by Susan Ward
His lips held the grimmest of smiles.
“He was all I had left of her, Merry. When I found the boy I found the impossibility of returning to England and equally a disdain not to. My reputation was gone and grief had taken my purpose. I lived under the pain of cruel speculation that would not wane. I would have been charged with the crime of killing my own wife and son before my flight to America, arrested, and hanged if not for the loyalty and unfailing defense of your mother.”
Merry’s eyes flew wide and her emotions raced in even greater chaos. That Rensdale was his cousin did not even compare to the revelation that he knew her mother. That whatever relationship he had with Rhea Merrick was significant enough she would have been his sole defender.
Merry said fiercely, “What does my mother have to do with you? How do you know my mother?”
Varian’s eyes were mocking and amused.
“She was never my lover, Merry, if that’s what you are worrying.” His smile was disquieting. “My wife was her cousin Ann Dunham and second only to my love for her, was Rhea’s love for her.”
It was clear by the expression on Merry’s face she knew nothing of Ann, nothing of where this was going.
Varian sighed and said, “It is little wonder they never spoke of me or the history. You were a child when this happened. Your mother was so greatly devastated by the loss of Ann. And me, I was a man of scorn, fear, and disrepute. We proper British sweep under the carpet our miseries rather than have them out to taunt us. I was ugly history, Merry. I was misery to everyone but your mother, so it’s little wonder you know nothing of this.”
The pieces were all joining at last, connecting and no longer diluted for Merry. The picture in the box in his sea chest. The girl. She had looked familiar because her face resembled Rhea Merrick’s, her own mother. Yet there were more answers in the picture if she had only looked.
“Indy was the boy from the Carolina? The one who survived with Mr. Craven. Who is he to you?” she hissed accusingly, knowing the answer, yet needing to hear it from him.
She carried his child. How could he have withheld this from her?
Varian smiled darkly. “Perhaps a better answer is who he is to you,” he said with malicious humor. “He is your cousin, Merry. Second? Third? My theology is a little scanty. But you share the same blood through your mothers. You are cousins and he is James Deverell, my son. A grim perfect circle of connected pasts, miseries, and pain-wrought loyalties which refuse to die.”
Varian went from his chair then, moving to take her face in the cup of his hand, and what was in his eyes struck deeply into her heart.
“Only two things remain, Little One, of that foolish man who left England in disgrace and grief a decade ago. My love for Ann, and my loyalty to your mother. I am going to give you my name to spare your mother grief, though the name I am giving you is as cursed as the one you know me by. No other reasons forces me from this ship, to live at your side in a society I despise. I am going to spare your mother our child’s shame of illegitimacy. I will not payback your mother’s loyalty by hurting her a second time. When we leave London for Falmouth you will be a married woman and my wife, restored in your position and regrettably much pitied. My name is Varian Deverell, Duke of Windmere. And if you are imagining that my power over you will lessen on land and you can escape me, Little One, you are wrong.”
At least half a minute passed before Merry could speak, so devastated she was at having her illusions shattered so brutally. She had thought Varian had come to love her. But he never spoke of love to her because he loved a woman long dead, his wife Ann, and Indy’s mother. She was nothing more to him than a substitute for the woman he’d lost. And now he would force her to become his wife out loyalty to her mother.
She struggled for the last remains of her pride, not caring where they took her. “I will not marry you,” Merry finally managed to gasp. “I would rather have shame than what you offer me. I want only never to set eyes upon you again. I will hate you forever.”
“Be wise, Little One. Are you imagining you can return to you family with my bastard in you and carry off my safety without me. If you think I am going to trust my life to that, you are wrong. I am marrying you and taking you home to your family, where you belong. I am seeing to the restoration of your position and the protection of my back. I am not inclined to indulge you anything at this point. Don’t think to impose upon my tolerance.”
If he had hit her he could not have been crueler. The effort not to cry had become painful, and she hissed, “I hate you. I will hate you until I die.”
Merry scrambled out of Varian’s bed and then the cabin. The door click behind her, and Varian fixed his gaze on the vacant space where Merry had been.
Shocked and disgusted, Camden snapped, “Did you have to be so cruel? Did it not occur to you once an apology, an apology she deserved, might have served you better? She is young and her heart is involved. She carries your child. I am appalled by you, Varian.”
The earl was huffing and puffing, so great was his fury, and when he paused to take a sip of wine, Camden heard Varian say softly, “Do you not think I am a little old for lectures from my godfather?”
“When you behave like a callous ass, no!” said the earl, succinctly.
An arched brow. “As I recall you wanted me to tell her the truth.”
The earl sighed heavily. “Oh, Varian, I am too old. I know you too well to pretend a farce between us. You were deliberately cruel. It’s clear you care for the girl so why hurt her a second time? What was the need of that appalling tale? Will you not allow yourself one measure of happiness in this life?”
Varian’s dark gaze was shimmering. “Do you think she would marry me after how I first spoke to her if I apologized? I tore her to shreds with my fury, and she would fight me, Brian. Fight because she is stubborn and wild and proud. If I had been gentler with her, she would have fought me to save her heart. I did not want her to run to the Merricks without me at her side and set in motion things I can’t fix. Things that would harm her. I can’t protect her if she leaves me. And she would not accept me any other way at this point, not without time to forgive me. I haven’t the luxury of that much time. It’s only a matter of days before Lucien knows she’s been with me, and if he gets her away from me before marriage, I won’t ever get her back. Not even with my child in her, would Lucien give her back to me. He would rather have his grandchild born a bastard than give his daughter to me in marriage after the slight of having taken her from him.”
“You have grown the fool if this is how you treat a young woman carrying your child who loves you,” Camden countered. “I would not blame her if she ran if that is a reflection of your conduct with her.”
Varian stared out the stern windows. “There was no other way. I could not spare her that. It is best she hears the ugly realities from me. They will be whispered at her back for the rest of her life. From me, in the worse way possible, so it will never hurt again as much as it did tonight. I had to do it this way, Brian. It was the only way to dispel any possibility she might entertain that she has a choice in this. I made her angry enough not to realize she holds every card, that she could run to Lucien and rid herself of me without effort. I know Merry well, Brian, well enough to know what is necessary to get her to marry me quickly. I will not lose her to Lucien. She may kick me with those little feet for a long while, but at least those little feet will be in bed beside me. That’s the first battle won, my friend.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Merry was running, blinded by her tears, and before she knew it she was on deck. She reached the plank between ship and dock before she stopped. Dense fog lay cold on the streets and she could see a single light burning in the mist. Her chest hurt, her heart hurt, and there were only a few steps to freedom.
But where was there to flee? Varian would only find her. She did not doubt him in that. Could she run home, after all the things she done? Could she bring this shame to her family? Could anyone run fro
m their heart and would running free her of loving him?
Laying her head on the rail, she began to cry with the force of her misery. Feeling a hand on her arm, she began to fight wildly.
“Merry. It’s me. It’s Indy. Don’t fight me. I want to help you.”
She twisted from his hands. “Help me. You gave me to him. Did you know I was your cousin? Did you?”
What the hell had happened? Indy searched her face. Her eyes were wild with emotion, ravished and distraught.
“Yes, I knew. Why do you think I didn’t kill you? Damn it, stop fighting. I have known since Grave’s End who you are and who you are to me.”
Her body began to quake, as though unable to absorb one more shock. She jerked back from him. On a voice unsteady and ragged with tears, she demanded fiercely, “Could you not have told me the truth? Could you not have spared me this? Do you think I would have betrayed you if I had known the truth?”
Each word she spoke cut into him. It was cruel, but it was the truth as well he spoke in return, “Wouldn’t you have? If I had let you go, you would have taken everything you’d heard to your father and it would have brought Morgan’s arrest and death. I knew who you were, which was why I could not harm you and why I brought you to him. If I had told Morgan the truth he would have sent you to your family that first night, without a thought to his own safety. Can you at least understand why I did this? If you can’t forgive me, be at least honest with yourself. You would have told your father everything and it would have killed us all. ”
It shamed Merry to acknowledge the truth of the boy’s words. Indy had meant nothing to her then. Morgan was a thing of terror and myth. They had not been real. She would have told her father and Uncle Andrew everything, even if the boy had told her he was her cousin. She would not even have believed him, most probably.
Indy saw the struggle and indecision on her face. “I had to save us all, Merry. Surely you understand that. Has it been so horrible for you, that you regret it all?”
Sinking out of his arms, she huddled on the deck, crying again.
“Let me take you back to him.”
She slapped his outstretched hand. “No. I will not go back, groveling to him for crumbs. I was only an amusement to him. Nothing more. An object to play with in boredom.” Brushing frantically at her tears, she looked up. “Do you know I carry his child?”
It was clear by his reaction he did not know.
“You’ll have to accept what he offers you. You can’t leave him. You can’t run home with his bastard in you. Or do you think you could go free off into the world, with a child hanging on your skirt with no name. You need to think, Merry. You need to be practical in your acts. You need to realize there is no choice but to accept what he offers you.”
She looked so desperate and lost, staring down at her trembling, clasped hands.
Whispering now, he asked, “Merry, what is it he intends to do about this?”
Her laughter was harsh and bitter. “He intends to marry me. To return my respectability to me while protecting his back, protecting you all. A noble sacrifice with economy of effort. He has taken away my respectability and oddly he was never once unkind to me in that. He played that fiction well, pretending to care for me. He no longer feels the necessity of maintaining that farce to spare my heart. He saved all his true opinion of me to deliver it with the noble gesture of making me his wife. Is that not humorous?”
Indy crouched down in front of her and brushed back the hair from her tear stained face. “What do you intend to do, Merry?”
What did she intend to do? She began to laugh, choking laughs because they were carried on tears. He said it as though she had choice.
Indy took her hands, and very gently said, “Come, Merry, you can stay in my cabin tonight. It’s clear you can’t go back to him. What the devil did he do to you?”
It would take Indy years to forget the look in her eyes. “He told me about your mother.”
~~~
Varian found Indy sitting on a small rise above the beach, an isolated, lonely figure. In his scarred hands was a bottle of half-filled whiskey, but when Varian got near enough to see the boy he knew the hazy glitter of his eyes was the result of more than liquor.
Another of his failures stared at Varian in the residue effect of whatever the boy had smoked. There was a desperate part of Varian that did not want to know if the boy had remained an opium addict all along, cleverly lying and concealing the weakness from him, or had simply reverted to past demons this one night.
He pretended not to see the tell-tale signs of the opium. There was enough misery to deal with tonight. The scarred lines of Indy’s face were even grimmer than usual.
“If you want to say goodbye to Merry you will have to do so tonight,” Varian informed him, hoping to find a non-explosive opening to this confrontation that had been waiting and simmering between them for months.
The silence that stretched between them was long and unfriendly. As furious as Varian was, it was more important to him to understand the boy’s purpose in this. He had succumbed to this anger once tonight, in misdirection, with disastrous thoroughness.
When at last Varian spoke, there was nothing in his voice. “You knew who Merry was when you put her in my bed. You knew she was Rhea Merrick’s daughter, and you gave her to me anyway, knowing what I would do to her and what that would mean to her.”
The boy nodded. They were both beyond the need for pretense now. The second silence between them was less strained.
“You would not have kept her if I had told you the truth,” Indy said simply. “You would have returned her to the Merricks that first night. Your complicated sense of honor and loyalty would not have permitted otherwise. You would have saved her and destroyed us all. I could not permit that.”
Varian’s eyes grew bleak. “Yet you could permit me to destroy Merry. Her ruin and unhappiness has no meaning to you because it was the cost of saving our lives? Is that what I am supposed to make of all you’ve done? That you care nothing for her? Do you not comprehend what you’ve taken from her in giving her to me?”
Black eyes met black, the older pair searching the younger pair veiled.
“Do you think I could have changed any of this? Would it have been better if I had killed her? Do you think you could have lived with the truth of that? That you sent me to the beach to kill my own cousin?”
Surprise flashed in Varian’s eyes too quickly to be concealed.
Was it possible they had both wandered so far that Indy had believed he was to kill Merry? Please, God, I don’t want the answer to that, not tonight.
Indy misread the flash. “I have always remembered more than I let you know. I have forgotten nothing of our life before the invention you created thinking to spare me. I know my mother was Rhea Merrick’s cousin and that the same blood in Merry’s veins runs in mine as well.”
Varian digested these words in silence. “Why have you kept this from me?”
“What would it have served if I had told you the truth? I remember but it changes nothing. Nothing of who I am, just as cutting away pieces of yourself to be with me has changed nothing of who you are. Can you not see your kindness has been no kindness at all, to either of us? When will you accept that I can’t be what you want me to be, release me from the misery of failing you, and let me go?”
Varian stared at the only living creation of his body, seeing the truth, and yet unwilling to accept it. “You are my son.”
Emotion flashed across Indy’s face in agonized waves. “Yes, I am your son. But I will never be your son as you need me to be. I can’t transform myself simply to end this suffering you’ve committed us to. Do you think I have not known that all these things you’ve become as Morgan you became because of me. Because I belong nowhere except where I am. Do you think I haven’t suffered knowing my failure has pulled you farther from yourself, farther into this miss-creation and grim existence you’ve exiled yourself to because of me? You no more belong with m
e on the Corinthian than I will ever belong with you in England. Can you not see it is past time for this to end? For us both to face truth. I am what I am and your will won’t change that.”
Varian’s eyes simmered with fury. “So, that was what Merry was to you? An instrument to end both our suffering? Am I supposed to step back and leave you to your future, then? Never mind she has suffered and may object to your careful planning of our futures.”
With cutting fury, Indy snapped, “Would it have been better for her if I had left her for Rensdale to marry so she would die at his hands like my mother did?”
“So you decided to provide her sanctuary by giving her to me,” Varian countered sarcastically. “What a naive, immature fancy, to imagine me and my legacy a sanctuary. To think you have protected her in all this. I would find it a refreshing sign of your youth if this whole damn situation wasn’t so appalling. Do you think this will end the way you wish it to? With me going with Merry, our life together happy in England with all the things she will suffer by being here with me, and me leaving you to your bitterness and hate and need for retribution. Do you think it will be so easy to repair what I have done to her? Do you think you can repair yourself by killing Rensdale? The heart and the soul are not so easily mended. I have stayed with you not out of obligation, but out of love, a need in myself to protect you, not from this world where you believe you don’t belong, but from the suffering of who you will be if you kill Rensdale. Rensdale is your flesh and blood, as abhorrent as he is to you. An inescapable bond. You have not learned that yet. I can’t let you go until you understand, because you will destroy yourself with your hate and need for vengeance.”
