The Unmasking of Lady Loveless. Nicola Cornick

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      “Devil take it, Alex,” Bentley called, “I was reading that!” But he spoke to thin air.

      Lady Loveless indeed.

      How very apt for his estranged wife.

      Out in the street it was snowing, tiny flakes on the edge of a cold east wind. Alex turned up the collar of his coat, refused the offer of either a hackney carriage or a sedan chair, and set off down the dark streets toward Cavendish Square. Almost he relished the idea of a run-in with a pickpocket or thief. It would at least relieve some of his anger and frustration.

      The wind stung his face. He felt cold inside as well, his heart shriveled, encased in ice. Melicent. He thought of his bride on their wedding day. They had met for the first time a mere week before. Melicent had been a gangly debutante in her first season, with long conker-brown hair and huge brown eyes. She had been impossibly shy and seductively innocent. Even though Alex had been furious to be forced into marriage by his father, the Duke of Beaumont, he had tried not to blame Melicent.

      He had been attentive to her throughout the wedding breakfast, trying to draw her out, thwarted by her reserve. Later that night he had consummated his marriage, treating his young wife with gentleness and patience, but the encounter had not been a success, for she had lain as still and cold as a statue and he felt unfulfilled and empty afterward. A few more unsatisfactory couplings had followed, but after a fortnight or so he had not sought her bed or her company any longer. Running the Beaumont estates had kept him fully occupied; they were both wife and mistress to him. He needed nothing more.

      Occasionally he would appear at balls to squire Melicent in a dance or two. His mother insisted on it and it silenced the gossips and his own guilty conscience. He and his wife had never spoken of their unsatisfactory marriage. It could not be said that the two of them had drifted apart, he thought now, for they had never come together in the first place.

      He was sure that no one, least of all Melicent, had guessed at the fury that had burned him up inside. She would have had no notion of the frustration and rage engendered by the threats the Duke of Beaumont had used to force his younger son into marriage. Alex’s father had wanted to ensure the succession and he had known that his heir, Alex’s elder brother, Henry, with his preference for men, would never marry. The duke had therefore blackmailed Alex, threatening to deny him the right to run the Beaumont estates if he did not wed. Alex had loved Beaumont with a passion from the moment he was born. The lands and the people were his life. He was the only one in the family who cared a rush for them. His father could not have chosen a more effective weapon.

      The weight of the book in Alex’s pocket brought his thoughts back to Melicent and reminded him that she might have been an untutored virgin when first they had married, but that she had certainly gained some experience from somewhere—or someone—in the meantime. The anger kindled in him once again. How could Melicent, with her sweet, honest eyes, her generous smile and her patent innocence, have become Lady Loveless, the shameless purveyor of erotic literature? It seemed impossible.

      They had been married for two years and it was a month after the Duke of Beaumont’s death when Melicent had told him that she was going to Yorkshire to care for her mother and that she would be staying indefinitely. Her own father had died the previous year, her mother was an invalid and Melicent’s feckless young brother Aloysius was running wild.

      They had quarreled for the first time in a married life previously marked by indifference. Alex had forbidden her to go. He could see now that he had been driven by pride; it was one thing for him to treat Melicent with careless unconcern, but quite another matter for her to defy him. And she had defied him.

      “You don’t want me!” she had said bitterly, her belongings scattered about her as she hastily packed a portmanteau. “You have never needed me. Mama does.”

      He had not heard another word from her in two years.

      Now she would be hearing from him. He would go to Yorkshire and confront his errant wife. He paused. No. He would go to Yorkshire and seduce his errant wife according to the style laid down by Lady Loveless. He would expose her for the wanton she must surely be.

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