She had been foolish! Joshua’s feelings were genuine; he loved her. Of all the women he’d known, he had asked her to marry him. She was special! And what had been his reward? To have his chosen bride believe a scurrilous story from a corrupt woman.
She started out of bed. She could see now that she had behaved very stupidly. She must go to him and make an immediate apology. Their meeting would give him the chance to deny the duchess’s evil words; his answer to a simple question would set everything to rights. She pulled the first gown she could find from the wardrobe and dressed quickly, her face a pale oval against the gown’s drab olive.
Slipping unseen from the house, she made her way swiftly towards the groyne. The sky was overcast, all trace of summer having for the moment disappeared, but only a light breeze blew and the water was unnaturally calm. She clambered down the sea-stained steps to the lower promenade. Then she saw him. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the night’s harrowing events were back and landing with a sickening thud. Her stomach was aflutter, but she continued to pick her way stone by stone across the beach until she stood only a few feet from him.
‘I cannot stay long.’ It was nerves that made her brusque. The certainty she’d felt minutes ago in her bedroom was deserting her.
‘Then I must be grateful for the few minutes you can vouchsafe me.’ He spoke lightly, but his eyes wore a puzzled expression.
It was better to ask the dreadful question at once, she decided; then they could clear the air and be comfortable together once more. But her voice when she spoke was hesitant. ‘Please accept my apologies for the way I behaved last night. I heard a disturbing story and it upset me greatly.’
He was still looking baffled. ‘Last night, Domino, we were at the play and enjoying ourselves, as I thought. What could possibly have disturbed you?’
‘The Duchess of Severn,’ she said baldly. ‘She visited in the interval.’
‘Dear Charlotte—and what now have I to thank her for?’
His tone was so much one of levity that Domino was convinced in that instant that the duchess’s spiteful story had been a complete falsehood. There was not the smallest shadow of guilt in Joshua’s face. Instead he was smiling gently at her, waiting it seemed for her to come to her senses.
In the face of his good nature, she was finding it difficult to continue and her words came haltingly. ‘The tale she told was most dreadful—and it concerned you.’
His look was still one of bland enquiry. She tried again, her words so quiet they were hardly audible against the soft swell of the tide. ‘Some years ago, she said, you seduced a young woman on the eve of her wedding; you were the bridegroom’s best friend.’
She was watching him closely as she spoke and saw his eyes narrow. A terrible premonition began to burn through her that he knew the rest of the story and she turned as white as the chalk cliffs that rose in the distance.
‘Say something, Joshua,’ she pleaded. ‘Say that it is not true—surely it is not true.’
‘Alas, my dear, for once the duchess is telling the truth. But it is an old story and I wonder how she came by it. No doubt Moncaster could tell us.’
She was speechless. Her rekindled trust in his innocence shattered in one savage stab. She had mentioned no names, but still she knew that her worst fears were confirmed. He had confessed, yet he was shaking it off as if it meant nothing. The vision she held of him crumbled into dust. He was no longer the man she had thought him. A different person stood in his place, a person that she could neither trust nor revere. She felt the dark abyss opening again beneath her feet, but this time she did not turn tail and run.
Gathering every ounce of resolution she possessed, and with a voice hardly wavering, she said, ‘Mr Marchmain, I regret that I cannot marry you.’
‘What! What are you saying?
‘I cannot marry you,’ she repeated dully.
‘This is a nonsense, Domino. Last night we were to wed. Last night you were eager to persuade your father that I would make an excellent husband!’
‘Last night I also learned of your past. And it is a past I cannot forgive.’
His head was shaking in disbelief and he began to stride back and forth, crunching the pebbles beneath his boots. After some moments he came to a halt in front of her, his gold-flecked eyes keen and lacking any trace of his usual lazy amusement.
‘My dear’, and he made to move towards her, but she stepped nimbly to one side, evading his touch.
His expression clouded, but he continued calmly, ‘My dear, you knew of my past, if not its details. I am too old and have wandered the world too long not to have a history. But that’s all done with. You are my only concern now, the only woman I have need or desire for.’
‘This has not to do with your desires, but everything to do with mine. I cannot marry a man for whom I feel contempt.’
It was a most terrible thing to say. Had she meant it? She must have done, since the blurted words had come instinctively, involuntarily. They had their effect. Joshua appeared thoroughly shaken. His face darkened into a scowl and when he spoke his voice was edged with anger.
‘I am not proud of my past. But, tell me, what exactly has earned your contempt?’
‘The people you hurt were dear friends of mine, and you hurt them not by accident, but purely to pursue your own pleasure. Her name was Christabel Tallis and the man she was to marry was…was Richard Veryan.’ Her face coloured with a suddenness that caught his attention.
‘Christabel and Richard Veryan!’ His brow furrowed for a moment, then she saw a dawning comprehension. ‘And was Richard the man you loved so hopelessly?’
He was mocking her, but she ignored the provocation. ‘It matters not. He was your friend and you betrayed him. Then you betrayed Christabel.’
‘I repeat, I am not proud of my actions. But it happened a long time ago when I was a shallow youth. You said yourself that I should be forgiven for crimes committed as a stripling. I distinctly remember that you were unhappy with my brother for the very conduct you now seem intent on emulating.’
‘That was before I knew what you had done.’
‘You knew what I had done. I told you the day we met on the Level.’
His jaw jutted pugnaciously; he was damned if he would let her rewrite their conversation to suit her own quixotic ends.
She was beginning to unravel, but she pulled her defences together and fought back. ‘You told me that you had failed friends. I did not know then the manner of that failure, or that it was my own very dear friends that you had treated so wickedly.’
‘So your moral code is relative, is it? My actions are forgivable, but only if the wounded parties are people for whom you have no care.’
She realised he was right and that her stance was illogical. But it did not change the way she felt. She had known too well the damage done to Richard, known how helpless she had felt to comfort him.
Her long silence seemed to encourage him and he softened his voice in persuasion. ‘Christabel and Richard are happy now, are they not? Isn’t that what is important? It was a bad deed, but good eventually came of it.’
She had no intention of disclosing that Christabel was staying just a few yards away and that a great deal of good had eventually come of it. But only eventually; so much unhappiness and suffering had gone before.
‘If they are happy, can we not be happy, too?’ he was asking.
That was simple to answer. ‘I can never be happy with a man who would deliberately cause such heartache.’
‘You refine too much on what is long past.’
‘How can you dismiss your wrongdoing so casually?’
‘I don’t. I am well aware of my sin. But I was a stupid boy—and now I have grown up. My life is different.’
‘Precisely how diffe
rent?’
She was regaining courage. If he had shown true remorse, pleaded with her, asked for forgiveness, she might have found it impossible to resist. But he had done none of those things. Instead he continued to be at his most mocking and combative.
‘Have we returned to my improper life and my fearsome reputation? Now let me see… You haven’t exactly baulked at consorting with a rake these past weeks. And, if I were being ungallant, I might say more than consorting.’
‘How dare you!’
‘And nor did Christabel mind,’ he continued inexorably. ‘Don’t forget it takes two. What happened was not my fault alone.’
‘You should have known better and acted better.’
‘I agree, but then so should she. It was she, after all, who was betrothed.’
Domino made to turn, hitching the skirts of her gown clear of the uneven strand. ‘I have no wish to continue arguing.’ And in the quietest voice yet, she added, ‘It is too painful.’
He seized on that one small phrase. ‘That would suggest that you still care for me.’
She said nothing and he pressed her, ‘If that is indeed so, why are you doing this?’
‘I have told you.’
Exasperated, he burst out, ‘Are you sure it’s not because you still love Richard Veryan and wish to punish me for the fact that he married elsewhere?’
It was an unkind stab. She turned back to him and, in a voice that wobbled only slightly, made her final adieu. ‘I have nothing more to say, Mr Marchmain. This is goodbye. Please do not attempt to contact me again.’
And with that she was gone.
* * *
Left alone, Joshua stared sightlessly out to sea. He had wanted to make amends to Domino for disrupting her life so badly and had offered her his hand in the best of faith. It had not been easy to breach the detachment that had protected him for so long, but he had done it. Only for her to walk away on a whim; it could only be a whim. It was absurd, he thought. He was no angel. He had behaved badly, once very badly, but that had been years ago, years when he’d been barely more than a fledgling and had understood nothing, neither who he was nor what he wanted. Surely youth offered some mitigation. They had been years of heady excitement, of feeling that every day as he ventured forth he could renew his world. He had certainly done so when he met Christabel. Renewed her world and Richard Veryan’s, too.
Fresh faced and inexperienced, he and Richard had launched themselves on the town in the very same month and become firm friends. Then one summer Richard had left for his home in Cornwall and returned with Christabel on his arm. A single look and he’d fallen immediately under her spell. She had been so alluring and so eager to seize life, so tempting and so easily tempted. He had cast caution to the winds, ignoring every demand of friendship. There had been nothing deliberate about the passion that had flamed between them; it had simply been too wild to control. That was no excuse, but why couldn’t Domino forgive such an old tragedy?
He guessed at the answer and his rancour began slowly to subside, dissolving into the sea air and on the cry of the gulls. He had destroyed her belief in him. Only very slowly had she grown to trust. At the outset she had been mightily suspicious, writing him down as a dangerous individual and one to avoid. But she’d been unable to avoid him. He had rescued her from her follies, one after another, and gradually she had begun to see him for the man he was, to see beyond the label society bestowed. And it turned out that the man she saw fitted her so perfectly that she had tumbled into love with him. Now the image she held had been shattered by a moment of careless talk.
But how careless? he wondered savagely. It had all the marks of spite, the marks of the vendetta waged by Charlotte Severn since first she became aware of the girl as a rival. The woman was stupid as well as vindictive. How could she not realise that the affair between them had ended months ago, that the plots she had been busily engineering against Domino were pointless? He would never return to her.
But she had wreaked all the damage she could possibly desire. It mattered not to Domino that Christabel and Richard were content. He had caused them pain, and there could be no defence for that. But if they had suffered, so, by God, had he. For years he had wandered Europe, seeking the most sublime art it could offer. He had taken solace in the beauty he’d found and tried to blot out the ugliness he’d known. Women had come and gone, his physical needs satisfied, but always there was beauty to strive for, a beauty just beyond his reach. He had begun to paint in the hope that here at least he would find what he so desperately desired. The seascapes he painted, one after another, the endless seascapes with their limitless horizons, spoke of escape from the unlovely life he led and the person he had become. But there could be no escape. For a brief moment, rescuing Domino from her plight had offered the prospect of a new wholeness, but that too had turned to ashes. He was not made for beauty. His decision to marry had been foolish, a transgression duly punished. The doubts that had bombarded him ever since he’d proposed were justified. He took a deep breath and began the climb to the promenade. He would live as he’d always done, he thought grimly, and go to hell in his own way. For years he had been doing just that and with some success.
* * *
‘Mr Marchmain and I have bid each other farewell, Papa.’
Domino stood just inside Señor de Silva’s office, ready to flee the room as soon as she was able. She was humiliated by this confession, for she was telling her father that she no longer wished to marry the man she had been mad to have only a matter of hours ago. This was an interview she wanted to be over before it had begun.
‘Farewell? What do you mean, querida?’
‘We have decided that, after all, we do not suit,’ she said as composedly as she could, silently praying that there would be no questions.
‘And are you quite sure of this, my dear?’
‘Yes, quite sure.’ But her heart was breaking. Surely any moment her father must hear the pieces falling to the ground.
‘You do not wish to marry him?’ Alfredo repeated, almost to himself.
He felt suddenly a good deal lighter. Domino’s determination to wed a man he considered grossly unsuitable had shocked him. It had been a struggle to appear complaisant, not wanting to be alienated from his only child. But now it looked as though her plans had come to nought. He would not have to suffer Joshua Marchmain as a son-in-law.
‘No, Papa, I no longer wish to marry him.’ Please, she begged inwardly, please don’t ask me why. Then thinking she should offer a little more to her long-suffering parent, she added, ‘I am sorry to have caused confusion.’
‘No confusion, my dear. You are right to draw back if you have doubts. And it seems that you do.’
She nodded miserably. Her father put his arms around her and gave her a comforting hug.
‘You have made a sensible decision,’ he said consolingly. ‘And now you must put it out of your mind and think what is to be done. Have you had a chance to consider?’
She had no idea what her life was to be. How very different to just a day ago! But she must not upset her father and, freeing herself from his arms, she fixed him with what she hoped was an unwavering look.
‘Lady Veryan will soon be travelling to London to consult a practitioner in Harley Street. She is wishful that I accompany her before I return to Spain.’ She congratulated herself that she spoke with hardly a tremor.
‘As her friend, that would naturally be a kind thought.’
‘Then I will do so, but she is to know nothing of this, Papa’, and she gestured vaguely in the air. ‘I mean nothing about Mr Marchmain. It cannot interest her and may cause her distress if she feels that I am upset.’
‘I will say nothing, you have my word. And Carmela knows nothing, so your friend will stay in ignorance of these doings. But are you upset, querida? Y
ou seem very calm.’
‘I know that I am doing the right thing, Papa,’ she answered obliquely. He must never know that her heart was crushed.
Her stay with Christabel in London would be brief. Beyond that, she hardly dared to think. Once her father was back in the capital, he would no longer need her services, for Lady Blythe would once more act his hostess while he remained in London. And Domino had no desire to linger in a place where at any moment she might come upon the man she most wished to avoid. She supposed that she would return to Spain—where else could she go?—but it would not be to marry as her aunts wished. Of that she was sure. After Richard she had been indifferent, ready to marry whatever husband they chose. But that was no longer possible. The sorrows of youthful infatuation had given way to an all-consuming passion, but for a man she could not wed. And if she could not wed him, she would wed no other. Always in the deepest recesses of her heart there would be this pain: sharp, nagging, insistent. A pain with Joshua’s name written on it.
Her father was speaking again. ‘I shall not be far behind you in leaving Brighton, my dear. But there is an important event to consider before we are finished here—the Regent’s birthday celebrations. I am sure you won’t have forgotten that the palace is throwing a grand dinner and ball in the Prince’s honour.’
The gentle reminder left her dazed. Her mind shrank from the idea of ever setting foot in the Pavilion again.
‘Friday’s celebrations are to be the most sumptuous occasion, I believe, and we have been greatly honoured by an invitation. It is fortunate that you will not have left for London by then.’
Surely she might be spared this further anguish. But, no, her father clearly expected her to accompany him. And she owed him that at least, for she had caused him nothing but trouble this summer. If he had an inkling of her true feelings, he would not wish her to go within a mile of the palace. But he saw a composed face and heard a calm voice and suspected nothing.
Society's Most Scandalous Rake Page 18