Highest Stakes (65 page)

  Was she intentionally making this difficult? His patience was strained as he continued. "As my wife, you stand to become the new Countess of Hastings. My requirements in exchange would be minimal, only that you behave with a modicum of decorum appropriate to the station, or at the least with a reasonable amount of discretion, and that you produce the heir necessary to continue my family line."

  "A broodmare, Philip? Is that what you propose, that I become your broodmare?" Her mocking reply broke any further pretense of civility between them.

  His grip now became like iron, bruising her shoulders, and he fought the urge to shake sense into her.

  "You might be more reasonable! I have done all in my power to make your situation tolerable. In the grand scheme of things, I ask a very small sacrifice in return for a title—security and a measure of comfort. I am neither aged, ill-formed, nor unskilled in pleasing a woman. I even dare boast there are many who would welcome my attentions."

  "Then I suggest you look amongst
that
herd for your broodmare. Your attentions are not welcome to me. I will allow only a man I love and respect into my bed. You will
never
be that man."

  "Do you fully understand what you are saying? Are you aware that your refusal gives me just grounds for annulment?"

  "Yes. I do understand. But why should you not set me free? With her husband's recent death, surely Beatrix would be willing to have you." She paused reflectively. "But then would you be uncle or father to little Sophie? I daresay 'twould be much too confusing to the poor child."

  The telltale signs of narrowing eyes and slight jaw twitch told her the barb had struck a raw place. Philip struggled to maintain his composure and self-control. His composure prevailed.

  "Have no doubt I shall shoulder my responsibilities where Beatrix and Sophie are concerned, but my family faces enough nefarious scandal at present, without my wedding or bedding my brother's widow. You might take more care to reflect upon your own bleak prospects, Charlotte, should you force my hand. I had wished for us to come to some sort of understanding, a truce perchance, but I see you are beyond reason."

  "Then do as you see fit, Philip. I will be at Cheveley when you come to your decision. Now, where is that accursed footman?"

The inquiry into Edmund's death had been only cursory. After statements were taken from the "witnesses," the case was simply declared an accidental death, and the earl's demise an unfortunate conclusion due to the shock. No one had even questioned how the earl had come by the murder weapon.

  Following the inquiry, Philip had met with the solicitors, only to learn he would accede to the earldom without a bloody farthing to support it! As Lord Hastings had threatened, his last will and testament mandated the entirety of his fortune remain in trust until one of his sons should produce an heir.

  Philip had never held any expectation of inheritance, but now it was his, he would have need of every shilling in the trust fund if the estate were ever to be profitable again. His income from the Horse Guard would barely support the bloody inheritance taxes, let alone sustain him. If only Charlotte hadn't proven so damnably bull-headed!

  Torn between his past and his future, Philip lingered at Hastings some days in a vain attempt to work out in his mind the hand fate had dealt him. He couldn't even mourn the loss of his father and brother. Their deaths simply represented the cessation of relationships he had done his best to avoid.

  For the past ten years, he had fervently wished for freedom from the yoke of his disapproving father. He had spent most of his life in resentment and petty rebellion against his unreasonable expectations, never aspiring to earning anything more than disapprobation, never dreaming he might one day become the earl. His father was dead, yet the yoke remained. Why did he not now feel the weight lifted from his shoulders?

  As the new earl, he would be expected to sell his commission and take up his father's seat in Parliament. His father's seat. His brother's desire. Not his.

  Philip had chosen the Horse Guard to make a life and a name for himself based solely upon his own merits. Was he truly ready to give it all up? In his mind, none of it seemed real. He was thinking too much. It was this damnable place. He packed for London.

  Fearful at the pounding, the maid ran to her ladyship's room, where Lady Susannah, rarely discomposed, snatched up her dressing gown and retrieved a small dagger from her bedside nightstand. She accompanied her maid to the side door off the kitchen, but her legendary composure slipped when she recognized the man at her door.

  "Philip! What are you about at this hour? Are you inebriated?"

  "Foxed quite to the gills, actually, but you needn't fret. I have come by the servants' entrance. None should see me."

  "Mayhap not
see you
, Philip, but few have not heard you, with your incessant hammering!"

  "I needed you, Sukey. I will desist the so-called hammering if you will only let me in." His tone was glib, but his eyes implored.

  Lady Susannah sighed in exasperation. "Very well. You once again prove me weak and foolish on your account. Pray accompany me to the salon. Sarah," she said to her maid, "you may go back to your bed."

  "My lady, are you certain?" The maid looked skeptically from the drunken man to her mistress's dishabille.

  "Do not concern yourself for my sake, Sarah. He has shown little interest in compromising my virtue." She was at once rueful at the truth of her statement and wistful at the remembrance of the time they had been lovers. But that was six years past.

  Sarah shrugged and reluctantly trudged back to her bed.

  Entering the salon, Lady Susannah lit several candles. In the increasing light, Philip could now appreciate the full state of her undress. Her thin silk wrapper clung softly to the curves of her still youthful body. Her normally coiffed hair lay in silky chestnut ripples, falling over her shoulders and down her back. Devoid of any artificial enhancement, she appeared, in Philip's estimation, ten years younger, and he thought more dangerously, never more desirable.

  He dismissed these thoughts with impatient irritation and silently, broodingly, paced her salon.

  Seated delicately on the sofa, Lady Susannah patiently watched his progression, intuitively sensing his struggle with whatever inner demons had led him to her door.

  "Well, Philip?" she prompted softly, gently, but with no gesture of invitation.

  He turned now to face her. "It would appear that I am now to become the Earl of Hastings," he stated emptily. "The earl and Edmund are both dead, and by default, the title is mine. I should be elated, jubilant even. Yet"—he paused—"I am curiously hollow."

  He hesitated, as if collecting his thoughts. "Why have I this void, this emptiness here, Sukey?" He thumped his chest with his fist.

  It was not a rhetorical question. He had come seeking her counsel and succor to a pain he couldn't yet acknowledge. Her own heart lurched in sympathy with this angst he had been trying to bury for the past decade. She waited for him to continue, to express what he had been ever loath to put into words.

  "I feel as if I cannot find any peace if I don't find the answers I seek. I tried in vain to dismiss the very questions, but without resolution, I cannot seem to carry on with my life."

  "What are they, your questions?" she softly prompted.

  His back to her, he began pacing anew. "The two questions I have asked myself? The first: why do I suddenly discover this void, when I have achieved an earldom, and presumably with it, the world at my feet?"

  "Philip, I speak as both friend and confidante when I say you have yet to truly know yourself. You are empty because you have never attained your heart's desire. Having failed to win your family's love and acceptance, you sought to be free of them. Though that was your conscious decision, your unconscious desire has remained unchanged. You needed the love, acceptance, and affection that should have been your due. Though now free of their bonds, you know that you will never have what you most desired. Any possibility has died with them."

  He stopped in front of the window, staring silently into the blackness, digesting her words.

  "And your second question?" she asked.

  "The second still haunts me after six years." His voice was barely above a whisper.

  She closed her eyes, and her heart ceased its drumming that she might better hear every word.

  "Why did you refuse me, Sukey?"

  She had no breath to respond, glad he could not see her face. It would have given away every secret of her heart. "As to the second question, my love"—the endearment slipped thoughtlessly from her lips now she was committed to bare her soul at last—"I shan't be coy, but my answer, after deeply pondering this question, is exceedingly complex. But perhaps you are now ready to hear it? Perhaps able to understand?"

  Philip waited, willing her to continue.

  Drawing courage, she spoke again. "I am
not sorry that I didn't accep
t you six years ago, but I deeply regret that I
couldn't
accept you."

  "What do you mean
couldn't accept me?" He spun to face her
, lashing out at her for his own weakness. "You were widowed and independent. You had means and no one to answer to. You professed love yet dismissed me out of hand. I have tormented over this far too long and now demand that you explain yourself. I
will
be cut loose from this web in which you have once again ensnared me!"

  "Ensnared you?" she answered incredulously. "I believed that you would have long since forgotten my very name."

  "Never, Sukey. I had believed you completely eradicated from my mind, but I am drawn back again, completely against my will. Like the proverbial moth to the flame, here I stand."

  "Against your will, like the moth to the flame? You don't trouble yourself with false flattery nor even any pretension of sensibility for my feelings in dredging up the past." She laughed bitterly.

  "No, I have no particular sensitivity for your feelings… if you indeed have any."

  "You really want to know why I refused you, Philip?" Susannah rose and came slowly but determinedly toward him. "I said I had regrets that I
could
not accept you. What I mean is, six years ago, I was a woman of nine-and-twenty in love with a rebellious youth. You were scarce past boyhood when you impetuously offered your name, but what was that name worth, my love?

  "You were living by your wits and estranged from your family. On top of that, I was your first real lover and knew, even then, I would not be your last. I saw such promise in you, Philip," she said tenderly, "but you had yet to grow into manhood.

  "I would have done neither of us a favor by accepting your proposal. Can you not understand me now? I drove you away by feigned indifference, planning to forget you and find my happiness with another, but my happiness has been elusive. I have never remarried because, though I tried valiantly, I have never loved another. The greater jest is that now you are become exactly the man I once envisaged, you are callous and indifferent to me."