Deceiver

by Nicola Cornick

  "I turned to Heinrich Von Trier after Emma's death," she said. "I was desperate for affection and I tumbled hopelessly in love with him. But for him the chase was everything." She pressed her fingers against her temples. Her passion for Heinrich Von Trier had burned out years before and she had soon recognized it as a pale imitation of love, but at the time his had seemed a double betrayal, coming so soon after Emma.

  "Once he had what he wanted and could boast of it, he was no longer interested," she said. "A quick fumble on the back­stairs was about the sum of it." She raised her hand to her cheek. "It was as sordid as it sounds."

  Marcus took her hand in his and drew it down to the bed­covers, holding it firmly between both of his. She tried to withdraw it but he held on firmly. She could sense the conflict in him, as though he were angry with her and yet trying to conquer his feelings. It made her shake inside.

  "Do not say that, Bella." He sounded fierce. "Do not demean yourself."

  "I need not," Isabella said bitterly, "when there are so many others able to do it for me."

  Marcus shook his head slightly. His expression was fero­cious. His grip tightened on hers so much she winced.

  "Damn the man." He spoke dispassionately and his coldness was far more frightening to Isabella than hot anger would have been. "Damn him to hell and back. I could kill him for betraying you."

  Isabella's throat ached. "You need not spare him another thought. The French have saved you the trouble of des­patching him."

  Marcus's expression lightened slightly. "That is something, I suppose." He looked at her. "You say that you loved him?"

  Isabella clung to his hand. It seemed a terrible betrayal to speak of her love for Von Trier to this man who had always been the true love of her life. Yet she could not offer Marcus anything but honesty.

  "I thought that I did," she said. "I was very unhappy. I needed some comfort." She broke off before she slipped into excuses. "Marcus, I am sorry."

  "Don't say that!" Marcus sounded so furious now that Isabella shrank back against the tumbled pillows. He turned to her suddenly and the fierce light blazed in his eyes. "Oh, I am angry, Bella," he said. "I cannot deny it. Angry and jealous. I cannot help myself. But I can still understand. You were des­perately unhappy. You say that you loved him and I believe you."

  There was an aching silence. Isabella did not know what else she could say. Marcus sighed.

  "What of the rest?" he said, and his voice was tired.

  For a moment Isabella did not understand, then she made a slight gesture. "There were no others. Is that not enough?"

  Marcus looked at her, incredulity in his eyes. "But. . . there must have been! I heard. . ." He trailed off, staring at her.

  Isabella almost laughed. First she had failed to satisfy her husband sexually, then she had discussed her old lovers with him and now he was finding it hard to believe that she was not the female rakehell that he had been led to believe. She doubted that it was possible for the situation to get any worse.

  "You heard gossip, Marcus," she said. "That is all."

  Marcus sat back slightly, scanning her face. "Von Trier? He was the only one? But. . ."

  "I flirted." Isabella traced a pattern on the bedcover with her fingertips. "It passed the time."

  "Then why—" Marcus's tone was warming into a white-hot anger now. "Why do you let them say such things about you, Bella?" His hands bit into her shoulders, shaking her. "Good God, it beggars belief! The lovers and the scandal and the outright perversions. . . is there anything that is not said of you?"

  "I am not certain," Isabella said. "I try not to listen."

  Marcus's eyes were almost black with fury. "Do not joke about this! Why did you encourage all the gossip by allowing your husband's mistress to attend his funeral, giving support to the scandal that you were engaged in some complaisant ménage a trois?"

  Isabella suddenly felt a great deal older and wiser than he. "Dear, Marcus," she said ruefully, "my life with Ernest was so miserable that I would have done more than that for some peace. Madame de Coulanges made Ernest happy." She gave him a wry look. "She kept him out of my way and that was worth a very great deal. For that I thought she deserved the right to take a proper farewell of him."

  She edged to the side of the bed. "I will leave you now. I am sorry that matters have fallen out the way they have."

  "Stay." Marcus held her still when she would have slipped from beneath the covers. He pulled her down beside him.

  "Lie down." He spoke softly. "You look exhausted. You have given me a great deal to think about, Bella, but I do not want you to leave me now."

  He still called her Bella. That was a consolation, for it spoke of an intimacy that they had achieved that had appar­ently not been lost. Isabella felt a vast relief. The shadow of India still pressed close but for once Isabella felt hopeful. One day—one day soon—she would broach the subject of India with Marcus and discover the truth.

  She lay down obediently and allowed him to draw her close to the warmth of his body. She tried to think about what he must be thinking and feeling but already the warm comfort of his body was soothing her and helping her slip toward sleep. She turned her face closer into his neck, breathing in the scent of his skin. As always, he smelled familiar and exactly right. It was a strange sensation but a reassuring one. Little by little, the trust between them was growing.

  Marcus could tell the precise moment when Isabella fell asleep. Her breathing changed and the final remnants of tension slid from her body, leaving her soft and defenseless beside him. He shifted his body slightly to draw her closer, tucking the covers around her protectively and brushing the hair away from her face. She looked sweet and young and beautiful. He felt something close to despair.

  This was not how he had envisaged the evening ending. It was the furthest possible outcome from that which he had intended when she had come into his chamber and stripped her clothes off with such wanton and delicious provocation. To be lying here cradling her so gently and yet to feel so much anger and jealousy and resentment, the least worthy of emotions, was extraordinary. What made him despair was that he was not sure if he could overcome that jealousy.

  He was completely aware of how unfair this was. He had had his share of women, taken without love and for mutual pleasure, and yet he resented Isabella giving herself to just one man in marriage and one other in love. Yet that was how he felt. She should have been his alone and she was not.

  Marcus clenched a hand in his hair and expelled his breath in a long sigh. Isabella did not stir. She was curled against him so trustfully that it made his heart ache at the same time the jealousy stirred rancid within him.

  He had always been a possessive man where Isabella was concerned. He had never felt like that about anyone else, least of all his first wife. His emotions for India were complex and laden with guilt but he had never felt for her one ounce of the white-hot need that he had for Isabella.

  He made an effort to push the whole matter from his mind. Tomorrow would be soon enough to think of it. If he wanted Isabella—and he still did—he would have to live with this forever. He would have to find a way.

  He got up when the dawn began to lighten the sky and the room grew imperceptibly brighter. He had not slept much. He felt exhausted. He knew that Isabella would wake and remember. She would want to talk and just at the moment he could not talk to her because in some obscure way he still resented the fact that she had taken a lover. Feeling wretched and a traitor, he slid from the warm cocoon of the bed.

  The morning was bright and tempting and the blue water beckoned to him from beyond the window. On the horizon a ship flicked white sails in the breeze. He dressed haphaz­ardly and walked down to Kinvara Cove, keeping his mind empty of all but physical sensation. The summer sun was already hot on his face. The air smelled of salt and the soapy scent of gorse and the sandy path crunched beneath his feet. He could feel the earth warm against his soles. It was refreshing.

  When he reache
d the water, he did not pause to remove more than his shoes, but plunged into the water, feeling it close over his head with a cold shock. He swam out beyond Kinvara Point where he hauled himself up onto the hot rocks and felt the sun beat down and the clothes dry salty sticky against his skin and thought that he ought to be the happiest man in the world. He was sharp set by now and walked back along the path from the point, up through the gardens and into the quiet house. He went to his chamber, changed into riding clothes and was humming softly as he descended the stairs and entered the breakfast parlor.

  Inside the door he stopped dead.

  Isabella was sitting at the table looking collected in a riding gown of dark blue. Her face was very pale, her hair ruthlessly braided and her expression closed. Marcus could tell in an instant that she had withdrawn from him in the same way that he felt distant from her. She must have woken, found him gone, and assumed that he had been unable to forgive her for the disclosures of the previous night. A helplessness possessed him. He knew he should try to bridge the gap between them before it grew any wider and all that they had managed to build up slipped away. Yet he could not. A part of him did not want to. He did feel angry and he did feel possessive and resentful and all those ugly emotions that he did not want to admit

  A moment later it was too late and she was asking about his morning swim in a tone of polite uninterest.

  They ate in silence, to the embarrassment of the footman serving them, who fidgeted from foot to foot and gazed point­edly out of the window. Looking at his agonized expression, Marcus reflected how much of a servant's life must be spent in such awkwardness. If the conversation was inappropriate or there was an argument between master and mistress, that would be as embarrassing as witnessing a total lack of accord between them. And this was how the rest of their life threat­ened to be now. His mind recoiled from the thought of spending his married life in this sort of approximation of intimacy. That was what he had had with India. It had been completely shallow. And now he was creating it all over again.

  "Would you care to go riding with me this morning?" The words surprised him almost as much as they seemed to surprise Isabella. He was not sure what had prompted them, beyond a desperate urge to put matters right before anything else went wrong between them.

  Isabella looked up and the color came into her face. She looked shyly pleased. Marcus felt a brute. He knew that he was punishing her for his own lack of tolerance and he strug­gled to find a way around it.

  He forced a smile. "We could ride up the path to Kinvara cliffs. You always enjoyed the view from there."

  For all his effort, the words came out stilted. Isabella did not miss it. The happy expression in her eyes faded a little as she nodded.

  "I would like that. I will meet you at the stables in twenty minutes."

  And that was that. Marcus drained his coffee cup and re­flected bitterly on how smoothly and superficially life could run without any kind of real conversation between the two of them. No doubt he would have plenty more time to observe that in future.

  Down in the stables, they were at least able to mask the atmosphere of strain between them by making a fuss of the horses. They rode straight out of the yard, up the track to the downs and out onto the top of the cliffs. Once again there was silence between them as the horses picked their way slowly across the springy turf. Marcus knew that Isabella was waiting to see if he would either broach the subject of their conversa­tion last night, or indicate that it was to be ignored forever. He felt angry. He felt exasperated, equally with himself as with her. Yet what could he say? I resent the fact that you married Ernest Di Cassilis and even more do I resent the fact that you slept with Heinrich Von Trier and I am even furious at the thought of you flirting with all those other men who use your name with such abandon. His lips tightened. It should not be like this.

  Isabella's face beneath the riding hat was serious and she did not look at him. The strain between them intensified until Marcus felt it snap into a mixture of frustration and rage that had to have some outlet.

  "I will race you to the chapel," he said.

  Her head came up, her eyes suddenly bright. She saw the angry challenge in his eyes and understood without need of words exactly what he was thinking. Without a word she dug her heels into Aster's flanks and gave the horse her head, and Marcus was left watching her flying figure galloping away.

  Marcus turned Achilles to follow, urging every ounce of anger and bitterness and mistrust from his body as they thun­dered across the heather and turf. For a long, breathless time, there was nothing but the thud of the horses' hooves on the grass, the rush of fresh air in his face, a strange exhilaration in his heart and the blur of color that was Isabella still out­running him.

  She was only a few yards ahead of him now and the stone wall that encircled the chapel and marked the end of the race was rushing toward them. Isabella reined Aster in so hard that the horse almost reared. She came to a grinding halt a few feet from the walls of the graveyard with Marcus slowing down beside her.

  "You won," he said. "I thought I would catch you—" He broke off.

  Isabella was not looking at him. It seemed she had not even heard him. She was staring over the wall of the grave­yard where a small procession of people straggled toward the door of the squat chapel, carrying a tiny wooden coffin. Isabella made a slight sound and pressed her hands to her mouth. She grabbed Aster's reins fiercely, turned the horse, and was away into the trees on the edge of the ridge before Marcus could even move.

  Marcus stared as the door of the church closed behind the cortege. A child's funeral.

  He knew nothing of children. He had wanted a family with India in the conventional sense of securing the inheritance, but his feelings had gone no deeper than that. He had no concept of loving a child and losing it and the destruction that that could wreak in a life. But he had imagination.

  He thought about how Isabella might feel on seeing such a thing and it felt as though his stomach had dropped and the bottom had fallen out of his world. He kicked Achilles to a gallop. He had no idea where Isabella had gone or even if she would stop, but he had to find her.

  In the end it was not difficult. He found her in a sodden heap within the ruins of the old beacon tower on the edge of the cliff. Aster was peaceably cropping the grass outside. Isabella had not tried to hide. She had simply taken refuge. Marcus had wanted to ask her how she felt but when he saw her face, he realized that there was no need to speak. Silently he gathered her into his arms and held her until the sobs that racked her had ceased and she rested her head against his shoulder. She had turned her face into his chest without thought or hesita­tion and it humbled him that in her grief she would entrust herself to him without question. He smoothed the hair away from her hot cheeks with gentle fingers, feeling her tears wet against his skin.

  "The child," she said brokenly, and he gathered her closer, as if holding her so tightly could banish the pain inside her.

  "I am sorry," he said. "I wish I could understand."

  She shook her head and burrowed closer to him. "I do not want to lose you, Marcus," she said. "I have lost so much and been so hurt. I could not bear for it to happen again."

  Marcus pressed his lips to her hair. "It will not," he said.

  And silently he felt the anger and the grief and the jealousy inside him melt as he realized that she was his now in all the ways that mattered—and that she always had been.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was fortunate that Aster knew the way back down to the stables since Isabella refused to let Marcus lead her down the cliff path but she was equally incapable of doing more than sit on the horse like a sack of potatoes. She knew now why she never normally cried. She felt dreadful—her nose was at least two sizes larger and felt like a beacon; her cheeks radiated heat and she was certain that she looked at least as bad on the outside as she felt on the inside. It was fortunate that Marcus had not tried to kiss her, but for one tender touch of his lips to her for
ehead. Poor man, no doubt he would not want to do more anyway. Anyone who envisaged that a pas­sionate physical reconciliation would follow so emotional a moment was fair and far out.

  Her poor opinion of her appearance was reinforced when they entered the hall at Salterton to find Pen and Alistair already there. Pen, with her customary openness and stagger­ing lack of tact, took one look at Isabella's face and exclaimed, "Bella, you look dreadful! What on earth can have happened?"

  "Perhaps you could show me the library, Miss Standish," Alistair intervened, catching Marcus's eye. "I understand that your aunt had a remarkable collection of the work of the late seventeenth-century poets?"

  "Oh, she did," Pen said, "but they are dreadful. I can never read more than a couple of cantos." She looked back over her shoulder at Isabella as Alistair steered her toward the library door. "Are you sure that you will be all right, Bella? I hope it is not Marcus who has upset you so. He would be a brute to do that."

  Isabella heard Marcus sigh, more with resignation than anything else.

  "I am perfectly well, Pen," she said. "Something upset me, that is all. It has nothing to do with Marcus."

  Pen gave her brother-in-law a suspicious look. "I hope not," she said darkly. "Yes, Mr. Cantrell, I am coming!" She gave in to Alistair's importuning gestures and preceded him through the library door.

  "Poor Alistair," Marcus remarked. "He detests late seven­teenth-century poetry."

  "That is something else that he and Pen have in common, then," Isabella said. She caught sight of her appearance in the pier glass and shuddered. There were sprigs of heather caught in her hair and bracken stuck to her riding outfit Her nose was, as suspected, red and shiny, and her eyes were piggy and tiny.

  "I think I shall go up and rest" she said faintly.

  "A good idea," Marcus agreed. "I will escort you."

  "There is no need," Isabella said. "I can manage very well on my own."