An Infamous Marriage by Susanna Fraser Page A

rein. Whatever she was about to tell him, it had left a scar. “Please do,” he said, though he was certain he would mislike what he heard.
    “Lady Dryden had come to call,” she said in that same voice. “You remember her, I suppose.”
    He nodded. How could he possibly forget? He’d never liked her, never forgiven her for how she’d cut his mother and how she and her daughters had treated him when he was little Jack Armstrong.
    “You may not be aware that she has a correspondent in Montreal, a cousin who married a merchant there.”
    He shook his head. He’d never troubled himself over Selina Dryden’s relations. But he had a bad feeling he knew where this was going now.
    “She was most anxious that I should know the latest on-dit, the scandal of all Canada, that a certain Colonel Armstrong had made off with another man’s wife. Helen Mannering, I believe her name was.”
    “Yes.”
    “You do not deny it, then.” Her voice remained level, but Jack sensed her temper was beginning to rise from the flush building in her cheeks and the fact that now she looked at him. Why hadn’t he noticed, five years ago, the subtle grace and elegance of his wife’s features?
    “No. But I cannot think it possible that Lady Dryden’s cousin knew the whole truth of the matter.”
    “Oh? I cannot think it possible that anything could justify so reprehensible a course.”
    Oh, yes, she had been anticipating this meeting and rehearsing her lines. But Elizabeth had it all wrong about Helen. “He beat her,” Jack said.
    “Her husband?”
    “Yes, the damned brute.”
    “He beat her because she made a cuckold of him.” It was more a statement than a question.
    “Would that make it acceptable?” he snapped. “If I had come home and found you in the arms of some strapping stable lad and blacked your eyes or bloodied your back for it, would you say, ‘I cannot complain. He was within his rights’?”
    She blinked. “Such a thing would not have happened. I have kept my vows.”
    So she wasn’t ready to yield an inch, was she? “So had Helen.”
    Elizabeth snorted.
    Now Jack’s anger rose. He understood now how the gossip must have wounded her, and why she had been furious enough to write such a dreadful excuse for a condolence letter. But was she this willing to doubt everything he said? “I have never been a liar. The man was a brute. He slapped her if she wore a dress he didn’t care for. He blacked her eyes for daring to dispute him over the merest trifles. She asked me for help after he almost choked her. She was afraid if she didn’t escape soon, he would kill her. Was I to leave her to her fate, simply because he was her husband and I had a wife in England?”
    “But you stole her out of her house and had her in your keeping. If it was truly so innocent, was there not another way?”
    “She trusted me. She wasn’t so sure about any of the respectable couples of our set. And she was only under my roof for three nights. Then—well, it’s a long story, but Mannering agreed to a separation, if she went back to England to live with her family and avoided future notoriety.”
    Elizabeth bit her lip. “Did you take her to bed those three nights?”
    He still didn’t like to think of that first night and what had almost happened. He had wanted Helen and, viewing himself as a gallant knight who had rescued a fair lady and earned her favors as a reward, assumed she wanted him, too. Now he shuddered at the memory and shook his head. “No.”
    “You lie.” Her words were certain, implacable.
    “As I already said, madam, I do not lie,” he said in the deadly quiet voice that had always terrified incompetent quartermasters and devil-may-care soldiers into submission.
    His wife remained distinctly uncowed. “You had a beautiful woman in your house, one you’d rescued from mortal danger, and you expect me to believe you didn’t touch her?”
    “I expect you to believe the truth. Would you like more of it? I did