Perilous Pleasures

by Jenny Brown

  “Adam, what are you talking about?”

  “MacMinn.” He said the word as if biting into it.

  MacMinn? She tried to make sense of what he was telling her. What had her mother’s coachman to do with anything?

  But then she remembered: It had been only after her mother had mentioned MacMinn there in the hall that Adam had turned pale and then, a moment later, quitted them so rudely. Before that, he had treated Isabelle with politeness, strained though it might have been. But no sooner had he’d heard her mention the coachman’s name than he’d undergone that transformation back into the angry man who’d first claimed her in her mother’s drawing room. But why?

  Adam’s voice still held that furious note she’d forgotten it was capable of as he went on berating her. “MacMinn was at our wedding, I saw what passed between you.”

  Her heart sank. Had she been living in a dream these last few weeks when she’d come to believe her husband had found a way to love her, despite who her mother was and what she’d done?

  It must be so. For a man who loved her wouldn’t speak to her this way. He wouldn’t snarl at her and spit his words like this. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she forced them back. She wouldn’t let him see how much it hurt to learn she’d been deluded when she’d thought herself loved and safe.

  Turning the energy of his attack back on him, she retorted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Of course I recognized MacMinn at our wedding. But I was under your spell and thought I was dreaming. If anyone was deceived that night, it was me!”

  “But you must have known that MacMinn came from your mother. You’d just seen him a few days before. You must have known what he was up to, and yet you went along with it. You agreed to marry me after he gave you that secret sign.”

  She remembered it now. In that dream that had turned out to be real where Adam had begged her to wed him, she had held back until MacMinn had made that small gesture he used to make when she was small and her mother would lose her temper with her, the gesture that meant she shouldn’t worry, that he’d take care to see that she was safe.

  Woodenly she replied, “What if I did. I thought I was dreaming. And when I realized he was real, and not a figment of my imagination, the following morning, I assumed he must have followed us, after you came and wrested me from my mother. It was just the kind of thing he’d do, and I was grateful for it. Do you begrudge me that there was someone at our wedding who knew me and wished me well?”

  “But once we were wed, you said nothing to me about having seen him. You kept it secret.”

  She had. A wave of cold swept over her as she remembered the way, the next morning, MacMinn had cautioned her not to mention their meeting to her new husband. But even so, there was no reason for Adam to be so furious about it. “Why should I have mentioned it? I didn’t know how you would respond. I had little reason to trust you, then. Your moods had been so uncertain.” As they were now. “And once you had revealed how you’d tricked me with your spell, I had other things to think about.”

  Adam bit his lip. “You make it all sound so reasonable.” His tone was wistful. “I could almost believe you were telling the truth. But if you are, then we’re both your mother’s victims. For if I tricked you, it was only because her minion tricked me first. It was he who bade us wed.”

  “But wasn’t it the Dark Lord’s will that we should marry?”

  “The Dark Lord’s will,” he said bitterly, “conveyed in his dying words, brought to me by your mother’s coachman, MacMinn.”

  “But how could MacMinn have brought you the Dark Lord’s message? He’d just been in London with us, and the Dark Lord was on his island, here in Scotland.”

  Adam’s voice, when he answered, sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a deep pit. “That’s just it. MacMinn didn’t come from the island. He came from your mother, in London.”

  It finally dawned on her what he was telling her and when it did, Zoe’s blood stopped moving in her veins. When she found the courage to speak, her voice was a croaking whisper. “Then it wasn’t the Dark Lord’s will that we should wed.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No. Never. Only Isabelle’s.”

  “How you must hate me. But Adam. I didn’t know.”

  “You must have guessed.” His lustrous eyes were filled with agony.

  “I never thought about it.” How could she, overwhelmed as she’d been by the virgin’s sickness which had made her love him so desperately he need not have used a spell to make her wed him? But she wouldn’t make excuses to him now. Nothing she could say could make right what he’d lost.

  But for her mother’s ruse her husband would have become the next Dark Lord, with all the powers he had longed for. Instead he had abandoned his quest so close to its end, when they were almost on his dying master’s doorstep, breaking his vow of chastity by making her his wife—devoting himself dutifully to the difficult task of making himself love a woman as flawed as she was, and doing it because it was what he’d thought his teacher had ordained.

  The hopelessness she saw in his eyes was all too explainable. There was no reason for him to love her any longer. She wouldn’t even ask it. He’d lost too much by marrying her. All she could do was acknowledge the injury that had been done to him. She must not ask for his pity, or make excuses for herself. He’d suffered too much at her mother’s hands.

  “It’s over then,” she said. Her voice sounded as if it were coming from a distant mountain top. “I won’t hold you to your vows to me.”

  “Is that what you wish?” His pain resonated through her, linked as she still was to him by her love. It made her want to throw herself into his arms and comfort him, though she must not. Her own pain screamed she’d been a fool to give up her protective numbness. She must pray she could find it again. She could only go on living if she never let herself feel anything again.

  She had married him in a dream, and he had loved her in a dream. Now it was time to awaken.

  Chapter 18

  “Your husband is a very grouchy man,” her mother observed. “But perhaps that is the kind of man to please a woman with your temperament.”

  It was the next morning. Zoe sat with her mother in the small breakfast room, watching in a state of stunned misery as Isabelle greedily devoured a full Scottish breakfast of porridge, bacon, and kippers. She envied the way her mother could ignore the stench of catastrophe that pervaded every corner of what had been, only the day before, such a happy home.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but her words were cut short by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Adam entered. He’d donned his heavy many-caped greatcoat and carried his serpent-headed cane. Once again, he was dressed for travel.

  “Good morning,” he said coolly to them both. “I hope you slept well.”

  How could she ever sleep well again without him by her side?

  The words rose to her lips, but she didn’t speak them. He would despise any words of love from her, now that he knew the truth about their marriage.

  He paused to allow her to reply but when she didn’t, he went on in a voice even more brittle and formal, “Zoe, may I beg the honor of a word with you?”

  She nodded and excused herself from the breakfast table.

  He led her as far as possible away from where her mother sat in the breakfast room, into the conservatory, brushing past the table full of geranium cuttings in their cheerful terra-cotta pots.

  He began, “I expect you slept no better than I did.”

  “I slept as usual,” she lied. Only the way he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly suggested that he recognized her falsehood.

  She busied herself in removing a dead leaf from one of the blooms, unwilling to think about the torment she’d felt lying alone in her bed the previous night. She couldn’t bear to see the coldness in his eyes and know they would never again glow with the warmth that had given her such joy in the weeks they’d just spent together.

  Had it only been yesterday th
at she’d stood in this very spot, potting the rooted shoots, and thinking what a fine show they’d make next summer? He’d come up from behind her, unnoticed, as she’d tended to the plants, and there had been that wonderful moment when the scent of the flowers had mixed with his earthy musk, before he’d enfolded her into the most tender of embraces.

  She savagely pinched off a long branch filled with blossoms though there was nothing wrong with it. Why did she have to feel this love he no longer wanted?

  “I didn’t sleep at all,” he said. “I spent the night in thought.” He picked up the branch she’d let fall onto the slate-topped table and examined it before adding, “Whatever the reason for our marriage, it’s too late to have it set aside. It was done according to the law, before witnesses, and fully consummated.”

  She flinched at his choice of words, so cold and legalistic.

  “Zoe, do you still care for me?”

  His words took her by surprise. But she’d had hours to practice hardening herself to her emotions. She spoke in a tone as cold as his. “You no longer have any reason to love me. I can’t afford the luxury of feeling anything for you.”

  A quiver ran through his lips, then his face hardened. “I see. But of course you no longer need to pretend to love me.” His eyes squeezed shut for a moment. Their lids were heavy and reddened. “If you wish to live apart from me, I’ll make you a generous allowance. I ask only that when you find some other lover you be discreet.”

  “If I wasn’t discreet you could divorce me. Perhaps that would be the best way to end this.”

  “Why?” he asked savagely. “It would restore nothing we’ve lost and only add more scandal to my family’s name.”

  “So you would prefer a separation? Will you send me away?”

  “My preferences have little to do with the current situation. I must play the hand I’ve been dealt.”

  “But what if I don’t wish to separate?”

  “Then you may remain here as my wife.” Adam continued, his voice deceptively calm, “I will never again mention the circumstances we became aware of yesterday. There would be no point. What happened can’t be changed. Perhaps it would be best if you did remain here, at least for the next few months. After all, you may already be carrying my heir—or a pair of Ramsay twins.”

  A shiver passed through her. How fitting it would be if she completed the havoc that had overtaken their lives by continuing the family curse.

  “I vowed to protect you,” he went on. “It’s the only vow I haven’t yet betrayed. So if you choose to remain, you may be confident that I’ll treat you with all the respect due to a wife.”

  Her heart contracted within her breast. He’d remain true to their vows out of duty, despite the fact that he could feel nothing for her now but cold disdain. Was she supposed to feel gratitude for that? It maddened her, how casually he proposed to turn the home that should have been a place of safety into her prison.

  Relentlessly he continued. “If you are increasing, our child—or children—will be raised with no knowledge of the trickery that led to their conception. I don’t wish them to grow up, as I did, knowing their parents were estranged even before their birth.”

  Despair coursed through her. How could their children not know? Adam might have forgotten how sensitive children were to the unspoken currents around them, but Zoe knew better. Their children would grow up feeling keenly how unwanted they were. Her heart broke. She had felt such joy, when she’d thought herself quickening, thinking she’d be able to give her children the gift of being born, loved, and wanted. But it wasn’t to be.

  She brought one hand up to her belly, as if to protect the helpless creatures who might be growing there, and said, “If I am increasing, I should prefer a total separation.”

  She wouldn’t let him fill her children with a wish that they had never been born. She might have to live without love for the rest of her life, but her children would be loved and valued, if only by herself.

  As what she said sank in, Adam froze into an ungainly posture, as if suddenly paralyzed. She saw his tongue flick out to moisten his lips as if he were about to speak, but he remained silent. Then he turned abruptly and paced up and down the length of the conservatory, his boots crunching on stray bits of debris that littered the floor.

  When he stopped, he said only, “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t give me my answer now. We’re both overset. It will take us both some time to come to terms with what has happened.” He turned toward the doorway. “I set forth for London today. I’ll be gone for some weeks. When I return, you can give me your final answer.”

  So he was leaving Strathrimmon, just as his father had, and he expected her to remain here, an abandoned wife, like his mother. Would he, too, die before his return as his father had, without ever seeing her again?

  The thought tore at her heart. If this was to be her last glimpse of him, she must make the most of it. She must remember every detail of his handsome face—no matter what it cost her. Pain and pleasure mixed as she allowed herself to give in one last time to the love she must learn to set aside. She drank in the way his full lower lip quirked up at the corner, the graceful curve of his eyelid with its long pale lashes, the heartbreaking golden luster of his stubbled beard.

  She stored each image away against the moment when he’d be gone, hating herself for doing it, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was learning now that there was an ailment far worse than virgin’s sickness—the one that afflicted abandoned wives.

  Only when she felt his eyes drilling into her, as if daring her to admit to what she was doing, did she let her eyes drop back to the battered plant she held in her hand and force her features to assume a mask of cool composure. She would not let him see how much she cared.

  “I bid you good day, madam.” He bowed stiffly. Then he pushed open the door that led into the garden and plunged through it, lost to her.

  She had been so cold. So stony cold. Standing there, discussing a separation so calmly. Telling him she wished to feel nothing for him. She must never have loved him. It all must have been an act. Adam had wanted so much to believe it wasn’t so, but the cool way she’d just received him made it impossible.

  Even when he’d grasped the magnitude of the disaster that had swept over them both, he’d cherished the hope, foolish as it had been, that perhaps the love that had grown up between the two of them might be enough to allow them to survive it.

  But the way his wife had responded to him just now in the conservatory had put paid to that. He could hardly bear to remember how much he’d hoped that she would assure him she still loved him as much as before, no matter what had led them to be married.

  But she had not. Her demeanor had been what it had been ever since her mother’s revelation. Cold and distant. She’d offered him none of the comfort he’d learned to expect from her. She hadn’t set her cool practicality to assuaging his fears.

  There was only one possible explanation. She had been making the best of things, seeing no alternative, caught in a trap of her mother’s making as much as he’d been. But now that her mother’s ruse had been exposed, there was no further reason for her to feign love for him. It must be a relief to her not to have to any longer. Indeed, she’d barely raised an eyebrow when he’d suggested they part. She’d paid more attention to the foliage in her hand than she’d given him as she’d coolly told him—as if discussing the selection of a fabric to cover the dining room chairs—that she preferred a separation to staying on with him at Strathrimmon.

  A wiser man would have granted it on the spot and turned his back on her forever. But he hadn’t been able to do it. Instead, he’d just mumbled something mealy-mouthed about making no decisions until his return from Town, still in the grip of that Piscean inability of his to face the truth. But he’d known, even as he spoke the words, that he was only postponing what he couldn’t prevent.

  Zoe had never loved him. The courtesan’s daughter had feigned what she must to get by. He’
d thought it a sign of her naïveté when, early on, she’d told him she’d do what it took to keep him sweet toward her. But he’d been wrong. She’d only been telling him the truth.

  Zoe watched numbly as Adam made his way down the path leading away from the conservatory. A few steps more and he’d be out of sight. Then, at last, she could allow herself the luxury of tears. But before that could happen, a servant came rushing toward her husband, so fast he almost knocked Adam down.

  “An urgent letter, Yer Lordship. From the post.”

  Mechanically, Adam took the letter from the man, but after seeing what was written on the outside of the sealed and folded billet, he froze, blinking his eyes as if he couldn’t believe what he’d read. He broke the seal and unfolded the letter within. When he was done reading it, he walked, very slowly, back into the conservatory. Back to her.

  “It seems I was mistaken. I’m not going to London after all.”

  Such was his look of alarm Zoe couldn’t help but say, “I hope no one is ill—or dead?”

  He responded with a harsh laugh. “No. Someone is most definitely not dead.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Here, read it yourself. I can’t bring myself to read it aloud to you.”

  He held the letter out in such a way that his fingers avoided touching hers, but even so, as she took the paper from him, she could feel that old feeling, as if a current flowed between his hand and hers.

  She scanned the letter, to distract herself. The signature was only a scrawl that meant nothing to her, but as she slowly deciphered the unfamiliar handwriting and read the lines inscribed in a spindly hand, what she held in her hand became clear.

  It was a letter from the Dark Lord, sent from the Isle of Iskeny. Dated only three days before.

  Its writer demanded to know if it were true that, as he had heard, Adam had chosen to dally at Strathrimmon. He lamented that his days grew short and wondered why his chosen heir had not returned to him. He wondered, too, what had happened to the virgin whose presence at the Final Teaching was so essential to them both.