A Priceless Gift: A Regency Romance

by May Burnett

  “It was no accident.” Lucian did not seem inclined to say anything more. It was not genteel to pry, no matter how curious she was, and Amanda reluctantly allowed the subject to drop, drawing him towards his own youthful image.

  “This portrait,” she stopped once more, “intrigues me greatly. It is you and yet not you. This arrogant young man, like the heedless schoolboy you just described, is not the man I know as my husband, and I would never have expected him to turn into you. During your absence, I compared my memories to this picture and concluded that I preferred the current version of Lucian Rackington.”

  He pulled her into an embrace and kissed her full on the mouth. “I am glad to hear it,” he said when they pulled back. “I don’t like that young man very well either. He was a proud, ignorant fool.”

  She had to smile. “And now?”

  “Now, I’m still a fool, but no longer quite so full of myself.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Did this change happen gradually, over the years, or suddenly?”

  He sighed. “It is a sordid, horrible story that I would rather spare you, my dear.”

  “If there is anyone here who can cope with sordid and shocking secrets, surely it is I. One gets accustomed.”

  “I suppose one does, but it’s deplorable that you should have to. Very well. At the risk of giving you a permanent disgust of me and the whole family, I’ll tell you all. In a way, it will be a relief to share this burden, though you are so young—are you quite sure you want to know?”

  “Entirely sure. How can I truly understand you otherwise, learn how you became the man you are today?”

  Lucian put her arm on his again. They resumed their amble around the long hall. No servants were near. Whatever tragic family secrets she was about to learn, Amanda would keep to herself.

  “Both my parents, but especially my father, espoused the notion that no moral limits applied to them, that they were free to do and act as they liked, as long as they got away with it,” Lucian began, then paused.

  “That sounds somewhat amoral.”

  “Oh, entirely amoral. That is the right word, rather than immoral; they simply did not care about right or wrong, or how their actions affected others. I remember once coming across my father with no less than three of our maids in bed with him.”

  Amanda sniffed. “That cannot have been good for household discipline.”

  “You’d imagine, but he still expected them to do their work or be dismissed without a character. When I came to his room, I don’t remember on what errand, he calmly invited me to join in the fun, though I was only twelve, on vacation from school. When I refused, more from shyness at such a crowd than lack of interest, he mocked me as a blushing violet. My father was good-looking and could be very charming, but he was a monster and brought me up to be like him.”

  Amanda tried to picture what such a childhood had been like, but her imagination was unequal to the task. “I must be grateful that he did not succeed.”

  “To my regret, he did, at least for a time. When that picture was taken, I was in a fair way of imitating him. At that period, I thought nothing of seducing a married woman and risking her happiness for a few casual encounters.”

  She frowned. Was he not still doing that? “What is the difference now?”

  “For the past fifteen years, I’ve avoided women whose families, especially the husbands, would punish them if the affair came out,” he explained. “Those who are not protected by the greater license enjoyed by the aristocracy. There were a few duels with jealous husbands before I knew better.”

  “Ah.” Amanda had hardly absorbed this when he went on in the most casual way, “I tried men, too, while at school—or rather, other boys—but found it was not to my taste.”

  “Men? Boys? How could that even work?” Amanda stared at him in puzzlement.

  Lucian shook his head, whether at himself or her, she could not tell. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting how sheltered you still are. I’ll explain about that some other time, when you are more experienced. To make a long story short, that I preferred to take my pleasures with adult and freely consenting partners already put me several steps above my father and some of his vile cronies, not that I want to defend the thoroughly selfish, spoiled youngster I used to be. My Father’s ruthlessness did not extend only to pleasures of the flesh. In business matters too, he was beyond cruel. He would not lose any sleep over driving some competitor to ruination and suicide. That happened more than once. We are enjoying the fruits of his scheming even now.”

  How fortunate that the man was long dead in his grave. “Was that why you ordered his portrait burned?”

  “No, that was the least of it. You must understand, Amanda, that I did not see anything particularly wrong with taking advantage wherever possible.”

  “Your aunt’s doctrine of the wolf and the sheep?”

  “Exactly. You don’t lose any sleep over the suffering of the chickens or pigs who supply the meat on your plate, do you? But in the end, my father shocked even me and jolted me out of my depraved complacency.”

  He paused again, his face shadowed.

  “Does it have anything to do with your sister?” Amanda guessed.

  “Indeed. My father died quite suddenly of a stroke, at fifty-six, while making love to a courtesan. Whips, ropes, and blindfolds were involved. It was hushed up, as usual in such cases, more frequent than you’d imagine. Even then I did not perceive anything intrinsically wrong in his values and way of life, though I hoped to meet my own end in more dignified style. I buried and even distantly mourned him. He had never been an affectionate parent.”

  Amanda thought of her own beloved father. Poor Lucian. He’d have been too proud to see that he deserved pity, or accept it, even now.

  “I quite enjoyed taking the helm of the earldom and rearranging father’s various businesses according to my own preferences. Naturally, I went through his papers and discovered that he’d kept a diary, in code, though it was not difficult to break. A whole series of them, in fact, seventeen books in all. Once I had dealt with everything urgent, I got around to reading them.”

  Amanda pressed his hand to show her support but did not interrupt.

  “What I read turned my stomach. It was all very boastful, with a vile kind of satisfaction at the havoc he routinely caused in others’ lives. I began to wonder if I truly wanted to emulate a man who had spread so much misery and desperation. Then I came to the fifteenth volume, covering the time after my mother’s death.” His voice became even drier. Amanda shivered. “He noted that Amaryllis was prettier than our mother ever had been, that he should spend more time in Racking to get to know her better . . . When I read that, knowing how his mind worked, my blood ran cold.

  “He dismissed the governess and did not hire a replacement. I’ll spare you the detailed description of what followed. He was not interested in mere rape, like your uncle, but in thoroughly corrupting my sister, making her a willing and enthusiastic participant in incest. She resisted for a while.”

  Amanda was speechless. “How perfectly . . . revolting,” she said in a choked voice when she could. “The poor child!”

  “He did not stop there. He made her do things that most courtesans refuse to perform, watched as he had his valet take her. You get the idea.”

  Amanda doubted it; that was so vile she could not envisage what it must have been like, infinitely worse than her own ordeal. How could a girl live with herself after that? Her disgust tasted bitter on her tongue. “So she killed herself?”

  “No. According to my father’s possibly biased account, they were looking forward to a happy future of such scenes, even after marrying her off to one of his friends. She was to become a full-fledged member of his set, provide entertainment to his cronies . . . but she became with child.”

  “Surely that was to have been expected,” Amanda said, her heart heavy.

  “Yes. Father was not too concerned at first. He gave Amaryllis a book handed down from his gra
ndmother that contained a recipe to deal with the matter. He considered it infallible. But for some reason, to his surprised displeasure, it did not work.”

  Amanda said nothing. So that was the origin of the book still in her possession . . . The old earl had believed in its recipes, then?

  “Things went from bad to worse. Amaryllis had a change of heart and refused to have anything further to do with him, and even talked wildly of denouncing his wickedness. Apparently she also poisoned his valet, though I can scarcely believe it.”

  Amanda could imagine it all too easily. “Did the man die?”

  “No, but he was ill for a time and never the same after, according to my father’s diary. He was pensioned off and sent to live in the colonies.”

  Bribed because he knew too much, Amanda surmised. Had the valet swallowed the potion that would ‘shrivel a man’s privates’? It seemed only too likely, though, in that case, why had Amaryllis not administered it to the earl as well? If he stood before her at that moment, Amanda would hand him the cup herself and laugh when he’d finished drinking.

  “There was some kind of struggle—it was not clear over what. She tried to poison Father, too, I think. He killed her, Amanda; he drowned my sister and her unborn child, pretending it was an accident or suicide afterwards. She did not want to die.”

  Horror held Amanda immobile, even her breath suspended until she gasped for air. “That . . . that is even worse than I suspected. He actually wrote all that down in his diary? Was he not afraid to be found out? Even a peer would hang for such a crime.”

  “He held only contempt for the rest of the world, and as events proved, his confidence that he would escape unscathed was perfectly justified. He lived on in his accustomed way for nearly a decade until that stroke.” Lucian searched her eyes. “Do you feel disgust for me now? A murderer’s son? We are said to look alike.”

  Amanda shook her head. “You are not he, and you do not share the same nature. I cannot and do not want to believe that the sins of the fathers are visited on their children, for that would imperil my own twins.”

  “I suppose.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I should be whipped for polluting your innocent ears with these unspeakable revelations.”

  “No matter how awful, I would rather know the truth, Lucian. What did you feel when you discovered your father’s crime?”

  “At twenty-three, I was not quite as far gone in corruption as he had been. Though, who knows? Had he not written down his boastful account, I might have followed in his footsteps and come to do even worse by now. Remembering the little girl with whom I had shared the nursery in my earliest years, I felt impotent fury and disgust. Had my father still been alive, I might have become a patricide at that moment. I seriously contemplated ending the Rackington line there and then by taking my own life. As a kind of posthumous punishment from my father, for despite all his crimes he was proud of our name and title and the royal connection. Eventually I decided that it would be a waste to throw my life away to no purpose, and instead accepted a somewhat hazardous mission for the Crown.”

  Amanda guessed he had been lucky to survive it, but only said, “I am glad your common sense prevailed.”

  “Before leaving the country, I had my father’s portrait burned. It was a good one, too. Gainsborough caught a trace of his sly malice, visible to those of us who knew him well. Still, I cannot regret, to this day, that I had it destroyed. I could not bear to look upon it, after what I had learned.”

  “That is understandable. I’m glad that your father is not looking down on us now, with the rest of your ancestors.”

  Lucian grinned suddenly. “Oh, I don’t know. If he knew what we are doing to the family and that we are planning to live in bourgeois virtue, he would turn in his grave.” He kissed her hand. “You are a pearl among wives, not to recoil in horror at this tale. I can only say, I regret I come to you so tainted by the past.”

  “The past is over, however bad. Let us build a better future for the twins and ourselves,” Amanda proposed.

  Chapter 23

  By the time Lucian had been home for five weeks, Amanda wondered when he would proceed to the next stage of their relationship. They had become friends and spoke of any subject under the sun; although, for some reason unclear to herself, she had not brought herself to talk to him of his sister’s recipe book, securely hidden at the bottom of a trunk. Purely to pass the time, she had assembled the ingredients of the dangerous liver remedy. It had not been that hard—apart from that spider, until she had discovered that ‘copper spider’ was a local name for a common variety of arachnid. If she decided to brew the potion, she could probably find some hibernating in the attics.

  But between the twins, suckled by two rival wet nurses now, and Lucian’s stimulating company, she had little time for that project. Her husband proved a fount of knowledge on a surprising variety of subjects, and she took full advantage of his willingness to teach her, since in London an ignorant woman would be easy game for the fops and wits he described in appalling detail.

  “You mentioned the other day that men have, um, relations with other men sometimes?” she recalled one afternoon as they were playing dominoes after lunch.

  He added a tile. “In boarding schools the practice is fairly prevalent. My best friend at Eton preferred men to females and still does. Max persuaded me to try what he found so exciting and delightful. But, despite our friendship, I found I did not care for it and I haven’t tried again.”

  Amanda could not help feeling relief. She wanted to ask what that attempt had been like and how the mechanics worked—surely an essential part for connecting two bodies was missing? But that would betray a prurient curiosity. “This friend, Max, does not care for the love of women at all?”

  “No, and as he’s a Viscount it is quite a problem for him. Actually a fair number of men are like that. Some pretend to be entrenched bachelors. Others claim they like the fair sex, and so they may, only not where bed sport is concerned. Then again, some men switch, enjoying both sexes alternately. The ancient Greeks were like that, quite openly; a man could have a wife at home and a male lover at the same time. But certain men are simply not interested or even physically unable to make love to women at all. They have to be more discreet than the ancient Greeks, since it is illegal to have a male lover. But the law has not eradicated the practice and never will.”

  Amanda thought that over. “If some men don’t care to bed women, that is their loss,” she concluded. “Is it possible that your secretary, Mr. Tennant, is one of those men who prefer other men?”

  Lucian shook his head. “No. Whatever made you suspect it?”

  “Mattie has been trying to interest him in an affair, but he has not responded as we would have expected to her broad hints. Though, if he does like women, perhaps he has some prior attachment we do not know of?”

  Lucian chuckled as he distributed the carved ivory tiles for a new round. “I had not taken your prim cousin to be so adventurous. Once again, appearances are deceptive. She has the air of an eminently virtuous woman, and I am something of an expert in the matter.”

  Amanda playfully boxed him in the arm. “Of course she is virtuous! She told me she misses the marriage bed and the bliss she found there with her husband. As a widow, according to her, nobody would take it very amiss if she had a discreet affair.”

  “Nor would they. Her hints cannot have been broad enough, for Tennant wants to marry her, rather than just have an affair. Do you think she would be amenable?”

  Amanda blinked in surprise. “In a heartbeat. Are you sure? I would never have guessed from his correct behaviour. But if they are to marry, it would be a good thing. You are right; at heart Mattie is a virtuous and respectable woman, who would feel happier as a faithful wife than as a fast widow.”

  He re-distributed the tiles for a new round. “You would not miss her services?”

  “Not when I have my husband and children around me. We would still be friends and visit. I p
resume they would settle in town since Tennant works there.”

  “You will soon make other friends, too,” Lucian predicted. “Let’s hope Tennant can reproduce the bliss she spoke of. But if not, she’ll be able to give him hints and instruction until she’s satisfied.”

  Amanda did not immediately touch her dominoes. “First they have to overcome their mutual shyness,” she pointed out. “Perhaps you could tell Tennant that I no longer need a companion now that you are returned and that Mattie may leave us soon? That might impel him to speak. I’ll have a word with Mattie herself if you are certain of Tennant’s serious interest.”

  “I heard it from Tennant’s mouth when I first arrived from Russia, and I would be surprised if he changed his mind since then. He’s the steadfast type I used to look down upon before our marriage.”

  Amanda studied her new tiles. There was the double six . . .

  Lucian ordered his new tiles. “So Mattie misses a husband’s attentions, does she? Did she describe them to you in detail?”

  Amanda frowned at him. “I had to stop her talking about it since she naturally assumed I would be familiar with these matters. My husband being known as such a famous lover. How could I satisfy my curiosity without giving away my abysmal ignorance? I pretended to be shocked and too priggish to talk to anyone about such matters.”

  “Ah.” He did not raise his eyes from his dominoes.

  “Of course,” Amanda said boldly, “it would be preferable if the next time the subject comes up I know what’s what and can imply that my experience is of a superior bliss that lesser mortals cannot even envisage.”

  There was a pregnant pause before Lucian shoved the game pieces away, his eyes glinting. “Is that a challenge I hear, my lady?”

  Amanda raised her chin. “You may take it as such if you like, my lord.”

  “But are you sufficiently recovered, fit enough?”

  Amanda nodded, unwilling to go into details.