Fated Folly (25 page)

‘
We will have to find a way—to go back.'

A harsh laugh left his lips. ‘After last night? Impossible.'

That hurt. Clare bit her lip on the threatening tears, and faltered, ‘Was it—was it so very bad? Did I do wrong?'

His expression changed, melting into tenderness. ‘Oh, Clare, no.'

Three strides brought him from the window, and as he came about the desk, his arms went out to her, drawing her helplessly into his embrace.

‘
You were bewitching. You gave yourself to me so sweetly, so charmingly.' He turned her face up and kissed her forehead, and his fingertips drew the telltale wetness from under her eyes. ‘Never think any blame attaches to you.'

‘
But, Rupert—' she began.

‘
Don't, Clare,' he begged, cutting her off and releasing her. ‘Don't ask me to explain.'

Her eyelashes fluttered uncertainly, and her lips parted a little, quivering. Rupert drew a painful breath and pulled his eyes away, turning quickly and removing to a safe distance.

‘
You said you loved me,' came her bewildered voice.

Rupert looked at her, and again the suffering in his eyes tore at her.

‘
I do love you, Clare.' Then he shook his head hopelessly, turning away again. ‘If love were all!'

There was a silence, and the shreds of Clare's broken dreams floated between them. She was numbing now, the weight of wretchedness too heavy to be borne. Her voice, husky and flat, fell into the charged hush of the room.

‘
What are we going to do?'

We, he noted, his unseeing gaze on the sunlit terraces outside. The knife turned a little more. Poor little infant. Dear God, what had he done to her? And yet she still wanted—needed, perhaps—to think there was something she might do. This was his cross, and though it crucified him to see her so dejected, he must bear it alone.

‘
I don't know,' he said quietly. ‘I must learn to—to live somehow with the—' hesitating over the word that speared him with its vicious truth ‘—desecration.' A deep sigh escaped him. ‘You must give me a little time, Clare. So great a—wrong—as I have committed—'

‘
No!'

He hardly heard the interjection, but his frowning gaze came about as he went on, ‘—cannot, in an instant, be absolved. I cannot forgive myself.'

This was more than Clare could bear. ‘It hurts me that you should need to.'

‘
Oh, God,' he uttered raggedly, throwing up frenzied fingers that disarranged his hair. ‘Clare, Clare!' His hands fell as he looked at her. ‘You don't understand. If I could have stopped—left your innocence intact. I should have waited. I meant to. What I did was vile.'

Clare's guts twisted. Vile? That inflammatory, ardent joining that had given her his heart? Why, why,
why
?

Rupert saw the tortured question in her face, and knew there were no words to convince her of his guilt. He had been gentle, at least the first time. With the second, his mastery had been surer, stronger, taking her yielding innocence as if they had been lovers for an age. In the crude light of day, it felt like the rudest violation. Even now, with the freshness of her, the unguarded plea in her youthful face, his conscience lashed him so that he could hardly bear to look at her.

‘
Leave me, Clare,' he begged in a haunted voice. ‘If you love me, leave me now.'

The wound, Clare thought, was mortal. For she died where she stood. Yet the ghost of her love did as he asked, and quietly left the library.

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

Mrs Arksey eyed her wholly unexpected visitor warily, and with some degree of reproach in her eyes.

‘
Biddy, I need your help,' Rupert said, low-voiced.

He could scarcely blame her as she set her lips firmly together.

‘
I don't know as I'm inclined to give it, Rupert. But you better come in.'

She stood back from the door of her little cottage, which was hard by the church, and set away from the road in a pretty garden, right in the centre of Shobbington village. Rupert walked into the hall, removing his hat and placing on the table there both it and the greatcoat he had worn against the wet winds. He had stabled his horse already, as of right. Mrs Arksey, as she had always done these many years, cast a quick look about to see that she was not observed, and shut the door.

The gesture of discretion, however, had become so much a habit that she missed the slouch hat, and the face that peered beneath it, covertly, from the shadow of the porch at the church door.

Rupert had already gone through into the familiar little living-room, just as he had always done, and waited for Biddy to reappear.

‘
Well, what is it?' she said curtly, even as she entered the room, her pretty plump features taut.

‘
Biddy, don't distance me, not now.' He moved to the large armchair to one side of the hearth and fell into it, dropping his head in his hands. ‘I know I was harsh with you yesterday. I know I deserve you should throw me from the house.' His eyes came up, and the torment was in his voice. ‘But I'm desperate. You're the only one who can—For God's sake, Biddy, I need you!'

Mrs Arksey nodded, her face relaxing. ‘Aye, you always did come to me when matters turned sour on you.' Her face creased into a relenting smile and she came to his chair, reached for a footstool and plonked down before him. ‘Well, then, my dear, what ails you now?'

It had been in just such a fashion that the liaison had begun. They had met, Mrs Bridget Arksey already a widow, when she had come to the Manor to do Rupert's family portraits for that part of the conversation piece commissioned by Lord St Merryn. The deaths from that virulent fever had occurred before the painting was completed, and Rupert had come to Shobbington both to inform her officially of the tragic events, and to request her to finish the picture, his cousin having promised that Rupert should have it and hang it in the gallery at the Manor.

Biddy's blunt sympathy had pierced straight through the thin shell of his distress, and the visit had culminated in the comforting of his unmanly tears in her ample bosom, and thence the uninhibited warmth of her plump body in her bed. But Rupert's conscience would not permit of a repeat until the taunting suspicions of his then wife drove him back. It was only after her death that Mrs Arksey became a regular feature of his life.

As he jerked out the torments of his present marriage, he could not but recall the bitterness that had consumed him after Meriel's death.

‘
Never again,' he had sworn. ‘I will go to my grave heartwhole, before I give another woman the opportunity, or the right, to deal with me thus.'

Yet here he was, his heart given completely to a chit of a girl, and desperate for the sympathy he knew only Biddy could give.

‘
I feel like a monster,' he was saying painfully. ‘It is as if I have destroyed the most exquisite little doll.'

Biddy tutted. ‘Come now, my dear, I'm certain sure you exaggerate.'

‘
I wish I did.' He drew a determined breath, for he must confess to someone. ‘The truth is even worse. I moved to that moment last night, step by step. Almost from the first instant we met, I wanted her. I tried—God knows!—to ignore it. Suppress it. Eradicate it. To no avail.'

‘
But you only married her to help her,' Biddy put in.

Rupert gave a harsh laugh. ‘So I led everyone to believe, including myself. Her affection for me was my downfall. Oh, how seductive was that! I told myself she might be content—I might be so—at least for a year or so, without succumbing to that promise of enchantment. But all the while, deep down, I knew that in the end—'

He broke off abruptly. ‘Have you any brandy?'

Mrs Arksey frowned. ‘You know well I have. I keep it for you.' She pursed her lips. ‘But you'll not go home tonight if you start on that.'

Rupert turned away, his voice low. ‘I cannot be in the same house with her and not give in again.'

‘
Well, I'm here, I suppose,' Biddy said grudgingly, as she rose.

He checked her, grasping her arm. ‘Don't be distressed, Biddy, but—if you will forgive me?—I could not. Not now. Not since—' He let her go, rising abruptly and making for the door. ‘I had better leave. I should not have come.'

‘
Sit you down, my duck,' Biddy said, intercepting him and shutting the door. ‘I'll fetch the brandy to you.'

Wearily, Rupert turned back into the room, but he did not sit, and his hand reached out swiftly for the glass Biddy brought him. He emptied its contents with a jerk.

‘
What were you meaning to do, Rupert, if you'd waited?' Biddy asked. ‘Set her free?'

‘
Set her free?' echoed Rupert incredulously. ‘If I could, I would not. I could not endure her loss.'

‘
You'll lose her in any event the road you're travelling,' Biddy warned.

‘
Oh no,' Rupert said firmly, ‘you are wrong, Biddy. If there is one redeeming factor out of the ills of last night, it is that I cannot now doubt how Clare loves me, child though she is. She will never leave me.'

***

 

Clare could not sleep. Not in this bed where the memories lingered to haunt her. Not while her ears strained for the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The house had long been quiet. For how many endless hours? But Rupert had not come back.

The day had dragged enough, heaven knew. If she could only have wept. But she could not. And Berinthia, questions and sympathy in her eyes, had been unbearable company. She was better alone in the orchard, for the gardens were overlooked by the library and Rupert was there, except that the wretched downpour had driven her back indoors. The gallery, then, pacing. Up and down, up and down. Leaden feet that mirrored her heart. Watching the rain bespattering the windows. Weeping her tears for her.

Once she went to the little antechamber at the end, but that was too full of ghosts. She thought of her pain after that first intimation of the trouble that was to come, and wished now that she might exchange it for the present agony.

She bewailed her ill-starred marriage—cursed the day she had dared to beard the ogre in his den. But then, there would not have been Paradise, albeit brief, last night.

One had to eat, of course. The dread, silent meals, with Berinthia's anxious gaze going from herself to Rupert. Rupert as silent as she, avoiding her eye as she did his, eating little. If either of them spoke other than to the servants, Clare did not know it.

And then, after dinner, Rupert had gone out, despite the rain. Clare did not know whether to be glad or sorry. She had seen him from the gallery, had watched him receive his hat and shrug on the greatcoat that Riggs had brought, and then stride out into the darkening evening. Desolate, she crossed the gallery to the window and saw him mount his horse and ride away. Away from his newly-made wife.

A little later, Miss Flimwell had climbed the stairs to accost her, hesitantly. ‘Clare, is there nothing I can do?'

A tragic little smile crossed Clare's lips. ‘Thank you, Berinthia, but there is nothing.'

Berinthia eyed her uncertainly. ‘Have you quarrelled?'

‘
Quarrelled? Oh no,' Clare said quickly. ‘No.'

There was a pause. Then Berinthia offered kindly, ‘Why do you not go to your bed? I will send Olive up with some hot milk.'

It seemed as good a programme as any, so Clare thanked the elder lady and went to her room. But no amount of hot milk, none of the tender ministrations of her maid—forewarned, no doubt, by Berinthia's concern—could bring sleep until she knew that Rupert was back in the house.

Afraid that she might have missed him, dropped off, perhaps, unknowingly, she went several times to the connecting door and peeped into his room. The candles still burned, but the bed remained empty. The last time, as dawn's grey light was just beginning to filter across the sky, Clare dragged her tired body all the way over to Rupert's great bed, and ran her hand across the pillows, as if she might reach some small trace of him there. The next thing she knew, Olive was shaking her awake, and the skies had turned blue beyond the open curtains at the windows.

‘
My lady! My lady!'

‘
What is it?' Clare asked, raising heavy eyelids.

‘
It's Mr Christian, my lady. Downstairs. An urgent message, he says.'

Suddenly Clare was wide awake. Rupert! Oh, heavens! What had happened to him? Tremblingly, she pushed her arms into the dressing-robe her maid was holding out, moving even as she did so back into her own room. She flew down the stairs to where Christian stood awaiting her, hovering by the door of the drawing-room.

‘
What is it?' she cried out breathlessly, before ever she reached him. ‘What has happened?'

‘
Don't be alarmed,' he said, guiding her into the drawing-room and closing the door in the faces of both Brookland, who had let him in, and Olive, who had followed her mistress downstairs.