Jane Feather - [V Series] by Virtue Page B

share. Ten years ago I was to be married. A woman your antithesis in every way. I had known her since childhood and it didn’t occur to me to woo her. She was a sweet, meek soul who I assumed would make me a compliant and exemplary wife. Instead, she fell wildly in love with a fortune-hunting gamester, who most skillfully swept her off her feet. She cried off.”
    His voice was perfectly level, almost bland as he continued. “The role of jilted fiancé was a hard and humiliating one for me. I was rather young to face such public mortification with equanimity. I decided then that a man could live in perfect contentment without a wife.”
    “Did she marry the fortune hunter?”
    What choice had she had …? Poor little dupe.
Marcus closed his eyes on the memory of Martha’s battered face, closed his ears to the sound of her broken whimpers. An untamed lynx would never get herself into such a predicament. An unprincipled adventuress wouldarrange matters to suit herself.
Had she heard those voices on the stairs? Had she known who was in the taproom before she’d walked in, her clothes almost disheveled, the aura of a satisfied woman clinging to every curve and line of her body? Had she contrived this?
But even if she had, a man of honor had no choice.
    “Yes, she married him,” he said, “and died in childbed nine months later, leaving him to game away her fortune.” He shook his head in a dismissive gesture. “I don’t wish to talk of Martha ever again. You and she are so different, one could almost believe you to be different species.”
    She wanted to ask him if he believed he could be happy married to her, but deep in her soul she knew the answer. His hand had been forced; he was making that clear with every word and intonation.
    If it wasn’t for Gracemere, it would be easy to let him off the hook. She’d be able to say that in her circles, reputation didn’t matter, that she’d be perfectly happy to be his lover for as long as it suited them both. But she wasn’t going to say any of those things. She was a gamester and she’d been dealt a perfect hand.
    She turned her head and met his cool gaze. “We have a bargain, then, my lord Carrington,” she said simply. Marcus nodded in brief affirmation and returned his attention to the road.
    Judith closed her eyes, listening to the roar of cannon growing ever closer. The road was thronged with columns of soldiers, horses and limbers, fleeing civilians mingling with the detritus of a retreating army. Suddenly all thought of passion and revenge seemed trivial in the midst of an event that would obliterate thousands of lives and shape the future of their world.

7
    T he village of Quatre Bras stood at a crossroads. To Judith’s eyes it was a village out of Dante. The battle still raged and a heavy pall of gunsmoke hung over the shattered cottages and farmhouses along the road. The dead and the wounded lay anywhere a spare place could be found for them, and from the surgeons’ field hospital, the sounds of agony rose, pitiable, on the evening air.
    The main street of the village was clogged with men and horses; a wounded horse struggled in the traces of an overturned limber, screaming like a banshee as a group of soldiers fought to cut the traces and right the cannon.
    “Dear God, you shouldn’t be here,” Marcus muttered to Judith. “What the devil am I going to do with you?”
    “You don’t have to do anything with me,” Judithdeclared. “I’m getting down here. There’s work to be done.”
    Marcus glanced sideways at her, took in the resolute set of her white face, and drew rein. They were behind the front line but still close enough for danger. He laid a restraining hand on her arm as she prepared to jump from the cart. “Just a minute.”
    “We’re wasting time,” she said impatiently.
    “It’s not safe,” he said.
    “Nowhere’s safe,” she pointed out, gesturing to the chaos around them. “I’ll be careful.”
    Marcus frowned, then