by Mary Balogh
“Jennifer—” he said softly.
“It is amazing,” she said, “how in the space of a few days one can grow up all in a hurry so that one was a girl one day and is a woman the next. I thought Lionel loved me. I thought you were so obsessed with me that you would resort to dishonorable trickery in order to win me.” She laughed softly and at last moved in order to press one hand over her mouth.
“Jennifer, my dear—” he said.
“It was revenge, was it not?” she asked. “You had returned from being with your stepmother and you saw Lionel here and you discovered that he was newly betrothed and you thought to end the betrothal and embarrass and possibly hurt him. That was it, was it not?”
He inhaled slowly. “Yes,” he said. He watched her eyes close and then clench tightly above her hand.
“The best way to do it was to make me fall in love with you and break off my own betrothal,” she said, “or perhaps cause Lionel to cast me off. And to do it in a rather public manner so that he would look something of a fool. That was it, was it not?”
“Yes.”
“I did not matter at all to you,” she said. “I was a mere tool. Tools do not have feelings. It did not matter to you that I would be disgraced and probably hurt.”
“At first,” he said, “I persuaded myself that you would be better off without him. Your life would have been hell with him.”
“And now,” she said, “it is heaven? You might have written that letter, Gabriel. You were both playing the same game. You might have called it ‘Cast-Off Jennifer.’ Perhaps you did. But you were both playing it. He out-maneuvered you. He thought of writing that letter before you did. But you might have done it, then or later.”
“I might have,” he said quietly. “But I did not. I could not.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because after that … kiss,” he said, “at the Velgards’ costume ball, guilt would no longer allow me to use you. I had come to know it was a person I was using as a pawn. I had come to realize what I was doing to you—and to myself.”
“Ah,” she said, “the loser’s excuse. The noble explanation. And so all must be forgiven. At the last possible moment you had an attack of conscience and put an end to your dastardly scheme. You would have allowed my reputation to recover.”
“What I did was inexcusable,” he said. “It will be on my conscience until I die, if that is any consolation to you, Jennifer. I can find no excuse whatsoever for what I did. I can find no redeeming feature in my behavior that would give me any right to beg your forgiveness. There is nothing I can say or do.”
“You married me.” She laughed again and looked at him at last. Her eyes coming to rest on his felt like the flailing of a whip. “You will be able to carry around your guilt for the rest of your life, Gabriel. It will be there every time you look at me. Will you ever make it up to me, do you think?”
“No,” he said, “never. And so you must tell me what you wish, Jennifer. If you wish for my protection and perhaps for … children, then we will continue to inhabit the same house. I will give you as much freedom as you desire. Or if you would prefer never to set eyes on me again, I will set up a home for you with everything you need and access to a man of business who will handle your concerns so that you will not need to have any dealings with me. Think about it for a day or two or for as long as you need. It will be entirely as you wish.”
He turned to the door and set a hand on the knob. He wished that he could set her free so that she would not have to bear his name for the rest of her life, so that she could look for a husband to love. He wished it especially now that her name would be cleared in the eyes of the ton.
But there was one thing more he must say to her. He turned his head to look back at her. “I suppose for the rest of your life,” he said, “it will be a toss-up in your mind which you hate more, Kersey or me. Or perhaps we will be equal in your low esteem. But I must say this, Jennifer. You feel unwanted and unloved. You feel that both men you thought cared about you did not but merely used you. You are wrong. You are both wanted and loved. I did not even realize it until after I had married you. I thought I married you to save you from ruin, and perhaps that was a part of it. But only a part. You are eminently lovable. I love you more than life.”
He left the room, directed a footman to see to it that his horse was at the door within ten minutes, and took the stairs up to his dressing room two at a time.
SAMANTHA CALLED DURING THE afternoon, bringing a maid with her. She was wide-eyed with the news that the Earl and Countess of Rushford and Viscount Kersey had come during the morning and been closeted with her uncle for all of half an hour. Aunt Agatha had been summoned after they had left. Jennifer’s name—and Lord Thornhill’s too—were to be publicly cleared, it seemed.
But Sam still looked unhappy even after hugging Jennifer and telling her how glad she was. And finally she disclosed what she said she had been planning to say today anyway. Lionel had pretended an attachment to her and she had fallen in love with him and then she had discovered how he had used her.
She did not know if Jenny would be able to forgive her.
Jennifer was beyond being hurt more than she had been hurt already. Feeling seemed quite dead in her. Except feeling for the cousin who had been her closest friend for several years. She did not blame Sam at all. Men were such evil creatures and so powerful when they had looks and charm to combine with ruthlessness and experience.
They walked in the park during the quiet part of the afternoon, arms linked, reflecting on what a difference a few weeks in town had made to their lives—but not at all in the way they had expected.
Jennifer dined alone after word had been brought that her husband would eat at his club. She sat in the dining room feeling the silence, feeling the presence of the servants, eating her way determinedly through at least a small helping of each course.
She spent the evening alone in her private sitting room, stitching at some embroidery. She would have to make an appointment to speak with him, she supposed. She had a feeling that he would keep himself away from the house as much as possible until she had done so and told him what she wanted.
What did she want?
I love you more than life. She did not believe him.
She did not know what she wanted. She did not want to think about it yet. At the moment the burdens were too heavy to allow for rational thought. He would have to wait for her decision.
She went to bed early. She was bone-weary. She needed an early night. And so she lay staring up into the darkness, wondering when he would come home and if he would come home—until she heard quiet sounds coming from his dressing room. She had left the door into her own open. And then the sounds stopped. Perhaps it had been only his valet in there.
She could not sleep. For twenty years she had slept in a bed alone. For two nights she had shared her bed. Now she did not know if it would be possible ever again to sleep alone. She could not sleep. She must have been lying in bed for two hours or more.
She sat up and lit a candle. And hugged her knees and stared into space while it burned half down. She could not sleep. Yet she could not get up the energy to pick up one of her books from the shelf below her nightstand. She did not want to read.
There really was only one thing to do. She acknowledged the fact eventually with a sigh and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She left the candle where it was.
SHE DID NOT KNOCK. She just opened the door quietly and stepped inside. She was not even sure that he had come home or that, if he had, he had not gone back downstairs. The curtains were drawn back from the windows, making the room quite light. He was standing by one of the windows, wearing his dressing gown, looking back over his shoulder at her. She walked across the room until she was standing quite close to him.
She could speak only what was in her heart. She had not thought out any plan of what she wanted. But some things were best spoken without prior thought.
“I want our m
arriage to continue,” she told him.
“Very well.” His tone was cautious. “It need not take long. Just a few minutes. Shall we do it here? You can go back to your own bed then. With luck and nightly effort I will have you with child very soon. Then you need see me less frequently.”
“That is not what I meant,” she said.
He stood quiet and still, waiting, looking at her.
“Did you mean it?” she asked him. “Please. Please, please, Gabriel, it must be the truth now. If you said it only because you knew I needed to hear it, and if you say it again now, I will know soon enough. Better by far merely to say that you wish me well and that you want to work with me to a mutually comfortable arrangement. Did you mean it?”
“I love you more than life,” he said again.
“Do you?” She set her head on one side and looked closely at his face in the darkness. She had given him a way out without his having to be cruel. But he had said it again. “I think we can make it work, then, Gabriel, because I love you too, you see. I know that I do because you have offered me a comfortable alternative to living with you but I know that I want to go on with you.”
He turned his head to look down into the square. It took her a few moments to realize that he was crying.
“Gabriel.” She touched his arm, horrified. “Don’t.”
But he shook his head and turned it even farther from her until he had got control of himself. “You cannot possibly be willing to forgive me for what I did to you, Jennifer,” he said. “It would be there between us for the rest of our lives.”
“There you are wrong,” she said, and she stepped boldly forward to set both arms about his waist. “We say it at church every Sunday when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, don’t we? But we rarely realize quite what we are saying. But we are all thoughtless sometimes and ride roughshod over the feelings of others. And we all use other people sometimes for our own ends. It is a regrettable part of being human. We are all in need of forgiveness over and over again throughout our lives. The measure of our goodness, I suppose, is the strength of our consciences. I think yours is strong. And apart from the fact that you are hurting now and filled with self-loathing, I am glad all this happened, Gabriel. If it had not, I would have married Lionel and been miserable with him. And I would never have known you or loved you. When I said I wanted our marriage to continue, I meant in every possible way.”
His hands were gripping her shoulders. He leaned forward now to rest his forehead against hers. His eyes were closed.
“If it is what you want, of course,” she said, suddenly timid again.
“If—” She heard him drawing a deep and slow breath. “I have just spent a day accustoming myself to the thought that I had very probably lost you, wondering how I was to live without you. Hoping that at the very least you would want a child of me before leaving me.”
“Ten, please, Gabriel,” she said, tipping her head back so that for a moment their mouths met.
“Be careful that I do not take you at your word,” he said, chuckling unexpectedly. “And I have been hoping, Jennifer, I must confess, that the begetting of a child would take a long time.”
“For shame,” she whispered to him, and she feathered kisses along his jaw to his chin. He must have shaved before coming to her last night and the night before, she realized. He had not shaved tonight.
“I know,” he said. “I am incorrigible. Don’t do that any more, Jennifer, unless you mean it.”
She started along the other side of his jaw. “I have been trying for hours to sleep,” she said. “You have done a terrible thing to me, Gabriel. You have spent two nights in my bed and now I do not believe I can sleep without you in it.”
“Are you sure it is sleep you have on your mind?” he asked. His hands were at work on the buttons of her nightgown.
She dropped her arms to her sides with a sigh of contentment and a little shiver of something more. “Well, perhaps after and between,” she said.
“After and between what?” His hands stilled.
“After you have made love to me and before you do it again and after that before you do it once more and so on,” she said.
“Good Lord,” he said, “do you want to make an invalid of me?”
Suddenly, amazingly, they were both laughing—with genuine and prolonged amusement and with a deeply shared affection. They wrapped their arms about each other as if they would never let go. They continued to cling together when they were finally quiet again.
“Lord God,” he said, sounding shaken. “Oh, dear Lord God.”
“Amen,” she said. “It really was a prayer, was it not?” She laughed softly.
“Yes,” he said. “It really was.”
She rubbed her cheek against his.
“I think perhaps,” he said, “we should get started, my love. Making love and loving and living and being married in every way it is possible to be. Will my bed do?”
She nodded and gazed up into his face as he nudged her nightgown off her shoulders and slid it down her arms and then dispensed with his dressing gown.
“As long as you are in it with me,” she said as he guided her over to the bed and laid her down on it.
He lay down beside her, slid an arm beneath her shoulders, and turned her against him. “That was definitely the idea,” he said. “Clever of you to perceive it, my love.”
She felt him along the length of her body. She felt the warmth of his mouth against hers and the promise of passion. And she knew she was where she belonged, where she wanted always to be, and where she would not be had it not been for a certain dastardly game.
Life was a strange phenomenon.
But philosophy soon died under the onslaught of passion.
Lord
Carew’s
Bride
1
OH, DO COME WITH US, SAM,” THE COUNTESS OF Thornhill said. “I know it is only a short walk to the lake, but the setting is lovely and the daffodils are in bloom. And surely it is better to have company than to be alone.”
There was a look of concern on her face that made her cousin, Samantha Newman, feel guilty. She would far prefer to be alone.
“The children will not bother you, provided you tell them quite firmly that you are not to be romped with,” the countess added.
There were four children, the countess’s two and Lady Boyle’s two. They were perfectly normal, well behaved—though exuberant—children. Samantha was fond of them and had no objection to being romped with quite frequently.
“The children never bother me, Jenny,” she assured her cousin. “It is just that I like being alone occasionally. I like walking long distances to take the air and commune with my own thoughts. You will not be offended, will you?”
“No,” Lady Thornhill said. “Oh, no, of course not, Sam. You are our guest here and must do as you please. It is just that you have changed. You used not to like being alone at all.”
“It is advancing age,” Samantha said, smiling.
“Advancing age!” her cousin said scornfully. “You are four-and-twenty, Sam, and as beautiful as you ever were, and with more admirers than you ever had.”
“I think perhaps,” Lady Boyle said gently, entering the conversation for the first time, “Samantha is missing Lord Francis.”
Samantha hooted inelegantly. “Missing Francis?” she said. “He was here for a week—visiting Gabriel—and left this morning. I always enjoy Francis’s company. He teases me about being on the shelf and I tease him about his dandyish appearance. Lavender silk for dinner last evening, indeed, and in the country! But when I am not in his company, I forget him immediately—and I daresay he forgets me, too.”
“And yet,” the countess said, “he has twice made you a marriage offer, Sam.”
“And it would serve him right if I accepted one of these times,” Samantha said. “He would die of shock, poor man.”
Lady Boyle looked at her in some shock herself and smiled uncertainly at the countess.
“No, if you really do not mind, Jenny, and if you will not be hurt, Rosalie,” Samantha said, “I believe I will walk alone this afternoon. Aunt Aggy is having a rest, and this lovely spring weather calls for something brisker than a stroll to the lake.”
“You could have gone riding about the estate with Gabriel and Albert,” the countess said. “They would not have minded at all. But here I go, trying to manage your life again. Have a good afternoon, Sam. Come, Rosalie, the children will be climbing the nursery walls in their impatience already.”
And so finally Samantha was alone. And feeling guilty for spurning the company that had been offered her. And feeling relieved to have the rest of the afternoon to herself. She drew on a dark blue spencer over her lighter blue dress, tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin, and set out for her walk.
It was not that she disliked either Jenny or Rosalie or their children. Quite the contrary. She had lived with Jenny and Jenny’s father, Viscount Nordal, for four years after her parents died when she was fourteen. She and Jenny had made their come-out together. They had loved the same man…. No, that was not to be thought of. Since Jenny’s marriage six years before, Samantha had frequently stayed at Chalcote with her and Gabriel. If they were in town during the Season, she often stayed with them there. Jenny was her dearest friend.
And Rosalie, the wife, also for six years, of Gabriel’s closest friend, Sir Albert Boyle, was impossible to dislike. She was sweet and shy and gentle and did not have a mean bone in her whole body, Samantha would swear.
The trouble was that they were both very contentedly married. They were both absorbed in affection for their husbands and affection for their children and affection for their homes.
