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The Baron’s Betrayal
by Callie Hutton

Copyright © 2015 by Callie Hutton. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Prologue

September, 1815

Northampton, England

With a loud gasp, Lady Marion Tunstall slid to the assembly room floor in a heap of cerulean blue muslin. In an attempt to catch her, her sister-in-law, Her Grace, the Duchess of Manchester, fell to her knees alongside her.

“Marion, what is wrong?” She patted Marion’s face and frantically looked around, and sighed with relief as her husband, Drake, Duke of Manchester, hurried toward her, his face pale. “Is she all right?”

Penelope shook her head. “I have no idea. She simply collapsed. I don’t know why.”

Drake’s lips tightened, and he went down on one knee beside his sister. “I certainly do.” He gathered Marion in his arms and mumbled soothing words to her as he shifted her against his chest.

He glanced at his wife and added, “Lord Tunstall just entered the room with another woman on his arm.”

Penelope’s head jerked up and she sucked in a breath, her face growing pale. “Lord Tunstall? You mean Marion’s husband Tristan?”

Drake nodded. “Exactly.”

“I don’t understand. Tristan’s been dead for more than two years.”

“Apparently not,” Drake snapped.

The three people on the floor had begun to attract a crowd of onlookers. The press of people separated and a man, with an older woman snug against his side, hesitantly approached them. His face was pasty white, and he held himself erect with a stiffness reminiscent of a marble statue.

“Is she all right?” The man stared straight ahead, his shaky voice registering shock.

“I don’t wish to speak with you right now, sir. Please excuse me while I see to my sister.” Drake nudged the man and woman out of his way. “I will call upon you in the morning. Please send a note around with your direction.”

Penelope gathered their things and hurried to follow her husband toward the door. Her mother-in-law, the dowager duchess, along with Marion’s three sisters, fell into line as they passed by and then headed to the two awaiting carriages.

Penelope waited as Drake climbed into the carriage with Marion’s still form in his arms. The footman assisted the dowager duchess, worry lines creasing her brows as she focused on her unconscious daughter. The girls, clinging to each other, headed to the second carriage. Penelope accepted the footman’s hand and clambered into the vehicle with Drake and the dowager duchess settling across from them.

Marion’s slack body rested in her brother’s arms as tension radiated from the other occupants. Drake tapped on the ceiling of the carriage, and it sprang forth, jerking as it started up.

After two years of a self-imposed prison in her room while she grieved for her dead husband, Marion had recently begun to resume a normal life. She had set up a shrine to her husband in her room and spent her days reading the poetry she and Tristan had shared during their brief marriage.

Little by little, Penelope had encouraged Marion to take walks in the garden, have meals with the family, and eventually to resume activities outside the home.

Marion shifted in Drake’s arms and moaned, her eyelids fluttering open. “What happened?”

Drake threw his mother a quelling glance as the carriage rumbled over the stone driveway and left the well-lit assembly rooms behind.

Chapter One

Lord Tunstall hung his head as he felt Drake brush by him with enough force to know he carried Marion in his arms. Marion. His wife. His lifelong love.

He ran stiff fingers though his hair as the silence surrounding him ended with a sharp abruptness when the front door closed. Shocked mumbling reached his ears, the tension in the room palpable. His heart pounded in his chest, almost choking him with its fierceness.

“Come, Tristan. It is perhaps best if we leave.”

He stiffened under her touch. Rage swept through him that she would do this to him. That she would allow him to come to this assembly, fully aware that his wife would be here. For surely, this was no accident. Mrs. Gibbons was much too clever. She’d known exactly what she had done.

His jaw worked. “I agree. There is much I need to say to you, and this is not the place.”

He and Mrs. Gibbons moved slowly through the crowd, fighting their way past clusters of angry voices. The Duke of Manchester and his family were well-liked in Donridge Heath. The distress he’d caused them would be the subject of conversations for many weeks to come.

Tristan attempted to un-jumble his thoughts and rein in his swirling emotions. Drake’s words as he’d snarled at him kept repeating over and over in his mind. I will call upon you in the morning.

Anger warred with sorrow at the shock he must have caused Marion, and the devastating hurt that would soon follow.

Mrs. Gibbons asked the footman for their carriage to be brought around. His rage was so deep, he couldn’t even speak. After a few minutes he felt the cool air on his face as the footman opened the door. They made their way down the stairs and he climbed into the carriage. Once the door closed, he tapped on the ceiling of the conveyance with his cane and settled back.

The scent of Mrs. Gibbons’s perfume filled the air, wafting toward him. Familiar and safe. Until now. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the soft leather seat.

“I fear I have made a terrible mistake.” Her quiet voice, usually one of comfort, provided no contentment now.

“I would prefer to speak about this once we return home.” His anger was too strong, his pain too raw, to deal with it now.

Tristan shifted as the carriage came to a halt in front of the house he had let when they’d left London two weeks ago. The house he was led to believe was in a small obscure village miles from Donridge Heath.

“Good evening, my lord.” The butler, Mason, opened the coach door, and helped them both out. Taking his butler’s arm, and still stiff with anger, they proceeded into the house.

“I wish to speak with you in the library, Lorelei.” The silence during the ride home had loosened Tristan’s tongue. Now he needed to lash out at the woman who had just caused pain to the woman he loved.

“Certainly.”

Mason relieved them of their coats, hats, and gloves, and Tristan and Lorelei headed down the corridor to the library.

Tristan made his way to the sideboard and poured a brandy. He used his cane to walk to the chair comfortably away from the fireplace and settled in. After taking a gulp of the liquid, he spoke. “Now you will explain to me why you led me to believe we were traveling to a village on the other side of England, and I find myself at an assembly hall in Donridge Heath.”

Lorelei took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry for my subterfuge.”

“Madam, I did not ask for your apology. I want to know why you did what you did and what you hoped to accomplish.”

“When I first saw you in the hospital two years ago, you were a pleasant, cheerful man, despite your injury. I have hated watching you turn into an angry, bitter one.”

“I was also unable to recall who I was, if memory serves. Perhaps that was the reason for the change in my demeanor.”

“Yes. No doubt that is true.”

When he remained silent, she continued. “My crusade to find my dear Everard would have left me crippled with pain if it were not for knowing you. It was bad enough to learn he had been injured in the Siege of Badajoz and sent to St. George’s hospital in Lisbon. But to find him so near death when I arrived was an agony only a mother knows.

“That my son had been able to spend his last weeks with you eased the sorrow in my heart. You were such a good friend to him, helping to nurse him even with your own injuries.” He closed his eyes at the memory, the sound of her ruffling through her reticule, most likely searching for her handkerchief, failed to move him as it once had. His misery was too raw to comfort her.

“Although you were reluctant to accept the inheritance my Everard left you, it was not necessary to invite me to stay with you as a companion. That thoughtfulness on your part gave me a reason to continue living. The last thing I ever wanted to do was bring you more pain.”

It had been a great surprise when Tristan discovered Everard Gibbons had left his substantial estate to him. When he tried to decline in favor of Lorelei, she refused to accept it since she had been left quite a bit from her three deceased husbands.

And since Tristan had needed a source of income to remain hidden from view, he had reluctantly accepted the gift.

“I have yet to hear an explanation as to why you told me we were retiring elsewhere when we, in fact, are in Donridge Heath.”

“Shortly after you regained your memory you told me you had a wife whom you did not intend to contact. However, I always thought you would change your mind.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I thought so because you are a warm, loving man. You speak of your Marion as if she were the center of your world.”

His jaw tightened in anger. “She was. At one time. But she deserves more than me. As it was no concern of yours, it was my decision to make, to leave her with the assumption that I had died at sea. After a while, she would meet someone else and lead a full, happy life.”

“Do you not think she had the right to decide that for herself? Did you not hear the commotion when she spotted you across that ballroom?”

“That was a cruel trick, Lorelei. The poor girl could have died of a heart seizure.”

“I agree. I did not handle it the best way I could have. Please forgive me.”

Tristan lowered his glass to the table alongside him and pinched the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. “I wish you to leave me now. What’s done is done, and I expect when her brother, Manchester, calls on me tomorrow, the conversation will not be a pleasant one.”

“As you wish.” She moved to where he sat and kissed him lightly on the top of his head. Something she had done every night almost since they’d met.

After the door latch sounded, Tristan let loose with a roar of agony and threw his drink against the wall. The sound of glass shattering broke the silence of the empty room.