by Mary Balogh
She had never been sorry—until now. She had thought it was love. Perhaps in a way it had been—on both their parts. But it had been commitment only on hers. And even she had broken the commitment.
“How could I forget you?” she said again. “But, John, there was too much to lose. There were too many people dependent upon me, including children. You do not even know about the children. Colonel Bedwyn offered me a chance to save them. He has been very kind.”
“Kind?” he said, possessing himself of her right hand and holding it to his heart. “Kindness is good enough for you, Eve, when you have known so much more?”
She was drawing back her hand when she looked up. Aidan was standing on the path a few feet away. She jumped to her feet.
“Supper follows this set,” he said. “You would not want to be late for it, Eve. You will excuse my wife, Denson?”
Eve did not look back at John. He stayed where he was and said nothing in reply. She set her hand on Aidan's sleeve. All his muscles beneath it were rock hard.
“Perhaps,” he said, “by the time we return to the ballroom you will have seen fit to recover your smiles.”
“Aidan—” she began.
“Not now,” he said softly. “This is neither the time nor the place, ma'am.”
CHAPTER XVI
SHE SET DOWN HER FAN ON THE BACK OF THE SOFA in their private sitting room and drew off her gloves. Then she removed her plumes, dislodging some of the curls piled on top of her head as she did so. The animated smile she had worn all evening and half the night had been discarded outside the door. She looked worn and pale. She did not once look at him—or try to scurry away to the privacy of her dressing room.
“You were very nearly indiscreet,” he said.
“Very nearly, perhaps,” she agreed, her hand straying to the diamond at her bosom. “But not quite. It is unexceptionable to walk with a guest in a lamplit garden.”
“And sit in a shady spot away from the path with him?” he asked. “And give him your hand to hold to his heart?”
How could I forget you? . . . He has been very kind. The words had rattled about in his brain since he had heard them three or four hours ago. He had not yet had a chance to explore exactly why he had been so shocked and so angered and so . . . hurt.
“I did not give him my hand,” she said. “He took it and I was withdrawing it.”
“Ah, pardon me.” He stood before the hearth, his hands clasped behind him, regarding her bowed head. “All was coercion, I suppose—the dancing, the slipping out onto the balcony and down to the garden, the choosing of a secluded seat in the dark—as well as the hand-holding.”
“Aidan—” She looked up but then appeared to have nothing else to say. Her eyes were dark with misery.
“Who is he?” he asked. “I confess myself unfamiliar with either the man or the name.”
“Viscount Denson is the son of the Earl of Luff,” she said. “They live at Didcote Park, five miles from Ringwood.”
“Ah,” he said, realizing that he was behaving like the conventional jealous husband, yet unable to stop himself. He had been enchanted with her during the first hour of the ball. He had been . . . Yes, indeed, he had been falling a little in love with her. Perhaps it was as well that something had happened to jolt him back to reality. But he still felt angry and hurt.
She struggled to say more but then just shook her head and fingered one of the plumes lying on top of her gloves.
“You lied to me,” he said. “You told me there was no one else. You told me you had no wish to marry anyone else.”
“No,” she said. “I allowed you to make that assumption without contradicting you.”
“It was a lie of omission, then,” he said, “rather than commission. But a lie nonetheless. You should have told me. I was cast firmly and unfairly in the role of villain in that affecting scene in the garden.”
“Then you did not hear everything, or anything, I said.” She took her hand away from the plume and clasped it about the diamond pendant. “I told him how you saved me and everyone who depends upon me. I told him how very kind you have been to me.”
“Kind!” he said with very much the same tone and emphasis as Denson had used earlier. “I do not deal in kindness, ma'am. I have never been accused of being a kind man. I married you in order to repay a debt to a dying man.”
“Then why,” she asked, “are you so angry?”
It was an uncomfortable question, for which he had no answer.
“That private encounter will not be repeated,” she said. “Is that what you are afraid of? That I will shame you and disgrace your family? It will not happen. I made a deliberate choice not to wait for Viscount Denson but to marry you instead. There was no deception involved, Aidan. Ours was never meant to be more than a marriage of convenience. We did not expect to spend more than two or three days together, did we? I accepted the consequences of what I was doing. I accept them now.”
He knew that he should leave it at that. She was being reasonable and honest.
“I suppose,” he said, “it is he who was your lover.”
She shook her head slowly, though not in denial, he guessed. “Leave it, Aidan,” she said. “That is all in the past. It is over. It is gone.” There was a slight tremor in her voice, though what the emotion was that caused it he could only guess.
“Is it?” he asked. He hated the fact that he could now put a name and a face to her lover. “He is the son of your neighbor. I will be gone forever after I have returned you to Ringwood.”
“Aidan.” Her knuckles were white about the diamond. “Don't do this.”
He gazed broodingly at her. He had not cared at all that she had not come to him a virgin—though he had been surprised. But he did care that she still loved the man, that the necessity of marrying him had destroyed all her hopes for future happiness. He felt like the villain of the piece even though he knew he was not and that Eve did not regard him that way. Damn him for a fool! Had he really let down his guard sufficiently to fall in love with her? Only to find that her heart was given elsewhere? And knowing full well that he was honor bound to leave her forever within a couple of weeks? Had he not learned years and years ago that tender feelings were best kept tightly leashed somewhere so deep in his heart that he could convince himself there were no such things? He had not come by his reputation for granite control without effort.
“You are right,” he said. “Perfectly right. We will say no more on the matter. You will discourage Denson if he attempts another tête-à-tête with you, ma'am.”
Her jaw tightened and her eyes hardened. “That was unnecessary, Aidan,” she said. “I will not have you play autocratic husband with me. I had the choice of thinking only of my own happiness and waiting for love or of thinking of the happiness of other people and marrying you. I chose you. If I could go back and was faced with similar circumstances, I would do it again. I made my choice and will live faithfully with it. Not for the sake of the Bedwyns, but for my own self-respect.”
He made her a curt bow. “We will say no more on this matter, then,” he said. “I will bid you a good night.”
She was still staring at him, pale-faced and stubborn-jawed, when he turned and strode in the direction of his dressing room. Nothing had really changed. Nothing and everything. It was one thing to have married her when it had seemed that the marriage would make no difference to her except to allow her to keep her home and her fortune and her precious lame ducks. It was another to know that he had destroyed a dream of love that must have been all-consuming. Eve was not the sort of woman who would have given her virginity if she had not loved passionately and committed herself fully to a future marriage with her lover. He had been sleeping with her for a week, deeply satisfied with the sex, deeply satisfied with her, though the emotional component of their encounters had crept up unawares on him. He had not even realized until now, tonight, that it had not been just sex—not for him, anyway. She had been enjoying their nights too—he
could not doubt that. But for her it had been all physical, as he had thought it was for him too. All the time her heart must have been yearning toward the lover who had not come back to her in time.
It was a disturbingly distasteful realization. It was humiliating. It was . . . It was damned painful.
He shut the door behind him and realized he was not alone.
“I thought I told you not to wait up,” he said, his brows snapping together in an irritable frown. “I am perfectly capable of getting myself out of my garments and into my bed unassisted, Andrews.”
“I know,” his batman agreed. “But you will toss your clothes aside like so many discarded rags, sir, and then it will take me the devil of a time getting all the wrinkles shaken and steamed and ironed out of them. I would rather sacrifice three-quarters of a night of sleep.”
“You have a damned impertinent tongue,” Aidan said. “I don't know why I keep you. Don't just stand there looking like a long-suffering martyr, then. Help me out of this coat. Whoever designs military uniforms should be made to wear them and stand in the front lines in them during a battle. That would teach them a lesson if they lived long enough to learn it.”
He would sleep in his own bed tonight, he decided—tonight and every night for the rest of his life. He would not go to her again. He could not. He could not bear to touch her again.
His spirits touched the depths of darkness.
EVE WAS IN THE MORNING ROOM WRITING HER DAILY letter home. There was so much to describe that she scarcely knew where to start. But instead of the buoyant mood in which she had expected to be writing this morning, she felt heavyhearted and on the verge of tears, though she had been unable to shed the latter all through what had remained of the night after she had gone to bed—alone.
John had been back in England for two months. Two months! Yet in all that time he had not found even a day to come into Oxfordshire to see her. He had been too busy with his social schedule. For over a year—and for years before that—she had loved and yearned for a man who had never had any intention of marrying her. She knew now that that was the truth. She did not know what effect the knowledge would have on her feelings. It was too soon to tell.
But recurring thoughts about John mingled with thoughts of Aidan. Why had he been so angry? Why had he behaved like a jealous, autocratic husband whom she had deceived? And why could she not feel simply angry with him? Why had it hurt to hear herself called ma'am again? Why had the bed felt so very empty without him? And why, if she loved John so unwaveringly, had she felt during the early part of the ball that she might be falling in love with Aidan? Was it possible to love two men?
Eve laughed as she mended her pen after writing one sentence of her letter, though she did not feel at all amused. She loved two men, one of whom had never intended marrying her, the other of whom had married her and intended leaving her forever—according to their agreement and her express wishes.
When she was one paragraph into her letter, making heavy work of describing her appearance at St. James's Palace yesterday, the door opened abruptly.
“Ah, here you are,” Freyja said. “I thought you were probably still in bed. I cannot believe I overslept and missed the usual morning ride with Aidan and Alleyne. I do not suppose you ride?”
“How could I not?” Eve asked her. “I grew up in the country.”
“But you have never come with us,” Freyja said.
“I have never been asked,” Eve told her.
“Oh, pooh,” Freyja said walking closer. “If you wait to be asked when you are a Bedwyn, Eve, you will be left to fade into obscurity like a wilting violet. Which, by the way, I thought you probably were until yesterday morning. I have not been so diverted in a long while as when I saw you descend the staircase in your black court dress, your nose stuck in the air as if you were a duchess at the very least. And I admired your spirit last evening when I am quite sure Aunt Rochester instructed you not to grin like a bumpkin, but only to favor the occasional guest with a distant and gracious smile.”
“Oh, dear,” Eve said, “did I grin?”
“Aidan was clearly enchanted,” Freyja said. “I daresay you will be the on-dit in every fashionable drawing room today, the two of you. A married couple who have the effrontery to gaze on each other in public as if they could devour each other. I am proud of you. We all knew, of course, that when Aidan fell, he would fall hard. I suppose the same holds true of all of us.”
“Oh, but—” Eve began.
But her sister-in-law waved an impatient hand. “Go and change into your riding habit and we will take a turn in the park,” she said. “I suppose you do have a riding habit?”
“Yes, a new one,” Eve said. “But no horse.”
“Wulf keeps a stable,” Freyja said. “All prime goers. I'll have one brought around with mine. You are not going to need one that is lame in all four legs, I hope?”
“No.” Eve laughed and cleaned her pen. She could finish her letter later. Perhaps some fresh air would blow away a few cobwebs.
“Good,” Freyja said. “I despise women who shriek with terror every time a horse tries to move faster than a slow crawl and look about them frantically in search of a man who will gallop to their rescue.”
Less than half an hour later they were in the saddle and trotting side by side through the streets of London in the direction of Hyde Park. It felt very good indeed to be on horseback again, Eve decided, especially when she had been supplied with such a splendid mount. It felt strange, though, and a little alarming to be maneuvering past carriages and wagons and pedestrians and crossing sweepers.
They turned heads as they proceeded. It was Freyja who caused that, of course. Clad in a forest green riding habit, a jaunty, feathered hat on hair that billowed loose and golden almost to her waist, she looked startlingly handsome even though no one could ever describe her as pretty. Eve felt very prim in contrast, dressed in her new sky blue riding habit and hat, her hair coiled neatly beneath it.
“Are you coming to Lindsey Hall for the summer?” Freyja asked. “I know Aidan has only a month of his leave remaining, but you could stay longer and meet Ralf—short for Rannulf, as you probably know—and Morgan. Or are you going to follow the drum?”
“Neither,” Eve said. “I will be going home to Ringwood soon after the state dinner at Carlton House and remaining there. Perhaps neither Aidan nor the duke has explained to you the nature of our marriage.”
“Oh, pooh, that,” Freyja said. “You are not going to keep to that foolish arrangement, are you? You will die of boredom within a year. If I were in your position, I would demand a place in my husband's life, and in that of his family too.”
“But I do not—” Eve began.
“Aidan is my favorite brother,” Freyja said. “His happiness is important to me. Not that I am not fond of all of them, even Wulf. But Aidan is . . . special.”
Eve followed her sister-in-law's lead into the park and immediately remembered how she had felt when Aidan had driven her here the day of their wedding. It was like being instantly back in the country. But she was intrigued by what Freyja had just said.
“In what way?” she asked.
“Well, for one thing,” Freyja said, “he was the only one who really stood up for me three years ago. Did he tell you about that?”
“No.” But Eve remembered something. “He did tell me that he quarreled with the duke and cut short his leave three years ago. Was that about you?”
“I had just become betrothed to Viscount Ravensberg, our neighbor, eldest son of the Earl of Redfield,” Freyja said. “There was a ghastly scene because I wanted to marry Kit, his younger brother, and when Kit heard about the betrothal he came galloping over to Lindsey Hall hell-bent for leather, breathing fire and brimstone, and banged on the doors until finally Ralf went out. They fought each other bloody out on the lawn in the darkness and then Kit rode back home and broke Ravensberg's nose—or perhaps it was the other way around. It really was a splendid commotion, q
uite worthy of the Bedwyns. Aidan arrived home on leave a few days later.”
“And supported you?” Eve said. “How dreadful that no one else did. But how could the Duke of Bewcastle so ignore your feelings?”
“You obviously still do not know Wulf,” Freyja said. “But I had consented to the betrothal. Ravensberg was, after all, the eldest son, and I know my duty.”
They were not riding along one of the paths but across the grass. It was a cloudy day, but the air was warm and still. Birds were singing. Other walkers and riders were out.
“What happened?” Eve asked. “Are you still betrothed to him three years later?”
“He died,” Freyja said with a shrug. “And Kit became the heir after all. A delicious irony, would you not agree? Wulf tried to match us up last year when Kit came home—he had been in the Peninsula fighting too, you see. But when he came, he brought a financée with him—a prim and proper, milk and water miss, I do assure you—and married her not long after. I wish him a long and tedious life with her. For me it was a welcome release from duty, of course. I would a thousand times rather be free than married to an old beau.”
Eve looked closely at her. She doubted it very much—that Freyja did not care, that was. Her very hostility to the bride suggested that she had cared very much indeed—and perhaps still did.
“Why else is Aidan special?” she asked. She was hungry to know more about him.
Freyja pointed ahead with her whip. “There is Rotten Row,” she said. “We will be able to set our horses through their paces a little better once we arrive there. Aidan was always the most earnest of us, if that is the right word. He adored our father and was the most affected by his death. He used to follow him around when he visited all the farms and consulted his steward. Sometimes when he was missing and no one knew where he was, he would be found out in the fields working alongside the laborers. He was a happy, sunny-natured boy, always smiling and laughing.”