She hesitated, then she nodded and started walking.
Damien called out to her. “Adele.”
She stopped and turned. He was standing beside a rose bush. His hair was a wild mess, his clothes looked ragged and worn. She glanced down at his feet. There was mud on his boots.
He took a step forward. “I don’t recall if I said it to you or not....”
“Said what?” she asked.
He paused, and when he spoke, his voice was smooth like velvet. “That I love you.”
A leaf drifted down through the air and landed on Adele’s head. She felt only a gentle breeze through her hair, and a simple, joyful contentment inside herself. “I love you, too.”
Then, feeling buoyant and full of cautious hope, she made off for the house.
Adele went straight to the conservatory—or rather the laboratory—to search for Harold. She did not find him there.
Next, she went to the dowager’s rooms and was pleased to discover the woman was sitting up, drinking soup with Eustacia at her side. Adele stayed for a short time to visit, but since it was Harold she wanted to see, she left them and went to knock on his bedchamber door.
No one answered at first, but then he called out, “Enter!”
She pushed the door open. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and when he saw that it was Adele, he stood quickly and straightened his neck cloth, appearing flustered. “What are you doing here?”
She was slightly confused by the question. “Did no one tell you that my mother and I arrived this morning? To see your grandmother?”
“Well, yes,” he said awkwardly. “Mother told me, of course. I meant, what are you doing knocking on my bedchamber door? It’s hardly proper, Adele.”
She forced a smile, remembering how uncomfortable Harold could be about bending or breaking rules.
“I apologize,” she said, “but I would like to speak with you privately. Could we talk in the library?”
He pasted on his customary, cheerful smile. “Certainly.”
She hesitated because she thought he might accompany her, but he seemed to want her to go on her own and wait for him there.
As she turned to leave, she stole a quick glance around at the furnishings, and realized it was probably the only time she would ever see the inside of this room.
After Adele closed Harold’s bedchamber door and the sound of her footsteps disappeared down the hall, Harold let out a breath of relief and sat back down on his bed.
Violet got up off the floor and smoothed out her skirt. “Upon my word, I’m getting tired of this.”
“What do you mean?” Harold asked.
“Oh, nothing,” she said irritably. “It’s just that this is not the first time I’ve had to duck down and hide in a room when that woman enters it.”
Harold accepted her explanation without asking for further clarification.
“Will you be all right?” Violet asked her brother, gazing at him with genuine sympathy, for he was truly no match for Damien. Not in a woman’s eyes.
Harold nodded. “Yes. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care if he hates me. There was a time when we were close, but now...I don’t think I can ever forgive him for this.”
Violet touched Harold’s shoulder. “He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness. He knew how much you loved her. He should have to grovel for your forgiveness for the rest of his life.”
“I did love her,” Harold insisted, “and he should most definitely have to grovel for my forgiveness. But it wouldn’t do him any good.” He gazed up at Violet with a bitter glimmer in his eye. “Because we are finished, he and I.”
Harold kept Adele waiting in the library for at least ten minutes before he entered, looking uncharacteristically serious. “I apologize,” he said, closing the door behind him. “I had something to attend to.”
“It’s quite all right.”
They both sat down and looked at each other for a few awkward seconds. There had been many awkward silences between them, which was exactly why Adele had to end this engagement and explain her change-of-heart as kindly and gently as possible.
She sat forward on the edge of the chair, laced her fingers together on her lap, and said, “Harold, I—”
He held up a hand. “Please stop, Adele. I know what you are going to say.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” He wet his lips, and his cheeks reddened. Slightly unnerved, Adele waited for him to continue.
“I saw you today,” he said. “I saw you under the tree. I know what happened.”
Adele went numb. She sat in silence, staring at him, as a wave of horror washed over her. She covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh, Harold....” Her voice shook when she spoke. “What were you doing there?”
“Mother told me that you had gone there looking for me. Naturally, I went to find you.”
She shifted agonizingly in the chair. “Harold, I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you. That’s why I went down there in the first place. To talk to you because I thought you were there.”
“But Damien got there before I did.”
She paused. “Yes.”
Harold stood and paced to the window. “You cannot know how shocked and devastated I was to see—” He stopped himself.
Adele was mortified.
“Damien...” Harold said with grim loathing. “My own cousin. We were the best of friends, ever since we were boys. He was like a brother to me.”
“He still is,” Adele said, hoping to prevent a complete dissolution of their friendship. She could not bear to think it would be severed because of her.
“No,” he replied.
Adele stood and went to him. “He tried to fight it, Harold. He tried very hard, and so did I. It just happened, that’s all. Neither of us ever wanted to hurt you.”
She touched his shoulder, but he shook her hand away. “You had already decided you didn’t want to marry me?” Harold asked. “That’s why you went looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“Because you wanted to marry Damien instead?”
She hesitated before she answered. “No. I was just going to go home to America on my own. I didn’t know what I wanted.”
He glared down at her. It was the first time she’d ever seen anger and pain in his eyes. He was always so cheerful and happy. “Did he propose to you?”
“Yes.”
He bowed his head and shook it. “Damien,” he said, through a jaw that was clenched tight with fury. “He had no right.”
“Harold....”
He turned from the window and paced angrily around the room. “And you.... How could you let him seduce you like that? What were you thinking?”
“I can’t really explain it.”
“No, I should think not. But you must realize how foolish you were. He has forced himself upon you, Adele.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He never forced me.”
“I mean he forced the situation to go as he wanted it. He wants your money, and he did what he does best in order to get it.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t believe that? You think he’s in love with you?” Harold continued to pace. “I suppose I should not be surprised. He knows what women like to hear.”
Adele bristled at that.
“Do you have any idea what’s been going on in his life lately?” Harold asked. “Do you know about the creditors? About Frances Fairbanks?”
“Everyone knows about her.”
“But they don’t know she’s with child.”
A sudden jolt caused all thoughts and responses to wedge in Adele’s brain. She stared at Harold, not quite able to accept what he was saying.
“She wants Damien to marry her, of course, but she has no money, so he is not inclined to propose. He does, however, possess some miniscul
e fragment of integrity in his own misdirected way, because he is determined to support her and the child. Hence, the urgency for a quick alliance with an heiress.”
Adele swallowed hard, biting back the hurt she felt. He was going to have a baby with Frances? He had never said anything. He had led her to believe their relationship was over.
“Do you know this for certain?” Adele asked. “Or is it just drawing room gossip?”
“Damien told me himself, and ridiculously, I was the one who convinced him that he should find himself a fiancée as soon possible. How’s that for a stab in the back? He set his sights on you.”
Adele felt sick. She had to sit down.
“Do you believe me now, that he is not to be trusted? Do you understand why I am so furious with him, for acting in such a devious, underhanded manner, and taking advantage of you so deplorably? My own cousin!”
“I don’t know what I believe at the moment,” Adele said.
Harold stopped pacing and met her gaze. “I will still marry you, Adele, if you wish it. It is Damien I am most angry with, and I hold myself partly responsible for this. I-I should have taken better care.” He approached and took her chin in his slender hand and looked down at her with a sympathetic expression. “I am of the opinion that you were taken in, but only because you are so good and innocent, and you do not see the bad in other people.”
Her dander perked up its head. “That’s not true, Harold. Everyone thinks I am perfect, but I am not, and I was not ‘taken in.’”
He dropped his hand to his side. “If what happened between you and Damien results in a child, I will accept that child. He would be my second cousin, after all. I would only hope that it would be a girl.”
Adele squeezed her eyes shut. “Harold, please don’t speak of this sort of thing. I’m sorry, but I cannot marry you, and I would feel the same even if I had never met Damien. You and I, we don’t love each other. And we have very little in common.”
“You respect me, do you not? Violet told me you said I was the most decent man you knew.”
“That is true.”
“Well, that is something to build on.”
“It is, but...I don’t want to build on it. I don’t want to marry you, Harold, and nothing will change my mind.”
“Will you marry Damien? Despite what I’ve told you?”
“I already said I don’t know.” She held a hand over her stomach to try and quell the terrible churning.
“If you do,” Harold said callously, “I assure you, you will live to regret it.”
With nothing left to say on that matter, Adele moved toward the door, but stopped and turned. “I’m very sorry about all this, Harold. I will leave Osulton today, just as soon as I can pack my things. I will ask you to say good-bye to your mother and your grandmother for me. Please tell them that I had come to care for them very much, and I never wanted to hurt any of you.”
With that, she walked out.
Harold sank into a chair, covered his face with both hands, and ground out a string of expletives.
Three hours later, Damien stormed into the conservatory, where Harold was setting up for an experiment.
Damien stopped on the opposite side of the laboratory table and slammed a letter down with a smack. The table jumped, and a carefully arranged collection of glass bottles wobbled, noisily clanking into each other. Harold bent forward and grabbed for them, hugging them together to prevent them from falling.
Damien leaned forward on his fists. “What in God’s name did you say to her?”
Chapter 26
Harold’s face pulled into a frown and he straightened, making sure, however, that the bottles were steady before he let them go. “You have a lot of nerve coming in here and demanding answers from me.”
Damien straightened also. They were eye to eye on opposite sides of the table. Pent-up rage, in each of them, crackled in the air between them.
“I asked you a question,” Damien said.
Harold glanced down at the letter. He picked it up and read it. As Damien watched his cousin, he recited the letter in his own mind, for he had read it so many times, he’d memorized it:
Dear Damien,
I am leaving Osulton Manor today. Please do not try and follow me. I was carried away by my passions today and I do not believe it would be wise for us to marry. I know about Frances, so I must protect my heart in this matter.
I must also inform you that I spoke to Harold and ended our engagement. He did not take it well, as he had been the noise in the woods.
Adele
“What did she mean,” Damien said, “that she must protect her heart? What did you tell her about Frances?”
“What do you think I told her? The truth, of course. Despite your improper intimacy with her, she did not deserve to be kept in the dark about your urgent need for a rich wife, or about your creditors or Frances. I would not allow her to be taken advantage of in that way.”
“She knows about all that. I never lied to her.”
“This is outrageous!” Harold said. “I should not be the one explaining myself. You should be!” Harold walked around the table. “You seduced and ruined my fiancée!”
Damien stared into his cousin’s furious eyes and managed to collect himself. He fought off the shock and anguish over Adele’s hasty departure and her decision that she would never marry him and realized that Harold had his own reasons to be angry. And he was right. Damien had indeed done the unthinkable.
“Perhaps we should take this outside,” he suggested, knowing there was much to be worked out, and this room constructed of glass was not the place.
Harold ripped off his apron and threw it on the floor. “Damn right we should.” In a most uncharacteristic manner, he forcefully led the way out.
Violet took the news that Adele had left Osulton Manor with neither grace nor understanding. She glared hotly at her mother in the drawing room and balled her hands into fists.
“My brother is an incompetent cretin! If she is gone, it is his fault for not knowing how to treat a woman! He is hopeless! No one will ever marry him!”
She collapsed into a fit of tears on the sofa, not the least bit comforted by her mother stroking her back.
“Now we shall be beggars!” Violet sobbed. “Harold spends all our money on his silly experiments, and I will have to marry beneath me, because all the best men in London want those rich American girls with their big dowries!” She dropped her head into her hands. “And Whitby! Now I will never have him!”
“There, there, Violet, it’s not so bad. You still have your beauty to recommend you.”
She peered up at her mother as if she had sprouted horns and wiped the flood of tears from her cheeks. “She is gone, Mother! Gone! She left Harold, and we will not get her settlement!”
Violet dropped her head into her arms again, and sobbed, “Oh, why does everything always have to happen to me!”
Damien followed Harold out to the large veranda at the back of the house. They both walked quickly with long strides to the stairs that led down to the rectangular pond. The wind had picked up. The green hedges of the maze were blowing, and low-hanging clouds were racing and changing shape across the gray sky. The pond was dancing with shadowy ripples.
Damien descended the stairs. Harold waited for him at the bottom, on the clipped green grass. They faced each other squarely.
“All our lives,” Harold said, “you have been the favorite. You were the strong one—fighting off bullies for me at school. You were the generous one—teaching me to play sports, even going so far as to stay behind in a race to run beside me and encourage me. I remember all those things, Damien, and I always believed it was because you were my friend. That is why I trusted you to bring Adele home to me.”
“Harold, I—”
“I’m not done. You did not help me. All you ever
did was make me feel like I wasn’t strong enough to do anything on my own, and if it weren’t for you—watching over me all the time like I was a weakling—maybe I would have gone to get Adele myself.”
Damien stared at his cousin. “I was your friend, Harold.”
“No, you were not. You just wanted to show off to everyone and pound your chest.”
Damien shook his head. “You make it sound like I was the one with all the blessings. Dammit, Harold, no one ever thought I was the better man. You were the one who could do no wrong. You’ve always had everything—parents who loved each other and loved you, a perfect palace to live in with a mother who still takes care of everything. You don’t have money problems. You are happy all the time because you have nothing to worry about except the results of your experiments. I was orphaned at the age of nine with the burden of guilt for my parents’ death, left with debts you could not even fathom.... So forgive me for learning how to be tough.”
Harold’s eyebrows lifted. “You are suggesting that you have cause to resent me? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life! No one can resist your charm. Grandmother has always favored you, and don’t pretend not to know it. You flatter her and flirt with her like she was a debutante, and she would do anything for you. You have her wrapped around your devious little finger.”
“For what devious purpose, may I ask?” Damien replied, trying to grasp his cousin’s logic. “She has nothing to leave any of us in her will. It all went to my father’s debts. She has only the pleasure of her last days, and I will not apologize for caring about her enough to enjoy making her feel good.”
“Like you made Adele feel good?” His tone suggested the worst.
Damien labored to control his anger. “You will forgive me for saying that that is something you, as her fiancé, failed to do. You were too busy mixing potions.”
“That is low, Damien. I loved her.”
Damien laughed. “Did you now? Tell me another one!”
“I did! You don’t know what I feel!”
“I know you had no time for her. I know you didn’t care enough to worry that she had been ravaged by her kidnapper. You didn’t even want to hear what happened to her, because it was not pleasant for you. I also know that you wanted her for her father’s interest in your chemical inventions. You were hoping to make the history books.”
In Love with the Viscount (American Heiress Trilogy Book 3) Page 21
