by Mary Balogh
“Elizabeth—” he said.
“You must not be afraid that I will crumble,” she said. “I will not.”
He tightened his hand around hers.
“And I will not stop loving you,” she said. She could hear that her voice was shaking. “Perhaps I was out of love with you when I fell from the carriage. But I don’t care about that. I will not stop loving you again when I remember. I don’t even care if you don’t love me.”
“Elizabeth—” he said.
“Make love to me,” she said. “I need you very close tonight. Closer than close. And I don’t care if I am being bolder than I normally am or bolder than a wife ought to be. I don’t care about anything tonight except you and me. Make love to me. Please?”
He did not remove their nightclothes. He did not spend time preparing her with lips and tongue and hands. He turned her onto her back, raising their clothes as he did so, parted her legs with his own, and thrust deeply inside her. He said nothing, but pressed her into the mattress with his weight and moved in her for many minutes with a slow rhythm that only gradually increased in pace and depth.
There was almost no passion but in its stead an enormous comfort and sense of closeness. She was almost sorry when the familiar aches finally began and she knew that soon she was going to come and that then he would finish and it would be all over, that he would withdraw his body from inside hers and she would be alone again.
“Just you and me and here and now,” he whispered, finding her mouth with his, and they sighed out the shared cresting of their pleasure.
Sleep came almost immediately.
Martin was happy enough to find that Christopher was leaving the breakfast room as he was entering it the next morning. He had no wish to waste energy on smiling and being polite and feigning friendship with a man he hated with a red-hot passion. They had gone up to bed together the night before, by God, Trevelyan and Lizzie. Martin would not easily forget the feeling of helplessness he had had as he had smiled and watched them go. He would not forget the bile that had risen to his mouth.
Trevelyan was going to spend the morning with his steward. Martin was to spend the time with Elizabeth, beginning the slow process of filling in the void in her memory. Trevelyan trusted him to follow the plan they had spoken of the day before. And the trouble was, Martin thought as he took his place at the table, be would have to move slowly indeed. Lizzie perhaps would not be able to stand the shock of having the truth forced upon her too quickly. Martin ground his teeth in impotent rage against Trevelyan who had brought about this coil.
His hope that perhaps Elizabeth’s memory had returned during the night was dashed when she joined him in the breakfast room a few minutes later. She still did not know him. More than that, she felt uncomfortable with him. She merely bade him a good morning, made some remarks about the weather, and sat down, her eyes lowered to her plate.
It hurt badly. He wanted to take her by the hands as he had the previous day when Trevelyan had brought her downstairs. It’s me, Lizzie, he wanted to say to her again.
He smiled. “You are still coming walking with me, Lizzie?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him uncertainly. She hesitated. “Please have patience with me, Martin. I have been told that you are my stepbrother, that we have been together almost since birth, and that we have a close relationship and a deep affection for each other. But it is one thing to know something with one’s head and another to feel it with one’s heart. To me you are a stranger. I will have to learn to love you all over again.”
Sensible, brave Lizzie. They were qualities she had learned during the pain of the past seven years, years when he had stayed with her, offering her all the comfort of his love. They were qualities that had not deserted her with her memory.
“I have all the patience in the world, Lizzie,” he said. “That is one thing I have always had. All good things come to those who have the patience to wait for them.”
“Thank you,” she said. She glanced across the room to the window. “I am glad it is not raining today.” She smiled, but it was a forced expression, he knew. It was not Lizzie’s usual warm smile, the smile she kept just for him. He felt strangely like crying.
They strolled later up the hill behind the house and out of the wooded valley that had taken him so much by surprise the day before. The countryside had seemed bleak and bare, and then suddenly there was the valley and the stream and the house and gardens. She walked a little apart from him. He sensed that she did not want to take his arm so did not offer it.
“Shall we sit down?” he suggested when they reached the top, testing the grass with his hand to make sure that it was dry.
She nodded and they sat looking back down into the valley.
“I love it here,” she said, her voice sounding almost defiant. “I am sure I was very happy to come home from London two weeks ago.”
“We live in Norfolkshire,” he said. “That is where you are from, Lizzie. From Kingston Park, a house and estate that would dwarf this.” He nodded down at Penhallow. “We grew up there together and scarcely left it until we were eighteen. We were wonderfully happy there and did not long for the outside world at all. You resisted Papa’s insistence finally that we go to London so that you could be presented at court and have a come-out Season.”
She clasped her arms about her updrawn knees and rested her forehead against them while he talked for perhaps half an hour about their childhood and early youth. About those golden years that he ached to recapture if only it were possible. It hurt him deeply to know that she had forgotten them, almost as if they had been unimportant to her. Though he knew that was being unfair to her.
“Oh,” she said with a sigh when he stopped talking at last. She looked up at him with weary eyes. “It is all like listening to stories about other people, Martin. I cannot believe that I was involved, that I was that happy girl you describe. I keep expecting there to be some spark of recognition, but there is nothing.”
He moved closer to her and set an arm about her shoulders—and was alarmed at her almost violent reaction. She twisted away from him and pushed at his arm.
“Don’t touch me!” she said, a look of terror and revulsion on her face. And then she stared at him with dismayed eyes and bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry, Martin. But you must remember that I cannot think of you as a brother. Only as a strange man. I cannot feel comfortable with any man’s touch but my husband’s.”
“You remember him, then, Lizzie?” he asked, stung.
“No, of course not,” she said.
“Who told you that he was your husband?” he asked. “Him? And you believed him? How do you know he was telling you the truth?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide. The color drained from her face. “He is my husband,” she whispered. “I love him.”
“How do you know,” he said, “that he did not just take advantage of your loss of memory to ravish you? Why do you put more trust in him than in me? I am your brother, Lizzie. I have always stuck by you through thick and thin.”
But she had scrambled to a crouching position. “Don’t,” she said. “Oh, please don’t. He loves me. He is my husband.”
“Lizzie.” He reached out a hand to her. But she backed away from him, got to her feet, and began to flee down the hill toward the house, dodging trees as she ran.
Martin took a few steps after her but then stopped. He was not sorry, he thought, though it pained him almost beyond bearing to see her panic-stricken and to know the turmoil that must be in her mind. She had to know sooner or later, and sooner was better than later. Ultimately there was no way to save her from pain. And he would be there for her to comfort her against the pain, as he always had been. The greater the pain, the greater the comfort she would need. Poor Lizzie. Would she never learn that his love was a free gift to her, that he hated to have to hurt her so that she would accept it?
If only she could remember. She kept waiting for something to
spark a memory, she had said. Was that how it would happen eventually, if it was going to happen at all? Something to spark a memory?
There was one thing that might do the trick—one spark that would surely work if anything could. And even if it did not jolt her memory, it was something she must know. And soon. It was something she would not be able to ignore, something that would finally convince her.
Martin began to stride down the hill after the fast disappearing figure of his stepsister. He would send Macklin back to London without further delay, he decided, thankful now that he had thought it wise to bring a servant with him. In three days Macklin could be back again.
In three days. It seemed an eternity. She would be with Trevelyan for three more nights. Martin clenched his hands into fists as he walked.
Elizabeth took the stairs two at a time. Christopher was not in their bedchamber or in his dressing room, just as he had not been in either the morning room or the library downstairs. Of course, she had known that he would be nowhere in the house. He had gone for the morning and the morning was only half over. She left his dressing room and raced blindly along the upper hallway.
Nancy was in her private sitting room, sewing. Thank God she was in the first place Elizabeth had thought to look. Oh, thank God. And she was rising to her feet and setting her sewing aside, a look of surprise and concern on her face.
"Oh,” Elizabeth said, “I did not knock. I am so sorry, Nancy.”
“What is it?” Her sister-in-law’s face was pale, her voice tense. “Your memory?”
"Nancy.” Elizabeth realized how breathless she was only when she tried to speak. “I am married to Christopher, aren’t I? He is my husband, isn’t he?”
She watched Nancy close her eyes briefly. “Has anyone said anything to make you doubt?” Nancy asked. “Martin?”
“Are we married?” Elizabeth felt as if she had walked into a nightmare and could not force herself awake.
“You were married seven years ago,” Nancy said quietly. “On the Duke of Chicheley’s estate. At Kingston Park.”
“Tell me about it.” Elizabeth raised the back of her hand to her mouth and could both see and feel it trembling.
“I can’t.” Nancy sighed and sat down again and motioned her to do likewise, though Elizabeth continued to stand just inside the door. “I was not there. But it was a fairly small affair. I believe you and Christopher thought it was the most wonderful wedding there had ever been. I suppose all brides and grooms feel that way.”
“Why weren’t you there?” Elizabeth asked.
“I was there for your betrothal party,” Nancy said, “and was supposed to stay while the banns were being read. You were both eager to marry as soon as possible. I—I got homesick and came back here a week before the wedding though both you and Christopher were upset about it.”
“So we are married,” Elizabeth said, almost afraid to let relief wash over her.
“What did Martin tell you just now?” Nancy picked up her sewing again.
“Only that I cannot know for sure whether anything that has been told me in the past weeks is true,” Elizabeth said. “He was upset, I think. And hurt. He tried to put his arm about me and I would not allow it. I told him he was a stranger to me.”
Nancy bent her head over her work.
“It felt wrong,” Elizabeth said. “I felt as if he was trying to—to seduce me. And I am horrified at my reaction. Christopher has told me that Martin is my brother and my close friend.”
“Stepbrother,” Nancy said.
“ No blood relation.” Elizabeth shivered. “Christopher says that he has always been devoted to me and that he has been a good friend to both of us. I must try to love him again, mustn’t I, Nancy?”
Nancy executed three careful stitches before replying. “Perhaps a loss of memory enables one to look at the people in one’s life with fresh eyes,” she said. “Perhaps one can then see in them qualities or shortcomings that habit normally blinds one to. I don’t know if you should try to force your feelings into any mold, Elizabeth. I really don’t know. I don’t know how to advise you.”
Elizabeth was surprised and alarmed to see a tear plop onto the cloth over which Nancy had bent her head.
“I think,” Elizabeth said, forcing her voice to steadiness, “that the sooner I know all there is to know, the better it will be for me and everyone else. This is putting a severe strain on you, Nancy, and I am sorry for it. But I’ll not try to force anything else from you. I am sure you must be caught between your loyalty to Christopher and your sympathy for me. I will wait for Christopher and Martin to tell me between them. Martin has just been telling me numerous stories about our childhood—stories about two strangers.”
Nancy looked up, her eyes bright with tears. “I am sorry, Elizabeth,” she said. “I am so very sorry. And sorry that I ever disliked and even hated you. I think perhaps you were as much a victim as Christopher was. In fact, I am sure of it.”
Elizabeth stood very still and drew a slow breath as her sister-in-law grimaced and closed her eyes very tightly and bit hard on her lower lip.
Elizabeth turned and left the room.
Nancy felt quite ill at her slip of the tongue. She had not meant to say anything despite her great disapproval of everything Christopher had done since his arrival in England. She had certainly not meant to bring that stricken look to Elizabeth’s face.
Poor Elizabeth! She had paid dearly in the last two weeks for the weakness of character that had made Nancy so despise her in the past. She was no longer weak, only bewildered and frightened and doing an admirable job of holding herself together and coping with a situation that must be terrifying. And now matters were becoming even more difficult for her.
Damn Christopher, Nancy thought, dredging up one of the worst words in her vocabulary. Damn him. She had so longed for his return. And yet now she wished him in the farthest corner of the Canadian or American wilderness—whichever was most distant. He had made a disaster of his return. A total disaster.
She could no longer concentrate on her sewing or on anything else indoors. She must get outside into the fresh air. Her first instinct was to walk up over the headland and down the path to the beach. But that was no longer a safe haven. Martin had been outside with Elizabeth when she had come running home. Perhaps he had gone to the beach. The thought made Nancy feel even more ill.
She would go out to the kitchen gardens, she thought, to cut flowers. The dining room and the drawing room needed new arrangements. But she had not been there five minutes, bent to her task, when she became aware of a pair of Hessian boots at the corner of her vision. Christopher would not be back yet, she knew. And none of the servants ever wore Hessians. She straightened up.
“Good morning,” Martin said.
She pushed her hair back over her shoulders. She had left it loose that morning the way she liked to wear it. She was forgetting that she no longer had Penhallow to herself.
He was smiling. But of course Martin always smiled. She felt a wave of hatred so intense that she wondered for a moment if it had contorted her face and he had noticed. But his smile did not falter.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I thought,” he said, “that ladies are supposed to decline in beauty once they have passed their twentieth year. You disprove the theory.”
He had forgotten, she thought contemptuously, that he had said almost the same thing at tea the previous afternoon. She set down the scissors and the small bunch of flowers she had gathered on the square of canvas she had brought into the garden with her. She would pick them up or send someone for them later. She removed her gloves and dropped them too.
“Thank you,” she said, stepping carefully over the flowers to the grassy verge on which he stood. “I must go inside to tidy up.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Not yet. I was nervous about coming here, you know. Not just because I suspected that Trevelyan had Elizabeth here and did not know how I would be received. But also because
I was afraid you would be here.”
She brushed some flecks of soil from her dress. She doubted he had given her a thought before his arrival. “Afraid?” she said, raising her eyebrows and looking at him coolly.
He laughed. “I think I owe you an apology,” he said. “A long overdue one.”
“I would prefer that you did not offer it,” she said. “Good manners might dictate that I accept. And the last thing I ever want to do on this earth is forgive you.”
“Ah,” he said, “so it did upset you, what happened. And you do blame me. Well, perhaps you are right. Certainly I have always felt guilty about it. But I was eighteen, you know, with no experience of the world whatsoever.”
“I was twenty,” she said, “and matched you in experience, more is the pity. May we change the subject? Or better yet, may we close this conversation entirely?”
“You are bitter,” he said. “And you are not prepared to consider forgiving me.”
“You are a guest in my brother’s house,” she said. “I will be civil to you. I am going inside. I really do need to wash my hands and change my dress.”
“You were so very lovely,” he said. “I was infatuated.”
“And comb my hair,” she said.
“And jealous of John,” he said.
For the first time her eyes blazed anger. “And of Christopher,” she said. “Especially of Christopher.”
He shrugged and gave her a rueful smile. “It felt rather like losing my right arm when Lizzie fancied herself in love with him,” he said. “I was very young. I quickly got used to the idea that times were changing and that I had to change with them.”
“Fancied herself,” she said scornfully.
“I liked him,” he said. “I was not really jealous. Envious, perhaps, of their happiness. And lonely. I thought she had made a good choice. I even continued to think so long after everyone else had turned against him. I liked him too well and was too concerned for her happiness to believe all the evidence that began to pile against him.”