Free Lady Hathaway's House Party by Joan Smith Page B

we’re not living together. What is the harm in having the estrangement legalized, so that we can both make a new life for ourselves?”
    Avondale, still on his feet, began pacing back and forth in front of the fire, one hand running through his hair in a gesture of frustration. It was strange to see him so agitated; even to see him with his hair slightly mussed was strange. His eyes fell on the books placed with care on the table, and he sat down to try to bring about a change of mood.
    “A divorce is out of the question. Any life we make for ourselves must take that fact into consideration. Now it seems to me that as we are married, we ought to make some effort to get along. I apparently did something to displease you—”
    “Ho—something!”
    “All right—you didn’t like the gowns, the jewelry, the carriage. All that can be changed. Buy what you like.”
    “I didn’t like the husband. That is what I want to change,” she said angrily. Why must he see marriage in terms of things?
    “That is what you will never change. Till death us do part, Belle, you’re stuck with me. While both of us draw breath, we are man and wife. Wherever you run off to, you are still my wife, and unless the puppy and you are willing to settle for cohabiting without legal sanction and raising a parcel of bastards, there will be no one else for you.” He spoke in a firm, conclusive manner that denoted nothing but stubbornness to his wife.
    “Perhaps I should get me to a nunnery, and quickly too,” she replied, and took a sip of champagne, to show she was unimpressed with his tirade, though in fact its determination had set her reeling. She had thought Avondale must be eager for a divorce, but she had obviously misread him.
    “It is not a matter for joking. I think you used me very badly, Belle. To sneak off in such an underhanded fashion, telling me you were going only for a holiday, then to have that Sangster write me—you could at least have written me yourself, explained why you did it. Surely I deserved at least that much consideration, some explanation for your inexplicable, as it seemed to me, behavior.”
    This was the weakest link in Belle’s case, and she knew it. She thought she had ample justification for leaving her husband, but she should have told him why she did it. A dozen times she had sat at her desk, trying to put into words the reason for her deserting him, but she invariably ended up with such a jumbled, incoherent account that she could make no sense of it herself, and could not send off such garbled stuff. Her stomach tied itself into knots to remember that month in London—she felt the old familiar sensation now. To walk into a lady’s house and see your husband’s hat and cane resting on her hall table, and to be told by the butler that milady was busy, and could not be disturbed, was surely cause for estrangement in the most lenient household. One’s husband ought at least to hide his hat and cane when he went on a love tryst, and not leave them sitting in public view for his wife and the world to see. For Lady Hasborough to see, and point out to herself with a snicker. And she had known Oliver would be there. Had taken Belle to call on Mrs. Traveller for that very reason.
    The memory of that afternoon invariably brought her blood to the boil. She had heard rumors, snide remarks regarding Mrs. Traveller, and had been induced to go to meet her out of a sense of rampant curiosity. She was a connection of Oliver’s, married to a cousin, so that the visit had a sort of a pretext, but the reason was to sum up the opposition.
    Belle had seen her about here and there, sometimes with her husband, a dashing but dissipated buck, and sometimes with others, but had never met her. She wished to see how she behaved, to hear how she spoke, and to see at close range her charms, for she was not the sort of flirt she would have thought Oliver would favor. He was usually more discriminating. There was a trace of the