by Anne Gracie
It was insane, dammit! She’d done it again, thrown herself impulsively away on a man she barely knew without giving any thought to what was prudent or practical. Or wise.
If she thought Thomas was the same man she’d married, she was in for a rude shock.
The waiting silence pressed against him, expectant, hostile.
She’d said nothing of love. She only spoke of honoring vows. Of duty.
The Rose he’d married was a deeply romantic young woman who lived and breathed love—love for her sister, love for her family, and once, an eon ago, love for him. For Rose, duty had never come into it.
He hardened his heart. He needed her and her fortune and would do what he must to secure his rights and fulfill his obligations. Four years of brutality and hardship burned the softness out of a man. A good thing too. To survive, a man needed to be ruthless.
“Thomas?”
He opened his mouth to accept her offer—and made the mistake of looking at her again. And saw the trembling mouth, the fingers tightly knotted in a fold of her dress, the eyes full of . . . he didn’t know what. Some emotion he didn’t want to know about.
His own duty was clear. But dammit, he couldn’t do it, not while she was looking at him with those wide blue eyes, full of . . . he didn’t want to know.
He swore long and hard under his breath, then heard himself say, “You do me great honor by your decision, Rose, but your family is right.”
“What do you mean? I said—”
Now he was the insane one, blowing a fortune down the wind when he so desperately needed it. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Things have changed. I have changed, and so have my circumstances. When you married me I was a young man with what I thought would be a bright future ahead of me. I had a career, the support of my family, a home. I have none of that now.” What was he doing, confessing all this—and in front of her family? Ammunition against him.
She bit her lip. “I don’t understand.”
He hardened his voice. “I can give you none of what that duke could. You’d be better off with him.”
“She would be—infinitely better off!” Lady Salter interjected. “As long as the duke can be brought to reconsider her after such a scandal.”
“If he were in any way worthy of Rose, he’d be here now, begging her to take him back,” Thomas snapped. “He’d never have let her go in the first place.”
The old lady looked taken aback. Ashendon raised his brows.
Rose shook her head. “But Thomas, I’ve already decided. I said—”
“You said everything that was honorable, but it’s a mistake. I’m not the man I was. Not the man you married.” Bile stung his throat. What was he doing? Throwing it all away in a stupid fit of . . . gallantry? Insanity?
But the words kept coming. “These past four years have been . . . difficult. I’ve changed. Not just outwardly.” He swallowed. “When a man is pushed to the brink . . .”
“Thomas, what are you saying?”
“You were just a girl. You made an impulsive promise based on a false premise, and now you believe you have no choice but to keep it. But it’s not true. You can do a lot better than me now.”
There, he’d done it, overturned all his plans in a stupid fit of . . . stupidity.
“Oh, splendid young man,” Lady Dorothea murmured.
Behind him, Ashendon growled, “Changed your tune, haven’t you, Beresford? Whatever happened to ‘fight tooth and nail to keep her’?”
Without turning his head, Thomas responded. “I was prepared to fight you, Ashendon, prepared to fight any other members of Rose’s family, but . . .” He lifted his hand in a futile gesture. There were no words to explain what he’d just done.
“Well!” Lady Salter raised her lorgnette and subjected him to a thorough scrutiny. “Well!”
“Thank you, Mr. Beresford,” Lady Ashendon said at last. “It’s a very gallant—and unexpected—offer.”
“Don’t you want to stay married to me?” Rose asked abruptly. Her face was white and tense.
“Of course,” he assured her, managing to make it sound like a meaningless gallantry. “But I rushed you into marriage once. Your brother claims he can have it annulled. I don’t know if that’s possible, but if it is, if you have a chance to start again fresh and leave an impulsive youthful mistake behind you . . .” He spread his hands in a why not? gesture.
Her brow furrowed. “You think our marriage was a mistake?”
He looked away and didn’t answer. He’d burned his boats. No use trying to mend them now. It was the very opposite of what he’d intended.
It was one thing to claim that which was his by right. It was quite another to have a trembling young woman offer him all she was and all she owned, simply because of a promise she’d made when she was sixteen. He’d sunk low in the last four years, but not that low.
The door opened and two footmen entered carrying tea trays and more food. Tea was poured, and cakes, sandwiches and little pastries handed around. The tense atmosphere eased slightly with the clatter of crockery and the tinkling of teaspoons.
“Have one of these excellent cream cakes, Mr. Beresford. I’ve eaten far too many already today, but they’re so delicious.” Lady Dorothea offered him a plate. And a warm, dimpled smile. It was a clear welcome.
“Thank you, no.” He was too tense to eat a thing. Besides, his stomach wasn’t yet ready for rich food like cream. But Lady Dorothea kept fretting that he was too thin and wasn’t eating, so to please her he took a cucumber sandwich.
“Well then, Mr. Beresford.” Lady Salter addressed him peremptorily. “Who are your people?”
His people? Good question. Four years ago his understanding of who he was and who his people were had turned to bitter ashes. “I’m an orphan. I have no family.”
Ashendon’s look was sharp. “You mentioned an uncle before. You said he’d raised you.”
Thomas nodded. “He washed his hands of me some years ago.”
Ashendon’s gaze sharpened. “Why was that?”
Thomas lifted an indifferent shoulder. “I cannot say.” And wasn’t that the truth? It had shocked him to the backbone at the time. Four years later, the hurt and shock had burned away. Bitterness and cold rage sustained him these days.
Rose suddenly asked, “But where were you all this time, Thomas? What kept you from coming home?”
“I was unavoidably detained.” It was the truth, after all. He had no intention of saying any more.
“Were you a prisoner of the French?” she asked.
“The war is long over,” Ashendon said curtly. “Most prisoners of war were released years ago.”
Everyone waited for Thomas to explain. He picked up a cucumber sandwich, ate it, then sipped his tea.
“Couldn’t you have written, at least?” Rose said eventually.
Ashendon watched him with narrowed eyes.
“Not all places have a postal service,” Thomas said.
She frowned, obviously unsatisfied with his responses, but said no more.
“Beresford, Beresford,” Lady Salter pondered aloud. “Would that be the Gloucestershire Beresfords or the Norfolk Beresfords?” Why the hell did she want to know? Hadn’t she realized he’d given up her precious niece?
“Neither.” In the direst of circumstances, both his uncle and cousin had betrayed him, so Thomas sure as hell wasn’t going to claim them now.
She sniffed. “Pity. Some connection to the Gloucestershire Beresfords, and in particular to the Earl of Brierdon, might have helped with this mess—if Rose decides to go ahead with the marriage, of course.”
Lady Georgiana made a contemptuous sound. “I don’t see how. Unless the earl wanted to advise Mr. Beresford on the tying of his neckcloth, and the use of champagne in boot blacking.”
Thomas put down his cup wi
th a clatter and stood abruptly. He’d had enough of this, this sitting around drinking tea and parrying pointless questions. “I’ll take my leave now. Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Ashendon.” The irony of the polite meaningless phrase. He’d ruined everyone’s day, and they all knew it.
And with no help from anyone else, he’d even ruined his own plans.
Rose jumped up. “I’ll see you out.”
Ashendon made as if to stop her, but his wife laid a hand on his knee and murmured something, and he subsided. She nodded at Rose, who led Thomas from the room.
* * *
* * *
Without a word, Rose walked toward the front door. Was she insulted by his rejection of her offer? Relieved?
Thomas couldn’t tell. The warm, vibrant, outspoken girl he’d married had changed, become this frozen young ice queen. She was just as beautiful as ever—more beautiful—but he’d never fallen in love with her face. It was Rose herself, full of life, fearless and bold, who’d entranced him back then.
Three paces from the front door, he caught her hand and turned her around to face him. “I meant what I said in there, Rose. I’m no longer a man to build a future with. You always craved freedom, so take it while you have the chance.” Because any minute now he was going to regret what he’d done.
She turned his hand palm upward and stared at it, her face troubled. “Your hands, your poor hands, Thomas.”
His hands, his damned, ruined hands. His calluses must have been rough against her soft skin. He tried to pull free, but she hung on and grabbed his other hand as well. “What happened to them?”
“Nothing.”
“But they’re so rough. And the scars—”
“I’ll get some gloves.” Damn, that valet was right. He should have worked that pumice stone harder.
“Don’t be silly, that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to know how they got that way.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in a hard, no-argument voice.
A spasm of emotion flickered behind her eyes and was gone. She dropped his hand and turned abruptly away, but instead of opening the front door to send him out into the street, she opened a door to the right and gestured for him to follow her inside.
It was a small anteroom, furnished with a pair of stiff-looking tapestry-covered armchairs, a matching sofa and a couple of small tables. A small window opened onto a narrow side street. She walked to it and stood with her back to him, gazing out, though at what, he couldn’t imagine: All he could see was the side wall of the next house. He closed the door behind him.
She turned and faced him, her arms folded defensively beneath her bosom. “Are you angry with me, Thomas?”
He blinked. “No. Why would you think—”
“Because I was about to marry again?”
“No, I—” He broke off. Perhaps he was a bit angry. But mostly with himself, not her. And the damnable situation, for which neither of them was responsible.
His uncle and his cousin were, ultimately.
She waited. He didn’t say anything. She turned back to gaze out of the window where there wasn’t a view. “They said you were dead, Thomas. Not merely missing. Not even lost. They said your ship was sunk, at the bottom of the ocean, and all hands drowned.”
“So I gather. But six of us managed to survive. Just me and five ordinary seamen. Three of us could swim, and we kept the others afloat, clinging to wreckage until we were washed ashore.”
“Where? Where did you land?” She still had her back to him.
“Does it matter?”
Her silence told him it did.
If he gave her a name it wouldn’t help. It would only lead to more questions and more, until she’d end up with a disgust of him. Better to have her angry.
“No place you’d ever heard of. A desolate land at the ends of the earth.” A blasted, benighted, hateful place.
It seemed to him her spine had further stiffened against him. “No letter? Not even a message? If I’d known . . .”
“No.” The fact was, he’d sent two letters, neither of them to her. Much good they’d done him.
“Was it difficult for you?” Maybe it wasn’t. If she’d told no one . . .
One shoulder hunched in a brittle, dismissive movement. “I managed.”
A flicker of anger caused him to say, “By not telling anyone about me? About our marriage? What was I, a dirty little secret you did your best to forget?”
“No,” she said after a long silence. “But I did decide it was better not to tell.” She paused and just as he decided she’d said all she wanted to, she continued. “You don’t know what it was like back then. If they didn’t know they couldn’t fuss, couldn’t ask me endless, impossible questions. If they’d known, they would have dragged me out of school, sent me who-knew-where, separated me from Lily, left her alone in that dreadful school—and to what purpose? You were dead, Thomas,” she repeated in a hard little voice. “So what was the point?”
What was the point? The brutal truth.
He should leave now before he said something he would regret. Make a clean break of it. She’d dealt well enough with his death; his departure from her life now would make little difference.
He regarded her stiff back and couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tongue.
“Did you even weep for me, Rose?” he asked, apparently needing to twist the knife in his heart one more time.
For a moment he didn’t think she’d heard. That, or she was going to ignore his question, his stupid, pointless, painful, irrelevant question. He’d made his decision. Why string it out?
“Weep for you? Weep for you?” She turned and, appalled, he saw that her face was drenched in tears.
“Rose?” All this time, giving him her rigid spine, tossing questions at him in that stiff little voice—no outward sign of distress—and yet her face and the neck of her dress were wet with tears.
A hollow opened up inside him, edged with panic. He hated it when women cried. And this was Rose.
“Weep for you, you big idiot?” She rushed at him and thumped him on the chest. Tears poured down her cheeks. “Why would I weep? What a stupid question. Weep? I was furious with you! Furious!” She pummeled his chest with angry, ineffectual fists. “You showed me a glimpse of heaven and then you left me. Left me!”
She went to hit him again and he caught her fist in his hand. “All alone with nothing—not even the slender hope of ‘missing.’ They said you were dead, Thomas! Drowned. All hands lost! In black and white they said it, printed in the newspapers! Just two weeks after our wedding!”
Helpless, guilty, paralyzed by her distress, he muttered, “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for. Dying? Not dying? Making her cry?
“‘Dirty little secret’—how could you even think such a thing? I just hadn’t had time to tell anyone. I had to wait until Lily was better—you know how sick she was, and she’s my beloved sister so of course I had to tell her first. And then—you were dead. And she was still away, recuperating, and I was stuck back in school, in a dormitory with five other girls.”
Her face twisted with emotion. “So who could I mourn with, who could I share my grief with—a pack of giggling schoolgirls, girls who would happily pick my life to bits for their entertainment, like, like chickens?”
Did she mean him to answer? How could he? He couldn’t imagine.
“There was no one, Thomas! No one! One day you were there, filling my life with joy, and then—you weren’t. It was as if you’d never existed. Except . . .” Her voice broke, and she touched the place over her heart. “Here. And in my dreams.”
She subsided against his chest, clutching his coat for support, clinging to him like a drowning person as great wrenching sobs shattered in waves though her.
Thomas couldn’t speak; there was a lump in his thr
oat as big as a fist.
He eased her onto the sofa and sat awkwardly holding her—he had no idea what to do. The man he used to be would have hauled her into his arms and kissed the tears away. The man he was now sat on the sofa, racked with tension, forcing himself to be distant and impersonal.
He’d let her go. Against all his best interests he’d pushed her away—for her own sake.
He’d thought he’d never forget the taste of her, or the scent, but in the life he’d led, it had been such a struggle to hold on to even the smallest of sense memories. The best he’d been able to do was to preserve in his heart and mind the idea of Rose. The memory of her laugh, her smile, the way she gave herself wholly, joyfully and without reservation.
Shame flooded him. He’d forgotten this, the actuality of her, the warmth, the scent, the passion of her.
Helpless and aching, he sat patting her back, making vague, deep, there-there-ish sounds. It was what you did when women wept, wasn’t it? When you couldn’t hold them as you wanted to.
At last the jerky sobs slowed, then stopped. For a long time the silence was broken only by the sound of ragged breathing—Thomas’s was almost as ragged as hers—and the distant rattle of carriages in the street outside.
Spent, she leaned against him, making no move to pull away. After a few minutes, she turned her tear-drenched face up to him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such a watering pot. I never cr—”
“Dry your eyes.” He made his voice hard. He thrust his handkerchief into her hand. “It’s all over now.” He released her and slid to the end of the sofa. “It’s over,” he repeated. “It was a bad time, but you have the opportunity now to put all that behind you and make a new life for yourself.”
She sat up, wiping her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Accept the annulment your brother says he can get you. Marry someone else.” Someone better.
She smoothed the damp and crumpled handkerchief over her lap. “Are you truly going to abandon me, Thomas?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m giving you a choice, the choice I didn’t give you four years ago.”