Free A Regency Charade by Elizabeth Mansfield

hollows in her cheeks and tiny lines at the corners of her mouth.
    He was surprised by the strong tug of pity in his chest, and he frowned at himself in annoyance. Why should he pity her ? It was he who’d been made to suffer!
    He forced himself to turn away from her. He had no wish to see her waken and catch him staring like a moonling at her face. He bit his lip in self-disgust. How had he come here? Had that fellow—what was his name? Horner? Hornbeam?—brought him here? Well, it was too late now to worry about the means. What was important now was to get out before she wakened. He was certainly in no condition to face her today.
    He looked down at himself to examine the state of his dress. He was in shirtsleeves. His coat and boots had been removed and his shirt unbuttoned at the neck. A quick glance around the room revealed that his missing articles of clothing had been neatly placed on a chair near the sofa. He tiptoed over to it, picked up his coat, put it on and buttoned it as quickly as his shaking fingers could manage. Then he silently picked up his boots and shako and carried them stealthily to the door.
    “ Alec ?” Her voice was sharp with alarm. “What …? Are you all right?”
    He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn. “Yes.”
    She gave a nervous little laugh. “I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to …”
    He lowered his head. “I’m … sorry about this. I didn’t intend to … to disturb you.”
    He could hear her draw in her breath. “ Disturb me? You weren’t … you couldn’t be … thinking of leaving ?”
    “Yes.”
    There was a beat of silence. “B-But …” The catch in her voice was quite noticeable, although it was plain she was making an effort to control it. “I haven’t laid eyes on you in s-six years !”
    He gave no answer. He merely reached out and put his hand on the doorknob.
    She uttered a frightened little cry, jumped up and ran across the room to confront him. “Alec, no ! You can’t be so unkind as to leave before … before we’ve had a chance to … to talk to one another!”
    He turned to face her, his eyes cold and his lips set in a harsh frown. “There isn’t anything to talk about, ma’am,” he said with finality.
    She put her back against the door in a desperate attempt to block him. “You can’t be serious! We’ve everything to talk about!”
    Alec winced. What a time to be thrust into a confrontation! Little hammers were pounding behind his temples, his eyes burned, his tongue felt thick and his brain was sluggish. To make matters worse, he was standing before her in his stockinged feet, completely lacking in dignity. He simply had to get out of there. “I don’t think,” he declared as firmly as his impaired physical condition permitted, “that a conversation between us is at all obligatory.”
    “But it is ,” she insisted. “You’ve never given me the opportunity to explain —”
    “I have no wish to hear any explanations, ma’am. Believe me, they are quite unnecessary.”
    “How can you say so when you don’t even know what they are ?” she demanded with some asperity. “And I wish you will stop calling me ma’am in that odious way, as if I were your maiden aunt!”
    “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly, shifting the awkwardly held boots from his right hand to his left underarm. “I have no wish to offend. Please give me leave to withdraw.”
    “But … don’t you have any interest in what I’ve been waiting six years to tell you?” she asked incredulously.
    He raised an eyebrow and looked down at her in icy detachment. “After all this time, there doesn’t seem to be much point. Your explanations can scarcely matter very much now, you know.”
    This bluntly cold response made her gasp. “Wh-What do you mean ? Surely the preservation of our marriage is a matter of some importance to you!”
    “Our marriage, ma’am,” he said with withering scorn, “means less than nothing to me.”
    His words smote her like