"God help you," she whispered, chilled and repelled by his words, "you sound like my father."
"I'm not surprised. The esteemed vicar thought that women were the source of evil and suffering, and I am inclined to think he had the right of it."
"Stop it!" Her voice was nearly a scream. "I can't bear it when you talk that way. What have I done that you despise me so? I didn't tell you who I was at first because I was fearful, and wanted to know you better. What is so dreadful about that? I never meant to hurt you." Her voice was between pleading and anger. "Why am I asking you for forgiveness when it is you who have wronged me most horribly?"
"Neither of us seems capable of forgiving the other," he answered with dry precision. "You can't forgive my violence, and I can't forgive your duplicity. Judging by the splendid performance you are putting on, you are no more capable of being honest with yourself than with me."
"I don't know what you are talking about!"
Gervase banged the goblet on the table so hard that brandy splashed on his hand. His face ablaze with angry pain, he leaned forward and said with harsh precision, "You found a man who had the strongest of reasons to doubt that any woman could be trusted, seduced him with sweet loving lies to the point where he believed that trust was possible. Then when he was utterly vulnerable, you betrayed him."
Breathing hard, he ended with a denunciation the more bitter for its softness. "Only a woman could so thoroughly and ruthlessly betray. No man would know how to be as subtly, treacherously cruel as you."
Diana noted that even now, he could not name himself as the man betrayed, and supposed that was a gauge of his pain. All she could do was repeat numbly, "I never wanted to hurt you. One reason I didn't speak was that the more time that passed, the harder it was to explain why I had not spoken earlier. It was easier to drift, to let events take their own course."
She stopped to marshal her arguments, trying to find words for what she had done by instinct. "I thought that if you came to love me, we could put the past behind us, that how our marriage began would be unimportant compared to how we had come to feel about one another." She spread her hands helplessly. "I never imagined that you would think I had trapped and betrayed you from a desire for revenge. Obviously I was wrong, but is that so unforgivable? I never claimed to be perfect."
He leaned back in the chair, his face lost in shadows, his voice tragic. "Ah, but I thought you were."
For a moment she was shocked and unbearably moved by his words. Then anger came. "I can't help that! It isn't my fault if you thought me more than I am. To love is to accept the whole person, imperfections and all."
She tried to penetrate the shadows with her gaze. "Why can't you accept that I love you in spite of my misjudgment? I know you are not perfect, that you can be cold and suspicious, even violent, but I love you anyhow."
"Then the more fool you are, Diana." He downed more brandy. "I could never understand why you claimed to love me. God knows I don't deserve it, but I wanted to believe you, and you were so convincing." His eyes filled with weary resignation, he continued, "It is far easier to believe that you are a liar than that you ever really loved me."
His statement filled Diana with despair. If he truly believed himself unworthy of love, how could she persuade him of her sincerity? Words were not enough, would never be enough.
Gervase gave a tired shrug. "Since you are a creature of emotion, not reason, perhaps you believe your own lies. Perhaps I should take advantage of that and retain you as a mistress."
She could see the hunger and the longing in his eyes, could sense his barely controlled passion, but his voice was inhumanly detached. "You are the most beautiful of women, superlatively gifted in bed, able to make a man forget his very soul. It would be a pity to waste such talent, especially since I have already bought and paid for it several times over.
"You were a matchless mistress"—his gaze traveled the length of her body, lingering with insulting deliberation—"and the bed was always the most important thing between us. What say you, Diana, shall I continue to call several nights a week and avail myself of your delightful body?"
"And you say that I know how to be cruel! I never felt like a whore before this moment." She shrank back in her chair, hating the very idea of what he was suggesting. Bitterly she finished, "Anything I know of cruelty, I have learned from you."
"Much better," he said approvingly. "We have no illusions about each other. Didn't you say something about knowing each other in our imperfections? The truth is that I am a rapist and you are a whore. In its way, a perfect marriage."
His words triggered a degree of fury greater than any she had felt in her life. "Damn you," she cried, "demean yourself if you will, but don't put me on your level, for I am better than that! I have tried to forgive, to give love in the face of evil, but you are not worth it."
Helpless tears poured down her face. "In the beginning I hated you. The only being I hated more was God Himself, for permitting such a thing to happen. When I first met you in London I was terrified. If I had not been raised to believe that a wife must submit to her husband, if I had not felt compelled to know you better, I would never have allowed you to touch me.
"Then I learned to love you, in the face of your distrust, even when you tried to dominate and possess me." Her voice caught in anguish. "Now, because you believe yourself unworthy, you have destroyed all the love I felt for you. Only hatred is left, and you have only yourself to blame."
Even as she hurled the words like weapons, she knew that she still loved him, but that the hatred was real too. "The morning after our hell-born marriage, my father abandoned me in that inn, delighted to be rid of me, with not a single backward glance. I was fifteen years old, Gervase, raped, confused, and frightened, and he left me there penniless, with only the clothes I stood up in, because he said I was now my husband's responsibility. If the innkeeper's wife had not taken pity on me, put me to work in the kitchens, and paid for the letter to your London lawyer, God only knows what would have become of me."
The remembered panic of a child's abandonment lanced through her voice. "Because I was not full grown, I almost died when Geoffrey was born. For two days and nights I was in labor, screaming in agony until I had no more voice to scream."
Having started, she could not stop, even though she knew mere words could not convey the sheer terror she had known. "I had never wanted wealth or status or fame. My greatest dream in life was a simple one: to marry a husband who loved me, to have children to love and cherish."
Then, with infinite bitterness, "In one casual, drunken act you tore that dream away from me, along with my innocence. Then you left me, neither wife nor maid, forbidding me to see or get in touch with you. My only choices were to live as a spinster for the rest of my life or take a man in adultery. Finally, turning my back on everything I was raised to believe in, I chose to do the latter and went to London, hoping to find a man who would love me in spite of my past. And the devil in all his humor sent me to you, my husband, and I was fool enough to love you."
There was satisfaction in seeing that her words affected him like physical blows, that he felt some shadow of her suffering. Contempt in every syllable, she finished, "As if your damned fortune could ever compensate for what you have done to me! There isn't enough money on earth to buy you a clear conscience."
"I know that. If there were anything on earth I could do to make amends, I would do it. You are angry and have every right to be." Gervase's face contorted with despairing guilt, bruised shadows underlining his light eyes. He drew in a shuddering breath, then finished in a voice raw with pain, "Can you listen to your own words and still deny that you wanted revenge?"
His question was like a splash of ice water in the face of her fury. Hearing the echoes of her words, Diana was appalled by her own bitterness. Shaking her head in vehement denial, she buried her face in her hands, her curtained hair isolating her with her thoughts. She had thought that she had transcended the anger about her mar
riage, that she had become a loving, forgiving woman, and now she stood condemned by her own words.
Terrified that she was not the person she had believed she was, Diana searched the darkest corners of her heart with harsh, relentless will, to learn if vengeance had truly been her motive. It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done.
She found anger, some of it for Gervase and her mother, more directed at her father. She found guilt, the tormented doubts she had known at bringing Geoffrey to London when she embarked on a life of shame. But she found no malice toward anyone, no desire to torment and destroy her husband.
When she was sure, Diana raised her head and said with the stillness that comes after storm, "In the years between our marriage and our meeting in London, I despised you, and had no desire to see you ever again." Then, with utter conviction, "But vengeance I left to God."
He shook his head, able to believe her anger but not her conclusion. "Finally, the ugly truth that lies at the bottom of the well, the rage you had hidden even from yourself. You should thank me for helping you discover it. You hated me and sought revenge. And you achieved it beyond your wildest dreams."
"You are wrong, Gervase." She brushed her hair back wearily. "Yes, there was anger—only now do I see how much—but that is only part of the truth. Though I hated you in the beginning, that passed. I swear before God that I never truly wished to harm you in any way. I wanted you to be sorry, to regret what had happened, but that is far from the viciousness you think me capable of."
"You can't have it both ways, Diana. How could I fully comprehend the injury I did to you and not suffer from the knowledge? You have sown the seeds of your hatred, and I will be reaping the harvest as long as I live." He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, their gray depths transparent in the candlelight. "You wanted your pound of flesh, and you got it. It was just bloodier than you expected."
The truth of his words struck her. Indeed, she could not have it both ways. A just man like Gervase could not turn aside from the consequences of his actions. Because he was strong and honorable, his torment at betraying his fundamental values was all the more acute.
As much as she hated to admit it, she could no longer deny that she had wanted to hurt him, just a little. Then, after he had shown proper remorse, she would have graciously forgiven him and they could have lived happily ever after in their love. She would have the added satisfaction of knowing how generous she had been.
Instead, because there were already deep wounds in his soul, she had injured him far more profoundly than she had intended, and that injury had rebounded on her. She wished she hadn't come here, had not opened this Pandora's box of dark and twisted motives. But too much had been said to retreat; she could only go forward. The past and present were unbearable. Only the future held hope, and that meant driving away all the dark shadows.
With sudden insight, she knew what must be done. Quietly she asked, "What is the truth that lies at the bottom of your well, Gervase? Who convinced you that you were unworthy of being loved, who made it easier to believe that I was a liar than that I could love you?"
She stood and stepped toward him, remembering what Francis had told her the day before. "Was it your father, who neglected you and considered you an inferior heir? Or was it your mother? You never speak of her." Her voice catching, she continued, "My mother killed herself, and I felt betrayed. What did your mother do that wounded you so deeply you cannot trust another woman?"
She raised one hand tentatively, then dropped it, afraid to touch him. "Why are you so terrified that you will send me away rather than risk love?"
"My God, you are a witch." He twisted away from her, his long muscles rigid with anguish. "Before I met you, my mother was the only woman I had ever loved, and it meant nothing to her. Less than nothing. I only wish that she had killed herself! It would have been a blessing by comparison."
"What did she do to you?" Diana pursued him implacably, stopping so close to his chair that the soft folds of her gown brushed his leg. "As you yourself have just shown me, wounds that are hidden from the light of day turn poisonous."
He gasped for breath as if he had been running, his voice ragged behind his hands. "You don't want to know. I swear before God, Diana, you... do... not... want... to... know!"
Diana placed her hands on his and gently pulled them from his face. As he flinched from her touch, she was shocked to see tears, his features distorted by unbearable memories. He was a grown man, but his expression was that of a devastated child. Softly she asked, "What did she do to you, Gervase, that you are letting it destroy your whole life?"
"You really want to know, mistress mine?" He knocked her hands aside, using fury to disguise his agony. "I warned you, but you insist on knowing the darkest secret of my soul, so I will make you a gift of it." Hoarsely, painfully, his eyes not meeting hers, he spat out, "The first woman I ever lay with was my mother!"
Diana stared at him in horror. Nothing had prepared her for this, and she was shocked to the depths of her being.
He could not stop, his words pouring out with chaotic power. "Do you think only women can be raped? You are wrong. My mother raped me, though not with force. She did it casually, because it amused her at that moment. Because she was unhappy about the loss of a lover. Because she had drunk too much wine. Because it never occurred to her to deny her impulses."
He shook his head violently, as if to dislodge the memories. "I was thirteen years old. At first I didn't understand, then I didn't believe, and finally I could not stop my body from responding even though I knew how unspeakably wrong it was."
He stood abruptly and she jerked back, uncertain of what he meant to do. Grasping the brandy decanter, in one smooth, furious motion Gervase hurled it across the room to shatter against the wall.
As crystal shards spun across the polished hardwood floor and the sharp tang of brandy filled the room, he cried out, "Is that ugly enough for you? Is that a powerful enough reason to doubt that women can be trusted?"
He had been avoiding her eyes, but now he turned to face her, all vestige of control vanished. "It repulses you, doesn't it, knowing that your husband is a man who committed incest with his own mother? Incest is the vilest, the most forbidden of crimes. Oedipus was hurled down from his throne, blinded, and cast out into the wilderness for it."
Half-wild with devastation, he finished in a hoarse whisper, "It is more than a crime, it is an abomination, a sin against God. There is nothing, nothing at all, that can absolve that."
His agony was a fiery, tangible thing, and it struck Diana to the heart. She didn't want to believe that any mother could do such a thing to her son, that the man she loved had lived most of his life with such grief and shame, but the intolerable truth was written in every tortured line of his face.
With instinctive desire to offer comfort, she cried out, "It wasn't your fault! She was a woman grown and you were scarcely more than a child. It is horrible that any woman could abuse her child so, but you are not horrible for having been a victim of her. Don't let your guilt destroy you."
Then, with fierce entreaty, she begged, "And don't punish me for your mother's sin."
His raw gaze met hers. He stood a bare foot away, the fevered warmth of his lean body palpable. "I may have been more sinned against than sinning at thirteen, but I can't escape the knowledge that I am far more her child than my father's."
His mouth twisted. "My father was as dry and unfeeling as dust. It is my mother's passionate, wanton nature I inherited, and I am no better than she was. You of all women know what I am capable of. I have tried to control myself, to spend passion where it will do no harm, to expiate my sins by working for goals greater than myself."
His shoulders lifted in a gesture of despair. "I have tried to believe that I am no worse than other men, but in spite of all I have done, I have been unable to escape the truth. I am flawed beyond redemption."
"No one is beyond redemption! You are no more flawed than any ot
her mortal man." In her fierce desire to defend him from himself, she grasped his upper arms, trying to break through his guilt and self-hatred.
She knew instantly that she had made a disastrous error. Her touch dissolved the fragile control that held Gervase's violent emotions in check, and his taut muscles spasmed under her hands. He pulled her into a fierce, painful embrace, his mouth devouring, his arms crushing her against his hard body. She felt nothing of love and tenderness, only anguish and a bitter desire to strike mindlessly at the darkness within him.
In two steps he had dragged her to the bed and thrown her onto it, trapping her body beneath him, bruising her lips as he invaded her mouth. Wrenching the neckline of her silk robe, he exposed her breasts to his hungry grasp.
Diana fought him, trying to get enough leverage with arms and knees to free herself, but he was too strong, too lost in his own private hell, for her to escape. If he had wanted her in any other way she would have given herself gladly, but not like this, not in an act of violence that would sear them both beyond the possibility of healing.
He half-lifted himself to get a better grip on her robe, and she used his shift in weight to reach down to the knife sheath on her leg. Lost in darkness beyond thought, Gervase didn't even see the bright flash of blade as she raised her knife and slashed it across his left forearm.
Pain penetrated his madness as words could not have done. As blood dripped onto her bare breasts, Gervase rolled away, his features contorted with horror at what he had almost done. His rigid body was an eloquent reflection of his despair as he buried his face, his hands clenching the heavy quilt. Even though his assault on his wife had been unsuccessful, the attempt was bitter confirmation of his own worst beliefs about his nature.
Trembling with shock, Diana laid the bloodstained knife on the bed and used one hand to pull her robe together as she struggled to draw breath into her lungs. The room seethed with the force of the emotions that had been unleashed, and she wondered helplessly how a man and woman who had loved could hurt each other so profoundly.
Dearly Beloved Page 36