Lord Harry's Folly (31 page)

Again, he seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then shrugged. “No, I must tell you all of it. Neither of us will ever be free of this unless I tell you everything. So be it.

“I’ll never forget coming to White’s one afternoon to be told that Damien had left suddenly for the continent. I thought at the time that he, like I, had grown tired of Elizabeth’s capriciousness. Filey seemed vastly amused by what he termed Captain Rolland’s defection and taunted me to declare him the winner of the bet. Although, as I said, I was no longer much interested in the lady, I didn’t believe that he had succeeded in winning her favor. That, along with his taunting, made me tell him to go to the devil. Not long thereafter, I began to revise my opinion, for Elizabeth appeared to be in his company more than in any other’s.

“You can imagine my shock several weeks later when Elizabeth, hooded and masked, arrived at my town house near to midnight one evening. I won’t sully your ears with the particulars of that memorable night although why should I spare you? You took my damned mistress all about London. There can’t be anything you don’t know now. Very well, I’ll say it outright, after all, you’ve been a gentleman for five months. You’ve seen more of this sordid world than any other young lady. Elizabeth didn’t leave until near to dawn the following morning. I bedded her several times. I’m not going to try to justify my actions of that night. I have repeatedly cursed myself for my galling stupidity. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth, before her most innocent and artful seduction of an experienced man, ensured that I had consumed half a bottle of brandy.

“Three weeks later, I was tearfully informed by a hysterical Elizabeth that she was pregnant. Fool that I was, I accepted her word without hesitation and offered her marriage. We were married by special license three days later, then removed immediately to one of my estates near to Billingsgate.”

Hetty could contain herself no longer. “By God, you still want me to listen to this outlandish tale you’re spinning? It makes me want to puke. You have the gall to accuse me of romanticizing the entire affair, yet you’ve told me the most outrageous lies. Damn you, you must have been the one to send Damien from England. There is no one else. You’ve made this whole thing up, perhaps for my benefit so I won’t try to kill you again, or else you’re simply trying to lessen your guilt over murdering Damien.”

She expected explosive anger from him, she expected more of his banked controlled rage. But she got neither. He said very quietly, “I will tell you, Hetty, I would have offered your brother half my estates had he but returned to take Elizabeth off my hands.”

“God, that’s a bloody lie! She was pregnant with Damien’s child. They loved each other, he would gladly have wed her. He never wanted to return to the continent. He didn’t want to die.”

“You’ve looked too long into only one side of the mirror. Elizabeth wasn’t pregnant with your brother’s child. It was Filey’s seed that grew in her womb.”

“No, damn you no, that’s bloody absurd your final lie. I won’t listen to any more of this.”

“I have absolutely no reason to lie to you, Hetty,” he said, his voice weary, now nearly emotionless.

“No, Elizabeth couldn’t have the letter, I read her letter to Damien. She loved him, not that foul lecher Sir William Filey.”

“It’s entirely possible that if your brother had remained in England, it would have been he who would have led the pregnant Elizabeth to the altar. But no, Hetty, she didn’t love your brother. As best as I could tell, she loved no one but herself. Wait, please don’t interrupt me. I have no desire to speak of this private human tragedy, much less remember it, but I see that you will never believe me otherwise.”

He was silent a moment, remembering the ugly scenes, the growing hatred. For an instant, he was sorely tempted to tell Hetty to believe what she liked and to go to the devil. Yet, there was so much pain and confusion in her blue eyes Damien’s eyes, Jack’s eyes and only he held the key to the maze of distorted truths.

“Elizabeth’s father, Colonel Nathan Springville, was a stern taskmaster, a ruthless martinet whose word was undisputed law in his family. I tell you this to help you understand why perhaps she acted as she did. She hated her father and wished only for escape, but her escape had to be through lawful marriage, else he would have consigned her to perdition. I can’t prove it, else I would have killed Filey with my bare hands, but it is my belief that he seduced her, then instead of offering her marriage, asked her to be his mistress. Damien was gone. She had no one to turn to save myself. Filey doubtless thought it fine sport. Perhaps you are right; perhaps she and Damien were lovers and she would have preferred marriage to him rather than to me. Perhaps she felt some affection for your brother and her letter was a plea for his forgiveness. I can only speculate, as can you.”

“Yes, your grace, I can also speculate. You paint the picture of a vain, unscrupulous woman, a woman who cared for no one save herself. But there is the letter, your grace, a letter that damns you. But more, there is Pottson. He told me of Damien’s unhappiness, not, of course, that Damien ever confided the cause to his batman, but Damien was affected, your grace, and deeply saddened.”

The fire was dying in the grate and the night shadows deepened between them. The marquess turned away, not answering her, and with mechanical movements lighted several candles and placed them near to the bed. He turned then, still silent, and added new logs to the fire. He kicked up the embers with the heel of his boot and watched the flames dance into life, then fall back upon themselves.

He walked back toward Hetty, and she saw naked pain in his eyes. She drew back from that knowledge of him. She drew back from the humanness in him, the honesty of that pain. She didn’t want to see pain, only guilt. But an instant later, his face was expressionless. But she wasn’t wrong, she’d seen that pain. She felt a small seed of doubt begin to grow within her. She hated it, wanted to squash it, but she couldn’t. When he spoke again, his voice was curiously flat, as if he were reciting an impersonal story.

“As I told you, after I married Elizabeth, we immediately left for Billingsgate. By the time we reached Blanchley Manor, we were scarce speaking to each other, nor did I ever again touch her. After but a month of marriage, her belly was round with child. I pressed her to tell me the truth of the matter, but she only laughed at me and hurled half-veiled taunts until I could bear the sight of her no longer. I had no desire to return to London and instead visited some cousins in Scotland until I knew her time was near.

“Upon my return to Blanchley Manor, her hatred of me was as heavy as her huge belly. The night the child was born, she had consumed a great deal of wine at dinner. I remember to this day thinking that her angel’s face had become cold and hard, as if mirroring her true nature. How she laughed at me that evening, for she knew that I wouldn’t divorce her, that I would accept her child as my own.” He could still picture her face, hear her low laughing voice. “Ah, so you do not care for your fine, beautiful wife, your grace?” He remembered how she had bared her swollen breasts, leaning over the table. “See all the milk I have! What a fine bouncing child I shall present to you, your grace.” He drew a breath and got a grip on himself.

He continued with an effort, and she saw it. “There is more ugliness, of course, but suffice it to say that my fury grew to such heights that finally I grasped her shoulders and shook her. She tore away, all the while laughing at me. In her drunken state, she tripped and fell heavily over a chair. The fall brought on her labor, and it was I who delivered my wife of another man’s child. It was a little girl and she lived but a few minutes. Her mother lay in a half-drunken stupor, uncaring.”

He paused a moment, then added in a voice devoid of emotion, “Elizabeth didn’t die in childbed as I have allowed everyone to believe.” He pictured again in his mind for perhaps the hundredth time what must have happened from his frightened groom’s account. Elizabeth had ordered his curricle without his knowledge, his half-wild bay stallion harnessed between the shafts. She’d whipped the animal about his head until in a spate of fury the stallion had kicked out the flooring of the curricle and sent Elizabeth hurtling down a steep incline. He said to Hetty, “She died in a curricle accident about two weeks after the birth of her child. That is all, Hetty, there is no more that I can tell you. It is, of course, up to you if you wish to believe me.”

He turned and walked away from her. As he had spoken, she had felt almost as if she had been there, standing near to him and Elizabeth as they wreaked their anger on each other. She had seen the bitter pain lighting his eyes, had sensed his unwillingness even now to unbury his painful ghosts. But the letter, she always came back to the letter. The letter and Damien’s unhappiness, as described by Pottson.

She lay staring into the dark shadows about the room, trying to make sense of things. She realized something she didn’t want to realize, but she had to. Deep within her she knew that he had spoken the truth. She simply had no doubts even though she wanted them, wanted to curse him for his lies, but they weren’t lies and she knew it. She simply knew it. She also realized that she wanted to believe him.

She thought of her life as Lord Harry, of the decision to make herself into a gentleman. Lord Harry had given her life meaning and focus. The sharp pain in her side was preferable to the wrenching pain that now filled her. Had Lord Harry’s existence been for naught? She felt hollow as she forced herself to ask, “You said that Elizabeth would never tell you who fathered the child. Yet you believe that it was Filey.”

He turned to face her and she saw surprise in his dark eyes, surprise that she was no longer challenging him. “Yes, that’s true. I told you that if I had been certain, I would have killed him. The babe carried his general features, very fair with a thatch of reddish hair. There was no resemblance whatsoever in the babe’s features to Damien or to me. There is nothing more I can tell you, Hetty.”

She lay back against the pillow and closed her eyes. “No, there’s nothing more. I believe you’ve told me everything.” Suddenly she felt such relief well up inside her that she wanted to shout with it. She was awash with it until it hit her hard what she’d done. She’d set out to kill a man, a man who was innocent. She struggled up on her elbows. “God, I’ve been like Don Quixote, fencing with windmills, searching for vengeance, when I had naught to do but speak to you, to show you Elizabeth’s letter, to ask for the truth. You were my
 
vendetta. I used you to help pull me from my grief. I made you my nemesis. I made you evil, all on the basis of a single letter. May God forgive me, what if I had killed you?”

She was crying, for the first time in so very long, she was crying. She felt stripped bare. She felt guilt and relief and such despair for what could have happened that she couldn’t bear it. She stared at him wildly.

“Hetty, no, you must not”

“Oh no, there’s no forgiveness for me. I believed you guilty over nothing more than that bloody letter. I shall never forgive myself for my blindness, for my stupidity.”

She turned her face away from him, muffling her damnable tears into the pillow.

He strode to her and gathered her in his arms, rocking her gently against his chest. She offered him no resistance, but he sensed her struggling with herself against the tears. He stroked the soft curls atop her head and waited quietly for her to regain control. He found himself smiling as her sobs dissolved into hiccups. He shifted her in his arms so that he could see her face.

“Come now, Hetty,” he said as she tried to burrow her face into the open neck of his white shirt, “Lord Harry would stare me straight in the eye and call me a damnable fool to have fallen into such a horrible situation. Surely Lord Harry wouldn’t weep all over my neck.” She continued to sob against his neck. “Lord Harry is also an honorable young gentleman. His courage and strength of principle are admirable, and since you, my dear Hetty, are Lord Harry, I would that you would stop this display of guilt. Surely Lord Harry would very quickly find another bone to pick with me. No, still not ready to come back to me? All right, Lord Harry thought I was vicious, that I was a predator. Perhaps I’m not those things, but I am an excellent gambler. I could take you at whist and at piquet and at faro and win your entire dowry. I could leave you humiliated, lying in the dust, no more money to your name. You wouldn’t have a chance against me. What do you say?”

Hetty raised her face, aware of his eyes, dark and tender upon her face. Why tenderness from the man she’d meant to kill? It warmed her. It made her feel strangely urgent. She sniffed loudly, then said right in his face, “You’ve seen me naked.”

Now this was unexpected. Interesting, fascinating even, but unexpected. But he was a cautious man, upon occasion. “Well, yes, I suppose that’s true enough, but I didn’t really think of you as a woman.”

“You’re lying,” she said, still staring at him straightly. “I was at Lady Buxtell’s establishment with Harry and Scuddy. There wasn’t a single man who wasn’t extremely interested in every inch of every female who was there.”

“You were in Lady Buxtell’s?” There was awe, but no particular surprise in his voice. “You actually went to a whorehouse?”

“How could I avoid it for five months? I tried, but Harry wouldn’t let me weasel out of it. I did something good, though. I saved a young girl who’d been befouled by Sir William. She’s now Little Jack’s nurse.”

“You go to a brothel and you manage to bring out a whore to stay with your nephew?”

She told him about Mavreen, about the death of her Uncle Bob. “What really made me angry was Sir William Filey. He’d treated her horribly.”

“Sir William isn’t a nice man,” he said, and dropped a kiss into her hair. He was so startled that he just looked at her. Hetty cocked her head slightly to one side, then smiled at him. “I also learned that men tend to think about sexual matters all the time. It was disconcerting until I got used to it and learned how to say my own titillating things. Everyone believed that I was keeping Mavreen and I let them believe it. It kept me out of Madame Buxtell’s house.”