by Mary Balogh
He looked at her—pale and composed, staring down at the hands in her lap. He was not sure he wanted to hear it. She had been his wife for three weeks. They had developed a working relationship during that time. They were almost friends. They were insatiable lovers. And yet they were strangers. He had not even known who she was until a few moments ago. Lady Catherine Winsmore—now Lady Catherine Adams, Viscountess Rawleigh—daughter of the Earl of Paxton.
For five years she had lived at Bodley-on-the-Water as Mrs. Catherine Winters, widow. Yet she had been the unmarried daughter of an earl. He was acquainted with the Earl of Paxton. He had just forgotten that his family name was Winsmore.
“I made my come-out when I was nineteen,” she said. “A family bereavement had prevented it the year before. I felt old. I felt that I had been left behind.” She laughed softly without amusement. “I was very ready for flirtation, love, marriage. Above all I wanted to enjoy my Season. A bereavement can be irksome when one is young, especially when it is for a relative one has not known well and can feel no great sorrow for.”
This was the Catherine of five years ago. She would have been a beautiful and eager girl. He would have been in the Peninsula at the time. She had made her come-out the year Ken had been invalided home. He had come back to Spain and deliberately infuriated them with his descriptions of all the young ladies of the ton with whom he had flirted and danced and walked. Perhaps Catherine had been one of them.
“I was fortunate enough to have several admirers,” she said. “One in particular. He offered for me early. Papa was eager. It was a good match. I liked him. I was inclined to say yes. But—oh, but foolishly I found him a little dull. I would say yes eventually, I thought, but I did not want to be tied down by a betrothal before the end of the Season. I wanted other men to think I was free. I was not done with flirtation. I was such a foolish girl.”
“It is not foolish to want to enjoy life when one is young,” he said quietly. Toby, across his foot, heaved a deep sigh of contentment.
“There was someone else who excited me far more,” she said. “He was handsome and gay and charming. And he was made quite irresistible by the fact that he had a reputation as a rake. It was rumored that he played deep at the gaming tables and that he was facing ruin and was in search of a rich wife. I was warned to stay well away from him.”
“But you did not,” he said.
She hunched her shoulders. “I had no illusions about the nature of his interest in me,” she said. “I had no thought of marriage with him. I was not in love with him. But it was exhilarating to be admired by someone so notorious and so—forbidden. I would sometimes dance with him in defiance of my chaperone. I used to exchange glances with him at concerts and at the theater. Sometimes, if he suspected that I was being kept at a distance from him, he would contrive to send me notes. I even answered one of them—but only one. I was uneasy about doing anything so outrageously improper. I was just—very silly.”
It must be very bad, he thought. She was taking a long while getting to it. She had not once looked up at him.
“Just very young,” he said.
“But then I did something outrageously improper after all.” She hunched her shoulders again and paused a long while before continuing. “We were both at Vauxhall—with separate parties. He asked me to dance with him, but my escort told him—very stiffly and firmly—that I was engaged for the evening. He smuggled a note to me with a wine waiter, asking me to meet him for a brief stroll along one of the paths. It was such a beautiful, enchanted place and it was the first time I had been there. But all my own party wanted to do was sit in the box that had been reserved, eating strawberries and drinking wine. No one was willing to dance or to walk. I was so very disappointed.”
Her voice had quickened, become more agitated. He looked at her bowed head and knew one thing at least. It was a good thing she had not married the dull, respectable man who had sapped all the youthful exuberance from her first Season. Poor girl that she had been—he could feel the pull of the temptation she had felt. Surely a harmful temptation, which of course she had given in to. He supposed they had been seen alone together and she had been ruined. No, there must have been more to it than that. He remembered his wedding night.
“I said I was going to call upon a friend in another box,” she said, “and rushed away before anyone could jump up to escort me. I went for the stroll I had so longed for.” She laughed and spread her hands over her face briefly.
He had ravished her. God, he had ravished her.
“He had a carriage waiting,” she said. “I did not want to get into it, of course, but he promised me it would be just a short drive so that he could show me the lights of Vauxhall from a little distance away. I was too embarrassed to make a loud fuss, which I would have had to make to free myself of his grip on my arm. He—he did something to me in the carriage—and he took me straight home afterward. He was quite bold about it. He told Papa we were in love and had been together and that he would have eloped with me but he had too great a regard for my reputation.” She paused.
“He had ravished you?” It was hard to get the words past his lips.
Her eyes were closed and her hands tightly clasped in her lap. “Over the years,” she said, “I have persuaded myself that it was not my fault. I said no—over and over again. But I went willingly to him, and I got into his carriage without any undue pressure. I suppose it cannot really be called ravishment. No one else ever called it that. It was all my fault.”
“Catherine!” His voice was harsh and for the first time her head shot up and she looked at him. “You said no. It was ravishment. It was not your fault.”
She closed her eyes again and tipped her head back.
“He wanted to be sure of your fortune?” he asked, though the answer was obvious, of course. “Why did you not marry him, Catherine? Did your father forbid it?”
She laughed harshly. “I would not,” she said. “Oh, I would not. I would have preferred to die. He made no secret of what had happened, of course—or his version of what had happened. He wanted to make sure that I had no choice.”
Ruin. Complete and total ruin. How had she found the courage to refuse to do what she had seemed compelled to do?
“And so,” he said, “you were banished to Bodley-on-the-Water to live out your life under an assumed name and an assumed widowhood.”
She did not answer for a few moments. “Yes,” she said at last.
“Who was he?” His voice was almost a whisper. He felt such a murderous rage that he was almost paralyzed by it.
She shook her head slowly.
He would find out. She would tell him. He would find the scoundrel and kill him.
“Catherine?” he said.
And then he was struck by a thought. She had not loved either man—either the one to whom she had been almost betrothed or the one who had ravished her. She had gone to London eager for her first Season—so there could have been no one she had left behind. Who the devil, then, was Bruce?
She had not answered him. She sat with her head still thrown back and her eyes still closed.
“Catherine,” he said, “who is Bruce?”
She looked at him then, her eyes at first blank and then filling with such torment that his breath caught in his throat. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. Then she tried once more.
“He was my son.” There was despair in her voice. “The child of that ugliness. He was born a month early. He lived only three hours. It was a very good thing he died, everyone said. How fortunate for me and for him too. He was my baby. He was mine. And he was innocent of that ugliness. Bruce was my son. He died in my arms.”
God! He sat rooted to his chair, frozen to it.
“There.” He was not sure how much time had passed since either of them had spoken. The emotion had gone from her voice. “That is what I should have told you
before we married. That is what you should have insisted I tell you. You have married a woman who was doubly ruined, my lord. I would not marry him even when the full truth of my predicament was known. I was sent to my aunt in Bristol. But she did not want me and I did not want to be there, being treated as if I were too depraved even for the gallows. So I suggested a future for myself that would rid my family of the embarrassment of my presence and would give me a chance for some sort of new life. I even chose Bodley-on-the-Water myself.”
He found himself doing mental calculations. Yes, it was six years ago that Ken had been sent back to England, not five.
“Catherine,” he said, “who was he?”
But she shook her head again. “Leave it,” she said. “Let it go. I have. I have had to in order to stay sane.”
“Who was he?” He recognized the voice as one he had used a great deal during his years as a cavalry officer. It was a voice that had invariably commanded instant obedience. She was looking at him again. “You will tell me who he is,” he said.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I owe you that. Sir Howard Copley.”
If it was possible to turn colder, he did it. There was a buzzing in his ears. He wondered with a detached sort of fascination if he was about to faint. Was such a ghastly coincidence possible? Yet he remembered the conversation he had had with Daphne not so long ago. Copley had been a known rake and fortune hunter for a number of years. He had been involved in a number of scandals and even in two duels. Somehow—but such things happened—he still moved on the fringes of Society and sometimes even closer than the fringes.
Lord Rawleigh had been told all about Copley at the time his betrothal had ended. The memories were all strangely mixed up with the events surrounding Waterloo. He had heard the names of a few other young ladies whose reputations had been sullied or even ruined by Copley. Could he remember any of those names now? Had Catherine’s been among them? Was it possible to remember accurately? Paxton’s daughter. Whom for some reason Copley had failed to marry even though she had borne his bastard.
Was he inventing the memory now? Or was it really there, lodged firmly in his subconscious? Angry as he had been at Horatia, hurt as he had been, he had thought at the time—at least she had been spared what that other foolish woman had endured. Paxton’s daughter.
She had got to her feet, and Toby was scrambling to his. His tail was waving cheerfully back and forth, brushing Lord Rawleigh’s leg as it did so.
“I am going to bed,” she said quietly without looking at him. “I am exhausted. Good night.”
Toby trotted out of the room at her heels. The viscount sat for a long time where he was before finally getting up and making his weary way to his own bedchamber, taking the candle with him.
• • •
SHE slept deeply and dreamlessly. She awoke early, surprised that she had slept at all. He had not come to her—for the first time since their return to Stratton. It was the end, of course. She accepted that quite calmly. She supposed she had always known that she would tell him one day or that he would find out. And if she had known that, then she had also known that it would be the end.
She would not burden herself with the guilt of having cheated him into marrying her under false pretenses. He had known there were secrets. He might have insisted on knowing them that day he had come with Daphne to her cottage. He had not insisted.
Well, now he knew that he had married a woman who could never again appear in decent society.
She would not allow her mind to move beyond the calm knowledge that this was the end. It was of no great moment. She had lived alone for five years and had even been happy. And it was not as if she loved him—she stubbornly refused to remember what she had admitted to herself just last night before she told him her story.
She would not go downstairs early. He had to be faced, of course, but not at breakfast. Not with the chance that his friends would be at the table too. She turned over onto her side and touched her pillow where his head usually lay. She willed herself back to sleep.
She woke up an hour later, surprised again that she had succeeded. It seemed that unburdening herself had released a great tension inside her and had left her totally exhausted.
His lordship was out riding with his guests, the butler informed her after she had entered the breakfast room and heaved a silent sigh of relief to find it empty. She hoped they would stay out all morning. She herself had three visits planned for the afternoon. There was luncheon to face, of course. But that would probably be like yesterday’s meals. His friends liked to talk and laugh. She was not sure if they had all been covering up for Lord Haverford’s revelation. She supposed they had been.
But she was not to be as fortunate as she had hoped. When she came up from her daily consultation with the cook belowstairs, it was to find all four gentlemen in the great hall, just returned from their ride. The Earl of Haverford strode toward her and took both her hands in his before bowing over them.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “We took Rex away from you for a ride. Forgive us. It will not happen again. We will be leaving this afternoon for London. We merely called here to wish you both well, you see. But we will not impose upon your hospitality further.”
She looked at him and at Lord Pelham and Mr. Gascoigne in some dismay. She did not want them to go away. And she was sure that they had planned to stay for a week or more.
“We will be disappointed to see you leave so soon,” she said. “Will you not reconsider?”
They were all very complimentary. But they were all vocal in their eagerness to be in town now that the Season had begun. And none of them would dream of imposing for longer than a day on newly married friends.
And so a mere few hours later they were waving their guests on their way, she and her husband. They stood outside on the terrace, the silence loud after the turmoil of the farewells and the departure. He took her by the elbow and directed her along the driveway toward the bridge, where they had been standing yesterday—was it only yesterday?—when this had all begun. They did not talk. He dropped his hand from her elbow after a few moments.
It was not so lovely today. There were clouds and a chill breeze. The water of the river looked slate gray rather than blue and its surface was ruffled. Toby ambled along the bank as he had yesterday, looking for a foe to vanquish.
“My father will no longer support me now that I have left Bodley-on-the Water,” she said, breaking the silence at last. “That was the condition. And I could not go back there anyway. But England is full of villages, and apart from the lease of a house, my needs and expenses are very few. Perhaps you will be willing to do what my father has done for the past five years. I can change my name again. I will never be any trouble to you.”
“We are going to London,” he said, his voice flat.
“No!” This was the last thing she had expected—the very last. “No, Rex, not London. I cannot go there. You know I cannot. And you would not wish to be seen with me there.”
“Nevertheless we are going,” he said. “There is a great deal of unfinished business awaiting us there.”
“Rex.” She grabbed his arm. It felt granite hard. “Perhaps you did not understand. Everyone knew. It was made very public. Even the fact that I was increasing. I was totally ruined. I could not possibly go back.”
His eyes looked bleak when he turned them on her. “Were you guilty, then?” he asked her. “Did you consent?”
“No!” Had he not believed her? Would she have behaved afterward as she had if she had consented? “But what difference does it make? You know that a woman is always guilty once her virtue is gone. And I would not play by the rules and redeem my virtue and reputation in the only possible way.”
“Then it is not finished,” he said. “We are going back to finish it, Catherine.”
She shook her head. She felt physically sick. “Please,” sh
e said. “Please, Rex. Let me go away. No one ever need know whom exactly you married. Your friends will say nothing.”
“You forget something,” he said. “You are my wife.”
He must have been a good officer, she thought irrelevantly. His men must have known the impossibility of pitting their wills against his.
“You must be sorry for that now,” she said bitterly. “You should have insisted on hearing all when I told you my name, Rex. You must have realized that—”
“Let us deal with realities,” he said. “You are my wife. I want a life with you. I want children of you.”
She felt a stabbing of longing. But she shook her head. “I should have told you,” she said. “I have known for six years that marriage was an impossibility. I have known that dreams were forbidden. I tried to turn you away, Rex. I said no time and time again.”
He had turned pale and his jaw had set hard. “Just as you did with Copley,” he said. “An apt comparison, Catherine.”
“Except,” she said, dismayed, “that you left that night when I said no. You did not force me.”
He laughed harshly.
“Let us stay here, then,” she said, her voice pleading. “And hope that no one ever finds out.”
“We are going to London, Catherine,” he said.
She set her hands on the balustrade and gripped hard as she stared down into the water. “You are cruel,” she whispered.
“And you are a coward,” he said.
“A coward!” She whirled on him, her eyes flashing. “A coward, Rex? I am a realist. I know the rules. I have broken them—by refusing to marry him, by agreeing to marry you. But I know the rules and I know which ones can never be bent or broken. I cannot go back to London.”
“But you will be going,” he said. “Tomorrow morning.” He turned to stride from the bridge in the direction of the house.
He did not wait for her, and she did not hurry after him. She stayed where she was, fighting faintness and nausea and panic. She should never have married him. She should have held firm even though there had been no alternative except total destitution. She should have held out as she had that first time. Why was it that courage came harder as one aged? Was it that one knew more of life as one grew older? That one realized that courage was not something that applied just to the moment but something that set the course for the whole of one’s life? If she had known when she refused to marry Sir Howard what was ahead for her—all the loss of identity, all the tedium—would she have refused?
