Royalist on the Run

by Helen Dickson

  His tone was subtle and sneering with contempt. It was the way he had habitually addressed her since the day of their marriage. ‘I was told you were dead. That was what you intended me to believe when you sent me the coffin containing another man’s body. As far as I am concerned I buried you that day. After the battle when Parliamentary soldiers came and burned the house down and took the land, my ties with you were severed.’

  As cold as a block of ice, John looked at his wife completely unmoved. ‘I still have the house in Bath.’

  ‘Not any longer. I needed money, so I sold it.’

  This he had not known. His eyes narrowed and glittered with anger and a nervous tic twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘You did what? Damn you! It was not yours to sell.’

  She met his eyes with a defiance she would never have dared show in the past. ‘Whose was it? You were dead.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘If you wanted me to believe you had been killed at St Fagans, why have you decided to show yourself now?’

  ‘Because I changed my mind and decided not to hide myself away any longer.’

  ‘You are a well-known figure. Did you really think you could remain hidden for ever? Was that what you wanted?’

  ‘At the time. You suspected I was alive. Who told you?’

  ‘Malcolm Lister—after Worcester when he arrived at Bircot Hall looking for fugitives. What were you hiding from—or perhaps I should say whom? Me?’

  He nodded. ‘Partly—mostly from myself—and what war has done to me.’

  Captain Fanshaw had told her John had been badly wounded in battle. She had noted a stiffness in his walk when he had approached her. ‘I heard you offered your sword to France.’

  ‘I did. Unfortunately the wounds I received at St Fagans have left their effects so I returned to Paris. However, I have not been idle. I have made a point of finding out what you have been up to. I know you became reacquainted with Edward Grey and he sought your help to bring his son to Paris—away from his brother-in-law, Colonel Lister, who he feared would take his son as his heir.’

  His calm, aloof tone annoyed Arabella. ‘You are right. You have been busy, John. May I ask how you came by this information?’

  ‘I made a point of finding out all I could.’

  ‘I had no idea that the people in Paris were so interested in me.’

  John pretended not to have noticed the force with which Arabella uttered those words. He brushed at a minute piece of lint on his sleeve and without looking at his wife he said smoothly, ‘Edward Grey is your lover. I am right, am I not, Arabella? I do know so you might as well admit it.’

  Arabella dug her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself calm. The heat of anger that shot through her was acute. ‘Then why do you ask?’

  ‘I will not be made a fool of and nor will you cover me with shame by continuing your sordid affair. I will leave you now to consider what my return into your life will mean for your future. Tomorrow I will call on you and I will tell you what I intend to do. Make sure you are at home for I will not take kindly to your absence.’

  John moved to stand in front of her, putting his arms out and drawing her slim, unyielding body close.

  ‘Don’t,’ she objected, putting up her hands to fend him off. For a moment it appeared as though she were returning his embrace. Suddenly someone sauntered past and, turning her head, she found herself looking into Edward’s cold expression.

  * * *

  With the green-eyed demon of jealousy clawing at his heart, Edward looked away and headed for a group of gentlemen engaged in conversation at the other side of the room. When Verity had approached him to inform him of John Fairburn’s unexpected arrival, believing Arabella would be unduly upset he had hurried to her side to offer his support. He needn’t have bothered. He was more furious than he had ever been in his life. It was an entirely illogical fury, for surely he should be happy that Arabella hadn’t been as unhappy in her marriage as she would have him believe.

  * * *

  Too much had happened to Arabella that night for her to sleep. She lay turning the problem over and over in her overstimulated brain, looking at it from every angle without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. One thing she did know: the man she loathed above all others with an obsession would destroy her if she went back to him.

  When it began to get light, seated in a chair by the window she still had not found an answer to her dilemma. With her head aching she dragged herself out of her chair and began to prepare for the day ahead.

  When John came she admitted him into the house herself, relieved that he had come early and hoping he would be gone before Edward arrived. She took him directly into the drawing room as Verity had directed she must do to speak to him in private. Closing the door, she stood and faced him, trying to keep her knees from trembling.

  ‘Please say what you have to say and then go. I have no wish to prolong this meeting.’

  ‘This meeting will take as long as I want it to—until you have packed your bags and come to live with me.’

  ‘Live with you? Where?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Arabella, you will be well kept. Since I have been back in Paris, I spend my time frequenting an establishment where the play is high—I have to say the company is anything but exclusive—but where fortune smiles on me and has enabled me to rent suitable rooms close to the Louvre Palace. You will recall that I always did have a flair for the dice and the turn of a card.’

  Arabella remembered well. John had the compulsion of the dedicated gambler. Whenever possible he would whittle away at the fortune his father had left in his care, casually gambling away enormous sums of money as if it would never end. Sometimes he won, which only encouraged him to continue.

  ‘I remember all too well,’ she replied. ‘I also remember how you almost gambled your inheritance away.’

  ‘Not any more. You might say my luck has changed. You will be comfortable, I promise you.’

  ‘Promise me all you like, John. I will not live with you.’

  ‘Yes, you will—in the end.’

  ‘No—and do not threaten me. I am not afraid of you.’

  ‘Threat? It is not a threat. It is an order. I will not have another man do to my wife what I can no longer do myself.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked, bewildered by his remark and curious as to what could be behind it. ‘Is it that you no longer want to—or because you can’t?’

  John said nothing, but his eyes, as he studied her, grew clouded and their expression was transformed slowly and strangely to one of vulnerability.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, reluctantly. ‘That is the reason. You already know I was wounded at St Fagans. I took the full blast from a fusillade of muskets. When I was pulled from the fray I was alive, but only just. I won’t go into detail, but the damage done to me has rendered me impotent. In other words, my dear wife, I am no longer capable of begetting a child.’

  Arabella stared at him, silent and wide-eyed, as if seeing him for the first time. He could not conceal the fact that he was suddenly agitated. Curiously she observed the distress into which this normally self-assured, manipulative man had sunk. He turned from her as he fought for restraint, but when he turned back to her all trace of his distress had vanished. Briefly, an immense sadness replaced Arabella’s anger. She was unable to imagine his suffering. He was watching her closely and saw the changes in her expression.

  ‘Pity me—gloat, even, if you must, for who would have guessed that John Fairburn would be brought so low that he can no long have carnal knowledge of his wife? I have no doubt that you will say I got the punishment I deserve.’

  The calculated, cold disdain with which he uttered these words acted like a bucket of cold water on the softening of her feelings.

  ‘No,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I do pity you,
but I will not gloat over your torment. You caused me a great deal of pain in our marriage and I hate you for it—which is understandable. But I would never wish what has happened to you on any human being. What was done to you... Was that the reason you wanted me to believe you were dead, because you couldn’t...?’

  A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth which twisted his thin face, making him look as cruel as his heart. ‘As you know I have always prided myself on my virility. I didn’t want to return to you half a man, to have to suffer the infernal torture which you would be for me if I could not share your bed, to remain bound by my own impotence, eaten by desire, interminably, knowing there would be no respite until death.’

  ‘So you sent me another man’s body in a coffin,’ she said, trying to understand. Despite his suffering, she could do nothing for him, nothing at all. But it did not alter the way she felt about him or remove the bitterness from her heart.

  ‘That is what I did,’ he replied, with a bitter smile. ‘I expected to die anyway, but it seems my time has not yet come. No one knows my secret except the man who tended me—and now you.’

  ‘What I find rather odd is that if you wanted to feign your death, then why not change your name also? You are well known—a man of considerable importance. Surely you must have realised that someone would recognise you and your name.’

  He shrugged. ‘I told you. At the time I cared little. I thought my time had come. When I realised I was not going to die from my wounds and that I would have to go on living, I decided to return to the world—and you.’

  His gaze travelled over her. ‘You know, you look different. There is something about you that...something in your eyes that...’ His words trailed away and he looked at her hard, appearing to consider a thought, then he frowned suddenly. ‘Are you breeding, Arabella?’ Arabella’s heart missed a beat and she started. Her quick intake of breath and sudden pallor answered his question. He smiled, a thin knowing smile. ‘Ah—so my suspicion is true. It is Grey’s, I take it? Does he know?’ She shook her head. His eyes narrowed as he contemplated her stricken face in thoughtful, calculating silence, then he seemed to reach a decision. A hardness entered his eyes and his expression became animated, as if a spark had been lit. ‘You will not tell him. I forbid it.’

  ‘But—what are you saying? Of course I will tell him,’ she retorted, staring at him in disbelief. ‘How can I not? The child is his.’

  ‘It does not have to be. It would appear I may have something to gain out of all this.’

  ‘Gain? What do you mean?’

  ‘I have always wanted a son.’

  He smiled slowly, a malicious, cruel smile. Arabella looked at him aghast. The result of what had happened to him at St Fagans had given him a vulnerability and to some extent weakened him, but the cruel streak still ran through his veins like his life’s blood. She remembered how it had been to live with him—ugly, violent. She hated him.

  ‘I hope I am mistaken and that you are not saying what I think you are. You can’t do that. It is up to Edward to provide for the future of his child.’

  ‘I can do what I choose and I will. I will do anything I please.’

  Arabella stood as one turned to stone, unable to think or act as she stared at her husband in horror, watching as her world began to crumble around her. Fear and panic were setting in. She struggled to conceal what she felt. With this man, her husband, whose terrifying history she knew more than anyone else, it was imperative that she remained calm and did not show her fear. She looked away, closing her eyes. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She told herself that it was some kind of bad dream that would go away when she opened her eyes.

  But when she did, John was still there, watching her like a cat watches a mouse it has selected for its dinner. She glared at him, her hands clenched into fists in the folds of her skirt.

  ‘The injuries you suffered not only rendered you impotent, they warped your mind.’

  ‘Perhaps. I have always wanted children.’

  ‘We had a child, John—Elizabeth—or have you forgotten?’

  ‘I remember her—a sickly girl. I know she died, but I shed no tears over her loss.’

  Arabella was appalled by his callous disregard for their daughter, but she chose not to comment. To become immersed in an argument about the one good thing that had come out of their marriage would only bring her more sorrow and heartache.

  ‘What I want is a son to carry on after me,’ John went on. ‘A son who will one day take over the estate.’

  ‘But the house is gone.’

  ‘The house was nothing but a pile of stones. It can be rebuilt. The estate is still mine.’

  ‘Along with all Royalist properties it has been sequestered.’

  ‘If that is so, then I will find a way of getting it back. When the King comes into his own he has promised he will return everything that has been taken by Parliament to those who remained loyal to him and his father before him. The child you are carrying is my only chance. If it is a boy he will be my heir.’

  ‘You are willing to raise another man’s child as your own?’ He nodded. ‘You are quite mad—insane.’

  ‘No, Arabella. Edward Grey has another child—a child that Parliamentarian Colonel Malcolm Lister would go to any lengths to get his hands on—to make his heir.’

  Arabella stared at him, a coldness and deep fear beginning to creep into her heart.

  ‘You intend to use it against him.’

  ‘Exactly. I can make it possible for Lister to achieve his aims. If you do not obey me in this, it is not you who will suffer.’

  ‘No, John. I will not satisfy your wicked schemes.’

  ‘No? Perhaps you should look at it another way. I will not divorce you, so you will not be free to marry Edward Grey. Do you know how society treats a known adulteress? Does the prospect attract you?’

  ‘Ever since I realised I was with child, I have been prepared to fight for—’

  ‘For what?’ he snapped. ‘For a man who jilted you to marry another? What happened to your pride, Arabella? I did not take you for a fool.’

  Arabella knew that what he said was true, yet she was loath to agree to the horrifying prospect he put before her. ‘You cannot expect me to agree to something so serious. Do you really expect me to turn my back on Edward, to keep the fact that I am to bear his child to myself merely to appease your greed for an heir?’

  ‘Then consider the alternative,’ he said, his tone menacing. ‘I shall have Edward Grey’s son—Dickon, I believe his name is, the boy you have become so fond of—spirited back to England.’

  There was a long silence, a silence heavy with the threat of a powerful man who would have his way whatever the consequences. His eyes had changed suddenly, becoming sharp and brilliant. She knew that change and it frightened her. It was a moment before she could bring herself to speak. John was determined, that was obvious. It was enough to see his eyes, intense and cold, the eyes of a man ready to commit any crime to slake his overwhelming ambition—and no doubt he had accomplices to assist him in his crime.

  ‘Not even you could be so cruel. You would not take a son from his father.’

  At the sight of her stricken face he laughed. ‘Believe me, Arabella, I will take him to hell if I have to. Do I really seem like a person who would let the disappearance of a child trouble my sleep?’

  The words dripped from his mouth, each one penetrating her heart like the sharpest blade. She stared at him as she realised the full impact of what, to her, amounted to a death sentence. For a moment she struggled inwardly to come to terms with the awful choice she knew she would have to make—and there was no choice, not really. That was the moment her anger evaporated in the face of grim reality.

  Hearing him speak with such cynical detachment of removing a child from his father made her doubt
his sanity. Her husband was a man from whom all human feeling had gone. She was starting to tremble, but she did not dare show it. Ever since her discovery that she carried Edward’s child, she had been carried along on a wave of exultation. But now she knew that nothing was that certain.

  ‘Let me think about it. Because of your—impairment, I realise that our marriage from now on will be a marriage in name only. That being the case, if I do agree to your terms, I ask you to respect my privacy.’

  John reached out and clasped her chin, twisting her face to look at him. His breath was sour on her face. Her flesh prickled with disgust and her gorge rose.

  ‘You have nothing to think about,’ he told her coldly. ‘It’s quite simple. If you want the child—Dickon—to remain with his father, you will keep silent about the one you are carrying and come with me—as my wife. Our marriage will be a marriage in name only. But for all intents and purposes, the child is mine.’

  Arabella twisted against his hand. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she gasped, struggling to free herself, but he was panting, his eyes fevered with excitement.

  ‘You deserve to be hurt.’ His grip tightened, twisting her flesh. ‘You will not see Edward Grey again. I will not sit by while another man performs on my wife that which should be done by me. The humiliation is mine, Arabella. Mine. You care for him?’

  Arabella nodded, suddenly tearful, realising at last the full depth of her feelings for Edward. ‘I love him. I love him with all my heart.’

  His look was scathing. ‘Then that is your misfortune.’

  ‘He will not take my leaving lightly.’

  ‘I am not a man to be trifled with and I don’t give a damn how much trouble he causes, he’ll not get you back—or the child. You have changed. You have become too bold for your own good. A little humility would not go amiss.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I see I shall have to teach you. As for your privacy—you will have as much privacy as I see fit. When the child is born I might be generous enough to share you with some of my friends—who commented profusely on your beauty when they saw you last night.’