Unforgiven (The Horsemen Trilogy)

by Mary Balogh

  Moira. My love. Don’t die. I’ll not let you die. My love. Ah, my love. Please, please don’t die. Don’t leave me. Ah, Moira. My love.

  She had heard it all that night—or thought she had. She had seen anguish in his ashen face, even tears—or thought she had.

  It was strange how the mind and the memory could play tricks on one. It was the way she had preserved her sanity, perhaps. The fact that she was losing her baby had been beyond denial. And so she had comforted herself with imaginary words, imaginary looks. Could she have imagined such things?

  If she had not, then he had not meant them. Against all reason, against her better judgment, against her very heart, she had waited for him to come back, to look at her that way again, to say some of those words again. She had waited to feel his hand on her head again. She had waited for him to say something about their lost baby. Something to comfort her and dull the raw pain of grief.

  There will be other chances for children. His voice stiff and cold, as if accusing her of making a fuss over nothing at all. Women miscarry. Children die. People live on.

  She had wanted to love him again. She realized it now, to her shame. At her wedding she had wanted to love him. She had resisted the need for the rest of the day—she understood now that was why she had been so horrid to him. But she had wanted to be convinced. Before he had left her dressing room, she had finally admitted that perhaps they could make something of this marriage. And then, somehow, despite all the horror of her miscarriage . . .

  She had wanted to love him.

  She could only hate him now with a renewed passion. Unfeeling man. How could he be so very callous?

  There was a knock at her dressing room door, a knock she had come to recognize. He never walked into her room. She must give him that, she supposed.

  “Come in,” she called.

  He bowed to her, his face cold and impassive. “How do you do today?” he asked.

  “Well, thank you,” she said.

  “The doctor seems to believe you are out of all danger,” he said. “You are looking better. I must ask you a question, ma’am.” He had not used her name for a week.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “A week ago,” he said, “you told me that you wished you need never see me again. You were not quite yourself at the time, perhaps. Do you still feel as you did then? Do you still wish it?”

  Kenneth. Had life really brought them to this moment? Why had he come back to Dunbarton? Why—? Pointless questions, pointless thoughts.

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  He made her another bow, more elegant, more formal than the last. “Then you shall have your wish, ma’am,” he said. “I shall leave for London tomorrow morning early. I will not disturb you before I leave. My steward will know where I may be reached at any time you have need of me. Good-bye.”

  It was an unreal moment. She had married a week ago. She had been more than three months with child. Now she had no child—and no husband. Yet she was locked forever into a barren marriage.

  “Good-bye, my lord,” she said.

  She stood staring at the door for a long time after it had closed behind him.

  16

  “BRIGHTON for me, I do believe,” Lord Pelham said. “Prinny and all the fashionable world will be there. One cannot help remembering that this time last year we were about to face the Battle of Waterloo. There is much of life still to be celebrated in a world that is finally at peace. I intend to celebrate.”

  “I will go home, perhaps,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “My father has been ailing, and there comes a time . . .” He shrugged.

  They were riding in Hyde Park quite early one morning in late May. They were discussing what they would do when the Season was over.

  “And you, Ken?” Lord Pelham asked.

  “Me?” Kenneth laughed. “Sorry, I was woolgathering. Or rather I was admiring the ankles of the maidservant walking the dogs over there. No, you may not go either to greet them or to terrorize them, Nelson. There is no point in gazing at me so soulfully. What will I do? Follow the fashionable world to Brighton with Eden, I suppose. Or go to Paris, perhaps. Yes, I fancy Paris—or Vienna or Rome. Even America. The world is out there to be enjoyed, and there is insufficient time, alas, to enjoy it all even during a lifetime.”

  “You will not be, ah, going home?” Mr. Gascoigne asked.

  “Home?” Kenneth laughed again. “Not a chance, Nat. There are more congenial things to do than incarcerate myself in Cornwall. Pursue the delectable Miss Wilcox, for example. Did you know that when she danced the supper dance with me at Pickard’s last evening she broke a commitment to dance it with Pickard’s eldest? I thought for one moment that he was about to slap a glove in my face. She will be in Brighton for the summer—a definite argument against Paris, would you not agree? I could keep Paris for the autumn, of course.”

  “The woman is an incurable flirt,” Lord Pelham said, “and of questionable character, Ken.”

  “Else she would scarcely be dangling after me, would she?” his friend said. “Jealous, are you, Eden?”

  “I would have thought you would wish to be at least in England during the autumn, Ken,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “Lady Hav—”

  “You thought wrongly.” Kenneth spurred his horse into a canter and looked about at the lawns and trees, at the handful of other riders, at the few pedestrians. Nelson raced joyfully at his side. He was enjoying himself enormously. There were more entertainments to choose among in London than there were hours in the day. There were enough gentlemen to talk with, enough ladies to flirt with that one had no time left in which to think or to brood. Whenever he did find himself alone, it was usually so late at night or so early in the morning that he fell immediately into an exhausted sleep.

  His mother had been in town for the past few weeks, as had Helen and Ainsleigh. He had informed them of his marriage but had made no explanation either of the event itself or of the fact that he was living separate from his wife. He had not sent the letters he had written on his wedding day. To their questions of shock and outrage he had merely answered that he had nothing further to add but that if they found themselves with anything else insulting to say about the new Countess of Haverford, perhaps they would be well advised to say it out of his hearing.

  To Nat and Rex and Eden he had merely announced his marriage. Being close friends of his, they had understood instinctively, it seemed, that he would say no more on the subject and had steered clear of it—almost. There were, of course, the occasional prompts and hints as there had been a few minutes ago.

  He did not know what he would do during the summer, Kenneth thought. But he must decide soon. There was only a little longer than a month of the Season left, and then London would be empty of society. The world was his for the traveling and enjoying—an exhilarating thought. There was only one place on earth he could not go, but it was a quiet backwater of a place that could excite no one’s interest beyond a fleeting moment of admiration for its beauties.

  It was a place that haunted him night and day.

  She had recovered her health, Watkins had informed him. She had not written to him herself. But then, neither had he written to her.

  A week ago you told me that you wished you need never see me again. Do you still wish it?

  Yes, I do.

  Eden and Nat were chuckling over something.

  “One somehow cannot imagine Rex setting up a nursery,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “But he looked mightily pleased with himself when explaining that Brighton was not the best place for Lady Rawleigh’s health and that he would be taking her home at the end of June. His meaning could not have been clearer.”

  “We are in grave danger of becoming very ordinary family men, Nat,” Lord Pelham said. “Two out of four. Are we two going to fight on alone to preserve the freedom that had us all rejoicing less than a year ago? While the other two
are increasing the population and accomplishing something as dull and respectable as securing their lines?”

  “You have already decided that both will be boys, then?” Mr. Gascoigne said. “Ken, what—”

  But Kenneth spurred his horse into a gallop and rode on ahead of them.

  It was much later the same day that everything came finally into the open. Mr. Gascoigne and the Earl of Haverford had shared a carriage to a ball—their friend had escorted an aunt and a cousin in his own carriage—and agreed on the way home that they would not look for any further entertainment that night. But Mr. Gascoigne had accepted the invitation to come inside the Earl of Haverford’s house on Grosvenor Square for a drink before walking home.

  “Miss Wilcox really has set her cap for you,” he said, seating himself, glass in hand. “She danced three sets with you. Was I mistaken or did she ask you the third time?”

  “Can I help it if I am irresistible?” Kenneth asked with a grin.

  “She wants to bed you,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “It is common knowledge that you would not be the first, Ken. But it might be well to remember that fast though she be, she is also a lady of the ton and there might be some awkwardness.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Kenneth raised his glass—and one eyebrow.

  “It would not be wise,” Mr. Gascoigne said.

  “But I can hardly be trapped into marriage, can I?” Kenneth said.

  His friend sat back in his chair and regarded him broodingly. “This is very hard to accept, Ken,” he said. “You have been the gayest blade in town for the past two months. You have made Ede and me look and feel like a couple of maiden aunts in comparison. You have been like a keg of powder waiting for a spark before exploding into a million pieces. We are worried about you. Rex too. He says that an unexpected and difficult marriage cannot be made to work if one does not keep one’s bride firmly at one’s side. He should know.”

  “Rex can mind his own damned business,” Kenneth said. “So can you and Eden.”

  “Is she so—impossible?” Mr. Gascoigne asked.

  Kenneth sat forward and set down his glass on the table beside him with an audible click. “Leave it, Nat,” he said. “My wife is not for discussion.”

  His friend swirled the brandy in his glass and gazed down into it. “Will your son or your daughter grow up a stranger to you, then?” he asked.

  Kenneth sat back again and breathed in slowly.

  “You were always—wild,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “We all were. But never irresponsible. It has always seemed to me that we are basically decent men and that when the time should come to settle down . . .” But he had looked up from his glass and stopped talking. He sat very still.

  Kenneth was gripping the arms of his chair very tightly.

  His eyes were closed. “There is to be no child, Nat,” he said. “We lost the child on our wedding night.” Why had he said we? The loss had been all hers. And it had not really been a child. She had been increasing for only a little over three months. But he realized something suddenly, something that explained Nat’s stunned silence. He was weeping.

  He surged to his feet and half stumbled toward the window so that he might stand with his back to the room.

  “Ken,” Mr. Gascoigne said after a while, “you might have told us, old chap. We might have offered some comfort.”

  “Why should I need comforting?” he asked. “It was conceived during a one-night encounter with a woman I did not like. I did not know of its existence until a week before my marriage. She miscarried it the very night of my marriage. I need no comforting.”

  “I have never seen you cry before tonight,” Mr. Gascoigne said.

  “And never will again, I can assure you quite fervently.” He was acutely embarrassed. “Damn it. God damn it, Nat, do you not have the decency to leave?”

  There was a lengthy silence. “I remember that time,” Mr. Gascoigne said at last, “when I went under the surgeon’s knife and was terrified I would scream or faint or otherwise disgrace myself before he ferreted out the bullet. I begged you—I swore at you—to leave, to return to the regiment. You stood there beside the table the whole time. I swore at you afterward too. I never told you how much it meant to me just to have you there. Friends share pain as well as pleasure, Ken. Tell me about her.”

  What was there to tell about Moira Hayes—about Moira Woodfall, Countess of Haverford? He had hardly noticed her through his childhood when she had been frequently with Sean and had been set aside to amuse herself while the two boys played and fought. She had been a thin child, dark, unpretty, uninteresting. She had been just a girl, after all. But, ah, the transformation in her and in his perception of her when he saw her again after an absence of years at school. Tall, lithe, beautiful, fascinating Moira—forbidden to him both because of the feud between their families and because she was gently born. And therefore tempting beyond his powers to resist.

  He had arranged meetings with her as often as was possible—not nearly often enough. He had talked with her, laughed with her, loved her—though their physical relationship had never gone beyond hand-holding and a few relatively chaste kisses. He had declared his love for her. She, perhaps more aware of the impossibility of it all than he, had always only smiled in return. Not knowing, not being sure of her feelings had driven him to distraction. He had been intending to defy his father and hers and the whole world if necessary to marry her. He had thought life would not be possible without her.

  “But your father won?” Mr. Gascoigne asked. “And hers? That is why you bought your commission, Ken?”

  His friendship with Sean Hayes had deteriorated through the years of their youth until there was only enmity left. He might have excused, even if he could not condone, Sean’s wild ways even though his gaming debts must have put a strain on his father’s purse and his promiscuous liaisons were apt to give him the pox. But it was harder—impossible—to excuse the way he began to cheat at cards and dice to recoup some of his losses and the way he would take the favors of any woman he fancied by force if they were not freely given. Kenneth might have excused some minor dabbling in smuggling. It was no longer a major or a lucrative business in the area of Tawmouth. But he could not excuse the way Sean had attempted to build the business by gathering about him a band of thugs and by consorting to bullying and intimidation and violence. Sean had been clever enough to keep the center of his activities away from Tawmouth itself most of the time.

  “You broke with the sister because of the brother?” Mr. Gascoigne asked.

  He had got wind of two things: first that Sean planned a landing in the cove at Tawmouth, and second that Sean had been dallying with Helen’s affections. Moira herself had told him of the latter matter, though she had not called it dalliance. She had been pleased. She had thought he would be pleased. She had perhaps thought that together the four of them could blast apart a family estrangement that had continued far too long.

  He had thought to deal with the matter himself. He had thought to witness Sean in the act of smuggling and to issue an ultimatum the next day. He would expose Sean as a smuggler or Sean would renounce his sudden interest in Helen’s fortune. Blackmail? Oh, yes, it would have been blackmail pure and simple. But when he had appeared on the cliff above the cove that night, he had run into someone on guard, someone who had pointed a pistol right at his heart. Moira.

  “She was one of them, Nat,” he said. “One of those ruthless thugs and bullies. She had a gun. Had it been anyone but me, she would doubtless have fired.”

  “Can you be sure?” Nat asked. “Perhaps she was—”

  “She told me to go home and forget what I had seen,” Kenneth said, “or she would kill me. Or have me killed.”

  He had gone home and told his father about both Sean’s smuggling and his secret dalliance with Helen. The latter had turned out to be far more serious than he had realized. There had been an elopement
planned. Sean, it seemed, had guessed that the Earl of Haverford, Helen’s father, would never consent to the marriage but would perhaps release her dowry after the fact, if only to avoid the worst of the scandal. The earl had acted with some restraint. He had given Sean a choice between prosecution as a smuggler and enlistment in the army. Sean had chosen enlistment, though Sir Basil Hayes had made his fate a little easier by purchasing a commission for him with a foot regiment. He had been killed at the Battle of Toulouse.

  “And I bought my commission,” Kenneth said. “I could not forgive Moira, and she could not forgive me. She was not the woman I had thought her to be. I swore never to go back to Dunbarton. But I did go back. And now she is my wife.”

  “You betrayed her trust,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “And she would protect her brother, even against you. Nasty.”

  “He was nasty,” Kenneth said. “He was not the sort of man a woman would protect—unless she was as ruthless and as evil as he.”

  “He was her brother, Ken,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “Do you still love her?”

  Kenneth laughed. “I would have thought the answer to that has been obvious enough during the past two months,” he said.

  “Actually, yes,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “A great deal has been explained in the past half hour. It has been rather obvious during these two months—Rex even suggested it to us—that indeed you still do love her.”

  “Leaving her one week after we were wed, planning never to go home to her is proof that I love her?” Kenneth said, turning from the window and staring at his friend with raised eyebrows.

  Mr. Gascoigne got to his feet and set down his empty glass. “It is time I went home,” he said. “It has seemed to us that it is unlike you, Ken, to abandon a wife for whom you felt mere indifference. And love and hate—well, you know what is said of them. Might I suggest that men do not cry over a child that is miscarried after only a few months unless they have powerful feelings for the woman who did the miscarrying? Hatred or love?”