Mistress by Midnight

by Nicola Cornick

  “Congratulate me, little sis! I am on my way to make my fortune!”

  She had thought that it was odd that he had seemed so happy because only the night before she had heard him arguing with Lord Fenner over money. He must have had Kitty’s note, telling him of her pregnancy, begging him to elope. And he had known he had no intention of doing so and every intention of threatening to broadcast her disgrace unless she paid him off. Kitty, who had been fathoms deep in love with him. Kitty, whom he had betrayed…

  Garrick was still talking in that rough, painful tone.

  “The next thing I heard was Kitty screaming,” he said. He glanced at Merryn, looked away. “She had a pistol. I don’t know why. I have often wondered. Maybe she did not trust Stephen from the first and that is the saddest thing of all. Anyway, she swore to kill him if he abandoned her.”

  Merryn felt the anguish rake through her, raw and sharp. The tears clogged her throat, tears for Kitty, so disillusioned and alone.

  “There was a shot,” Garrick said, “and I forced my way through the hedge to the center of the maze and I found them.” He stopped, breathing hard. “Kitty had shot Stephen in the shoulder. She was mad with grief and distress. Stephen was on the ground. He was bleeding copiously and swearing at her. He was still taunting her, telling her that she was so stupid she could not even kill him. He had his own pistol leveled at Kitty and he said he would show her how it should be done.” Garrick stopped. “We both fired together,” he said. “Stephen’s bullet hit Kitty in the arm. Mine killed him.”

  Merryn sat dry-eyed and frozen. Stephen, she thought. You blackguard. You utter scoundrel. The tears prickled her eyelids and closed her throat, tears of bitterness and disillusion. There was a sharp pain in her chest, a crack in her heart, stealing her breath. All pretense had been stripped away now and she had to accept the fact she had always known in her heart of hearts and yet had chosen to deny: that her brother had been worse than a wastrel and a rogue. He had been arrogant, vain and dangerous. He had played with people’s lives, with Garrick, with Kitty, with herself, as though they were counters in a game.

  She buried her face in her hands again as the shivers racked her.

  She felt Garrick move and then he pressed her glass of wine into her hands, holding them steady as she drank obediently and once again felt the warm liquid flower within her giving her warmth and strength. She raised her head and looked at him. The lines of grief and unhappiness were etched so deep in his face that she wanted to reach out to him and smooth them away.

  “I’m sorry, Merryn,” he said. “I wish I could say it was not true.”

  “You took Kitty away to protect her,” Merryn said. “I thought you had run to escape trial.”

  “I thought I would have had a good chance of acquittal if I had stood trial,” Garrick said. “I wanted to stay, to face justice for what I had done.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “But it was impossible. Everything would have come out—not merely Kitty’s affaire, which we could not hide, but her pregnancy, too…” His voice fell. “She would have been utterly ruined and the future of the baby, too.” His face twisted.

  “I would have given the child my name if I could have done,” he said, and Merryn could hear the rawness in his voice. “I would have done anything for her to be mine—” He stopped.

  “You could not claim her as your own because it was too late,” Merryn said. She watched the way that his fingers tightened around his wineglass and wanted to ease that pain in him. “Kitty was already pregnant when you wed her.”

  “Three months gone,” Garrick said, “and I had been out of the country until a month before our wedding.” He shook his head. “Even so, I thought there might be a way, if I took Kitty abroad where nobody knew us. I thought we could pretend and that I could give the child my name.”

  “But if the child had been a boy,” Merryn said, “he would have been your heir.”

  Garrick shrugged. For a moment a hint of amusement lifted the harsh lines of misery on his face. “That would not have mattered to me,” he said. “God knows, it was not the fault of the child—it was innocent in all of this—and there have been bastards aplenty in the Farne line before. Ethan…”

  There had been Tom, too, Merryn thought. Soon she would need to explain to Garrick about Tom but not until everything else had been laid bare between them.

  “My father, though,” Garrick said, his voice bitter and hard. “He would not stand for a bastard inheriting the Farne Dukedom. He had too much arrogance and pride. It was our final quarrel. And in the end—” His shoulders slumped. “It did not matter because Kitty had no will to make a future with me after Stephen had died. Susan was born prematurely and Kitty slipped away. It seemed as though she had no reason to live.”

  Merryn took his hand and laced her fingers tightly in his. She felt his surprise and his instinctive move to draw away from her before he relaxed and let her hand rest in his.

  “You had a reason to live, though,” she said softly. “You had Susan.”

  Garrick looked down into her face. “She had lost her mother,” he said, “and I had robbed her of her father before she was even born. What else could I do other than to protect her?” His fingers tightened painfully on Merryn’s. “I could not keep her with me,” he said, “in exile, alone. Besides Kitty’s family wanted her.” He raised a hand to Merryn’s face and touched her cheek. “Just as you wished for something to remember Stephen by,” he said, “so they wanted to have something of Kitty, something good and unspoiled and true that need not be tainted by the scandal. So I gave Susan to them and I promised to keep the secret of her parentage. I swore never to speak a word to anyone to protect her always.” Again his fingers brushed her cheek, his touch full of regret. “I did not know you then,” he said harshly. “I did not know how much I would come to love you and how desperately I would want to tell you the truth. When we were to wed I wrote to Lord Scott begging to be released from my oath. But he…” He stopped.

  “He forbade you to tell,” Merryn said. Her voice shook. “I understand. No one had cause to hate the Fenner family more.”

  She thought of the way that she had hated Garrick in the beginning with such a blind passion that it could not be quelled. Kitty Scott’s family had had equal reason to hate.

  It was then that Merryn realized that she was crying, silently, big fat tears dropping onto the arm of the chair like the snowflakes outside. She rubbed them away with her fingers. Garrick took her damp hands in his and his touch was warm and comforting and for a moment she clung to him before he freed himself and moved away. She could sense the loneliness in him again, the solitariness that she had seen from the first, that had set him apart. She remembered the way he had rejected her love for him because he believed that what he had done had made him a pariah, unworthy of love. First she had hated Garrick Farne with a passion, she thought, and then she had wanted him to be a hero and neither was fair to the man he was, the man who had been forced to make terrible choices and had lived with the consequences ever since. Now at last she saw Garrick as he truly was: an honorable man who had been in an intolerable situation, who had made mistakes and tried to make reparation, too.

  “I don’t understand why you blame yourself, Garrick,” she said carefully, wanting to reach out to him, to breach that frightening coldness and give him the comfort that she knew he needed in his soul. “You acted to protect Kitty and her daughter. Everything you did, you did for their sakes, out of honor.”

  Garrick shook his head. There was stark unhappiness in his face, so sharp it cut Merryn to the bone. “Don’t seek to give me absolution, Merryn,” he said. He turned away from her as though he could not bear for her to look on him. “You were right all along,” he said briefly. “I was jealous of Stephen. When I discovered that he had bedded Kitty I hated him for his careless arrogance and the way he could simply take whatever he wanted.” He shook his head. “Every single day,” he said, “from that moment to this, I have thought that I need no
t have killed him. I could have put a bullet through his shoulder or shot the pistol from his hand…” His voice fell. “But I did not. And I will never be sure that I did not act through jealousy and revenge.”

  Merryn got up slowly and crossed to him, putting her arms about him. He did not respond. She could feel the resistance in him. “You have tortured yourself every day, Garrick,” she said softly. “You had no time to think, no time to do anything other than to react. And if there was an element of anger and jealousy—” she shook her head “—then every day since you have atoned for that by protecting Kitty and then her daughter from harm.”

  She felt a tiny slackening of the tension in him. “I acted out of duty,” Garrick said. “What else could I do?”

  “You acted out of honor,” Merryn corrected. “What else would a man like you do?” She freed him, stepped back. There was something that she had to tell him now. “Listen to me,” she said. Her voice shook. There were tears in her eyes. “We all do wrong,” she said. “There is something you do not know.”

  Garrick had heard the painful note in her voice. He turned toward her.

  “I was Kitty and Stephen’s go-between,” Merryn said.

  There was a silence. Garrick stared at her, dark eyes narrowed. He looked incredulous. “You?” he said. “But you were a mere child—”

  “I carried messages for them,” Merryn said. “They could not trust the servants so they used me. It was easy,” she added. “No one suspected me.”

  Her mind was opening now like a window into the past, and the memories she had repressed for so long because of her grief and guilt came tumbling out. That summer had been hot, the fields yellow and dry under a baking blue sky, the sea a perfect cobalt-blue. She could see Stephen, lounging on the grass under the plane trees in the garden at Fenners, calling her over, teasing her, smiling at her.

  “Merryn, be a sweetheart and take this letter to Lady Farne for me…”

  His laughing blue eyes had been narrowed against the sun. He had smiled, a smile for her alone.

  “Don’t tell anyone… It’s our secret…”

  It had been so exciting to be so important. She had rubbed her dirty palms on her even dirtier skirt, hauled up her stockings and taken the letter from his hand. She could feel it even now, smooth and cool against her hot skin. She had sped across the fields to Starcross Manor, tumbling over the stile, with the dry stalks of the meadow grasses whipping her legs. Kitty had been waiting for her. She had sent the maid for lemonade and Merryn had gulped it down thirstily. Kitty had written a reply but she had not sent Merryn back at once—that was one of the things that Merryn had grown to love about her. Kitty always took the time to talk to her, to ask her what she was reading, to give her little presents of ribbons and bookmarks and quills. She was kind. And later Merryn knew that she was unhappy, that she had been forced to wed when her heart was given somewhere else. Given to Stephen.

  “You were only a child,” Garrick repeated. He rubbed his forehead as though it pained him. “You cannot have known what you were doing.”

  “I knew exactly what I was doing,” Merryn said. “Do not make excuses for me, Garrick. I was thirteen years old. I thought it was romantic. I wanted them to run away together.” She gulped in a breath. “You said that Kitty wrote to you,” she said. “It was the reason you came down that last day, the day you found them together. But it was not Kitty who wrote to you, Garrick. It was I.” She looked away, her words wrenched from her. “I loved you,” she said. “Oh, I was only young but I felt it so passionately! You know me now—” a small sad smile cut through her grief “—you know how wholeheartedly I give myself up to every thing I believe in. It is my greatest weakness, I think. And I thought that if Kitty and Stephen were to elope then you might notice me at last.” Her breath caught. “I was almost fourteen,” she said. “I thought that in a couple of years I would be old enough for you.”

  She stole a look at Garrick’s face and the shock and the dawning horror she saw made her feel sick. She gave a despairing gesture. “So I wrote the letter. I lured you to Starcross Manor.” She struggled to control her voice, raked by the agonizing grief of what she had done. “I thought it would force a confrontation,” she said. “I knew you were a good man, a generous man. I thought you would let Kitty go. But instead…” She put her hands to her face then let them fall. “That was why when you told me in London that Stephen had tried to kill Kitty I could not believe you,” she whispered. “I did not want to believe you. It was not meant to be like that.” She stopped, her throat dry, her heart aching. Garrick was standing absolutely still. He had not moved, had not spoken. His face, dark and drawn, was turned away from her. Merryn felt her soul wither.

  “I’ll go now,” she said and her voice broke.

  She was shaking. She was not sure how her legs carried her to the door. The handle slipped under her fingers as she fumbled with it.

  Then Garrick’s hand closed over hers, holding it still. “Merryn,” he said softly. His arms came about her and as she felt their strength she turned her face against his chest and her grief burst out and she cried and cried while Garrick held her as gently as though she were a child.

  “Hush,” he said, stroking her hair. “Merryn, sweetheart—”

  She raised her face to his and he kissed her lashes, brushing the tears from her wet cheeks, kissing her trembling mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said brokenly. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “To think that you have lived with that all these years,” Garrick said, his voice rough with emotion, “never knowing what happened, desperate to understand.”

  Merryn clung to him. “I could not let it go,” she whispered. “When you came back I had to know. I had to find out what had happened, what had gone wrong.”

  “And I thwarted you at every turn.” Garrick sounded bitter, regretful. His arms tightened about her.

  “I blamed you because I could not face my own culpability,” Merryn said, the words tumbling out. She wiped the streaming tears away with the back of her fingers. “I knew I had done wrong but I could never tell anyone…” Her voice trembled. “Oh, Garrick…”

  They stood for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, lost to all else, drawing strength and love from one another. After a while Garrick loosed Merryn enough to look down into her face.

  “Merryn,” he said, “will you marry me?” He smiled, brushing the tumbled hair gently back from her flushed cheeks. “I asked you before,” he said, “and you did not want me. If you have changed your mind—”

  “With all my heart,” Merryn whispered, reaching up to kiss him.

  Garrick patted the pocket of his coat. “I brought the special license with me. Was that very presumptuous of me?”

  “Frightfully,” Merryn said. She looked at him under her lashes. “When?”

  “I thought tomorrow?” Garrick said. “If you are in agreement and if the vicar of Kilve agrees.”

  “What do we do until then?” Merryn said, more softly still.

  “Well,” Garrick said, “you need to take a bath for you have almost been drowned in a quicksand and threatened, and sustained any number of shocks and it is remiss of me to have kept you from your bed for so long…”

  Merryn smiled. “I bespoke a bedchamber but it was the last one available,” she said. “I am afraid that you will have to sleep in the taproom.”

  “And have Mrs. Morton assume that we were already in marital difficulties?” Garrick said. “I thank you, no. I have no wish for her to press on me her sovereign cure for impotence, nor for my alleged shortcomings in the bedroom to be broadcast to all of her acquaintance.”

  Merryn was betrayed into a giggle. “She could help you,” she said. “She told me in the carriage that she has a range of remedies to cure all ills.”

  “Thank you,” Garrick said, “but I do not recall you having any complaints before.” He scooped her up in his arms and strode to the parlor door. Out in the hall, Mrs. and Miss Morton
were lighting their candles at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. Morton gave a little shriek to see Merryn once again clasped so tightly in Garrick’s manly grasp.

  “Good night, Mrs. Morton,” Merryn called as Garrick took the stairs two at a time.

  “I do not believe those two are married at all,” she heard Mrs. Morton hiss to her daughter. “And they call themselves the Quality!”

  UP IN THE PRIVACY of a tiny chamber under the eaves of the inn Garrick stripped the blue gown from Merryn’s body, peeling off her underclothes with gentle hands, shaking out the sand that seemed to have penetrated every fold of her dress and clung to her skin, making it salty and rough. He concentrated very hard on the practical task, trying to ignore the delicate curve of her breast as she stepped out of her shift, trying to blot from his sight the luscious arch of her hips, the long, pure, tempting line of her bare leg. He had been quite enough of a brute keeping her downstairs in the parlor, cold and filthy, while they talked. He felt racked with remorse. The best way to make it up to her, he thought, was to see her safely into bed, make sure she was wrapped up warm and tight so that she did not catch an ague, and then retire to the taproom for a long, frustrated wakeful night alone and Mrs. Morton’s impotence aids be damned. This was no time to be thinking of ravishing Merryn. He would wait until she was recovered from her ordeal, wait until they were wed, wait until he had the marriage lines and they were respectable as the Duke and Duchess of Farne. He looked at Merryn as she rolled the stockings down her legs and felt the heat rise over his body, felt the color sting his cheeks and his eyes burn and he turned away so that she did not see the evidence of his arousal.

  A hipbath stood in the corner, the scented water steaming. It smelled divine of lavender and herbs and he heard Merryn give a little greedy moan. She skipped across the room, all rosy skin gleaming in the firelight, and slipped beneath the water with a sigh of pure physical pleasure. Garrick gritted his teeth hard and turned his back. Unfortunately that brought the wide bed into view, with its fresh white sheets turned down so very invitingly. Garrick stomped across to the window and stared out into the snowswept darkness. That was better; a cold winter night should chill his ardor.