Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  The man in question entered the drawing room. He appeared not the least bit distracted right now, but instead serious and determined.

  “Alexia, please forgive me, but I would like to speak with Miss Blair alone. Would you mind if I stole her away for a short while? It is a conversation that should not wait.”

  Alexia’s eyebrows rose a fraction. She gave Phaedra a subtle glance. I expect to be told what this is about.

  “Certainly, I do not mind. I will go to the library.”

  “Please do not inconvenience yourself. The others will be up shortly. Miss Blair, perhaps a turn in the garden would suit you. We can chat while we enjoy the fragrance of the late blooms.”

  Phaedra ignored how interesting Alexia found that. She accepted the invitation, wondering what topic required Elliot’s extraordinary demand for privacy.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  The garden was intimate and as redolent of summer blooms as Elliot promised.

  “Did your brothers order you to sally forth to battle me again, Elliot?”

  “They were as astonished by my departure from the dining room as you were by my request.” He led her over to an iron bench and bade her sit. He remained standing, however. “Although if I had walked out on them in anger I would have been justified. Christian was telling Hayden about the memoirs. I daresay they will discuss that matter a long while.”

  “Discuss me, you mean.” She wondered if she would regret his demand for this privacy. If Lord Hayden were of the same mind as Easterbrook, she might have just forgone the last few minutes ever to be had with Alexia.

  She could not see Elliot’s expression in the dark, but she sensed his mind working. Calculating. Deciding.

  “Phaedra, there has been an untoward development about our untoward development.”

  It took a moment for her to realize that he referred to the wedding in Positano. “Not too untoward, I trust.”

  “Remarkably untoward.” He set his foot on the bench beside her and leaned over his knee so his face and voice were closer. “This morning my solicitor told me that the marriage is most likely valid and will be upheld as such in any challenge.”

  All thought and feeling disappeared while she absorbed the shock. Then a variety of emotions burst in her heart. They shouted and clashed. They created chaos with their unruliness. Her mind, however, achieved an astonishing clarity.

  “No wonder you were looking at me so oddly during dinner. It is a miracle that you did not take to drink at this news.”

  He did not respond to that, which was gallant of him. She also understood why he wanted to speak out here in the dark. She doubted he could hide his dismay any more than she could.

  “I do not see how I can be married when I did not choose to marry, when I did not sign a contract, and when it was a Catholic ceremony,” she said.

  “I spent the afternoon with a proctor who has argued similar cases and he explained it. A marriage that is legal in the country where it happens is binding here. That is well supported by the ecclesiastical courts. Nor must it be a priest of the English church that solemnizes the vows in such cases. He believes no challenge will stand, but he suggested that for certainty the ceremony be repeated here.”

  “Why would I repeat vows that I never thought I made?”

  He turned his head and looked at the house. He gazed up at the windows overlooking the garden. He offered his hand. “Walk with me, Phaedra. I will tell you exactly what was told to me.”

  He tucked her arm under his and spoke quietly while they strolled up and down the garden path. Her heart pounded harder with each step and each word.

  “That marriage does not fit into the neat categories of the law. Therefore its validity becomes a matter of interpretation in the courts. There are no secure predictions of how a judgment in our case will go,” he said. “When the proctor suggested the vows be repeated, he was thinking of a challenge later, due to questions of inheritance or the legitimacy of children. That is what my solicitor meant when he spoke of it surviving a challenge as well. Both of them were so confident that the marriage would be judged valid that they only recommended another ceremony to avoid someone creating a scandal by trying to exploit the ambiguities later.”

  “The lawyers viewed all of it backward, Elliot, and their advice is flawed as a result. We do not want assurances it will stand. We want to make sure it does not.”

  “There is a presumption of validity in the court. If we claim it was not valid then we would bear the burden of proof.”

  The panic in her blood began to enter her head. “I think someone else should have to prove that it is valid.”

  “Phaedra, I learned more about the case law in this matter today than any man needs to know. Even in England the statutes are not always applied as clearly as one would expect. Some of the judgments that were cited astonished me. Marriages deemed valid despite no proper license, for example. The fact we did not sign that license in Positano is of little account, especially since our words alone create the validity in that country, under those laws.” He drew her under the canopy of a tree. “It appears that you are stuck with me, darling.”

  She could not believe she was hearing this. The panic grew, threatening her composure.

  He moved to embrace her. She broke free of his arms. “This is not an untoward development, Elliot. This is a disaster.”

  She paced away, struggling to reclaim her rational sense. Surely he had heard wrong. There had to be a way to set this aside.

  “You spoke of ambiguities. I would think there are enough to void this from the start. Which ones did your lawyers see as creating problems later?”

  “Phaedra—”

  “No. No. I never married for a reason, Elliot. I made a decision after thinking hard and long on the matter. I will not find myself now married by accident rather than choice. You must tell me if there is any way at all to undo this.”

  He crossed his arms. It emphasized his size compared to hers, and communicated his mood, which now thickened the air.

  She hated when men took that pose. Hated it.

  “I could divorce you. That is one way to undo it. You would have to give me cause, however, and I am not inclined to allow that.”

  Allow it? Heaven preserve her, he was sounding like a husband already.

  “Divorce means a marriage occurred and I deny that one did.” Her racing thoughts collected around her last statement. “We must explain that we were not willing. We must explain that there was no consent.”

  “An entire town heard us make those vows. No one saw a sword at our necks when we did so.”

  “The situation was as bad as a sword at our necks. Once we describe it, that will be clear to the Church. If we explain that neither of us said those words willingly, that should be enough.”

  He looked down at her. She searched the shadows of his face for indications of his relief.

  “I was not coerced, Phaedra. I did it to protect you, that is true. But I said the words fully accepting that they might bind me. I will not lie about that.”

  His calm acceptance of this marriage shocked her. “You cannot want this.”

  “I did not seek it but I am not so distraught as you are. After what we have shared, it is a small step.”

  “You will be distraught soon enough. You do not need a marriage to have whatever you can share with me. You gain nothing by this except responsibility for a woman who will never accept your rights to her.”

  No sooner had she said it than the truth sliced through her desperation. He did gain something. Something he and his family wanted very badly.

  She gazed at his dark form in the heavy night shadows. A wife lost everything in a marriage. The law gave the husband her property, her voice, her children, even her separate selfhood.

  Would he do it? Would he take such a rash step to get control of the press and the memoirs? She thought the gain very small compared to the cost.

  He strode to her and pulled her in
to his arms. He kissed her hard, as if passion could obliterate the horrible suspicion that had entered her mind.

  “It is not that,” he said hoarsely. “If I did not take that manuscript when I left your bed last week, I would not sell myself for it now.”

  His kiss confused her more. She could not sort her thoughts because they came so fast and scattered. “Then why?”

  “Because of this.” He kissed her again, long and deep.

  “You already have that,” she whispered.

  “I will not have it any longer if you petition the court to invalidate this marriage.”

  “If I choose to give it, you will. It is my decision—”

  “It is no longer. If you claim your words were coerced, we cannot continue as we were. We cannot say such vows, share a bed, and then claim we are not married. The past alone may cause the marriage to be held valid if it becomes known. We were not discreet in Italy. To continue an affair here, to have any private contact, would ensure the judges dismiss your petition.”

  His tone, so clear and firm, so lacking true sympathy, sounded cruel. He described a terrible choice.

  Helplessness and anger poured out of her heart. She barely contained what it did to her. She should not have to give him up for such a stupid reason.

  She saw the choice too clearly, and it sickened her. To relinquish their friendship, to never feel his touch, to retreat from all intimacy—or to accept the legal shackles the law forged for women, and to submit in every way to the rule of another person.

  She could name the ways. She had heard them enumerated by her mother for eighteen years.

  “It need not go that way,” she cried, violently rejecting both stark alternatives. “No one really knows what happened in Italy. No one was actually with us. If we are discreet here, no one will know either.”

  He grasped her upper arms in his two hands, as if he sought to control a madwoman. “We will be under oath. I will not lie. Nor will you.”

  “You cannot want this. You cannot. Think, Elliot. The world will mock you if we are man and wife. I will not be other than I am, not for you or your family. Everyone will laugh and say you have the most odd wife, with strange ideas and eccentric habits. They will—”

  “They will say I married a woman who is almost as odd as my brother. Nor do I care what is said.”

  Her eyes burned. She covered them with her hands and pressed hard, trying to hold the tears back. Her heart weighed thick and heavy.

  He released her arms and embraced her again. That only made it worse. The warmth, the memories, moved her so deeply that she lost the battle with her emotion and wept. She experienced the grief that was waiting, the loss if they parted, the nostalgia that would tear at her heart.

  She wanted desperately for that pain to convince her to accept the alternative. She urged her emotion to say marriage to this man would be good, not a prison.

  He held her while the worst of it poured out, wrapping her closely with his arms. The warmth of his mouth pressed her crown.

  Her heart twisted and tightened and shattered. She would miss this most of all. This and the knowing that went deeper than any friendship.

  His aura changed. It was as if the Rothwell sternness lost its grip. The night breeze bore it away.

  She pressed her damp eyes against his shoulder. “This is not the way that any marriage should be made, least of all one for me. I must try to undo this, Elliot.”

  His palm came to rest on the back of her head. The gesture of comfort almost made her weep again.

  “Will you help me, Elliot? I do not expect you to lie, but will you not fight it?”

  “You are asking me to give you up completely, Phaedra. I do not know if I can.”

  “Not completely. Afterward we can be friends again. I do not want to think that we will forever be parted over this, Elliot.”

  “It will be a long while before I can touch you again, darling. The courts work slowly.” He turned her head and kissed her cheek. “You are asking more than you will ever understand.”

  “You think so now, but you will see soon enough that I would never make a good wife. My character is too malformed to find contentment in that role.” She attempted a smile, but it only made her mouth quiver. “I am saving you. You seek to be honorable and do the right thing, and that is good and noble of you. But once your desire has passed, you would hate this unsuitable match, and be miserable that it had been forced on you.”

  He touched her lips with his fingers. “This separation will be more unnatural than the marriage you describe. For many weeks I have thought of you as mine. Kiss me now, so I have one last taste of you.”

  Her heart rebelled at how he named this a last kiss. It screamed its anger as their mouths met. It wept with frustration while she clutched him in a frantic embrace.

  He held her more firmly, as if bidding the storm to calm. Her spirit obeyed the silent command. The clouds scattered, the cool air flowed, and she was totally with him again one last time, in a place of warmth and light and freedom.

  “Are you drunk?” Hayden asked the question while he closed the library door. He glanced at the decanter on the table and the glass in Elliot’s hand.

  “That is the last thing I need now. I did want some privacy, however.”

  “I will leave you to it then.”

  “Hell, it is your home. Your library and your spirits. I’ll go.”

  “Stay.” Hayden’s smile made it a request. “I am glad you delayed your departure. It gives me the opportunity to speak with you alone about the revelations belatedly granted to me today.”

  Elliot remembered Hayden’s face after dinner while Christian laid out the matter of the memoirs. Hayden’s annoyance had not been directed at either Phaedra or Richard Drury, but at the two brothers who had neglected to confide in him earlier.

  That annoyance snapped again, quietly. “Learning about those memoirs explains much. Chalgrove approached me last month, asking if Alexia had influence with Miss Blair and could she arrange a meeting. I was stupid enough to think he had developed a fascination. Now I think it more likely that he worries he is in those pages.”

  “I have not read it. I do not know if he is.”

  “Perhaps you will call on him and find out how much influence he requires.”

  “If I have failed to help this family, I can hardly help him.”

  “With one word to Miss Blair you can find out how worried he needs to be. He is an old friend who has had enough trouble of late. Do this for me and I will forget that you kept me ignorant of this intrigue.”

  “Christian decided you were not to know.” It was a weak excuse from a man lacking strength at the moment. He possessed nothing inside him except a void in his chest that near suffocated him. His soul had been a blank since returning from the garden.

  Phaedra thought she was the one making the choice out there, but he had been facing his own dark reckoning. He had not been the least shocked to learn of their situation today. Those lawyers had mapped out a path to ensure that his possession of the woman he wanted was complete and permanent.

  If she had given the slightest indication that she welcomed this development, he would have pressed his advantage. His inclinations were not to help her set the vows aside. He wanted her bound to him forever so he would never wonder if a new friend might steal her away.

  He had told himself all day that she would get used to it. Her opposition was philosophical and there was no practicality in her beliefs. Pleasure and luxury and kindness would soften her view quickly. He would not demand any changes at first and very few later.

  A memory had plagued him, however. It still did, and the brandy was not helping. Not a memory of Phaedra. Not even one of his mother. He saw his father at the door of the library at Aylesbury, gazing in at the woman whose head was bent over her pen. His face had been as stern as ever and his posture uncompromising. He did not notice the boy on the floor by the bookshelves, so total was his attention on his wife.


  Elliot understood that memory now, in ways he never had as a boy. The last Lord Easterbrook had been looking at his wife with the eyes of a man in love. Hopelessly in love. Tragically so.

  He looked at his brother. Hayden expected him to hold a conversation about something else, when all that mattered was that kiss in the garden.

  “Christian knew I would not countenance his methods,” Hayden said. “Nor do I understand why he cares so much. Everyone knows father was no saint. If they want to wonder if he killed a man, let them.”

  Elliot had to smile at that. “It is said you are the most like him. Perhaps that has allowed you to reconcile yourself to what he was or might have been.”

  “Is that what people say? How interesting. I would have said it was you or Christian. You see, I would never do to Alexia what he did to our mother. Nor would I take vengeance on a rival after he was defeated.”

  “And you think that I might?”

  “I do not know. I only am sure I would not.”

  Elliot was not nearly so sure that he would not. He had been well schooled in desire recently, and the lessons had not all been good ones. The eyes he kept seeing in that memory made him uneasy because they looked too damned much like his own when he gazed in a looking glass these days.

  Perhaps Phaedra sensed that. Maybe during one of those intrusions she had seen it in him, or maybe she feared it might be a legacy he had inherited.

  “We do not know that he took vengeance,” he said. He did not want to believe the Rothwell ruthlessness could go that far.

  “It does not matter if he did or not. That two of his sons fear he did signifies more than the act itself, doesn’t it?”

  It was not the soldier in the Cape Colony who had been on Elliot’s mind. “Mother was not blameless.”

  Hayden pondered that observation. “Even not knowing if he did it, you seek to justify it? No, she was not blameless. She was an adulteress. Worse, it was not a frivolous affair but one of the heart. He would not let her go, but he did not have to isolate her. The marriage was prison enough for her. He did not have to make a real one for her down at Aylesbury.”