Heartless

by Mary Balogh

  But it was coming back and she could not keep pushing it away. The panic. And the nightmare memory of how she had lived with it for weeks and months on end for the whole year after his leaving before she had met and married Luke. The bed suddenly seemed a mile wide and he and she perched on opposite ends of it. She felt surrounded by cold emptiness, the cold threat of reaching hands.

  She rolled over onto her side and pressed herself close to the reassuringly warm and solid body of her husband and burrowed her way past his arms so that she could snuggle her head against his chest beneath his chin. Hold me. Please hold me.

  His arms came about her and he muttered sleepily. And then woke up.

  “Anna,” he said, “what is this? Would you have me lame and impotent from so much use? Give me a few moments and I will be ready for you.”

  “No-o,” she wailed. It was not pleasure she wanted now, but comfort. Love. “Luke, take me home. Please take me home. I want to go home.” Perhaps there she would be safe.

  “To Elm Court?” he said. “You are feeling homesick? You are missing your youngest sister? I will take you there if you wish it.”

  “No,” she said, “not there. Not there ever again. Take me home. Home to Bowden Abbey.”

  He held her close for a while, saying nothing. She felt almost as if he had retreated somewhat from her.

  “To Bowden?” he said. “Anna, what is all this? Has something happened?”

  “Nothing,” she said against his chest. “Nothing at all. But I am tired of London. I want to go home. Please let us go home.”

  “Home,” he said. She could feel him draw breath slowly. “Yes, it is home, is it not? But there is something, Anna. What is it?”

  She swallowed and pressed closer. “I am going to have a child,” she said. She had not intended to tell him yet. She was not even sure yet.

  “Already?” One hand had moved up to her head. His fingers stroked through her hair and massaged her scalp.

  “I am a week late,” she said. “I am never late. I think I must be with child. I want to go home.”

  He said nothing for a long time. He continued to massage her head soothingly while her hand clung to a thick lock of his hair that had fallen over his shoulder and across her face.

  “Yes,” he said at last very quietly. “It is time. Our first child must be born at Bowden. You must have the quiet of the country while he grows in you. We will go home.”

  Safety and peace closed in about her again and she felt very close to sleep once more.

  “Anna,” he said softly, “it pleases me that you are with child. I thank you.”

  She smiled drowsily. In a month of physical closeness and passion and of emotional distance, they were the first words that seemed to reach across the distance. They sounded almost like a declaration of love. For tonight almost was good enough. She let herself fall the rest of the way into sleep, held safely in her husband’s arms.

  • • •

  He was frankly terrified. He rode faster than usual in the park early the following morning. He had created a new life. He and Anna together. They had created a new life inside her body. And for the rest of his days he would be responsible for that life he had started and for the life of the mother.

  He was bound inextricably to life and its duties and responsibilities and to at least two other people—his wife and the child who was growing in her womb. He had thought the marriage bond to be the one that would always weigh most heavily on him. He had not expected that the knowledge she had given him last night would bind him so much more. The material needs of his child he could supply with no worry whatsoever. But he would be responsible also for the emotional needs of his child. His mind touched on the idea of love and veered away again.

  It was something he could not do. He had spent ten years detaching himself from human ties, from emotional entanglements. And he had been well content with the results. Could he now go back? Could he become again the person he had been? Only to be destroyed again? Only to be vulnerable again and reminded of his essential aloneness?

  He was terrified. Terrified. What if Anna should die? What if he had killed her by putting new life inside her when he was in no way equipped to nurture that life beyond the womb? What if he had killed all the beauty and all the joyful vivacity that was Anna?

  He eased back on the reins when he realized he was risking his horse’s safety as well as his own. And he could no longer afford the luxury of risking even his own safety. A child and its mother depended upon his life and safety. He felt a wave of dizzy nausea at the thought. He did not want anyone emotionally dependent on him. He would be unable to handle the responsibility.

  What if, like his mother, he could not give his child love?

  But he was incapable of love.

  He did not want to be capable of love. He did not want to be capable of feeling pain.

  Fortunately, he had something else on which to focus his mind as he rode home. Doris. He knew that she suffered and that she would suffer for some time to come—he could remember something of what that kind of suffering felt like. But despite a lingering uneasiness, he was still convinced this morning that he had handled the matter in the only possible way. And he had not relented about sending her back to Bowden. He would go this morning, as promised, and see her on her way with their mother.

  Luke thought again of the child she had been and the youth he had been. A long time ago. He sighed as he sat down to breakfast and looked through the pile of letters and invitations neatly stacked beside his plate.

  There was a voucher for an enormous sum of money enclosed in a letter that asked payment of the gaming debt by the Duke of Harndon since his brother, Lord Ashley Kendrick, appeared unable to meet it himself. Ashley’s signature was scrawled at the bottom of the voucher.

  Ashley was still in bed when Luke arrived at Harndon House. Before seeing his mother and sister, Luke went himself to his brother’s room, took a glass of water from the dressing room, and trickled its contents over Ashley’s face. His brother sputtered into wakefulness.

  “Zounds! What the deuce!” he said.

  Luke tossed the voucher onto his chest and his brother picked it up and regarded it silently for a few moments.

  “Pox on it,” he said, “he had no business sending it to you, Luke. I shall see to settling it. Go away and let a fellow sleep.”

  “I shall give you a choice,” Luke said coldly, and he could almost hear his father speaking through his voice—though his father had given him no choice ten years ago. “You may keep this voucher and go to the devil with it with no further allowance to help you along, or you may hand it back to me for payment and get out of that bed and have your bags packed in time to accompany Doris and our mother to Bowden, where you will stay until you can satisfy me that you have good reason for leaving again. You have five minutes in which to decide.” He crossed the room to the window, flung back the heavy curtains, and stood looking out at the sunny square. He had forgotten that the sun was shining.

  He had offered a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. A choice of being tossed out without any means of living—as he himself had been tossed out ten years ago—or of facing total capitulation, total humiliation. But Luke hardened his heart and said nothing more.

  “What time are they leaving?” his brother asked from somewhere behind him after perhaps four minutes had passed.

  “As soon as you are ready,” Luke said without turning.

  He heard the door into Ashley’s dressing room open and close again a few moments later. The gaming voucher, he saw when he turned, was on the bed. Luke walked over with a stony heart to pick it up.

  So it was back to Bowden Abbey, he thought, folding the paper and putting it in a pocket. Back into his past. Taking his present and his future with him.

  He went to find his mother.

  13

&nb
sp; BOWDEN Abbey. Luke watched for it with some dread. As a boy he had loved the house and the park, the farms and the village. He had hated the thought of ever being away from it. School and university were tolerated only because there were the holidays to look forward to. And perhaps he would not have had to move away if all that mess with George had never happened. His father would have given him the living at Bowden.

  But then it was not so much the place he dreaded, he knew, as the memories that had become associated with it. It was a pity, perhaps, that it was the last memories that had stuck with him ever since, almost obliterating the good ones. He could remember feeling great pleasure at George’s return from his Grand Tour. Although he had always been enormously fond of his older brother, the four-year age difference had sometimes been an impediment when they were boys. Now it seemed to have narrowed. They were young men together and brothers. There had been a few weeks of endless talking and of riding together, fishing together, playing billiards together, visiting together—they were always together. Or so it had seemed. Obviously there had been some time when George was not with Luke, else what had happened would have had no chance to happen.

  The betrayal had shattered something in Luke that had never mended. George and Henrietta. George raping Henrietta. But no, the mind of the thirty-year-old Luke shied away from that particular word. Seduction maybe. Surely he must have believed Henrietta willing—Luke knew how sexual desire could sometimes blur one’s judgment. But even the idea of George the seducer could still bring an empty ache to the pit of his stomach.

  There was the unwilling memory of George when confronted, ashen-faced and tight-lipped, refusing to make any comment on the story Henrietta had told, refusing to defend himself and his actions, refusing at first to accept Luke’s challenge—and ultimately refusing to fight him by deloping and watching steadily as Luke took aim at the willow tree. And dropping without a sound when hit.

  Luke drew a slow breath. He had never seen his brother after that. And never would now. And only now—amazingly—did he recall a long-suppressed memory. A package had arrived from George after six months. Inside was nothing but a piece of paper with his brother’s scrawled signature and a rather thick wad of money. Luke had returned it without comment. Olive branch or blood money? He had not known which. He had repressed all memory of the package until now.

  All his own letters—written to his mother and father—had been similarly returned. He had been turned off, cast out.

  And yet now by the supreme irony of fate this all belonged to him—they were approaching Bowden land—and he was coming back to it as the Duke of Harndon. Back to duties he had never asked for. Back to Henrietta, his brother’s widow.

  Instinctively he turned to his present and his future. His wife was sitting beside him in the carriage, quietly watching the scenery through the window. He might have reached for her hand if her sister had not been sitting opposite her. He was glad that her sister was there to prevent him from showing such weakness. Agnes, against Anna’s advice and despite the protests of Lady Sterne, had begged to come with them. The girl, though very pretty, was equally shy. London and its gay round of balls and parties was not to her taste, Luke guessed. He had sent for the other sister, too, the deaf-mute, knowing that Anna was fretting about being away from her for so long.

  His present and his future. In the three days since she had begged him to bring her home she still had not bled. It seemed almost certain that she was with child.

  She felt his eyes upon her and turned her head to smile at him. There was sunshine in her smile again and relaxation in her posture despite the tedium of a long journey. It surprised him that she had grown to hate London. She had seemed to be enjoying to the full the social life there, and her company had been much sought after. But in the last three days she had been almost frantic to leave, urging the servants on to speed up their preparations. Perhaps she was the sort of person who, once she had an idea, had to act upon it now if not yesterday.

  “We will be passing through the village within the next few minutes,” he said. “We are almost home.”

  “Are we?” Excitement lit her eyes and she leaned away from the back of her seat, the better to see from the window.

  And then they were in the village, slowing for the sake of possible pedestrians or domestic animals. It all looked shockingly the same as it had always looked. What had he expected? Luke wondered. That everything would have changed beyond recognition in ten years?

  But one thing had changed. Ten years ago he had been merely a younger son of the duke and little more than a boy. He had not attracted a great deal of notice when his carriage passed through the village. This time he was the Duke of Harndon, and he was returning after a long absence. There were no crests on his carriage, but that did not appear to matter. Word must have spread that he was expected any day, and cottage doors were being flung open and tavern and shops were spilling forth their few customers.

  Caught by surprise, Luke leaned forward and raised a hand in greeting to those who waved at him, their faces for the most part wreathed in smiles of welcome.

  “Luke?” Anna said. She laughed with delight. “How wonderful.” She, too, had a hand raised and was looking from the window on her side of the carriage.

  But he leaned back sharply as they approached the end of the street and the church. He averted his head. No, he had no wish to see the church or the churchyard. He realized suddenly that it was not just the memories and not just Henrietta he had dreaded returning to. There was something worse than them. There were the graves in the churchyard, the graves of the two men he had not had chance or inclination to forgive in this life and could never now forgive.

  “Ah,” he said in some relief as the carriage made the almost immediate turn through the tall and imposing stone gateposts into the park of Bowden Abbey. “The villagers must have heard that a new and lovely duchess was arriving. Those standing on your side of the street will be able to boast of having seen you, my dear.”

  She laughed again. “’Tis more like,” she said, “that they wanted to see what Paris has done to you. Oh, the trees! They are very ancient, are they not? And oh, look, Agnes. Deer. A whole herd of them. ’Tis shady here, a pleasant break from the sunshine.”

  It had seemed like black night to him as he rode down the driveway for the last time. They had already passed the spot where Doris had waited for him.

  “Ohhh!” There was a shared gasp from both Agnes and Anna as the carriage suddenly left the trees and the shade behind and all the splendor of the open park came into view—the double arched stone bridge over the fast-flowing river; the long, smooth lawns sloping upward; the four-tiered terraces of the formal gardens, carefully cultivated and ablaze with color; and the massive house, all turrets and mullioned windows, an indescribable mess of architectural styles, but imposing and splendid.

  Luke gazed on it, as he had gazed at the village a few minutes ago, with surprise to find it looking so much the same. It could have been yesterday, he thought. Or a century ago.

  The carriage crossed the bridge and made its way up the driveway past the lawns and then beside the long formal gardens before turning onto the topmost, cobbled terrace before the marble steps and the great doors. The doors had been flung wide by the time the carriage had drawn to a halt and the coachman had opened the door and set down the steps.

  Luke stepped resolutely out and turned to hand first his sister-in-law and then his wife down. Anna had lost her smile, he saw, though her eyes were still wide with wonder and her cheeks were becomingly flushed. He offered her his arm and she set her own formally along the top of it. He should have offered her encouragement, but he had none to offer. This was perhaps, he thought, the most difficult moment of his life. No, hardly that—one of the most difficult.

  He led his wife into the great oak-paneled hall, two stories high, with its huge portraits of family ancestors and its massive twin f
ireplaces at opposite sides and its tiled floor. Dwarfed by the magnificence surrounding them, the servants were lined up on both sides of the door to welcome him home and to be inspected by their duke and his new duchess.

  His mother’s doing? Luke wondered.

  His father’s old butler, Cotes, presented him with the stiff bow Luke remembered well to the housekeeper, Mrs. Wynn, whom Luke had not seen before. Luke presented his duchess and Lady Agnes Marlowe. And then he and Anna walked the lines of the servants. They were standing stiffly to attention, many of them with brightly curious eyes. His wife, as Luke expected, rose to the occasion with all the ease of her experience. She smiled warmly at each servant and had a personal word for most. Tired as she must be, from the journey and perhaps from early pregnancy, she did not rush this first duty as mistress of Bowden Abbey or show any sign that it was anything but a delight to her.

  He had chosen well, he thought. She would do her job thoroughly and with grace. He was proud of her.

  “The family is waiting abovestairs in the drawing room, your grace,” Mrs. Wynn said when the inspection was finally over, addressing herself to Anna. “Will you greet them first or retire to your apartments first?”

  “Oh, we will go to the drawing room first,” Anna said, turning a smiling and inquiring face toward Luke.

  He inclined his head.

  “But Lady Agnes would probably prefer to rest for a while,” Anna said.

  Agnes looked relieved.

  Mrs. Wynn nodded and turned to lead the way through the pointed archway to the grand oak staircase.

  Luke, following behind her with his wife on his arm, felt rather as if he had lead weights in his shoes. It had been home once. And was to be home again, if that were possible. His family awaited him abovestairs—his mother, who had turned away from him when he had most needed a mother’s love; his brother, whom he had humiliated and dealt with almost as harshly as his father had dealt with him; his sister, whose heart he had ruthlessly broken even though once upon a time he had known all about broken hearts. And Henrietta.