LITMIR.BIZ

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a flat line, he turned his back on her and resumed the search of his jacket pockets.

      ‘You must forgive me for forgetting all about this,’ he said sarcastically, as his fingers closed round the elusive article. ‘It is just that discussing your brother was the last thing I expected to be doing on my wedding night.’

      Imogen’s eyes snagged on the wedge of flesh that became exposed when his dressing gown gaped as he threw her brother’s wedding gift to her. He was not wearing a nightshirt!

      Her eyes swept the entire length of him, ending in a fascinated perusal of his bare calves and toes. She gulped. He did not appear to be wearing anything at all under that dressing gown.

      She remembered the look on his face as he had approached her bed, the gleam in his eyes when she had smiled. The eager way he had grasped her hand.

      And his bitter words as he riffled through his wardrobe at her behest.

      ‘I do beg your pardon,’ she said, hanging her head. She had been so busy thinking of things to resent about him, she had entirely forgotten what a poor bargain he was getting out of this marriage. That there was only one thing he considered her fit for.

      ‘I c-could leave opening this until morning.’ He had not attempted to deceive her, she could see that now. It was just that her concerns seemed trivial to him. Because she was a mere female. And he was a typically thoughtless, selfish male.

      She returned to her room and laid the packet on her bedside table.

      ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he growled, stalking into the room after her. ‘We will get this business out of the way, since it is so very much on your mind. I intend to have your undivided attention when I make love to you for the first time.’

      His lips twisted into a sardonic smile as she snatched the packet up and went to sit on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. She would have permitted him to assert his marital rights over her, dutifully, but he would have to be blind not to see that her fingers were itching to untie the knot on that damned parcel, rather than the belt of his dressing gown.

      He joined her on the ottoman, wondering if any other bridegroom had ever found himself coming so low down on the list of his bride’s priorities on his wedding night.

      She looked up at him warily when he sat down, a question in her eyes.

      ‘Go on.’ He sighed. ‘Let us see what all the fuss was about.’

      With a smile of relief, she tore open the wrapping paper.

      Then went white.

      He forgot all about his own fit of pique when he followed her appalled gaze and saw, lying in her lap, a replica of a hangman’s noose. Fashioned from what looked like a lot of silk scarves plaited together.

      ‘Dear God! What is the meaning of this? Is it some kind of threat?’

      ‘Not a threat, no,’ she said in a thin, reedy voice. ‘He said, it was to remind me. I stupidly thought…’ She raised one trembling hand to her brow to push back a hank of hair that had flopped into her eyes.

      ‘You see, on the way to church, I had such high hopes…’

      His heart leapt at her words. Had she, too, seen that they could forge something good together?

      ‘…the children of all three families brought together, to celebrate a new start…the Carlows were there, and William Wardale’s daughter, and me, Kit Hebden’s daughter. And then he showed up too, and I hoped finally, we would all be able to move out of the shadow of what our parents did…’

      Her fingers hovered over the glistening silken noose coiled in her lap, as though not quite daring to touch it. Lest it develop fangs and strike out at her like a venomous snake.

      ‘Midge.’ He took her chin in his hand and turned her face towards him. ‘You are making no sense.’ The only thing he knew for certain was that, once again, her mind was far from him.

      She shivered, and the vague, troubled look crystallized into something like ice.

      Her lips pressed firmly together, she pushed the torn edges of the packaging back into place, to conceal the silken rope. Then she got up, walked to the fireplace, and threw it into the flames.

      ‘Rick was right all along,’ she said bitterly. ‘Someone did want to ruin my day. Only it was not some rival for your title.’ She flicked angry eyes over him. ‘But my own brother. Half brother,’ she corrected herself, seizing the poker and holding down the package as the heat began to make the paper uncurl. ‘The announcement was only in the Gazette yesterday, so he must have known where I was all along. And never once did he come forward. All those years, we thought he was dead. Mourned him. While he was out there, watching us, hating us, waiting for some chance to strike back at us…’

      ‘Midge, you cannot possible deduce all that from a few silk scarves fashioned into a hangman’s noose—’

      ‘Oh, but I can!’ She turned round to look at him. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know…’

      She swayed on her feet. The poker fell into the hearth with a clatter. Monty swept her into his arms, drew her away from the fire and settled her on the edge of the bed.

      ‘Then tell me,’ he murmured.

      She wrapped her own arms about her waist. ‘How much do you already know?’

      ‘I suppose, only what is generally known. The tittle-tattle about your mother’s lover killing your father. And him being subsequently hanged for the murder. But until today I had never heard of the existence of…an illegitimate Gypsy boy. Nor do I understand why those three families in particular, gathering together, could have much significance.’

      She nodded her head, just once, as though making up her mind about something.

      ‘My father and Lord Leybourne and Lord Narborough were working together on some kind of state secret. My mother did not know exactly what. Except that one night, my father told her he knew who the spy was, and he was going to meet the other two and tell them how he had worked it out. Lord Narborough found Leybourne later, crouching over my father’s body, with a dagger in his hand. And eventually Leybourne was hanged for murder and treason. They used a silken rope, since he was a peer of the realm.’ She jerked her head towards the direction of the fireplace, without taking her eyes off her hands, which were now clasped together in her lap.

      ‘The shock made my mother very ill. Grandpapa Herriard took the opportunity to get rid of Stephen, when he moved us all back to Mount Street. But Stephen’s mother came looking for him. It seems my father had promised her he would raise her son like a little lord. She blamed my mother for the broken promise—and put a curse on her.’

      Viscount Mildenhall could not help the derisive snort that emanated from his mouth.

      Midge looked up at him coldly. ‘It might sound like a joke to you, sir, but the words were so accurate they haunted my mother to the end of her life. The Gypsy woman said that because she had stolen her son, she would never see a single one of hers live to adulthood. My mother had just had a miscarriage. And not long after that, my younger brother, my only real, full brother, took ill and died too.’

      ‘It was probably just a coincidence—’

      ‘You have not heard the rest,’ she broke in. ‘After cursing my mother, she went to Wardale’s execution, screamed curses at all three families involved in the loss of her son and her lover, and then hanged herself too. With a silk scarf. That—’ She did glance at the fireplace then, appearing momentarily distracted from her narrative by the sight of the purple and blue flames licking along the charred edges of the symbolic noose. She shuddered again, saying, ‘It is a reminder that my family, along with the Wardales and the Carlows, destroyed his mother. And that her curse will keep on eating us all alive until her form of justice has been satisfied.’

      She turned and buried her face against his shoulder.

      ‘I am sorry

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