by Jenny Brown
In a tone that gave no hint of the sadness that had swept over her, she said, “It wasn’t your fault alone that I found myself in peril. It was, after all, my idea to come here with you and play your mistress.” As she pulled herself upright, he dropped her hand, responding to the harshness with which she had broken out of their embrace. As he withdrew, she felt herself bereft. Still, she forced herself to keep on speaking in a light tone. “You cannot take full credit for all that happened, Edward. Much as I should like to blame you, I, too, have an impossibly impetuous nature. Uranus rules us both, which you would have learned if you’d ever asked about my nativity. Indeed, my own natal Uranus is conjunct Jupiter, which makes me even more impulsive than you are.”
As she gabbled on, she saw him study her face as if seeking the answer to an unasked question. When he had found it, he stood up and adjusted his rumpled coat. She saw him bite his lip. Then he took a deep breath, and his expression hardened. He, too, was recovering his self-possession.
“I am much at fault for not inquiring more deeply into much else that concerns you,” he said in a sober tone. “And not just about your nativity. But I can well believe you, too, are ruled by the planet of surprises. For my life has been in a continual uproar since the moment I first drew you into my carriage.”
“I am sorry for that,” she said. “But you may take comfort in knowing it must all be at an end now.”
“I suppose I must,” he said, his eyes hooded, their expression once again impenetrable. “Come, Eliza, my carriage waits below.”
Chapter 22
Only when they were out on the street, making their way through the crowd of people who milled around, drawn by curiosity to know what the noise and smoke had been about, did Eliza realize she had no idea what she would do next. It was fortunate that Edward moved with a decisiveness that reassured her he had some plan in mind. After they had walked only a short distance she saw his carriage. She clambered into it and, as he gently wrapped her in the fur he had found resting on the seat, she realized that despite the warmth of the evening, she had been shivering.
At length he spoke. “I will never forgive myself for what you’ve been forced to undergo in the past hour.” His voice was once again unnaturally formal, and she sensed what it was costing him to maintain such rigid control. But whatever effort he was expending, it could scarcely be more than what it took for her to keep from flinging herself into his arms and seeking her comfort there. But she must not. She did not dare.
What future was there for her if she gave in to her reckless love for him? He had rescued her as he had promised, but that was a far cry from pledging to love her forever. The events of the past day had snapped her out of the dream in which she had been living.
She had known him for less than a fortnight. How could she possibly imagine they could be happy, bound together in marriage for a lifetime? Passion had brought them together and it might keep them together for as long as such passions might last. But she was too wise to think it would last for a lifetime. It took love, not passion, to make a lifelong union work, the kind of unselfish love that could forgive a partner’s failures. She had no reason to think Edward capable of that. He was too prone to resent those who hurt him. How could she trust that, when the glow of their romance wore off, he would be able to find the deeper love it would take to make a marriage last?
And now that she was out of danger why should she even think he would repeat his proposal? She had rejected him with scathing reflections upon his character. He might well feel the same disgust for her he had felt toward Estella, even though he had done what his pride demanded and rescued her from the predicament their shared heedlessness had put her into. Now that she was safe, he might be glad to see the last of her. He was still Lord Lightning, eccentric and unpredictable. He was the last person on earth she should be turning to for comfort now.
As if he had read her thoughts, he said, “Regrettably, you will be forced to spend a little more time in my company, but I see no alternative. You have no one here to depend on save myself, so I must still take full responsibility for your safety until we return to London, which we will do as soon as I make a brief stop at my mother’s house to pack. While we are there, I will go to the magistrate’s to retrieve your things, though the swine himself will be unable to assist me. He suffered a crippling accident in the course of his flight from the town hall—one I’m happy to say I had some small part in facilitating. His friend, too, is now severely indisposed. You can rest assured they will never again harm another woman. Once I’ve recovered your books we can be on our way.”
“But surely, if you leave Brighton now, you will lose your inheritance.”
“I have claimed as much of my inheritance as I care to.”
“But won’t your mother lose her home if you leave Brighton now?”
“My mother never ran the slightest risk of losing her home. The clergyman who attended my brother on his deathbed offered to testify that my brother was not in his right mind when he made his will. She knew that all along. That’s why she felt safe in attacking me through you.”
“But if that was the case, and you had nothing to hold over her, how did you get her to release me?”
“I did what I had to do.” His face took on a shuttered look. “There is no point in discussing it further.”
He took a deep breath. “When we reach London, I shall offer you any assistance you might accept from me so that you may return to living out your life in whatever manner you see fit. You need not tolerate my presence any longer. And until then, you may rest assured that I will not burden you with any further expression of those sentiments you can have no pleasure in hearing.”
She nodded, wordlessly. He was right. She could not wish to hear him repeat his proposal, not when she had not the courage to commit herself to spending her life with him. Were he to ask again, she must offer him only a second humiliating rejection. So she bit her lip to keep herself from making any reply and looked down into her lap, though she still felt his warm brown eyes fixed on her. Indeed, such was the intensity of his gaze, she would have almost thought he was waiting for her answer to the proposal he had just promised not to renew.
She sank more deeply into the rich fur, hiding herself in the shadow of the carriage as they rode on. Edward again was the first to break the silence. “I shall not raise this subject again, Eliza, but my honor requires that, as difficult as it might be, I must remind you one last time that if there should, indeed, be some consequence of the night we shared together—”
“You will open your purse generously.”
A look of what might have been pain flitted across his face. “No, I will not.”
Shock echoed through Eliza. Had her rejection angered him that much? Did he hate her now as he had once hated Estella? She fought to let none of her perturbation show and said coldly, “I took full responsibility for what I did that night. I was no longer the innocent I was when I first met you. I knew what might result from our encounter and chose to engage in it anyway. I have no intention of becoming a burden to you.”
“You misunderstand me,” he said quietly. “You could never become a burden to me. I mean only to say, that should you be carrying our child, I shall insist you marry me. No child of mine will grow up with the shame of bastardy. And though I know how much you wish to avoid a fate like your mother’s, I trust I have proved to you that I am not like your father. Should our marriage become necessary I would do what I could to ensure you would have no cause for regret. But otherwise, I will make no claim on you. You may live the life you choose. And it is possible you are right in thinking that the quicker you resume your life without me, the better off we will both be.”
She felt a swift stab of loss at his words, for she knew, as he could not, that there would be no child. This very morning her courses had begun. So they would go to London and there they would separate forever. She would be left with her memories of the few glittering days that had transformed her life an
d with the haunting vision of his face as it appeared to her now in the faltering twilight, his pale lashes lowered as he struggled to reassume the ironic mask that was Lord Lightning’s, the mask that protected Edward Neville from feeling any pain.
She wished she, too, had some way of damping down the pain she felt right now, but she didn’t. How unfair it was to feel so much love for him, when it was so wrong and dangerous to feel it. When to give in to it would be to bind her to him for life. The price was too high. So she only murmured, “Thank you, Your Lordship,” and nestled more deeply into the reassuring warmth of the fur.
Her aunt had said, “There are some things in life we are not meant to know,” but her aunt had not spoken of the suffering caused by that uncertainty.
At length they arrived at his mother’s house. It reared up in the night, the black-and-white of its façade rippling in the shadows. “Are you warm enough?” he asked. “I shall leave you here briefly while I collect my things. You can have no wish to come inside.”
“Of course. I am fine.”
She thought for a moment he was going to kiss her, but it was just her imagination, for he only let himself out of the carriage and left her alone to her thoughts. She snuggled deeper into the wrap, feeling how rattled she was, still, by the events of the day, and grateful to have a chance to be alone.
But she was to have no chance to nap. No sooner had she settled back into the corner of the carriage, than the door opened again. It was one of Lady Hartwood’s footmen.
“Lady Hartwood requests a few moments of your time, within, miss.”
Eliza shivered. She had no desire to see the woman whose malice had put her into prison.
“Her Ladyship will brook no refusal,” the footman added. “She demands to speak with you.”
She thought of refusing whatever Her Ladyship might command, but she had not the energy for it. There was nothing to fear in giving Lady Hartwood what she asked for. It was most likely that having had her revenge, she now wished only to gloat. Well, let her. It did not matter. In another day Eliza would be back in London, on her own, and there was little possibility she would ever see Lord Lightning—or his mother—again. And even if his mother intended to do her more mischief, Edward would be there to protect her. So steeling herself for a final, unpleasant interview, Eliza slowly extricated herself from the carriage and let the footman lead her into the house.
Lady Hartwood awaited her in the parlor, seated in her customary position in her chair. At Eliza’s entrance, she dropped the embroidery she had been working on and sat up straight. Her heavy corset creaked. She favored Eliza with the sort of look she would have given a chambermaid found stealing and said, “Well, you have come out of this tawdry affair in far better shape than you deserve to. You should know you have me to thank for saving you. I have called you in to allow you to express your gratitude. Where is your curtsey, woman? Do you know nothing of how you should behave before your betters?”
Eliza stood up straighter. She would not be cowed. “I have already bestowed my gratitude where it belongs, Your Ladyship, on your son. It was he who saved me, not you.”
“Little fool. I imagine you think he did so because he loves you.”
“I think no such thing. He is a man of honor and he acted honorably.”
“The word honor comes strangely from the mouth of a creature like you.” Lady Hartwood sniffed. “If my son told you he rescued you out of love, you would be a simpleton to believe him. He has merely become enraptured with the idea of himself as a selfless lover. It is a novel sensation. It will pass.”
Despite herself, Eliza shivered. Lady Hartwood still had the knack of putting words around her own, darkest fears.
Then Lady Hartwood leaned forward and let her voice drop. “Did my son tell you how much I extracted from him in return for your freedom?”
“He said nothing about it.” But even as Eliza spoke she wondered what Lady Hartwood could be alluding to.
“How very nobly he is acting,” Her Ladyship sneered. “It must be yet another new sensation for him. But I should have thought he would have told you how much he paid, if for no other reason than to ensure you remained with him until he was ready to send you away. He hinted you were losing your enthusiasm for his attentions and there is nothing he would hate more than to be rejected before he had the opportunity to reject.”
The import of what Lady Hartwood had just told her only now struck home. “Lord Hartwood paid you to have me freed?”
“A great deal. It was very careless of him to brag about his wealth to me.”
Lady Hartwood picked up her embroidery and took a stitch before continuing, “There was no other inducement he could have given to make me relent. As much as I would have liked to see you hang, I prefer to live out the rest of my life in comfort. The arrangement I forced him to make will make that possible. That was the price of your freedom, missy. When he abandons you, you may console yourself that no doxy of his has ever before cost him what you have.”
Eliza turned away from her tormentor. To think that Edward had made a sacrifice like that for her and had said not a word about it, even after the way she had reproached him with his selfishness in the gaol. She felt her heart open. That was not the act of a resentful soul.
She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she wheeled around to confront Lady Hartwood. “You have placed me forever in your son’s debt, for there is no way I can ever repay him. But I shall cherish the memory of his selfless act for the rest of my life—for it was selfless indeed. You are wrong in thinking he would use his generosity to force me to stay with him against my will. He said nothing of it, nor did he attempt to use it to compel me to do anything I knew would not be prudent. We shall separate as planned on our return to London.”
A look of satisfaction swept over Lady Hartwood’s features. “Then have you learned, at last, what it means to love a man like Edward?” she asked. “He told me he offered for you and you refused him. Is this true?”
“It is.”
“Did you finally come to understand, before it was too late, that my son is a man who cannot love?”
Eliza said nothing.
“Come, girl. I wish to know your answer. You defied me once and mouthed a bunch of twaddle about him. But clearly you thought better of it, if you turned down his offer of marriage. Admit it. You learned at last that he is a cold, cruel man who cannot love.”
“No. I did not. Your son is passionate and warm, and he would love me if I would let him. It is my own character I’ve learned to understand better, not his. Though I love him with all my heart, I am a coward. I urged him to believe he could love, but when he tried to live up to my urgings, I had not the courage to trust he would succeed.”
Lady Hartwood sneered. “Why should you trust him when all he has done is seduce you with his charm as he has so many others? His father was just like him, you know. So handsome. So deft with words. He recited poetry to me and it came alive, and I wished nothing but to be in his arms. Nothing else mattered to me then. But it did matter later, oh how it mattered!”
Anger surged within Eliza. “He’s not like his father at all, though you did everything you could to make him believe he must grow up to be just such a libertine. It’s a wonder there’s any goodness left in him. But there is. He is a kind and loving man, despite what he believes he must be because of his father.”
A look of scorn twisted Lady Hartwood’s face. “He knows nothing about his father,” she said with contempt.
A tall spare form loomed in the doorway. “You’re wrong, Mother.” Edward pressed forward. “I know all about my father. My real father.”
“Mrs. Atwater told you?” She looked horrified.
“She didn’t mean to, but she let something slip and from there it was not hard to winkle out the rest.”
“What are you talking about?” Eliza demanded.
Edward took off his hat and let his pale curls spill out to frame his face. “You were so right,
Eliza, when you insisted that Lady Hartwood was indeed my mother. Your charts told you the truth. And you were right, too, when you told me there was some mystery surrounding my birth which could explain my mother’s implacable hatred for me.”
Lady Hartwood sprang up from her seat. “Edward. Not in front of a stranger!”
“Eliza is hardly a stranger. She suffered greatly because I didn’t know the truth about my birth. I owe her an explanation, and so do you. And besides, without her prodding I should never have discovered that truth.”
He turned back to Eliza. His deep brown eyes met hers and she saw within their depths a joy she had never seen in them before. Had he overheard her protest her love for him? The thought terrified her even as she felt her heart swell with the hope that he had learned, at last, the truth of those feelings she had not had the courage to reveal to him.
Trying to keep her voice from trembling, she asked, “What did you learn, Edward, that fills you with such joy?”
He took a step toward her and took her hand. At his touch she felt a burst of warmth flow into her heart. He squeezed her palm gently, just once, then again met her eyes. “I hardly know how to tell you, Eliza,” he said. “But I think you of all people will understand what it means to me. You see, you were right about what you told me you read in my nativity. I am indeed my mother’s son, but to my great amazement and relief, I find, after all, I’m not the son of the man I thought to be my father. I’m not Black Neville’s son.”
It took a moment for the full meaning of his words to sink in. Then her mouth dropped open. But she had no time to reply, for Lady Hartwood had risen out of her chair and was leaning heavily on her cane, her eyes wild. “Edward, consider what you do! Would you put us both in her power? You may delight in destroying my reputation, but consider what such a revelation means for your own.” She sank back into her chair, her breast heaving. Edward made no reply but merely waited patiently as his mother regained control of herself.
