He did not care. He had not made a very good fist of being her husband, up till now, but he had to tell her that it would all be different. If she would just forgive him for his stupidity, and give him another chance.
And that was when he saw her. She was not yet off Bowdon land, thank God. She must have heard the beat of his horse’s hooves because she glanced over her shoulder.then darted into the trees.
A fresh shaft of pain seared right through him. His gut instinct had been right. She was trying to hide from him. Probably thought he was about estate business, and might not have noticed her. She would have no idea he was looking specifically for her. Because he had let her think he did not care!
He put the horse straight at the trees. She could not have got far into them.
His horse reared up on to its hind legs as he drew up far too close to the tightly packed trunks for the creature’s liking. He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and leaped down. He would be better on foot amongst the dense growth, anyway.
To his astonishment, she had not run very far at all. She was peeping out at him from behind the bole of a slender beech tree, looking, if anything, a little shamefaced.
Then she stepped out into full view and lifted her chin as she faced him. The same way she had lifted it after the Dowager had insulted her. He felt the gesture like a slap to the face. She was expecting him to hurt her and bracing herself for it.
Why would she not? All he had done since they had met was hurt her!
‘Don’t leave, Aimée,’ he pleaded. ‘Whatever I have done that makes you want to walk away from our marriage—’
She gasped. ‘It is not you!’
He laughed bitterly and indicated the bag she had over her shoulder. ‘What is that, then? What have you got in there?’
‘Oh, this …’ Her eyes darted from his, and she laid a protective hand over the flap. She did not want him to see whatever it was she had in there.
So he grabbed hold of it, meaning to open it and just look. She stepped back, in consternation, and the thing was so flimsy, the strap broke. The contents went tumbling on to the beech mast. As he had suspected. Brush and comb, stockings, nightdress and.
‘Oh, no!’ she cried, as the wind riffled through the pages of the History of the Present War in Spain and Portugal, sending the flowers she had preserved from her wedding bouquet swirling away into the undergrowth.
He sank to his knees, clutching the book in his hands as she darted off after her treasures, braving brambles and getting her bonnet knocked off by low-hanging branches. For the sake of a half-dozen papery-thin flowers and a scrap of material she had cut from her wedding dress. He had recognised the pattern as it fluttered across the ground.
It felt like a reprieve. There was still hope for them if she could want to take things like this with her, wherever she had been planning to run. A book he had given her. Because he had given it to her. He could not imagine her actually wanting to read such stuff.
‘You don’t really want to leave me, do you?’
‘What?’ She was intent on retrieving just one more flower, though it was no mean feat, what with tripping over her skirts and pushing her straggling hair out of her face. When her bonnet had come off, it had dragged her hair down with it.
She looked at him warily over her shoulder.
He raised the book, drawing her eye to it. ‘You ran upstairs and were back down again in the time it took Jenks to down a jug of ale. You only grabbed a few essentials. And this. To remember me by.’
‘What of it?’ she snapped, folding the three blooms she had managed to salvage into the carefully hemmed scrap of printed cotton she had cut from her wedding dress. ‘It makes no difference now.’ She tucked the lot into a pocket of her skirts. ‘I will not be bothering you with my unwanted emotions any more.’
‘Perhaps I want you to bother me with them,’ he said, getting to his feet.
‘No,’ she said grimly. ‘You told me from the start you did not want this marriage to be about love. You have made it perfectly clear you will not change your mind about that.’
‘Oh, but I have,’ he said, wishing he dared take a step towards her. He was half-afraid that she was on the verge of running. She had that look about her—an air of subdued desperation.
Flinging up her chin another notch, she said, ‘Get back on your horse, Septimus, and pretend you have not seen me. It will be better if you claim ignorance of my doings today. It would have been better …’ She glanced ruefully at the book, as though mentally bidding it farewell. ‘Better if you had not come after me at all.’
‘Better for whom?’ He shook his head. ‘Certainly not for me. Not any more. At first, it is true, I thought it would be best to marry a woman I hardly knew, rather than one I thought I loved. Like a fool I thought if I went into marriage with a clear head, I would not get hurt. Miranda, you see, my first wife, she did not … well, she did die, eventually. But she had left me before that. She swore that she loved me, that she could not live without me. That,’ he said bitterly, ‘was how she got me to propose to her. I sent her all my pay, and she spent it going to places where she could meet someone else. When I came home wounded, when I needed her the most, she took one look at my face and ran off with another man. And I swore I would never trust a woman’s word again.’
‘No, how could she?’ It was Aimée who closed the distance between them, Aimée who reached up and cupped his face with her hand. She had heard the facts from his men, but never truly seen the pain his wife’s behaviour had caused him.
‘Because she was nothing like you, Aimée. She had no heart, no notion of loyalty. I should have seen it from the start, but I was so busy trying not to fall too deeply for you. I got all tangled up in wanting you, yet wanting to stay free of you. I have been thrashing about, inside—’ he tossed the book aside and tugged her hand down to his chest ‘—like a fish in a net. Night after night, I had to come to your bed. And day after day I grew angrier and angrier with myself for needing you. Kept myself busy sorting out everyone else’s problems, to stop myself thinking about you. And nothing worked. Nothing.’ His heart was beating so fast it was making him shake. ‘I don’t want to live without you, Aimée. My life will not mean anything to me if you go.’
‘I … I do mean something to you, after all?’ she said, searching his face to see, he expected, if he was telling her the truth.
‘Everything,’ he said simply. ‘I love you.’ And felt a great weight rolling off him. He had thought it would chain him down, if he ever said that to a woman again. But instead, he felt freer than he had for a long time, because he was no longer fighting himself.
‘Please come home.’
She took a step back, shaking her head, tears welling in her eyes.
‘I c-can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Septimus … I told you it was nothing you have done. Oh, why did you have to tell me you love me? It makes everything so much worse!’
‘How can it?’ he said, releasing her hand reluctantly. ‘I know I have been harsh with you thus far, but you still feel some affection for me, or you would not have tried to keep a memento of our time together. Don’t you see? It will all be different now. Give me another chance, and I swear, this time, I will be all you want a husband to be.’
But her eyes shifted away from his, and her hand went to her waist, where he knew she kept all that money hidden. And he suddenly wondered if there was more to her flight than just running out of patience with him. Yes, there must be! A woman like Aimée would never just give up on her marriage. She had too much pride.
‘Look, I know you were in some kind of trouble before we met. But I do not care what you may have done, or what you have been involved in—that is all in the past.’
And as he said it, he recalled the way she had craved respectability so much, she had fled out into the night, rather than give herself to a man she feared would debauch her. Married him, when she was still a little afraid of him, rather than return to whatever life she had known be
fore. And, he realised in a blinding flash, applied for work as a governess rather than use the money that might have given her an easy life.
She was not a criminal. Not by nature. She would never willingly return to whatever she had been mixed up in, whatever she had done to come by so much money. He almost laughed. He already loved her so much that he had come chasing after her before he had even worked this much out. ‘Whatever it is you fear, whatever it is you are fleeing from, it will not make me think any less of you. It could not.’
She looked back at him then, and he could see hope flickering to life within her.
‘Just come home with me and I will protect you. Stand by you. That is what a husband is for!’
But then she shook her head, fresh tears welling in her eyes.
‘No,’ she whispered. Her lips trembling with the effort it was taking her not to break apart, she said, ‘You must just go back to the house, and meet whoever it is the Dowager has summoned from London to expose me, and pretend you know nothing about any of it! There is no need for anybody to know you were complicit in my crimes. Just tell everyone that you were completely taken in by me,’ she said desperately. ‘Let them blame me for it all, I shan’t care. I won’t be here to face it.’
Crimes? ‘The Dowager?’
She turned then, intending to retrieve her bonnet, but he caught hold of her arm and spun her back.
‘It is about time you did face up to things, instead of always running away! For once in your life, woman, can you not stand and fight?’
‘No amount of fighting will get me what I want,’ she said bitterly.
‘And just what is it you want, Aimée?’ he urged her. ‘Tell me.’
She shrugged off his hand, and looked away.
‘I thought I wanted you to love me. I thought if you loved me …’ She tailed off, looking confused. ‘I truly thought you never would. Ever. And since our whole farce of a marriage is ab-bout to be blown out of the water, I stupidly thought the last thing I could do for you was to arrange things so that the scandal would f-fall on me, not you! I don’t want,’ she said, raising woebegone eyes, ‘to bring you down with me.’
‘You are trying to tell me that you are leaving it all behind, the safety, the security, the respectability you have craved all your life, to save me from scandal?’
She nodded. ‘The only way for you to get clear of the sc-scandal that is about to erupt is for you to l-let me go. P-please, Septimus,’ she begged him, ‘go back to the house, and act surprised when you hear …’ She laughed bitterly through her tears. ‘No need for you to act. You have not the remotest idea where I came from, or what I went through to get out of London, have you?’
‘No, but you can tell me,’ he said, grasping her by the shoulders. ‘Whatever it is you fear about this man who has come here, just tell me, and we can deal with it. You do not have to fight him on your own! I won’t turn away from you, I swear.’
Aimée pushed the straggling hank of hair off her face for the umpteenth time and swallowed down a sob. The expression on her face was so desolate, so … humiliated, that he could not help putting his arms round her and drawing her close. She bowed her head, slid her arms about his waist, and, for a few moments, she just clung to him.
But after a while, he felt her stiffening, drawing away. He let her go, knowing that at last she had drawn the courage from deep within herself to tell him the worst.
‘My father is not dead, Septimus.’
It was the last thing he would have expected her to say. While he was still wondering where she was going with that piece of information, she hurriedly added, ‘I may have led you to believe that, by saying I am all alone in the world now. I … I did not tell you an outright lie. Not once!’ She hung her head. ‘Though I have skirted round the edges of the truth very often.’
He nodded. ‘I know.’
‘What?’ She looked up at him, consternation all over her face. ‘That my father is not dead, or …’
‘That you are economical with the truth.’
A look of hurt flickered across her face.
‘Sometimes,’ he amended. ‘But it does not matter, Aimée. I still love you. I cannot help it. I do not think anything you could say or do would make me stop loving you. Believe me, I have tried, and it is like trying to swim against the tide.’
But her beautiful face was all closed up like a coffin. Her eyes diamond bright with tears she was valiantly holding in check, she said, ‘He betrayed me. My father. He was in some gambling hell, losing heavily as usual. When somebody offered to clear his debts in return for my virginity, he auctioned me off, Septimus …’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Sold me to the h-highest bidder!’
‘What?’ How could a man do that to his own daughter? It was appalling.
When she saw the shock written all over his face, she stepped smartly back.
He reached for her, but she shook her head. She was trembling now, her cheeks fiery red.
‘You wanted me to tell you! So let me speak!’ Head high, fists clenched, she said, ‘One of the men at that table, a man who claimed to be my friend, ran to warn me. And then Lord Matthison’s servant came with an enormous sum of money.’ a shudder of disgust shook her slim body ‘… for apparently the virginity of a lady with my antecedents is worth a great deal! And a message that in future he expected only to deal directly with me. And after that, as far as I was concerned, my father was dead to me. How could he have done that?’
For a moment she looked so lost, so bewildered and alone that it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms again and stop her confession right there. But as he moved towards her, arms outstretched, she took another step back, holding up her hands in front of her to ward him off.
‘No,’ she hissed. ‘You wanted this! You shall not stop me until I have told you the whole story! I took the money and ran. Yes, as you say, I am good at running!’ She laughed a little hysterically. ‘I learned that from a master. All my life, whenever things got too hot in one town, we would run from Papa’s creditors and start out again somewhere else. A new city. A new country.’
Her heel came up against her bonnet then. She stooped to pick it up, avoiding seeing the expression on his face by making herself busy brushing off the leaves.
‘And hiding! I knew all about that, too. I moved from one lodging house to another after I fled Papa, never staying more than one night in each of them, until the day I saw your advertisement. It was like a sign—that I could have a new life, a new sort of life, doing honest work. I did not care that technically I would be somebody’s servant. Mr Jago said he would give me tickets for the stage. I had been too afraid to go to the booking office myself, in case they were watching out for me. But this way, all I had to do was pick up the tickets minutes before I boarded the coach. Even if they saw me, they would not have time to stop me. Only—’ she twisted the bonnet round and round in her fingers ‘—only Mr Jago said I had to provide character references. And I had never worked before. Had no previous employer to vouch for me. So I contacted some people … people I’d already had dealings with, in my efforts to keep Papa from debtors’ prison. They supplied Mr Jago with a set of fake references, which as you know I sent to him along with my letter of acceptance. Which is probably a criminal offence. Buying and using a set of forged references.’ She glanced up at him anxiously. ‘Quite apart from misappropriating the funds Lord Matthison sent me …’
He looked furious. Her heart quailed. But when he spoke, it was to say, ‘You have been the victim of wicked men, or almost their victim. You did what you had to do. No more, no less. If anything, it makes me admire you all the more.’
‘Th-then you don’t …?’
He never knew what it was she had meant to say, because she had flung herself into his arms, was clinging to him and sobbing. But the sobs were of relief, not anguish. And even when she stopped, she still clung to him. It was one of the sweetest moments of his life.
‘You have not told me anything
that convinces me you have any reason to run away from me. Or what made you take to your heels today, of all days.’
‘It is because of that man,’ she said, tilting her head back so that she could look into his face, without moving away from him. ‘The man the Dowager tracked down!’
‘Damn the woman!’ he said. ‘I suspected she was investigating Miranda’s background. She must have sent some of her minions to find out more about you.’
‘Lady Fenella warned me that she sent for him so that he could expose my f-fraud, she called it. And I knew it would all come out. What my father tried to do must have been the talk of the gentlemen’s clubs. And they might have found out how I cheated to get the means to live and work away from London. How you … you have married a woman who is no better than Haymarket ware!’
He shook his head. ‘How can you say that? When you went to such lengths to preserve your virtue?’
‘Septimus,’ she said, looking up at him in wonder, her fingers kneading the silk of his shirt sleeves. ‘Septimus, you …’ Then she shook her head, a frown pleating her brow. ‘You cannot ignore the fact that the Dowager has found somebody who was involved in that disgusting auction. Most probably Lord Matthison. He has the reputation of a devil! He would not let such a massive amount of money go, I am sure. He is bound to want revenge for being balked of his prey.’
‘No, I do not think it can be him,’ Septimus replied. ‘At about the time you answered my advertisement, he was creating another scandal by claiming some seamstress was his long-lost fiancée—the woman everyone thinks he murdered several years ago. I would think he is far too busy trying to clear his name of that crime, to bother hunting you down, Aimée. Not for any reason that we cannot deal with.’
‘Deal with? We?’ Her fingers dug into his sleeves so hard he could feel her nails through the silk. ‘Even if you do stand by me, Septimus, my shame and disgrace is going to be noised abroad. I will never be able to look anyone in the face ever again!’
Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride Page 21
