by Mary Balogh
“Why do you speak of these things as if they are new discoveries?” she asked.
“Because they are,” he said. “I had a chat with some of the servants this morning when I went down to the kitchen in search of you, and they told me all sorts of things I had never heard before. We were not allowed to mention my father’s name, you know.”
“Why?” She frowned.
“He was a rake and a libertine and the devil’s spawn,” he said. “When righteousness came into the house in the guise of my mother’s second husband, his influence was to be forgotten once and for all. For the good of every one of us, family and servants. Come to think of it, maybe he would not have been disappointed. Maybe he would have hailed me as his true successor. Do you think?”
She ignored his flippancy.
“So you were told nothing of your own father?” Her huge, fathomless eyes grew larger.
“On the contrary,” he said. “I was told something of him almost every day of my boyhood. He was the man whose seed had made me bad, irredeemable, incorrigible, and any number of other nasty things. I was as like him as two peas in a pod-as two rotten peas, that is. I would never amount to anything in life because I had his blood running in my veins. And everyone knew where I was headed after I died-downward, to be reunited with him.”
“Did your mother not have something to say?” she asked.
“My mother was a sweet lady,” he said. “Naturally placid, I believe, and very easily dominated. She needed always to have someone to tell her what was what. The servants claim that she adored my father. But after his death and my birth she collapsed into lethargy and a gloom that lifted only when Wrayburn took over her life and married her. She loved him, I suppose. She was also terrified of him, or at least terrified of displeasing him. Even after his death she would not say or do anything of which she thought he would disapprove.”
“She did not love you?” she asked softly.
“Oh, she did,” he said. “She undoubtedly did. She shed tears over me more times than I can count and begged me to be good and godly, to do all that my step-papa told me so that I would be worthy of his love too.”
“And Rachel?” she asked.
“She was denied her youth,” he said, “because the world beyond our doors was a wicked place and a girl’s place was at her mother’s side.”
“Charlotte?”
“Ah, but she did not have the bad blood,” he said. “And Miss Daniels came when she was still very young. She was also fortunate enough to be a girl. He was not much interested in her.”
He felt more and more of an idiot. Why was he spewing out all this ancient history? He never spoke of his boyhood. He rarely even thought about it. He was certainly not looking for pity-perish the thought! He was just surprised that this morning’s revelations in the kitchen had upset him so much, set the wheels of his mind whirling.
His father had loved Rachel. He had loved his own unborn self. He had been capable of love. He had died for love.
His thoughts were spinning so fast he felt downright dizzy.
“I think my father loved my mother too,” he said. “He stopped womanizing after he married her.”
She had their clasped hands raised, he realized. He could feel the touch of her lips and the warmth of her breath against the back of his.
“Only minutes before word was brought to him that my mother’s pains had started,” he said, “he proposed a toast to me. Son or daughter-he did not care which I was provided I was born alive and healthy. He actually said that, though he must have wanted a son. An heir.”
She rubbed her cheek back and forth across his hand.
“The servants worshipped him,” he said, “though they were by no means blind to his faults. Recklessness, according to them, was probably the worst of those.”
“They worship you too,” she said. “Though they are still not blind.”
“I think,” he said, “we might have been a happy family if he had lived.”
He wished he could stop spouting drivel. When was he going to shut his mouth and keep it shut?
“But then,” he said, “if things had not happened as they did, there would not be Charlotte, would there? She has always been very precious to me.”
Devil take it, would someone please tell him to shut up?
“Strange that,” he said. “She is his daughter. How can she possibly be dear to me?”
“Because she is herself,” she said, “just as you are yourself.”
“Katherine,” he said, “stop me, please. There must be all sorts of skeletons in your cupboards too. Tell me about them.”
“There are really none,” she said. “My life has been privileged indeed. Oh, I have lived through the unspeakable grief of losing my mother when I was just a child and then my father when I was only twelve. They were desolate times-and that word does not begin to describe them. But I always had my sisters and brother, and none of us ever doubted that we were loved or wanted. Even though Meg gave up her future with Crispin Dew for us, she never made us feel that it had been a sacrifice for which she partly resented us. Indeed, I did not even know about it until a few years ago when Nessie told me. I was always so secure in the love of my family that I find it hard even to imagine being a child and not having that security. I cannot imagine anything worse than a child feeling himself to be unloved and unlovable. I cannot bear the thought.”
Her voice had become thinner, higher pitched.
He could not blame circumstances for anything, though, could he? For making him who he was? That would be a sniveling thing to do. They were the circumstances with which he had been presented, and at any moment in his life-child, boy, or adult-the choice of how to think, speak, and behave had been his.
Still was.
He drew his hand from hers, raised himself onto one elbow, and smiled lazily down at her. It was time to recover himself.
“Has my sad story moved your tender heart, Katherine?” he asked, his eyes roaming over her face to come to rest on her mouth. “And is that heart smitten with love for me as a result? Are you ready to confess all? That I am one step closer to winning our wager? Two steps? Or that I have won it outright?”
He realized his mistake immediately. She would not view that as gentle teasing. It was too reminiscent of what had happened at the lake, by Jove. And it was unfair, dash it all.
Would he never learn?
But the words could not be unsaid, and all he could do was wait for her reply, his right eyebrow cocked, his eyelids hooded over his eyes, the corners of his lips drawn up into a half-smile.
One devil of a fine fellow.
God’s answer to the prayers of lonely, lovelorn womankind.
Or perhaps not.
She raised one hand as if to set it tenderly against the side of his face. Instead, her open palm cracked hard and painfully across his cheek.
22
SHE rolled away from him, scrambled to her feet, jumped down from the stone, and strode halfway across the clearing before stopping almost knee-deep among the grass and wildflowers.
She had never in her life hit anyone. She had slapped him across the face. Her hand was still stinging. Her heart was pounding up into her throat and her ears, almost choking and deafening her.
She whirled on him.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried, her voice breathless and shaking. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”
He was sitting up, propped on one arm while two fingers of the other hand were poking gingerly at his reddened cheek.
“I do indeed,” he said. “Katherine-”
“You took me in,” she said, “you invited me in, and then you slammed the door shut in my face. If you do not want me to have any part in your life, then shut me out altogether, stay hidden behind the wit and the irony and the hooded eyes and the cocked eyebrow. Go away. Leave me here to live my life in peace. But if you choose to let me in, then let me all the way in. Don’t suddenly pretend this has all been about the w
inning of a stupid wager.”
She was panting for breath.
He gazed at her for a few moments, his lips pursed. Then he got to his feet and crossed the clearing to stand in front of her. She wished he were wearing his coat and hat. He was too disconcertingly… male in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.
“They were just a few random comments about my family,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing to get excited about. I thought you might be amused by them. No, I thought you might be touched. I thought you might pity me. Is pity not halfway to love? I thought you might-”
Crack!
Oh, dear God, she had done it again-the same hand, the same cheek.
He closed his eyes.
“That does hurt, you know,” he said. “And you have me at a disadvantage, Katherine. As a gentleman, I cannot retaliate, can I?”
“You know nothing-nothing!-about love,” she cried. “You have been loved, and you are loved. You even love without knowing it. But you shut yourself away from it as soon as it threatens to break through the barriers you erected about your heart years and years ago lest you be hurt more and more until you could not bear even to live. Those days are over if you would just realize it.”
He half smiled at her.
“You are lovelier than ever when you are angry,” he said.
“I am not angry,” she cried. “I am furious! Love is not a game.”
Still that half-smile and the hooded eyes, which were hooded indeed now. There was not even a glimmering of mischief or humor in them.
“What is it, then, if not a game?” he asked softly.
“It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. Oh, I know I have had life easy in the sense that there has always been unconditional love in my life. I know I cannot even begin to understand what it was like to grow up with very little love at all. But are you going to let that upbringing blight your whole life? Are you going to give your stepfather that power, even from the grave? And you were loved, Jasper, perhaps by everyone except him. All your servants and I daresay all your neighbors have always loved you. Your mother did. Charlotte adores you. I am going to stop talking now because really I do not know what I have been saying.”
His smile was twisted, lifting one corner of his mouth higher than the other, and she realized that there was a great tension in him, that his facial muscles were not perhaps quite within his control. The two slaps had probably not helped either.
“If I can persuade you to love me too, Katherine,” he said, “my life would be complete. Happily ever after. I will-”
“That wager!” She almost spat out the words. “I am mortally sick of that wager. I’ll have no more of it, do you understand? It is over with. Done. Love is not a game, and I will no longer have any part in pretending that it is. The wager is obliterated. Null and void. Gone. Go back to London with your stupid wagers if you must and to your equally stupid gentlemen friends who think it fun to bet money on whether or not you can persuade a woman who has done nothing to offend any one of you to… to debauch herself with you. Even to allow it to happen up against a tree in a public pleasure garden. Go, and never come back. I will never miss you.”
Oh, dear, God, where were the words coming from? Why had she had to bring that up again?
“I think,” he said softly, “my wagering days are probably over. I hurt you dreadfully.”
It was not a question.
“Yes, you did,” she said, and burst into tears.
“Katherine.” His hands cupped her shoulders.
But she would not collapse against him and cry her heart out. She beat her fists against his chest instead, sobbing and hiccuping and keeping her head down. Oh, how foolish she felt. Why this sudden hysteria? All that had happened a long time ago. It was ancient history.
“How could you?” she cried, gasping and sobbing as she spoke. “How could you do that? What had I ever done to you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I have no excuse, Katherine, no defense. It was a dastardly thing to do.”
“All the gentlemen in that club must have known,” she said.
“A goodly number, yes,” he agreed.
“And now everyone knows,” she said. “And it is too convenient to blame Sir Clarence Forester.”
“Yes,” he said, “it is. The fault was entirely mine.”
She looked up into his face even though she knew her own must be red and swollen.
“How could you do that to yourself ?” she asked him. “How could you have so little respect for yourself? How could you have so little regard for human decency?”
He pursed his lips. His eyes-wide open now-looked steadily back into hers.
“I do not really know, Katherine,” he said. “I am not much given to introspection.”
“And that has been deliberate on your part,” she said. “Feelings must have been unbearable to you as a boy, and so you cut them off. But when there are no feelings, Jasper, there can be no compassion either-for other people or even for yourself. You end up treating other people as you have been treated.”
She swiped the back of her hand over her wet nose, and he turned abruptly and strode back to the flat stone. He leaned down to his coat, drew a handkerchief out of a pocket, and came back to her, his hand outstretched.
She dried her eyes and blew her nose and balled the handkerchief in one hand.
“I am not going away,” he said when she looked at him again. “This is my home and you are my wife. What I did to you three years ago was unpardonable, but unfortunately you are stuck with me. I am sorry about that. But I am not going away.”
“Oh, Jasper.” She looked at him, glad despite herself. He was not going to go away. “Nothing is ever unpardonable.”
He pursed his lips and gazed at her in silence for a few moments.
“If the wager is off,” he said, “is it all off? All the conditions too?”
“Yes,” she said, and it was an enormous relief to say so, for of course she knew to which condition he referred. He was not going to go away, but their marriage as it was now was no marriage at all-thanks to that condition she had imposed on the wager during their wedding night.
She had missed him so much, which was a ridiculous thing when there had been only that one night. Not even a full night. He had slept in their private sitting room for much of it.
“Come to me tonight,” she said, and felt her cheeks turn hot.
She dropped the handkerchief to the ground and lifted her hands to cup his cheeks. The marks of her fingers were still visible on the left one. And her face must look an absolute fright.
He took her hands in his and turned his head to kiss first one palm and then the other.
“Katherine,” he said, “you cannot seriously expect me to hear that yes at one moment and come to me tonight at the next and be content to wait that long. You could not expect it of any self-respecting red-blooded male. Least of all me.”
“But everyone would wonder where we had gone,” she said, “if we were to disappear to our rooms as soon as we returned to the house. Besides-”
“Katherine,” he said softly, and kissed her lips.
And of course she knew instantly what he meant, what he intended. She was aware just as instantly of sunlight and heat, of the chirping and whirring of unseen insec
ts, of the call of a single bird, of the softness of grass and wildflowers about their knees. And of the smell of his cologne and his body heat and the feel of his lips against hers again. And of a welling of desire that engulfed her from head to toe.
She wrapped her arms about his neck and opened her mouth.
And somehow they were down on the ground, the grass waving above them, and all was hot, fierce embrace and labored breathing and urgent, exploring hands and mouths, and clothing discarded or pulled and pushed out of the way-until she lay on her back and his weight was on her and his face above hers, filled with a desire to match her own.
“Katherine,” he murmured.
His waistcoat and neckcloth were gone. His white shirt gaped open at the neck to show the muscles beneath and the dark hair that dusted his chest. His pantaloons were opened at the waist. Her bodice was down below her breasts, her skirt up about her hips. Her legs were spread on either side of his, her stockinged feet resting on the warm, supple leather of his Hessian boots.
She twined her fingers in his hair, which was warm from the sun.
“The ground makes a damnable mattress,” he said, “especially in the act of love.”
“I do not care,” she said, and lifted her head to kiss him, to draw him down onto and into her. She did not care that he must know he had won that stupid wager long before it had been abandoned. She did not care if he knew that she loved him. Love was vulnerable, she had just told him.
Ah, yes, it was.
But it was not to be avoided for that reason.
“Let me be noble.” There was a smile in his eyes. “For once in my life, let me be noble.”
And he rolled with her until he lay on his back. He had taken her legs in his hands and bent them so that she was kneeling on either side of his body. She set her hands on his shoulders and lifted her head so that she could look down at him. And he raised his hands and pulled out her hairpins until her hair fell down on either side of her face and onto his shoulders.
“Come,” he said then, and he grasped her hips, lifted her, and then guided her down onto him so that she felt his long hardness slide into her wet depth. She pressed down onto him, clenching her inner muscles as she did so, and closing her eyes.