Duchess of Seduction (Hearts in Hiding 3)

God, he certainly needed a lesson in that!

His overtures to Cressida last night only proved how utterly lacking in sensitivity he was. He’d completely misread the signals she’d sent him.

Impatiently, he pushed aside the document, desperate suddenly to leave Mariah’s sitting room. He needed to return home so he could confront Cressida and learn why she ran hot and cold with him these days.

Most of all, he had to understand why she had followed him to Mrs. Plumb’s and enticed him so overtly only to reject him later.

“It is never possible to predict a person’s desire to know another,” he said, hoping to do justice to Mariah’s question while his thoughts remained with his wife. “This other young woman whose identity I discovered yesterday was removed from the orphanage the same day, and it is possible the two names were confused. I can tell you this, however—she lives in desperate poverty with a family named Potter, and your patronage would be gratefully received, I’m sure.” He hesitated, then pressed on, his voice tinged with doubt. “However, the initial subject of my inquiries—”

“You mean Madeleine Hardwicke? Please suspend the lawyer speak, Justin.”

Mariah’s voice was bleak as she moved to stand before Justin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “If it is Madeleine Hardwicke, she won’t want to know me...” she drew out the pause, adding quietly, “will she?”

Taking Justin’s lack of response as confirmation for her worst fears, Mariah whispered, “Then my daughter is as lost to me as she ever was.”

She turned away, saying brokenly, “I know I am being selfish and unreasonable. Would I wish her to have spent her life in poverty? Of course not. But what can I offer...someone like that... in my current position, when I was so hoping my suspicion to be entirely off the mark and that you would discover a young woman to whom I could be of some small use?”

Insensible to his soothing answer, her agitation increased as she paced. “I just cannot believe it of Robert’s family. They wanted nothing to do with me. Robert, himself, abandoned me! Now this! Surely the risk would be too great if the truth were discovered?”

Justin tapped the desk with his fingers, mulling over everything he had learned during the past weeks. He’d spent hours studying the Sedleywich orphans register and following the complex chain of events that had obscured the origins of the child later presented to the world as the legitimate daughter of one of London’s leading families. The daughter Mariah believed was her own.

“It’s all in my report, Mariah,” he said, indicating the document on the desk. “Soon, I shall receive information which will confirm, I suspect, that this second girl has no relevance to my investigation. As I’ve told you, Miss Hardwicke’s family has gone to great lengths, and expense, to guard against any possibility of discovery, making my task so difficult. The only thing they could not take into account was family resemblance and a mother’s need to know .”

Mariah appeared not to have heard him. Only the rise and fall of her bosom revealed her feelings as she stared through the window into the street. “After all these years to finally discover my child...” Her voice trailed away before she added bitterly, “A child I can never claim!”

Her pain sliced at him, but he had nothing to offer except platitudes. She spoke the truth.

Mariah gave a wry laugh as she turned to say over her shoulder, “Only yesterday I told a young woman I was childless. Indeed, it is the truth, for I have never known my daughter and, now, it appears, I never will.” Dropping her eyes, she added, “In a twist of irony, this poor young woman’s anguish was caused by her ever- growing brood. Four, she said she’d had, in eight years, and suffering torments because she believed another would kill her.”

Justin watched her push her dark hair back from her high fore- head and wondered when it had become so tinged with gray. Just as he’d been struck by her handsome Castilian features when he’d first met her, he’d been struck by the continued rich gloss of her hair when she’d approached him three weeks before. Now it seemed dull and lifeless.

She was talking again, and he realized she was still referring to the young woman she’d met the previous day.

“I’d never have guessed it. She looked as innocent as a child, herself, beneath the thick veil and dressed all in black like an Italian widow. And frightened. This was no place for her. She admitted as much, but I think she’d have entered a tiger’s den if she could have reclaimed her husband and poured out her heart to him.”

Justin, who had been scanning his report once more while preparing to leave, looked up.

“She was here to reclaim her husband, did you say?”

Maria nodded, chewing her thumbnail as she continued to stare into the street. “If we women were only given rudimentary knowledge of the facts when it came to the realities of marriage, this poor woman would not be so desperate and I”—her shoulders slumped— “might still be happily married.”

He could barely attend to her reflections and hoped his voice did not betray him. Trying to assimilate the multitude of questions jostling for precedence, he asked carefully, “How did you and this woman meet?”

“She was near fainting in the corridor, so great was her fear of discovery. She’d been told her husband was here, though she seemed to have scant notion as to what she would do when she found him.”

“She ventured to this place, alone, to find her husband?” Justin balled his fists and forced himself to breathe evenly. Mariah could be describing no one else but his wife. “Because someone told her this is where she’d find him?”

“I think she just wanted to know if he was here. She said she was terrified of more children. Apparently, her mother died giving birth to her fifth.”

“What!” Justin gave no thought to the force of his exclamation. A!aid of more children? Cressida doted on their offspring. Increasingly, she chose to spend her time with them, rather than her husband.

Mariah was speaking once more. He tried to concentrate on her words while the implications of her assertion filtered through to his brain. He’d begun to think his wife’s earlier enthusiasm for the marriage act was purely for procreation, not recreation. That while she sought a cessation of marital relations with the nursery full, she’d also lost interest in the shared intimacy he still so greatly craved. Not once had she ever suggested he take precautions to protect against further pregnancies.

Shock was swept away by the most intense dismay as he acknowledged they’d never properly had the conversation. Such talk was lewd, sinful... Good Lord, he thought with a start, perhaps Cressida did not even know such prevention was possible. It was not a conversation one had with one’s wife, though he had tried...

The realization of Cressida’s real and terrible fears swamped him, and the words of his report, upon which his eyes were unconsciously trained, blurred. Uncurling his fingers, he raked his hand through his hair.

He straightened in his chair, breathing carefully as he acknowledged how gravely he had failed his innocent, lovely wife. It was his duty to comfort and protect Cressida, to make her happy. He was ten years older, with experience beyond anything she could ever know. Just as Cressida had no knowledge of sexual relations outside their own bedroom, she’d have no idea how to translate her fear into words. Lord almighty, she’d known nothing on her wedding night, and when her first p