by Mary Balogh
God. Oh, please, dear God, let it not be so. Please, God.
Matthew. He had found her. He had come to take her away.
She stumbled slowly on. When had he come? Why had she not been summoned and arrested immediately? Why had everyone in the drawing room not turned to stare accusingly at her when she brought Lady Pamela in? What sort of a waiting game was he playing?
She leaned against another tree trunk, her cheek against its rough bark, and hugged it with her arms.
What would happen? Would he take her back alone, or would there be someone else to guard her? Would she be bound? Chained? She had no idea how such things were done. How long would she be in prison before being brought to trial? How long would she be in prison after the trial before …?
Oh, please, dear God. Please, dear God.
There was no point in running any farther. He had tracked her this far. There would be no further escape. There was no point in running.
She stood where she was for a long time before pushing wearily away from the tree and making her slow way back to the bridge. And she stood leaning against the parapet, looking sightlessly down at the moonlit cascades, and listening without hearing to the rushing and splashing of water.
She knew for several minutes that there was someone coming, though she did not turn her head to look. Matthew. It would be Matthew. Expecting that she would fight him again? Try to run again? She wondered that he was coming alone. He had not been alone the last time. She had killed his companion then.
Or perhaps he had seen from her face in the drawing room that there was no fight left in her. She was tired of fighting, tired of running. Tired of living.
He stopped at the end of the bridge.
“What is it?” he asked her.
It was not Matthew after all. It was him. The thought crossed her mind that under almost any other circumstances she would have been terrified, as she had been two nights before—alone with him like this in the night, far from the house. But there was no point in feeling terror. Only the one inevitable end could hold terror for her any longer.
“Nothing,” she said. “I wanted some air.”
“And abandoned Pamela in the drawing room?” he said.
She turned her head to look at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not think.”
“What is it?” he asked again. “Was it my brother? Do you know him?”
“No,” she said.
“Lord Brocklehurst, then?”
“No.”
He walked slowly along the bridge toward her. “Was either of them a customer of yours?” he asked.
“No!” Her eyes widened in horror.
“I am the only man to be feared in that particular way, then, am I?” he asked.
She turned away to look down into the foaming water.
“Was it me, then?” he said. “Am I the one you were afraid of? Were you afraid that I would maneuver just such a meeting as this? Were you afraid of a repeat of two nights ago?”
“I was not afraid,” she said. “I was just weary and faint. I needed air.”
He leaned an elbow on the parapet beside her and stood looking at her. “You are such a mystery,” he said softly. “I do not know you at all, Miss Hamilton, do I?”
Her chest was tight with pain. “You don’t need to know me, your grace,” she said, and could hear her voice shaking. “I was your whore and now I am your daughter’s governess. You do not need to know me in either capacity. I merely exist to provide a service to you.”
“I wish you could know that I am not your enemy,” he said. “I think you need a friend.”
“Men do not make friends with their whores and servants,” she said.
“If you are a whore,” he said, “I am an adulterer. We are equal sinners. But you at least had good reason for doing what you did. For one night you were a whore. Don’t let it blight your whole life. You survived. That is what matters.”
“Yes,” she said bitterly, “survival is everything.”
She felt his fingertips resting lightly against the back of her hand on the parapet. Revulsion sizzled up her arm and into her throat. Her first impulse was to snatch away her hand and back away from him. But she was so alone, so much without hope, so utterly in the grip of despair.
She kept her hand where it was, though she knew that it was trembling beneath his fingers. She wished it were anyone but him. She wished she could take the two steps that separated them and lay her body against his, her head against his broad chest. Oh, she wished it and despised her weakness. She had always stood alone, ever since the death of her parents and her realization that she was not wanted by the strangers who had come to live in their home. She had always been proudly independent and had never allowed self-pity to destroy any chance of happiness that she might have.
She wanted Daniel. She closed her eyes.
His fingers slid across her hand and curled beneath hers. He held her hand in a warm clasp—with those long fingers that had touched her and held her. She could not prevent her deep shudder, and yet she did not pull away. She leaned against the parapet and kept her eyes closed as she had when they had waltzed together.
And he lifted her hand until she felt his lips, warm and still, against the back of it.
God. Oh, dear God.
After a few moments he turned her hand and held her palm, first against his mouth and then against his cheek—the unscarred cheek.
“I know that I am the last person in the world to be able to comfort you,” he said. “I know that what I did to you and my appearance make me deeply revolting to you. But if it ever comes to that, Fleur, if there is ever no one else to whom you can turn, then come to me. Will you?”
“I can stand alone,” she said. “I always have.”
“Have you?” he said. “Ever since the death of your parents when you were eight?”
She was silent. And aching with the sound of her name, the first time anyone had called her Fleur since her parents.
“Come back to the house,” he said. “You are cold.”
“Yes,” she said.
And she allowed him to draw her hand through his arm and lead her slowly and silently on the long walk back. And she wished and wished he were someone different. She longed to lay her head against the broad shoulder beside it, to turn into his arms, to beg him not to leave her alone that night—her last night of freedom. If only he were Daniel.
And she thought with bleak humor of how Daniel would react to such an invitation. He would be shocked and hurt and sorrowful.
The duke stopped when they reached the upper terrace, at the foot of the horseshoe steps.
“I meant what I said,” he said, one hand over hers as it rested on his arm. “I was angry at my own weakness that night, Fleur, and I used you crudely and cruelly. I have much to atone for. I would like to do you a kindness.”
“You already have,” she said. “You fed me and paid me more than I had earned, and you gave me this post.”
He said no more, but only searched her eyes with his for a long silent moment in the darkness until she felt terror welling in her again.
But she remembered the greater terror facing her inside the house and drew herself free of his grace in order to climb the steps unassisted. She hoped she would not be chained, she thought, and began to run. She hoped she would not be carried or dragged from this house the next day in chains. And she hoped …
She opened one of the doors herself without waiting for the duke to come up beside her. And she fled across the great hall and through the archway to the staircase as if all the hounds of hell were in pursuit of her.
THE DUKE OF RIDGEWAY WATCHED HER GO, HIS face impassive for the benefit of the footmen who stood in the hall.
Was it he from whom she fled? And yet, though he had felt her shudder when he touched her, she had fought her revulsion and mastered it just as she had when they had danced. Had she feared that he would suggest taking her to her room or to his?
But no,
she must know that he had not had seduction on his mind, that he was deeply concerned about her.
What was the unknown terror that had sent her fleeing first from the house and then back into it?
He felt so very responsible for her, as he did for all his servants and all those under his care. But more than that with her. He was the one responsible for changing her life irrevocably, and that in a manner designed to fill her forever with horror.
He had not kissed her or held her or fondled her. He had merely seated himself and ordered her to remove her clothes, and had watched her every movement. And he had ordered her to lie down while he undressed in front of her. While the candle still burned in the wall sconce, he had pulled her into the position he wanted, the position in which he could demonstrate his mastery over her and all women, and then he had demonstrated that mastery without subtlety or gentleness.
And yet he had taken her to that inn wanting to soothe himself with feminine compassion and warmth. Her very silence and self-possession had inflamed him, angered him. He had wanted her to reach out to him as no one had reached out for more years than he could recall, and she had looked at him with steady acceptance of what she must do to earn her living.
He cursed softly and turned from the hall to rejoin his wife and their guests in the drawing room. And he found himself looking curiously at Lord Brocklehurst, who was conversing quietly and amiably with a small group. The duke joined that group.
“Yes, she is sleeping,” he assured Lady Mayberry, who asked about Pamela.
An hour passed before he found himself almost alone with Lord Brocklehurst and uncertain whether he or the other had maneuvered it so.
“You have a fine daughter, your grace,” Lord Brocklehurst said with a smile.
“Yes, indeed,” the duke replied. “She is very precious to my wife and me.”
“The prospect of marriage is appealing when one thinks of acquiring a family of such pretty children,” the other said.
“Yes, indeed,” the duke said. “You are betrothed?”
“Oh, no, no, not yet,” Lord Brocklehurst said with a laugh. “Of course, it must be a worry to have children and the responsibility of giving them all that is the best. How does one choose a worthy governess or tutor, for example? Your governess seems like a quiet young lady. She has been with you long?”
“Quite recently acquired, actually,” the duke said. “We are well satisfied with her work.”
“It must be time-consuming to check the references of such an employee,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “to make sure that one is not being deceived in any way.”
“Perhaps,” his grace said. “I employ a secretary for such a purpose. You know Miss Hamilton?”
“Oh, no, no,” the other said, “though the name is familiar. And the face too, a little, now that you mention it. I believe I know her family. Perhaps I met her once.”
“Ah,” the duke said, “Miss Dobbin is to play the pianoforte, I see. I shall draw nearer. Excuse me, Brocklehurst?”
So, he thought, crossing the room to stand behind Miss Dobbin’s stool, it was definitely Brocklehurst. And the man was being as secretive about the whole connection as Fleur had been.
Or was he overreacting? Had she merely been embarrassed and distressed to see a man who might recognize her and see her in the lowly position of governess?
Who was she? Who and what had she been? At first he had not been particularly curious about her. Her story had seemed plausible enough. But she had lied to him about her parents. If her father had died in debt, it had certainly not happened recently. But something had happened recently.
And why did the not knowing matter to him? Had he ever wondered about Houghton’s past or that of any of his other servants? Fleur Hamilton’s past was her own business.
But why had she lied about her father? Why had she lied about not knowing Brocklehurst? Equally intriguing, why had he lied about his acquaintance with her?
His wife, he saw without looking, was paying court to both Shaw and Thomas.
FLEUR WAS IN THE music room early the following morning, playing Beethoven—not at all well. She had not tried any of the new music that morning, but had only tried to steady herself, lose herself in the old. But the magic had deserted her. She stumbled, played mischords, forgot her place.
She would have banged her hands in frustration across the keyboard if the door to the library had not opened earlier as it usually did, but as it had not the morning before, to reveal briefly the figure of his grace.
She had not slept at all. Though she must have done, she reflected, or there would not be the remembered nightmares—the dead face and staring eyes of Hobson, the discomfort of traveling in a coach with her wrists bound in rusty chains at her back, the trapdoor and the knowledge that below it was emptiness and a waiting coffin, the scarred hawkish face above her and the long-fingered hands beneath her buttocks to hold her steady, Matthew with a strawberry-red rose across his dead face, blood running from the puncture made by a thorn.
Yes, she must have slept.
How long would it be? How much longer did she have?
Was she playing Beethoven or Mozart?
She heard the door from the hallway open, though it happened very quietly and the door was behind her. She took her hands from the keyboard and folded them in her lap. She knew who it was. She did not have to look around.
“Ah, Isabella,” a familiar voice said. “No, I beg your pardon. Fleur, is it not?”
She got up from the stool and turned to face him. He was smiling, as Matthew so often was. She placed a finger over her lips and pointed in the direction of the open door into the library. He nodded his comprehension. And she led the way from the room.
“There are lawns at the back of the house,” she said. “I believe it has stopped raining.”
It seemed appropriate that the long spell of warm, sunny weather had broken sometime during the night. The clouds were heavy and low and the grass glistening with the drizzle that had fallen on it, she had seen in a glance from the window of her room earlier.
And it seemed strange now to hear her own voice and to note that it sounded just as it usually did.
“A few questions revealed to me your morning habits,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “They are no secret.”
She took him to a back entrance, avoiding the great hall. She did not go for a cloak, though it was chilly outside. But she scarcely noticed.
“I will come quietly,” she said, walking on ahead of him past the kitchen gardens to the lawns beyond, leaving him to catch up and fall into step beside her. “I don’t know if you brought assistance. I don’t know if you plan to put fetters on me. I don’t know what the law is. But you will not need them. I will come quietly.”
Even the clouds were beautiful. Even the wet grass soaking its moisture into her shoes felt wonderful. And she remembered her first sight of Willoughby and her first weeks there. She remembered her buoyant feeling of hope and happiness. She remembered the visit to the Chamberlains and their return visit. She remembered walking this very lawn with Mr. Chamberlain, the children rushing on ahead with a ball. She remembered playing with the puppy in the paddock. And she remembered waltzing on a lantern-lit path.
“Murder is a hanging offense, Isabella,” he said.
“I know.” Her pace unconsciously quickened. “I also know, as do you, Matthew, that I am no murderer. What happened was an accident caused when I acted in my own defense. But of course that will be an irrelevant point when we both speak in court.”
“Poor Hobson,” he said. “He was merely stepping up behind you to prevent you from tripping over the hearth yourself, Isabella. It was unfortunate that you were in such a temper because I had been forced to admonish you for your own good. He would be alive now.”
“Yes,” she said, “it sounds convincing even now, Matthew. And I was foolish enough to panic and run—the actions of a guilty person. What is the procedure? Am I to be bound?”
She looked at him for the first time. He was still smiling.
“You are his mistress?” he said. “You looked high indeed, Isabella.”
“I am his daughter’s governess,” she said. “Or was. I am your prisoner now, I suppose.”
“And yet,” he said, “it would break my heart to see that lovely neck with a rope about it, Isabella. And perhaps it is true and you misunderstood the situation and thought self-defense necessary. Who am I to judge your motives? Perhaps it was an unfortunate accident after all.”
“What are you saying?” She had stopped walking and stood looking directly at him.
“The simple truth,” he said. “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt if I possibly can. You know I love you, Isabella.”
“I could play this game out to the end,” she said. “But I believe I understand you very well, Matthew. You will agree that Hobson’s death was an accident if I consent to be your mistress. Am I right?”
He held his arms out to his sides. “Why the harsh tones? Do you see a pistol about me?” he asked. “Chains? Ropes? Do you see a constable or guard lurking at my shoulder? Do you think I have searched for you all this time just in order to see you executed? Do you know me so little, Isabella?”
“Speak plainly with me,” she said. “For once in your life, Matthew, speak plainly. If I refuse to be your mistress, what then? Give me a straight answer.”
“Isabella,” he said, “I am a guest here. I came with an old friend of mine, Lord Thomas Kent, to spend a few weeks on an estate I have always wished to visit. It is quite splendid, is it not? You are a governess here—a happy coincidence. And of course we must speak of that unhappy death, whose mystery still has not been cleared up because you fled immediately after it. But there is no need to say everything that needs to be said between us at this very moment, is there? You are not going anywhere for the next few weeks, and neither am I.”