Page 15

by Mary Balogh

She continued to look straight upward. “Nothing really,” she said.

“Only suggestions of what might have been. Have we been together?”

Each question was like a knife stabbing into him. “No,” he said.

Her eyes closed at last and they were both silent for a long time.

“Why?” she asked at last.

“There were misunderstandings,” he said. “A dreadful quarrel. You would have none of me and I ran away.”

“To Canada,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And have just recently returned.”

“Yes.”

She laughed unexpectedly. “If I knew of all this happening to a stranger,” she said, “I would be horrified. But it happened to me. There are details missing, aren’t there? Many details. I don’t want to know them. Not now, Christopher. Just tell me one thing.” She breathed in slowly and exhaled raggedly. “Were we happy to be together again? In that carriage before I fell out, were we happy?”

He opened his mouth and drew breath, but he could not bring himself to answer.

She laughed again. “There is a whole story behind just that one incident, is there not?” she said. “How on earth did I come to fall out? Or was I pushed?”

She began to cry then. She continued to look upward and made no attempt to cover her face or to turn it away from him. He could see her tears in the dim light from the window.

“Elizabeth.” He set the backs of two fingers against her cheek, expecting her to flinch away or to slap at his hand. Instead she grasped his wrist and brought his palm against her mouth and held it there.

“I don’t want to know any more,” she said between sobs. “I don’t want to, Christopher.” She turned her head to stare at him. “I hate him. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I do. He is evil and he is going to tear us apart.”

He swallowed. “Nobody can tear us apart except ourselves,” he said. “I have ...”

But she surged over onto her side and pressed a hand over his mouth. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say any more. Please don’t.” She withdrew her hand. “I won’t stop loving you, Christopher. Don’t expect it of me. I just won’t.”

It was not a gentle lovemaking. Before he plunged into her, making her cry out with mingled pain and desire, they were both somehow naked and their mouths and tongues had ravished each other, and their hands had stroked, pressed, explored, aroused pain and pleasure. He pressed her downward, pounding into her, only half feeling her fingernails drawing blood from his back, only half hearing her cries and his own. He lay spent on her after it was over, heedless of the fact that his full weight was on her.

That could well be the last time, his mind told him as rationality began to return. And his throat and chest ached with unshed tears as he lifted himself off her. He held her wordlessly, not sleeping, knowing that she did not sleep either, until perhaps an hour later when they made love again tenderly, slowly, and wordlessly.

There really was nothing to say.

Though they both knew that soon there would be a great deal to be said.

After riding to and from London at a punishing pace, Macklin was back at Penhallow early enough that Martin could have pressed matters and taken Elizabeth aside during the evening. But he wanted her to be quite alone when she saw what he had to show her. She would need to be alone. This was one thing at least that he was going to have to explain to her quite openly and clearly. There was to be no beating about the bush on this matter. No more hints. Only the final denouement.

Christopher had left already when Martin went down to breakfast the next morning. He would be gone all day again, then. It was a relief to know that he had not changed his plans. Martin breakfasted with Elizabeth and Nancy. The latter treated him with cold civility.

As if he cared, Martin thought. Silly bitch—did she think he cared how she treated him?

Elizabeth was bright-eyed and slightly flushed. She knew that the crisis was coming that morning, Martin thought, and she believed that she would be rid of him once she had faced it. Poor Lizzie. She thought she would be glad to see the back of him. He ached for the suffering he was about to cause her. And he ached to have it over and out of the way so that he could begin to comfort her, so that he could take her away to safety again.

“I have promised to spend an hour with Martin, Nancy,” Elizabeth said, rising from the table when they had all finished eating. “Do you mind?”

“No, of course not,” Nancy said briskly. She smiled at Elizabeth and did not even look at Martin. “There are a few matters I need to attend to.”

Elizabeth faced him when they had left the breakfast room. “You wish to walk outside?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I think a private room would be best.”

He saw despair in her eyes when she nodded to him before turning to lead the way to the library. She knew it was the end of her little idyll, he thought, and his heart ached for her again.

“Your servant has returned?” she asked, turning to him as he closed the library doors behind him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well?” She had squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“It is a small something I have to show you,” he said, drawing a package out of an inner pocket of his coat and slowly removing the silk wrapping.

She watched without moving. Her hands clasped in front of her were white-knuckled.

“It is a portrait,” he said. “A miniature, Lizzie. And a very good likeness. We were all agreed on that when it was painted at Christinas time.”

From across the distance between them she looked at the picture in his hands. Her face was expressionless, stony almost.

He took several steps toward her and turned the little framed miniature in his hands so that it was facing her.

She looked into his eyes for what seemed a long time before looking down. Only her eyes moved. Her lips trembled and she reached out one finger to touch the frame. “Christina,” she said.

He held his breath. “You remember?” he said into the silence.

“No,” she said, snatching her finger back as if it had been burned.

“Is that her name? I don’t know her. She has dark hair and blue eyes. She looks very like Christopher. “ Martin watched her rub one palm up and down over her hip and outer thigh, her fingers spread back.

He heard her swallow. “She is his daughter, isn’t she? And mine?”

“Yes,” he said.

She continued to look at the picture for a long time, her hand still rubbing her side. And then she caught up her skirt and ran, fumbling and tearing at the knob of the door in her haste, fleeing along the corridor and through the archway into the great hall. Martin followed behind her but made no attempt to catch up to her. He stood in the archway and watched her jerk open the front doors without waiting for a servant to open them for her. She fled outside into the courtyard.

Martin looked down at the miniature of his six-year-old niece—his stepniece—and forced himself to stay where he was at least for the time being. She had remembered her daughter’s name. Perhaps that was the crack in the armor that was needed to bring everything flooding back. But whether it was or not, she clearly needed to be alone for a while. Her reaction had been more violent even than he had hoped it would be.

It was a chilly morning and she was wearing only a thin dress. He turned toward the stairs. He would fetch a cloak from her room and go to meet her after a while.

Elizabeth ran all the way up the hill and along the mile of headland to the edge of the cliffs, the wind blowing in her face. She paused for a few moments to catch her breath and press a hand to her aching side and then ran to the top of the path and down it, heedless of its steepness or the dangerous drop to one side of it. She stumbled on the loose pebbles at the bottom of the path, scraping her knee painfully.

Christina. The sharp pain brought the name back and all the cause of her panicked flight. She had known the name of the child in the po
rtrait, though it had seemed to be a picture of a stranger. But she had heard herself speak the name. Christina. And then she had known without any real doubt that she was their child, hers and Christopher’s, and yet she was not at Penhallow with them. And he had never mentioned her. Even when she had asked him why they had never had children.

Elizabeth stood very still suddenly and pressed clenched fists to her mouth. Christina was suckling at her breast and she herself was crying. Constantly crying. The baby was always fretful. The child was not getting enough milk, the nurse said. They were trying to persuade her to hire a wet nurse. Who were? The nurse. Her father. The physician. Not Martin. Martin was soothing her, comforting her, telling her that she must stop crying, that.she must put her grief behind her, that she must draw all her happiness from her daughter.

He was telling her that if she could do that, then her milk would come back and Christina would be contented.

Elizabeth lowered her hands from her mouth and stepped onto the sand of the beach. The tide was half in, she saw. The air was cold.

There were goose bumps on her arms. But she only saw them; she did not feel them. That had not been a real memory, had it? She had no memory. She remembered nothing. She was suddenly very frightened.

They had not wanted her to name her baby Christina. Papa had wanted Sarah—her mother’s name. Someone else had suggested Elizabeth. Anything but Christina. It would not be fitting under the circumstances, they had said. Except Martin. Martin had understood. He had sat carefully on the side of her bed—the opposite side from where the newborn baby lay asleep—and had taken her hand in both of his and smiled his usual kindly smile.

“You must name her whatever you wish, Lizzie,” he had said. “She is your daughter.”

“They say she should not have a name like his,” she had said, gripping one of his hands, trying to draw on his strength. “But she is his daughter, Martin. And I loved him.” The inevitable tears flowed again.

“Yes,” he had said gently. “And now you have me to love you instead, Lizzie. And to stand by you too. I’ll speak up for you, never fear. You must call her what you wish.”

“She is Christina,” she had said and she had smiled at him through her tears.

“Yes,” he had said. “Christina Ward. That is her name, Lizzie. I’ll explain to Papa.”

Not Christina Atwell? She had closed her eyes wearily. No, perhaps not. But she had a Christian name like his and she had his dark hair and his blue eyes, if they stayed blue. The new nurse Papa had hired for the baby had told her that most babies have blue eyes, but that they often change color with time. She did not want her baby’s eyes to change color. Christina was all she had left of Christopher. All she had ever had of him.

Elizabeth was rubbing her arms with her hands when her mind returned to the present. God. Oh, dear God, what was happening?

What had happened? She turned to walk with hurried steps along the beach as if she could outstrip the flashing memories—if they were memories.

Martin had stayed with her when Papa had returned to London.

At Kingston. He had stayed at Kingston with her. She would have wanted to die if it had not been for Christina. Her baby had given her a reason for living. And not just for living. Her daughter had given her a reason for growing up. There had always been people to look after her, to make her decisions for her, to shield her from pain and problems. She had never had to be strong in herself. She had been taught that it was unfem-inine to have a strong character.

But she had stopped crying so that Christina might have milk. And she had learned to smile and look happy so that her daughter might have a secure childhood. She had learned to do something useful with her life. She had spent far more time with her child than most mothers of her acquaintance did, and she had involved herself with the affairs of the neighborhood as the lady of the manor. She had been that since the death of her stepmother, she supposed, but she had never taken on the responsibilities the position entailed. Now she did.

And gradually, very gradually, she had come to feel that she wanted to live on her own account. She had come to feel that life was worth living despite everything.

Martin had stayed with her at Kingston although he had had no need to do so. The dreadful scandal had not touched him nearly. And London was surely where he ought to have been. He was a young man and must crave the social life and the pleasures young men look for. He had not been obliged to stay with her. But he had— throughout the years. And he had become again her very dearest friend, her emotional prop until she had learned through determined effort to rely more on her own strength and less on his. Then he had been her companion, her confidant.

Sometimes she had wondered why he did it. Why did he give up his own pleasure just because she needed him? He was not even her brother, only her stepbrother. Sometimes she even wondered if that fact were significant and wondered if it were possible for a man to marry his stepsister. Was it legally possible? But Martin’s affection for her never seemed loverlike. And for that she was profoundly thankful.

She had needed a brother, not another lover.

Elizabeth walked along the beach, her head down, her arms wrapped about herself. She could no longer feel any doubt that the images running through her mind Were real memories. She was remembering. And yet her memories were like the small and tantalizing glimpses of one’s surroundings one sometimes has in a dense mist. Tiny patches of clearness in an otherwise blank world.

What had happened? Where had Christopher been? She knew the answer, of course. He had been in Canada. But why? Dear God, what had happened? And how had she come to be here with him now and without Christina?

She had reached the cave. The lovers’ cave. But she felt no desire to go inside. She set her back against the large boulder before its mouth, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes.

Christopher did not know about Christina. She had only been suspecting when he left that she was with child, but she had not told him about her suspicions. She had wanted to be quite sure before sharing the wonder of it with him. And afterward they had persuaded her not to tell him—even Martin. Not that they had known where he had gone anyway at first. They had assumed he had gone back to Penhallow.

He had left. He had left her forever. He had gone to Canada.

Elizabeth pressed her body back against the rock as if by doing so she could prevent what was happening. And she desperately held her mind blank, opened her eyes to look up at the sky, across the blue of which clouds were scudding in the wind. She must hold her mind blank. Oh, God!

And then the floodgates opened.

The letter.

The half-naked woman he had been holding when she had gone with Martin to that house in response to the letter, disbelieving. And the woman’s child. His child.

His protestations of innocence despite the fact that she had caught him red-handed. His constant attempts to explain, to lie his way out of the situation.

Her removal to her father’s house and her refusal to see him. Her father’s enforcement of that refusal though she had always hoped that he would break his way in to see her.

His disappearance.

Those other stories. Terrible, incriminating stories, showing her a ruthless and cruel side to Christopher that she had never suspected.

The whore. The whore who had fallen and killed herself after being severely beaten by a customer. By Christopher.

The poor man who had been cheated out of his fortune—by Christopher—and had then taken his own life in despair.

The divorce Papa had demanded. Oh, God, the dreadfully public and scandalous divorce.

And the pain. The pain that went on and on until she had hoped that it would kill her.

And his continued absence. He had not come back to defend himself or to fight for her. Or to know that they were to have a child.

The divorce! Elizabeth staggered away from the rock and back along the beach, blindly hurrying toward safety and comfort. Toward some
thing that did not exist. Panic set her to stumbling, gasping and sobbing.

She and Christopher were divorced!

She had to stop when she was halfway up the cliff path. All her breath was gone, there was a stabbing pain in her side again, and her legs felt like jelly. She looked upward. There was a man standing at the top of the path and she almost turned and ran back to the beach.

But it was not him. It was Martin.

She dragged herself upward again, seeing at last the safety she had been running toward. Martin! He was walking slowly downward toward her.

And then she remembered Manley. Lord Poole. And St. George’s.

St. George’s this time, Papa had insisted. She would do it right this time—and she had reluctantly agreed with him. She would do everything right this time. With the head and not the heart. She remembered the masked rider who had snatched her up outside the church. And the terror of the long journey in the darkened carriage. And Christopher getting into it with her eventually. And her attempt to escape through the unlocked door.

“Martin.” She could scarcely gasp out his name. But she did not have to walk the final few steps toward him. He came to her, wrapped a cloak about her, and caught her up in reassuringly warm and strong arms.

“It’s all right, Lizzie,” he murmured against her ear. “I have you safe now, love. No one is going to hurt you. Not ever again. I won’t let it happen again.”

“Martin,” she said. “He kidnapped me and then he lied to me. He told me I was his w-w—”

“I have directed your maid to pack your trunk,” he said, holding her tight. “I’ll have you on your way home in no time at all, Lizzie. Don’t worry about a thing. Leave everything to me. You know you can trust me, don’t you?”

Chapter 13

ELIZABETH was in a fever to be gone. Christopher would be away until late in the afternoon, she knew, and it was not even noon yet. Perhaps it was not even past the middle of the morning. But she was terrified that he would return unexpectedly and try to prevent her from leaving. She was, after all, his prisoner at Penhallow. She knew that now and understood fully why she had not been allowed to leave the estate. Perhaps he would try to stop her from leaving her prison even though Martin was with her.