by Mary Balogh
Yet all she had had left of that love after three months of marriage was heartache, and eventually a child who resembled him to an almost uncanny degree. Christina. She thought of how her daughter’s thin arms would twine about her neck when she came to Kingston and of how her mouth would pucker for a kiss.
At Kingston? Exile again? She would hide from the world all over again, nursing a broken heart, clinging to Christina for love and to Martin for support and strength and companionship? Would she?
Was that what she really wanted? Was she capable of nothing better?
She lay determinedly still beneath the covers, wondering if morning would never come.
Morning did come eventually and with it Martin tapping on her door. Elizabeth flung herself into his arms.
Martin looked closely at her after they had exchanged greetings.
“Lizzie.” His voice was concerned. “You have not slept, have you? There are shadows beneath your eyes. I don’t suppose you feel like breakfast either, do you? But don’t worry. I’ll have your maid bring up some laudanum and then we shall set out on our way and you can sleep with your head.on my shoulder. I am with you now, and you need worry about nothing. Once we reach Kingston you will soon feel at peace again.”
“I want to talk to you about that,” she said. “And I am ravenous. I could not eat dinner last night. Can we talk over breakfast, Martin?”
“Of course,” he said. “Whatever you wish, Lizzie. I am glad to see that you have not gone quite to pieces.”
“Aren’t you proud of me?” She forced herself to smile.
When they were sitting in the dining room over breakfast, Elizabeth found that she was not really hungry after all. But she forced herself to eat two slices of toast and to drink a cup of tea. This was not going to be a repeat of the past, she had decided during the night. He was not going to destroy her again.
“We are not going to Kingston,” she told Martin. “We are going back to London.”
He stared at her, amazed. “Lizzie,” he said, “it is all arranged.”
“With the coachman?” she said. “Then he must simply be told that the destination has been changed. I am not going to run away, Martin. I have done no wrong.”
He was silent for a while, stirring his coffee, watching what he was doing. “Of course you have done no wrong,” he said. “But you know enough about society, Lizzie, to know what the tabbies will do with your story. You have been gone for almost three weeks. Of course you were taken by force. But what does that prove—as far as society is concerned, that is? Some people were already murmuring before I left London that perhaps you had connived in your own abduction. Even those sensible enough not to believe that will remember that you have been almost three weeks alone with your kidnapper—or they will choose to believe that you have been alone with him. They will draw the inevitable conclusions.”
“And be perfectly right,” she said. She flushed but looked him directly in the eye. “But I am not going to run away, Martin. People may think what they will. How did Manley react?”
“You cannot think of marrying him now, Lizzie,” he said, reaching across the table and taking one of her hands in his. “I know it is what you wanted, but it is out of the question now. If we go to Kingston—”
“We are not going to Kingston,” she interrupted. “It would be grossly unfair to you, Martin, for me to drag you there again. You have devoted enough of your life to my troubles. And why will he not marry me? I was kidnapped from my own wedding. What happened to me after that was not done with my free consent. I shall explain to Manley. If he is anything of a man, he will want to resume our plans.”
“Lizzie”—he squeezed her hand—”you are merely asking for further rejection. I am sorry about it, truly sorry, but that is the way life is. As for me making sacrifices for you, you know that is so much nonsense.”
“No, it is not,” she said. “You are twenty-five years old, Martin. It is time you started thinking about your own happiness and your own marriage. I’ll not be guilty of holding you back from that any longer. I am curious to know whom you will choose. And I will be quite prepared to love her, you know. I will not be jealous even if you and I are almost twins. I’ll be like you were. I can remember how determined you were right from the start to be Chr—” she drew a deep breath—”to be Christopher’s friend. He let you down as surely as he did me, didn’t he?”
“Lizzie,” he said, “are you quite determined to do this? Is there nothing I can say to convince you that you are just inviting further suffering by going back to London?”
“No,” she said quietly. “Besides, Martin, Christina is there and I cannot wait even one day longer than necessary to see her again. I am going back.”
“We will have to plan this carefully, then,” he said. “We cannot tell the truth, Lizzie.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Isn’t the truth always the best in the end?”
He picked up his coffee cup with both hands and swilled the liquid about inside it. “Not in this case,” he said. “We must not mention Trevelyan. And we have to explain your three-week absence.”
“I was kidnapped and held prisoner!” she said.
“No.” He shook his head, still watching his coffee. “You were kidnapped and you fell out of the carriage trying to escape and knocked your head and lost your memory.”
“You see?” she said. “The truth. Though who will believe it, I don’t know. It sounds highly improbable.”
“Your kidnapper had to make off in haste,” he said, “because there was another carriage approaching. So you were taken up by a perfectly respectable lady, who has given you shelter ever since. I found you, having been asking around about you until I was finally directed to the correct house. And the sight of me restored your memory. And the sight of Christina’s portrait, of course.”
“I don’t really see the point in the lies,” Elizabeth said, frowning.
“They will prove that you have been living respectably during the time you have been missing,” he said. “And they will explain why there was no ransom note. It’s the only way, Lizzie, if you insist on going back. Do you know what society would do to you if they knew you had been with Trevelyan again? And what they would do to Papa?”
The last idea stayed the protest that was on her lips. “To Papa?” she said. “It would be a dreadful embarrassment to him, would it not? And to you, Martin. I sometimes forget that I cannot act from purely selfish motives.”
“You can forget about me,” he said. “But it might be hard on Papa, Lizzie. And on Poole. He would be made to look a pretty fool, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. “If it became known that it was Christopher who took me away, it would be easily believed that I went willingly. Oh, yes, that would be dreadful for Manley. I cannot do it, can I?”
“It is my story or Kingston, I’m afraid, Lizzie,” he said. “You know which I favor, but I’ll let you make up your own mind as I always do. Your freedom means a great deal to me.”
She drew a deep breath. “Your story, then,” she said. “But I am not sure how good I am at lying, Martin. We are going to have to decide on some details so that we both tell the same story. And what if someone decides to check the story and discovers that there is no lady who took me in?”
“We will work it out on the way,” he said. “I’m sure I can come up with someone who will be willing to back our story. You are quite mad to choose this course, Lizzie.”
“Yes.” She smiled determinedly at him. “It’s about time, is it not?”
Chapter 14
Nancy did not see her brother until the morning following Elizabeth’s departure. She had needed to talk with him and had twice stood outside the door of his dressing room during the evening, her hand raised to knock, despite Hemmings’s warning that his lordship did not wish to be disturbed for the rest of the day. But both times she had walked away again without knocking.
He was not at breakfast. Nancy sat alone, picking at her food, wondering i
f he had eaten and gone out already or if he had missed breakfast as he had missed dinner the evening before. He was in the library, Hemmings told her when she asked. And so she went there finally and let herself in without knocking. The chances were that he would have either ignored a knock or called out to her to go away.
He looked up at her from behind the large oak desk, his face a stern mask. There was nothing spread on the desk before him, only a paper knife balanced on his palm. He held her eyes with his and set the knife down quietly.
“So, Nance,” he said, “you can go about your business with a clear conscience again this morning. That mad episode in my life is at an end. I returned to England at just the wrong moment, it seems. A day later and she would have been married already and none of this would have happened. But no matter. We have summer at Penhallow to look forward to together.”
“Christopher,” she asked, “did Martin stay long enough to speak with you? I gather he did not leave with Elizabeth during the morning. What did he tell you?”
“That her memory came back,” he said with a shrug. He picked up the knife again, balanced it on one finger, and twirled it slowly. “We knew all along that it might happen suddenly like that. I can only be thankful for her sake that it did happen, I suppose. I know it distressed her to have no sense of her own past or even of her own person. The trouble is now, of course, that she has a few more memories to add to all the ones that were lost-forcible abduction, deceit, imprisonment. Pleasant memories all, aren’t they?”
“Christopher,” Nancy said, taking a few steps toward the desk, “she spoke to me before she left. She said something that I think you should know about.”
He laughed harshly. “You were to tell me from her to go to hell?” he said. “No need to pass on the message, Nance. I am more than halfway there already. But no matter. The past cannot be changed, can it? I can only—”
“She said you had taken her away from someone,” Nancy said.
“There was someone inside the church who would not understand why she had gone away without a word. She was upset at the thought.”
“Poole,” he said. “Goddammit, she loves him, then.”
“A child,” she said, watching him, wondering if she could possibly have misunderstood Elizabeth. But the words had been almost free of ambiguity. “A six-year-old child. A little girl. She would not understand where her mother had gone, Elizabeth said.”
He looked at her blankly, but he sat unnaturally still. The knife clattered unheeded to the desktop.
“I think the child must be your daughter, Christopher,” Nancy said.
She watched his eyes close and his hand lower to clench around the knife.
“She is six years old,” Nancy said. “She must be yours.”
His eyes closed more tightly. But when she took a few hurried steps toward him, he lunged to his feet and turned sharply away to a window.
“Well, Nance,” he said after a lengthy silence, “it seems that we are a pair of villains, Elizabeth and I, quite worthy of each other. I have been guilty of kidnapping her during the past three weeks. She has been guilty of withholding a child from me for the past six years. Are they equal villainies, do you think? I think perhaps they are. Or perhaps hers is worse.”
“Christopher,” Nancy said, but she could think of nothing else to say to him.
“A child,” he said. “A daughter. Did she call her by name?”
“No.”
He laughed softly. “I have a six-year-old daughter,” he said, “and do not even know her name. Or what she looks like. I went away and she was carrying my child. I have known for a long, long time that I should never have gone. I should never have made it so easy for them. They kept my child. To her they are her family. She probably does not even know of my existence. Do you think she has been told I am dead, Nance? I think that is probably what they told her.”
Nancy walked up behind him and set a hand lightly on one of his arms. She knew by the sound of his breathing that he was fighting tears.
“Well,” he said at last, so quietly that she knew he was talking to himself more than to her, “they have had my wife for almost seven years and my daughter for six— Chicheley and Aston and even Martin. That is long enough. Too long. It is my turn again.”
“Christopher”—Nancy tightened her grip on his arm— “what are you going to do? You are not going to do anything foolish, are you?”
“I’m going to London,” he said, turning to her and speaking as calmly as if he were announcing that he was going to call upon his steward.
She held up both hands, palm out. “You can’t,” she said. “You know it is impossible, Christopher. The Duke of Chicheley will have you arrested. You know from experience that he will not hesitate to use his power against you. Who knows what will happen to you after that.”
“A hanging,” he said. “I don’t think they will do it, though, Nance. I don’t think they will want to admit publicly that it was Elizabeth’s divorced husband who ran off with her and proceeded to live with her for three weeks. And Chicheley will not want to hang the father of his granddaughter. He has too much pride for that. A firing squad or a chopping block might be genteel enough for his tastes. But not a common hangman’s noose.”
Nancy felt as if she might faint. But she could not afford to be vaporish. She must make him see sense. “You cannot take the chance, Christopher,” she said. “Elizabeth said that she would press charges herself.”
He laughed. “I wonder what the penalty is for kidnapping a man’s child for six years,” he said. “Nothing, I suppose, when the kidnappers are the mother and the very powerful grandfather. I’m going after her, Nance. You might as well save your breath and sit down before you fall down. I want to see my daughter. And I want to have a few words with my wife—with my ex-wife.” Both his face and his voice were grim.
Nancy took his advice and sank into the chair behind the desk.
“For weeks now,” she said, “I have been waiting to wake up from this nightmare. But it has become too bizarre to be a dream. It can only be reality.” She set her elbows on the desk and rested her face against her hands.
“Poor Nance,” he said, setting a hand on her shoulder, “my nightmare has been almost seven years long. I was a newly married man, deliriously happy, poor fool, when I fell asleep. I have not woken up since. But I will. I had better go and set Antoine to packing. I’ll leave at first light tomorrow,”
Nancy took her hands away from her face and slammed them palm down on the desk. “Oh,” she said, “you fool, Christopher. Do you think for one moment that they will let you see the child? But save my breath, you told me. Very well, then, I will say no more. I have to go upstairs to summon Winnie. One day is not long when one has to pack for perhaps several weeks in town.”
“Nance?” he said as she got to her feet.
“Well, someone has to watch over you,” she said, whirling on him, angry at last. “Someone has to come and visit you in jail. Someone has to be present at your execution who is not treating it as a morning’s rare sport.”
“It is the Season in London, Nance,” he said. “And probably this one is busier and more frantic than any other with the victory to celebrate. Are you sure you want to leave Penhallow to get involved in all that?”
She quailed at the very thought. “I said nothing about wanting,” she said. “But I will go, nevertheless. I fear you will get yourself into deep trouble. Perhaps I can help avert it. I don’t know. Perhaps Elizabeth will forgive me more readily than she will forgive you. Perhaps the duke will listen to me. Perhaps Joh—perhaps John will listen. However it is, I have to be there. How could I stay here with my imagination running wild?”
He squeezed her shoulder. “You are a good sister, Nance,” he said.
“The best. I am sorry I have dragged you into all this.”
She looked at him with a grimace that was her best attempt at a smile.
He gripped her shoulder harder suddenly. “God, Nan
ce,” he said almost in a whisper, “I have a daughter. I am a father.”
She circled her arms about his waist and rested her forehead against his chest.
Antoine sensed that the other servants at Penhallow, who had tolerated him at first as something of an eccentric, had now become rather hostile toward him—especially one footman and one groom.
He did not much care. On the other hand, it did not hurt him at all to know that he and the earl were to leave for London with only a day’s notice.
Winnie had changed. She was no longer the sunny-natured and flirtatious girl who had played off three male servants—himself included—against one another so that she could keep her heart free for the young man who would eventually come along and capture it for life. She had lost a great deal of her prettiness and was losing some of her pleasant plumpness. Her eyes, which had been bright and frequently smiling, were now haunted and rarely looked directly at another person, especially if that person were a man.
And yet she met Antoine at least once each day. He had suggested it and she had accepted with gratitude. They made no secret of their meetings. The other servants naturally assumed, Antoine thought, that they were lovers. And yet they could all see that Winnie was not happy, that she was perhaps even frightened. And so they must assume that he was a rough and a jealous lover. They disliked him. It was natural enough. Antoine did not resent their hostility or the fact that he could not justify himself to them.
England and the English did not much interest him, though he was looking forward to seeing more of London than he had seen on the day of his arrival from New York.
Winnie seemed to look upon him as some kind of big brother—though in fact they were cf almost identical height. As an older brother, perhaps. She prattled to him about herself and her family and her upbringing. She had a younger brother to whom the earl had just offered a job as soon as the boy reached his sixteenth birthday the following month. Then Winnie would not be the only one responsible for supporting their mother.