Sighing at herself, she hung James’s hat and coat beside her cape on the hooks near the door, then turned to his bags. He’d brought only a leather valise and a satchel of papers. The satchel was familiar from their first encounter in his library. In the days when she was convinced that the Marquess of Leath was evil personified. How far she’d traveled since.
After lugging the bags into the parlor, she set the valise near the stairs. When he woke, he’d want his shaving gear and a clean shirt. She rubbed her face with one hand. He’d chafed her last night. And, she blushed to note, not just on the face.
She lifted the satchel onto the mahogany desk in the corner. The bag was heavier than expected and not fastened properly. When she slung it up, the contents cascaded across the priceless Turkey rug.
She smiled to think that even here, he brought work. Then she glimpsed her name on some legal document.
Curious, she gathered the papers and bore them to the couch. A quick glance at the document revealed that it set out Eleanor Charlotte Trim’s agreement to become James Fairbrother’s mistress. She didn’t read it from beginning to end—it was dauntingly thick—but the man so thorough in political and estate matters had been equally thorough when it came to her ruin. There were provisions for allowances and gifts. And children.
When she reached the paragraphs mentioning progeny, her hand curved over her belly. She wasn’t overjoyed about bearing the marquess’s bastard, but she accepted that pregnancy was likely. Perhaps a baby already grew inside her. The thought of a child never free to claim its father shaved a few layers off her contentment. Perhaps she should wake James and make him remind her why she’d taken this reckless step.
Sighing, she set away the contract. James had drawn it up for her protection, but she couldn’t like it. The dry language left her cringing. She felt like something the marquess had purchased.
A pile of letters bound with cord lay beneath the contract. Nell had no right to pry into James’s correspondence so she bundled everything up.
Until a word caught her eye. A word that turned her blood to ice.
Baby.
Knowing she committed an unforgiveable breach of privacy, she snatched up the sheet of cheap paper. The hand was unformed, as though the woman writing it had little or no education. It was dated a week ago and signed “Your dearest Celie.”
Bile stinging her throat, she read the pathetic lines addressed to the great marquess, pleading for money to support the little girl they’d made together. Fumbling, she knocked aside that letter and read the next. The same, except signed Mary and dated a fortnight ago. This child was a boy.
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.
Nell’s mind insisted she stop, pretend that she’d never seen those pathetic words. But a force stronger than self-protection gripped her.
She read each letter more quickly, until she barely glanced at the last one. Another name. Another girl who could barely write. Another baby. Another desperate plea sent within the last month.
Numbly she stared down at the papers littering the sofa and the floor.
Leath had seduced all these women after he’d abandoned Dorothy, and there had been multitudes before Dorothy if Nell believed in the diary of debauchery.
She believed.
One letter had slipped behind a cushion. She straightened it and started to read.
This one was different. Someone called Hector Greengrass wanted Leath to pay him ten thousand guineas in return for a certain document. The short note, written in a vilely knowing tone that made her skin crawl, invited the marquess to arrange a meeting via a tavern in Newbury. It mentioned no names, but she immediately knew that he was talking about the diary of Leath’s sexual exploits. The lecherous marquess had fallen into a blackmailer’s clutches.
Nell closed her eyes and struggled to calm her pitching stomach.
Dorothy hadn’t lied. Even down to the diary.
On a muffled cry, Nell lurched to her feet and rushed outside, leaving the door banging in the wind. She retched into the flowerbed, bringing up watery tea and not much else.
Feeling woozy, she stumbled upright, clinging to the cottage’s whitewashed wall. Her legs trembled near collapse. Behind her eyes, the sad, begging, incriminating letters marched, one after the other. Each representing an innocent girl who had fallen foul of a rake’s lies. Each representing a life destroyed.
She vomited again, although nothing was left inside her. Still she heaved until her stomach hurt. But nowhere near as badly as her heart.
Eventually she stood, head swimming. With an unsteady hand, she wiped cold rain from her face. More than anything, she wanted to scrub every inch of her skin. But she couldn’t risk returning upstairs. Not when that brute lay in wait.
Disgust threatened to crush her into the mud. But this wasn’t time for self-hatred. She’d have years to regret her stupidity and weakness.
Now she needed to escape. The scale of Lord Leath’s evil staggered her. She couldn’t comprehend that the man she thought she’d known turned out so rotten. Turned out to be the man she’d originally believed him. He’d used her. Worse, she had an agonizing premonition that after her blistering anger cooled, she’d discover that he’d broken her heart too.
But she wasn’t defeated. Finally she had proof of his sins. And, she thought, straightening, she was in Derbyshire. She’d always intended to enlist the Duke of Sedgemoor’s influence to bring down the wicked marquess. His Grace’s family seat, Fentonwyck, was mere hours away.
Leath’s preparations for their affair had included delivery of a sweet little bay mare for Nell. She almost smiled. Before she was done, he’d be sorry he’d taught her to ride.