‘Y-you threatened him with a pistol?’ Her heart had begun to beat in a strange and irregular rhythm.
‘I took Linney with me, naturally,’ he sneered. ‘I am not up to doing much in the way of intimidation on my own. Even with a brace of pistols. But then, Lampton is not much of a match,’ he said bitterly. ‘He is only up to bullying and cheating women. Faced with a man, even half a man like myself, he soon showed his true colours.’
‘Why, Robert? Why did you insist he marry Susannah? When you could have… Oh!’ It would be easier to conduct an affair with a married woman. If they were discreet, Susannah’s reputation would not suffer.
‘Robert, I am sorry, but I do not think it will work out for you. Susannah loves Lampton. And she never…that is, she could not…’ She shook her head again, unable to tell him, even now, that her friend found him physically repulsive.
Though she had turned to him that night by the fountain. Perhaps that one incident had given him hope that, once she had seen through Lampton, Susannah might be desperate enough to turn to him again.
The cab drew up outside Walton House and a footman hurried to open the door and help her, and her husband, to alight.
They went inside, side by side, to all appearances as though they were any married couple, returning from paying a morning call. Though he looked as though his world was coming to an end, and she felt as though she was bleeding inside.
When they reached the foot of the stairs, he cleared his throat.
‘Would you spare me a few moments before you return to your rooms?’ he said in a clipped voice. ‘There is a matter we need to discuss.’
Her heart sank. There could surely not be anything more to say, could there? Their marriage was over. Did he really think she could sit and discuss it, rationally? Yes, she thought, turning to him with a resigned expression on her face. He still thought this had been just a business arrangement on her part. He still had no idea how she had felt when she had agreed to be his convenient wife.
‘Please?’
Her eyes came to rest on his face, flinching at the look that struck such a chord with her own misery. There was nobody who could understand, better than she, what he was suffering right now at the thought of his beloved giving her heart and her life to another. With a sigh, she nodded her acquiescence.
She took her place on one of the sofas before the empty fireplace, mechanically removing her bonnet and veil, laying them on the cushions beside her, while Robert took the sofa opposite. For some while, he said nothing, though he never took his eyes off her. She had the peculiar impression that he was memorising every facet of her, from the tips of her pale blue kid half-boots to the crown of her head.
When Linney came to ask if she would like some tea, Robert’s expression turned downright ferocious.
‘I have no wish to discuss the breakdown of my marriage over the teacups as though it was a mere formality!’ he roared. ‘Make yourself scarce!’
Deborah clasped her hands in her lap, focusing on them through a film of tears as Linney beat a hasty retreat.
Funny, but though she had known he wanted an end to their marriage for days, accepted that it was for the best, because she hated him anyway, she really did….
She sniffed, appalled to find the mist clearing as a single tear brimmed over and rolled down her cheek.
Angrily, she wiped it away with her gloved hand. She was not going to cry in front of him! He was not worth it! If he could toss her aside, and still hanker after Susannah…
To her shock, Robert got up and came to sit beside her. He pressed a handkerchief into her hand.
‘Please, do not cry, Deborah. You will be free of me soon, I swear.’
He got up then, and moved away abruptly. ‘Forgive me. I know you would not wish to have me anywhere near you.’ He paused before the sideboard, pulling the stopper from one of the decanters and twirling it between his fingers, before turning to her with a grave expression on his face.
‘You must see that we have things to discuss, before you leave me for ever.’
Deborah put her hand to her temple, where a dull throbbing had begun. Was he talking nonsense, or was she in too much of a state to understand what he was saying?
‘I don’t see,’ she admitted, shaking her head in confusion. ‘What are you talking about, Robert? What things must we discuss?’
‘Have you not thought that you might be with child?’ he blurted out, his face going so pale she thought he might pass out. Indeed, having said the words, he came back to the sofa opposite hers, and sat down rather heavily.
Deborah felt as though he had struck her. He had used her, lied to her, thrown her love back in her face and trampled it underfoot, and now he was turning white about the mouth at the prospect he might have accidentally impregnated her?
She had always borne whatever life had thrown at her with the grace she had been taught a lady should always display. On the very few occasions she had felt her self-control waver, she had walked away from the prospect of confrontation.
But now she felt something inside her snap. She surged to her feet, crossed the narrow space between the two sofas and slapped him hard across the face. Tears were streaming unchecked down her face now, but she was past caring. She stood over him, breathing hard as she struggled to find words to tell him what she thought.
But there were none sufficiently strong to express the scope of her anger, or the depths of her anguish.
She watched as the marks of her fingers blossomed red across his pale features, a stunningly satisfying testament to her physical outburst. And she drew back her arm to hit him again.
This time, he caught her hand in mid-air, the crystal stopper flying from his fingers and shattering against the marble lip of the hearthstone.
So she raised her other hand, clenched it into a fist and flailed out at him wildly. He raised his injured left arm to ward off the blows she rained down on his face and shoulders. But all the while, he was twisting her other arm until he managed to bring her whole body down beside his on the sofa. She slithered across the leather seat in her effort to pull herself away, but he was too strong for her. Catching her round the waist with his left arm, he hauled her up against his chest, and somehow she found she was sitting on his lap, sobbing into his neck, while he held her tightly against his body, her arms clamped to her sides.
Eventually she stopped struggling, and just let the tempest of tears flood out. When the storm passed, she sagged into him, her eyes closed, waiting for his hold on her to slacken, for him to put her away from him.
But he just kept on holding her tightly, his own face pressed to the crown of her head.
Finally, though she kept her eyes closed, her face pressed into his neck, she drew enough strength from some source deep within herself to say, in a voice that quivered with defiance, ‘If I am with child, I at least, shall love it. Even if you won’t want to have anything to do with it, or with me….’
‘No!’ He sat up, and, taking her chin in his hand, so that she had to look into his eyes, said, ‘If you are with child, I shall support you through the ordeal of bearing it. In any way I can! You only have to send me word, and I swear, I will do whatever you request of me!’
She frowned, once more puzzled by his words. But she seized on the tiny grain of hope she had gleaned from them.
‘If I find out I am pregnant, would you come down to Wycke, then?’
‘Of course, if you are sure that is what you want.’
Before she had time to think, she blurted, ‘Oh, then I hope I am pregnant.’
He reeled back, an expression of horror on his face.
‘You cannot wish that! Deborah, you cannot mean it.’
‘Why not?’ She sat up straight on his lap, glaring at him. ‘What is so bad about wanting to have a baby? Even though you don’t love me, surely you want to have children? When you proposed, you promised me—’
‘This has nothing to do with love!’
‘I know…’ s
he sighed ‘…I know you only married me to get the money. I have always known that you are in love with Susannah. And, indeed, I—’
‘In love with Susannah? Have you run mad? Where on earth did you get such a ridiculous notion?’
Her heart was beating very fast. ‘B-but you pursued her. You kept on begging her to dance with you. You even got her an invitation to Lord Lensborough’s ball so she would finally agree….’
His face darkened. ‘That was what Lampton assumed too. That was what started this whole cursed train of events. Oh my God,’ he breathed, shutting his eyes, and letting his head fall against the back of the sofa. ‘How I wish I had not been such a damned fool. Though if I had not…’ He stilled, opened his eyes and looked at her with such sorrow she wanted to weep for him.
‘I know,’ she said, disentangling her hand from his so that she could run her fingers over the weals she had raised on his face, ‘you would not have had to watch her fall in love with Lampton….’
He drew in a sharp breath, catching her hand in his own and holding it so tightly it almost hurt.
‘I can see the only way I am going to make you believe I care nothing for Miss Hullworthy is to confess the whole. Though it makes me ashamed to admit how low I sank.’ He bowed his head, pressing his mouth to her palm, the slightest quiver going through his shoulders as he breathed in deeply.
‘Though what have I got to lose?’ he said bitterly, lowering her hand to her lap. ‘You already hate me.’
She halted on the verge of agreeing with him. Could she really sit on the lap of a man she hated, her arm about his neck, hoping and praying he would not tell her to get to her own sofa, and leave him in peace? She had told herself she hated him, had even physically attacked him, and yet, when she had glimpsed one way of avoiding a separation, she had begged him to go to Wycke with her. That was not hatred. Her stomach seemed to turn over. It was very far from being hatred.
‘I first ran across Miss Hullworthy when I was searching for a man who was causing trouble for Lensborough’s fiancée. I had picked up his trail, and was looking for someone who could help me run him to ground. The first time she caught sight of me, she…’ he grimaced ‘…shuddered. By that time, I thought I had grown hardened to causing pretty women to feel nauseous. Indeed, Heloise had assured me that my scarring was so much less than when she had first met me…but then Miss Hullworthy turned up her pretty little nose at me, and I…I am ashamed to admit this, I decided to teach her a lesson.’
Deborah cast her mind back to the way he had behaved in those days, her brow furrowing in perplexity.
‘I could see how uncomfortable my presence made her feel. And so I made it my business to leap out at her, at every event I could find out she attended, just to spoil her evening! She sank even lower in my esteem when I perceived that if I had a title, or money, she would have overcome her disgust at my appearance, and positively fawned over me.’
Deborah could not argue with that statement. It was an aspect to Susannah’s character she had disliked very much herself.
‘So I held out the lure of an invitation to the most exclusive event of the season thus far. Lensborough’s ball. And she behaved exactly as I had known she would. With the soul of a whore, she put aside her natural inclination and sold herself to me for the space of a half an hour.’
‘No…you have misjudged her!’ She could perhaps understand why Robert felt so bitter, but he was wrong about Susannah. ‘She is just a bit spoilt, and rather silly, that is all. She got carried away with the idea of marrying well, at first, but she soon saw it was wrong to pursue a man only for his title. Lampton has no title. And she has agreed to marry him. She loves him!’
Robert made a sound that expressed his disgust at that statement. ‘She does not know the meaning of the word. She is just dazzled by his looks and superficial charm. She knows nothing of him at all. But that is beside the point.’ He shifted, taking her firmly round the hips and pushing her off his lap, though she derived some comfort from the fact that he placed her on the cushions beside him, rather than tossing her on to the floor, as she had half-expected he might wish to do at one point.
‘It gets worse,’ he said grimly, looking down at his boots, rather than at her. ‘I made her the object of a wager. I bet Lensborough that I could get the prettiest débutante of the Season to grovel to me, though the very sight of me made her feel ill…’ He ran his fingers through his hair, an expression of contempt on his face.
‘I never cared for Susannah,’ he confessed rawly. ‘Not in the least. But because of that wager, Lampton set out in pursuit of her, thinking I was about to propose!’ He laughed bitterly then, shaking his head at the absurdity of it all. ‘I never had any intention of marrying her.’
He raised his head to look at her, as he said, ‘The only woman I have ever wanted to marry is you.’
He got to his feet then, and paced away from her.
‘God, what a mess.’
Deborah looked at the stiff set of his shoulders, the misery that had been a constant burden for so long lifting somewhat as she repeated, ‘You wanted to marry me?’ But she would not jump to conclusions. ‘To get the money Miss Lampton had left you in her will. And to get revenge on Lampton for stealing Susannah from you….’
He whirled round, his expression so fierce it would have scared her had he looked at her like that earlier in the day, when she had still believed he was in love with Susannah.
‘I did not consider he had stolen Susannah from me! It had nothing to do with her! Or, at least, very little. It was my past! My childhood. My God, Deborah, have you no idea how much I hate the Lamptons? Once I learned I could do him a bad turn, I did not care who I had to use, I wanted to hurt him! To avenge my mother, if nothing else! The Lamptons killed her, do you know that? Turning her out of her home, insinuating I was not my father’s child, refusing to let her see Charles, who she thought of as a son…’ His whole body was quivering with rage. ‘And so I used you. I bullied you into marrying me, promising you a secure financial future, and children, without sparing one thought for what it would do to you.’
He marched back to the sofa, leaning on the back and gripping it tightly, his face a mask of grief as he said, ‘And because of my selfishness, my desire for revenge, you got caught up in the feud, and those men took you, and hurt you…’ With a hand that shook, he traced the fading bruises on her cheek, the scar on her lip.
‘Raped you. And might have got you with child….’
She gasped. ‘Nobody raped me!’
‘But the bruises on your neck…your dress was torn…’
‘You thought I had been raped?’ she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. Instead of trying to comfort her, he had kept as far from her as possible. Had even decided to banish her to the country.
‘You were wrong,’ she informed him in a flat voice. ‘My dress got torn when they hauled me out of the cab. They split my lip to teach me a lesson for trying to think I could escape. And my neck got bruised when they held me down to cut off a lock of my hair to send to you.’
‘But Heloise said you burnt all your clothes. She said you would never feel clean again. I thought—’
‘Yes, you have told me what you thought,’ she said bitterly. ‘I burnt my clothes because I was afraid I might have brought fleas into the house. And you would feel dirty if you had spent a couple of days sleeping in your clothes, in a filthy cell, with nothing but ale to wash in! I stank like a brewery!’
He came round the sofa then, intent on taking her hand. ‘They did not rape you. Thank God….’
But she leapt to her feet, backing away from him. ‘What kind of man are you? You can hold my hand now, when you know I have not been defiled, but when I needed you, when I woke in the night shivering with fear, where were you then, Robert?’
She was shaking with the force of her anger and disappointment. Every time she felt as though there might be a chance for them, he slammed the door on her hope yet again.
�
��I thought you would not want me near!’ he protested. ‘Not after that last time, when you ran out on me. Not that I blame you, but don’t you think I noticed how you flinched every time I got anywhere near you, after that?’
She realised she was standing with her fists clenched at her sides, slightly crouching as though she was preparing to spring at him. She made herself straighten up, and uncurl her hands, before hissing, ‘After you called me a slut, you mean?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I was so angry with you, Deborah, after the picnic. I had been watching you all day, trying to see which of my so-called friends it was you were planning on cuckolding me with!’
Hope flickered and died. Wearily, she went to pick up her bonnet.
‘You do not know me at all, do you, Robert? From the very first time you asked me to marry you, you have done nothing but insult me.’
‘I know.’ He drew himself upright, standing ramrod straight as she made her way towards the door. ‘You deserve better. It is why I am letting you go.’
‘Letting me go?’ She let go of the door handle, and turned to him with renewed anger. ‘You are sending me away. You have decided, for whatever reason, you can no longer bother with the pretence of wishing to be my husband, and so you hide behind all these pathetic excuses!’
She marched back to him, her eyes blazing with a fury that she no longer had any intention of trying to control.
‘For once in your life, Robert, why don’t you admit the truth!’
‘The truth?’ he said. ‘The truth is that once you have left me, I shall feel as though my heart has been ripped out. I don’t know how I will survive it, but for your sake, I know I must. It is the only thing I can do for you….’
His heart would be ripped out? Her own heart gave a lurch as one or two of the comments he had made earlier, which had so confused her, came to mind. He had spoken of threatening Lampton with a pistol, so that she would be safe from Hincksey. He had denied loving Susannah, vehemently, declaring she was the only woman he had ever wanted to marry. She remembered the almost defiant nature of that proposal, his certainty that any sane woman would refuse it. And suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place.
Captain Fawley's Innocent Bride Page 23
