And then he dealt the death blow to any last, lingering hope they might be able to salvage anything from the current situation.
‘You owe me seven years, Cora,’ he snarled. ‘Seven dark, blighted, hellish years…’
‘I don’t owe you anything!’ she cried, finally finding the strength to close her eyes and turn her head aside. She owed him nothing if he could believe she had lied about how she felt about him back then. Or was capable of just walking away without one word of explanation.
And then she heard Robbie growl, ‘You have to marry him, Cora. Nothing else for it now you’ve slept with him. A man’s heir, you know…’
And she saw another door slamming in her face.
She might have known Robbie would side with Kit against her. Men did not care how miserable women were made by their decisions.
Beasts, the lot of them!
With a wild cry, she raised her arms, and pushed Lord Matthison hard in the chest, forcing him far enough back for her to get to her feet.
‘I hate you both,’ she panted, looking wildly from one to the other. For years, growing up, their friendship had excluded her, the little girl who did not have the freedom to escape the stultifying atmosphere at home. How she had envied them their education, their freedom to stay out of doors all day long, their freedom to choose each other for a companion! For a brief time, when she travelled with them for the first time to Kingsmede, she had thought they would include her. But they had not. They had both lied to her, and evaded her, and now they were siding together, to thwart her, and contain her, and control her.
She cried out again, an inarticulate sound that expressed all her rage and pain and betrayal. She did not need either of them! For the last seven years she had earned her own living, and she could jolly well do it all over again if necessary!
The door opened. ‘Dinner is—’
The butler got no further than that, as Cora pushed past him in her desperate need to get out of the room, and away from the two men who had so spectacularly betrayed her. Again.
Chapter Eleven
She was too distraught to hear the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs after her. Not ’til she reached her room, and yanked open the door, did she become aware that Lord Matthison had chased after her.
But she was too quick for him. By the time he caught up with her, she had slammed the door, and locked it.
‘Cora, let me in, damn you!’ he yelled, pounding on the door.
‘No!’ she yelled back in defiance. ‘Go back to London and marry Miss Winters! She can have your blasted money and your rotten title. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want you!’
And then her legs folded under her.
She had been desperately trying to hold herself together ever since her memory had returned. Now she had completely run out of will-power. She bowed her head, and yielded to the grief she had held in check for seven years, her only concession to dignity being to muffle the sound of her sobs by burying her face in the carpet.
When she eventually ran out of tears, she could not say she felt any better for having given way to her emotions. Her eyes were swollen, her head throbbed and every muscle in her body was shaking. Her hair had come down and hanks of it were plastered to her face and neck.
When she tried, she could not get to her feet. So she crawled to the dressing room where she dipped a washcloth in cold water, and wiped it over her face.
And then she sat down on the pile of towels on the stool, wondering what on earth she had been crying for.
This emotional storm had been sparked off by Kit’s angry insistence that she marry him. Should that not have made her heart leap with joy? She had loved him for as long as she could remember. Even when her mind had not allowed her to recognise him, her heart had somehow known it belonged to him.
She eyed her reflection with some hostility. She rather suspected it had been Cora doing all the weeping. Mary had always been too determined to hang on to her self-control to let her emotions get the better of her.Yes, she turned more fully towards the mirror. But then Cora had just discovered the man she adored did not love her back.
That was what all the weeping had been about. She was having to deal with the pain her seventeen-year-old self had never had the chance to purge from her system. She had just remembered exactly how she had felt when she had seen that woman opening her bodice and offering Kit her bared breasts. When he had walked towards her with a smile, taken her in his arms and kissed her, she had felt as though he had plunged a dagger into her heart. For a few minutes, she had been out of her mind with grief…
And then she had gone down to dinner, the intervening years gone in the blink of an eye. She was still reeling with the sense of his betrayal, and instead of him giving her any sort of explanation, or even an apology, he had accused her of all sorts of crass behaviour. How dared he?
She straightened up with a sniff, anger restoring her backbone. Unable to find a handkerchief about her person, she inelegantly wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her gown needed laundering anyway, after rolling about on the floor in it.
Seven years, she reminded her reflection crossly. It had all happened seven years ago, not yesterday! Even though that was what it felt like.
She twisted the washcloth between her fingers, studying it, rather than the woebegone reflection that inhabited the mirror. It was all very confusing. One minute she felt like Cora, the heartbroken girl who had just discovered her idol had feet of clay. Then next, she was Mary, older, wiser…but no less in love with the same man.
She sighed, cupping her chin in her hands and regarding herself in the mirror with resignation. It made little difference which version of herself she felt like; both of them were hopelessly in love with a man who did not love her back. As the starry-eyed Cora, she had shut her eyes to reality, grasping at a fairy-tale ending where the prince married the peasant and they all lived happily ever after in his castle. She had not even noticed the wicked witch hovering in the background, casting her spells over the gullible young princess-to-be.
She shook off the fancy, returning to the knotty problem of why she recoiled from the prospect of marrying a man she had been in love with, one way or another, her whole life.
She could not entirely blame her reluctance on the idealistic, youthful, Cora part of her. Even Mary, who knew the value of financial security, respectability and freedom from drudgery had baulked at the prospect of marrying him. Mary, who had loved him so much she had tossed her scruples aside, had declared she would rather be his mistress.
Well, it would have been impossible for a seamstress to marry a wealthy Viscount. But now she knew she was Cora…why should she not marry him? Her father had been a gentleman, after all. And her mother from a perfectly respectable family. There was not such a vast gap between their ranks that a match was ineligible.
And she belonged to him. Even when her mind had refused to let her remember what had passed between them before, her heart had leapt at the very sight of him. For he held it in the palm of his hand, to cherish or crush as the whim took him.
She gasped.
That was it! She was afraid he would inflict untold misery upon her. She did not want to be enslaved by the love she bore for a man who could not return even a tenth of her feelings.
What, then, should she do?
As if in answer, her stomach growled. It was hardly surprising. She had eaten virtually nothing all day. She crossed to the bell-pull, and yanked on it to summon a maid. Dealing with her hunger was at least something practical she could see about. A self-deprecating smile came to her lips. Putting off thinking about unpleasant topics was something that Mary had always been extremely good at.
It was not long before she heard a tentative knocking on her bedroom door.
Her head spun a little as she rose to answer it, confirming that her decision to send for food had been a wise one. There was no sense in making herself ill, on top of everything else.
‘Cora, are you all right?
You look so pale.’
It was not a maid, standing in the doorway, but Lord Matthison.
‘Don’t lock the door again,’ he pleaded, his hand shooting out to push the door wider. ‘I will not come in, if that is what you want, but…’ He thrust his fingers through already disordered hair. ‘If anything should happen to you…’
To look at his haggard expression, anyone would think he really cared about her. But a little voice that she could not quite manage to silence pointed out that he had already been accused of murdering her once. He had spent seven years under that cloud. It would get even worse if any harm befell her now, whilst she was under his roof.
‘I rang for a maid,’she said resentfully. ‘I need something to eat.’
An expression of incredulity flashed across his face. Then he straightened up, his eyes hardening.
‘Of course.’ For the first time she noticed the girl who had brought her tea earlier, hovering further down the corridor. At a brusque gesture from Lord Matthison, the girl scuttled off on her errand.
‘You cannot remain in your room indefinitely,’ he said coldly. ‘We have matters to discuss. Arrangements to make.’
‘Yes.’ She leaned against the doorframe, her arms folded round her waist. ‘But not now. Not tonight. Please…’She couldnotbringherself tolookhimin the eye any longer. The coldness emanating from him in waves was already making her shiver. ‘Please, just let me have tonight to myself,’ she begged him. Just standing here talking to him was more than she felt able to cope with.
‘We can discuss—’ her broken heart, her unrequited love, the other women in his life ‘—matters tomorrow, if you are determined to proceed with the betrothal we entered into seven years ago.’ She still could not quite understand his determination to marry her, when he could look at her so coldly. ‘I suppose, technically, it still stands.’
Could it be as simple as that? He had made a pledge? And a man of honour did not withdraw, once he had given his word. She did look up at him then, but his eyes had narrowed, and he was looking at her as though she was a complete stranger.
She supposed she was in a way. She was certainly a stranger to herself. Part Cora, part Mary, and completely muddled.
‘You came to my bed,’ he grated, as though he now found it hard to believe.
How cruel of him to remind her how weak she had been! And yet, she realised miserably, if he were to put his arms round her this minute, and murmur a few soft words, she would cling to him, and beg him to come into her room, and stay with her all night. How she wanted him to hold her, as he had held her last night! Tenderly, as though she was precious!
‘You could be carrying my child,’ he said, growing noticeably angrier.
She flinched. Cora had only trapped him with a kiss. Mary had done it with a potential pregnancy. He had been gentleman enough to spare Cora any expression of resentment. Mary, the wanton, could expect no such consideration. She felt tears stinging her eyes again. She had survived waking in the shattered, blasted ruins of the life she had dreamed of as a girl. But she did not think she could bear hearing him systematically destroying the illusion that taking her to his bed had meant as much to him as it had to her.
‘Please, Christopher, don’t say another word! I cannot bear any more! If I am carrying your child…’Oh, how she wished he wanted her to be the mother of his children! ‘But even if I am not…’ She faltered. If she was not pregnant, she might be able to persuade him to let her go.A vision of a future without him in it stretched out like a wasteland before her. It would be unbearable! She shuddered. She could see herself going to her grave loving him, and him alone. It was hopeless. ‘I could never marry anyone else.’
Unable to bear standing so close to him, yet feeling so far apart, she retreated into her room.
Lord Matthison stared balefully at the door she had shut in his face. Cora did not want him in her room. She did not want to marry him. The thought that she might be carrying his child had been so distressing it had brought her to the verge of tears.
But she could not marry anyone else now. By taking her to his bed, he had effectively ruined her!
God, how he wished he had not insisted on waking Cora! Mary had loved him unreservedly, giving him her whole heart along with her virginity. She had trusted him with her future, even though she believed she could only ever be his mistress.
But he, damn fool that he was, had wanted to be able to marry her. As Cora.
And now, without knowing quite how or why, he had lost them both.
The maid returned, and nervously cleared her throat. She could not get to the door while he was standing with his nose to it, glaring at it as though he could blast it to smithereens by force of will alone.
Muttering a curse, he stepped away. The girl darted him a wary glance, tapped timidly on the door, and scuttled inside with Cora’s supper. She looked as though she thought her employer had lost his mind. She was probably right. It had been a long time since he had known anything remotely resembling sanity. Every time he had thought he’d begun to make sense out of the chaos Cora had left behind, a new twist in his path had made him re-assess where he really was. And always, always, she had been dancing just out of reach, like some elusive sprite.
From the very first, it had been that elusive quality about her that had tantalised him. The slender girl who had darted shy glances at him across the table when she thought her father was not looking. The prim, untouchable maiden who had taken on the burden of housekeeping for her exacting father after her mother’s death. That ethereal, otherworldly quality she possessed had been what had made it so easy to think of her as a spirit, wandering the earth. Last night as he’d held her in his arms, he had thought he’d captured her at last, but today…
He stepped back from the door that separated them, a shaft of pain lancing through him.
She still eluded him. Even as Mary, there had been a part of her he could not reach. She could have been his mistress, but never his wife. He had thought he would get what he wanted once she knew she was Cora. Instead, she had gone and slammed the door in his face. And turned his world upside down all over again.
Had she ever really loved him?
If she had, surely seeing him again would have restored her memory? But no, it had been coming back to Kingsmede, and hearing her brother’s voice, that had freed her mind from the chains that bound it.
He found himself halfway down the stairs, his hand clenching the banister, breathing hard. Why had she told him she loved him if she had not meant it? Why, he thumped the banister with his clenched fist, had she felt the need to make such a colossal fool of him?
She had made him believe she welcomed his kisses. That day he had taken her rowing and she had wound up in his arms, and he had finally thrown caution to the winds…she had responded with an eagerness he thought matched his own! He had really believed they could overcome all the barriers he had feared might keep them apart. Her youth, his rank, their complete lack of funds.
That, he decided grimly, that was the moment he had lost his mind. He had been crazy to have thought they could make it work.
Crazy.
‘Christopher!’
He lifted his head at the sound of Robbie calling his name, to find he was standing in the middle of the hall, so completely lost in thought he had forgotten why he had gone down the stairs at all, never mind which room he had been heading for.
Robbie was standing in the open doorway to the library.
‘What you said to Cora,’he growled. ‘Before dinner. Itdidna’makesenseto me.’Heshook hisshaggy head. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all evening.You accused her of leaving you.’ He scowled, shaking his finger at him. ‘But when you wrote me, ye said she had lost her memory and did nae know who she was when you found her. Which is it? For I canna see how both can hold true.’
He stood back, inviting Lord Matthison to join him in the library. ‘I think it is high time we had a long talk, and worked out just what the hell has been
going on.’
Cora groaned and rolled over in bed.
She would have sworn she had not slept a wink all night, but sunlight was streaming through a chink in the curtains, and last time she had opened her eyes the room had been completely dark.
Her throat was raw, her tongue felt too big for her mouth, and her head ached all the way down to her knees. In fact, she felt so dreadful, she might just as well have drunk the contents of the decanter that had come up on her supper tray the night before.
Oh, no, no! She shook her head, flinging back the covers and setting her feet on the luxuriously soft rug. One thing she had decided during the long hours of the night was that she would never succumb to the false comfort alcohol offered.
There were those who let the circumstances of life crush them. The streets and alleys of London were littered with them. Both men and women who gave up hope, and turned to drink, or worse. She had heard of women who would let their babies starve while they spent their last pennies on gin. But there were others, afflicted with like circumstances, who just gritted their teeth, and got on with it. Mary had been on the verge of collapse when she had found herself in London, with no memory of her past, terrified by her colleagues within doors, and the bustling, noisy, threatening crowds without. But she had gritted her teeth, performed every task that was set before her, and doggedly refused to let her mind dwell on those nameless fears that seemed to lurk round every corner.
Or had that been Cora?
Both of them, all of her, she no longer knew how to describe herself, but one thing she had learned about herself through all this, she nodded, tugging hard on the bell-pull: she was a survivor.
The person she was now was stronger than the naïve, dreamy Cora, or the self-effacing Mary. Nothing had managed to destroy her so far, and she was not going to succumb to the kind of self-pity that might do so now!
She was no longer a silly child who had never set foot outside her village. She was not going to throw away her entire future happiness because the man she loved had committed an indiscretion.
Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss Page 19