Deceiver

by Nicola Cornick

  "I was not aware when I was young that Papa was in serious financial difficulty," she said. She shrugged a little. "Children are often unaware of these things. They think that matters will always be the same, always safe." She sighed. "When I grew older, I discovered that Papa was forever in and out of debt, making a small fortune, losing it again, gambling, investing in dreams, unable to be prudent. . . . When he died, he had lost all his money, which is why Freddie is obliged to work and Pen has such a pittance on which to live."

  Marcus had not moved an inch since she'd started speaking. He was sitting across from her in the leather armchair and he was very still, but with a watchful stillness that was reflected in his eyes as he studied her. His expres­sion was cold and remote. Isabella felt chilled to see it and curled herself deeper in her own chair for comfort.

  "At the time that Ernest offered for me, Papa was within an ace of ruin. Ernest was a rich man then, of course. He offered to save Papa from the debtor's prison." She laughed a little bitterly. "I was part of the arrangement. In order to save my family from ruin, I was obliged to accept Ernest's suit. It mattered nothing that I was about to marry you. Their security was dependent on my acceptance." She broke off, staring into the heart of the fire, where the embers glowed bright.

  She would say nothing of how it had felt. Nothing of her father, exposed as a weak man who could not protect her, blus­tering and ordering her to accept Ernest's hand in marriage; her mother, ripping her little embroidered handkerchiefs to shreds in her restless fingers; Freddie, his face blank but the expression in his eyes so desperate; Pen, catching her hand and asking her if it was true, and would she let them all starve. She had been too young to make those agonizing decisions but she had made them anyway.

  "So you agreed," Marcus said tonelessly.

  Isabella felt the anger rip through her. That he could sit there unmoved, condemning, when after twelve years she could still feel the despair and the hopelessness that had pos­sessed her. . .but Marcus did not know any of that. For all he knew, she might have seen Ernest as the goose laying the golden eggs.

  "It was not an easy choice," she said quietly. "I was in love with you. I was completely besotted." Emotion crept into her voice. "We were to be married the next day! It was a . . . shock . . .to be obliged to see matters differently."

  "You could have refused," Marcus said. His mouth was a hard tine. "You could have insisted on marrying me and told your father to go hang."

  Isabella thought about it. She could have run to Marcus but she had been young and alone and terrifyingly uncertain of what to do. She had wanted Marcus—ached for him to be there to protect her—and yet she had known with finality that in choosing him she would be condemning her entire family to ruin. She had been torn apart.

  I needed you so much. . .

  She bit back the words. She would not tell him that now, not when he had sufficient bitterness for them both. Once it had been so very different. She felt a sharp pain at the bright simplicity of their time together. She had given herself to him because she was in love and had been heedless of the conse­quences. At seventeen she had been rash, reckless and un­mindful of all the tenets of behavior that she had been brought up to believe in. But then the consequences had followed— her parents, Freddie, Pen—and her daughter, Emma. Their futures all depended on her making the right decision. So she had chosen their well-being over her happiness with Marcus and learned the hard way that unfettered passion and careless disregard might feel blissful at the time but that there was always a price to pay. She had paid every day in memories and regrets.

  And now Marcus would blame her for her choice. He was looking at her broodingly. She knew there was no sympathy or understanding there for her. She swallowed hard.

  "I suppose," he said, "that it was too dangerous for you to take a risk on me even though I might have been able to help you all. I had no money and no prospects then, and Prince Ernest was a rich man—"

  "Don't you dare to suggest that I married him for his for­tune!" The words broke from Isabella before she had chance to stop them. It was instinctive, straight from the heart. She had not wanted to rehearse all the anguish in front of Marcus but she could not help herself from letting this much emotion show. She saw his eyes widen at the irrefutable sincerity in her voice.

  "But you did," he said slowly. "You did marry him for his fortune, albeit to save your family."

  Isabella turned away. What had she expected—that he would hear her explanations and draw her to him with all the strength and the lost love and the warmth that she had cher­ished in him before? That that was exactly what she had wanted, secretly, not even admitting it to herself. But life was never so simple as that.

  "Yes," she said. "I married him for his money because my family needed it. He bought me." She looked at Marcus de­fiantly and spoke with deliberate hardness. "Even had you and I married, Marcus, there is no guarantee that we would have been happy. We were young and so wrapped up in our feelings and so thoughtless of the future."

  "True," Marcus said. He smiled faintly. "I do believe we were quite swept away in discovering such a consuming desire for each other."

  Isabella had been. It had been new and exciting and utterly overwhelming. She had had no thought for tomorrow and no shame for today. Just the memory of it made her ache with a poignant mixture of longing and regret.

  "Such strong desires have a habit of burning themselves out," she said, "leaving little behind. They are best left in the past where they belong."

  Marcus did not reply. He looked at her as he had done in the prison, from the paste diamond pins in her hair to the silver slippers peeping from beneath the hem of her skirt, and she knew he was thinking of the wedding night she had agreed to give him. She shivered with raw emotion.

  Marcus shifted a little. "You could at least have offered me an explanation," he said. "You could have written to me via the Admiralty." His mouth twisted with grim humor. "It would have been polite to explain the circumstances to me, espe­cially given what we had been to one another."

  Isabella gave a half shrug. "I could not begin to think how to tell you," she said, and that was the truth.

  Marcus's gaze branded her. "I was your lover, Isabella! You were once able tell me anything. I thought—"

  Once again, there was a taut silence. Isabella felt the tension between them stretch so tightly it would snap with the least provocation. There was no point in waiting for absolu­tion. Marcus would never give her that. Suddenly all she wanted was for him to be gone so that she could sleep.

  "So," she said. "You have your explanation. I know it is too little and too late but—" She shrugged her shoulders. That was all she was prepared to give. She felt empty.

  Still Marcus did not reply. Isabella fidgeted.

  "And now," she said, as the silence lengthened, "I want you to let me go."

  Marcus did not answer at once. It was frighteningly plau­sible. All the assumptions that he had made about Isabella's desire for a tide and a fortune could be turned on their head. Isabella at seventeen, alone, obliged to make the kind of choices that one hoped never to make in a lifetime . . .she must have felt desperately lonely and afraid.

  Everything had happened so quickly between them, from the first secret, incendiary look they had shared to the raw passion that had driven them together, to the final cold fate that had pulled them apart. Time enough, and yet no time at all. . .

  His certainties wavered. Isabella was looking very pale and tired, but he could discern no emotion on her face. She had spoken with such composure, almost as though she had rehearsed what she was going to say. And yet he could not discount the sincerity in her voice when she had protested the charge of marrying for a fortune.

  There was another allegation to lay at her door, however, and he would do well to remember it. She was not exoner­ated. Not yet.

  "What about India?" he said harshly. "I can see why you might have made the choices you did with regard to me, but she. . ."
He shook his head. "What did she ever do to incur your dislike?"

  Isabella had been waiting for his answer, tension in every line of her body. Now he saw the puzzlement creep into her eyes and a tiny frown crease between her brows.

  "India?" The bewilderment was clear in her voice. "I do not understand what you mean."

  Once again he felt the force of her sincerity. His interpre­tation of the facts told him one thing but his instincts told him quite another. He wanted to believe her false and yet her honesty seemed to thwart him at every step.

  "Turning her mother against her." Marcus cleared his throat. He had never overcome the guilt that he felt toward his late wife. He had married her for all the wrong reasons and they had never been able to make each other happy, which made him all the more determined to see justice meted out. It was too late for India, perhaps, but he could lay Isabella's sins at her door and make her admit her cul­pability. He got to his feet and paced across the room with a caged anger.

  "Throughout your visits to Salterton and your letters to Jane Southern you deliberately undermined your cousin's po­sition." He turned to look at her. "India told me that her mother frequently goaded her with the fact that she wished she had a daughter like you. You set out to take Salterton from India. She and Lady Jane had a monstrous disagreement about it. Jane disinherited her as a result."

  Isabella's eyes had widened in horror and disbelief. She was sitting stiffly in the chair now, upright, her hands clenched on the arms. She shook her head slightly. "But I knew nothing of this! I swear I never said or did anything to damage India's re­lationship with her mother, least of all to see her disinherited!"

  Marcus thrust his fists into the pockets of his jacket. "Then why would India swear that you did? She had no reason to lie to me."

  He saw Isabella's expression change and before she could turn away he caught her to him, pulling her to her feet. He held her hard and close.

  "It is true, isn't it? There was something you did."

  Isabella had whitened. "It is true that I made no secret of my love for Salterton," she said stiffly. "I did write, and I did tell Aunt Jane how much I missed the place. If that is a sin—if that was what led Aunt Jane to disinherit India—then I must plead guilty. But none of it was deliberate. I could no more hide my love for Salterton than I could have—" She stopped.

  Than I could have hidden my love for you.

  Marcus heard the words as though she had spoken them aloud. For him too the memories and feelings he had for Sal­terton were inextricably tied to the time he had spent with Isabella there. Once again he felt a wave of disloyalty to India, followed by shame.

  "You were the daughter that Jane really wanted," he said. "How do you think India could live with that?"

  Isabella shook her head. "I cannot be held responsible for that, Stockhaven."

  "You can be held responsible for all the insidious little ways in which you reminded Lady Jane of her preference for you," Marcus said sharply.

  "I did no such thing. If India told you that, she was lying."

  Marcus's hands tightened. "Why should she lie? You think that she was jealous? Of you?"

  Isabella looked disdainful. Her face was very close to his and he could see the telltale beat of the pulse at her throat giving away her agitation, but on the surface she looked as though she could not care any the less.

  "Why should she be jealous of me?" she said. "She was married to you."

  "She married the man that you rejected," Marcus said sharply.

  Isabella's lashes flickered down, veiling her expression. Her mouth was drawn tight; that luscious mouth that was always his undoing. He wanted to kiss her. The need rampaged through him. He wanted to kiss a woman he disliked intensely and it was very disturbing.

  "I doubt that India was ever jealous of me," Isabella said, "but in truth I have no notion of what India thought about any­thing." Her eyes were dark, shadowed. "We did not confide. We were not close."

  "Despite being of an age?"

  Isabella had heard the reproach in his tone and the color flared in her cheeks. "Oh, do not try to lay that one at my door, Stockhaven! I wanted to be a friend to India but she did not seem to need me. She was—" Isabella hesitated. "A very self-contained person. Well, you knew her better than I." She moved away from him and he let her go. "So no, I told her nothing of my feelings for you either at the time or later, and even if I had—"

  "She would have had no reason for jealousy, being the one that I had married," Marcus finished grimly.

  "If she knew that you cared for her then she had nothing to envy," Isabella agreed. She was pale now, as though some­thing was hurting her. She lifted her chin. "I know nothing of this, as I told you. For all I know, you could be making this entire matter up as another stick to beat me with."

  Marcus made an abrupt movement. "I do not lie," he said through his teeth, "and neither did India."

  "And neither do I!" Isabella's blue eyes, so like those of his late wife, flashed defiance. Marcus felt suddenly bitter. He had never doubted India's accusation because he had understood all too clearly how Lady Jane Southern might have felt. Isabella had fire and courage and spirit where India had meekness and timidity. For some mothers she would have been the ideal daughter, but not for Jane, who had had a restless spirit herself. She and India had been as dissimilar as chalk and cheese and they had never been able to live comfortably with their differences. Yet somehow it felt like a double betrayal of India for him to be able to enter into her mother's feelings and see how perfect a daughter Isabella would have been for her.

  "Despite your denials, it is part of a pattern, is it not?" he said roughly, as though Isabella had not spoken. "You married Ernest Di Cassilis for his money and I am sure that the others, the men you had along the way, had to give you something you needed or be discarded." His possessive anger was fanned white hot at the thought as he continued. "You made sure that Jane Southern disinherited her daughter in favor of you. You married me to save yourself from ruin. And now you bargain to buy your freedom. There is little you will not do, little you will not stoop to, to ensure your own fortune."

  Isabella had turned very white at his words. "That," she said, "is blatantly untrue."

  "The facts speak for themselves."

  "The facts are as I related them to you," Isabella said. "I married Ernest because at the time it was what I thought was best to save my family. As for the others. . ." She swallowed hard.

  Marcus held himself tight with rage. "Yes?"

  "There were not so many of them as you imply," Isabella said, "and all I wanted from them was affection." There was stark despair in her voice. "I know that you and others have branded me a whore on the strength of it but you know nothing. Nothing at all."

  "So tell me."

  Isabella looked at him and there was a faint smile in her eyes. "Oh no, Stockhaven. You did not ask that. I am not going to expose any more of my soul to you. All you wanted was the truth of what happened when I jilted you. That I have given you, whether you choose to believe it or not."

  Marcus felt his frustration tighten further. "And the rest? The inheritance?"

  "I have told you. I knew nothing of Lady Jane's plan to dis­inherit India and I deny that I encouraged her to do so. And I married you—" She paused.

  "Yes?" Marcus said again.

  Her eyelashes flickered, once again hiding her expression from him, but her tone was bleak. "Very well. I confess it. I married you to save myself from the debtors' prison. It was a bad mistake but I was—"

  She broke off. and closed her lips tightly.

  I was desperate. He remembered her saying it when she had threatened to marry whichever of his fellow prisoners would have her.

  He shrugged. The anger drove him on and it left no room for sympathy. "So. I have paid off your debts and you are safe. You have told me why you jilted me and now—" He paused. In the firelight she looked fragile and apprehensive. He wondered how on earth she could look like t
hat when she was the most brass-faced creature on earth.

  "And now," he said, deliberately, "I do believe it is our wedding night."

  Isabella had her hand against his chest, warding him off. "I cannot give myself to a man who does not care for me, does not trust me and I dare say does not even like me very much."

  Marcus laughed. There was a wildness inside him and it demanded recompense. He wanted to slake his anger and his bitterness in her body. He wondered how she thought that any man could look on her and not feel the same desire.

  "You underestimate my feelings for you, my love," he said. "I admire you and I want you."

  Isabella's clear blue eyes challenged him to examine those truths he wanted to ignore. "Yet you despise me," she said.

  Marcus's gaze did not falter. "A part of me does, perhaps. We need not regard it." He touched a finger to her lips. If he did not have her soon, he thought he would burn up with the wanting.

  "I need you very much," he continued, the rough under­tone edging his voice. "You are not indifferent to me, either. Look me in the eye and tell me that you do not want me."

  Isabella was biting her Up. She did not look up. "I want to be indifferent to you," she said.

  "Ah." Marcus leaned forward and touched his lips lightly to the curve of her neck. "That is a vastly different matter, as even you will allow."

  He felt a shudder run through her but then she moved from beneath his touch and deliberately put a distance between them. "You cannot have me," she said. She turned her shoulder. "Go! Go and find a harlot to satisfy your lust!"

  There was a moment's stillness. Marcus did not move. He put one hand on her arm and felt the conflict in her. She was wound as tight as a spindle.

  "You do not mean that," he said softly.

  Isabella's shoulders slumped.

  "I do not mean it," she admitted. "But you must go, Stock­haven. I told you the truth and you have chosen not to believe me. I cannot give myself, married or not, to a man who has no respect for me."