“Of course. They won’t concern themselves about it. Most of them have known me since I was a baby.”
“You were a baby?” Jessica asked.
“When we have our first, maybe it will make it easier to imagine. The poor mite will indubitably have the misfortune to look just like me.”
Jessica studied him. He was dressed in a superbly tailored blue coat above buff pantaloons. His cravat fell in crisp folds beneath his freshly shaved chin. His hair caught the shine of the sun streaming in at the window. Subtle shadows outlined the planes of his face.
They were looks that he knew how to use like a sword.
“But your appearance is—”
“Something I have learned to accept and wield to my advantage as an adult, Jessica. But it cost me many a fistfight as a lad. It’s not easy for a boy to be too far out of the ordinary.”
“It won’t matter,” she said quietly. “There won’t be any child. You are under no obligation at all.”
“But a wedding would please the old stone knights in the chapel.”
She looked down. “We are not getting married, so your ancestor’s effigies will have to wait for another time.”
The blue eyes widened slightly. “Really? Why?”
It took all of her courage. “After last night? Surely that was enough?”
“That you were not a virgin and offered me a seduction skilled enough to make my word worthless and my body like putty in your hands? No, it’s not enough, Jessica. If your father wagered your maidenhead to a gaming partner and lost, it wasn’t your fault.”
She felt ill. “How did you know?”
“I suspected it after the Mapleton’s ball, when you lost your temper and kissed me.” His voice seemed stripped of emotion. “And then I found a friend who knew about Whinburn House. It seemed the only logical conclusion.”
“And, knowing that, you still offered me marriage?”
“I did.”
Jessica looked away, unable to face his eyes. “I don’t ever remember anything at Whinburn but gambling and drinking. There were women, too, of course, and parties that went on for days. When I was little, I was kept out of the way in the nursery, but that couldn’t last forever. I suppose it was inevitable. Father was drunk and he owed a lot of money to a man from Scotland who had visited often before. The man won me from my father one night at hazard. His name was Ben Cameron.”
“How old were you?” Michael asked quietly.
“Just sixteen.”
“So you thought that marriage was out of the question? What of our debt to Caroline and Peter?”
“Go back and marry Honoria. She won’t hurt them if you wed her. She can give you the kind of marriage that people like you expect.”
“I don’t want the kind of marriage that people like me expect.”
“Then what kind of marriage do you want?”
“I want to marry you, wild Jessica.”
She put her head in her hands. “So instead of repulsing me because of my past, you nobly offer yourself in a marriage of convenience. Then you will put me aside like Anne of Cleves, or perhaps you will keep me to mother your children while you take your women to Marchmont. This is a gesture of pity, isn’t it? You think it wasn’t my fault—that I was raped. But I wasn’t. I was willing enough, and he brought me nothing but pleasure.”
“Then I’m very glad, Jessica.”
“How can you be? Ben Cameron was beautiful and I loved him. I happily became his mistress. He was killed when his horse fell, and I wept very bitterly for him. My father suffered the most dreadful remorse, yet it had all happened with my consent. You offer me your name out of compassion or some misplaced obligation, even when I caused you to defile your own honor. Well, that’s generous of you, but I’m not going through with it. I can’t face the rest of my life in your power, sinking into a relationship based on artifice and recrimination, all tempered by your damnable efficiency and control. You said that ne fronti crede should be our motto. Well, I think I want to be able to trust to appearances. I don’t want to keep up a pretense week after week, year after year, and I think you deserve better.”
“Better?” he said. “You think I deserve better?” He seemed completely detached and calm, but his eyes were like still pools of clear water reflecting a summer sky. “What pretense?”
Jessica folded her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath.
“It will no doubt sicken you to hear it, because you must have heard it a thousand times from women far more beautiful and desirable than I am, but I’m in love with you.” She could not look at his face. “After last night, I know that I always will be. I don’t expect you to do anything about it, except to find a way to release me from this wedding. You must see that it’s the one fact that makes the whole thing impossible.”
He did not reply for a moment, and she forced herself to glance up at him. He looked stunned.
“Why?” he asked at last.
“Because I should not be able to keep up my side of the bargain like your mother did. I couldn’t take solace in flirtations, while you entertained your mistresses at your Aunt Sophy’s beautiful house. It makes me vulnerable to you. It makes it matter to me that you think I deliberately encouraged Peter’s infatuation. It makes the sight of your indifference a torment. You are able to hurt me, and in spite of all the fights we have had, you have too much honor to do it with impunity, now that you know that I care. Both of us would be miserable. I should rather live alone, and leave you your freedom.”
“I don’t want my freedom.”
Jessica’s brows came together in a frown. “Why not? So that you can plague me and revenge yourself forever over my every transgression, real or imagined?”
“Because I shall never be happy until I have you.”
She sprang to her feet. “I don’t want to be had. Damn you! Can’t you have the grace to leave me any dignity?”
Suddenly his expression was as stripped as it had been the night before, when the rain and exhaustion had carved away all of his control.
“Jessica, don’t!”
“Don’t what?”
He wrung both hands through his hair, instantly disordering the careful arrangement his valet had labored over.
“Don’t do this! I love you. I have loved you for months. How could I have guessed you returned it? If I thought for a moment that you had encouraged Peter as a well-deserved revenge for my treatment of you, I don’t anymore. I suppose I was angry that you were indifferent to me. I know he didn’t touch you at the Blue Boar, but if he had, what difference would it make? I would still love you. I shall always love you. Isn’t that enough grounds for marriage?” He threw back his head and laughed. “I have never botched anything as thoroughly in my life as this courtship. Forgive me, my love, please?”
Jessica stood stock-still. Eventually, she sat back in her chair.
“But you cannot. You cannot love me.”
“Then you don’t think that I proved it last night?”
“Does the body reveal love?” she asked.
He looked genuinely surprised. “Of course it does, dear Jessica. When Ben Cameron taught you all that beautiful expertise, be assured that he loved you, too. If he hadn’t been killed, you’d have known it. I love you with my skin and bones and flesh. But my soul and mind and spirit want you, as well.”
Jessica could not look at him. “It won’t wash. You cannot marry someone like me. You’re a paragon in society—a man fit to entertain heads of state. You’re being gallant, but it’s not an even match.”
He glanced down at his hands for a moment. His face seemed laid bare to the bone.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “You are right.”
She stood up to go, blinded by tears, but his next statement stopped her.
“You had your lover at Whinburn, Jessica. For me there was Lady Beaumont.”
“Lady Beaumont? Who is she? I know you’ve had mistresses. It doesn’t make any difference.”
�
�Yes, it does.” He shuddered, then he laughed with the old self-contempt. “I was twenty. Her husband found me in bed with her. It was a wager I’d made with some friends—that I could seduce her when they’d only been married two weeks. She was young and naive and vulnerable. He was years older. But I didn’t love her. It was an idle gesture of arrogance and pride. I was a great drinker and gambler—a younger son, what responsibilities did I have? Dear God, if I had come to Whinburn then, instead of Ben Cameron, it might have been me. I shall never forget how Lord Beaumont looked when he found us. Yet he would simply have called the footman and had me thrown into the street.”
“But he did not?”
“I was foxed. I made him challenge me to a duel. We met the next week, with pistols. I had so little respect for his feelings that I caroused away the night before with my friends, and came to the field almost too drunk to stand.”
“So you were humbled? It has happened to other young rakes.”
The remarkable blue eyes met hers in open derision, but it was directed only at himself.
“No, indeed, dear Jessica. My brother hushed it up, of course. I was banished from the country and ended up in the Peninsula. I had so little discretion that I killed him.”
* * *
Chapter 20
“And Lady Beaumont?” she whispered at last.
He was torn open, defenseless in the face of his pain. “She was married off to an Irish peer. Seven months later she was confined. The baby was stillborn, and she killed herself. It might have been my child.”
“And it might not, Michael,” Jessica said gently.
“I will never know, of course,” he said with some bitterness. “I have learned to accept that. Almost nobody knows of it now.”
“Except me?”
“And Lady Emilia. My Aunt Sophy told her. Also, a friend I met in the Peninsula. We shared our stories one night after one of our comrades was killed. He had been accused of murder, but unlike me, he was innocent. Lord Beaumont was a good man who died because of my arrogance and stupidity. I have relived daily how Lady Beaumont must have suffered. I deliberately risked leaving her with child. What is your transgression compared with that?”
Jessica wiped away blind tears. “But thank God, Michael! Thank God for poor Lord and Lady Beaumont. It’s the one thing that makes us even.”
He looked at her, his expression uncertain. “You do not despise me?”
She dropped her hands and reached for his. “How could I, my dear earl? I love you. You lived this down long ago, didn’t you?”
“I have tried, God knows, day in, day out.”
“Starting with however many years you fought in the Peninsula—”
“Where I was forced to court the favors of Death? Yet, alas, the devil always protects his own.”
“You didn’t mean to kill Lord Beaumont.”
“I was too damned foxed to have intentions, but he still died.”
“For heaven’s sake, it was an affair of honor. Lord Beaumont could have found a way out, if he’d wanted to. You said he was much older. He should have known better. I suspect he had more stupid arrogance than you. And Lady Beaumont welcomed you to her bed, didn’t she? You didn’t force her.”
“Hardly,” he said wryly.
“But you have taken all the responsibility on yourself. Just because she was young and female, Lady Beaumont was not helpless. She knew the risks. When she lost the baby, she may have been temporarily deranged. That was hardly your fault. My dear earl, it was a tragedy. But if it can’t be forgiven, then neither can my sins. If I’d objected to my father’s wager, he’d never have made me go through with it. Yet I was happy to be wanton, flattered by the attention and despising convention. Though I loved Ben, I didn’t care that he didn’t offer marriage. I knew nothing of his circumstances and never asked him. If he hadn’t been killed, he would have handed me on to another man soon enough, then another. Instead, I sank into such shock and grief at his death that I swore never to love again. Haven’t we both learned our lessons?”
There was nothing left of his elegance. He was stripped to the soul. But a great burden had been laid down, and what remained still shone with brilliance.
“Jessica, I don’t deserve happiness. I don’t deserve you.” His voice was vibrant with sincerity. “Yet, dear God, I love you, just as you are and with everything you have done. If you still love me, as I am and with everything I have done, will you marry me?”
She began to cry, openly and without shame.
“Lord Deyncourt, I am overwhelmed that you have so honored me with your proposal. I should be pleased to accept. Now, let’s go and wed before we have another argument.”
He pulled her into his embrace and kissed away the tears. It was some time before Jessica was able to extricate herself.
* * *
The coach pulled up before the door of Castle Deyncourt. Peter and Caroline helped Lady Emilia alight.
“Dear Lord, I am as stiff as an old board. Why does no one come out to greet us? If I ever receive another such disgracefully cryptic message from my great-niece, I shall disown her. Where on earth is the butler?”
No one had come out to welcome them. The castle stood smiling secretly in the sun.
Lady Emilia swept up to the front door and pushed it open. The young couple followed her into the hallway, where the suit of armor stood blankly at attention.
“No footmen? What is going on here? Is there not a servant in the house?”
“Hark, Lady Emilia,” Caroline said. “I hear something.”
The sliding sound of metal crashing against metal could be faintly distinguished through the thick walls.
“By God, it sounds like a sword fight.” Peter’s young face looked remarkably grim. He grasped Caroline by the hand. “Who but Sir Gordon Cranby?”
The three of them hurried in the direction of the sound. No one intercepted them.
At last Peter opened a heavy oak door.
“Good God!” Aunt Emilia cried.
The two combatants put up their rapiers at the sound of her voice, and stood panting and laughing together.
“What on earth is this? Is this any way to go on? Lord Deyncourt, whatever do you think you are about?”
The earl put his arm around his opponent. His face was open and free from shadows. He laughed aloud.
“Lady Emilia! May I not practice fencing in my own home?”
“But with Jessica? I am shocked to the core, young lady. Where are your shoes, child? Has the world gone mad?”
Jessica looked down at her bare legs and feet beneath her rucked skirts.
“No one fences in shoes with heels, Aunt Emilia.”
“And where are the servants?” Lady Emilia asked. “Are they so shocked at all these goings-on that everyone has given notice?”
“They have the day off,” the earl said. “Jessica and I have some catching up to do.”
He pulled her to his side and kissed her on the mouth, then released her and gave Lady Emilia an immaculate bow.
“I have been busy telling my wife that a countess may do as she pleases. Lady Deyncourt will set fashion and arbitrate manners, and she will publish Greek tales for her pin money.”
“Countess?” Aunt Emilia said. “I need salts.”
Jessica ran to put her arms around her great-aunt. “We’re to be wed today. It’s all arranged. So if you came to stop it, you’re too late.”
“Now, why should I try to stop it, young lady?” Aunt Emilia’s rouged cheeks crinkled into a huge smile. “I have been working at nothing else for these last months.”
“You see?” Deyncourt laughed. “We didn’t stand a chance, love. All the world conspired against us.”
“Except me,” Peter said ruefully. “I’m dashed sorry I was such an idiot. Caroline has forgiven me, so can you?”
“Omnis amans amens, Lord Steal,” Jessica said.
Caroline gave her a puzzled look, but Peter laughed. “It means ‘every lover is demente
d,’ Caro.”
“Shall we shake hands, Steal?” the earl said with a wink.
“Gladly! For a minute there I thought you were fighting a duel with Cranby.”
“Alas,” Deyncourt said with a shake of the head. “Sir Gordon has taken ship from Bristol. He felt it advisable to leave England before his creditors caught up with him.”
“Well done!” Lady Emilia exclaimed.
“And we have a piece of news that might interest you, Deyncourt,” Peter said with a grin. “Lady Honoria Melton has announced her engagement.”
“So who is to be the lucky fellow?” the earl asked innocently.
Lady Emilia sank onto a chair. “Dear God, Deyncourt! Do not tell me you had a hand in this, also?”
He laughed openly. “Alas, before I left London I sent a note to disabuse the Incomparable of her hopes. I also informed the prospective bridegroom—very tactfully, of course—that I had done so. The outcome was natural enough, don’t you think?”
“I don’t understand,” Jessica said. “Who is Lady Honoria to marry?”
Peter could hardly keep a straight face as he announced in triumph, “Why, Hanging Judge Clarence, of course.”
* * *
Michael and Jessica were married in the mellow medieval chapel of the castle. A sleeping crusader had a sudden blush brought to his stone cheek by the sun streaming in through the rose glass of the west window.
It was not surprising that the earl was once again impeccable, but Jessica stood at his side in one of her London gowns that Caroline had packed, and with diamonds around her neck.
The jewels appeared from the family safe. It had never occurred to Jessica that the Countess of Deyncourt would possess such things, but Michael had put a treasure of precious and beautiful jewelry into her hands.
While Peter nervously clutched the ring, Caroline stood behind the bride holding a great armful of roses from the gardens.
Lady Emilia Shay, to her own considerable annoyance, wept copiously into a large handkerchief. Lady Emilia’s coachman and servants stood awkwardly at the back of the chapel and grinned.
* * *
“Well,” Lady Emilia announced once the necessary papers were signed. “I believe we had better go straight on to Bath. We are hardly going to hang around here and act the gooseberry.”
Valor's Reward Page 22