After the Kiss (20 page)

Irritation nudged aside the humiliation of this moment. Or perhaps it was pride, finally coming to the forefront.

The countess was not unlike those she had served at the bookshop. The women of the nobility traveled in black lacquered carriages, not seeming to notice the squalor they passed. Not for them the bone-jarring journey across the cobbles or the stench of London’s streets. Their carriages had springs to soften their backsides, and they carried nosegays to perfume the air. They rarely saw her when she served them or made remarks in her hearing that were insulting. Effortless rudeness performed condescendingly.

“If I erred in not addressing you properly, I apologize, my lady,” she said, tilting her chin up. “But should you not also apologize for your rudeness? Or
are you simply an arbiter of manners and do not bother to abide by them?”

“You are as you are, young woman. I will issue no expression of regret for it.”

They stood facing each other across the table.

“You think to insinuate yourself into Michael’s life, no doubt,” the countess said caustically. “Your ploy will not succeed. I will see to it that he sends you packing back to the docks, where you can ply your trade with those who appreciate your no doubt considerable talents.”

Margaret knew full well that her presence in Michael’s home was not considered proper by anyone’s standards, either tradesman or noble. But neither was she a common doxy. However, not one protest came to mind. Instead, she was subjected to the other woman’s silent and all encompassing contempt.

The bitter tang of the chocolate wafted upward from the tray. She had never cared for the drink in the best of times, but today it seemed especially horrid. Perhaps it was because of all the rich food she ate last night, or simply the tension of this meeting. Or, perhaps her child was simply making his presence known in the most awkward and inopportune moment. For whatever reason, she felt suddenly and acutely nauseated.

She closed her eyes, waited for her stomach to settle, all the while breathing deeply. It was the only way to counter the discomfort. But it seemed as long as the chocolate was there, so was the feeling of sickness.

“What is wrong with you?” the countess demanded.

Margaret shook her head, pressed her hand to her waist, lowered her eyes and walked determinedly toward the doorway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the countess demanded. “I have not yet dismissed you.”

She didn’t turn, didn’t answer, intent only on the chamber she shared with Michael and privacy.

R
obert was his usual reticent self when Michael turned over the results of the Cyrillic cipher to him. He had not expected anything else. But he knew his friend well, and could tell from the sheer absence of expression on Robert’s face that he was excited about the translation.

From this moment forward he wouldn’t know what happened to the cipher. Should any additional messages come into the Foreign Office’s possession using that same key, the code could be unscrambled by someone else. His involvement was only in deciphering the pattern. How it altered history was often unknown.

He returned home to discover his mother’s carriage waiting on the curb. The first sign that something was wrong. The presence of his oddly silent sisters inside
the vehicle was the second indication. In addition, Elizabeth looked concerned, an expression that warned him of the confrontation no doubt taking place at this moment.

He confronted Smytheton at the door. “Where are they?”

“In the morning room, my lord.”

His feeling of dread accentuated with each footstep. The door opened just as he reached for it. Margaret swept by him, her face parchment white. She brushed away his staying hand and raced for the stairs.

He turned to face his mother.

“What did you say to her?”

She frowned at him, jerked on her gloves.

“It’s what I have to say to you that’s important, Michael. Is that the same woman you had the temerity to bring to the theater last night? At the height of the season? Have you no thoughts for my standing? Or your sister’s reputation? If you must behave in such a deplorable fashion, then you should comport yourself with the grace your father did, and hide the trollop!”

“Is that what you told her?” he asked, his anger mounting.

“It does not signify what I said. Everyone is talking about what you have done, Michael. I had to be informed of it by Helen Kittridge!”

“So you thought it important to come here today,” he said, as dispassionately as possible. “And see for yourself.”

“No, Michael. I came to protect the reputation of this family, which is evidently not one of your concerns,” she snapped.

“Why, Mother, because I chose to have a companion at the theater?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No, Michael, because you chose a strumpet to accompany you.” Twin dots of fiery color appeared on her face.

“She is not a strumpet,” he said tightly. “Merely a woman with no family to protect her.” The truth startled him. Another bitter recognition of his own idiocy. “Her presence here is not her fault. But mine.”

“You’re very loyal to her, Michael,” his mother said, her lips tightening. “More so than to your own family.”

“Perhaps because she is more deserving of it.” He turned and left the room, intent on finding Margaret.

“Is it because of the child?”

He turned and stared back at his mother. She stood in the doorway, the picture of wealth and position. “What are you talking about?”

“Your absurd protectiveness for this woman. Is it because of the child she carries?”

At his silence, she frowned at him. “Surely you knew? She’s breeding.”

Michael felt as if a brick had struck him. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” she said, “but she didn’t have to. I’ve had four children of my own, Michael. I know the signs well enough. She has that look, for one. And the smell of chocolate made her ill. I was the same with Charlotte.”

She glided across the foyer as if she didn’t see him standing there, dumbstruck. Smytheton opened the door for her, bowed. She turned and glanced at Michael. “But do not take my word for it,” she said sharply. “Ask her yourself.”

Michael took the stairs two at a time. Whatever he expected to find, it was not Margaret seated at the end of the bed, wearing her faded green cotton dress. Her
hands were linked together on her lap, her feet crossed at the ankles. Beside her on the bed was the blue dress she’d worn earlier, topped with the shawl he’d given her.

He entered the room, closed the door behind him. She didn’t look up as he approached her, only fixed her attention on her linked hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said, his voice too loud. He stood before her and attempted to calm himself.

Her head jerked up and she stared at him wide-eyed. If anything, she grew more pale.

“Tell you what?” she asked. A paltry attempt at brazening it out, he thought.

“About the child. My child.” His look dared her to deny it.

It seemed to him as if the moments thudded past with their own sound. A drumbeat, heavy and ponderous.

“How do you know?” she asked finally, her voice faint.

A confession couched in a question.

“My mother informed me. Evidently, having four children has given her some insight into life,” he said dryly. “Perhaps I should be grateful for her timely interference. Were you bloody well going to tell me, Margaret?” He continued to gaze at her, hoping that he appeared more calm than he felt. “Or were you just going to fade away into nothingness? Never letting me know? Never telling me that I sired a child?”

“Why?” she asked, standing. “So that you could label him your bastard?”

He was taken aback by her anger.

“I never wanted you to know,” she said, and the
truth of that statement rang out in her words. Idiotic to feel a spurt of pain at her comment.

“Why not?” There, a rational enough question.

She gripped one of the posts, studied the carving intently. “Because you would never stop trying to convince me to stay with you.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I won’t.”

She frowned at him.

“At least he would be provided for,” he said. “Or do you intend to raise him in your cottage? Educate him as well? I do not doubt that you are a good teacher, Margaret, but I could provide him with better schools.”

“You probably could, Michael,” she said, turning aside. “But then he would be forever known as the Earl of Montraine’s bastard.”

Another startling blow. How adept she was becoming at delivering verbal wounds.

“Better than being poor, Margaret,” he said, in an effort to ward off the effect of her words.

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “Is it? My grandmother earned money by tatting lace and taking in washing. Her knuckles were so red and swollen that sometimes she wept in her sleep. I was called Margaret Long Toes because my shoes never fit. I’d cut out the toes so that I could keep wearing them. There were days, Michael, when there was not enough to eat and I went to sleep early in order to dream of food. Do not try to teach me about being poor.”

A formidable woman. She had lost what stability she’d had with her husband’s death, yet had transformed herself. A teacher, a woman of the country. Now a mother, dedicated and protective even before her child was born.

“The poor have pride, too, Michael. Perhaps more than the rich because it means more to us.”

Anger gave her some color. At least now she was not so pale.

“You can’t leave me, Margaret,” he said stubbornly. Reasonably. He was waging a war of wills and words, one he’d never expected to have. But then, he’d not thought that she would come to mean so much to him. Or that she would be carrying his child. Nor had he ever considered that the realization would create yet another emotion inside him—an ebullient pride.

“Do you remember Covent Garden, Michael? The women who strutted about the theater district with their skirts pulled up, the better for the world to see what they were? Is that what you wish to make of me?” Her eyes flashed at him.

“Bloody hell, Margaret.” He strode to the fireplace in order to put some distance between them. He needed time to think, to marshal his arguments. She had effectively punctured his logic and shown him the weakness of his reasoning.

“My husband was a duke’s bastard. The nobility of his sire did not make his illegitimacy easier to bear. Is that what you want for your child, to be mocked at school? To be called bastard?”

“Do you really think that now is the time to bring up your damnably sainted husband?” he asked caustically.

“Stop swearing at me,” she said testily.

“I want to do more than that, Margaret,” he admitted. “I want to strip you naked, tie you to this bed and force you to remain there until you start making some bloody, damnable sense!”

Her eyes widened. Good. She should be a little wary of him at the moment. Rage had a cleansing
effect, Michael noted. He felt as if it burned from the inside out, the fuel being all the petty exasperations of his days, the irritants he’d buried for years.

“Why are you so angry?” she asked him, courageous enough to look at him again. He wanted to warn her that he was changing as the moments passed, becoming someone not quite himself.

Why was he so angry? Because she was slipping away from him and there was not one damn thing he could do about it. Because she was right, and he saw that just as he saw his own actions in a kind of magnifying glass. The shame he felt warred with other, more dominant emotions. Need, desire, a possessiveness that shocked him.

He stood at the fireplace, fists clenched, fascinated to discover that rage was bringing forth a new man. This man wanted to throw the new gowns his mother had purchased on dubious credit out in the street, trample on the bonnets his sisters nonchalantly ordered, flail his arms like a madman and rail at every damn woman on the face of the earth. But more, he wanted to keep her with him no matter the cost. No matter what he had to do to ensure it.

“Is it pride, Montraine? Is that all this is?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her.

She walked toward him. He stiffened, looked away from her, furious. Instead of anger, there were tears in her eyes. “Let me go, Michael,” she softly said. “This will not aid us at all. It will only ruin the memories of these past days.” When she reached him, she reached up and pressed four fingers gently against his lips.

“There is nothing you can say to me that will convince me,” she said softly. “It is perhaps not a shocking thing for a man to have a mistress. Quite another
to be one. I find that I do not like being called
whore
. And I could not bear it if our child was labeled a bastard as he surely will be if I stay.”

It felt almost as if a door was swinging shut, slowly. An odd reaction to repudiation. The pain of it surprised him.

“I don’t want to be your whore, Michael. I don’t want you.”

That was new. Something altogether innovative. He forced a smile to his face to mask his sudden surprised hurt.

“I’m supposed to simply accept your decision, Margaret? Walk away and forget?”

“You have no choice,” she said simply. “I was only a challenge to you, Michael,” she said. “And you told me yourself you don’t like being bested.”

Let her go. Settle an amount of money on her. Ask her to inform him when the child is born. Marry your heiress and send more money on an annual basis. Arrange to do so through his solicitor. Arrange for the child’s schooling. His conscience had a hundred suggestions. If he wished to handle the situation in a pragmatic fashion, there were options available to him.

How strange that they were all unacceptable.

He didn’t know how to say all he wished to say to her. The words should have come easier than they did. Instead, they crouched, cowardly, in his throat.

I admire your strength, Margaret, your wit and the way you look at the world. I glory in your mind and cherish your thoughts. Even your anger fascinates me
.

When had this enchantment with her happened? When they’d laughed together on the river? Or in the theater when she’d sat so still and proud while everyone gossiped about her? Or on a terrace when she’d
almost kissed him? Did it matter when it had happened? It had. Simply put, it had.

“Can you so easily forget me, Margaret?”

“I will have to,” she said softly. But he noted that she did not quite look him in the eye.

“What are you going to do, Margaret? Will your villagers not think it a little strange that a woman two years widowed is bearing a child? It will be a little difficult to convince the villagers that the child is the sainted Jerome’s.” At the look on her face he bit back an oath. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do, isn’t it?” The words she’d said to him a week ago resounded in his mind. She’d hinted at it then.
Even where I live will not be a concern of yours
.

“Perhaps,” she said.

He turned and fingered one of a pair of Staffordshire dogs resting on the mantel. “So, you are going to have to go away. Create a new existence for yourself. Pretend yourself newly widowed and claim the child Jerome’s.” He turned and glanced at her. “Is that it, Margaret?”

Her silence was assent enough.

“I should be happy you wish to leave me. I would be well suited with Jane Hestly as a wife.” She would not be easily coaxed to amusement, his bride. She would be solemn and serious and exceedingly proper. Nor would she have a way of tapping her fingernails on the cover of the book as she read, a habit that had made him smile. She would not have the ability to make him doubt himself. And she would not, he realized, possess the capacity to wound him.

Margaret stood silent behind him. Waiting for his assent, his agreement. Patient while he brushed aside this surprising pain so that he could speak.

He had avoided sentiment all his life. Because it
was his nature. Because, too, he’d been surfeited with it. Yet now he felt buffeted by the force of it. Strangely animated in a way he’d never been. Rage and euphoria, a curious combination.

He had thought of words such as enchanted or captivated to describe his reaction to her, but they did not measure exactly what he felt. The emotion Margaret sparked in him seemed difficult, almost impossible, to place in a net of words. If it was a number, he would call it infinity. And the very poetry of that thought shook him to the core.

The realization slid into his mind with the ease of a breath.

Surely a logical man would have understood long before now? A man whose life revolved around puzzles and ciphers and codes would have comprehended what had happened to him? It shouldn’t have taken him this long to understand.