She had not long to muse on exactly what her enterprising stepdaughter might not attempt to entice her besotted Toby into doing, when she saw a lantern bobbing along the path. Seconds later, she made out the unmistakable form of Lord Rothersthorpe, striding along so swiftly he was making his lantern swing wildly.
He would not be in such a hurry to get here if he had any idea what she was about to say.
Nerves sent her leaping to her feet as he mounted the steps. She couldn’t quite see his face, but, immediately after putting his own lantern on the floor just inside the doorway, he strode across and caught her in his arms.
Before she could manage to utter a protest, he was kissing her passionately.
And, oh, but she couldn’t deny herself the sheer bliss of being in his arms, this one last time. Flinging her arms round his neck, she kissed him back with all the desperation that had been building in her ever since he’d asked her to do the impossible: to marry him.
He was the one to draw back and break the kiss to ask a question.
‘What do you have in mind for me tonight?’
He looked eager, excited, just as though he expected her to have some sexual treat for him. As though she’d asked him out here to indulge in a little alfresco lovemaking.
Why should she be surprised? It was what he’d suggested the very first day he’d arrived, when he’d treated her as though she was the kind of woman he’d only consider good enough to be his mistress.
Though if he now assumed she was sexually adventurous, she supposed she should take some share of the blame. She’d been utterly brazen with him in the bedroom.
No wonder he was so sure of her that he couldn’t imagine her saying anything but ‘yes’ to his proposal, even though he’d treated her shabbily.
Something about the look on her face as she thought about where to start explaining why she couldn’t marry him must have got through to him, because his smile faded.
‘What is it? Tell me. Is it Rose?’
He plunged on without giving her a chance to say a word.
‘The timing of her betrothal is a bit awkward for us, is that what you think? I know you wouldn’t want to do anything to spoil her wedding plans, or take the attention away from her. We can put off making an announcement until after she’s married, if you like. I have already waited eight years for you. A few more weeks won’t kill me. Though my preference would be to marry as soon as we can. By special licence, if needs be, so that nothing need part us again. Now that we’ve found each other...’
‘No. You don’t understand. It isn’t Rose. It’s...it’s Cissy.’
‘Lydia.’ He shook his head. ‘I can see that you have grown to love those girls dearly. But...’
‘Please, let me explain...’
‘It doesn’t matter what it is,’ he said fervently, ‘we can work it out. Marrying me won’t mean you have to cut any of them out of your life completely. And I have already told you, I would be only too pleased if Michael could come to look upon me as a father.’
She gave him a hard look.
‘Yes, but what would you arrange for Cissy?’
‘Arrange? What do you mean? She will either stay here, or go and live with Rose, won’t she? That’s the beauty of her picking Smollet. The man is so solid he makes her feel safe. She adores him. She’ll be fine, Lydia, you’ll see.’
‘No, she won’t, she—’
‘Lydia, listen to me.’ He took her by the shoulders, his expression becoming serious.
‘Your first husband should never have let her grow so dependent on you that you cannot have any life of your own. I suppose I should have foreseen it would upset you to think of hurting that poor creature, but I am thinking of you. Of us. She is not your responsibility. She is Robert’s.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ she said, pulling out of his grasp. ‘She is not Robert’s responsibility at all. She is mine. She is my sister. Mine. I brought her into this family when I married Colonel Morgan.’
A frown flickered across his face. ‘But I thought...’
‘Yes.’ She flung up her chin and glared at him. ‘I let you think it, so you would show your true colours. And you did. You said it would be better to palm her off into the so-called care of some professional person!’
‘Only because I thought you were being used by the Morgans. I did not think it was fair of them to expect you to be a full-time nursemaid, on top of running their household and so forth. Had I known from the first she was your sister...’
‘You might never have had anything to do with me at all,’ she said vehemently. ‘You might have feared that kind of weakness runs in the family and shunned me altogether.’
He glanced at her stomach.
‘Yes, now you are worried about what I might be carrying in my womb, too, are you not?’
‘No, I—’
‘Well, you need not worry. For one thing, Cissy was perfectly normal when she was born. And for another, the Colonel taught me how to take measures to prevent a further pregnancy after I bore him Michael. He did not want to take any risks with my health.’
‘You took...precautions...to avoid having my child?’
‘Yes. For I have no intention of bringing an illegitimate child into the world.’
He reeled back as though she had struck him.
‘You...you have been using me,’ he gasped. ‘You thought I was good enough for a fling, but not to become the father of your child.’
Mounting anger turned him into another man, right before her eyes.
‘You never had any intention of marrying me, did you? All these years, I’ve been right!’
The shadows cast by the lanterns on the floor made gave his face an almost demonic cast.
‘It’s all falling into place now. You were just as secretive when we first knew each other, weren’t you? You could have told me all about your sister and how you needed to get married to provide her with a home—I take it that was the pressing reason you sought security?’
She nodded.
‘But I could not have spoken to you about such things then.’
‘You said you thought of me as a friend. Friends don’t deliberately hide things from each other.’
‘You are not being fair,’ she protested. ‘A single lady cannot really think of a single gentleman in that way...’
‘You didn’t trust me one bit. You never really opened your mind or your heart to me. Did you?’ He seized her by the upper arms. ‘Did you? You never gave me a chance. Not back then.’
‘I could not! I—’
‘Not then and not now, either. You knew I thought Cissy was Robert’s sister. Instead of telling me the truth, you led me on a merry dance. Setting me tests I didn’t even know I was failing. Inventing reasons not to trust me!’
‘It wasn’t like that...’
‘Have you ever trusted anyone, Lydia? Ever given anyone the benefit of the doubt?’
He flung her from him and gave her a cold look.
‘You have to do it all on your own, don’t you? You won’t share responsibility for Cissy with me, or anyone. We could have carried the burden together. I could have helped you. Instead you have deliberately shut me out of your life. Just like last time, you’ve written me off as useless without even giving me a chance to prove myself. I suppose I should consider myself lucky you at least deigned to give me any sort of answer this time. You didn’t think it worth bothering with before. I had to find out I’d been rejected from your newly acquired stepson. I should have known how you really felt about me from the way you came into my room and helped yourself to my body that first night. No sharing. No giving. You just took what you wanted from me and then left.’
‘No. I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t mean to...’
‘Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you by putting on that woebegone look,’ he said with disgust. ‘It won’t work on me any more. You are responsible for your own actions, Lydia. You, and nobody else. You made your own choices. Nobo
dy made you do any of it. Nobody made you marry your colonel. Knowing you as I do now,’ he said with a look of utter contempt, ‘I dare say you preferred the cold, business-like arrangement you had with him. An arrangement that allowed you to keep your heart intact. You will never risk it, will you? You...you share out tiny portions of yourself, but you keep most of it back. You are incapable of trusting, or sharing, or seeing the best in others. You always look for the worst and so you find it.’
He spun round and stalked away. But just as he reached the doorway, he turned back and sneered, ‘I cannot believe that I allowed you to dupe me all over again. All day, I’ve been thinking about the future I thought I would have with you. I pictured you at my side, helping me care for my tenants, travelling up to the manufactories I will inherit one day and working out ways we can improve the lot of the workers. And you know, even though I believed Cissy was Robert’s sister, I was already wondering if I would have to make a place for her in our home so that you would not be distressed at the prospect of abandoning her.’
He would have what? No. He could not mean that. He was just saying it to hurt her.
Once again, he must have read from her face what she was thinking, because he said, ‘I would have done it for you, Lydia. But what do you care for all of that now? Why am I even telling you? You’ve already made up your mind.’
He bent down and picked up his lantern. Then he stood quite still for a moment, holding it high as he stared at her coldly.
‘I cannot believe that, even now, I find you beautiful. Just look at you,’ he sneered. ‘You look so frail, still, as though you are made of clouds and moonlight, and the slightest breeze could waft you away. And in a way,’ he laughed bitterly, ‘that is true. You have no substance. No heart. You look like a lovely woman, but you are not. You are just an empty shell, Lydia. Perhaps I should be grateful I found out in time that you are incapable of really loving a man.’
With that, he turned away and stalked off.
Lydia sat down with a thud on the nearest bench, his condemnatory words ringing in her ears.
She was not incapable of love. She had loved him for years. Against her better judgement...
Which was a kind of lack of trust.
But then she hadn’t ever dared believe he might change his mind about marriage, back then, and want to marry her. So she hadn’t spoiled what precious few moments they shared with her problems. She hadn’t thought he would be interested...
Lack of trust.
But how could she have trusted him? He’d made it so plain that he didn’t want to get married.
Except...last night he’d said he had meant that proposal. That he’d wanted her more than anything. That he’d never stopped wanting her, even when he thought he hated her for choosing Colonel Morgan, instead of me...
She went cold inside.
He was right. She had misjudged him. First as a youth, and now as a man.
She’d blamed everyone around her for her predicament and borne it like some kind of martyr. But it had been her own fault. She hadn’t trusted him.
Well, she hadn’t trusted anyone. She had thought she had to rescue Cissy all on her own. She had been terrified of having to find a husband during her Season, because she hadn’t believed the man existed who would take both her and her unfortunate sister. Her guardian had been so strident about what society thought about people like her. He said that everyone thought they should be locked away from normal people and the fact that her father hadn’t done so was just another example of his poor judgement. Which in turn had led to the mountain of debt and chaos he’d left in his wake.
She’d believed him and that was what had made her Season so horrific. There were so many prettier, wealthier, more accomplished girls in town and such a dearth of eligible men, let alone the kind of men who exhibited the slightest symptom of being amenable to a plea for clemency for her poor unfortunate sister.
Nicholas had accused her of preferring the Colonel’s bargain to real love back then...but she hadn’t known she’d had a choice! At least, she hadn’t dared to believe she had a choice. And the Colonel had been so concerned when he’d found her ill on his sofa, and so taken by what he termed her fragile beauty, that she’d felt the first flicker of hope that he might be the one...
The one who would give Cissy a home.
The only one she could believe might really do so.
And now...well, she hadn’t dared let herself think of ever marrying again, because she hadn’t thought there was a man alive who would agree to her terms.
And it wasn’t that nobody measured up to the Colonel. The Colonel hadn’t seen Cissy when he agreed to become responsible for her. Besides, her limitations were far more obvious now she was in her early twenties than they had been at fourteen. He’d been able to think of her as a child. And accept her as a child. She’d fitted into the schoolroom quite well at first. Only when his own daughters had overtaken her, while she’d stayed exactly the same, had he truly seen how deep the damage had gone. But by then Cissy had won him over with her total hero-worship.
But now Lord Rothersthorpe was saying that he would have been prepared to have Cissy living with them. For her sake.
She bent double for the pain that gripped her stomach. She’d let her guardian’s attitude sink into her and take root like a poisonous weed. She’d believed all men would be like him, deep down.
But it hadn’t been true. It had never been true.
The Colonel had never shown the slightest sign of revulsion for Cissy, nor had Robert. On the contrary—they’d both gone out of their way to protect her.
And all the men who’d come here courting Rose had been tolerant of her, to varying degrees. Lieutenant Smollet was strict with her, but not unkind—rather like the Colonel had been. He could calm her down when she grew boisterous. And she felt safe with him—that was why she adored him.
Mr Bentley made a fuss of her dog and treated her as though she was in truth the same age as Michael.
Lieutenant Tancred had made a game out of the way she mispronounced everyone’s names, encouraging everyone to call Lord Abergele ‘Lord Beagle’ to his face.
And Lord Beagle himself had never appeared shocked or embarrassed by her. In fact, the pair of them had reached a kind of rapport when Cissy discovered he could always produce edible treats from his pockets between meals.
Even George Lutterworth treated her no worse than he did his own sister.
All week, she’d been denying the evidence of her own eyes and kept right on believing what her guardian had told her.
By doing so, she’d wrecked any chance for happiness with Lord Rothersthorpe. Twice over.
She had misjudged him.
And she had hurt him.
She hated what he’d forced her to see about herself. She’d thought she’d always striven to do the right thing, but she’d really just been a coward when it came to love. She’d always played it safe. Been too timid to take risks.
Was he right? Was she incapable of trusting anyone? Or really loving a man?
She’d certainly never had to risk her heart with her first husband. He hadn’t been interested in it. Only in her body and her capabilities as a housekeeper.
It had been a safe arrangement. For her heart.
And ever since Lord Rothersthorpe had come back into her life she’d been talking herself out of loving him. Putting the worst possible interpretation on all his behaviour, to give herself an excuse for doing so. Looking for the worst, she’d found it. Even this afternoon, she’d assumed he’d been attempting to seduce Rose. And even when it had turned out not to be the case, she’d then condemned him for ‘helping’ her for nefarious reasons.
What was she to do? Could she let him leave tomorrow, thinking she was as cold and shallow as he’d just accused her of being?
Admittedly, she’d made a mess of things with him, but she’d had her reasons.
But...why should he listen to anything she had to say? Now?
&nb
sp; Oh, what was the point of even attempting to make him listen? It was over.
She buried her face in her hands.
Why couldn’t she be more like Rose, who’d been courageous enough to fight for what—no—who she wanted? She’d never fought for Lord Rothersthorpe. She’d always talked herself out of hoping she had a chance with him. Even now, she was just...just sitting here, bemoaning her fate!
Could she dare take a leaf out of Rose’s book?
Rather shakily, she got to her feet.
It probably wouldn’t work, but then what did she have to lose? He couldn’t think any less of her than he already did. And if she achieved nothing else, she could not let him leave thinking she hadn’t wanted to marry him when she’d been younger. It was too cruel to let him carry on thinking she’d discounted him out of hand, or considered him unworthy of a reply.
Her hands trembled as she picked up the lantern. In spite of telling herself she couldn’t make things worse by going to him and trying to explain, doubts and fears rose up in legions as she made her way across the lawn. The grotesque shadows cast by her bobbing lantern were like goblins leaping and whirling round her in a mocking dance. Silently taunting her with her many, many faults. She was cowardly. She didn’t trust anyone. She was hollow. She was heartless.
And she was probably about to make a colossal fool of herself.
Even if he let her into his room, why would he listen to a word she had to say?
But she was done with sitting back, and thinking the worst, and only half living. How would she find out if there was any chance he might have it in him to forgive her, unless she went and asked?
To paraphrase what Rose had said that afternoon, there was only one Lord Rothersthorpe. She would never find another man like him. She would never feel about another man the way she felt about him. And if she didn’t stand up and, just for once, fight for what they could have, she didn’t deserve him.
When she reached his room she did not knock. In the mood he’d left her, he was unlikely to let her in. She just opened the door and walked in.
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