Debt of Honor

by Ann Clement

  Letitia smiled at him almost beatifically. He would be momentarily disabused of that last notion.

  “Hmmm, is that really certain?” she asked.

  Percy leaned back in his chair then he reached up, touched her face with his knuckles and traced her cheek. Suddenly, his mood turned pensive, almost sad.

  Letitia took his face in her hands and kissed him briefly.

  His hands covered her hips and moved up and down in a gentle massaging motion.

  “I would like very much to meet your family,” she said, still holding his face. And because he seemed so sad, she changed her mind. She was going to keep the best for last, but he could use some cheering up. “Now it’s my turn. Do you remember you mentioned once that the nursery rooms upstairs could be turned into my studio if I wished?”

  Percy kissed the inside of her palm. “Why, have you run out of space in the orangery already? Did you cover all its walls with works of art while I was gone?”

  “No, nothing of the sort.” She chuckled and ran her fingers along his lips, anticipating with excitement the pleasure her announcement was going to give him. “I hope you will not mind making it more habitable for someone who will move in next spring. Am I giving you enough time?”

  His hands stiffened on her hips, and then he dropped them altogether. “What are you saying, Lettie?” he asked too gravely for the occasion.

  “That in a matter of a few months it will be needed for a new tenant. We are going to have a child, my love.”

  Percy moved the chair back so violently it fell to the floor when he shot up from it. “No!” he said vehemently, shaking his head. “No! You are mistaken. I cannot believe that!”

  He began pacing around the room, apparently too agitated to stand in one spot.

  Letitia gaped at him, bewildered. “Why can you not?” she asked after a moment while he continued his pacing. “I do not think I am mistaken. Josepha has been suspecting it for some time. By now I have every reason to believe her. If you’d like, we can consult a doctor or a midwife.”

  Percy kept pacing, his face contorted. His eyes had suddenly a shiny gleam to them. But that could have been only a reflection from the bright light coming in through the window.

  Because when he finally stopped in front of her, they were like daggers and his face showed none of its recent warmth.

  “Get out of here!” he hissed.

  Letitia stepped back instinctively. She was supposed to get out of where? The library? Why? Why wasn’t he happy?

  “Get out! Now!” he gritted out again.

  She had not misheard him the first time then. More puzzled than frightened, she took a few steps away from him until she stood on the other side of his desk.

  “What is wrong?”

  “What is wrong?” Percy repeated and laughed. “You accused me, ma’am, of having a mistress. I see clearly now that it has been done with the design to cover your own indiscretions. You intrude in here to announce you are with child, and you are asking me what is wrong? Perhaps you can indulge my curiosity and inform me of the identity of his father.”

  His words hit like a slap to her face. Letitia almost choked from the impact and gripped the edge of his desk for support. She searched his countenance frantically for some explanation, some signal that it was just a bad dream. But Percy’s face was like a chunk of ice. There was no mistaking his reaction.

  It was not a bad dream. It was a nightmare happening to her at that very moment.

  “Are you mad?” she asked finally. “Are you insane? How can you… How dare you…. No, how can you utter something like this after all we shared together? How can you think such a thing?”

  “How can I?” Each word oozed frost. “You did not think me serious when I told you I abhor infidelity in marriage, did you? Perhaps you will now. I shall tell you how I not only can think such a thing, but am absolutely convinced that I am right. Did you not ever wonder why there are no children from my first marriage?”

  That took her completely by surprise. She opened her mouth to answer, but the question was apparently rhetorical as far as she was concerned.

  “Let me tell you,” he supplied. “There are no children in this house, because I am unable to father any.”

  Letitia expelled the breath she had not even realized she was holding. Relief swept over her, even though she was still furious with him for the way he reacted. Was this all?

  “That is certainly not true.” She tried not to sound wounded. “Of course you can have children. It had to be Sarah who—”

  “No!” he cut her off. “In six years of marriage, Sarah did not conceive once. Yet the day she died she was with child. But not mine. It was her lover’s of a few weeks, who lived under my roof at the time. Six years against five weeks! Do you want any more proof? Do you need any more proof?”

  “What?” She couldn’t keep astonishment from her question. The worshipped goddess had been an unfaithful wife? “How did you find out?”

  Percy’s face distorted into another grimace.

  “It is not important how. You don’t need to know the details.”

  Ah no, he was quite wrong about that. She was entitled to know every little detail that had prompted his reaction.

  “Let me be the judge of that,” she said. “You accuse me of adultery, yet I have not heard a single argument that would give credence to your accusation.”

  Percy glared at her, then dropped his gaze to the floor between them. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he compressed his lips into a tight line. When he raised his head, if not for that ticcing muscle, his face would have been a perfect mask of calmness.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “Two years ago, Ethel hosted a summer house party. When she discovered that somehow the numbers had been mismatched and she would have to put two strangers in one room, I offered one of the guests—who happened to be my old Cambridge acquaintance—a room at Bromsholme.”

  Letitia raised her brows in question when he said nothing more. He had not explained anything so far.

  Percy was obviously aware of it. The muscle in his jaw developed a regular tempo of its own. He swallowed hard.

  “The day was exceptionally hot. I was with Petre all morning, but we returned by noon. I went upstairs to wash off the sweat and find a clean shirt. Then I heard Sarah’s cries. I thought she was unwell again. Instead, when I opened the door to her bedchamber, I found her and my friend in flagrante delicto.”

  Oh goodness. Oh dear Lord. How horrid. How absolutely terrible. The nausea attacked her again, but this time it had nothing to do with the morning sickness. Letitia almost gagged on contempt for Sarah. She imagined her own feelings on such an occasion. If she came upon Percy with another woman, she would probably tear them both to pieces with bare hands.

  But she would not let him extend Sarah’s sins to her own person.

  “I daresay you were no exception,” she said when he failed to resume his story. “Even I am not that ignorant to pretend that I do not know—though not from personal experience, as you just implied—that half of the ton thrives on such relationships. How it pertains to our current situation, I cannot imagine.”

  “You cannot imagine?” he repeated, sarcasm dripping from each word. “Surely, you are not so slow-witted to miss the connection.”

  “I beg your pardon,” she shot back, matching his tone word for word. “I wish I could shrug off this latest insult, but the logic you applied to your accusation would make everyone I know slow-witted—including you. You have to do better than that.”

  Percy’s nervousness increased. Was there something he did not want to tell her?

  She had no choice but to confront him.

  “Mrs. Waters told me Sarah died very suddenly and not in childbirth,” she said. “Did she? You are the only one who can tell me what really happened.”

  Her word
s had an unexpected result. He flinched.

  “I already told you, the details are not important.”

  And just like that, she suddenly understood. The air in the library became too hot to breathe. Sweat trickled down her back as she recalled Ethel’s words spoken in the garden during the wedding breakfast.

  “You murdered her,” she whispered, glad of even the rather-dubious security his desk provided.

  “What?” His head snapped in her direction, and he fixed an angry gaze on her. “Are you accusing me of killing my wife? What nonsense is that?”

  Yet he seemed very uncomfortable. His face paled and filled with anxiety and perhaps even fear.

  More cold sweat trickled down her back, but she could not show him how panicked she began to feel.

  “People are talking.” She shrugged, doing her best to maintain her composure.

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “It is not important who. You do not need to know the details,” she snapped back. “I never put much store in gossip, but I am no longer so sure about the falsehood of this one. Did you murder her imaginary lover too?”

  “Imaginary?” he almost roared. “I told you, Anthony Burdett was my acquaintance at Cambridge. And had I not met him by chance in London six years earlier and visited his aunt with him, I would never have met Sarah. Ironic, is it not? No, I did not murder him. I called him out.”

  Oh God, he had fought a duel! And since he was here, in front of her, that Burdett fellow had to have been the recipient of a well-aimed bullet.

  Meanwhile, Percy’s face was a battlefield in action. Anger, indecision, vulnerability and despair fought one another until he seemed to banish them all and come to a decision. He walked to the window, where he stopped with his back to her.

  “Perhaps I owe you an explanation,” he said after a moment in a much calmer, although not at all friendlier, tone. “Sarah took her own life.”

  Letitia stared at his back, silenced into incredulity again.

  “She stayed in her room for the rest of that fateful day,” he continued in a flat tone devoid of emotion. “While I went to meet Burdett the next morning, she sent a message to my valet that she did not wish to be disturbed. But as the day progressed, the silence emanating from her room took on an eerie feeling. Sarah would not open the door, even to her own maid. Eventually, I forced it.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Her body hung from the curtain rod, facing the door. She left a note for me in which she acknowledged her pregnant state and named Burdett the father of her child. Thus, I am not only guilty of those two deaths, but now I also know that I am unable to beget a new life. Perhaps this was what drove her away from me.

  “Her maid was with me when I forced the door, but I stopped her from calling for help. Sarah would not be buried in consecrated ground if word got out. I am certain the servants suspected something was amiss, but what they chose to believe and tell others, if anything at all, I do not know. I cannot prevent gossip.”

  In the ensuing silence when neither of them spoke, the room filled with the wild hammering of her heart. The effect of his words on her emotions was dizzying.

  Percy spoke again. “When you and I wed, my intention was to maintain a white marriage. I did not think you wanted anything different. Whatever happened earlier did not seem to matter. Perhaps I should have told you this long ago. You should not have nurtured a hope or expectation of something you cannot have as my wife. But it is too late now.”

  “Too late?” She fought the tears stinging under her eyelids. “Too late for what?”

  “For saving this marriage.”

  His rejection delivered another unexpected blow. His twisted logic notwithstanding, her heart went out to him, but he wanted none of it. Couldn’t he see how wrong he was?

  “Oh, I think this marriage has been doomed from the very beginning,” she rejoined with cold hauteur. “You turned out every inch the man I first expected you to be. I would never lie to you. I never did. As for your beloved and conniving Sarah, you proved nothing to me. Why can you not understand that she cheated you—again? Why you choose to trust a woman like her is beyond me. She left you a note? Well, that was easy. You never stood a chance of proving or disproving her veracity in this case once she killed herself, did you? I’m only surprised she did not inform you she was going to have twins!”

  “Enough!” he roared. “How dare you sport with me and my feelings in such a callous manner?”

  “How dare you accuse me, basing your argument on some flimsy nonsense a child would see through? Do not touch me!” She raised her voice when he moved in her direction. Instinctively, she began to move toward the door until he blocked her exit.

  “I have no intention of touching you ever again, ma’am.” His face, contorted with fury, loomed right above hers, but to her great relief, his hands stayed by his sides. “Flimsy nonsense, you say? Oh, I do not think so. Sarah had always wanted children, and I disappointed her. Perhaps she would be now a happy mother and I would never know the difference, had I not discovered them. Perhaps she would have left me for Burdett. But she could not lie about something like that when she was on the verge of taking her own life, whether I was able to prove it or not.”

  “And, therefore, I must lie since I am not planning to kill myself. What happened to your brain? I will not ask what happened to your heart. I am beginning to believe that you do not have one where I am concerned.”

  “And I am beginning to believe that what was spread about you in town might not have been entirely without foundation. Like you, I never put much store in gossip. I might have been wrong in your case. Had I been more careful, I might have spared myself the anguish of dealing with your duplicity!”

  “My duplicity! How dare you! I have done nothing to earn the contempt you, in your madness, so liberally bestow upon me!”

  Percy laughed. It was an ugly, angry sound.

  “No, nothing indeed, besides begetting a child outside the marriage bed!” He leaned closer and his words froze the air between them once more. “You should have heeded my warning. I have no intention of tolerating your betrayal. Enough has been said already. Now, get out! This is no longer your home. Sadly, there still will be the spectacle of a divorce, no matter how much I might wish to keep it quiet, but I shall accept that humiliation more readily than your presence in my life.”

  With each word that sliced like a razor, Letitia’s fear subsided, while her fury grew to match his. Until it exploded.

  “I hate you!” she spat. “I hate you with all my heart! What is this? Some sort of a game for you? A trap to test my loyalty? You have a foul mind, Sir Percival Hanbury, if you think you proved anything beyond the rabid condition of your thoughts. You want me to leave? Do you think I would stay a minute longer with someone whose chief feelings toward me are distrust, suspicion and hatred? Never!”

  And with that, she marched to the door, yanked it open and then slammed it behind her so forcefully even the massive doorframe shook from the impact. Through the haze of gathering tears, she noticed one of the footmen who had failed to become invisible at the right moment and now straightened up at attention, pretending he had not noticed a thing.

  “Traveling carriage!” she almost shouted. “Run to the stables and have it ready immediately!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It seemed his feet had sprouted roots in the carpet in the middle of the library, or at least that was how Percy felt once the library door slammed with such finality on his life. His muscles still trembled from the aftershocks of Lettie’s none too quiet exit, as well as, or especially from, the blow she had dealt him.

  Percy slowly eased the fists he had clenched in order to make sure he kept them to himself. He would have never hurt her, but extending such consideration to the objects on his desk had not been easy.

  Only last night, she had said she lov
ed him. And he’d walked into that trap like a hungry animal, wanting to believe her. Luckily, it had been a short-lived delusion on his part. By God, he should have known better than to trust a woman again. Apparently, he had not learned his lesson the first time.

  More the fool he.

  Percy took a few labored breaths until his lungs returned at last to their normal functioning. Unfortunately, his heart refused to follow suit and probably would not for a very long time. Or maybe he needn’t worry about his heart; Lettie had accused him of not possessing that particular organ. He wished it were true; otherwise, the next forty or so years of his life seemed perilously close to banishment in hell.

  For a man without a heart, he could feel an astonishing amount of pain, though. Lettie’s announcement found its way to his most vulnerable spot, wherever that was.

  It surprised him somewhat that he did not really care about the identity of her child’s father, even though he had asked her that question. It would eventually be revealed anyway, once the criminal conversation case was underway. But the name, or the man himself, was only a formality. What counted, no, what hurt the most, was that, like Sarah, she’d consorted with another man. Although, unlike Sarah, she could not have known about his shortcoming, his incompleteness, until he told her. Of course, Sarah had not known with any certainty until the very end either.

  Not only he had not seen it coming—again—but he was still in shock at this newest betrayal. He had been deluding himself that Lettie loved him, for God’s sake. And those three little words—I missed you—had opened the floodgates he kept firmly locked and swept him along with the torrent of his rushing emotions. Emotions that churned onward with such force he could hardly breathe for a few moments.

  She missed and loved him. The heart he did not possess had exploded then into pieces, and he had sunk into the warmth of her words, had let his hope that there might be happiness after all open and blossom. Those few precious words she had whispered with such conviction nourished this hope like the spring sun. And Lettie—his beautiful, intelligent and, yes, he had believed until yesterday, loving wife—had been her wonderful self, unrestrained and unselfish.