by Joan Wolf
“Don’t, Georgie. I’m soaked. You’ll ruin your frock.”
“I don’t care about my frock,” I said fiercely.
“Well, you’ll get all wet, and then you’ll take a chill and become ill.”
His hands on my shoulders were quite firm. He really did not want to hold me.
I swallowed and stepped back from him.
“Thank God you are safe,” I said.
He gave me a strained smile. His hair was still dripping, and in the full sunlight of the river bank I saw that there was a stripped austerity about him that had not been there before our return to London. Shadows of sleeplessness marred the taut skin beneath his eyes.
Lord Marsh said, “Surely it wasn’t necessary to go in after him to finish the job, Philip. From here it looked as if you had been quite effective enough with the oar.”
Philip looked at him. “One always likes to be certain,” he said expressionlessly.
“Well, you almost got yourself killed making certain.” Marsh’s strange light eyes looked curious. “Did you get your hands on him underwater?”
“No. I was too late. By the time I got in he had been swept too far away for me to see him.”
I stood there with Catherine and listened to Lord Marsh congratulate my husband on making sure of the demise of my attacker.
I could not help but think that Charles Howard had a wife and three small children.
Philip looked exhausted. “Who sent for the rescue boat?” he asked. “I would never have made it back to shore if it hadn’t been there.”
“I did,” said Lord Marsh.
The two men looked at each other.
“I think we can say that at last I’ve repaid you that favor, can’t we, Philip?” Marsh said softly.
Philip nodded wearily. “We’re even, Richard. From now on, let us agree to stay out of each other’s way, shall we?”
Lord Marsh gave his eerie, humorless smile. “Just as you wish, dear boy. Just as you wish.”
He turned and walked away though the trees.
Philip had started to shiver. “Let’s go up to the house,” I said gently. “I’m sure the marquess will be glad to lend you some clothing so that you can get home without catching your death.”
He looked cynical. “I can assure you, Georgie, I have been in far worse straits than this.”
I didn’t think his shivering was just from the cold. “Come along,” I said with a bit more authority.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to face all those people and all those questions. I’m not ready yet, Georgie.”
There was the faintest trace of desperation in his voice, and I knew I had to listen to it.
“All right,” I said, “but I am coming back with you.”
He didn’t want me. I could see it in his face. But I was adamant, and I supposed he could see that in mine. I turned to Catherine, and said, “Will you tell your mother that I have gone home with Philip, Catherine? And tell the Amberlys and Mrs. Howard that of course we will be willing to answer questions about what happened on the river this afternoon, but . . . not today.”
“Of course,” she said gently.
I took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Catherine.”
Philip merely nodded coldly. We both knew that he was furious that she had allowed me to come with her to Thames House.
He’ll get over it, I mouthed to her, and she gave me a strained smile in response.
Philip and I got into the boat he had just come upriver in, and the boatman pushed off.
It was a silent ride back to Westminster. Philip dried off a little in the sun and the breeze, but he continued to shiver all the way back home.
My mind was preoccupied with what had happened this afternoon. Foremost, of course, were joy and relief that we were both alive. But I had to confess that I was deeply disturbed about the ruthlessness that Philip had shown in getting rid of Charles Howard.
Hitting Howard over the head with the oar to save me had been one thing. But deliberately to try to drown him was something quite else.
We took a cab from Westminster to Mansfield House, and Philip went into his dressing room to change out of his wet clothes.
“I want to see you,” I told him as we went upstairs. “Come into my dressing room when you are dry. It is imperative that we have a talk.”
He looked wary and reluctant, but under the circumstances he could hardly plead a prior engagement. I didn’t even bother to change out of my garden-party dress, but forced myself to sit on the chaise longue and wait patiently. It took him twenty minutes to come in. He was wearing a dressing gown.
“They’re filling a tub for me, so I can’t stay long,” he said. He sat down on the edge of one of the fireside chairs. “What is it that you want to talk to me about, Georgie?”
I looked at him. I saw the finely drawn look of him, the strain around his eyes, and I remembered Lord Marsh’s disturbing comment about his attempt to make certain that Charles Howard was dead.
A charge that Philip had not denied.
Like a blazing comet lighting up the blackness of the night sky, the truth dawned on me.
“You didn’t try to drown Charles Howard this afternoon, did you?” I demanded. “You tried to rescue him.”
He looked at me and didn’t answer.
“You hit him over the head because you had to get him out of the boat with me, but then you went after him and almost got yourself killed in the process.”
A little of the strain left the corners of his eyes. “I was too late. You can’t see in the water of the Thames, and by the time I got into the river he was gone.”
“But you kept on looking for him, didn’t you, Philip? That’s why you were underwater for so long.”
He rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I thought about leaving him. He had tried to kill you, after all.”
I smiled at him, trying to bridge the chasm that still yawned between us. “I’m glad you tried to rescue him, Philip. I’m proud of you.”
He looked ineffably bleak. “Don’t be proud of me, Georgie. That is a mistake.”
I got up from the chaise longue and went over to stand directly in front of him, too close for him to get up without bumping into me.
“I want you to tell me what is wrong, Philip.”
He started to say something, but I cut him off. “Don’t try to deny it. Something is very wrong with you. You have been avoiding me lately as if I had the bubonic plague. If you don’t like me anymore, if you don’t find me desirable, then please just say so. I can’t bear this situation where I am left feeling rejected and I don’t even know why.”
“Not find you desirable?” His laugh was painfully harsh. “Why do you think I haven’t been coming home? It’s because I can’t bear to lie next to you in that bed and not make love to you.”
“But why can’t you make love to me, Philip? Have I said or done anything to indicate to you that I don’t like it when you make love to me?”
“No.”
His face was stark.
I put my hands on his shoulders. Under the heavy silk of his dressing gown, the tension in them was palpable. I asked reasonably, “Then what is the problem?”
He drew a deep, unsteady breath. “Do you remember, when you were telling me about Maria, how you said that you couldn’t understand how men could take advantage of poor young girls like her?”
“Yes.”
“Georgie.” He looked up and met my eyes. His own were clouded with pain. “My father took me to my first brothel when I was fourteen years old. I am one of those men whom you so rightly despise. How could I possibly touch you when I knew that? I didn’t have the right.”
I stared back into the dense, pain-filled blue of my husband’s eyes. Dear God, I thought. Fourteen years old. What kind of a monster had he had for a father?
I ran my thumbs caressingly along his cheekbones. “Philip,” I said gently, “you are not to blame for what happened to you when you were fourteen years
old.”
“But it continued,” he said. “Don’t you see, Georgie? It became a way of life with me.”
A little silence fell between us as I contemplated his words. So this was the cause of the distance that had always lain between us, I thought. This sense of his own unworthiness.
I tipped his face up, so that he had to look at me, and said, gravely, “Philip, if I forgive you for the sins of your youth, will you promise me that you will forgive yourself?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You had a wretched upbringing. You had no one to teach you right from wrong, no one to teach you the importance of being kind. I think it is nothing short of a miracle that you have turned into the kind of man who can be gentle to Anna, the kind of man who can risk his life to rescue a would-be murderer like Howard. I admire you more than any man I have ever known. And I love you. If you don’t love me back, I will surely die.”
“Georgie,” he groaned. “Oh God, Georgie.”
He clamped his arms around my waist and pressed his face against my breast. I held him close to me, my lips buried in his midnight-dark hair.
We remained like that for many moments.
Then he said, “I have felt so desperate. I wanted you so badly.”
“Well, you made me thoroughly miserable,” I returned. “I was beginning to think you had a mistress somewhere.”
At that, he lifted his head from my breast and looked up at me incredulously. “A mistress? Are you serious?”
“Well, what else was I to think?” I asked reasonably. “We were so close at Winterdale Park, and then, when we returned to London, you didn’t seem to want me anymore. You acted as if I was polluted or something. I didn’t understand.”
He reached up, pulled me down so that I was half-sitting, half-reclining on his lap, and then he kissed me. Thoroughly. Dizzily. Wildly. When finally he lifted his mouth, my head was lying limply against his shoulder and his hand was lying possessively upon my breast, gently massaging my nipple.
“I love you so much, Georgie,” he said. “I thought I should go mad this last week.”
My heart rang like a bell at the sound of those longed-for words.
I wiggled a little on his lap. “When did you first know you loved me?” I asked, eager for more confidences.
“The day you walked into my library and said that you were there to blackmail me,” he returned promptly.
My eyes flew wide open. “What?”
He grinned at me, that boyish grin I loved so much. “You stood there, and looked at me out of those huge brown eyes, and you were so brave and so sweet and so determined.” He kissed my nose. “Surely you don’t think I spent all that money just to get back at Aunt Agatha?”
“You’re joking,” I squeaked.
“Not at all.”
“You were horridly rude to me.”
“Of course I was rude. I knew I couldn’t marry you myself, and I had no intention of torturing myself by fostering any kind of a friendship between us.”
By now I realized why he thought he couldn’t marry me.
He was such a wonderful idiot.
“It took me a little longer to fall in love with you,” I offered. “It was seeing you with Anna that did it, I think. I knew then that you were not the cold-hearted man you liked to pretend you were.”
I reached up and smoothed his hair. I smiled at him. “Oh, Philip, I am so happy.”
“In a very short time, you are going to be happier still,” he growled in my ear.
“I am?”
The words were scarcely articulated before his mouth was on mine once again: hard, probing, seeking, wildly erotic.
My whole body went up in flames. I wanted him so badly that it frightened me. I wanted to taste him, to touch him, to fill my senses with him. I wanted him to enter me, to possess me, to be one with me, as only he would ever be. I wanted us both to climb together to the heights of volcanic passion, and afterward I wanted us to lie together in each other’s arms, fulfilled and quiet and at peace.
Philip lifted his mouth from mine long enough to say, “Come to bed with me?”
“Yes,” I said wholeheartedly. “Oh, yes.”
EPILOGUE
IT WAS A WARM SUMMER AFTERNOON, AND NANNY and I sat on two lawn chairs under the wide-spreading oak and watched my three-year-old son play with Anna. We were in the section of Winterdale Park that my husband had created as a play area for the children, although Marcus, our one-year-old, was not yet grown enough to take advantage of all the exciting opportunities that this small domain afforded. He was still perfectly content to sit on the grass in front of me and dig in the dirt and hunt for worms.
Robin, on the other hand, was perched on the wooden platform of the tree house. It terrified me every time he climbed to that high perch, but I forced my fear down and made myself be content with watching him like a hawk. I knew that I was inclined to be overprotective of my children because of what had happened to my sister, but I could not seem to help it. I had nightmares sometimes of Robin tumbling to the ground from that damn tree house and striking his head.
I had been angry with Philip when he had had it built. He had paid no attention to me, however, and as I watched both Robin and Anna scramble nimbly up and down the ladder that led up to the platform, I reluctantly admitted that my husband had been right. The tree house was an enormous success, and kept not only Robin and Anna, but any visiting children, busy for hours on end.
Now that I was a mother, I found it hard to forget all the dangers that stalked our seemingly innocent world. I had only to look at my sister, trapped in her eternal childhood, to know that fate was not always kind to children.
All of a sudden Robin’s clear, childish treble came piping through the air from the heights of the tree house. “Papa’s home, Mama! I can see him coming from the stable!”
I smiled. There had been an important debate in the House of Lords that Philip had gone up to London to attend, and while he was in the city he had planned to see his man of business. I had not expected him home for at least another day.
Robin and Anna both scrambled out of the tree house and disappeared in the direction of the stable. The dogs followed them, woofing excitedly.
“His lordship is back early,” Nanny said comfortably.
“Yes,” I replied. “The debate must have been over sooner than he anticipated.”
My husband came around the corner of the donkey barn. He had Robin riding on his shoulders and Anna skipping at his side. The dogs trailed behind, tails wagging eagerly. He came over to me, lifted Robin down, bent to kiss me lightly on the mouth, and said hello to Nanny.
Robin said eagerly, “Did you bring me anything, Papa?”
I said, “Robin, it is very rude to ask people for presents.”
Robin said, “Papa isn’t people, Mama. He’s Papa!”
“An incontrovertible fact,” Philip said gravely. He reached inside his rust-colored coat and came out with a small carved figure of a pony for Robin and two dyed red ostrich feathers for Anna.
“One day soon we will get you a pony just like that one,” he said to Robin.
Robin yelled with delight. He held the pony in front of him and began to gallop around the play area, making loud whinnying noises.
Anna jumped up and down, and said, “Please, Nanny, may I go and put my feathers in my hair?”
“Go along with you,” Nanny said.
As Anna fled toward the house and a mirror, I looked at my husband. “You know she will wear those feathers like bunny ears, Philip.”
“But she will love them.”
She would.
He bent down and picked up the baby, who had been lifting his arms to him. “How’s my best little boy?” Philip said. Then he tossed Marcus into the air.
The baby shrieked with delight.
Philip tossed him again. Once more Marcus shrieked.
I hated it when he did this, but I forced myself to say nothing. Philip took such obvious d
elight in his children, was so interested in their lives, was so clearly determined to be different from his own father, that I felt I had no right to let my fears interfere in this precious relationship.
After the third toss, Nanny mercifully said, “That’s enough now, my lord. You’re going to make him sick.”
She held out her arms for the baby, and Philip obediently handed over his son.
He looked at me. “Come for a walk?”
I stood up, put my hand on his arm, and we left the children under Nanny’s guardianship while we went along the path that led to the lake. We ended up in our favorite spot, a small sheltered glade that looked out over the water and the island and the temple. I sat with my back against a large oak tree and Philip flung himself down next to me and laid his head in my lap.
“So what happened?” I asked.
His eyes were shut. “The Lords voted to commence the trial of the Queen on August 17.”
The Prince Regent, newly crowned as George IV, was suing his wife for divorce, which required an Act of Parliament.
“Oh no,” I moaned.
He sighed. “Oh yes. It is going to be utterly hellish. London is in a state of chaos.” His eyes opened and looked up at me. “I will have to attend, unfortunately, but you and the children are to remain here at Winterdale. There is already great unrest in London. The populace is disgusted with both the King and the Queen, neither of whom is exactly blameless in this situation.”
In fact, the history of adultery on the part of both the King and Caroline was extensive and disgusting.
“What a wretched situation,” I said.
“It certainly is,” he returned feelingly.
I ran my fingers through his thick black hair, and his eyes closed again. Silence fell. I looked down at Philip’s relaxed face. His long lashes lay quietly on his cheeks. He was clearly enjoying the touch of my hand.
“Has anything happened here since I’ve been gone?” he murmured.
I told him a funny story about Robin. He opened his eyes, looked up, and gave me the sweet smile that always made my insides turn into liquid. He picked up my hand and kissed it.
