Rules of Attraction

by Christina Dodd

  “Not to speak ill of the dead, but I had my reasons.” His mouth set in its usual stern line. “I don’t remember my mother. My grandmother gave me affection. But my father was a tyrant, without love for me or interest in my doings except as they advanced the family name.”

  “So you rebelled.”

  “You’ve heard the rumors.”

  “A few,” she admitted. “Years ago, and more recently from Seaton.”

  “Seaton.” Dougald smiled, but not pleasantly. “If he knew the details, he could dine out on them for years.”

  “Are the details so dreadful?”

  “My father insisted on hard work and abstinence. I scorned him. My grandmother blathered on and on about the family honor and tradition. I hated it. Everything they said seemed so old-fashioned and restrictive. I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t the life of a businessman, dressed in a black suit and hung by the cravat around his neck.” Flinty-eyed, Dougald touched his formally tied cravat. “No, my family was rich, so I lived the good life. By the time I was fifteen, I nightly drank myself into oblivion, I smoked cigars until I reeked and visited the finest whores. I was tough. I was a man.”

  Hannah couldn’t imagine Dougald behaving with such abandon.

  He glanced up to see her incredulous gaze fixed on him, and added, “Until my father cut off my allowance.”

  She winced.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. I hated him so much.”

  “I understand that.”

  He stared at her. “You?”

  “I had a father, too,” she explained. “He didn’t marry my mother.”

  “Perhaps he wanted to, but couldn’t defy his parents.”

  “The grandparents I will meet tomorrow.” She almost wished she could put that encounter off until she had developed more confidence, or a tougher spirit, or at least the worst of this emotional tumult had passed.

  In his most pessimistic tone, he said, “We are a pair.”

  “Don’t sound so cheerful.”

  He didn’t in any way respond to her jocularity.

  With a sigh, she asked, “So you went home?”

  “Me? Not me. Father was trying to bring me to heel. I was determined he would not succeed.”

  She could imagine the younger Dougald, choking on his pride. “Did you live with friends?”

  “When the family money was gone, I didn’t have any friends.”

  He didn’t sound bitter, but his friends’ desertion must have taught the youth a savage lesson. “What did you do?”

  He sliced a glance at her. “I sank to the depths. I was a blackguard of the first water. I led a coterie of thugs. We fought other thugs, attacked any dandies foolish enough to be out after dark, and stole whatever happened to be at hand, and when I was caught…” His voice faded away.

  Her heart leaped into her throat. They hanged thieves. “You were caught?”

  “The magistrate had to show me the gibbet before I gave in and sent a message to my father.” He straightened up without expression, said, “My father died of the shock. Clutched his heart and keeled right over.”

  Hannah sat, stunned, and tried to imagine what the guilt had done to the impressionable lad.

  “Charles paid the magistrate a hefty bribe and got me out of the gaol. He took me home to see my father—and there he lay, in his coffin.”

  “How dreadful,” she whispered.

  Dougald stared at the flowers, drooping in their vases. “Funerals always make me think of my father.”

  Comprehension dawned. “You blamed yourself for his death.”

  “With some justification.”

  She bristled with indignation. “Of course with some justification, but it’s not all your fault! You were only a boy. He should have taught you values, and if at first he failed, he should have tried again. He should have hunted for you and persuaded you to come back. He was a successful businessman. His pride could have taken the blow. Instead he died without ever seeing you.”

  Dougald watched her, his mouth curled in a crooked grin.

  “Is that why you always supported the orphans’ home, and found decent jobs for the men on the streets and the women in the workhouses?”

  “I have a lot of reparation to make.”

  “And here I just thought you hid a kind streak.” She pressed her head to his shoulder, then straightened up. “Yet you were always such an uncompromising businessman.”

  “Because I wanted to be better than Father, yes. But also, I was sixteen when I took the reins of the business. If I hadn’t been ruthless, I would have been wiped out by Father’s ‘friends.’”

  Hannah tried to speak. She needed to speak, to tell him what she had discovered these last few days.

  But he misinterpreted her attempt. With harsh honesty, he said, “Don’t try and tell me you would have stayed if you’d known. You wouldn’t have. I was determined to beat my father in every way possible, including as a merciless bruiser. Eventually I would have chased you away.”

  She tried to speak again.

  But he waved her to silence. “You were too young to handle me. You had no mother, no friends, no one to tell you what to do when a man was stubborn and stupid. I shouldn’t have married you so young. That was my mistake.”

  Finally, she snapped, “More than lying to me about my dress shop?”

  He stared at her, and when he saw her impatience, he put his hand on his shoulder and leaned back against the pew. “My wound is starting to hurt…”

  “So is mine.”

  He straightened. “Your ankle?”

  “No.” This time it was her turn to face the front and speak toward the flowers. “The wound you inflicted when you said I abandoned you without trying.”

  “Oh.” Dougald tried to brush her pain away and take responsibility for everything. “That was part of my scheme to drive you away.”

  “The real part.” She faced him again. “Don’t lie to me, Dougald. I recognized the truth immediately. I’ve spent too many years trying to justify my escape to myself. I knew I had done wrong.”

  “You were young.”

  “Other women have said their wedding vows at eighteen and meant them. I left because I wanted to go before I began to swell with your child.”

  He jerked, almost as if he’d been stuck by another bullet. “Sound reasoning.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was. But the truth is, beneath my original starry-eyed wonder, there lurked the ghosts of my past. Always they whispered to me.” With a shaky sigh, she admitted, “I never expected our marriage to last.”

  His face stilled into the cold mask of the businessman and lord. “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. You and I could not have been more mismatched. You, with so much to prove. Me, knowing that no man would ever want me forever.”

  His mask dropped away, leaving a man confused. “Not want you? I wanted you all the time. So much I was embarrassed. I feared I was out of control. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, and if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered. From what I had seen, there was no home in this world that lasted. Not for me, anyway.”

  “I allowed Charles to run our home, so it was never your home.”

  “But you were right when you said I could have fought him and won. I had the weapons. I just…thought it was no use.” Hannah had heard Dougald’s tale, been touched by his trust, and wanted to give him her trust in return. But this was hard. This hurt with the lingering pain of ancient memories. Still she spoke, ignoring the quaver in her voice. “My mother…you knew my mother.”

  “A good woman.”

  “Yes, and she raised me the best way she could. She enfolded me in her love. She tried to make me proud and strong, but she had to leave me while she worked.” She tried to smile at him. “Do you know, the first words I remember hearing are, ‘Hey, bastard, stop that?’ My nursemaid couldn’t remember my name. Neither could her children. So I was, ‘Hey, bastard.’”

 
He gripped the pew in front of them. “Did your mother know about this?”

  “Of course not, and I didn’t tell her.” She remembered the times she’d wanted to speak, but she had recognized the burden her mother carried. “What choice did she have?”

  “None.” He frowned. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with our marriage. I never worried about your legitimacy. I never reproached you. I would have killed anyone who did.”

  “For my sake?” Stiffening her spine, she asked the difficult question. “Or because no one should slander your wife?”

  “For you…because…it was never…” He stammered to a halt. “I…don’t know, Hannah. Even at that time, even when I was a selfish youth, it wasn’t all for the sake of my pride. Now…now I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of you. All I care about is what I think, and I think you’re a remarkable woman.”

  She chuckled, just a little. “Now that I believe.”

  “That you’re a remarkable woman?”

  “That you don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

  “Then believe this—nothing less than a remarkable woman could have turned me from my well-planned revenge.”

  A fine declaration, and one she would treasure. Sincerity shone from Dougald, brighter than the colors of the stained-glass window. He was proud of her, and if she wished, she could stop talking now. They had said so much. She didn’t have to tell him everything. Didn’t have to expose every shameful reminiscence. “I know who I am,” she said. “I know what I’ve done. I’ve founded and run a successful business in a man’s world. I realize how I’ve grown from the girl who left you and our marriage.”

  Dougald had been so brave; could she do any less? He wouldn’t turn away if she showed him the ugly secrets chained in the dungeon of her soul…would he?

  She wanted to laugh, but contained herself. Perhaps her ugly secrets didn’t reside in her soul, but in her gut, for her stomach twisted with protest when she imagined telling him the truth. “If you say I’m remarkable, then I would not disagree with you.”

  “That’s my Hannah,” he approved.

  When he found out who she really was, he would probably turn away. Wetting her suddenly dry lips, she finished, “Most of the days.”

  “I knew there had to be a catch.”

  “Sometimes, somebody says something, and all the fear and guilt comes flooding back. When I was a child, I would make friends tentatively. They’d like me. We’d laugh together. We’d eat together. I’d think, ‘This time will be different,’ and then they would turn on me when they found out.” Hannah tried to look at him, but although she’d been as intimate with this man as any woman could be, her gaze skittered away. Physical intimacy, she realized, could not compare to the sharing of thoughts, memories, feelings. “You can’t beat a dog every day without it sooner or later attacking.”

  He leaned back, watching her through that enigmatic, knowing gaze. “Last night, I thought you were going to jump at Mrs. Trenchard.”

  She had hoped he wouldn’t notice. Foolish Hannah, Dougald noticed everything. “I haven’t heard it for so long. Bastard. She called me a bastard.” She touched her forehead, her lips, her throat. Her gestures betrayed her agitation, but she couldn’t stop. She had to move, had to shake off the pain, or all the old rage would rise in her. She feared it would take possession, and she’d be the young Hannah once more—desperate to please, afraid of rebuff, always searching for a home and a family of her own. “I thought I had come so far.” Dropping her hands into her lap, she said in a low, intense voice, “But when Mrs. Trenchard said that, I just wanted to make her stop before everyone knew…before they all turned on me…”

  “They all…the aunts wouldn’t turn on you. They adore you.”

  “I know. I know! But I didn’t think, I just wanted to fight or to run away.”

  “Oh.” He understood now. “Like you did with me.”

  “I expected you to hurt me. As I got deeper and deeper in love with you, I realized that when you turned on me, my pain would be devastating.” It hurt now to tell him how vulnerable and frightened she had been. And to know that, with him, she still was. “You almost did me a favor when you refused me my dress shop. My dream wasn’t really destroyed. You gave me the excuse I was looking for. The excuse to leave.”

  He stood up, then sat back down. “My God, we could never have stayed together.”

  “No.” She was glad he realized the truth, and knew that she realized it, too. It had taken both of them to end their marriage. “Before we could ever succeed, I had to learn I could make friends, that I was not just the poor little bastard the world despised. You…you had to learn that you didn’t want to be your father.”

  “I didn’t learn I didn’t want to be like my father. I just learned that because of you, I failed to be like him. How could I be cold, indifferent, unloving, when I had you to snap at me and nag at me and take me to the heights of passion?” Carefully, he picked up her hands and rubbed them between his own. “There is a wise adage that says you can never cross the same river twice. You can go to the same spot on the bank, but the water that was there before has flowed on to the sea. We’re standing on the bank of a river, and we’ve been here before. But it’s not the same river.”

  “We’re not same people.” She returned the clasp of his hand. “I would like to cross the river with you again.”

  A smile broke across Dougald’s face. An open smile, one that united the old, charming Dougald and the new, taciturn Dougald. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  She stilled. For one moment, she remembered how he had plotted his revenge on her. The recollection of his searing diatribe rose from her memory and romped like a drama across the stage of her mind.

  If she surrendered to him now, he would have succeeded. She would be his forever, to hurt as he wished.

  But the Dougald who held her hands had had faith in her beliefs. He had showed her his past. He listened when she spoke. Although she didn’t approve, he had even taken a bullet for her. She had to return that faith. Perhaps it wasn’t love or anything more than passion, but it was Dougald, and he was what she wanted.

  So she took a breath and she said, “Remember when you told me you wanted to make me fall in love so you could subjugate me to your marital demands?”

  He shifted warily. “Yes.”

  “Well…you’ve succeeded in half your plan.”

  He understood at once. Gathering her into his arms, he held her tight, his cheek on her hair. “You have made me happier than I have been in my whole life. I wish that I could…wait.” He stood up and dragged her with him. “Come on.” He pulled her out of the pew and to the front of the chapel. He positioned her directly in front of the altar, then took his place beside her.

  She had stood in front of a church with him one other time. Then the pews had been filled with the best families in Liverpool, her gown had been of the finest blue velvet, and a minister had stood in the pulpit.

  This time the chapel was empty of witnesses, she wore her black mourning gown, and only the two of them would know what they said this day, yet she understood what he proposed.

  This time, the vows would be real.

  Taking her hands again, he faced her and stared into her face for a long moment. “There have been times this week when I thought I would never know love again. I woke with the hope of seeing you. I bathed with the memory of your smile. I walked the corridors while imagining you walked with me. My soul bled every time I glimpsed you—the froth of lace, the satin of your cleavage, the narrowness of your waist. I told myself that I only wanted you in my bed, but every day I moved closer to the truth. I wanted you for my wife.”

  She should have been triumphant. She had tried to make him suffer, and she had succeeded. But he had suffered enough in his life, and she would never be the cause of his suffering again.

  Dougald’s eyes were solemn, his voice deep and vibrant. “I want to talk to you. I want to listen to you. I want to
walk with you and, yes, I want you in my bed. That’s what I want today. That’s what I’ll want in a hundred years. If you will promise to be my wife forever, I will pledge myself to your happiness. Please, Hannah, will you be mine?”

  She wanted to tell him. That he had been everything to her—guardian, lover, husband. For years he was the man whose memory she fled. For years he had been the man she remembered. Since she had come to Raeburn Castle, he had been her nemesis, her defender, and nothing more and nothing less than her man.

  Yet she could barely speak. All she could do was take his face between her palms, look at him with tear-filled eyes, and whisper, “Forever. I am yours forever.”

  30

  The train had arrived. Queen Victoria was on her way in the carriage he had had brought in from his home in Liverpool, and Hannah paced into the newly constructed foyer on the main floor of the castle. “It’s raining. How dare it rain today of all days?”

  “This is England,” Dougald replied. “Her Majesty has been damp before.”

  Hannah gave him a look that plainly told him what she thought of his good sense, and waited while the aunts came in and lined up.

  Dougald didn’t know which made Hannah more coltish, the prospect of presenting Her Majesty with the tapestry or knowing her grandparents would be present at the reception following. Certainly she marched up and down the line of aunts, giving them an oration that would have made Nelson proud and examining each for appropriateness of dress.

  The aunts, bless them, were so nervous they let her.

  Dougald followed Hannah as she tweaked and straightened and generally frightened them to death, and as he passed, he smiled at each of the aunts. “The crimson velvet much complements your coloring, Aunt Isabel. The blue brings out the color of your eyes, Aunt Ethel. Aunt Spring.” He took her hands and spread them wide. “The little pink flowers on the white material are so cheerful.”

  “I like it,” Aunt Spring answered. “You don’t think it’s too soon after the funerals, do you?”