‘You must see that we have things to discuss, before you leave me for ever.’
Deborah put her hand to her temple, where a dull throbbing had begun. Was he talking nonsense, or was she in too much of a state to understand what he was saying?
‘I don’t see,’ she admitted, shaking her head in confusion. ‘What are you talking about, Robert? What things must we discuss?’
‘Have you not thought that you might be with child?’ he blurted out, his face going so pale she thought he might pass out. Indeed, having said the words, he came back to the sofa opposite hers, and sat down rather heavily.
Deborah felt as though he had struck her. He had used her, lied to her, thrown her love back in her face and trampled it underfoot, and now he was turning white about the mouth at the prospect he might have accidentally impregnated her?
She had always borne whatever life had thrown at her with the grace she had been taught a lady should always display. On the very few occasions she had felt her self-control waver, she had walked away from the prospect of confrontation.
But now she felt something inside her snap. She surged to her feet, crossed the narrow space between the two sofas and slapped him hard across the face. Tears were streaming unchecked down her face now, but she was past caring. She stood over him, breathing hard as she struggled to find words to tell him what she thought.
But there were none sufficiently strong to express the scope of her anger, or the depths of her anguish.
She watched as the marks of her fingers blossomed red across his pale features, a stunningly satisfying testament to her physical outburst. And she drew back her arm to hit him again.
This time, he caught her hand in mid-air, the crystal stopper flying from his fingers and shattering against the marble lip of the hearthstone.
So she raised her other hand, clenched it into a fist and flailed out at him wildly. He raised his injured left arm to ward off the blows she rained down on his face and shoulders. But all the while, he was twisting her other arm until he managed to bring her whole body down beside his on the sofa. She slithered across the leather seat in her effort to pull herself away, but he was too strong for her. Catching her round the waist with his left arm, he hauled her up against his chest, and somehow she found she was sitting on his lap, sobbing into his neck, while he held her tightly against his body, her arms clamped to her sides.
Eventually she stopped struggling, and just let the tempest of tears flood out. When the storm passed, she sagged into him, her eyes closed, waiting for his hold on her to slacken, for him to put her away from him.
But he just kept on holding her tightly, his own face pressed to the crown of her head.
Finally, though she kept her eyes closed, her face pressed into his neck, she drew enough strength from some source deep within herself to say, in a voice that quivered with defiance, ‘If I am with child, I at least, shall love it. Even if you won’t want to have anything to do with it, or with me ….’
‘No!’ He sat up, and, taking her chin in his hand, so that she had to look into his eyes, said, ‘If you are with child, I shall support you through the ordeal of bearing it. In any way I can! You only have to send me word, and I swear, I will do whatever you request of me!’
She frowned, once more puzzled by his words. But she seized on the tiny grain of hope she had gleaned from them.
‘If I find out I am pregnant, would you come down to Wycke, then?’
‘Of course, if you are sure that is what you want.’
Before she had time to think, she blurted, ‘Oh, then I hope I am pregnant.’
He reeled back, an expression of horror on his face.
‘You cannot wish that! Deborah, you cannot mean it.’
‘Why not?’ She sat up straight on his lap, glaring at him. ‘What is so bad about wanting to have a baby? Even though you don’t love me, surely you want to have children? When you proposed, you promised me—’
‘This has nothing to do with love!’
‘I know …’ she sighed ‘… I know you only married me to get the money. I have always known that you are in love with Susannah. And, indeed, I—’
‘In love with Susannah? Have you run mad? Where on earth did you get such a ridiculous notion?’
Her heart was beating very fast. ‘B-but you pursued her. You kept on begging her to dance with you. You even got her an invitation to Lord Lensborough’s ball so she would finally agree ….’
His face darkened. ‘That was what Lampton assumed too. That was what started this whole cursed train of events. Oh my God,’ he breathed, shutting his eyes, and letting his head fall against the back of the sofa. ‘How I wish I had not been such a damned fool. Though if I had not …’ He stilled, opened his eyes and looked at her with such sorrow she wanted to weep for him.
‘I know,’ she said, disentangling her hand from his so that she could run her fingers over the weals she had raised on his face, ‘you would not have had to watch her fall in love with Lampton ….’
He drew in a sharp breath, catching her hand in his own and holding it so tightly it almost hurt.
‘I can see the only way I am going to make you believe I care nothing for Miss Hullworthy is to confess the whole. Though it makes me ashamed to admit how low I sank.’ He bowed his head, pressing his mouth to her palm, the slightest quiver going through his shoulders as he breathed in deeply.
‘Though what have I got to lose?’ he said bitterly, lowering her hand to her lap. ‘You already hate me.’
She halted on the verge of agreeing with him. Could she really sit on the lap of a man she hated, her arm about his neck, hoping and praying he would not tell her to get to her own sofa, and leave him in peace? She had told herself she hated him, had even physically attacked him, and yet, when she had glimpsed one way of avoiding a separation, she had begged him to go to Wycke with her. That was not hatred. Her stomach seemed to turn over. It was very far from being hatred.
‘I first ran across Miss Hullworthy when I was searching for a man who was causing trouble for Lensborough’s fiancée. I had picked up his trail, and was looking for someone who could help me run him to ground. The first time she caught sight of me, she …’ he grimaced ‘… shuddered. By that time, I thought I had grown hardened to causing pretty women to feel nauseous. Indeed, Heloise had assured me that my scarring was so much less than when she had first met me … but then Miss Hullworthy turned up her pretty little nose at me, and I … I am ashamed to admit this, I decided to teach her a lesson.’
Deborah cast her mind back to the way he had behaved in those days, her brow furrowing in perplexity.
‘I could see how uncomfortable my presence made her feel. And so I made it my business to leap out at her, at every event I could find out she attended, just to spoil her evening! She sank even lower in my esteem when I perceived that if I had a title, or money, she would have overcome her disgust at my appearance, and positively fawned over me.’
Deborah could not argue with that statement. It was an aspect to Susannah’s character she had disliked very much herself.
‘So I held out the lure of an invitation to the most exclusive event of the season thus far. Lensborough’s ball. And she behaved exactly as I had known she would. With the soul of a whore, she put aside her natural inclination and sold herself to me for the space of a half an hour.’
‘No … you have misjudged her!’ She could perhaps understand why Robert felt so bitter, but he was wrong about Susannah. ‘She is just a bit spoilt, and rather silly, that is all. She got carried away with the idea of marrying well, at first, but she soon saw it was wrong to pursue a man only for his title. Lampton has no title. And she has agreed to marry him. She loves him!’
Robert made a sound that expressed his disgust at that statement. ‘She does not know the meaning of the word. She is just dazzled by his looks and superficial charm. She knows nothing of him at all. But that is beside the point.’ He shifted, taking her firmly round the hips and pushi
ng her off his lap, though she derived some comfort from the fact that he placed her on the cushions beside him, rather than tossing her on to the floor, as she had half-expected he might wish to do at one point.
‘It gets worse,’ he said grimly, looking down at his boots, rather than at her. ‘I made her the object of a wager. I bet Lensborough that I could get the prettiest débutante of the Season to grovel to me, though the very sight of me made her feel ill …’ He ran his fingers through his hair, an expression of contempt on his face.
‘I never cared for Susannah,’ he confessed rawly. ‘Not in the least. But because of that wager, Lampton set out in pursuit of her, thinking I was about to propose!’ He laughed bitterly then, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. ‘I never had any intention of marrying her.’
He raised his head to look at her, as he said, ‘The only woman I have ever wanted to marry is you.’
He got to his feet then, and paced away from her.
‘God, what a mess.’
Deborah looked at the stiff set of his shoulders, the misery that had been a constant burden for so long lifting somewhat as she repeated, ‘You wanted to marry me?’ But she would not jump to conclusions. ‘To get the money Miss Lampton had left you in her will. And to get revenge on Lampton for stealing Susannah from you ….’
He whirled round, his expression so fierce it would have scared her had he looked at her like that earlier in the day, when she had still believed he was in love with Susannah.
‘I did not consider he had stolen Susannah from me! It had nothing to do with her! Or, at least, very little. It was my past! My childhood. My God, Deborah, have you no idea how much I hate the Lamptons? Once I learned I could do him a bad turn, I did not care who I had to use, I wanted to hurt him! To avenge my mother, if nothing else! The Lamptons killed her, do you know that? Turning her out of her home, insinuating I was not my father’s child, refusing to let her see Charles, who she thought of as a son …’ His whole body was quivering with rage. ‘And so I used you. I bullied you into marrying me, promising you a secure financial future, and children, without sparing one thought for what it would do to you.’
He marched back to the sofa, leaning on the back and gripping it tightly, his face a mask of grief as he said, ‘And because of my selfishness, my desire for revenge, you got caught up in the feud, and those men took you, and hurt you …’ With a hand that shook, he traced the fading bruises on her cheek, the scar on her lip.
‘Raped you. And might have got you with child ….’
She gasped. ‘Nobody raped me!’
‘But the bruises on your neck … your dress was torn …’
‘You thought I had been raped?’ she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. Instead of trying to comfort her, he had kept as far from her as possible. Had even decided to banish her to the country.
‘You were wrong,’ she informed him in a flat voice. ‘My dress got torn when they hauled me out of the cab. They split my lip to teach me a lesson for trying to think I could escape. And my neck got bruised when they held me down to cut off a lock of my hair to send to you.’
‘But Heloise said you burnt all your clothes. She said you would never feel clean again. I thought—’
‘Yes, you have told me what you thought,’ she said bitterly. ‘I burnt my clothes because I was afraid I might have brought fleas into the house. And you would feel dirty if you had spent a couple of days sleeping in your clothes, in a filthy cell, with nothing but ale to wash in! I stank like a brewery!’
He came round the sofa then, intent on taking her hand. ‘They did not rape you. Thank God ….’
But she leapt to her feet, backing away from him. ‘What kind of man are you? You can hold my hand now, when you know I have not been defiled, but when I needed you, when I woke in the night shivering with fear, where were you then, Robert?’
She was shaking with the force of her anger and disappointment. Every time she felt as though there might be a chance for them, he slammed the door on her hope yet again.
‘I thought you would not want me near!’ he protested. ‘Not after that last time, when you ran out on me. Not that I blame you, but don’t you think I noticed how you flinched every time I got anywhere near you, after that?’
She realised she was standing with her fists clenched at her sides, slightly crouching as though she was preparing to spring at him. She made herself straighten up, and uncurl her hands, before hissing, ‘After you called me a slut, you mean?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I was so angry with you, Deborah, after the picnic. I had been watching you all day, trying to see which of my so-called friends it was you were planning on cuckolding me with!’
Hope flickered and died. Wearily, she went to pick up her bonnet.
‘You do not know me at all, do you, Robert? From the very first time you asked me to marry you, you have done nothing but insult me.’
‘I know.’ He drew himself upright, standing ramrod straight as she made her way towards the door. ‘You deserve better. It is why I am letting you go.’
‘Letting me go?’ She let go of the door handle, and turned to him with renewed anger. ‘You are sending me away. You have decided, for whatever reason, you can no longer bother with the pretence of wishing to be my husband, and so you hide behind all these pathetic excuses!’
She marched back to him, her eyes blazing with a fury that she no longer had any intention of trying to control.
‘For once in your life, Robert, why don’t you admit the truth!’
‘The truth?’ he said. ‘The truth is that once you have left me, I shall feel as though my heart has been ripped out. I don’t know how I will survive it, but for your sake, I know I must. It is the only thing I can do for you ….’
His heart would be ripped out? Her own heart gave a lurch as one or two of the comments he had made earlier, which had so confused her, came to mind. He had spoken of threatening Lampton with a pistol, so that she would be safe from Hincksey. He had denied loving Susannah, vehemently, declaring she was the only woman he had ever wanted to marry. She remembered the almost defiant nature of that proposal, his certainty that any sane woman would refuse it. And suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place.
‘You really are the stupidest, most self-absorbed man I have ever met,’ she said rather shakily.
‘Yes,’ he admitted bleakly. ‘I have done everything wrong where you are concerned.’
‘I, too, have been remiss,’ she said thoughtfully. She should have told him she loved him right from the start. And then shown him, day by day, that she meant it. It would have saved them both so much pain. ‘In not telling you that I love you.’
‘You cannot!’
‘That is what I have been trying to tell myself, but, sadly, it is the truth.’
He made an angry, slashing gesture at himself. ‘No woman could look at this and love this!’
‘Do you know,’ she said, placing her bonnet carefully on the table, ‘the first time I saw you, at Mrs Moulton’s card party, you never even noticed me? You walked in through the door, and immediately, all the other people there seemed to me like actors upon a stage. You were the only real person in the room. You were so vibrant, so alive, in your uniform, standing there, scanning the room like a man on a mission. I think I lost my heart to you in that moment.’
‘Mrs Moulton’s card party?’ He looked bewildered.
She began to draw off her gloves, noting with feminine satisfaction that his eyes were riveted upon her actions, ‘Your eyes slid straight over me as though I did not exist, but they snagged on Susannah, and stayed there. You looked at her the way all men do. Up and down her body, and then up to her face again, and then you sort of half-smiled.’ She reached up to caress his face. ‘Just a half-smile, the way you do. And that was when I noticed you had a few scars.’
‘A few scars!’ He flinched away from her hand. ‘My face is a ruin!’
She nodded. ‘A ruin of what it once was, perhaps. Yo
u must have been excessively handsome before you got burned. Probably too handsome for your own good.’
He stared at her as though she was out of her mind.
‘I saw you on three more occasions before you spoke to me. At the theatre, at the Farringdons’, and once, riding in the park, one morning, very early. It was not until you began to pursue Susannah, and got right up close, that I realised just how badly injured you were. And by then, all I could do was marvel at how well you concealed the fact.’ She tilted her head to one side, running her eyes over his whole frame. ‘When you wear your uniform, with those boots, it is almost impossible to tell that you have lost your left foot. You know, you are far more aware of your injuries than other people are. Certainly all I saw, in those days, whenever you came up to ask Susannah to dance, was the most attractive man I had ever met.’
‘You … found me attractive?’ He was leaning back against the arm of the sofa now, his breathing laboured. ‘You lost your heart to me?’ he said, as though her earlier declaration had finally sunk in.
‘Why are you saying this?’ His face flushed an angry red. He shook his head. ‘You cannot have done. It is impossible.’
She shrugged. ‘That was what I kept trying to tell myself. I knew a man as experienced, as sophisticated, as you would never look twice at a drab little provincial girl, scarcely out of the schoolroom, and that I must not let the infatuation grow any deeper. But I could not stop myself. And when you proposed …’ her eyes were shining as she thought back to that day ‘… it was as though all my dreams had come true.’
‘I am no woman’s dream,’ he persisted. ‘More like a nightmare. Deborah, I do not understand why you persist in saying these things—?’
‘Because it is the truth, you idiot,’ she said rather sharply. ‘Though heaven alone knows why I still love you. When you have been at such pains, right from the very first, to let me know how very little you think of me.’
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