Page 43 of The Viscount Needs a Wife (All for Love #2)

E mrys watched the play of the cards with his usual lazy air of inattention. In fact, his awareness was all on the man seated opposite him at the round table big enough to seat six comfortably.

Emrys reached out to play a trick with a casual flick of the card, and the candlelight caught the gleam of gold off the plain signet ring on his right hand.

Annis’s ring, of course. The same one he had worn back to the Russian ambassador’s party and ensured that the so-called Earl of Tavistock got a good look at when he introduced himself to the young man.

The ring was clearly inspiring a certain fascination in Tavistock.

He had difficulty keeping his eyes off it, just as he had the other night.

Emrys was wondering how such a callow youth could have terrified Annis for so long.

She had told him the first attack occurred seven years ago.

Lawrence Redmayne would have been eighteen then, and not yet come into the title.

Why had he left it so long to try again to get the ring from her? It didn’t make sense.

Annis was tucked away upstairs with Sarah to keep her company. He would send for her at the right time.

“You’re having the most damnable luck, Ashford,” remarked the duke.

“I am, aren’t I?” said Emrys, surveying his losses with a faintly bemused look.

“What will you stake next?” said Pendrell with a harsh laugh. “That ring?”

“I may have to,” said Emrys with a rueful smile.

Tavistock’s eyes flashed. Really, this is too easy.

Tavistock cleared his throat and said, “It’s an unusual ring, my lord. Where did you get it?” The bait on the hook!

“It belonged to my wife’s father,” he said, casually shuffling and cutting the cards.

Tavistock, in the act of taking a sip of brandy, changed color and choked. “Your wife?” he gasped, when he could speak.

Emrys, enjoying the tightening of his snare, said, “You wouldn’t have met my new wife. We were only married recently. She’s upstairs with the duchess. Why don’t I have the ladies join us for tea?”

Tavistock gaped like a fish, and Emrys rose to ring the bell. When Latham appeared, he ordered tea and requested that Lady Ashford and the duchess join them.

A few minutes later, the door opened, and Annis and Sarah entered the room.

Emrys tensed. This was the bit he felt most uncomfortable about, for Annis didn’t know that Tavistock was here.

Would she recognize him? Would he recognize her?

It was vital for the verisimilitude of the situation that she react naturally, so he hadn’t prepared her.

He expected to be fully raked over the coals for that later.

“We didn’t expect you to be finished so early, my dear—” she said and came to a complete stop when her eyes alighted on Tavistock. Her color changed, and Emrys was out of his seat and catching her before she could falter.

“My dear, are you perfectly well?” he asked, all solicitude.

She threw him an expression that would have cut glass.

At the same time his awareness was on Tavistock who, like all of the men, when the ladies entered the room, had risen from his seat.

He was now looking warily from one man to the other as if trying to decide what to do.

“Take a seat,” he murmured to Annis and passed her to the duchess.

The two women sat on the couch nearest the fire, but with a view of the table around which the gentlemen were still clustered. He noted Sarah clasping Annis’s hand.

“ Have you met my wife, Tavistock?” he asked with a certain degree of challenge in his voice.

Tavistock opened his mouth and shut it again.

Before he could say anything further, the door opened to admit the servants with the tea.

Absolute silence reigned while the tea was arranged on the table before the ladies.

The servants left, closing the door behind them, and Emrys went on in a conversational tone, “You needn’t be afraid to admit the truth.

Nothing said in this room will leave it, provided you meet certain conditions. ”

Tavistock drew himself up with an effort and cleared his throat. “I do not take your meaning, my lord.”

“I think you do. However, if you prefer plain speaking, I’m happy to oblige. You threatened my wife a number of years ago with unspeakable violence in order to obtain this!” He held up his hand with the ring on it.

Tavistock blinked and licked his lips. “Th-that wasn’t me.

” He glanced round the room and then at Annis.

“It wasn’t me, I swear. It was my grandfather.

” He swallowed visibly. “I never knew about any of it until he was dying last year. And even then, he didn’t tell me much.

Just that there was a ring that belonged to my father, and if anyone found out about it, it could stop me inheriting.

And he muttered something about ‘the Pringle girl.’ That was all he said.

He was raving. I thought he was out of his head.

“I forgot about it until I found my father’s old diary and read it through.

Then I started making inquiries. Quite by chance I discovered the Pringle Academy for Young Ladies in Bath.

Miss Woodrow, my fiancée, went there. I traced Miss Pringle to—to—” He stopped, swallowing, and nodded at the duke.

“I traced her to Troubridge’s employ. I broke into her room and ransacked it looking for the damned ring!

But it wasn’t there. So, I left her a note to bring it to me.

I just meant to get the ring from her—I didn’t mean to do her harm.

But she stabbed me!” He threw a fulminating look at Annis.

“And she scarred me!” He touched his face.

“She left me for dead in the middle of that field! I’m lucky to be alive! ”

Annis was white as a sheet and swaying in her seat. Emrys wanted to go to her, but the duchess had her. He needed to finish this and quickly. But before he could say anything, Annis spoke.

“Yes. I think that is probably true. The—the man who attacked me seven years ago was not this man. It must have been my grandfather. He was a bigger man with a gruffer, deeper voice. I never saw his face; he wore a mask. But I got the impression he was older.” She pressed her fingers to her trembling lips, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Emrys’s hand clenched in distress at her anguish. The sooner this is over the better.

She went on, “He threatened me to keep me quiet and tried to force me to give up the ring. I don’t think he was really sure I had it. He seemed to accept it when I said Mama hadn’t given me anything.”

“So, you really are my father’s brat?” said Tavistock, staring at her in disbelief.

Annis flinched, and Emrys snapped, “She is your father’s legitimate daughter. That is why your grandfather tried to obliterate all knowledge of her. Your father married her mother before he married yours.”

“So? “Tavistock was breathing fast.

“Janet Pringle Redmayne didn’t die until six years ago, and there is no record of the marriage ever being set aside.” Emrys paused. “That makes your parents’ marriage bigamous, and you a bastard.”

Tavistock went white and then red. “You can’t prove that!”

“I can actually. The record of the marriage is valid—I checked. And you’ll have a devil of a time proving it isn’t,” said Emrys grimly.

Tavistock clenched his hands in frustration. “What do you expect me to do? Give up the title?”

“Not necessarily.” Emrys glanced round the room.

“If you provide me assurance, witnessed by each of the persons here, that you will never seek to harm anyone in this room or any member of my family or the families of any of these gentlemen, then the information disclosed in this room will remain here. You have my word as a gentleman.”

“And if I don’t accept your word?” Tavistock was panting.

Emrys waved to Mr. Gerard Newbury. “Then this gentleman will take you into custody and I will charge you with whatever the law will allow in regard to your attempted assault and terrorizing of my wife.”

“And I will bring charges against you for attempted robbery and willful damage to property,” said the duke.

The fight seemed to go out of Tavistock at this point, because he sagged and said wearily, “Very well.”

“You give us your word that you will take no steps against any of us or our families?” pressed Emrys.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Good, because if you do, I will denounce your father as a bigamist and you as a bastard. I will see to it that you lose everything.”

Tavistock bowed stiffly. “If that is all, I will bid you good evening, my lord.”

Emrys bowed to him, and he left the room.

With the closing of the door, the frozen state of the room thawed, and everyone started talking at once. Emrys ignored them and went to Annis, sitting like a statue on the couch. The duchess rose and let him sit beside her.

“I’m sorry, love. I needed your reaction to be natural to force him to confess. Can you forgive me?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. And then she collapsed against him. “Is it really all over?”

“Yes. I doubt that he will bother us again. He would be mad to try it,” Emrys said, wrapping his arms round her.

*

Later, after their guests had departed and they were alone in their bed, Annis turned in Emrys’s arms and said, “The only thing I don’t understand is why Mama kept the secret of their marriage even to her grave. Why would she do that?”

“I doubt we will ever know that, love,” he said.

She traced a finger over his chest, thinking back to her last moments with her mother, wishing she had told her—

Sitting up with a jerk she said, “The box!”

“What?” he said bewildered. She pushed back the bedclothes and padded over to the bookcase against the wall where her mother’s wooden box sat. She brought it back to the bed and climbed back in.