by Mary Balogh
“Yes,” he said.
The carriage had stopped, presumably in Grosvenor Square, but neither of them made any move to open the door.
“What did you do to him?” Elizabeth asked. “Presumably you and John both confronted him. John has as strong a grievance against him as you, doesn’t he? He loves Nancy and loved her seven years ago. Did you kill him?”
“No.” He sat looking at her steadily. “I thought I would, Elizabeth, and I believe that John thought he would too. Perhaps we both anticipated an argument over which of us should have the privilege of doing it. But we did nothing when it came to the point. I don’t know if he will come back to face your father or if he will run away and never appear in any of our lives again. But I am afraid that his obsession with you will not allow him to stay away. I am afraid that I might eventually be forced to kill him.”
“Obsession,” she said. “He is my stepbrother. He was my playmate, my comrade, my confidant. How can he have been obsessed? How can I have been so close to him and yet not have seen so much of what he is?”
“Elizabeth.” She could hear him inhaling and could see from a glance at his face that he had not finished even now.
“Tell me,” she said.
“He told us that he was the only living person to know,” he said.
“Before she died his mother told him that your father is his father too. He is not your stepbrother, Elizabeth, but your half-brother. His budding feelings for you suddenly became incestuous.”
She spread her hands over her face. “Martin,” she whispered.
She did not know how long they sat in silence. Eventually he touched one of her hands very lightly.
“Come back to the Pulteney with me tonight,” he said. “There is no reason now for you not to do so, Elizabeth. And Christina is there. I don’t want you staying here tonight. And I think perhaps you need company.”
Yes, she needed company. She needed arms about her and a shoulder to lay her head on. She was so very, very tired. Even her pregnancy could not account for such total weariness. She would need to think. A whole lifetime of feelings and impressions would need to be adjusted. And there was guilt to be faced. A heavy burden of overwhelming guilt. But not tonight. She could not think or feel guilt tonight. She would not.
But before she could nod to Christopher so that he might call directions to the coachman, there was a sharp knock on the door and it opened to reveal John, looking pale and tight-lipped.
“There you are,” he said. “Both of you. Good. Elizabeth.” He reached inside to take her by the upper arms and lift her to the ground and hold her to him. “Listen to me. There is no easy way of saying this. Martin has been killed. By Christopher’s Canadian valet, it seems. Has Christopher told you anything?”
Christopher jumped down onto the cobbles and drew Elizabeth away from John, wrapping his own arms tightly about her.
“Everything except the reason why Antoine would want to kill him,” he said.
So there is more, Elizabeth thought. More and endlessly more.
“Martin is dead?” she said. She was being hurried into the house, Christopher’s arm tight about her shoulders. She was glad he was dead. She was glad. She had never been more glad of anything in her life. If she had had to face him, knowing what she now knew, she would have killed him herself.
She wished he were still alive so that she could kill him herself.
He was her brother, her half-brother. The fact that they looked alike was no accident. He was her brother. Had been her brother. He was dead. Martin was dead.
Someone was crying hysterically. Someone else was picking her up and carrying her in strong arms through the hall and up the staircase to the drawing room, where her father was sitting, ashen-faced. And then she was in his arms and he was patting her back and Christopher was hovering over her and John was standing behind their father.
She realized who it was who had become hysterical.
Martin was dead.
Chapter 32
IT was a long and tedious journey home. It was not at all what Christopher had expected. He had expected a cloud to lift as soon as they left London behind them. He had expected that they would drive off into the happily ever after, the three of them. There were no further obstacles to their happiness. And yet they were not happy.
Christina rode with them most of the time instead of in the baggage coach behind with her nurse, Elizabeth’s maid, and Christopher’s newly hired valet. She was their salvation, perhaps, her eager chatter and her endless questions about Penhallow masking the silence that would otherwise have hung heavy between her parents.
As often as not she sat on her father’s lap, gazing up at him with trusting eyes as she listened to stories of the paradise where they were going to live—she and her mama and papa and her new brother or sister when the baby arrived. She was excited at the prospect of a new baby in the family. She always transferred to Elizabeth’s lap when she felt sleepy. A mother’s breast made a more secure pillow, it seemed, than a father’s arms.
They spent two nights on the road. He and Elizabeth shared a room and a bed, Christina being in an adjoining room with her nurse on both occasions. They even made love both nights, slowly and silently, their bodies joining to give and receive pleasure, their mouths remaining apart.
They were man and wife again. They were on their way home to a place where they belonged and where they had once loved. They were taking with them their daughter, whom they both loved to distraction. And they both awaited, with equal eagerness and impatience, the arrival of their new child. The barriers were all down.
There was nothing left for them to do but live out what remained of their lives in peace and happiness.
Yet they were not happy.
Elizabeth would, of course, have to be given time to recover from the dreadfully upsetting events of the past week. Learning the truth about Martin and having to cope with the knowledge of his murder all on the same night had almost driven her from her mind. The week since, in particular the funeral, had imposed an enormous strain on her.
Everything had worked out well for him, Christopher thought.
The Duke of Chicheley, broken by Martin’s death and by the story of his villainy that John had told, had accepted the remarriage of his daughter. He had even begged Christopher’s pardon. He appeared to approve of the betrothal of Nancy and John. He had been so visibly shaken by Martin’s death that Christopher wondered if he knew the truth after all—if he knew that he had lost a son. It was the one piece of information that John had withheld.
It was impossible to talk of things having gone well for Elizabeth. It was true that she had been finally freed from all the plotting that had caused her such misery through the years. And it was true that she could now face her new marriage with the knowledge that her husband had not been so cynically unfaithful to her during their first marriage.
But she had lost a brother whom she had loved for as long as she could remember. Despite what she now knew about him, there would always be those memories.
Neither Christopher nor John had wanted her to go up to Martin’s room that first night. His body had been brought home and laid out on his bed. But she had insisted on going.
Christopher had accompanied her there and had been horrified and even angry at first when she had stopped standing silently beside the bed looking down at the still body and had leaned over Martin, taken his cold hand in hers, and gone down on her knees, pressed her face against his hand, and collapsed in a storm of weeping.
The weeping had stopped after a few minutes, but she had stayed where she was for a long time. And Christopher’s anger had dissipated. He had understood. She had loved Martin—as a sister loves a brother. That could not change just because of what she had so recently learned about him. And one of the things she had just learned was that Martin was indeed her brother. It was something she had learned too late.
And so she had kept an almost constant vigil beside his bed until the
day of the funeral. And she wore the deepest mourning for the brother who had destroyed her marriage and would have destroyed her too if things had not turned against him at the end.
“He loved me,” she told Christopher when they stood together at his graveside, the last to leave. “It was a sick and a twisted love. An obsession as you called it. But a sort of love nevertheless. I can’t hate him. Forgive me, but I can’t. I wish I had had a chance to tell him that I forgave him.”
There had been no word at all about Antoine or Winnie, though discreet inquiries had revealed that a ship of the Northwest fur trading company had indeed sailed for Canada very early on the morning following the murder. They would be on that ship, Christopher was sure.
Nancy had stayed in London, moving from the Pulte-ney to stay with her friend, Lady Hardinge. Her betrothal was to be publicly announced despite the fact that John was officially in mourning.
They were planning to marry at Penhallow in August.
Penhallow! Christopher hoped that it would bring Elizabeth and him peace. He hoped that they would be able to love there as deeply as they had loved during those weeks when her memory had been gone.
He hoped so. His wife and his children had become the focus of all his dreams. He watched Elizabeth as she held Christina asleep in her arms and gazed out the carriage window with eyes that looked large and sad and not quite focused on the passing scenery.
Christina was past the age of needing regular afternoon naps. But she was sleeping this afternoon. A day and a half at Penhallow seemed to have exhausted her. It was the sea air, Christopher said.
There was no more effective sleeping potion in the world. It was all the activity, Elizabeth thought.
On the morning after their arrival Christopher had taken their daughter for a walk up the side of the valley opposite the house. The slope was steep enough, he had said, that it had one puffing on the way up and shrieking with delight as one ran down again trying to make one’s legs keep up with the momentum of one’s body. Elizabeth had heard Christina’s shrieks and Christopher’s laughter as she gathered flowers from the kitchen garden. They had climbed the hill four times in all.
And then in the afternoon they had all walked up the hill behind the house and across the headland to the cliffs and down the cliff path to the beach. They had walked at a sedate pace because Mama was carrying the fourth member of their family, Christopher had explained to Christina, and he could not yet help her with it. On the beach the long-promised sand castle had been built. If it was not the most splendid one ever to have been constructed, it was not for want of trying. They had spent all of three hours on it. At least Christopher and Christina had. She herself had lain down for a rest and had even drifted off to sleep after Christopher had spread his cloak on the sand for her and insisted that half the family could build while the other half rested.
He had grinned at her. In fact, he had done a lot of smiling in the past day and a half, mostly at Christina, but occasionally at her. He seemed happy to be home and happy that they were with him. And yet there was a wariness in his eyes. And she did not blame him. How did he know that he could trust her when she had been so untrustworthy almost from the beginning of their acquaintance?
They had all played games in the house during the evening until Christina’s bedtime. This morning they had ridden along the valley, the three of them, at first away from the sea, into denser, quieter forest, into quietness and beauty, and then toward the sea, turning back only when they reached the marshy sand of the estuary. While Elizabeth walked back to the house from the stables, Christopher was dragged off for one more run down the opposite hill that apparently had developed into three.
And so Christina was asleep, exhausted by sea air and vigorous exercise and happiness. Christopher had disappeared about some business. Elizabeth had escaped to the beach.
She stood with her back against the large boulder before the lovers’ cave, feeling the salty breeze against her face, knowing that there was enough heat in the sun’s rays to bronze her face if she was not careful. She closed her eyes and felt warmth and did not want to be careful.
She had stood just here as her memory came back to her. As the idyll of the weeks preceding its return slipped away from her. As she gave up the consuming love and passion she had felt for Christopher during those weeks.
All was well that ended well, she thought. She was back again. She was married to him again. They had Christina here with them. Their new child was growing in her womb. She loved Christopher. She thought he probably loved her though he had not said so recently.
It was a happily ever after she was living in. Except that there was an emptiness. Her eyes strayed to the shapeless mound that had been a splendid castle the day before until the tide had come and ravaged it during the night. And her eyes strayed farther, to the foot of the cliff path.
He was coming, walking unhurriedly toward her across the sand.
She felt a welling of love for him and a sinking of sadness. If only seven years could be erased.
She was exactly where he had expected to see her. Somehow he had known she would be there, not only on the beach but against the boulder, close to their cave. He felt a surging of hope, seeing her there. She had come to the place where they had loved and been happy.
She was pale. She appeared to have lost weight. And yet she was beautiful. She was his wife, his love. And she was unhappy and distant. She was watching him.
He came to stand beside her, one shoulder propped against the rock. His eyes were on hers, though he said nothing. And she found that she could not look away from him.
“The only thing I was guilty of,” he said after a few moments of silence, “was cowardice, Elizabeth. I ran instead of staying to force you to listen to me, to force you to come back to me. I ran instead of staying to find out the truth. I was not guilty of any of those other things. I was never unfaithful to you even in my thoughts. I loved you totally. I told the truth when I said I came to you a virgin. Can you not forgive me for the one thing I did wrong? Will it always stand between us?”
He did not understand. Could he not understand? He thought that he was the one at fault. Oh, Christopher. My love.
He watched tears well into her eyes and hover there, ready to spill over. She did not look away from him though he knew from the way she swallowed that she could not answer him immediately. If she said no, then all would be over for them. No, not quite that drastic. But they could never be quite happy unless she could forgive him. And for that one fault he could rely only on her forgiveness. He had no excuse to offer beyond youth and inexperience and foolishness.
“Can you forgive me?” she said at last, her voice high-pitched, at the edge of tears. “I am the one at fault, Christopher. It has all been my fault. All of it. I believed everyone but you. I said I loved you, I married you, I made all sorts of vows that were to last until eternity. Yet after three months I lost faith in you and destroyed everything. I can’t forgive myself. How can I expect you to forgive me?”
She blinked her eyes and one tear spilled down each cheek. He reached out a thumb to cover one and bent his head to lick the other one away. She was looking at him, her head turned sideways when he drew back his head. He could feel hope bubbling up inside him.
“You must not blame yourself,” he said. “None of us saw through his schemes, Elizabeth. I thought him the only friend I had left even as I sailed away to Canada. Your father was convinced enough to take the almost unprecedented step of bringing divorce proceedings against me. Martin was your brother, your dearest friend. How could you have seen the truth?”
“You should have been my dearest friend,” she said. “You were my dearest love, but I was very young and very foolish. I was a little afraid of you. And so I let myself believe that you could have done those things. If I had made you my friend, nothing could possibly have come between us. I would have known!”
“Neither of us could help our youth,” he said. “We were not given time t
o become really close friends, Elizabeth. We were too busy with our love and our fears and uncertainties to have done more than begin the process of developing a lifelong friendship. It would have come with time. Our love would have seen to that. But time was taken away from us deliberately and ruthlessly. What happened was neither your fault nor mine.”
He was going to forgive her? He was even going to insist that there was nothing to forgive? She looked at his face through her tears and wondered that she could ever have been afraid of him. It was a beloved face, a kindly and understanding face.
“I kept Christina from you,” she said, “and all knowledge of her. You told me yourself not so long ago that you did not know if you could ever forgive me for that.”
That fiend whom she still mourned was responsible for all that had happened. Could she not see it? Or must she blame herself for not being the only one to see through his deceptions? Was there no way he could reassure her? It seemed that perhaps there was only one way.
“Elizabeth.” He took her right into his arms, drawing her away from the rock, so that she leaned against him and not it. “If you need forgiveness, it is yours. And everything is forgotten as of this moment. Is that clear? Everything is washed clean just as that poor castle has been by the tide. Perhaps—just perhaps—if our love had never been tested it would have become a humdrum thing in time. It will never be that now, will it? We both know how very near we were to losing each other forever. And we have both learned that married people do not live happily ever after once the wedding ceremony is over. We know that we must work at our marriage every hour and every day for the rest of our lives. It has been a lesson worth learning, hasn’t it?”
“Do you love me?” she asked him, lifting her face to his. “I know that you have committed yourself to this marriage, Christopher. I know that the children—”
He kissed her. She clung to him, tasting his answer in his mouth.
