A Woman Scorned Read Free

fists?
    Cole trembled with anger at the prospect. But it was none of his business. He had survived it. And so would they. “I take it we are discussing Lady Mercer?” he dryly replied, bending over to retrieve his uncle’s quill.
    “Bloody well right we are,” answered Lord James, his voice stern. “And that is why I have called you here, Cole. I require your assistance.”
    His assistance?
Oh no. He would not back a bird in this mess of a cockfight. He wanted nothing to do with the Rowland family. The young Marquis of Mercer meant nothing to him. Cole was merely related to the family by marriage, a fact his cousin Edmund Rowland had always been quick to point out, since it was crucial that the dynasty keep their lessers in their proper places.
Well, fine!
Then why must he suffer through an account of the machinations of Lady Mercer?
    Her husband’s suspicious death had nothing to do with Captain Cole Amherst. Lord Mercer’s lovely young widow might be Lucrezia Borgia for all he knew—or cared. Certainly many people held her in about that much esteem. And while they had liked her late husband even less, in death there was always veneration, no matter how wicked or deceitful the deceased had been in life. Yes, Lady Mercer’s life was probably a living hell, but Cole needed to know nothing further of it.
    “I am afraid, my lord, that I can be of no help to you,” Cole said coolly. “I do not know the lady, and one cannot presume to advise—”
    “Quite right!” interjected his uncle sharply. “I need no advice! I daresay I know my duty to the orphans of this family, sir. You, above all people, ought to know that perfectly well.”
    Duty
.
Orphan
. Such ugly, dreary words, and yet they summed up the whole of his uncle’s commitment to him. He could almost see young Lord Mercer and his brother being locked up in the Long Chamber of Eton now. Cole bit back a hasty retort. “With all due respect, uncle, these children are hardly orphans. Their mother yet lives, and shares guardianship with you, I believe?”
    “Yes,” Lord James hissed. “Though what Mercer meant by appointing us jointly defies all logic! That woman—of all people!”
    Inwardly, Cole had to laugh. He rather suspected that Lord Mercer had known better than to circumvent his wife’s parental authority altogether. From what Cole had heard, her ladyship was capable of flying in the face of any authority or command. Indeed, the woman whom half the
ton
referred to as the Sorceress of Strathclyde was reputedly capable of anything. Had the provisions of her dead husband’s will displeased her, she would simply have set her pack of slavering solicitors at James’s throat.
    But quite probably the lady would have lost, for despite her own Scottish title and her status as the dowager marchioness, the patriarch supremacy of English law died a hard, slow death. But from all that Cole had heard, Lady Mercer—or Lady Kildermore as she would otherwise have been called—had seemingly forgotten St. Peter’s admonition about women being the weaker vessel and having a meek and quiet spirit.
    At that recollection, grief stabbed Cole, piercing his armor to remind him of Rachel. How different the two women must have been. Unlike Lady Mercer, Cole’s wife had been the embodiment of all the Bible’s teachings. Was that not a part of why he had married her?
    At the time, she had seemed the perfect wife for a religious scholar, for a man destined to enter the church, as his father before him had done. Yes, like Uncle James, Rachel had known her duty quite thoroughly. Perhaps it was that very devotion to duty, Rachel’s own meek and quiet spirit, which had been the end of her. Or perhaps it had simply been Cole’s callous disregard for her welfare.
    Shifting uneasily in his mahogany armchair, Cole shook off the memories of his dead wife. It should have been harder to do. What he had done should have haunted him, but most of the memories were so deeply buried