The Countess

by Catherine Coulter

  I began rhythmically petting George, who had pressed himself hard against my chest. I said to my husband, “What did he do to you that you have hurt him? That you lured him to England and shot him and made him a prisoner?”

  Lawrence laughed. “Well, Jameson, do you want to tell her of your despicable lechery or shall I?”

  My father said, “It does not concern her, Lyndhurst. Leave it between us, where it belongs.”

  “I don’t think so, Jameson. After all, it was only through using her as delicious bait that I could get to you. Even then I wondered if you would come, if you had any feeling at all for her. How I prayed that you did. I decided the best way to get you back, probably the only sure way, was to marry her. Then you would accept that she was completely in my power. But I tell you, when I sent the announcements to every newspaper I could think of, I was praying that you would discover what I had done soon. If you had not, then I would have been stuck with her until I could think of something else. Ah, but you did read my beautifully phrased wedding announcement. You wrote her that letter to warn her, and then you came, her white knight to rescue her. But, of course, it didn’t matter. I controlled everything. Yes, everything I planned has worked out perfectly. You, her, even my miserable nephew.

  “Ah, my dear nephew John. Now, that was a treat. I watched him fall in love with her. Indeed, I believe my poor nephew fell in love with her even before I had arrived in London to woo her. But she was so damaged by you, made so wary of men by the example of your blatant lechery, that she saw my nephew as nothing more than a danger to her. When he smiled at her, even spoke to her, I’ll wager she was terrified of him.

  “I hadn’t realized just how badly you had scarred her until I saw that my nephew did love her, that he had probably tried to attach her when he’d been in London. He is a soldier, well made, a handsome young man, and I, I had to admit, was older. Yet she chose me over him. He had failed with her. And I wondered why. Of course it was obvious to anyone who simply asked a few discreet questions. Of course, I knew exactly who to ask. And I knew for certain then that she was afraid of a young man because of what she had seen you do.”

  I turned slowly to look at him. All his words flowed over me and again, I saw fully my own blindness, my own inability to deal with what was real in my life and what wasn’t real, what had haunted me, twisted me. He had known that John loved me? Ah, but what had he done to John? I said, “What do you mean you controlled John?”

  He smiled down at me. He looked ready to rub his hands together, he was so pleased with himself. “I took care of John.”

  “He isn’t at a Christmas house party with Lady Elizabeth, is he? That is why Tempest was in the stable. You have done something to him. My God, you killed him, didn’t you? You murdered your own flesh and blood.”

  Chapter Thirty

  That monster actually laughed. “Not yet. But soon, my dear, soon.”

  Something broke deep inside me, broke completely, irrevocably. I dropped George to the floor and lunged at my husband. I ripped off my gloves and went for his eyes, but he was simply too tall and I couldn’t reach that far. I dug my fingernails into his cheeks. I felt his flesh shred, felt the wetness of his blood on my fingers. “Where is John, damn you? Where?”

  He grabbed my wrists even as he yelled in pain. I had hurt him badly. It felt very good. I was panting hard, kicking at him, but my cloak wouldn’t allow me to get in the vicious blows I wanted. Lawrence said to Flynt, “For God’s sake, go get Major Lyndhurst from the shed. Leave Boynton there. Let the little bitch see that I haven’t yet killed him. Also, why should he miss this wonderful exhibition? It is, after all, the conclusion to all my well-executed plans.

  “Now, you will hold still, madam, or I will kill him and then I will kill that damned dog.”

  He released me and touched a handkerchief to his cheeks. “You will pay for that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You already told me that I would pay for all of it.”

  I leaned down and picked up George. I didn’t say another word, just stood there, shaking with bone-deep rage, with frustration, looking at my father. There was only the deep harsh breathing of the men in the small cottage. I didn’t think I was breathing. I was just standing there, frozen, Lawrence’s blood on my hands, beneath my fingernails. My father lay still, making no sound at all. The fire hissed, sparks flying upward.

  The cottage door opened again. I whirled around to see Flynt shove John into the room. His hands were tied behind his back. He was wearing only a white shirt, breeches, and his boots. He had to be freezing. The bastards. There were bruises on his face. He looked thinner, haggard. Black whiskers covered his cheeks. How long had they kept him here? But I knew. They had held him and Boynton for two days.

  I wanted to run to him, but I knew better. I said very calmly, very slowly, holding myself perfectly still, “Are you all right, John?”

  Amazingly, he smiled at me, his teeth very white in the dim light of the cottage. “I’m just fine, Andy. Just a bit on the cold side, but I’ll survive. Boynton will survive, too. I wondered how long it would take for him to bring you here. I knew he would. I’m sorry I could not stop him. I tried, but I was just too late. He was waiting for me, his bully boys with him. Now, I believe that is your father lying on that bed?”

  “Yes.” George began to bark wildly. “No,” I said, “John cannot hold you now. Remember Brantley’s training. Just be patient, George.”

  Lawrence said, “If it makes your life mean a bit more, John, let me tell you that the little bitch here loves you. As much as you love her? That I don’t know. But she tried to kill me when she heard I had taken you. Just look at what she did to my face.”

  “I wish she had managed to do more than just scratch you,” John said. He looked at me, smiling very widely now. “Do you love me more than I love you, Andy? Do you think that is possible?”

  I just stood there, frantically petting George’s topknot.

  “No,” I said. “It is not possible.”

  He gave me a blazing smile then, but said nothing.

  “She is only a small girl,” Lawrence said, frowning at me, sounding a bit bewildered. “She managed to tear my skin with her fingernails. Ah, you can be certain that she will pay fully for that.”

  And I thought yet again of my derringer, pressed against my stomach. I wanted to shoot him so badly, I was shaking with it. I said to my husband, “You have gathered all your players. You used me as bait to get to my father. You now have both of us. You have even brought your own flesh and blood here. Don’t John and I have a right to know what this is all about now?” Surely Lawrence wouldn’t kill his own nephew, his heir? Would he? No, it was too monstrous. That left my father and me.

  “Well? Won’t one of you tell me? Tell John?”

  My father winced at the pain in his shoulder, then looked down at his hands. When he finally lifted his head, he looked directly at me, and I would have had to be blind not to see the absolute despair in his eyes.

  He looked just beyond me, into the past, I thought. He said, “It was such a long time ago—” He broke off, shaken by a spasm of coughing. The room was still except for his racking cough.

  He wiped his sleeve across his mouth, and then, slowly, he said, “I met Lady Caroline in Paris. She was at the time Lyndhurst’s second wife.”

  Of course. Caroline. I suppose that I should have figured it out, but I hadn’t. So obvious, really. My father liked women, they probably flocked to him, and he used them. Why not Caroline? My mouth was dry, so dry that I could hardly breathe. I petted George and felt John standing not three feet behind me, silent, but I knew he was thinking, trying to assess what he could do to save us.

  “We became lovers. Andrea, listen to me. I loved her, and she loved me. Never have I loved a woman as I loved Caroline. You must try to understand that I could not help myself, nor could she. You must try to forgive me.”

  “Continue, Jameson,” Lawrence said. “It is time she knew the whole tr
uth about her father.”

  “I already know the whole truth,” I said, but they both ignored me.

  “Very well,” my father said. “You shall hear it all. Lady Caroline became with child. I, of course, was married to your mother. Finally, both of us realized there was no choice. She would simply have to pass the child off as Lyndhurst’s. It was then that she told me she had been traveling—without her husband—for nearly a month. She wasn’t certain she could pass the child off as his, but she knew she had to try. What was a month, after all? Babes were born before their times quite often. But, still, we had to part. Both of us felt great despair.”

  I said, “Ah, yes, that sounds vastly romantic, Father. You killed Lady Caroline, just as you killed my mother, just as you killed Molly, the maid. Your excuses are pathetic, sir. Your lust is unspeakable.”

  “Who is Molly?”

  I closed my eyes. “Dear God, you don’t even remember her, do you? She was a maid in our household. She was the downstairs maid. You got her pregnant, and she died birthing your child, and you just walked away, damn you. You just left, probably whistling, probably on the hunt for your next conquest. She meant nothing to you. And my mother knew, she knew about Molly, all about your other women. There were so many, how could she not know? I remember her pleading with you, tears streaming down her face, her sobs that should have stopped you, yet there was nothing but your indifference.”

  “Andrea, for God’s sake, you were only a child. You could not possibly have understood. You saw everything through a child’s eyes. That is never what is real, what is true. Listen to me. Your mother—she tended toward hysteria, surely you realize that now. She saw everything as a slight to her, even the smallest word would make her cry and scream and lose her head completely. Beyond that, she was a cold woman. Oh, yes, she was beautiful, but she was cold. She didn’t want me as a man needs to have a woman want him. She didn’t want me to touch her, but more than that, she didn’t want me to have any other woman.

  “I was not a monk. I had to have companionship, share desire and passion with someone who cared about me. Your mother didn’t. I was nothing more than a possession to her. I tell you, I had no choice but to find a small moment of pleasure, of peace, with other women. She gave me no other choice. She drove me away from her.”

  I said very calmly, looking directly at him, directly at his beautiful mouth that had just spouted so many lies about my mother, “All of what you said, it is nothing more than your weak excuses to justify what you did, and you know it. My mother loved you with all her heart. You hurt her, continually, without caring that you did. She told me. I was only a child, yet I actually held her while she cried whenever you went off to be with another woman. She was destroyed by your blatant disregard of her. You ended up killing her with your indifference. You were her life, yet she was nothing at all to you. You are as much of a monster as this ridiculous old man here.”

  To my surprise, he nodded. “You are right about a lot of it. I am trying to excuse myself.”

  Lawrence said, “You wondered, did you not, why he did not write you exactly why he was warning you to leave Devbridge Manor? Can you imagine him actually writing to you that he had taken another man’s wife, gotten her with child, and then returned her to her husband? Can you ever think he would condemn himself like that? He didn’t have the guts to write you the truth. Surely you see that now.”

  Yes, I did see it now. I heard John behind me. What was he thinking? There was dead silence in the room. I looked at my father, saw the red blood staining his once-white shirt. I saw the nearly uncontrollable pain in him, from the wound in his shoulder to the wounds I was inflicting on him. Damn him to hell, he deserved nothing from me, nothing but my contempt, my hatred. I stood rigid, lost for a long moment in the past, my mother’s wan, tearful face passing before my eyes. Ten years ago—my mother was dead, buried, gone. Then, quite suddenly, a door closed in my mind. The past lay behind that door. There were no shadows, no bitter images or memories to slither through. No, there was nothing but clarity now. I felt as if I had just been lifted out of a pit. I felt light engulf me. I felt free. I felt whole. I looked into those brilliant blue eyes of his, the color, the shape, just like mine, and said, “Why did you leave me? Mother died, and I never saw you again. Why did you leave me alone?”

  “Your grandfather gave me no choice. He had power, enough power to ensure that I could not come near you.” He added in a voice full of bitterness and regret, “I was forced to leave, my child. Your grandfather would not allow me near you. I would have tried to see you after your grandfather’s death, but a dear friend of mine was dying, and I could not leave her.”

  “Did you kill her, too, Jameson?”

  “No, you bastard, I did not.” He looked directly at me again. “You believe I wanted never to see you again, my only child? Oh, no, Andrea, I loved you. Not seeing you left emptiness in my heart.”

  I looked at this man who was my father, not all that good and honorable a man perhaps, not all that steady and reliable a man, but he was still my father, and he had tried to save me. He had stayed with a dying friend. I stretched out my hand toward him. I wanted to cry and hug him so tightly I would feel the essence of him deep inside me. I whispered, “Did you come to save me, Father?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.” He rose slowly to his feet. None of the men stopped him. He walked to me and took my hand in both of his. He petted George. George licked his hand. He smiled down at me. “You are still small. I wondered how tall you would grow.” He lightly touched his fingers to my hair. “The color is incredible—so many different brilliant shades, not just the red or brown of mine. You are beautiful, Andrea. And I imagine that you are brave as well. You have become an admirable woman.”

  Lawrence did nothing at all, just stood there, watching us.

  I saw my father weave where he stood. I walked with him back to that narrow bed and helped him sit down. “Tell me the rest now, Father. It seems that all three of us are in this situation together. You owe it to me, to John. I must know the rest.”

  “There is not much more, Andrea. Caroline left Paris to return to Lyndhurst. She didn’t want to leave me, but there was simply no other choice for either of us. Her family wouldn’t have helped her, she knew that. She was so beside herself at one point that she tried to abort the child, but it didn’t work.

  “She wrote to tell me that Lyndhurst had taken her back immediately. I received one more letter from her that said he did not seem to suspect at all that the child wasn’t his. I was terribly sad, but relieved. I wanted Caroline to be safe, to find happiness, and I knew she wanted the child, our child.

  “Then I heard that Lyndhurst was spreading the story that his wife was mad. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew she was pregnant with another man’s child. Perhaps he even knew it was me. It is my belief that after the child was born, he murdered Caroline.”

  “Yes, I guessed that he had,” I said. I heard John suck in his breath behind me.

  Lawrence said, “I dislike John having to hear these accusations, and that is all they are, base accusations. As to your tawdry affaire with my wife, once she told me she was with child, I knew what had happened. It didn’t take me long to find out the name of her lover.

  “Her attempts at concealment, at perfidy, amused me. Actually, there was never any question at all in my mind. You see, I was unable to impregnate a woman. My seed was lifeless. Thus, it was obvious that Caroline had betrayed me. I did nothing wrong. You are the dishonorable one here, Jameson, not I.”

  “No, sir,” John said. “I don’t believe they are simply accusations at all.” He sounded so calm, so in control that in the deepest part of me, a bit of hope sprang to life. “I had already come to the conclusion that only you could be behind all the incidents at the Manor—the old woman wearing that marvelous disguise, wielding my Moorish knife, that barbed wire beneath Small Bess’s saddle. They were clumsy, yet very effective. You scared both Andy and me witles
s. There was really no one else to be responsible, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

  “You are my uncle, after all. You took both Thomas and me into your home after our parents were killed. Despite our differences, I believed I was important to you, to our line. But you changed, didn’t you?

  “You did kill poor Caroline, didn’t you? She was unfaithful to you, and so you killed her.”

  “All my surprises,” Lawrence said, and there was petulance in his voice. “I believed that you were fooled, for the most part, John. I saw you take her side, saw the way you looked at her, saw the way she looked at you. I laughed to myself, John. I owned her, she was my life, my chattel, and you would never have her, never. Would you have tried to seduce her? Would you have eventually succeeded? Would she, like Caroline, have tried to foist her bastard off on me?”

  He was shaking his head and laughing a little. “Ah, but she is so very afraid of men and what men and women do together. I honestly don’t believe it ever would have happened, more’s the pity. You would have failed.

  “Yes, naturally I murdered the faithless bitch. Caroline was a whore, she betrayed me, she deserved to die. It was simple justice.”

  And there it was, all of it, the betrayal, the lies, and Caroline’s death. No, I thought, her murder, after she had birthed her child.

  “Father,” I said. “You have a daughter. Her name is Judith. I remember now that when I first saw her, I realized there was something familiar about her. It was myself that I was seeing in her. It was you. She is lovely. She is bright and kind. She will become a beautiful fine woman.”

  John said from behind me, “I, too, realize that Judith does resemble Andy. I felt a tug of familiarity after you came, Andy, and it is there, of course. All these years, Uncle, you have watched and seen the father in the child, only it was Jameson here, and not you.”