The Bride Sale

by Candice Hern

  Verity finished plaiting her hair, then removed her undergarments and donned a nightgown. She felt much less like crying when she returned to bed at last. She had pushed aside what had happened that evening and come to a decision. Though she could not give James what he needed, there were two things she could give him: her friendship and his reputation. They were all she had to give.

  James sat on the side of the bed and sipped Lobb’s special coffee. His head throbbed and he felt more hung over from drink than he’d ever been in his life. Drink and conscience and self-loathing. All of it had exaggerated the effects of last night’s alcoholic binge.

  He had hoped to drink himself out of the despair he felt over what he’d done to Verity. It had not worked. The more he drank, the more despondent he’d become. The drunker he got, the more beautiful, the more compassionate, the more passionate Verity had become in his mind. By the time he had passed out in the chair, he had been sick with love for her.

  In the reasonably clear light of day, he realized how foolishly maudlin and sentimental he’d been in his cups. He admired her, to be sure, and lusted after her as well. But guilt over what he’d done to her had magnified his feelings all out of proportion. It would be exceedingly foolhardy to fall in love with Verity.

  He rose slowly to his feet, the creaking of the bed frame painful to his ears. He grabbed the bedpost to anchor himself.

  “You all right there, m’lord?”

  James stood perfectly still while the ringing in his ears quieted and the throbbing in his head subsided to a dull roar. “Yes, Lobb,” he said at last, “I’m fine. Just help me dress, would you? I’m not feeling too steady on my pins this morning.”

  He washed his face in bracing cold water, but when he started to shave himself, Lobb took the razor from James’s shaking hands and did the job himself. Afterward, James stood useless as a rag doll while Lobb got him dressed, all the while thinking of what he would say to Verity. For once in his life, he wanted to do the right and noble thing. He would offer her marriage, if such could be arranged, or at least a marriage of sorts if it could not be legally done. Perhaps he could contact Gilbert Russell and discuss the possibilities of a parliamentary divorce. In any case, James was bound and determined to pledge himself to Verity, legally or not, especially if he had made her pregnant.

  When he finally made his way down to breakfast, he found Verity there, as expected, looking as though she had not slept. The sight of her brought on a renewed wave of desolation, a self-loathing as deep as any he’d ever known. Agnes was there as well. She glowered at him as he took his seat across from her.

  “You look terrible,” she snapped. “I suppose you’ve been drinking all night again.”

  “Good morning, Agnes,” he said. “Verity.”

  Agnes snorted and Verity nodded, attempting a wan little smile. Agnes then set off on a diatribe on the evils of drink, and how it was simply one more sinful nail in his wicked coffin. James tried not to listen and allowed the pounding in his head to drown out her shrill voice.

  After half a slice of bread and a few sips of black coffee, he rose to his feet, interrupting Agnes mid-sentence, and excused himself. He turned to Verity before leaving. “There is a matter I must discuss with you,” he said. “Would you join me in the library at your convenience?”

  He immediately wanted to bite his tongue. The library! What sort of monster would she think him, to force her to return to the scene of last night’s debacle? Before she could speak, he amended the request. “No, not the library,” he said. “The Old Drawing Room. I’ll have Tomas lay down a fire. Will you join me there?”

  “Of course, my lord,” Verity replied, without the slightest trace of awkwardness or hesitation. But then, he had never yet seen her lose her composure in public. “Shall we say in half an hour, then?” she asked.

  “As you wish.”

  After Tomas had laid the fire, James paced the small room. The Old Drawing Room was seldom used and so he could expect reasonable privacy. Located on the second floor in the tower wing, it was approached by old stone stairs dipped in the center from centuries of wear. It was in the oldest part of the house, built in the fifteenth century, and retained many of its Tudor furnishings.

  Two rows of mullioned windows on the north and east walls provided ample light in the afternoon, but on this gray morning, the room was dark and cheerless. And cold. Perhaps it had been a mistake to meet Verity here.

  Tomas’s entrance startled James out of his thoughts. “Seemed awful cold in here, so I brung more kindlin’ to build up the fire.”

  James kept his back turned while Tomas went about his business. He did not wish to chance another episode by catching sight of newly ignited kindling, but he heard the rush of flame and felt the warmth against his back. When the red-haired youth left, James resumed his pacing and rejected the temptation to pull out his pocket watch to check the time.

  When at last he heard Verity’s approach, James stopped pacing and stood with his back to the fire, so that when Verity walked in she found him facing her straight on. She paused in the doorway.

  “Come in, please,” he said. He moved one of the straight-back wooden chairs from along the wall and placed it before the grate. “Sit here by the fire. These older rooms can be quite cold this time of year.”

  She looked at the chair but did not speak or move away from the door. Damn. He ought to have chosen a more suitable room. Not only was it cold and dark, but the furniture was ancient and not at all comfortable.

  Verity took a tentative step into the room and gestured toward the chair. “Will you join me?” she asked. “Or did you intend to remain standing? I should much prefer it if we were both seated.”

  “Of course,” James said. She would not want him looming over her. He brought another chair and positioned it opposite the first.

  Verity walked toward the first chair and turned it so that its back was to the fire. “You take this one,” she said. Then she moved the second chair so that it faced toward the fire, several feet away from the other, and sat down.

  The small gesture almost paralyzed him. It took a moment before he could bring himself to take the chair, and a longer moment while he composed himself to speak. She did not allow the awkward silence to hang in the air.

  “I have never been to this room,” she said. “It must be quite old. I’ve only seen that sort of linen-fold paneling once before, in an old Tudor home in Lincolnshire. It sets off the tapestries beautifully, does it not? You have a lovely home, Lord Harkness.”

  Bless her for opening the conversation with banalities. “Do you really think so?” he said. “Do you not find it dark and forbidding?”

  Verity smiled. “I did at first,” she said. “I thought the same of you, too.”

  James flattened his spine against the hard back of the chair. So much for banalities.

  “But I have since discovered,” she continued, “that Pendurgan is not as dark and forbidding as it looks. Neither is its master.”

  “Verity.” He shook his head in disbelief, then rose from his chair, too agitated to sit. He began pacing once again and wringing his hands in frustration. She was going to make an apology very difficult. “How can you say such a thing, after what happened last night?” He stopped pacing and stood before her. “I cannot tell you how much I regret my behavior.” He was looming, so he sat down again. “It was inexcusable. How can I ever—”

  “Please, my lord.” She held up a hand to stop his words. “You must not trouble yourself over what happened. Besides, it is I who should apologize to you.”

  “You? Why on earth would I need your apology when I was the one who—”

  “You only needed comforting and I was not able to provide it.” Chagrin, or perhaps it was sadness, gathered in her eyes. “I wish I could have done so, but you must know that it is impossible. I am very sorry.”

  Good Lord. Verity was actually apologizing to him, and after he had practically raped her the night before. It was more t
han he could bear, and he leaped to his feet again, too unsettled to sit still. “Verity, I treated you abominably last night. I…I hurt you.”

  Her gaze dropped to her lap. “It was my fault.”

  Her fault? What was she talking about? Did she blame herself because she had not warned him of her virginity? Yet she had denied being a virgin, despite all evidence to the contrary. “I do not understand.”

  “It does not matter.” She looked up again. “Perhaps we should just try to be friends?”

  He could hardly believe what she was saying. “You wish to be my friend? After what I’ve done to you? And after all that you know, that you must surely know, about my past?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied, as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

  James sank down onto the chair again. “I do not understand you, Verity Osborne. Why do you not hate me for hurting you, or at least fear me, like all the rest?”

  “Recollect, my lord, that I was there last night. I saw what happened to you.”

  He flinched as though she’d stuck him. Dear God, what had she seen?

  “I know that in your mind you were back in Spain,” she said, “fighting that battle again.”

  James gripped the wooden arms of the chair. “And how the devil do you know about that?” he asked, furious that she should know about Spain. What else did she know?

  “Please do not be angry, my lord. I wheedled the information out of Captain Poldrennan.”

  “Damn him!”

  “Do not blame the captain,” she said. “You must blame me for being too meddlesome. I wanted to know, after the other things I’d heard.”

  “From Old Grannie and the rest?”

  “Yes.”

  James heaved a sigh. “Then you know what I’ve done. You know the harm I’ve inflicted. And now I’ve done harm to you, as well.”

  “I only know what I saw, my lord,” Verity said. “I saw firsthand how what happened in Spain—and here—still tears you apart after all these years. I would like to help you, if I can.”

  Damn her interference. Her attempt at compassion had become intrusive and he didn’t like it one bit. He was unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. “How can you possibly help me?”

  Verity smiled, apparently oblivious of his building anger. “By standing your friend,” she said. “By making up valerian infusions to help you sleep without nightmares. By being there when the visions overtake you again. By listening, if you wish to talk about it.”

  “Talk about it?” Was she mad? “Good God, I want only to forget it. That, of course, is impossible. Talking about it is the very last way in which you might help me. Stick to your possets and potions, Verity.”

  She pressed on, unfazed by his words. “But keeping all that terror inside is eating away at you. I do not know about the visions or blackouts or whatever it is that happens to you.”

  Lord, please make her stop.

  “But I do know about nightmares,” she continued. “I know the shock of seeing and feeling the terror all over again, just as sharp as the first time, so that you wake up with a scream in your throat. And it happens again and again until you think you will die of it.”

  James reined in his temper and watched her face closely. She spoke from the heart. He thought she had overcome the horror of being sold in the market square. He had even resented her for it. Had he overestimated her strength? Was she plagued by nightmares still?

  “What happens to you must be a thousand times worse,” she continued, “since it occurs while you are awake. I saw what it did to you.”

  James squirmed in his seat.

  “What set it off this time?” she asked, apparently determined that he would talk about it.

  He had not often spoken about his blackouts. Only to Lobb, who knew of them firsthand from the beginning, and once or twice to Alan Poldrennan. But the resolute look in her eyes told him she would not let up until he had told her everything. Damn her.

  “My lord?”

  He tossed her a look that he sincerely hoped reflected the intense displeasure he felt at her well-meaning persistence. In the end, though, he was helpless against those gentle brown eyes. He wrenched his gaze from them and stared at a spot on the wall above her shoulder.

  “I had just finished reading a letter and tossed it into the grate behind me,” he began. “Some minutes later, I got up to get a brandy, assuming the paper would have ignited long before. It had not. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it lying at the edge of the grate. I think it burst into flames just then. I don’t know. I can’t remember anything else.”

  Verity remained silent for a moment and then said, “It is indeed a thousand times worse than a nightmare.” When he looked up at her, she caught his gaze and held it. “I’d like to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I suspect there is a good man beneath all that pain,” she said, “beneath the Lord Heartless façade.”

  By God, he’d had enough. “Madam, you go at me like a miner with his pick, chipping and chipping at solid rock where you think you’ve spotted signs of a rich vein. But there’s no shiny ore to be found here, my dear. I suggest you leave it alone. You will only disappoint us both.”

  “I merely want to help.”

  “You cannot help!” he shouted. “God’s teeth, woman, this is not some winter ailment to be healed by your herbs. Don’t you understand?”

  Verity gazed at him with those liquid brown eyes, doleful as a hound and full of hurt. Blast it all, he had no right to shout at her.

  James ran his fingers through his hair and made a effort to curb his anger. She did not deserve this surly treatment, but neither did he deserve her compassion. He had done her irrevocable harm and yet she still wanted to help him. It was almost more than he could bear.

  He lowered his voice. “No, of course you do not understand,” he said. “How could you? How could you possibly understand what it’s like to live a life riddled with shame and guilt? To endure the fear and hatred of everyone around you until you become the monster they make you out to be? To wake up each morning and wonder how you can possibly make it through one more day? To want so badly to put an end to it all and yet be without the courage to do the deed? What can you know of any of that?”

  Verity sat quietly, hands folded in her lap, the firelight reflected in the depths of her dark eyes as she watched the flames behind him. After a moment, she lifted her gaze to his and spoke, very softly. “You are right,” she said. “I can probably never understand the pain you have suffered. I am sorry if I presumed too much. I only hoped to be able to offer you my friendship, if you would have it.”

  She devastated him with her benevolent words and her gentle eyes. She offered him yet another precious gift, and he had almost been ready to toss it back in her face. Anger dissipated, James leaned forward in his chair, reached out, and took her hand. “My dear Verity, there is nothing I would rather have than your friendship, and I accept it gratefully. But I confess you confound me. Here you are offering kindness to one who behaved no better than an animal last night, taking you against your will.”

  Her gaze dropped to her lap once again. She kept her eyes on their clasped hands. “It was not against my will,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps not at first. But it was badly done. I caused you pain and I deeply regret it. It shall not happen again, I promise you.”

  “You’ve done me no harm, I assure you, my lord.”

  He doubted that, but did not press the point. “If we are to be friends, will you at least call me James?”

  “James, then.”

  He squeezed her hand and released it. He did not wish her to think he wanted more. “Verity Osborne, you are a remarkable woman. You humble me, and I would be proud to call you friend. But you must not press me on certain matters. Just as I will not press you on matters I know you do not care to discuss.” She winced slightly at his words. He had her there. It was a sort of blackmail—her silence on
Spain for his silence on her virginity and the state of her so-called marriage—but it was necessary.

  “Agreed?” he prompted.

  “Agreed.”

  “You will stay at Pendurgan, then?” he asked.

  She chewed on her lower lip as though considering a negative reply. James realized it was now he who presumed too much.

  “Verity, as I told you on that very first night, you are not bound to stay here if you do not wish it. You are free to go whenever you choose. You always have been.”

  She released her lip but her brow remained furrowed. He wished to God he knew what she was thinking. Did she wish to leave? She had at one time, of course, but he had thought…he had hoped…

  “Yet I suspect,” he said, “you have no place else to go. You told me that your parents are both dead, and that you have no brothers or sisters. The woman you were so fond of, the one who taught you about herbs, she is also dead, is she not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me offer you a home at Pendurgan,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, to keep from sounding as pathetically plaintive as he felt. The thought of her leaving had set off a despair howling around in his head like a chill wind.

  “I do still feel responsible for you, Verity,” he continued, “despite my recent behavior. You are welcome to stay, my dear. You shall remain my long-lost cousin. Will that suit you?”

  She smiled, and his despair dissolved into a warm breeze of hope. “Yes, James,” she said. “I would very much like to stay. Thank you.”

  He smiled in return. “And we shall be friends, you and me,” he said. But there was one more sticky issue to deal with, and he found himself squirming slightly as he prepared to bring it into the open. “Yes, we shall be friends,” he said at last. “But you must allow me to be more than that, Verity, if I have…if you are…if there is a child.”