“My wife was the light of my life.” He was surprised how easily the words emerged.
He never spoke of Joanna. To anyone. It was as much a rule as not cheating at cards and keeping his linen clean. She lived on in a candlelit shrine in his heart, where she stayed untouched and beloved. Pure and unsullied by his sins.
More bizarre that he should speak of Joanna to a fallen woman like Olivia Raines. And that he knew she’d understand where nobody else would. Although he didn’t fool himself about what his wife would have thought of his current mistress. Joanna would have despised everything about Olivia.
“You still love her.” The words weren’t a question.
“Yes.”
“I admire that.” She turned and poured two glasses of wine from the decanter on the sideboard. “She must have been a remarkable woman. You were lucky.”
“Yes, I was.”
What a revelation. He’d been blessed with a great love and all he’d done since was run away from the fact that God had granted that gift, even if for too short a time.
He accepted the crystal glass filled with wine the same color as the robe Olivia wore. She settled herself cross-legged at the end of the bed. Too far away to touch, damn it.
Her effortless grace, the way she crossed her legs, modestly folding the satiny material across the enticing paleness of her thighs, reminded him of women of the seraglio. She was endlessly alluring. Endlessly erotic. Endlessly exotic. Wherever she’d been born.
She took a sip of her wine, never shifting her clear scrutiny from his face. “So why did you abandon your children?”
He choked on his wine. “Confound it, Olivia!”
He caught his breath and stared at her in shock. For a moment she’d lulled him into a sentimental dream. He should have known she wouldn’t let him linger there.
He found his voice. “Bloody Montjoy has a busy tongue, hasn’t he?”
“Perry told me what he knew.”
“What he thought he knew.”
“So he was wrong?”
Damn it, he wanted to lie. Damn it, he wanted to tell her to take her curiosity and her presumptuous self and remove both from his presence until she was prepared to be the mistress he’d bartered for in Montjoy’s salon.
Except he didn’t want that cool, self-possessed beauty, in spite of her spectacular looks and vulpine cleverness. He wanted the disheveled woman who stared him down over a glass of wine and asked him questions he didn’t want to answer.
Hell, he wanted her and as more than a temporary bedmate. He had no idea what he could do about it.
Nothing. That was reality.
So against his will, against his inclination, but at the bidding of his cold, empty heart, he answered her. “I couldn’t bear to stay after Joanna died. I couldn’t bear the sight of my own children because every time I looked at them, I saw my wife. Even as a baby, Roma looked heartbreakingly like her mother. Then I remembered my wife was dead.”
He recollected few concrete details of those first months after Joanna’s accident. It was a time he never revisited. Which meant it haunted him like an angry ghost.
Olivia leaned forward and placed one slender hand on his knee, bared by the gap in his robe. He didn’t understand it, but the touch made him feel more whole than he’d felt since that tragic, horrific day sixteen years ago when his world had disintegrated.
“I’m sorry, Erith.”
Even her voice soothed his pain. How did she do that? And because she did that, how could he live without the balm of her presence? He felt himself sinking deeper and deeper toward inevitable disaster.
Very slowly, as though the gesture had a significance into a future he couldn’t imagine, he lifted his free hand and put it over hers. He felt her momentary tension before she relaxed. As if she accepted his touch. As if more existed between them than just a contract between keeper and courtesan.
He curled his fingers around her hand in a light hold and spoke. Against his expectations, the words emerged without difficulty. “It wasn’t Roma and William’s fault that I felt like I’d died with Joanna. The damnable thing is, it wasn’t anyone’s fault except my own, unless I blame Joanna’s stubbornness.”
“What happened?”
He took a fortifying sip of wine, feeling the rich liquid slide down his throat. His hold on Olivia’s hand firmed. Her touch was his only lifeline to the present.
Olivia studied Lord Erith as he struggled to summon words to describe his wife’s death. How strange to think that only a few days ago he’d seemed superhuman, almost from a different species compared to other men she’d known. A cold automaton with intelligence that cut and wounded.
Attractive, certainly. A challenge. A bait to her curiosity. A fillip to her reputation for eternal irresistibility. Nothing more.
The man before her was tired and sad and had known too much loss and pain. Most of the time, his vigor and his brilliant mind meant his age was hard to guess. Now he looked older than he really was.
She’d fought stalwartly against admitting that he touched her heart. It was a fight she’d finally lost in a rain-sodden grove in Hyde Park. Even if a heart was a luxury no courtesan could afford.
His voice was different, flat, grim. “We quarreled. She wanted to go riding just after she told me she carried our third child. Joanna was a punishing rider. I’ve never seen a woman like her on horseback. If you met her in a drawing room, you’d think her the perfect lady. Put her in the saddle and she was an Amazon. But she’d had two hard deliveries. I worried about her health and tried to coddle her.”
Self-loathing and savage sorrow vibrated in his voice. The heart she refused to acknowledge ached for him. She should have guessed something like this from the first. His guilt about his wife was too close to the surface for him not to blame himself. Inwardly Olivia cringed with shame to remember Perry’s cavalier recounting of Lady Erith’s death and how she’d accepted the bald facts so easily, so thoughtlessly.
But of course, she’d been a different woman then.
She made herself speak calmly. “Of course she rebelled and took the horse out.”
“She marched off in a fury and had her favorite mare saddled and…” The hand that held hers tightened. Not to the point of pain but with a firmness she felt to her bones.
She saw him swallow. The gray eyes were bleaker than the North Sea on an overcast winter’s day. “Stupidly, I gave her half an hour’s start so she could collect her temper. Then I set out after her. She had a customary path through the park, so I knew where she’d be.” He paused again, and his baritone voice was low and unsteady when he went on. “Or I thought I knew.”
“Erith…” she whispered. His pain reached out and grabbed her by the throat so she couldn’t breathe. She twined her fingers around his in silent empathy.
He leaned across and placed his wine on the table beside the bed. His hand trembled so badly that liquid sloshed over the edge of the glass. She wanted to cry as she witnessed this strong man shaking with grief and remorse.
How he must have adored his wife.
She’d seen so much fault and folly. She’d never believed love like this existed. The purity of emotion in his strained face cut right to her soul.
And hurt more deeply than anything since her brother’s betrayal so many years ago.
Nobody would love her like that. Ever. The glow in Lord Erith’s eyes—eyes she’d once thought cold and emotionless—made her want to rage with envy for a dead woman. Olivia’s essential, inevitable and eternal isolation stabbed her anew.
“I rode out to fetch her. I came to a bend in the bridle path through the woods and…” He snatched a shuddering breath. “The mare must have shied at something. We never found out exactly what happened. The horse was skittish. That’s how Joanna liked her mounts, fresh enough to be exciting.”
That’s how Joanna liked her husband too, Olivia thought. He must have been breathtaking when he was young and madly in love. The idea shot another arc of
pain through her.
Hard to imagine him innocent. Not so hard to imagine him in love—he still worshipped his wife, for all his dallying with the fallen sisterhood. She read that now as an attempt to fill a life left essentially meaningless after the collapse of its central pillar.
His voice seemed to scrape out of his throat. The gray eyes were opaque as a silver mirror as he relived that afternoon so long ago. “I heard the horse screaming. The poor brute had broken its leg and was in agony.”
He stopped. His hand flexed in hers, and she knew that whatever horrific visions paraded before his inner eye, he knew exactly where he was and who he was with. He hadn’t left her, however powerful the harrowing memories that held him in thrall.
The knowledge meant more to her than it should. Than a woman like her could allow it to mean. “And Joanna?”
He gave an infinitesimal shudder and his eyes were bleaker than ever when they met hers. “I think she was killed instantly when the horse fell on her. I can’t be sure. Her face was peaceful, so I’ve always prayed she didn’t suffer before she…she died. I can’t bear the thought of her calling for me, that I failed her. Just as I can’t bear to remember that our last words were spoken in anger.”
“She knew she was beloved.” At a profound level, Olivia recognized that if this man committed himself, you could trust that commitment to the end of the world.
“Yes,” he said dully. “I worshipped the ground she walked on and she knew it.”
“Then she was a lucky woman, and the last thing she’d want is for you to destroy yourself with remorse.”
His gaze sharpened and the frightening blankness left his expression. He sounded like he woke from a long nightmare. “I’ve never told anyone about Joanna.”
She wondered at the people close to him, that nobody had forced this story out of him before, like lancing an infected wound. Then she realized a proud man like Erith would permit very few people close, probably no one.
Looking down, she contemplated their joined hands, his skin so tanned in comparison to the pale olive of hers. Desperately she sought for words to give him solace, strength.
“It’s sad to keep our loved ones trapped in our hearts and never speak of them. We kill them again with our silence.”
“For years, how she died has haunted me. I should have been on my knees with gratitude that I knew her at all. She was beautiful and spirited and full of life. Yet I’ve locked her away in the dark like a prisoner.”
“Oh, my dear.” The endearment slipped out before she could catch it. Just as she couldn’t stop herself from surging forward and taking him in her arms.
She’d only comforted two men in her life. Not men, boys. Perry, years ago when his father tormented him to the edge of madness. Leo as a child.
So why did it feel so natural to draw Lord Erith’s head down to her shoulder, to press him against her breast, to try and infuse warmth into his cold, cold sorrow?
She expected him to resist. But he came shaking into her embrace.
Silence reigned. She didn’t speak, even when she felt the dampness of his tears against the skin of her neck.
Chapter 16
Erith reined his horse in near a stand of oaks in Hyde Park and waited for Roma to catch up. She was several hundred yards back and bouncing about like an ungainly sack of potatoes on her long-suffering mount. Beside her, a groom jogged along with a stoic expression that indicated he’d seen it all before.
His daughter certainly hadn’t inherited either of her parents’ facility in the saddle. Odd he’d never known that about her. But then she was basically a stranger. The magnitude of the task he’d set himself before he left Vienna struck him yet again.
This visit to London proved a salutary lesson for his conceit. He’d imagined his children would fall upon him in tearful gratitude the moment he showed a spark of interest. He’d imagined any mistress he selected would be the easy conquest women always were.
Laughable how divided his imaginings proved from hard reality.
He’d left Olivia toward dawn. He hadn’t made love to her again. Even though he’d been hard and ready, he couldn’t bear another unfulfilling encounter.
Or unfulfilling on any level but the basest.
At sunrise he’d walked out, purged of sixteen years of poison. He had so much to thank Olivia for. When they first met, he’d thought she was extraordinary. Little had he known how extraordinary she truly was. Yes, he still missed Joanna. He’d always miss her and mourn the tragic waste of her death. He’d always regret that their last words had been spoken in temper and that he’d failed to save her life.
But over time, that harrowing afternoon had become the sum total of his memory of his wife. Since leaving the house in York Street this morning, a flood of recollections had washed away much of the old rancor.
He remembered the golden weeks of courtship, the sweetness of the first time they made love, their joy at the birth of the children. Afternoons of laughter. Evenings of dancing. Nights of almost innocent pleasure.
He recalled other things too that until now he’d forgotten or had felt too racked with guilt to dwell on. That Joanna had been obstinate and a little too fond of her own way. That at times he’d wished she would catch onto a joke more quickly or read a situation’s undercurrents.
Ever since that moment of ineffable sweetness when Olivia took him in her arms, Erith had felt Joanna’s dear presence. Her ghost hadn’t been vengeful or accusing. Instead, he’d felt bathed in love and forgiveness.
His lighter heart had prompted him to ask Roma, who usually ate breakfast with him in sullen silence, to come riding. She hadn’t responded with great enthusiasm. But then she never responded to anything he said with great enthusiasm. She’d greeted him with surly dislike when he arrived from Vienna, and her attitude hadn’t warmed since. He’d allowed her to get away with her open resentment because he felt guilty.
He wasn’t letting her go unchallenged any longer.
He’d returned to London on a quest to reconcile with his family. A quest he now intended to pursue with his full powers.
He’d been wrong to blame himself all these years for Joanna’s death. It had just been a tragic, horrible accident.
But his appalling treatment of his children was his fault. Dear God, perhaps even an unforgivable fault. It was time he remedied his sins. It was time he and his children came to an understanding. Affection was perhaps too much to ask, although he’d sell his soul to establish even an ounce of the respect and love he’d witnessed between Olivia and her son yesterday.
Unfortunately, he suspected things with his daughter would worsen before they improved. If they improved. An uneasy, lowering truce had persisted thus far. Would it disintegrate into open warfare before he left for Vienna?
Roma was puffing when she reached him. She was plumper than Joanna had ever been. From what he saw, her activities mainly involved lying on a sofa in her room devouring the latest novels and scoffing bonbons. It was a puzzle how she’d exerted herself to catch a nonpareil like Thomas Renton. Although occasionally Erith had chanced upon her laughing with a friend and glimpsed a different side to her. And she seemed popular enough when he’d escorted her to the endless balls that formed her nightly entertainments.
“Do you remember your mother, Roma?” he asked as she brought her horse alongside his.
He’d deliberately selected a smaller mount than Bey for himself. Even so, he still towered above her. The groom hovered outside earshot but kept a watchful eye on Roma. It suddenly struck Erith that perhaps his daughter had trouble staying in the saddle and the fellow had rescued her before.
The thought should have roused wrenching memories of Joanna’s accident. But Roma was such a completely different rider, and one who rarely extended herself beyond a trot, that he found it hard to worry. His pride winced to think a child of his so inept a horsewoman.
She sent him a sulky glare, familiar from weeks of sharing Erith House in fulminating hostility. �
��Aunt Celia has told me about her. I was only two when she died.” She spoke as if she expected him not to know.
“Of course I remember how old you were,” he said mildly. “And William was three. If you like, I could tell you about her.”
He caught a flash of vulnerability in the blue eyes with their thick dark lashes. Eyes that broke his heart every time he looked into them because they were so like Joanna’s. Then the sullen recalcitrance returned, making him wonder if he’d mistaken that brief flare of pain.
“You didn’t care about my mother. You don’t care about us. You’re here for my wedding just for the public show. Then you’ll go back to Vienna and your mistresses and your drinking and your gambling and forget all about your family again.”
The rancorous tirade startled him. It revealed more spirit than he’d ever seen in her. She urged her horse forward, but she was such an execrable rider that he had no trouble keeping up.
“I loved your mother, Roma. Your mother loved me.”
“Well, I’m sorry for her then,” the girl said dully. “You’re not worth loving.”
Joanna hadn’t thought so. For Joanna’s sake, he had to persist with her daughter. It might be too little too late—it was—but he had to form some relationship with this girl he loved but didn’t know at all.
And he’d have to fight the same battle all over again with his son. William dealt with his father’s long ago desertion by pretending his father didn’t exist. To date, the boy had only come up from Oxford once to see him, and that was clearly under sufferance.
With every day that passed, Erith witnessed what damage his selfishness had wrought. A heavy weight of discouragement settled in his gut as he recognized that his sins were almost certainly irredeemable.
But God help him, he had to try to fix what he’d done.
“I wish you would go away again,” Roma said stubbornly. “I wish you had never come back.”
The words might be childish but they stung all the same. “You and William are the most precious things in my life.”
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