Three Little Secrets by Liz Carlyle Page B

by the even softer click of the door as she opened it. But on the threshold, she hesitated, her sharp intake of breath unmistakable.
    With a strange sense of dread, Merrick turned in his chair. Bess Bromley stood in the corridor, the thrusting swell of her milk-pale breasts unmistakable, even in the shadows. Phipps was with her, his face flooding bright crimson. Clearly he had forgotten having shown Madeleine upstairs.
    Her expression bleak, Madeleine pushed past both of them without another word and vanished. Across the distance, Bess’s bold gaze burned into Merrick, already hot and greedy. Merrick’s stomach twisted, sending bile surging into his throat.
    “My apologies, Mr. MacLachlan.” Phipps choked out the words. “It has been a busy day. Miss Bromley is here to see you.”
    Merrick had already jerked open his top drawer, and withdrawn a sheet of letter paper. “Miss Bromley’s services are not required today, Phipps,” he managed. “I shall send for her when she is needed. Now kindly show her out.”
     
    Madeleine waited until she was situated deep in the shadows of her carriage before she burst into tears. Oh, she was so angry! So angry and so hurt. So humiliated by her own damnable emotions. She did not need more pain; no, not at this point in her life. She had believed herself finally on the verge of contentment, if not happiness. She was not even ready to think about Merrick’s wild allegations, claims so outlandish, one could hardly countenance them, let alone comprehend them.
    Right now, she had to deal with the shock of simply seeing him again after thirteen years. Their accidental meeting last week almost did not count, the moment had been so surreal. And that woman waiting by his office! Dear God. Her eyes had sent a chill down Madeleine’s spine. So flat. So void of feeling. Her purpose, too, had been quite clear.
    The carriage was rolling away, the harnesses jingling loudly. For just an instant, Madeleine allowed herself the luxury of giving in completely to the grief. She buried her face in her handkerchief and let her shoulders begin to shake. The sobs came heavily then, the great, heaving gulps of her girlhood. She had not cried thus in better than a dozen years. No, not since she had lost him—or lost the man she had loved, was perhaps a better way of putting it.
    The morning after her wedding, Papa had arrived in Gretna Green to tell her that Merrick was not the man she thought him. And he had shown her proof. Now, she was not sure where the facade ended, and the real Merrick began. He was a stranger to her. And yet he seemed the very same: a tall, dark implacable pillar of certainty. A man who knew his own abilities. His own mind. Yes, his confidence—that was what had made her fall in love with him, for at seventeen, she had possessed little of that quality herself.
    In the beginning, she had not even believed herself ready for her come-out. She had begged Papa to leave her in Sheffield just one more year. Aunt Emma had pressed him, too. Madeleine had never been out of the country a day in her life, her aunt had warned. She had not had the benefit of a mother to bring her along and initiate her into the ways of the haut monde. Indeed, she had turned seventeen only days before. But Papa had not wished to listen. He had patted Madeleine on the head, as if she were one of his prized spaniels, and told her he had the utmost confidence that she would do him proud.
    But his confidence had been misplaced. Less than halfway through her very first London season, Lady Madeleine Howard had fallen head over heels in love with a nobody. She had been but six weeks out of the schoolroom when first she’d set eyes on him. Aunt Emma had taken her to a ball given by the Duke and Duchess of Forne, and if it had not been love at first sight upon seeing Merrick MacLachlan, it certainly had been utter fascination. The duke, a patron of classical architecture, had just engaged Merrick to draw the plans for a