by Mary Balogh
Nancy resumed her seat when John looked at her before accepting the invitation. She considered picking up her embroidery again so that she would have something at which to direct her attention. But she was afraid that her hands would not be steady enough.
“Ah, yes, the appointment,” John said. “Elizabeth is in quite a flutter about it. We have been careful to keep it from our father. He would not approve, Christopher. You must know that.”
“I would like to see him try to keep me from my own daughter,” Christopher said. Nancy watched his hands closing into fists at his sides.
“So you found out at last,” John said. “It was inevitable, of course. I said that right from the start, when it was decided to keep it as the great family secret. Elizabeth did not have much say in that decision, by the way. Other people made her decisions for her in those days. I am happy to see that she has changed. Perhaps you should be aware of that if you did not notice it last night, Christopher. If you decide to fight her on any issue, you may find that you have a fierce opponent.”
Christopher said nothing.
“When did you come back to England?” John asked.
“A month ago,” Christopher said. “I have been at Penhallow.”
“And learned of the existence of a daughter,” John said. “Is that what brought you to London?”
“Yes,” Christopher said.
“Well”—John shrugged—“Elizabeth is bound and determined that this afternoon’s encounter will be the only one.”
He did not know, Nancy thought. Elizabeth and Martin had kept the secret. She could understand why Elizabeth had done so. But Martin? She would have expected him to protect his stepsister by getting rid of Christopher in the obvious way. Of course, Elizabeth’s reputation could suffer if the truth came out, and Nancy had no doubt that Elizabeth was the most important person in the world to Martin.
John was looking at her. Nancy resisted the impulse to clench her hands in her lap.
“I came to ask you how you enjoyed last evening’s ball,” he said to her.
“I enjoyed it very well, thank you,” she said.
“And to ask you if you would care for a walk in the park,” he said. “It is a beautiful afternoon. More like June or July than May.” His eyes were smiling, but there was a certain wariness in his expression. He was uncertain of himself, Nancy realized.
Her mind reached frantically for an excuse. But Christopher was going out and there was no way of pretending that she was otherwise engaged. There was no excuse to be made, only a bald refusal. How could she give that?
“Thank you,” she said. “That would be pleasant.”
His eyes told her that he understood that she meant just the opposite. They hardened for a moment before he smiled and got to his feet.
She got up too. “I’ll fetch my bonnet,” she said.
He was not dressed in uniform today. He looked even more magnificent today, she thought, because today one saw the man himself and not just the splendor of a dress uniform. He was ten times more attractive than the uniform. The thought did strange things to her stomach.
She would give a fortune, she thought, if only she could think of some reason for staying in her room at the Pulteney instead of going out walking with him.
They were walking in the park, green lawns stretching to either side of them, green trees sheltering them from the noisy bustling world of London beyond, blue sky and warm sunshine overhead.
He was mad, John thought as he made labored conversation with his companion. She had made it quite clear the evening before that she did not wish to be near him, and it had never been his way to press his attentions where they were not welcome. He was mad to have invited one of the few women not to be attracted to him to walk with him. But the night before had not been a success. The girl had been pretty enough and lively enough and had taught him a few interesting new tricks. He had got his money’s worth and more. But he had woken up this morning feeling that he was suffering from a hangover even though he had scarcely drunk the night before. He had felt dissatisfied and determined that he would never again yield to the temptation to go whoring. He would choose a wife, or failing that, set up a regular mistress.
He had felt resentful of Nancy. And he had felt the need to see her again, to put a definite end to something that had never ended. Though what he meant by that he did not know. He had asked her to marry him and she had said no. What could be a more definitive ending than that?
“Have you found it difficult returning to London after so long?” he asked her, changing the subject on which they had been talking drearily for several minutes. “Penhallow is rather remote, is it not?”
“Yes,” she said. “I came to be with Christopher. I was afraid he would get himself into trouble.”
“He was angry with Elizabeth?” he asked. “I can hardly blame him.”
“He was overwhelmed with the knowledge that he has a daughter,” she said.
“Was he?” He looked down at her and was struck, as he always was, by her dark, vivid beauty and her full, quite voluptuous figure. The woman could have the whole male world at her feet if she so chose. Perhaps she did not realize that. “You have been alone at Penhallow since your father died?”
“Yes,” she said. “It took a long time for a letter to reach Christopher and for him to come home.”
“I thought you loved me, Nancy,” he said abruptly, knowing that he should leave the past alone, that it was unmannerly not to do so.
She stiffened and moved a little farther from his side, though her arm was still resting lightly on his. “That was a long time ago,” she said. “We were children.”
“I was twenty-three and you were twenty,” he said. “Hardly children, Nancy. You were already a little past the usual age for a come-out. And a little past the usual age for marriage.”
She seemed not to be able to find words with which to answer him. She shrugged her shoulders, obviously in some distress. If he were a gentleman, he would start talking about something else again.
“You encouraged me,” he said. “I did not imagine that. You participated in that kiss as eagerly as I did. Indeed it was a rather improper kiss for a couple who did not after all become betrothed the next day.”
“Please,” she said, “I do not want to talk about this. It is over, John. It is the distant past.”
“Just as it is over between Christopher and Elizabeth?” he said. “Sometimes I think there must have been some kind of curse on our two families when they tried to intermarry. Have you ever known another couple to divorce, Nancy? And on really such slight grounds? Adultery! Parliament would not have time to conduct its day-to-day business if it had to hear all such cases.”
“He did not commit adultery,” Nancy said. “I would believe it of any man before I would believe it of him. It was a trumped-up charge. Someone meant him mischief. Someone wanted to spoil his marriage. I wonder if whoever it was succeeded even better than he expected.”
“Probably,” he said. “And what happened between us, Nancy? Someone else’s mischief was at work against us too?”
She turned her face sharply away and he realized in some shock that he had hit on a raw nerve.
“Was there someone else?” he asked.
“No.” She had stopped walking and withdrawn her arm from his. “I want to go back to the Pulteney, John. Please?”
“What was it, Nancy?” he asked quietly, looking intently into her face. But her expression made him instantly contrite. There was agony there. “No, it’s all right. I’ll take you back. You gave me your answer a long time ago. Forgive me for being less than a gentleman.”
But she was biting her lip and looking back into his eyes. “It was not you, John,” she said. “It was nothing to do with you. I had an unpleasant—experience. It happened before—before I met you. I thought it did not matter. I thought—when we became friends—when you k-kissed me that it would be all right. But it was not. I c-couldn’t—” She shrugged again
.
He did not realize he was gripping her upper arm until he saw his hand there. His face felt cold as if all the blood had drained from it. “Someone else had—touched you?” he said.
She pulled her arm free and began to walk back the way they had come. “No!” she said. “Nothing like that. It was not—Oh, please.”
They walked side by side, not touching, not talking for a few minutes. She broke the silence at last, her voice calm again.
“It was not you, John,” she said. “I was very fond of you. I think I hurt you. I did not realize that. I thought you would have forgotten all about it very quickly. You are so very—oh, so very attractive. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, Nancy,” he said, “for upsetting you again. I thought I had forgotten about it too until I saw you last evening. If I thought of you at all, I suppose I imagined you with a husband and family.”
They walked on again in silence. He had not realized they had come so far into the park.
“Do we say good-bye now when we reach the Pulteney?” he asked. “Do we try to avoid each other for the rest of the time we are both in London?”
“I suppose so,” she said after a while.
“I don’t want to,” he said. “I want to see you again. Can we forget about the past and pretend we are new and friendly acquaintances? Will you come for a drive to Kew Gardens with me? Tomorrow perhaps?”
She directed her gaze to the ground in front of them for a while. “John,” she said finally, “I cannot ever—I cannot be with a man. I don’t want to get into a situation in which I will have to reject you again. Is it conceited of me to think that is possible?”
“We will be friends,” he said. “Kew Gardens tomorrow?”
“I don’t know what Christopher’s plans will be,” she said. “But yes. Tomorrow, John. It will be pleasant.”
He smiled at her. “Take my arm,” he said, offering it to her. “I will find it easier to match my step to yours.” She took it and they walked the rest of the way in silence. But it was a more comfortable silence than it had been.
One thought bothered him, though. If she had had some unpleasant encounter with a man before she met him and if that were sufficient to draw that look of horror and revulsion on the evening when he had offered her marriage; and if it had kept her from marrying anyone else ever since and had caused her to say, as she just had, that she could never be with a man—then how had she been able to participate in that kiss they had shared? It had been more than a meeting of lips. His hands had roamed over her, and he had held her body close against his. Their mouths had shared desire.
She must have been raped, he thought, that coldness in his head again making him feel almost that he would faint. It was the only cause that could draw such a violent and long-term reaction. But before she met him? He did not think so. It was something that had happened after their kiss—but before he had asked her to marry him. There had been only one day separating those two events. She had been raped during that twenty-four hour period? But she had been staying at Kingston. The servants? His mind ran over all the likely possibilities. But there did not seem to be many, if any. The guests? There had been only a few. He thought of each of the men in turn, married as well as single. His father? Martin? Martin had been just a boy. The likelihood that one of them had done that to her was like a nightmare that he would far prefer not to face.
But it had to have happened during the night following their kiss or during the next day, before he had made her his offer and tried to touch her again.
He escorted her to the outer door of her suite at the Pulteney and smiled at her. “I shall look forward to tomorrow, Nancy,” he said. “I am glad we can be friends again.”
“So am I.” She smiled back. “Thank you for the walk, John.”
He turned away without touching her. He was fully aware that it was already too late for simple friendship between them. Seven years too late.
There were two ladies strolling beside the Serpentine, one of middle years, the other elderly. They looked like mother and daughter. There was a youngish woman, probably a nurse or perhaps a governess, watching three children who played noisily at the water’s edge. A gentleman, or perhaps a businessman or a lawyer, hurried along the path as if he had only his destination in mind and did not even notice the beauty of his surroundings.
They were not going to come, Christopher thought. She had either deceived him the evening before or else had changed her mind. Perhaps Martin had persuaded her not to come. Perhaps the duke had discovered that he was in town and had forbidden her to leave the house on Grosvenor Square. They were not coming. He felt a mingling of panic and despair.
And then he saw her. Elizabeth, that was. Someone was beside her, holding her hand, but for some strange reason he could not bring himself to look. He kept his eyes on Elizabeth. She had seen him, but she had looked away again and was listening with tense, unsmiling face to the child who was skipping along at her side and prattling. He could see that with his peripheral vision, though he did not look directly.
She was wearing a light green muslin dress, not one she had had with her at Penhallow, and a wide-brimmed straw bonnet. She looked like a girl still, he thought, with her slender, shapely figure. She had come. He wondered if she had done so because he had almost threatened her or because she had wanted to. If she had said nothing to Nancy when she was leaving Penhallow, he would still not know of the child’s existence. Had she spoken deliberately then? Or had she been so upset that she had not known what she was saying?
Had she wanted him to know that they had a child?
His heart felt like a heavy hammer beating in his chest.
Elizabeth looked up, startled, when they drew close to each other. “Oh, Lord Trevelyan,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “Are you out for a walk too? Isn’t it a lovely afternoon?”
“Hello, Elizabeth,” he said. He was terrified to take his eyes from her face. The child at her side had stopped skipping.
“This is a friend of mine, sweetheart,” she said in that bright and brittle voice that was so unlike her usual way of speaking. She smiled quickly down at the child. “The Earl of Trevelyan. This is Christina, my lord. My daughter.”
It took almost a physical effort to move his gaze downward and across. She was looking back at him from beneath the brim of a bonnet like her mother’s with wide and candid blue eyes. Her face was thin, a little pale, not very pretty. A few dark curls tumbled over her forehead from beneath the bonnet. He felt as if he had reverted suddenly to childhood. She was Nancy all over again, except that Nancy’s eyes were green.
“Christina,” he said. “You have a name like mine. I am Christopher.”
His daughter stared at him for a few moments before looking up at her mother. “Papa was Christopher,” she half whispered.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
Papa! He felt as if a knife had been plunged into his heart and twisted. Elizabeth had told the child something about him and had called him papa.
And so there she was, he thought, his daughter. His own flesh and blood. Product of his own seed. She had grown inside Elizabeth’s body. He had put her there. With love. He had loved his wife and she had conceived Christina.
He had been staring at her silently. She moved closer to her mother and rested one cheek against Elizabeth’s leg. She still watched him with steady eyes.
What did one say to a daughter one was meeting for the first time when she was six? “I have been wanting to meet you since coming to London last week,” he said. “Your mother and I used to be particular friends, Christina.”
She half turned her face into her mother’s skirts and regarded him from one eye.
“Whom do you look like?” he asked. “You certainly do not have your mama’s coloring.”
“I look like Papa,” she said into Elizabeth’s skirts. “I have Papa’s blue eyes. Don’t I, Mama?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“May I walk with you?” he a
sked. “It is so summery in the park this afternoon, is it not?”
He looked up at Elizabeth. Her face had lost all color. She stared at him intently.
“We must not keep you, my lord,” she said. “You must be busy.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Only busy hoping I would meet someone I know to share the afternoon with me. May I walk with you, Christina?”
The child nodded against her mother’s leg and looked up at her.
And so they turned and walked, he and Elizabeth pale and silent, Christina between them, holding to Elizabeth’s hand and stealing glances at him once in a while. It was a disaster, he thought. He had expected some huge emotional moment, and there had been nothing but awkward silences and stilted talk. He was a stranger to his daughter. She kept very close to her mother’s side and left a noticeable gap between herself and him. She had not spoken a word beyond answering his questions.
A man and woman were walking toward them, their arms entwined, a small child up on one shoulder of the man, clinging to his wildly curly hair. The man wore no hat. The woman was carrying it in her free hand. All three of them were laughing and watching the swans on the Serpentine.
Christopher looked across at the tense pale face of his former wife and down at the shy face of his child. He noted again the distance between them.
“Would you like to ride up on my shoulders?” he asked his daughter. But he wished he could recall the words. She drew closer to Elizabeth and shook her head slightly. He looked ahead and tried not to feel hurt. Perhaps it was just that she felt herself too big for such a thing.
“Yes,” a little voice said suddenly. “Yes, please, sir. May I, Mama?”
His eyes locked with Elizabeth’s. Please, he begged her silently.
“Of course,” she said, “if Lord Trevelyan is wiling.”
He stooped down and picked up the child and settled her on one shoulder. She was lighter than a feather. She giggled suddenly and he felt one warm little hand circle around the back of his neck and come to rest over his ear. “Don’t drop me,” she said.
