by Mary Balogh
What a gullible wretch, he would have said of himself if the story had been told to him of someone else. What a romantic fool!
Lionel had returned to England this year. Perhaps—no, probably—that had been their first meeting, at the Rochester ball. They had been waltzing together, looking incredibly beautiful together. He would have used his charm on her again—Lionel would have been unable to resist the temptation to exert power over a beautiful woman who had once loved him when he was forbidden territory. And she would have felt a resurgence of her long-suppressed feelings for him. She would have tried to resist them. She would have been very upset.
If she had rushed from the ballroom after the set was over, rushed onto the landing outside the ballroom and run into someone she had never expected to see again, someone with whom she had struck up a friendship a month or two earlier, she would have greeted him with delight and relief. She would have seen him almost as a savior. She would have begged him to take her outside where there was air. She would have tried to forget with him. She would have asked him to kiss her. She would have told him she loved him. …
And if she was still upset the following day, and if the friend called upon her to make her an offer, having mistaken the cause of her ardor the night before, she might have impulsively accepted him. She might have tried to escape from herself and to have avoided having her fragile heart rebroken by accepting the offer of someone safe.
She had never once since their marriage, he thought, told him that she loved him. He had said the words to her numerous times. She had never shown any sign that she wanted passion with him.
He was her friend. No less and no more than that.
He wondered how far off the mark all his guesses were. Not far, he believed. As far as the sun is from the earth, he hoped.
He could not bring himself to hope.
She came, finally. He heard the carriage and stepped into the hall. She was like a little piece of the summer sky in her pale blue muslin dress and straw bonnet trimmed with yellow flowers. She was flushed and smiling.
Something blue, he thought.
And even then he had to wait. She wanted to go upstairs and wash her hands and comb her hair, though it looked lovely enough to him. She paused on the stairs and looked down at him. But she continued on her way.
She could have been no longer than ten minutes. It seemed like ten hours. But he heard the door of the library open behind him eventually and turned as she came in. Fresh and lovely and still smiling.
His wife. His love.
The door closed behind her and she stopped suddenly. He had thought she was going to walk right across the room into his arms.
“What is it?” she asked him, her head tipping to one side and her smile dying. “What is the matter, Hartley?”
“Why did you marry me?” he asked her.
He watched her eyes widen with surprise and—with something else.
15
THE LIGHT WENT OUT OF THE DAY. SHE DID NOT understand the question—and yet she understood one thing very well. She understood that the dream was fading, that she was waking up. That she was being forced to wake up.
“What?” she asked. She was not sure that any sound got past her lips.
“Why did you marry me?” he asked again. “Because you love me, Samantha?”
The ready lie sprang to her lips but did not make it past them this time. She stared at him, the man above all others whom she would protect from hurt if she could. “What has happened?” she asked him.
“You counter one question with another,” he said. “Was mine so difficult to answer, Samantha? A simple yes or no would have sufficed.”
The light that had been in his eyes since the night of the Rochester ball had died. Oh, fool not to have realized before it was too late that it was the light of love. It was gone.
“Tell me something,” he said. “And let there be honesty between us. Do you still love him?”
Something died inside her. Something that had been blooming unnamed and almost unnoticed since her wedding day.
“What has he been telling you?” she asked.
His eyes grew bleaker, if that was possible. “I notice,” he said, “that you do not ask to whom I refer.”
“What has he been telling you?” Her hands sought and found the handle of the door behind her back. She clung to it and moved back against it as if it could protect her from pain.
“About six years ago,” he said. “And about this year.”
“And you believe him?” she asked.
“I will believe you,” he said. “Tell me what happened six years ago.”
She closed her eyes for a few moments and drew deep breaths. What did six years ago have to do with this moment? But of course it had everything to do with it.
“I was very young,” she said, “and fresh from the schoolroom. And he was handsome, charming, experienced. I did not like him. I thought him cold. I even told Jenny so. But that was before he kissed me one evening and declared his passion for me. There was nothing else except melting looks from him and fiercely unhappy glances and the suggestion that if we were ever to know happiness together, I should speak with Jenny and have her end the betrothal. He could not do so as an honorable gentleman.”
“Did you think him honorable, Samantha?” he asked quietly.
“No!” she said sharply. “But I thought him unhappy and in love and desperate.”
“As you were?” he asked.
“I would not do as he asked,” she said. “I fought my feelings for him. And I felt sick for Jenny, about to marry a man who did not love her. I prayed for an ending of the betrothal so that she could be saved and he and I could be together, but when it happened it was horrible. Oh, dear God, it was horrible. The terribly public disgrace for Jenny. Uncle Gerald caning her and preparing to send her away. And worst of all—or so it seemed at the time—Gabriel forcing her into marriage. And it was all my fault.”
“But it was not,” he said.
“No.” She had her hands over her face. She drew a deep breath again. “But I have never been able to stop feeling guilty. If I had not presented Lionel with the idea of a way out … He did not love me. He had tried to use me. He laughed at me when I approached him after Jenny’s hasty marriage. He made me feel like a silly child, which is just what I was, of course. I have hated him ever since.”
“Hated,” he said. “Hatred is a powerful emotion, Samantha. Akin to love, it is said.”
“Yes.” Her voice was dull. “So it is said. I still hate him. Today more than ever. Why would he want to hurt his own cousin?”
“It amuses Lionel to hurt people,” he said. “Tell me about this spring.”
“There is nothing to tell,” she said. “I saw him in the park the day before the Rochester ball. I had not known he was back in England. I was terrified. And then he appeared at the ball and asked me to waltz with him. I did. That was all. Oh, and he called on my aunt and me the next afternoon.”
“Before I called?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You were terrified,” he said. “Of what? That he would harm you?”
“No.” She felt suddenly weary. She would have liked nothing better than to sink to the floor and fall asleep. But there was the necessity to talk. He was not going to let it go. And now she must reap one of the rewards of the friendship she had wanted with him. Friends were open and honest with each other. “No, not that he would harm me. That he—That I would find that my hatred—”
“—was merely a mask for love?”
“Yes.” Her hands had found the handle of the door again.
“And was it?” he asked.
“No,” she said more firmly. “For a while I thought it just possible that he was sincere. He tried to persuade me that he had loved me all the time, that he had hurt me in order to protect me from his own disgrace, that he had come back with the intention of wooing me again and making me his countess. I was confused. And afraid. But I did not want
to believe him or love him. I did not trust him and would never have been able to. I know now that my instinct was right, that he is still as contemptible as he ever was. Why did he want to hurt you?”
“When you asked me to walk in the garden with you,” he said, “and when you asked me to kiss you and told me that you loved me, you were reacting to the turmoil of emotions he had aroused in you, Samantha? And the next afternoon when I came to offer you marriage, the same thing?”
“Oh.” She gazed at him unhappily. “I was so very happy to see you. Those afternoons at Highmoor with you had been among the happiest times in my life.”
“With plain, ordinary Mr. Wade,” he said. “Who had defects to add to his ordinariness. Who was the very antithesis of a Don Juan. Who would never confuse you or hurt or abandon you. Who would be your little puppy dog. You would be very safe with him. And so you married him.”
The horrifying thing was that there was truth in his words. But only some of the truth. Not all of it.
“Hartley.” Her grip on the doorknob became painful. “Don’t belittle yourself. Oh, please don’t do this.”
“Then suppose you tell me,” he said, “why you married me. Tell me, Samantha.”
“Because I wanted to,” she said. “Because you were sweet and kind and, and—”
“—and very rich?” His voice was hardly recognizable. She had never heard sarcasm in it before.
His face swam before her eyes, and her jaw felt suddenly cold as a hot tear dripped off it onto her dress. “Oh, don’t, Hartley,” she begged him. “Please don’t. You know that I was unaware of that fact. I married you because I wanted to, because I liked you more than any other man I have ever known, because I felt s—”
“—safe with me.” There was harshness in his voice. “I would be so ecstatic to win such beauty for myself that I would be unlikely ever to stray from you. Well, you were right there, Samantha. I have what is perhaps an unfortunate belief in fidelity in marriage—on both sides. No mistresses for me, no lovers for you.”
“Hartley—”
“Listen to me, Samantha,” he said. There was a harsh command in his voice that frightened and distressed her. “You lied to me. You let me marry you believing that lie. And it was a momentous lie. I have never wanted a loveless marriage, and yet now it seems I am irrevocably in one. But it is a marriage. Never forget that. You are my wife. You had better sort out your feelings for my cousin once and for all. If it is love, put it from your heart. If it is hatred, let it go. I will not have you always afraid to see him lest you find yourself in love with him. And I will not have you beneath me on our bed, dreaming that I am he.”
“Hartley!” Her mouth fell open and she gasped for air.
“There may never be love between us,” he said. “It is strange how my own has shriveled to nothing in the course of a few hours. But there will never be shadows. Or secrets. Is that understood?”
“You are being unfair,” she said. “You are being cruel. I have never—”
“I asked if you understood.” His face was stony, his eyes opaque. He was unrecognizable. She did not know this man.
“Yes,” she said.
“If your maid has started packing your things,” he said, “you may tell her to unpack again. We will be staying here.”
“No.” She was shaking her head against the door. “I want to go home, Hartley. Please let us go home. Oh, please.”
“We will be staying here,” he said. “You can enjoy the rest of the Season, as you usually do. I can occupy myself in any number of useful and useless ways. We need not be in each other’s company any more than either of us would wish.”
“I want to go home,” she whispered. But she knew it was useless. He was implacable, this stranger who still stood across the room from her, his back to the empty fireplace.
“If you have taken leave of all your friends,” he said, “you may now boast, Samantha, that you begged to stay and that your besotted bridegroom bowed to your wishes. I will not contradict you. It is late. You will wish to change for dinner. If you will excuse me, my lady, I will be taking dinner at my club.”
She turned without another word and fumbled at the handle of the door before getting it open. She hurried, head down so that the footmen would not see her face, up the stairs to her room.
It was all ruined, she thought. Her marriage. Her life. Everything.
It seemed she had been wrong to forgive herself at last.
There was to be no happiness for her.
Only three days and three nights. Pure joy, now worth less than nothing. Yes, less. It would have been far better if she had never known it.
She did not know how she was going to live through the pain. It was worse than the last time. Oh, far worse. Because this time she—
Well, this time she was the one who had done most of the hurting. And therefore her own pain was inconsolable.
HE LIFTED HIS LEFT arm to the mantel and rested his forehead on it. He did not know himself or this strange, unexpected anger that had had him lashing out to hurt as badly as he was hurt. He had intended only to talk with her, to have the truth in the open so that somehow they could patch something together out of their marriage and move on.
He had not intended to become angry—he never lost his temper. Never until today. And with the person he loved most dearly. And he had never felt the desire to hurt. Until today. He wanted to put a bullet between Lionel’s eyes—No, that was too quick and probably painless. He wanted to pound him to a bloody pulp. And he had wanted just now to reduce Samantha to tears, to have her begging for what he would not grant.
He had succeeded admirably.
He drew a deep and ragged breath through his nose. But it was no use. He wept with painful, chest-wrenching sobs.
He froze when the door opened behind him again. He kept his head where it was. She came close to him before speaking.
“Hartley.” Her voice was very quiet, very calm. If she had touched him at that moment, he would have gathered her to him with such force that he would have crushed every bone in her body. “I want you to return it to Lord Rushford, if you please. Or if you wish to keep it because it was your mother’s and is precious to you, then please do so. But I do not want it and I don’t want ever to see it again. This ‘something blue’ has ruined my marriage.”
He lifted his head and looked at his mother’s sapphire brooch in her palm. He took it without a word.
He felt her looking into his half-lowered face for several silent moments before she turned and left the room again.
He closed his fingers over the brooch and tightened them until the diamonds cut into his hand rather painfully.
HE WAS LATE COMING home. She lay on her back, staring up into the darkness beneath the canopy of her bed as she had done for several hours, listening to the sound of the door to his room opening and closing more than once, to the distant hum of his voice and his valet’s. To silence.
She gazed upward and imagined him leaning against the tree on the hill at Highmoor, watching her look downward toward the abbey, catching her trespassing. If only she had turned and hurried away at that moment. Back to Chalcote and safety.
But she had not.
Her dressing room door opened softly and a faint beam of candlelight shone across the room, across the lower half of her bed. She did not move her head or close her eyes. He came and stood beside the bed.
“You are awake, then,” he said after a few moments. His eyes must not be as accustomed to the darkness as hers were.
“Yes.”
Please talk to me. Please tell me you did not mean those cruel things. Tell me I did not really lie to you. Take me home tomorrow.
She did not move. She continued to stare upward.
He was removing his dressing gown and climbing into bed beside her. And turning to her and starting to make love to her.
Say something. Not in silence like this.
He was slow and gentle and patient. His hands—not his mo
uth—worked their skilled magic on her body, until they both knew she was ready for him. And then he came inside her and slowly, skillfully worked the same magic there, until she was wonderfully relaxed and strangely aching all at the same time. He released his seed, hot and deep inside her.
It was all right, she told herself. Everything was going to be all right. But she knew that nothing at all was right. He had loved her as he usually did, though there was never a sameness about his loving. But there was something missing. Something undefinable. Something essential.
She could smell liquor on his breath, though she did not believe he was foxed.
She held him against her, her legs still twined about his, willing him to sleep. But he never slept on her for more than a minute or two at the longest. He was too considerate of her comfort to squash her beneath his full weight for too long. He lifted himself away.
And up to sit on the side of the bed. He got to his feet after a few moments and put his dressing gown back on. He looked down at her in the darkness.
“Thank you,” he said. “Good night, Samantha.”
She was too miserable to reply. She gazed upward again. Moments later the beam of light from the doorway narrowed and disappeared. She was in darkness once more.
Ah, dear God, she was in eternal darkness.
LADY CAREW, THE TON were soon agreed, had got just exactly what she wanted. She had made a brilliant match to a wealthy and indulgent husband who was willing to cater to her every whim. He had been about to drag the poor lady back to his own dull life at remote Highmoor in the middle of the Season. But she had easily talked him out of that foolishness. And so they had remained, she to dazzle society with more charm and wit than ever, he to follow in her wake or to pursue his own quieter pleasures until summer came.
It appeared to be a thoroughly successful marriage. They were both happy—no one had ever seen Lady Carew more vivacious than she was in the weeks following her marriage, and no one had ever seen as much of her husband. He was almost always smiling.