Page 6 of The Rakehell of Roth
That. Same. Night.
She’d gathered—albeit after a lot of weeping and the shattering of her rose-tinted spectacles—that her husband might not have held as grand an affection for her as she’d had for him. That what had seemed so special to her had not meant a thing to him at all, because right after he’d done his duty, he’d absconded like a thief in the dark.
Isobel snarled out an oath as her mare’s hooves pounded the dirt, putting much needed distance between them and those dratted newssheets at the manor. It was a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky, but Isobel hardly took notice, so intent she was on outrunning her fury.
In the beginning, she had thought Winter’s absence would be for a day or two. She had waited like a besotted fool for weeks before Mrs. Butterfield had taken pity on her and explained that the marquess was very busy with his business in London and very rarely came to Kendrick Abbey. And if he did come to the country, he had his own estate in Chelmsford—Rothingham Gable.
Even then, she’d been so sickeningly naive, wondering why a husband would choose to leave his new wife at his father’s ducal residence instead of his.
Perhaps he was performing restorations.
Perhaps he wanted to surprise her.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
She’d learned the unpleasant answer a few months later from a loose-lipped maid—her heroic, honorable, noble husband was apparently renowned for hosting wild house parties at Rothingham Gable. Bacchanalian revels, the maid had confided with suffocated giggles. Of course, that had all been long before he’d been married, the maid had hastily assured her.
Of course, a heartsick Isobel had echoed.
Now, three years and five months later, with the barest minimum of correspondence from the marquess, she learned more about her vagabond husband from the London gossip rags than from the man himself. Isobel had had enough. This time, he’d purportedly engaged in a dawn duel. Over an opera singer of all things.
She scowled as she slowed and dismounted, letting Hellion cool off and graze.
How dare he disrespect her so?
As the Marchioness of Roth, she’d held her head high and pretended her callous husband wasn’t such an empirical ass. She’d been patient. Honored her vows. Respected his wishes. Brushed off his antics as youthful folly. Buried the hurt that his coldhearted desertion had caused. Told herself that eventually, like all highborn gentlemen, Winter would come to his senses and require an heir. Then she would have a family, even if her rakehell of a husband did not want to be involved.
Someday.
Someday had never come. Swallowing her bitterness, Isobel paced back and forth, the rich smell of grass and earth doing little to calm her down. Even the cheery sound of laughter from the children of the tenant farmers down the hill didn’t make her smile.
As year after year passed, she convinced herself that she wasn’t bloody miserable each month she spent cooped up like some forgotten mare put out to pasture, with only her pianoforte and her useless accomplishments to keep her company. Isobel remembered with acute shame what she’d primly told her sister years ago: a young lady should be accomplished in the feminine arts. Music, and dancing, and whatnot.
Well, she was eating a large serving of crow andwhatnotat the moment. No one had ever explained to her younger and vociferously green self whatwhatnothad meant. If it meant dealing with a husband who had dumped his wife in Chelmsford while he gallivanted in London and pretended he was an eternal bachelor, then she’d be an expert in the matter.
“He’ll grow out of it, dear,” Mrs. Butterfield had told her. “All men sow their wild oats.”
So she’d let him sow. Acres and acres of it. But this was outside of enough.
A bloody duel. Over someone whowasn’this wife.
Isobel clenched her fists together, staring mindlessly over the tops of the tenant cottages to the spire of the village church in the distance. Clarissa, her dearest friend and lady’s companion, had suggested that some of the accounts of gambling and indecent revelry might be false—salacious stories sold newspapers, after all. But evensomestories had to have a modicum of truth to them. Isobel thought she’d become desensitized to her husband’s antics, but clearly not.
Rage and hurt bubbled up into her throat.
“Damnation, woman!” Clarissa wheezed as she reined her horse to a lathered stop where Isobel stood at the edge of the rise overlooking the lake. “I never should have taught you to ride.”
Her sweaty best friend dismounted, her dark mess of curls sticking out in every direction, and her green eyes knowing, full of sympathetic anger. Isobel’s own eyes were dry as she greeted her. She’d shed enough tears for that pigeon-livered rogue of a husband. He did not deserve another drop from her, not a single one.
“I take it you read the newssheets,” Isobel said. No need to beat around the bush. There was only one reason that her friend would follow her mad dash from the house.
Clarissa nodded and remained silent. After three years of shared confidences, particularly about the subject of the Maggot of Roth, she well knew when to let Isobel vent. She had enough opinions of her own about Isobel’s scoundrel of a husband, but at times like this, she was the more level-headed of the two of them.
“They exaggerate everything,” Clarissa said in a soothing voice. “You know this. Those abominable liars write what they want to write.”
“Then why wouldn’t Roth dispute them, if that were the case?”
“Perhaps he thinks them amusing? Men don’t worry about those sorts of things.”
