much to give you back the equivalent of what was taken from you.’
‘Then I suppose I must be grateful for that at least.’
‘I am sorry, Beatrice, if I have hurt you. I regret that, but please believe me when I say that I desire only your peace and happiness. Do not forget that.’
She turned and looked at him. ‘It is not enough to say you’re sorry, to try to make amends, hoping to wipe out everything you have done,’ she said, stiff with pride and anger. ‘You should have thought of all this before you robbed my father to add to your own fortunes and then killed him. Now it is too late, do you hear, too late! How can I possibly remain married to you knowing this? I will keep Larkhill, but I would rather die a thousand deaths than take anything else from you! Can’t you understand that I hate you?’
She flung the last words in his face and had the bitter satisfaction of seeing him whiten. She triumphed in it, rejoiced in it, hoping for some sign of weakness which would put him absolutely at her mercy, but Julius Chadwick was a man of steel and did not know how to weaken. He merely shrugged and turned away from her.
‘I shall leave for Larkhill at first light. Please don’t try to stop me.’
‘I won’t.’ The fact that she had been so quick to believe the worst of him cut through his heart like a knife, leaving him with a dark sense of having been betrayed. He knew that by not telling her everything he was being unreasonable, but he just couldn’t help himself. Even if their marriage had been a travesty at the beginning, he had become comfortable with the idea of her being his wife and was reluctant to let her go.
‘Go if you feel you must—after this I am sure you can’t wait to leave me, but I will never divorce you,’ Julius continued dispassionately, immune to the wrathful expression on her beautiful face. ‘We will discuss the course of our future at a later date, but until then we have a child to consider and it will be raised by both a mother and a father.’
One look at his face convinced Beatrice that he was absolutely furious with her. Not only were his eyes glinting with icy shards, but the muscles in his cheeks were tensing and vibrating to a degree that she had never seen before.
She drew an infuriated breath. ‘As you said, we will discuss the course of our future another time. Goodbye, Julius.’ With that she swept out of the room, leaving him staring after her. She did not see the move he made towards her, or his look of angry pain and suffering, or hear the sigh of bitter defeat he uttered when she closed the door.
With a sense of burning betrayal and seething anger at her husband’s terrible crime, fighting back scalding tears of hurt, Beatrice hurried to her room—to pack, she decided, for if he wasn’t going to tell her the truth, she would not remain in the same house as a liar and a murderer.
In her wretched suffering she lay awake, hearing sounds of her husband moving about his room behind the closed connecting doors. It went on all night, which told her that he too was unable to sleep. She wanted to call out to him, wanted desperately to feel his arms around her, but she could not do it.
Dawn found her huddled in the comforting warm refuge of her cloak as the coach left the house. On the point of leaving, a letter addressed to her was delivered. It was from Astrid. Not until the coach had left London behind did Beatrice open it. It was as she had expected. Astrid had run away with Henry Talbot. They were in Scotland, at Gretna Green, where they had married. Astrid went on to tell her that they were deliriously happy. Things would be hard for a while since they had no money, but Henry’s parents had agreed that they could live with them for the time being.
Beatrice was happy for Astrid and sincerely hoped her cousin would find happiness wed to the man of her choice. She could well imagine how the news would be received by her aunt and had no doubt that she would turn her back on her daughter and cut her off without a penny.
It was raining hard and clouds the colour