Slightly Tempted

by Mary Balogh

  “A true friendship runs deep,” Henrietta said.

  “I do not believe,” Morgan said, unable to keep all the scorn she felt entirely from her voice, “I would feel very kindly disposed to a friend who had ruined the character of a relative of mine and doomed him to nine years of exile. I believe she would quickly become my former friend.”

  “You do not understand,” Henrietta said.

  “No,” Morgan agreed, “I do not. But I am sorry, Henrietta. I did not mean to quarrel with you. I just feel a need to understand the past, to know why it was Gervase who was chosen for such suffering. And why my brother had to suffer so much humiliation.”

  “I do not know,” Henrietta said again, and Morgan was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

  “I want to see the lady,” she said. “I want to talk with her. Will you go there with me, perhaps tomorrow, and introduce me?”

  “Is it wise?” Henrietta asked.

  “I have no idea,” Morgan said. “But I will go there alone if you will not accompany me. Will you?”

  Henrietta drew a deep breath and released it on a sigh.

  “If I must,” she said. “Very well, then. You are going to be living here anyway after you marry Gervase. It is fitting that you call on her sometime. I just hope there will not be any . . . unpleasantness.”

  “Gracious,” Morgan said. “So do I.”

  She smiled up at Monique and Eve, who were approaching the pianoforte together.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE FOLLOWING DAY WAS DRIZZLY IN THE morning, though it opened out to a dry, cloudy, cool afternoon. Freyja and Joshua, Cecile and Lord Vardon took out the boats, and Eve and Aidan, Monique and Sir Harold took the children on a long walk. The countess spent the afternoon, as she had spent the morning, making final plans for the fete and the ball with her cook and housekeeper and butler. Gervase, who had gone out after breakfast with his steward, had not yet returned.

  Morgan set off with Henrietta in the carriage for Winchholme, less than five miles away. The roads were wet but not impassable. The sun was even trying to break through the clouds as they approached the picturesque old manor, its gardens laden with roses, whose sweet, heavy perfumes Morgan could smell even before the carriage rolled to a halt. She and Henrietta had scarcely spoken to each other, each wrapped in thought.

  Lady Marianne Bonner met them herself at the door. While she greeted Henrietta by clasping her hands and kissing her on the cheek, Morgan gazed curiously at her. Even though she had passed the first bloom of youth, she was a remarkable beauty, from her shining golden curls all the way down a shapely, perfectly proportioned body to her small slippered feet. When she turned her eyes on her guest, Morgan could see that they were very blue.

  This, Morgan thought, was the woman Wulfric had almost married. This was the woman he had loved. He must have loved her. Like all the Bedwyns, he believed strongly in love within marriage. He could have had no other reason to marry her—he had not needed her father’s influence or her fortune, and he had had three brothers to make the begetting of sons less urgent than it might otherwise have been. This was the woman who might have been her sister-in-law.

  Both curtsied as Henrietta made the introductions, and Marianne flushed, looking even more lovely as she did so.

  “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Lady Morgan,” she said.

  “And I yours, Lady Marianne,” Morgan replied.

  They were taken into a cozy sitting room on the ground floor that looked out on some of the best of the roses. The French windows were closed against the chill, but Morgan could imagine how fragrant this room must be on a warm summer’s day when the doors could be thrown back.

  Mrs. Jasper, Lady Marianne’s aunt, was in the room, but she excused herself to rest after being presented to Morgan. She was a very elderly lady whose presence at Winchholme offered at least the appearance of chaperonage to a single lady living alone. It was an arrangement that probably suited both.

  The tea tray was brought in and they all conversed politely on a variety of topics for a while. But as Morgan prepared to introduce the topic that she had come to discuss, Marianne broached it herself. It was suddenly clear to Morgan that she had known about this visit in advance. Henrietta must have sent a note over during the morning.

  “I understand,” she said, setting down her plate, “that you have been asking Henrietta about what was to have been my betrothal ball, Lady Morgan.”

  Morgan set down her own cup and saucer and clasped her hands in her lap. Marianne and Henrietta were sitting side by side on the settee. Both were looking at her rather warily, and Marianne’s cheeks were considerably flushed.

  “I asked,” Morgan said, “if Henrietta knew how my brother and her uncle and your father learned that you and Gervase were together in your bedchamber. They would have had no way of suspecting such a shocking thing in the ordinary course of events at a ball. Who told them? Who sent them up there?”

  “I have never thought to wonder about it,” Marianne told her.

  But Morgan was gazing steadily at her. “I am afraid I do not believe you,” she said bluntly. “You must have wanted to be caught. You had drugged Gervase and taken him into your bedchamber from your sitting room. You wished it to seem that you had lain with him so that you would not be forced to marry Wulfric—my brother. But how could you be caught if no one knew you were together or where you were to be found? Your plan could succeed only if you had an accomplice.”

  Marianne stared right back at her, flushed and defiant—and guilty. “You are calling me a liar, Lady Morgan?” she asked.

  Henrietta set a hand on her arm and made a sound of distress.

  “Wulfric must have loved you,” Morgan told her. “I know him. No other motive would have led him toward marriage. He must have been deeply hurt as well as dreadfully humiliated by what he saw in that room—or what he thought he saw. Gervase was hurt in a far more terrible way. He is still only very gradually recovering. He is still wounded and in some ways permanently scarred. There is no way you can make restitution for what you did. But at least you can tell the truth.”

  Marianne opened her mouth to speak, but Henrietta spoke first, looking sharply away from them both as she did so.

  “I was the one,” she said. “I told them—all three of them. I told them Gervase had dragged Marianne upstairs against her will.”

  She had suspected it since last evening, Morgan realized. She had hoped she was wrong, since betrayal from within his own family would be far worse to Gervase than betrayal by a neighbor and former friend. But why?

  Marianne passed one hand over her face and turned suddenly pale.

  “We planned it together,” Henrietta explained. “Marianne’s father had bullied and threatened her into accepting first the Duke of Bewcastle’s courtship and then his marriage offer. If the betrothal announcement had been publicly made, all would have been lost. She would not have been able to avoid the marriage. She turned to me in her misery and desperation, and together we concocted the plan.”

  “To frame Gervase for that terrible disgrace?” Morgan asked, aghast. “To make it seem that he had ravished Lady Marianne? Your own cousin, Henrietta?”

  “I never really belonged,” Henrietta said, getting to her feet and taking a few steps away from the settee while fumbling for a handkerchief in the pocket of her dress. “There were Monique and Cecile growing up behind me, all vivacity and frivolous beauty, everyone’s favorites. And there was Gervase, always teasing me and always trying to find me partners and beaux during that dreadful Season. I wanted—all I ever wanted was to go home. Not to Windrush, but home to my mother and father. But they were dead.”

  “Ah, Henrietta,” Marianne said, clearly distressed for her.

  “I am sorry,” Henrietta said after blowing her nose and coming back to sit on the settee again. “I recovered from all of that years ago and recognized how unfair I had always been to the family that had nurtured and loved me. I truly love them all now
. But we tend to be selfish, self-centered creatures indeed when we are very young. At least I was.”

  “You must understand,” Marianne said, addressing herself to Morgan, “that my only thought was to be rid of the Duke of Bewcastle in such a way that my father could not blame me. The fact that Gervase was my neighbor and friend was a point in favor of the plan. I imagined that I could explain all to him the next day and he would understand and perhaps even explain privately to the duke—they were friends, you see.”

  “You could not explain to Wulfric yourself?” Morgan asked her.

  “I—” Marianne closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I could not. You must understand, Lady Morgan, that I was only eighteen. I am not proud of what I did. In fact, it has haunted me ever since. But I was so very young.”

  “I am eighteen now,” Morgan said softly.

  Both women stared at her mutely.

  “And the brooch?” Morgan asked. “Was it really stolen?”

  Marianne shook her head. “Papa would have made me marry Gervase,” she said. “I could not have said no—I had told Papa that he ravished me. And he could not say no—offering for me was something that was required of him as a gentleman. I had to think quickly, and I did what was truly reprehensible as well as stupid. I wanted to explain to Gervase afterward, but he was gone. I never, never expected the events of that night to have such dire consequences. I almost lost even Henrietta’s friendship. She was so very angry with me about the brooch.”

  “But you did not think of explaining to Gervase’s father?” Morgan said. “He never saw his son again. He died believing him to be a ravisher and a thief.”

  “He had always been so proud and fond of Gervase,” Henrietta said. “How could I have known that he would actually punish Gervase—and in such a way? It was horrible. It was like a nightmare from which I could not awaken.”

  “But you would not do the honorable thing and confess your part in what had happened?” Morgan stared at her. Such cowardice was so far beyond her own nature that it was hard to understand it, far less condone it in someone else.

  “Morgan,” Henrietta said, “there is nothing, nothing you can say that I have not said to myself a thousand times, that Marianne has not said to herself. It is not easy to live with the guilt of realizing that what one did, knowing even then that it was wrong, had such catastrophic results for several innocent people. I have given thanks daily for Gervase’s homecoming and for the happiness he has found with you. But it does not quite compensate or atone.”

  “No, it does not,” Morgan agreed, understanding suddenly why Henrietta had always been so pleased for them. She looked from one to the other of the co-conspirators, trying to imagine what could possibly have driven two young girls to such desperate measures. Just youth and naïveté and defiance of authority—and then fear of the consequences if they confessed? But how had Henrietta been drawn into it? Had it been just spite on her part against a cousin who had pressed dancing partners and even beaux on her when she could not attract them herself?

  It was as that final question was passing through her mind that the answer came to her like a blinding light. She was only recently out of the schoolroom. She had lived a sheltered life there, taught only those things considered essential for a lady’s education and whatever she could glean from boisterous brothers and a bold sister, all of whom had been careful of what they said in her hearing. But she understood nevertheless.

  Of course!

  Marianne and Henrietta were more than friends. They loved each other. Marriage, for either one of them, would have been the ultimate disaster, the horror of horrors to be avoided at all or any cost.

  And so they had avoided it—at a terrible cost to other people.

  She looked from one to the other again and, though not a word was spoken, she could see that they knew she knew. Briefly, almost imperceptibly, their hands touched on the settee cushion between them.

  She understood. She did not condone. She did not forgive, but she understood. She could not hate them, she discovered. She had put herself mentally into their shoes and imagined taking the walk through life that was their destiny, and she could not hate them or condemn them. She could only despise what they had done.

  “If I could go back,” Marianne said with a sigh, “I would defy my father and speak plainly with the Duke of Bewcastle. Or so I say now when I am safe from both of them. But going back would mean returning to the body and mind and emotions of a timid, frightened girl who was different but could not explain those differences to anyone in the world except the one who shared her fright. Perhaps even knowing what I know now I would not have found the courage.”

  “And if I could go back,” Henrietta said, “I would speak to Uncle George, explain to him, even though doing so would have meant being torn away from all communication with Marianne. I would not allow that to happen to Gervase if I could go back and do things differently. But I cannot go back—and perhaps I would not find the courage even if I could.”

  “Find it now,” Morgan said.

  “My uncle is dead,” Henrietta said, “and so is Marianne’s father.”

  “But Gervase is not,” Morgan said. “And Wulfric is not.”

  Marianne blanched. “You expect me to confess to the Duke of Bewcastle?” she said.

  “I expect nothing,” Morgan told her. “Wulfric is a strong man. Whatever he suffered then, he will have recovered from by now. And Gervase’s long ordeal is over. He was strong enough to survive it with all his best character traits intact, and he is building his life anew. They will both live out their lives in the manner they see fit regardless of what you do. I expect nothing of you.”

  She got to her feet.

  “I wish to leave now, Henrietta,” she said.

  Henrietta hesitated. “Take the carriage,” she said. “Will you mind going alone? Marianne will send me home in her carriage later. We need to talk.”

  It was a relief to Morgan to be alone on the journey home. The truth was far more horrible than she had ever imagined. How dreadful it must be to love and yet know that the world would never either condone or accept that love. To have to keep it secret throughout a lifetime.

  Yet love it must be. They had been constant to each other for years, had committed terrible deeds for each other, had betrayed a cousin and friend for each other, had wreaked immeasurable hurt on other people, and had shared the guilt ever since.

  How could she know what she might be capable of doing under similar circumstances?

  If Wulfric had persisted in refusing to allow Gervase to pay his addresses to her, she might have openly defied him, perhaps even have eloped. Or she might at worst have waited three years until she reached the age of majority and did not have to consult Wulf at all.

  Marianne and Henrietta had had none of those options.

  But Morgan’s mind was suddenly diverted.

  Eloped? Waited three years?

  She was not going to marry Gervase at all—by her own choice.

  She must end the masquerade soon. Perhaps she would do it at the ball. That would be spectacular—and also unnaturally cruel. Afterward, then. Soon afterward. She would tell him quietly that she was ending it and leave Windrush with Freyja or Aidan. It would be enough. She would leave enough embarrassment behind her—and take enough bleakness away with her.

  Did he have any feelings for her at all? Sometimes she thought he did, and of course he told her that he loved her. Certainly she believed that he had a physical passion for her. The words he had murmured to her while making love to her outside the grotto had surely not been feigned. But it was not enough anyway. He had become too dear to her in Brussels, and all the time he had been cynically and callously using her. There could be no forgiveness for that—or if there could, then there could be no lasting trust after it.

  Morgan closed her eyes as the carriage bounced over the ruts of a road that was still rather muddy. How strange life was, she thought. If Marianne and Henrietta had not behave
d desperately and dishonorably on a night long ago when she herself was only nine years old, Gervase would not have crossed the ballroom at the Camerons ball in Brussels and effected an introduction to her. He would not even have noticed her. She would not have noticed him. He would not have been tempted to make his own descent into dishonor. She would never have loved him.

  All connected. Ah, yes, all, all connected.

  THE SUNSHINE WAS BACK THE FOLLOWING DAY. THEY all spent it exploring the wilderness walk in the morning, boating and swimming and even diving later. But the heat and exercise tired most of the children by midafternoon and all of them were sent to the nursery for a sleep or some quiet time. The adults variously dispersed through the house or on a stroll outside. Morgan was sitting on the seat in the flower garden with Emma, who had walked over from the vicarage just a short time ago, while Jonathan toddled around near them.

  Gervase watched from the library window, having just caught up with some correspondence that had been awaiting his attention on his desk for two days. It pleased him that his family and the bolder Bedwyns seemed to like one another. It particularly pleased him that Morgan had been so well accepted here and that she seemed genuinely delighted by her surroundings and the people in it.

  After the ball he was going to convince her somehow to forgive him. He was going to propose marriage to her in earnest.

  He was on the verge of going outside to join the ladies and to play with his nephew, but he noticed suddenly that a carriage was approaching up the driveway. He did not recognize it even when it drew closer. He ought to go outside to greet his visitor in person, perhaps. But something held him back.

  Both Morgan and Emma raised a hand in greeting as the carriage drew level with them, but it continued on its way past them and turned onto the terrace below the window at which Gervase was standing. He watched as a lady descended, a maid behind her.

  His mouth turned suddenly dry. Morgan had gone out in the carriage with Henrietta yesterday but had not told him where they had gone—he had not asked. But he had guessed.