by Tracy Grant
“Of course you aren’t blameless, darling. No one should bring children into the world without being in a position to care for them. I know that better than anyone. I also know it’s far easier said than done. Once the mistake had been made, there were other options. She could have waited until you came back and told you about the baby.”
“And given me the chance to do what pathetically little I might to help?”
“If she knew you at all, she must have realized you wouldn’t abandon her. She could have gone to Italy with you. You could have taken her to Scotland. It wouldn’t have been easy. You’d have been ostracized by polite society—or at least she would—but none of you would have starved and she and the child would have been sure of your love. That’s more than most children have.”
“Then my failure is all the greater. Perhaps if she’d had more faith in my love she would have waited.”
“It was your baby, too. You deserved to know about it.”
He held her gaze for a moment. “Did you tell O’Roarke about Colin?”
“Yes. But I told you first. I didn’t realize I was pregnant until Blanca and I were in the mountains waiting to intercept you.” She saw his face twist at the memory. “I wasn’t trying to play on your sympathies that morning you found me being sick by the stream, darling. I swear it. I was honestly trying to decide what to do about the child I was carrying. I’d realized I wanted to keep the baby no matter what, you see. I wanted him, Charles. I didn’t do it to trap you. Acquit me of that at least. I was shocked when you asked me to marry you.”
“You hadn’t bargained on the extent of my idiocy, I suppose.”
“I didn’t know your mistress had just killed herself while pregnant with your child. If I’d known that, not to mention that you had questions about your own paternity—”
“You think that’s why I married you? To replay the farce of my own childhood?”
“No, but I think you were determined to be a better father to Colin than Kenneth Fraser was to you.”
“That goes without saying. But it wasn’t until later—after Father died—that I realized he probably wasn’t my father at all.”
“Darling, you’d wondered for years, perhaps without even admitting it to yourself.”
“Perhaps.” Charles glanced into the fire. “O’Roarke didn’t want his child?”
“Raoul lived his life as though he might be killed at any moment. He still does. He couldn’t afford to think about his own future, let alone a family.”
“And he couldn’t have married you in any case. Last I heard, he had a wife in Ireland.”
“Yes, though they haven’t lived together for years. He offered to send me to France and provide for me and the child. I couldn’t—” She grimaced, a rank taste in her mouth. “I told myself I couldn’t turn my back on my work and my comrades and my cause. But to be brutally honest, darling, I also couldn’t bear the thought of being shunted off out of the fray. If I’d truly put Colin first, I suppose I’d have taken Raoul up on his offer. And yet Colin would have been immeasurably poorer, not having you for a father.”
“But that wasn’t why you agreed to be my wife.” His fingers curled round the brocade arms of his chair. “You consulted with O’Roarke before you gave me an answer, didn’t you? That’s why it took you three days to decide.”
“I couldn’t very well have made such a decision without consulting him.”
“No. I don’t suppose you could.” Anger leapt in his eyes. “How the devil did you think it would end? You couldn’t have expected to stay married to me forever. You couldn’t have wanted to.”
She twisted her hands together, but she didn’t let herself flinch from his gaze. “I’d scarcely known you a month when we were married. I knew you were a remarkable man, but I didn’t understand in the least why you’d proposed to me. You didn’t exactly wear your heart on your sleeve, dearest. You still don’t. I thought your proposal was some sort of quixotic, chivalrous gesture. I didn’t realize—”
“That I have feelings just like a normal person?”
“I didn’t realize how deep your feelings ran. I didn’t realize how completely you gave your loyalty. I didn’t realize how much I could hurt you.” She swallowed, remembering the quiet conviction in his voice as he spoke his wedding vows. It had been like a shock of cold fire, the realization that whyever he was marrying her, this man took those vows as a solemn promise. What she hadn’t known until now was that that promise was more than half a debt he felt he owed to another woman. That the loyalty he gave to her was the loyalty that belonged to Kitty Ashford. “I’m not saying I’d have acted differently if I had known,” she said. “I can’t be sure. But when I agreed to be your wife, I hadn’t the least idea what marriage meant to you.” Or to me.
“And Colin?” Charles’s voice was harsh. “What was supposed to happen to Colin when the marriage had served its purpose?”
Her fingers locked together. “I was used to thinking of immediate objectives and not giving much thought to the future. I hadn’t yet realized one can’t do that when one has children. But to the extent I considered the future at all—I thought I could walk away from the marriage and take Colin with me. Until I saw how much you loved Colin. And how much Colin loved you.”
“And then?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“I was actually mad enough to tell Raoul that we’d made a horrible mistake and we had to tell you the truth. Raoul told me not to be a bloody idiot. He said if you knew the truth the marriage would certainly be over and I’d either have to leave and take Colin with me or give Colin up to you. Not to mention the fact that I might be arrested as a spy. He said if I really couldn’t handle it any longer, he’d send Colin and me to France. I took that as a challenge. Like you, I don’t care to admit there’s any challenge I can’t meet, dearest.”
“And O’Roarke knew that challenging you was the best way to keep you at your post.”
“Oh, yes, Raoul’s fiendishly good at getting people to do what he wants. Besides, by then it was late 1813 and Wellington had pushed his way into France. Raoul asked me if I wanted to turn my back on the cause I’d worked for so long just when things were desperate.” His voice echoed in her head, at once caustic and impassioned. She looked at Charles. “And the truth is, my darling, I didn’t want to turn my back on it.”
“So our farce of a marriage continued. A marriage born of your duplicity.”
“And your guilt.”
He started to protest. Then he looked away. When he spoke the words seemed to be dragged out of him. “Oh, Christ. Can we ever really be sure of why we do anything? I’d failed Kitty when she needed me most. If you’re asking if I thought of that when I saw you in trouble, then of course I did. If you’re asking if I thought of my own unborn child when I learned you were pregnant, then of course that’s true as well. I told you the truth when I said I’d never expected to marry. I didn’t think I’d be much of a prize as a husband, and my parents had given me a singularly low opinion of the institution. If it hadn’t been for your predicament and my guilty conscience, I might never have found the courage to offer for you. But—I didn’t need guilt or duty to make me want you for my wife or love your child.”
Her fingers ached to smooth the shadows from his eyes. She wondered if she’d had this same urge to ease hurts before she was a mother. She couldn’t remember. “I’ve tainted it for you, haven’t I?” she said. “Whatever your reasons for marrying me, you gave your love to Colin freely, without condition. Now you feel as though I manipulated you into it. If you think everything between you and me was false, what does that do to what’s between you and Colin?”
His eyes went cold. “I’d never,” he said with precision, “let what’s happened between you and me affect how I feel about Colin.”
“But Colin’s inextricably bound up in everything that’s happened between us, from that moment you found me being sick by the stream. I didn’t mean to u
se him to trap you, but I did drag him into the deception with me. That’s probably the most unforgivable thing I’ve ever done.”
He stared at her, his gaze steady, appraising. “If I’d known the truth,” he said, “I’d never have let myself become Colin’s father. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am his father.”
And he always would be. But what did that mean for their future life when he couldn’t bear to live with Colin’s mother?
The fire gusted behind her and let loose a puff of smoke that prickled her eyes. She unhooked the brass dustpan and broom from the stand beside the fireplace and stared down at the wreckage of the glass Edgar had dropped. “At least now that I know about Kitty, I have an idea of what went wrong between you and Edgar.”
“What?” Charles turned his head.
“Why you aren’t as close as you once were.” She dropped down on the carpet. A jolt of pain reminded her of the wound in her side. She swept the sparkling shards of crystal into the dustpan. “It can’t have been easy for him to learn you’d been the lover of the woman he loved himself.”
In seven years, she could count the times she had taken her quick-witted husband completely by surprise. This was one of them. “My brother broke his share of hearts in the Peninsula,” Charles said, “but he wasn’t in love with Kit. He scarcely knew her.”
“He may have loved her from afar, but there’s no doubt he loved her.” She stood and emptied the dustpan into the fire. The fragments of crystal sparkled diamond-bright in the flame. “Didn’t you see his face when you were talking, darling? He couldn’t even bear to hear the whole story.”
“Of course he couldn’t. A story about a woman killing herself cuts a bit too close to the bone. Not because he loved Kitty. Because her fate is rather too much like Mother’s.”
Which must have burned Charles all the more. Mélanie returned the broom and dustpan to their stand. “There is that, of course. But it was more than the painful associations that drove him from the room. You could see it in his eyes.”
Charles picked up his whisky glass and stared at it. “I’d have noticed.”
“Under normal circumstances I don’t doubt it, but you can scarcely have been yourself at the time, dearest. You never talked to him about Kitty. And Edgar was away with his regiment most of the time in those days.”
Charles tossed off the last of the whisky. “Even if it were true, whatever went wrong between Edgar and me started long before either of us met Kitty, when I was still at Oxford. When Mother died.”
“Then perhaps what happened with Kitty merely made it worse.”
He twisted his empty glass between his hands. She could see him turning the possibility over in his mind. Then he shook his head. “We’ve scarcely time to dwell on it at the moment. If this sordid story has convinced you there’s no good to be had from talking to Velasquez, it’s served its purpose. There’s no point in discussing it further.”
Mélanie hesitated, but instinct said she had pushed him as far as she could. She moved to the door. “Edgar must have forestalled Laura. I’ll see if the food’s ready.”
Charles pulled his dressing gown closed at the neck. He looked more weary than she had ever seen him. “You’re unfailingly practical.”
She gave a bleak smile. “I’m a mother.”
Colin shifted his position on the bed. His leg jerked. He sat up and disentangled the chain that ran from the metal cuff round his ankle to a similar cuff on the bedpost. It didn’t hurt, really, except when he pulled on it. But it felt very undignified.
He’d managed to sleep when they first brought him here, once his heart stopped pounding so loud he could hear it. But now he felt as though he’d been sleeping for hours and he didn’t think he could anymore, even if it was the only way to pass the time.
He hitched himself up against the thin pillow and kicked off the scratchy blanket. The air clogged his throat and tickled his nose. Maybe that was because of the dust motes dancing in the glow from the rush light beside the bed. The air had a sour smell, too, like his stuffed duck when he’d left it outside for days and it had got rained on.
He’d only been in a place like this once before, last year just before Christmas, when Mummy took him with her to give toys to children whose parents didn’t have enough money to buy them presents. Some of the places they’d gone then had been even dirtier and damper than this, but Mummy had told him it wasn’t polite to stare or make comments about people who were less fortunate than you were. He wasn’t sure if that still applied if the people were holding you prisoner. He thought maybe it didn’t.
A door opened and closed with a thud in the room outside. The man, Jack, coming back. Colin wondered if he’d brought food. They’d given him some bread and smelly cheese when he woke up, but he’d only been able to swallow a few mouthfuls.
“Christ, you took long enough.” Meg’s voice came from the other room. Colin squirmed against the pillow. He could see shadows on the wall through the crack in the door.
“I stopped at a tavern. Got to pass the time somehow. Didn’t think there’d be another message since he told us to sit tight this morning. Turns out I was wrong.”
“There was a message? Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Let me see.”
“Pipe down, woman, ten to one he’s just telling us to be patient. There’s no money with it. I checked.”
Colin heard the sound of a paper being ripped open. “There’s a card enclosed,” Meg said. “‘Just in case you think I don’t mean what I say.’ What the bloody hell—The rest is in that damned code. Got a pencil?”
“What the hell would I be doing with a pencil?”
“What indeed? It’s a bloody good thing for you I went to the parish school for a spell. His lordship wouldn’t’ve hired us unless one of us could read. Here we are.” The scratch of a pencil on paper followed.
“How’s the brat been?” Jack asked.
“Quiet. Someone taught him manners. Christ, Jack, you’ve had one too many pints.”
“You like me when I’m drunk.”
“No, I don’t. Damn it, Jack!” Meg gave a yelp of protest.
“Why not?” Jack said, in a funny, thick-sounding voice. “You must be bored out of your wits.”
“Your breath smells like stout.” A thud followed, as though Jack had fallen into a chair. “Anyway, the kid’s right next door.”
“So what?”
“You know I don’t like having an audience.”
“You turning into a mum?”
“Don’t be stupid, Jack.” Her voice was harsh, like sandpaper.
“Oh, hell, Meggie, I forgot about your own kid. I’m sorry.”
She was quiet for so long Colin thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew in her breath with an odd sort of hitch, but when she spoke her voice sounded flat and ordinary. “I forget myself half the time.”
They fell silent. Then the sound of the pencil on paper stopped. “Oh, Christ.” Meg sounded as though she’d lost her breath for a moment. “God, he’s a sick bastard.”
“What?” Jack said.
She muttered something in a voice too low for Colin to hear. Jack let out a low whistle. “Not turning squeamish, are you?”
“Course not. But I don’t see the point—”
“That’s his lookout.” Jack’s heavy boots thudded on the floorboards. “Come on, let’s get it done.”
“I’ve a good mind not to.”
“Don’t be daft, Meg. He’d find out soon enough. We won’t get the blunt we were promised, let alone more, if we turn soft. Get a move on, will you, woman?”
“This wasn’t part of the agreement.” Her voice faded, as though she’d crossed the room.
“Damn it, Meg, we do what it takes to finish the job, same as always.”
“No!” Her voice bounced off the thin walls. Something in it sent a prickle of fear down Colin’s back.
“Jesus.” The boots thudded again. “I’ll do it myself, then.”
“W
ait a minute, Jack.” Meg’s lighter footsteps hurried after him. “Hell. Bloody, bloody hell.” She drew a rasping breath. “All right, if it’s got to be done, let’s make sure it’s done proper-like. Do we have any more laudanum? No? Then where’s the brandy?”
They appeared in the doorway a moment later. Jack had his hands behind his back, as though he was hiding something. Meg’s gaze moved over Colin’s face. She didn’t look angry, but something in her eyes made Colin want to crawl under the bed. He would have, if it wasn’t for the leg shackle. As it was, he inched back as far as he could against the spiky iron headboard.
Meg stood there for a long moment, long enough for his heart to start pounding again. Then she walked toward him. She had a bottle in her hand. She pulled out the cork. It had a strong, raw sort of smell. “Drink, brat. Bottoms up. Trust me, love, it’ll make what’s coming that much easier.”
Colin took a sip and gagged. It didn’t taste like the stuff they’d given him in the cart. It burned his throat like hot coals.
Meg tipped the bottle up and forced the rest down his throat. Then she looked over her shoulder at Jack. “Don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Let’s get the bleeding thing over with.”
Chapter 19
“C olin is a sensible boy,” Blanca said. “He’ll know you and Mr. Fraser will come for him.” She was doing up the strings on Mélanie’s evening gown with trembling fingers that pulled at the silk.
“He’s always had such faith in his parents. I hope—” Mélanie swallowed, her throat dry, the supper she had forced herself to eat roiling in her stomach. “I hope his faith proves warranted.”
“Don’t be foolish, Mélanie. You and Mr. Fraser are ten times more clever than Señor Carevalo. I never thought he had much wit for all his—how do you say it?—for all his swagger. Oh, Dios.” This last was because one of the strings had snapped off in Blanca’s hand.
Mélanie shut her mind to images of failure while Blanca stitched the string back onto the frock and finished doing up the ties. Ridiculous to be fussing with evening dress at this of all times. But though Mannerling’s gaming hell might be raffish, proper attire would be expected. She had left Edgar downstairs in the library to help Charles dress, after the three of them and Laura Dudley had choked down mouthfuls of soup and coffee in uneasy silence. Edgar had made no further reference to Charles’s revelations about Kitty Ashford or to his own abrupt exit. Mélanie doubted that he would have even had Laura not been present, but the memory of Charles’s story had reverberated through the room nonetheless.