Heartless

by Mary Balogh

  The woman servant had folded back her petticoat and her shift to the waist so that Anna had closed her eyes tightly and sobbed with shame. And then the servant had taken something—Anna had not seen it but it had felt hard and cold and greasy—and pushed it slowly inside, twisting it as she did so.

  There had been blinding terror, screams above that constant soothing voice, and sharp pain. Anna had thought she was about to die. She had thought they were going to impale her until they had killed her.

  But the woman had withdrawn whatever it was she had used and Anna had felt a hot gush between her legs.

  “There is the blood,” the woman had said, sounding satisfied. “It has been done, sir.”

  She was no longer a virgin, he had told her afterward. No man would want her as a wife now. She must never think of marriage.

  Anna was sobbing. Dry, painful sobs that hurt her chest and robbed her of breath.

  “Shh,” Luke was saying, cradling her head against his shoulder, freeing it of cap and pins so that he could run his fingers soothingly through her hair. “My love, forgive me. Please forgive me.”

  He was crying too, Anna realized suddenly. She stayed where she was for a while until the echo of his words finally took meaning in her brain.

  “Forgive you?” she said. “For what?”

  He swallowed. “I can see myself sitting behind that desk,” he said, “the morning after our wedding, telling you that you had some explaining to do. Interrogating you. Demanding to know how many times, with how many lovers. Demanding to know if you had loved him. Ah, my sweet love, forgive me.”

  She drew back her head and looked into his face. “Yes,” she said, “if ’twill make you feel better. But I was very foolish not to tell you all then. I realize that now. I was afraid to, Luke. I was afraid of losing you.”

  “So soon?” he asked. “But why? We hardly knew each other. We had had a week’s acquaintance. Not even. The fact constantly amazes me when I look back.”

  “But I loved you from the moment I first saw you,” she said, “looking more gorgeous than any other gentleman I had ever seen. With your cosmetics and your fan that should have made you seem unmanly but somehow had just the opposite effect. I was dazzled. And I was lost from that moment on. And so I was unwise enough to give in to temptation when you came to offer for me. I would have done anything after that to avoid the risk of losing you. I was foolish.”

  He sighed. “And I talked so sensibly of duty and pleasure,” he said. “Anna, Anna, what a very foolish man I was.”

  “No.” She raised a hand to cup about one side of his face and let all the tenderness she felt show in her eyes. “Just a very unhappy and a very hurt person, Luke. Hidden skillfully behind a facade of splendor and a reputation for ruthlessness and heartlessness. I believe some of the pain has gone away, has it not?”

  He touched his lips to hers. “All of it,” he said. “All of it, Anna. I was dead for ten years, my love, and you have brought life back to me in one.”

  She smiled and then snuggled her head against his shoulder. She suddenly felt very tired.

  • • •

  It was still dark when he woke up. He guessed that he had not slept for very long. The carriage was still moving at a steady pace. They were fortunate that it was a light night. His coachman had assured him that he would have no trouble seeing well enough to drive. And neither the coachman nor Luke had any particular fear of highwaymen.

  Joy was settling into sleep again. He realized that it was her slight fussing that had woken him. But she stilled and fell silent even as he watched. Anna was sleeping against his shoulder.

  He had killed four men in his lifetime—two of them this very night. It was a heavy burden knowing that he had deprived men of life, though in each case he had felt fully justified and in each case the killing had seemed unavoidable. But he knew at this moment that he had only one regret about killing Lowell Blakely. The regret was that he had been able to do it only once.

  One other thing of which he was glad. He was thankful that Blakely was not in fact Anna’s father and that she had proof that would satisfy her beyond any doubts. For a long time, perhaps for the rest of her life, she was going to live with bad memories. At least she would not be burdened by the knowledge that her father had so used her and that she had helped kill her father.

  There were still hours to go before they would be home. It would be daylight by the time they reached Bowden and there was not the faintest sign of dawn yet. He was impatient to be home.

  Home! A feeling of almost unbearable longing and love swept over him. Bowden Abbey—where he belonged, where he lived with his wife and his daughter, where their other children would be begotten and born and nurtured. Where he would live surrounded by family and warmed by the love he gave them and received from them for the rest of his life. Where he could be with Anna, the two of them living there together until a ripe old age, God willing.

  Unconsciously he tightened his arms about her.

  “Mmm.” She sighed deeply and burrowed closer for a few moments before drawing her head back and smiling sleepily up at him. “Are we almost home?”

  “I see my wife here before my very eyes,” he said, “and feel her in my arms. I have but to turn my head to see my daughter asleep within a few feet. Are we not home already, love?”

  She smiled slowly at him. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, Luke.”

  He chuckled suddenly. “Do you remember going home from Ranelagh?” he asked her. “I suppose ’tis not a very pleasant memory for you, Anna, as you were very frightened on that occasion and had turned to me for comfort, I believe. But the memory is very pleasant indeed for me. And very tantalizing.”

  Her smile deepened and became fully Anna’s smile—sunshine in the middle of the night, with a touch of mischief added to it.

  “What memory would that be?” she asked, getting to her feet, and turning awkwardly in the confined, swaying interior of the carriage to sit on his lap.

  “It started like this,” he said, his lips light against hers while his hand explored one of her breasts through the fabric of her stomacher and then pushed beneath it to fondle smooth and warm flesh. “Mm, Anna, they feel so good when there is milk. I have never sucked them since you gave birth. Tonight I will.”

  “Memory is returning,” she said in a whisper. “But ’tis sluggish.”

  “And then there was this,” he said, his hand moving sensuously beneath her petticoat and up her legs until his fingers could fondle and arouse her. “Though I believe my memory is hazy too, my love. I believe at the time we both had such voracious appetites that we moved immediately to the main feast.”

  She moaned. “I am voracious now,” she said.

  “Ah, me too, love,” he said, lifting her and bringing her astride him, pushing her skirts up out of the way as he did so and unbuttoning the flap of his breeches. “Come to the feast, Anna. Let us gorge ourselves together.”

  “Yes.” It was half gasp, half sigh as he brought her down onto his hard length and let her settle there for a few moments. He pressed his mouth to her one exposed breast, took the nipple into his mouth, and sucked hard. Her milk was warm and sweet . . . and infinitely exciting. “Ah, Luke, Luke, you are so beautiful.”

  He chuckled and lifted his head. “But manly, too, I believe we are agreed?” he said. “Tell me I am manly as well as beautiful, Anna. Come, my dear, I must not have my self-esteem shattered.”

  She was laughing quietly and helplessly then against his hair. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, you feel manly, Luke, I must confess. So manly that I marvel there is room for you there.”

  And so after all it was a joyful feast in which they indulged together and on which they gorged themselves over the next several minutes. Passionate and joyful and healing and life-giving. There was pleasure in plenty and ecstasy for the taking at the end. But more t
han that, there were happiness and self-giving and love. And the promise of an ever-abundant and ever-joyful feast for the rest of a lifetime.

  They did not sleep afterward but sat side by side, their arms about each other, gazing with shared affection at the child who was sleeping the night away on the opposite seat, quite ignorant of the fact that her safety had been seriously threatened for a number of hours.

  And now they would take her home together and give her the security of their shared love until it came time for her to pass on the love she had been given to someone else and begin her own family. They would take her home and give her brothers and sisters if they were fortunate.

  “Luke,” Anna said, “I have always been fortunate enough to be able to enjoy happiness when it presented itself. I have always had hope and I have always had the ability to see and appreciate the little things that can make life worth living. But I know now that it has been years and years since I have felt totally happy. I am happy now at this moment. Totally, wonderfully happy. No matter what the future has in store for us, I want to remember that there has been this moment. And that even this moment, with no more preceding and no more to come after, would make the whole mystery of living worthwhile.”

  He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “We will live life from moment to moment,” he said, “thankful for each one we have together. Look, Anna, the world is turning gray beyond the windows. Dawn is coming.”

  “Ah,” she said, “daylight and hope.”

  “And sunshine and laughter,” he said. “Let us watch the sun come up, shall we? Together?”

  She sighed with contentment. She did not need to answer in words.

  Read on for a look at Lord Ashley Kendrick and Lady Emily Marlowe’s story in

  Silent Melody

  Available in trade paperback from Signet Eclipse in August 2015.

  1756

  IT WAS HARD TO LEAVE. But it was impossible to stay. He was leaving from choice because he was young and energetic and adventurous and had long wanted to carve a life of his own.

  He was going to new possibilities, new dreams. But he was leaving behind places and people. And though, being young, he was sure he would see them all again some day, he knew too that many years might pass before he did so.

  It was not easy to leave.

  Lord Ashley Kendrick was the son of a duke. A younger son, and therefore a man who needed employment. But neither the army nor the church, the accepted professions for younger sons, had appealed to him and so he had done nothing more useful with his twenty-three years than sow some wild oats and manage the estate of Bowden Abbey for his brother, Luke, Duke of Harndon, during the past few months. Business had always attracted him, but his father had forbidden him to involve himself with something he considered beneath the dignity of an aristocrat—even of a younger son. Luke felt differently. And so Ashley, with his brother’s reluctant blessing, was on his way to India, to take up his new post with the East India Company.

  He was eager to go. Finally he was to be his own man, doing what he wanted to do, proving to himself that he could forge his own destiny. He could hardly wait to begin his new life, to be there in India, to be free of his dependence on his brother.

  But it was hard to say good-bye. He did it the day before he left and begged everyone to let him go alone the following morning, to drive away from Bowden Abbey as if on a morning errand. He said good-bye to Luke; to Anna, Luke’s wife; to Joy, their infant daughter; to Emmy . . .

  Ah, but he did not really say good-bye to Emmy. He sought her out and told her he was leaving the following day, it was true. But then he set his hands on her shoulders, smiled cheerfully at her, told her to be a good girl, and strode away before she could make any reply.

  Not that Emmy could have replied verbally even if she had wanted to. She was a deaf-mute. She could read lips, but she had no way of communicating her thoughts except with those huge gray eyes of hers—and with certain facial expressions and gestures to which he had become sensitive during the year he had known her, plus others they had agreed upon as a sort of private, secret, if not entirely adequate language. She could not read or write. She was Anna’s sister and had come to Bowden soon after Anna’s marriage to Luke.

  Emmy was a child. Though fifteen years old, her handicap and her wild sense of freedom—she rarely dressed or behaved like a gently born young lady—made Ashley think of her as a child. A precious child for whom he felt a deep affection and in whom he had been in the habit of confiding all his frustrations and dreams. A child who adored him. It was not conceit that had him thinking so. She spent every spare moment in his company, gazing at him or out through the window of the room in which he worked, listening to him with her wonderful, expressive eyes, following him about the estate. She was never a nuisance. His fondness for her was something he could not put satisfactorily into words.

  He was afraid of Emmy’s eyes the day before his departure. He did not have the courage to say good-bye. So he merely said his piece and hurried away from her—just as if she were no more to him than a child for whom he felt only an indulgent affection.

  He regretted his cowardice the following day. But he hated good-byes.

  He got up early. He had been unable to sleep, his mind tossing with the excitement of what was ahead of him, his body eager to be on the way, his emotions torn between an impatience to be gone and a heaviness at leaving all that was familiar and dear behind him.

  He got up early to take a last fond look at Bowden Abbey, his home since childhood. But not his, of course. It was true that he was heir to it all, that Luke and Anna’s firstborn had been a daughter. But they would have sons, he was sure. He hoped they would. Being heir was not important to him, much as he loved Bowden. He wanted his own life. He wanted to build his own fortune and choose his own home and follow his own dreams.

  But he loved Bowden fiercely now that he was leaving it and did not know when he would see it again. If ever. He strode away behind the house, watching the early-morning dew soak his top boots, feeling the chill wind whip at his cloak and his three-cornered hat. He did not look back until he stood on top of a rise of land, from which he had a panoramic view down over the abbey and past it to the lawns and trees of the park stretching far in all directions.

  Home. And England. He was going to miss both.

  He descended the western side of the hill and strode toward the trees a short distance away and through them to the falls, the part of the river that spilled sharply downward over steep rocks before resuming its wide loop about the front of the house.

  He had spent many hours of the past year at the falls, seeking solitude and peace. Seeking purpose. Seeking himself, perhaps. A little over a year ago, he had been in London. But Luke had returned from a long residence in Paris, rescued him from deep debts and a wild and aimless life of pleasure and debauchery, and ordered him to return to Bowden until he had decided what he wished to do with his life.

  He climbed to the flat rock that jutted over the falls and stood looking down at the water as it rushed and bubbled over the rocks below. Emmy had spent many hours here with him. He smiled. He had once told her that she was a very good listener. It was true, even though she could not hear a word he said to her. She listened with her eyes and she comforted with her smiles and with her warm little hand in his.

  Dear, sweet Emmy. He was going to miss her perhaps more than any of them. There was a strange ache about his heart at the thought of her, his little fawn, like a piece of wild, unspoiled nature. She rarely wore hoops beneath her dresses and almost never wore caps. Indeed, she did not often even dress her hair, but let it fall, blond and loose and wavy to her waist. Whenever she could get away with doing so, she went barefoot. He did not know how he would have survived the year without Emmy to talk to, without her sympathy and her happiness to soothe his wounded feelings. He had felt despised and rejected by Luke, his beloved br
other, and his own sense of guilt had not helped reconcile him to what he had considered at the time to be unwarranted tyranny.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was time to return to the house. He would have breakfast while the carriage was brought around and his trunks were loaded, and then he would be on his way. He strode back through the trees in the direction of the house. He hoped everyone would honor the promise not to come down to see him on his way. He wished that he could just click his fingers and find himself on board ship, out of sight of English shores.

  He wished there did not have to be the moment of leaving.

  • • •

  Ashley had told her yesterday that he was leaving today. It had not been unexpected. For weeks past he had been excited over the prospect of joining the East India Company and going to India. There had been a new light of purpose in his eye and a new spring in his step, and she knew that she had lost him. That he no longer needed her. Not that he ever avoided her or turned her away. Not that he stopped talking to her or smiling at her or allowing her to walk about the estate with him or to sit in his office while he worked. Not that he stopped holding her hand as they walked or stopped calling her his little fawn. Not that any of the affection had gone out of his manner.

  But he was going away. He was going to a new life, one that he craved. One that he needed. She was glad for him. She was genuinely glad. Yes, she was. Oh, yes, she was.

  Lady Emily Marlowe curled up on the window seat in her room and gazed out on a gray and gloomy morning. She tried to draw peace from the sight of the trees and lawns. She tried to let them soothe her aching heart.

  Her breaking heart.

  She did not want to see him today. She would not be able to bear seeing him actually leave. It would hurt just too much.