by Anna Bradley
Her shoulders went stiff, and an odd expression flitted across her face. “Why should I care to know? It can’t make any difference to me.”
Cam didn’t answer, but held out his hand to her. “Come away from the door, Eleanor.”
She hesitated, but then she closed the door and stepped back into the room. He gestured toward the settee again, and she sat.
He remained standing. “You don’t have the whole of Amelia’s story. Not even close. You know she’s illegitimate, but you didn’t say a word about her father.”
“I assumed he was some aristocrat or other. Your aunt didn’t say so, but who else—”
“Who else but an aristocrat would ruin a grieving widow and then abandon her as soon as he put a child in her belly? Who else, indeed? You’re quite right. He was an aristocrat who cared for nothing but his own gratification.”
He paused, confused at the cold, hard edge in his voice. This wasn’t how he’d meant to tell her, but here was the old ugliness, sucking all the air out of the room.
“Surely you don’t claim an unfamiliarity with self-gratification, Cam?”
Cam caught his breath as pain shot through him, followed by a cold fury. Was that what she thought? That he’d made love to her only to gratify his lust? Damn it, he wasn’t at all like Hart Sutherland. “You went to great lengths to get Amelia’s sordid tale, Eleanor, but you abandoned the chase before you had the choicest bit of gossip. However will you become a competent blackmailer if you give up so easily?”
Eleanor flinched, and shame rose in Cam’s chest at the bitter sarcasm in his voice. He didn’t want to hurt her, but the despair he’d felt as a child was lodged in his throat, and he had to get it out before it choked him.
“My mother was beautiful,” he went on, struggling to stay calm. “Amelia looks like her. She has similar features, and the same fair coloring.”
Eleanor twisted her hands in her lap. “Angelic.”
Angelic, and cursed.
The harsh reply rose to Cam’s lips, but he bit it back. “Yes. Her beauty was out of the common way, and she attracted attention. Even after my father died and she was broken by grief, she was still lovely. Haunted but lovely, maybe even more so than she’d been before, for a certain kind of man, anyway. The kind that preys on vulnerability.”
“Yes, I think I know the kind of man you mean,” she said, not looking at him.
Does she imagine I am such a man?
Cam’s hands tightened into fists. “My mother was on a ride one afternoon when she was unfortunate enough to catch the attention of the aristocrat in question. He’d been to Aylesbury and was headed back down to London by way of Watford. He saw her out on her horse.”
“And her fate was sealed, because she happened to be in the wrong place, and to stumble across the wrong man.”
Cam dug his fingernails into his clenched palms as another wave of pain and anger swept over him. “Fate is cruel—is that what you mean to say? Crueler to some than others, I think.”
She didn’t answer.
“My father had been dead nearly four years by this time, but my mother’s sorrow hadn’t faded. She never would have taken up with such a man if she hadn’t been so lonely, so wretched. The moment she did, of course, my uncle discovered it, and he wasted no time in tossing us out.”
“Did she . . . do you suppose she loved him? The aristocrat?”
He shook his head. She hadn’t loved him, but in the end it didn’t matter, because Hart Sutherland had broken her nonetheless, as surely as Ellie would break him if he let her walk away. “No. She couldn’t love anyone else, not after my father. One doesn’t ever get over a love like that, do they?”
She jerked her gaze from her lap to his face. “No. No, they don’t.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, then Cam broke the silence. “However she may have felt about him, you can be sure he never loved her. He kept her for three years, right up until she told him she carried his child. He was furious. He accused her of trying to squeeze money of out him for her brat, though she’d never asked him for a shilling, and he’d certainly never been generous with her.”
Eleanor released a long, shaky breath. “What . . . what did he do? What happened?”
“Come now, Eleanor.” His laugh was short, bitter. “You know what happened. He left her, without warning, and without a word. Amelia was born seven months later. My mother held her for a little while, but then she started to bleed. She died within the hour.”
His mother, pale and lifeless, the white sheets soaked with her blood . . .
The old misery clawed at him. He gulped in air to loosen the fist clenched inside his chest, but it only squeezed harder. Why should Ellie be spared? No one else had been. His mother. Amelia. Himself.
“This is the child you thought to toss to the ton, Ellie, an innocent to ravenous wolves. A child without a mother, whose father abandoned her while she was yet in the womb.”
She choked back a sob, and the small sound cleaved Cam’s heart in two. Pain poured into his chest from the wound, but he grabbed the raw edges of his flesh with both hands and held them together, determined to finish this before he bled to death.
“Do you think the ton will find her angelic, Eleanor? Or will they simply see a bastard when they look at her?”
Tears rushed to Eleanor’s eyes. “I never wanted to hurt Amelia. I didn’t have a choice.”
Her tears slashed at his open wound, but when his mouth opened, more hurtful words poured out. “Choice is a luxury. Amelia never had one. I was kind to you, Eleanor, when I made you admit you could never hurt her. I kept you from doing something unworthy of you.”
“Unworthy of me,” she said dully. “Not of you, though.”
He snorted. “Lady Charlotte is hardly a defenseless, illegitimate orphan, is she? She’s had every advantage of money and birth, just as you have.”
Her dark eyes flashed. “So we deserve it? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” he shot back. “Not because of your advantages, but for another reason altogether.”
“I find myself weary of your reasons, Cam. I don’t want to hear any more.”
But she would hear it, whether she wanted to or not.
Cam stalked over to the settee and loomed over her, his legs thrown wide, his body rigid. “Oh, you’ll hear it, my lady, and right through to the finish.”
In some dim part of his mind he knew he’d lost control, but the realization came too late, and from too great a distance. The weight had crushed him for so long he’d had to heave it off his chest with a mighty shove, and now it tore free with a vengeance, gained momentum, and flattened everything in its path.
Eleanor looked up at him, her eyes stained with tears. “We’ve had some advantages. I don’t deny it. But we’ve had difficulties too. Do you suppose we haven’t? It may shock you to hear it, but aristocrats aren’t exempt from pain, any more than anyone is. We’ve overcome obstacles you know nothing about.”
Oh, but he did know, and it was time she did, as well. “What, you mean your father? Yes, he was rather a challenging obstacle, wasn’t he?”
She stared at him, open-mouthed. “He—what do you know about my father?”
“Quite a lot, as it happens. Perhaps as much as you do.”
Her face went so white he knelt down in front of her and took hold of her upper arms. He looked down at his hands, clutching at her, and watched his fingers tighten as if they weren’t a part of his body at all.
“No, you don’t,” she whispered. “You can’t know anything about him.”
A deep, frozen calm crept over him. He saw his hands fall away from her, heard his own voice, polite and distant, as if he asked if she took sugar in her tea, or observed the weather was unseasonably warm. “But I do, my lady. I knew him. He was the type of man who preyed on other’s vulnerabilities, wasn’t he? The type of man concerned only with his own gratification.”
Ellie shot to her feet, but she had to grope for
the arm of the settee to steady herself. “Stop it!”
But he couldn’t stop. The words began to pour from him now, blood from a deep, open wound. “The kind of man who’d ruin a woman broken by grief—a widow. The kind of man who’d abandon her without a second glance when he found she carried his child. The kind of man who’d leave that child without ever seeing her, without ever offering a penny of support for her, and without ever acknowledging her.”
She was gasping for breath now. “No. You’re lying. I know you’re lying.”
She tried to break away, but he grasped her shoulders and turned her back to face him. A sense of unreality swept over him as he looked into her dark eyes.
Hart Sutherland’s eyes.
“No Ellie, you know just the opposite. You know it’s true. You have only to look at Amelia’s eyes to see it. She looks very much like my mother, yes—the fair hair, the pale skin. But my mother had green eyes, and Amelia’s are dark, almost black. Have you ever noticed that, Ellie? Her eyes look like yours, don’t they? You must have your father’s eyes too, just as Amelia does.”
“He wasn’t a good man.” She was pleading now. “I know that. I don’t pretend he was, but that—what you accuse him of, it’s—”
“Unforgiveable. Worse than unforgiveable. It’s the kind of sin that demands restitution. Don’t you agree, Ellie? An eye for an eye.”
She’d begun to claw at his hands to get free, but as soon as she absorbed those words, she went still. “All this time, you said it had nothing to do with me. That I didn’t matter. All that mattered was I was a Sutherland.”
But she did matter. She was all that mattered.
A tide of bitter regret threatened to drown Cam, and he had to fight the urge let his head fall into his hands. Why had he been so vicious? He’d meant to be kind, to tell her gently . . . yet the truth itself was vicious. How could he deliver such a violent blow with a gentle fist?
Blow. Fist. Christ, what had he done?
She sagged against him and he lowered her gently to the sofa, cursing himself.
“It started that way, but it’s not true anymore. Please listen to me. I don’t want to punish you, Ellie. Perhaps I did at one time, but not anymore.”
I only want you.
She stared at him, dazed, her eyes vacant and glassy, and the silence stretched between them until he could bear it no longer. “I swore to myself when Amelia was born I’d do everything in my power to right the wrong done to her. The support of the Sutherland family won’t smooth her way entirely, but it’s the best hope she has for the future she deserves.”
She didn’t reply to that. She simply stared at her lap, as if she hadn’t heard him, or couldn’t make sense of his words.
“It was either you or Charlotte,” he said, forcing the rest out, determined to finish this, whatever it took. “I chose you, because of the two of you I thought you were more likely to recognize your obligation to Amelia.”
Her head came up at this. “My obligation? I’m obliged to marry you because of my father’s sin? My God, Cam—if he could do such a thing to your mother, to Amelia, then he had fewer moral compunctions than even I suspected. What if everyone he wronged demands restitution of me? Are you willing to loan out your wife to them all, so I can right my father’s wrongs? It’s only fair, after all. An eye for an eye, isn’t that right?”
An eye for an eye. How ugly it sounded. How brutally unfair it seemed, when she said it. Yet it was justice, wasn’t it? Parity?
He grasped her cold hands in his. “I meant your obligation to Amelia. She’s your sister, as much as Charlotte is—your family, as well as mine. Will you turn your back on her, now you know the truth?”
But he hardly knew what the truth was anymore, because this wasn’t about Charlotte or Amelia or the Sutherlands now. It wasn’t about threats, or truces, or secrets, or justice.
It was about Eleanor. Him, and Eleanor.
He ached to press her hand to his face and whisper promises in her ear, to soothe away the hurt he’d caused. Promises he’d keep. That he’d take care of her. That he’d be good to her. That she’d never regret becoming his wife.
That he loved her.
But it was no use. She wouldn’t listen to him. Making love to her had stunned him, devastated him, but she saw it as just another ploy to manipulate her. She’d think the same of his declaration of love, and why shouldn’t she? His mouth still burned from his threats. It was a mockery to speak of love with such bitter lips.
It started as a tragedy, so why shouldn’t it end as one?
“We would have supported her, you know,” she whispered, her voice filled with such sorrow he had to close his eyes against it. “The Sutherlands, I mean. We’d have done it without the threats, without coercion. Happily. We’d have welcomed her with open arms. Charlotte, Alec, Robyn—all of us, even my mother, who . . .” She caught her breath on a sob. “Who had every reason to hope she’d never again be asked to forgive another of my father’s cruelties toward her.”
Her words hit him like a blow across the face. No one who’d known Hart Sutherland had escaped without scars. No one, no matter their rank, or their legitimacy.
“We could still. It’s—it’s not too late.” She stumbled over the words. “If you would but trust my family, there’s no need for us to marry.”
“No, Eleanor.” The words leapt from his mouth before he realized he’d formed a conscious thought. Maybe the Sutherlands would welcome Amelia. Maybe they would stand by her and ease her way into society. He could believe it of them. They were kind, decent. Like Eleanor, they were not what he’d expected.
But it didn’t matter. She’d said it wasn’t too late, but it was.
For him, it was.
Did she believe she could give him everything, shatter so sweetly in his arms, and he’d let her walk away from him? Even now she might carry his child in her belly. Did she think he’d allow his own child to suffer Amelia’s fate? Did she think he’d let history repeat itself?
He took her hand between both of his, his grip fierce. “No.”
Fall at her feet, take her hands, beg her . . .
She didn’t argue with him. She didn’t even try to withdraw her hand, but it rested like a dead thing between his, cold and lifeless. She wasn’t fighting him anymore. The thought should have given him hope, but it didn’t.
He released her hand, and it dropped to her side. “You believe Amelia shouldn’t be punished for an accident of birth. She bears no fault in it, so she shouldn’t suffer for it. Is that right, Cam?”
Had the room grown cold? He felt chilled to his very soul. “Yes.”
“But you think it fitting I should?”
He opened numb lips to answer her, but there was no answer to that, and his throat closed before he could utter a word.
She didn’t seem to expect an answer. She went to the door, opened it, and stood there, head bowed, waiting.
Take her in your arms. Beg her pardon, and tell her, tell her . . .
But he didn’t. He didn’t say a word, because there was nothing he could say she would believe. For a long moment he gazed at her, his heart cold and hollow in his chest. Then he walked across the room and out the door.
Eleanor closed it behind him, and she didn’t move for a long time afterwards. When she began to shiver from the cold she changed into her dressing gown and wrapper and sat on the edge of the settee, careful not to think of anything.
The fire died away sometime during the night, but she didn’t go to her bed. She couldn’t, not after she’d been there with Cam.
She folded her hands mechanically in her lap and sat, back straight, and didn’t think of anything. She didn’t make plans. She didn’t try to find a way out—a way to jerk the strings into place. She sat and let emotions wash over her. Memories. Her father, with his cold, dark eyes. Charlotte, as she’d been as a child, with her muddy pinafores and wild black curls. Amelia, asking if Eleanor would always be her friend. Cam, speaking to her of o
bligations.
And at last, just Cam. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could see him still, his green eyes tender as he made love to her, his hands cupping her face, his voice, whispering she was beautiful.
She was still there when Charlotte found her, hours later. “Eleanor? What are you—dear God, you’re like ice. What’s happened?”
Eleanor turned to Charlotte, surprised to see her there. “Happened? Oh.” She pulled her wrapper tighter around her throat. “I’m going to marry Camden West.”
Chapter Twenty-five
She could almost believe nothing had changed.
Eleanor stood to one side of the ballroom, her gloved fingers wrapped around a glass of lemonade, a stiff smile pasted on her face as she watched the dancers whirl from one side of the floor to the other.
It looked the same. The same colorful silk gowns and blinding white cravats. The same throats and wrists adorned with the same flashing jewels. The same gilt mirrors reflecting the same couples, shuffling through the same figures of the same dances.
It might have been any ball, at any time, in any townhouse in London. It might have been Lady Foster’s ball, six weeks ago.
Except it wasn’t.
The smooth, glittering surface appeared undisturbed, but underneath it the currents ebbed and flowed, surged and retreated. Eleanor struggled to remain upright as the sand shifted beneath her feet. Her jaw ached, and her palms were damp inside her tight gloves.
Charlotte was dancing with the Marquess of Hadley again. There was nothing so unusual in that, perhaps. Hadley had never made a secret of his admiration for Charlotte, and he often asked her to dance. Charlotte, ever gracious, often accepted him, but while she clearly liked the Marquess, she’d never shown any marked partiality for him.
Until now. Since their return from Lindenhurst four weeks ago, Hadley’s suit had met with an unusual degree of success. He gazed down at Charlotte tonight, besotted as ever, his handsome face alight as if he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, with any other lady in his arms. Whether Charlotte had accepted his suit or not, Eleanor hadn’t the faintest idea. Charlotte hadn’t confided in her.
