits, diminishing her beauty but making her all the more enti

cing for it.

“But what does Tony do to you?”

Melissande waved an impatient hand. “It isn’t proper that I tell you what goes on. Tony is a madman and he insists upon ordering me about and then he does things that he really shouldn’t do but the way he does them, well . . . However—” Again, she fell silent, and Alexandra was left wondering if what went on between a husband and wife wasn’t to be devoutly wished for. She’d asked no more questions. Melissande had left, somewhat routed, and Alexandra found she was coming to believe that Tony was the perfect mate for her sister. She wondered how Douglas would have treated Melissande were he married to her. She doubted he would ever be nasty to her.

It didn’t matter. There was nothing more for her here. She was well; she had no intention of having Douglas recognize that she was well, and allowing him to be one to take her back to her father. She would not allow him to serve her that final indignity.

She didn’t deserve it. She deserved a lot of things, for she had been part of his betrayal, but she didn’t deserve the kind of humiliation he would dish out. She would dish it up to herself, with no assistance from him. She pictured her father’s face in her mind when she arrived at Claybourn Hall, alone, kicked out, soon-to-be-annulled. It was an appalling picture, but it was better than the one with Douglas gloating as he stood beside her, telling her father that she wasn’t adequate, that he didn’t want her, would never want her. She didn’t want to think of what the lost settlement would mean to her father. In any case, there was nothing to do about it. She’d tried.

She waited until she knew that Douglas had ridden out with his estate manager, a man whose name was Tuffs, then made her way confidently downstairs. She paused, hearing Tony speaking to Hollis.

“I wish Ryder hadn’t left before we discovered Douglas and Alex were missing. He was trying to help Douglas get his brains unscrambled.”

“I agree,” said the stately Hollis. “But Master Ryder is gone and there are none to assist His Lordship, save you, my lord. Has His Lordship, ah, ceased yet to demand your guts on a platter?”

“No,” Tony said. “Hell, I grow tired of remaining here trying to make Douglas see that Melissande isn’t at all the sort of wife who would suit him. Stubborn blighter! Why can’t he see beyond her beautiful face to her altogether self-indulgent nature? I think it time I took my wife away, Hollis, to Strawberry Hill.”

“I have come to understand that Lady Melissande would prefer London, my lord.”

“So she would, but she will prefer differently when she comes to understand what it is I wish her to want.”

If Alexandra thought it strange for a peer of the realm to speak with such intimacy to a butler, her brief stay at Northcliffe Hall had taught her differently.

“Perhaps it would be best for you to depart, my lord. Ah, but His Lordship’s humors are so uncertain. I am concerned about Her Ladyship.”

“I too, Hollis. But her illness at O’Malley’s cottage—I can’t help but feel it was a good thing. Douglas seemed affected, and he did care for her intimately. An excellent idea of yours that no one go back with O’Malley to the cottage.”

Alexandra backed up a step. She didn’t want to hear any more about intimacy or the machinations of Douglas’s staff. She wasn’t sure that Tony wouldn’t try to stop her from leaving. Or Hollis, for that matter. Or Mrs. Peacham. She chewed on her lower lip, trying to figure out what to do.

Then it occurred to her that none of them dared touch her. They could rant and rave, but even Tony, easygoing, and an immense rogue with unlimited loyalty to his cousin, despite his ultimate poaching in Douglas’s nuptials, wouldn’t dare to lock her in a room, and that is what it would require, for she would not remain willingly.

She was still, and at this moment, the Countess of Northcliffe. She could do whatever she pleased. Only Douglas could stop her and he wouldn’t. Still, because she wasn’t completely daft, she waited until Tony drove out with Melissande. She’d heard Melissande say to Mrs. Peacham, excitement in her lovely voice, that he was taking her to Rye, a town of wondrous historic importance. “Yes, Mellie,” Tony had said fondly, kissing her temple, “Rye was chartered in 1285. Edward the First, you know. It’s lovely and I’ll kiss you again on the cliff walk.”

At one o’clock on Friday afternoon, Lady Alexandra, soon to be the discarded Countess of Northcliffe, armed with one valise and her own thirty pounds, walked firmly out the front door of the hall.

Hollis stood slack-mouthed in the entranceway, all his most convincing arguments exhausted in the dust, and with no discernible effect on Her Ladyship.