She frowned, perplexed. “Learn to fence, you mean?”
“Yes.” He stood up and came down the length of the table. He moved behind her chair. “You’ve finished your dessert. Come on.”
“Come on?” she repeated, twisting around to look up at him. “Where?”
“For a fencing lesson.” He began pulling her chair out from the table. “You said you wanted to learn.”
“When I was a girl! That was a long time ago, John.”
“I know at twenty-six you’re ready for the grave. But I think we have time to squeeze in a few fencing lessons first.” He grasped her arms and pulled her to her feet. “Look at it this way. You hate me, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” she said at once.
“Well, then, this is your perfect opportunity to stab me with a sword.”
It only took her two seconds to make up her mind. “What are we waiting for?”
“I knew that idea would appeal to you.” He tilted his head and kissed her neck, but he slipped away before she had the chance to even chastise him for it. “Is my old fencing gear still in the attic?” he asked as he started out the door.
“I don’t know,” she answered, following him out of the dining room and down the corridor to the stairs. “Is that where you kept it before?”
“When I was a boy.”
They went up to the attic and found that his boyhood practice foils were still there, tucked away in a wooden crate.
He pulled them out, took one and gave the other to her. He stood her in the large, empty space in the center of the attic and faced her. “Do what I do,” he told her, and when he lifted his left hand high, slightly behind him, she did the same. He pointed his sword at her with his right hand, and she pointed hers at him.
“Good,” he said. “Now watch me.”
He stepped forward with one foot, bending his knee, and thrusting the sword in his hand forward. The cushioned tip touched her just under her ribs.
Viola tried to do what he did but encountered a problem almost at once. “I can’t do that,” she complained. “My skirt gets in the way.”
He straightened, grinning at her. “Well, if your skirt is really a problem—”
“No,” she said before he could finish his thought.
“But if you just took it off—”
“No! Put that possibility out of your mind.”
“That possibility is never out of my mind.” He turned away. “But if you are going to be prudish about these things, we shall have to think of another solution.”
He put down his foil and crossed the room to an old trunk. “There used to be costumes in here when I was a boy,” he told her as he opened it. “For Fancy Dress parties and putting on plays and such.”
Rummaging through the pile of old clothes, he pulled out a pair of trousers. “Mine,” he explained. “When I was about fourteen. They should fit you.” He pulled an old white linen shirt out of the trunk and tossed both garments to her.
She caught them in her arms and waited, but he didn’t move to turn his back. “John, if you want to be friends, you have to be nice.”
“I could be very nice to you,” he said, a world of meaning in those words and the way he said them.
“That isn’t what I meant! Turn around.”
He gave a heavy sigh and obeyed. “I’ll be honorable about this,” he told her over one shoulder as she removed her lacy shawl collar, “although it is most unfair. My own wife and I can’t even have a peek at her petticoats.”
“You’ve peeked at plenty of petticoats,” she shot back as she unfastened the buttons down the front of her bodice. “You don’t need to see mine.”
She slid out of her dress and undergarments and kicked off her slippers, then pulled on the trousers and shirt. “All right,” she said, buttoning the shirt. “You can turn around.”
He took one look at her in his boyhood clothes and chuckled. “They look much better on you than they ever did on me,” he said and walked back to the center of the room.
She rolled up the shirtsleeves and turned up the trousers at the hem, then slid her feet back into her slippers and picked up her foil.
They faced each other, blades pointed as they had been a few moments before, and this time she was able to step forward, bend her knee, and thrust the blade just as he had demonstrated.
“That is called a lunge,” he told her. “Do it again, only this time aim for somewhere on my torso.”
She bit her lip, tilted her head to one side, considering. She lowered her gaze.
“Somewhere fair,” he said at once.
Viola took a step forward, thrusting with her foil toward his stomach, and as she did so, he brought his blade up to block her move. “That,” he told her, “is a parry.”
She straightened with a nod. “I see.”
“Good.” He faced her, sword pointed. “Hate me, do you?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. Here’s your chance to express it.” He gestured with his blade. “Have at me. Stab away.”
She looked at him, at the challenge in his eyes, and she lifted the sword, pointing it at him. She mirrored his stance and thrust again, but her jab was halfhearted, and he evaded her simply by turning sideways.
“Pathetic,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not trying.”
“I don’t want to accidently hurt you.”
He gave a shout of laughter. “I’ll just bet you don’t.” He gestured with his blade. “Come on. Try again. It might help if you think of all the reasons why you hate me. Why do you hate me, anyway?”
“Why?” She stared at him. “How can you even ask me that? So many reasons, I can’t list them all!”
“Then tell me. Show me.”
She made another jab at him, harder this time.
“Better,” he said, blocking her move with nothing more than a flick of his wrist. “Keep going. Why do you hate me?”
“You lied to me before we got married, that’s why.” She struck at him with the foil. He parried her again.
“Very good,” he said. “You just might have a knack for this.”
“You make an appealing target.”
“I thought I would.” He beckoned her to continue. “Don’t stop now. I want you to get all those resentments out in the open once and for all.”
“Is that what this is about?” she asked, lunged again and missed him altogether. “You think this will solve everything?”
“No.” He thrust with his blade, but very slowly, giving her plenty of time to defend herself by bringing her foil up as he had showed her. “But it is a start.”
They both stepped back.
“So,” he said, “I told you I loved you before we got married, and that was a lie, and that’s why you hate me?”
“Not only for that. There’s Elsie.”
“Oh, yes, Elsie.” He nodded, sounding so infuriatingly calm that she wanted to throw the sword at him. Instead, she jabbed her foil in his direction, pulled back when he parried her, and without waiting did it again. Their swords clashed together.
“When I found out about her, it devastated me. I couldn’t bear to sleep with you anymore. So you walked out on me! I hate you for abandoning me.”
“I waited a month, sleeping alone, being driven mad by the fact that you were in the next room and wouldn’t let me sleep with you. You wouldn’t relent. You just cried a lot.”
“You waited a month before you left. How big of you, to wait a whole month.” With those words, she felt as if a torrent had been unleashed. Using the sword he had given her, she gave vent to what she felt, taking stabs at him with both the blade and her tongue. “You left without a word. You just packed your things and took off. No good-bye, no note! I was so in love with you, I would have forgiven you for Elsie eventually, but you never gave me the chance. You never even tried to see my side. You broke my heart and didn’t care.”
She drew back. “Two months later, you showed up here. You wanted to make up
. Of all the arrogant, conceited—” She broke off and struck again. Their foils clanged together—once, twice, three times. She pulled back, panting.
“I wasn’t just saying that,” he told her, shaking back his hair, “and I wasn’t feeling conceited, believe me, especially when you slapped me right across the face and told me to go to the devil.”
“But you didn’t go to the devil, did you?” She lunged at him, he parried her again. “You went to Jane Morrow. I can only assume you didn’t want to make up all that badly.”
“If that was what you assumed, you were wrong.” He moved onto the offensive, thrusting his blade at her, but slowly, giving her plenty of time to defend herself against the move.
“Was I?” she countered, hitting his foil, almost wishing she’d struck him instead. “You had such a fine way of showing me how much regard you had for our marriage.”
“Jane meant nothing to me,” he said, and straightened. “Nor I to her.”
“So, you devastated me a second time for someone who meant nothing to you. How lovely. I suppose you used her to forget about me?”
“Actually, yes.”
She laughed in disbelief. “And Maria Allen? Another balm for your wounded male pride?”
“If you want to put it that way.” He took a deep breath and lowered his foil. “You probably won’t believe this, but I wanted to reconcile with you then, too. At Brighton.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “Brighton? What are you talking about?”
“Two years ago, when I followed you down to Brighton. Remember? And what did you do? You saw me, gave me one contemptuous look that would have frozen any man’s blood, told me to go back to my whores, then turned your back and walked away. You left town before I could even unpack my trunk and ran to your brother.”
“My departure from Brighton didn’t stop you from finding Maria, did it?”
“No. And yes, I got in a duel over her. You want to know why? Nothing very noble, I admit, but I’ll tell you. I was the latest in a long line of Maria’s lovers when her husband decided he didn’t like being cuckolded anymore. He called me out and we shot each other in the shoulder for the sake of honor. Stupid, I grant you, but true.”
“And what happened then, John?” she cried. “I went to Hammond Park. Out of concern for you, though God only knows why! When I got there, you were in bed. Loss of blood, the doctor told me. I asked you if you were going to be all right, and what did you say? You said, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, darling, but I’m going to live. Maybe you should get some arsenic.’” She stabbed at him and missed. “I was so afraid you were going to die. And then you said that to me.”
“After Maria, what did you want me to say?” he asked. “Something along the lines of, ‘Sorry, old thing, messed it all up again, but if you stay, I’ll make it up to you.’ Is that what I should have said? Would anything have been the right thing to say?”
“Words are not what mattered to me! It’s the things you’ve done that matter. Did you ever once give a thought to what life has been like for me, John? Seeing all your other women and knowing you would rather be with any of them than with me?”
“That is not true. I would rather have been with my wife. The woman who should have been the mother of my children, the woman who should have been in my bed and wasn’t there. Who made it clear as crystal she loathed me, would never stop loathing me, and couldn’t bear to be anywhere near me.”
“Do you think that justifies what you did?”
“I am not trying to justify any of the things I’ve done. I am trying to explain why I did them.”
The very calmness of his demeanor, the fact that he was not getting defensive and fighting back only made her hurt even more. She lifted the foil in her hand and struck out, going on the attack. She struck at him again and again. He parried each of her movements with an ease that was almost leisurely, but he also moved backward, allowing her to be the aggressor and drive him across the room.
“I hate you for all those women, and I don’t care about your reasons for going to them!” she cried as she lunged at him and lunged again. “I hate you for all those other women you have kissed and touched and made love to, women to whom you gave the things that were supposed to be for me and only me!”
His back hit the wall, and she struck one more time, thrusting her blade right at his heart. He didn’t even try to block the move, and took the hit square in his chest. “I hate you, John,” she said, and drew back, panting. “For taking my love for you and destroying it. And for making no more than two halfhearted attempts to reconcile. And for coming back now just because you need something from me that no other woman can give you.”
Out of breath, she lowered her arm and dropped the foil. It clattered to the floor. The image of him in front of her began to blur. “Most of all, I hate you for making me hurt all over again,” she choked, “when I had finally gotten over you.”
She turned away, but of course, he wouldn’t let her leave. She heard his blade drop to the floor, just before she felt his hands close over her arms. He was not even winded, damn him.
“You said you wanted to understand me better, and that’s why I’ve tried to explain things,” he said. “I cannot do more than that about what is in the past. I am not walking away again, and I’m not letting you do that, either. This time, we are going to find a way to live together without annihilating each other. That’s why we have to be friends.”
She shook her head. “It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
She pulled against his hold, and he let her go. She didn’t answer him, for it was a waste of breath and she was already exhausted. Instead, she walked down the stairs with him right behind her, and neither of them spoke until they reached the door of her room. She paused there and turned toward him. “Good night, John.”
“Why is it impossible, Viola? You always want to talk about things, so talk. Why is it impossible for us to be friends?”
She sighed with frustration. “Because, well, because—” She stopped as he reached up to tuck a loose tendril of her hair behind her ear. She pushed his hand away. “Friends have trust, and I don’t trust you.”
“I will have to earn your trust, then, won’t I?”
He was being so damned reasonable. It was always dangerous when John was reasonable. She licked her lips. “You are doing this to trick me,” she accused. “Trick me into bed.”
He crossed his fingers. “Is it working?”
“No. It will never work again.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
“Not a thing.” She turned around and reached for the knob of her bedroom door, wanting desperately to get away. “Because I still hate you.”
“No, you don’t. Not anymore.” He closed his hand over hers to stop her from opening the door. “That night at Grosvenor Square, when I came in out of the rain to see you, you let me stay. That’s when I knew you didn’t hate me anymore.” His hand over her hand, he leaned closer. His body brushed against hers, just barely, but enough that Viola’s heart began to pound in her chest as if they were fencing again. He kissed her hair, then her temple, then her cheek. “You don’t hate me, and if we become friends, you never will.” He pressed his lips to her ear. “See how this works?”
That quiver began in her tummy, the quiver of fear and hurt mixed with the desire, and she felt as if she were drowning in her own confused emotions.
“I am going to make you trust me,” he murmured. His hand caressed the back of hers where she gripped the doorknob. “I am going to make you stop being afraid.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you.”
But she was. Oh, she was.
He knew it, too. “Now who is the liar?” he asked, and kissed her ear, then let go of her hand and stepped back. “Good night, Viola,” he said, and started toward his own door a bit farther down the corridor.
She went into her room and shut the door. As Celeste helped her change into n
ightclothes, she listened to the low murmur of his voice in the room beside hers as he spoke to his valet.
He was right. She didn’t hate him anymore. She lost her grip on her hate and her resentment a little bit more every time they talked, feeling more of the old magic every time he smiled, every time he made her laugh, every time he did something nice, every time he kissed her. And without her hate, she had no shield. No weapons. She was out in the open, unprotected and vulnerable.
What had happened to her pride? Viola climbed into bed and hugged her pillow, huddling into a tight ball of misery. Pride, she thought, was all very well, but it made for a lonely life.
If she and John became friends, she would fall for him again, and he knew it. If they were friends, it was only a matter of time before she started to believe him again, believe he was sincere, believe that he cared, believe that he might, one day, love her when he had never loved anybody in his life. If she began to believe in him again, she would slide all the way down, right into his bed, heart in her hands for him to take all over again. And God help her after that because if he walked away again, it would smash her heart into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 14
The following morning, Viola did not come down to breakfast, and John decided to take breakfast to her instead. He went to the kitchens, and upon learning that no food had been sent up to her, loaded two trays with some of her favorites and his and took them to her room.
When he opened the door, he found her sitting up in bed, reading her letters, which had come in the morning post. “What are you doing?” she cried as he entered the room, followed by a pair of maids.
“What does it look like?” he asked, gesturing to one of the maids to put the tea tray on the bedside table. He took the tray of food from the other maid and waved both servants out of the room. “I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t invade my privacy this way.”
“Silly to tell me I cannot do what I have already done,” he said as the door closed behind the maids, leaving them alone. He sat on the edge of her bed, set the tray on her lap, and poured tea for them both. “Besides, it is my house.”
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