He could see her pondering the value of his suggestion, and how much she longed to run from whatever awaited her in this house, but instead she shook her head.
“I came here to face my past,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “I must do that to move on.”
He wrinkled his brow at her choice of words. Move on? Where was she moving on to?
But he held his tongue, keeping his questions to himself because at present he didn’t think she could bear them. Instead, he touched her hand as they walked up to the front door of the little cottage.
“I am here,” he whispered.
She looked up at him. “It is the only fact that makes this tolerable,” she admitted with a weak smile.
Then she lifted her hand and knocked on the door.
Chapter Eighteen
Vivien could barely breathe as the door opened and revealed a servant she did not know. But of course, when her mother moved away, she likely had left what few servants she had behind, only to hire new ones upon her return.
“May I help you?” the maid who stood at the entryway asked blandly, completely oblivious to Vivien’s pain and horror in this moment.
“I—I am here to see…to see my mother,” she stammered.
She shot a brief glance over her shoulder to find Benedict watching her with the same unreadable expression as he had possessed all day, despite the revelations he had heard. She bit her lip and forced herself to continue.
“I’m Alice Roth,” she finished, hating the way her given name rolled from her tongue.
Benedict drew a sharp intake of breath at her admission, but said nothing else.
The maid stared at her with wide eyes, then bobbed out a brief nod. “I will ascertain if Mrs. Roth is home.”
She left the door open but didn’t ask them in and so Vivien stood on the step, silent as she waited for the girl’s return. It was but a moment, though it felt like an eternity, when she was back.
“Come with me,” she said, her tone darker than it had been as she gave Vivien a quick once-over before she led them both into the house.
Vivien felt her entire body tense as she moved into the foyer. The house looked the same, it smelled the same, and she felt like she had stepped back in time to a far more unpleasant period.
The parlor was on the right and as the door opened, Vivien briefly considered running. Benedict would aid in her escape, she knew that. Except she feared she had gone too far now. If she left, she wouldn’t leave the past behind as she had before. She had opened this Pandora’s Box; she had to face the demons within.
They entered the parlor and Vivien moved to the window to stare out at the gardens behind the house. So many memories mobbed her that she hardly noticed anything else in the room until Benedict cleared his throat.
“You do not have to stay,” he said to the maid.
Vivien turned to find that the girl had positioned herself next to the open door, arms folded, as she stared at the two of them.
The maid pursed her lips. “I have orders, sir.”
Benedict looked utterly confused, but Vivien squeezed her eyes shut as frustration and anger overtook her. She moved forward.
“Thinks we’ll steal her silver, does she?” she snapped.
The maid took a faltering step back at Vivien’s tone, but did not respond.
Vivien pivoted back to the window. “Ridiculous.”
“Not so very ridiculous when you consider all you’ve done,” her mother’s voice said from the door. Vivien swallowed hard and turned to look at her.
Rosalind Roth was much the same as she had been the last time Vivien stood in this parlor. Tall and slender with blonde hair like her own, but rather than blue eyes, she had dark brown ones. Time had been kind to her, keeping her face freer from lines than some women of her advancing years.
Her expression was also the same—filled with hate and judgment for the daughter she despised.
“Mother,” she managed to say with at least some strength to her tone. “You look well.”
Her mother sniffed in reply and motioned the maid away. “Thank you, Ruth, you may go. Don’t worry yourself with tea—I doubt our guests will stay long.”
Vivien lifted her chin to keep her pain from being reflected on her face, but her embarrassment was harder to control. Especially when Benedict’s horror and shock at this exchange was more than evident on his handsome face. But of course it would be, he came from a loving family, he couldn’t fathom the deep flaws present in hers.
“You are correct, we will not trespass on your hospitality long,” Vivien spat out, nearly choking on the words. “I was nearby and did not realize you continued to make your home here. I would not have bothered you had I been forewarned.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed, I suppose you did not know I was here. The last you heard was that I left Sapsgate. Did it give you pleasure to know that what you did drove me away from the home your father built for us?”
Benedict stepped forward at that. “Mrs. Roth, perhaps you do not understand—” he began.
Vivien gasped as her mother turned her attention on him. She hadn’t seemed to notice him before that moment, a fact that Vivien had wished would remain the same. Now her mother looked him up and down.
“What are you?” she asked, the cold steel of her tone unbendable, even by his charm. “Her lover? Not her husband, I’m certain.”
If Benedict was shocked by her directness, he did not show it on his face. “I am her…” He glanced at Vivien with a supportive smile. “I am her friend.”
“Her friend,” her mother sneered. “Is that what they call a whore’s consort now?”
Benedict drew back in horror, his face twisting with shock at her mother’s pointed, cruel words.
“Stop,” Vivien said softly. “Your quarrel is with me, not him.”
“Protective indeed,” her mother all but hissed. “But does he know you are a murderer?”
Vivien rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I did not murder anyone.”
“You did,” her mother protested in something akin to a screech. She spun back on Benedict. “You know that she spread her legs for the first man who offered her a little more than a smile, don’t you? And that it destroyed any hope her father had for marrying her well to a very nice young man of good fortune. Instead, my husband had an apoplexy and died in our dining room because of the public reaction to the fact she had been compromised.”
Vivien swallowed. Her mother’s revisionist version of that night made her throat so dry and her eyes sting with tears she refused to shed because she knew they would give her mother such pleasure to see them.
“I had to leave Sapsgate because I couldn’t bear living in the house where my love took his last breath,” her mother continued, her anger growing with every word. “Where our own child stood over him with such lack of feeling and let him die because she had no principles.”
Vivien clenched her fists. “I felt his death as keenly as anyone,” she protested, her voice cracking. “I wept for him.”
Her mother shook her head. “Little good that did, to weep for him in death when you were the one to put him in the grave.” She spun on Benedict. “So remember that, my fine gentleman. If you think she has any kind of a heart, she does not. She is an empty, worthless shell. You would do well to watch your back that she doesn’t stab it just for the pleasure of causing you pain.”
“Enough!” Benedict roared in a tone Vivien had never heard before.
She spun on him to find his face almost purple with rage and his bright eyes flashing. She stepped back, stunned by the power of his emotions, the drive he had to protect her. And even her mother, with all her limitations, recognized it and staggered away a step.
“You will not say another word,” he continued. “Viv—” He stopped and cast a quick glance at her. “Your daughter is no empty shell. She is as full and glorious a woman as I have ever met. She is kind and decent, she helps those who need her and she wo
uld never cause harm to anyone unless it was in the defense of the weak. I refuse to let you attack her with such vitriol, no matter who you are.”
Her mother wobbled briefly, but then shook her head. “You don’t know her.”
He looked at Vivien and she could see that he believed her mother on some level. In fact, she was right in so many ways. But in others, in important ways, she was wrong.
He shook his head. “With all due respect, neither do you. You may be correct that I don’t know the circumstances of her past, but neither do I care about them. I know her today.”
Her mother opened and shut her mouth, but couldn’t seem to come up with a response to Benedict’s declaration. Slowly, Vivien approached her.
“Mother,” she whispered, wanting so much to take her hand but unable to breach the gap that would always be between them. “I should not have come today, for I know my presence troubles you and I do not wish to do that to you. I realize you have lost a great deal and that you blame me for that.”
Her mother let out her breath in a shuddering sigh and did not lift her face to look at her daughter. Vivien hesitated a moment before she continued.
“Are you in need of funds?”
Her mother jerked her head up and Benedict shot her a glance too.
“No!” Her mother said, but then shifted slightly. “I would rather not receive money from the sources you obtain it from.”
Vivien shook her head. “I will have a sum deposited into your account when I return to London. You can pretend you do not know the source.”
Her mother folded her arms and said nothing. Not that Vivien expected appreciation, but the continued disgust from a woman who had once loved her stung.
“We’ll go,” she whispered as she moved for the door. She felt Benedict a step behind her and was glad he made no move to touch her. His warm hand on her back might have been her undoing. “I don’t think I shall see you again, so I hope you will be well.”
Her mother cast her one brief glance and then turned her face, cutting off contact, making it clear that the loss of her daughter was meaningless. Vivien nodded and exited the room.
The maid who had escorted them in was waiting for them in the hall. With a glare, she motioned for the door. Vivien might have laughed at the lack of subtlety if it all didn’t hurt so damn much. That was something she had always wished to control, but had never been able to succeed at.
The air outside felt cool after the stifling environment of the parlor and Vivien drew a long breath of the freshness. Behind her, the front door to her childhood home slammed and she shut her eyes at the violence of the action, at the implications of it. She had revisited the past, just as her list had required she do, but in doing so she had rung the final bell on her relationship with her mother. She would never return here, she would never see her again.
And as she turned to Benedict to take the arm he offered and walked with him back toward the center of town and his carriage, she realized that she was going to have to tell him something about what he had witnessed, why everyone called her by a different name. She owed him that. And she did not look forward to the confessions she was about to make.
Benedict was thrumming with questions, but he said nothing until the carriage door closed and they began the long journey back to London. In the dim cool of the vehicle, he reached across to take Vivien’s hand.
She looked up and her eyes were so sad that it hurt him to look into them.
“You want to know,” she whispered. “You desire explanations for what you have seen and heard today.”
He nodded. “It would be difficult not to desire them given all that has transpired,” he admitted.
She swallowed and he saw her struggle on her face. Vivien had worked hard to control everything and anything she revealed to those in her life. Confession was not something she made easily and now the pain of it was palpable.
“You must realize by now that I was not always Vivien Manning,” she began, her voice trembling.
“Yes,” he said, squeezing her fingers.
“Alice Roth is the name I was born with and lived with for the first eighteen years of my life.” She shook her head. “That girl, Alice, was a very different person than I am. She was raised by middle-class merchants with some success in their shop. They wanted her to marry a boy of status elevated from theirs, joining the riches of two families and providing them with a means to move up in local Society.”
Benedict nodded. “You wanted something different.”
She laughed. “Actually, I didn’t. I had been raised to do as my parents requested. They were harsh taskmasters—I never believed there was another way but to obey and make up in some way for the disappointing fact that I was their only child and a girl on top of that.”
He pursed his lips. “So what prevented your following their plan for you?”
“A man,” she said, her breath short. She turned her face from him to stare outside at the passing green hills and trees. It was a lovely scene, but her voice contained no pleasure. “A boy, but I thought he was a man. He was the second son of a second son, of little importance to your Society but of great importance to mine. He was visiting family in the shire and we met in town. He pursued me and I convinced my parents that his star was on far faster a rise than the young man they wished me to marry.”
He wrinkled his brow. “So you wished to raise yourself to loftier places. It is understandable.”
“No,” she laughed, utterly humorless. “I was not so wise as I am now. His loftier standing was nothing to me. I believed he cared for me. And when he cornered me in a barn at a country dance, I did not resist at first. We were in love, after all, or so I told myself. But when he went too far in his attentions, I refused him.”
Benedict shut his eyes. “And he violated you regardless.”
“Yes.”
She stopped talking for a moment and he could see she was reliving whatever had happened to her that night so long ago. And despite all the pleasures she had given and received since that time, she was still moved by the memories. Memories he wished he could erase for her.
“Afterward, I put on my clothes and asked him when we would wed,” she said. “I was terrified and in pain, but I believed he had a right if he was to be my husband. He laughed at me and it was clear he had never intended to be an honest suitor. He wanted my virginity and that was all. Once he took it, stole it, there was nothing left for him to desire.”
She straightened her spine and he felt her attempt to put all her strength back into herself after her confession. But there was a new vulnerability there only he could see.
“But I still don’t understand the estrangement between you and your family,” he pressed. “Your mother was almost wild with her anger toward you.”
“My mother…” She sighed. “She was always a little mad, overly emotional, painfully critical. She blamed me for the stress on our family if only for the fact that I was a girl. My father was a balance for her and we were often partners in an attempt to calm her.”
“You told them what had happened?” he asked.
She nodded. “When I came home, my dress torn and my face streaked with tears, I had no choice but to answer their questions. My father was appalled, as was my mother. But in her mind, it was the loss of a future that was the true horror. We had turned aside my prior suitor because of the belief that this gentleman’s son would wed me. Now I had no suitor and no virginity. I was ruined and so were they.”
Benedict shuddered. “That could not have been her true thoughts. She felt no compassion for you in the attack?”
“Compassion is not an emotion she has ever truly felt. Perhaps she is not able,” she said with a shrug that had to be more dismissive than those words made her feel. “But her madness only increased after that. She railed and shouted, she cried and called for friends to pity her. Of course that let the story be shared and verified and soon it was clear I could never marry well. My mother called me a whore and that
is what I was in the eyes of everyone in Sapsgate.”
“Great God,” he muttered, stunned by her words. He might struggle with his family bonds, but his mother loved him. His brother loved him. He did not doubt those things for a moment.
She shrugged. “My father was sitting in the dining room a few weeks later, my mother screaming at me, railing on about how our lives were ruined. He suddenly stiffened and fell to the floor, dead before his napkin fluttered down beside him. The doctors called it an apoplexy, my mother said I murdered him. That night I slipped from the house with what few belongings I could carry and went to London on a post carriage. I have never returned.”
“You changed your name,” he said.
She nodded. “I changed everything. I became a new person. I all but killed poor Alice Roth, left her behind in Sapsgate. Vivien Manning was born and I have been her since the moment the carriage pulled down the road.”
Benedict examined her face in the dim light from the window. Her voice was utterly calm, but he could see the strain around her eyes. She feared his reaction to all she had told. She feared the new intimacy that telling had created between them.
“I like Vivien Manning,” he said softly as he reached out to caress her cheek.
She smiled slightly. “So do I,” she admitted. “She is far stronger than I ever thought I could be.”
“She certainly is strong as well as kindhearted.” He shook his head. “Why did you offer your mother money after all her unkind words to you?”
She pondered that for a moment. “Because she is a sick woman, troubled by demons that existed long before my innocence was stolen in a barn. When my father was alive, she had someone to take care of her, to temper her worst impulses. Now she is alone and her torments must be her only companions. I pity her more than hate her. Though I cannot say that I did not loathe her for a very long time.” He shook his head and she frowned. “You do not approve?”
He lifted his gaze to hers in surprise. “I approve of you enormously. And the fact that you have shared this very private view of yourself is something I appreciate. I realize it was not easy to do.”
Her Perfect Match: Mistress Matchmaker, Book 3 Page 15
