Three Little Secrets (29 page)

Madeleine just shook her head. “Merrick, we can none of us look back,” she said. “What’s done is done. Life goes on.”

“Maddie, those are such clichés,” he said. “
Should
I have come for you? Should I have taken you from Bessett?
Would you have come home with me?
Tell me, damn it. I need to know.”

Madeleine twisted her hands in her lap, feeling like a seventeen-year-old girl again. “Oh, Merrick!” she whispered. “I just don’t know! By then I was so confused.”

The truth was, however, she likely
would
have gone with him. Yes, to the ends of the earth. But what good would such truths do now? She was beyond bitterness and hate. She had no wish to see Merrick rip himself apart with guilt over an old woman’s harsh words.

He looked squarely at her then, his eyes tinged with grief and not a little remorse. “It is so much easier, Maddie, when I can lay all the blame at your doorstep.”

She shook her head. “And what of me, Merrick?” she asked. “Your grandmother does not mince words. Did I dishonor my vows? I…I thought not. I thought I’d no other choice but to marry Lord Bessett and go away.”

“But why, Maddie?” This time, there was no anger in his words. “Why? Was there…no other choice?”

“None that I could see,” she whispered. “Merrick, I do not ask that you forgive me. If you wish to wrap your anger around you like a shroud—which is what I fear you have been doing—then it is none of my business. But now you want a part in Geoff’s life, and I…well, I believe that would be best for Geoff, too. I will sacrifice anything, Merrick, for my child’s welfare, even my peace of mind.”

He looked at her beseechingly. “What are you saying, Maddie?”

“Merrick, I was just seventeen,” she whispered. “I had no knowledge, really, of the world. And I was—or believed I was—a prisoner in my father’s home. He had carried me back from Scotland by force with every intention of finding some way to marry me off to serve his political purposes.”

“Oh, Maddie!”

She reached out and took hold of his wrist. “And then I learnt that I was with child, Merrick,” she went on. “Can you comprehend my fear for the babe I carried? I had not heard from you in two months. My letters to you in London went unanswered—assuming they got out of Father’s house, which I now doubt.”

“Christ Jesus.”

“Bessett offered me a way out, and a name for my child. What else was I to do? I was not so brave as your grandmother would have wished. Some might say I behaved quite spinelessly. But I meant it then as I mean it now: no sacrifice was or is too great if it serves my child. And that marriage was my sacrifice.”

“As I am now your sacrifice?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Do you hate me so much, Maddie, that you wish never to have to see me again? Will it pain you to have to see me on your doorstep?”

She shook her head. “We must find a way to go on.”

“All right,” he said softly. “So what is it, then? Am I a long-lost cousin? The boy’s godfather? What lie are we going to tell society, Maddie?”

“Society can go to hell,” she said. “Merrick, why did you never tell me what my father did to you?”

He looked at her blankly.

“That scar,” she said, her voice firm. “He did that, and worse. I know, because that woman at the inn told me.”

He cursed beneath his breath and sat silent and stoic for what seemed an eternity.

Well, damn him,
Madeleine thought. She would sit out here until dawn, if that was what it took to get an answer from the man.

“Maddie, I don’t know,” he finally said. “And what difference does it make now? I told myself that you had sided with your father over me. That you didn’t wish to hear ill spoken of him. But perhaps that was just a part of my—what did Granny call it?—yes, my overweening pride. Or perhaps it was a part of that shroud of anger you just accused me of having.”

“Perhaps it was,” she murmured. “And I did love my father, Merrick. Even until the last, I believed he had my best interests at heart. But…but he did not, did he?”

Merrick cleared his throat a little roughly. “I was not much of a catch, Maddie,” he admitted. “I am sure he felt that you could have chosen from amongst a hundred better, richer men.”

“How frightfully broad-minded of you,” she said dryly. “But I do not think that gave him leave to have you beaten half to death. And I think we both know now that he would have married me to the devil himself had it better served his needs.”

Merrick’s hands clenched into fists. “Damn it, Maddie, do you realize that all this—or the worst of it—could have been avoided had I done one simple thing?”

“What?”

“If I had just told Alasdair what we were about,” he answered grimly. “I should have asked for his carriage and told him we meant to marry. But for once in my accursed life, I wanted to be the dashing rogue. I wanted to be…I don’t know—I wanted to be Alasdair, I suppose. And so I pinched his carriage and thought it a great romantic adventure.”

“Oh, Merrick!”

He looked at her almost shamefacedly. “Had I told him, Maddie, he would have come looking for me when I didn’t return home. He would have come to Gretna Green, and he would have been sharp enough to see which way the wind blew and put a stop to your father’s tricks. But I told no one. Aye, perhaps Granny was right about that overweening pride after all.”

“They left you badly hurt,” she said.

“They left me half-dead,” he said grimly. “And they meant to. But I remember nothing of those weeks, Maddie. The only clear memory I have is of hiking up that long carriage drive to your father’s house, half-drunk on laudanum to stanch the pain.”

“Hiking?” If ever he’d come to Sheffield, this was the first she had heard of it.

“Actually, I think I was on horseback,” he admitted. “The bone in my leg had not fully healed, and my hip was—well, a damned mess. But in my mind, I walked. In my dreams, that is how I remember it.”

“I never knew.”

He shrugged as if it did not matter. “Well, it did no good, for your father was gone, and you had remarried, they claimed. Two weeks earlier.”

“Dear God.” It was all sinking in on her now.
Two weeks?
“Merrick, do you remember my maid?”

“Florette?” he said, his tone curious. “Oh, aye. Painfully well.”

“I think she was Papa’s spy. He left her behind in Gretna Green.”

“Aye, to wait for my funeral, no doubt,” he said darkly. “She swore to me, Maddie, that you had changed your mind. She brought your father down to the stables, and…and she told me you had had a change of heart.”

“Dear God,” she said again. “And she is the one who cut that page from the register. I am sure of it now. The names are too similar. Flora. Florette. Papa must have paid her.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Madeleine turning all the ugly truths around in her mind. Yes, many people had conspired against them. But there was a part of Madeleine which believed that true love would always prevail—and that if it did not, then it was not true enough. Or that you were not brave enough or strong enough to deserve it.

“Well, this is old history now, is it not?” she said quietly. “A lifetime has passed since then.”

He turned to look at her. “Aye,” he finally said. “A lifetime.”

Madeleine shifted her skirts, half-meaning to rise and walk back to the castle. “Well, I am glad, I suppose, that we have had this talk,” she said. “Perhaps it is no less tragic, but I am glad that we have laid some old ghosts to rest.”

“I am glad, too,” he said, but his voice was hollow.

It was time to change the subject. Time to begin as she meant to go on—as Geoff’s mother, and, were it to prove remotely possible, as Merrick’s friend. She forced a more conversational tone. “Tell me, what is that little island there?” She lifted her hand and pointed into the gloom.

“It is a little island,” he answered.

Madeleine forced herself to laugh. “Wretch!” she said. “Can one go there? Is that what the little barge is for?”

Merrick peered over the edge of the pier. “I would hardly call that a barge,” he answered. “It is naught but a sort of raft which is kept for summer entertainments. But yes, it can be punted out to the island or simply set adrift on the water.”

She leapt to her feet. “Take me out there,” she said impulsively.

“Now?” He looked up at her as if she’d lost her mind. “In the dark?”

She reached a hand down to him. “It is not dark,” she said. “The moon is so bright one cannot see the stars. You said as much yourself.”

With a look of grave reluctance, he let her draw him to his feet. He looked down at the raft, and shrugged. “Can you swim?”

“Reasonably well,” she said. “Certainly I can thrash about and scream for help most efficiently.”

“Aye? Good enough, then.”

He was actually going to do it?
Madeleine was inexplicably elated.

Merrick grabbed of the piling above the raft, and stepped down with his lithe grace. It dipped beneath his weight, but he balanced neatly on his stronger leg, turned, and offered a hand to Madeleine.

It was a little awkward, and a little frightening, too, to step so far down onto what was surely an unsteady surface. But she had asked, so she gathered her skirts in one hand, hiked them up, and stepped. Somewhere in mid-step, however, Merrick caught her around the waist with an impossibly strong arm and lifted her neatly into the center. She landed with a loud shriek, then quickly clamped a hand across her mouth.

By the flickering lamplight, she could see his eyes dance with humor. “You’ll have them all rushing out here to rescue us, Maddie,” he said. “I am not perfectly sure how I would explain the fact that two rational, responsible adults are about to do such an impulsive, foolhardy thing.”

She held his gaze a moment. “But one cannot truly savor life without having at least a little danger in it,” she murmured. “How long has it been, Merrick, since you did anything reckless?”

“Well, that would be—” He pondered it for a moment, “—about twelve years, eleven months, and…oh, two days?”

“Ah,” she said quietly. “You are speaking of the day we left London for Gretna Green.”

Her heart sank a little at the thought. But he probably spoke the truth. It probably was the last impulsive, irresponsible thing he had done. Or at least it must seem so to him. She cleared her throat sharply. “This rides frightfully high in the water,” she said. “Do you think it will turn over?”

“Impossible,” he said, taking her hand again. “Look here, sit down in the center, and you’ll not feel so much as a list.”

She sat. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll manage well enough,” he said, kneeling to unfasten the mooring. “I’ve been doing this since I was a lad. Now, what does my lady command? To the island?”

She considered it. “I wish to see it, yes.”

“Your wish is my command.”

Soon Merrick had a pole in hand and was pushing them away from shore.

“Will that thing really touch the bottom?” she asked uneasily.

He laughed. “In a few spots, I pray,” he said. “We are on the shallow end of the loch, and it is not especially deep this time of year.”

Thus reassured, Madeleine set her hands behind her, leaned back, and looked up into the moonlit evening. With the night sky drifting above her, and the rhythmic
slosh, slosh
of Merrick’s exertions, the raft did indeed feel perfectly steady—and delightfully relaxing.

“The current tends always to pull toward shore,” he said. “I’ll punt into deeper water, then we’ll just drift round the loch—I hope.”

They slid across the water in silence for a time. What little current there was could be clearly seen in the moonlight. On deep, smooth strokes, Merrick drove the raft forward until, eventually, the exertion wore down his sense of propriety. With the island but a few yards away, he laid down the pole, and stripped off his coats, tossing them down beside her. A cloud of musky male scent tinged with something soapy and spicy settled over her for an instant.

“You have changed your cologne,” she said on impulse.

He hesitated for a moment, and half turned to look at her. “Have I?”

She reclined onto her forearms, and looked up at him. “Yes, I noticed it that night at—” Embarrassed at the recollection of what they had done at Lord Treyhern’s, she faltered.

“Yes, I comprehend,” he said dryly, taking up his pole again. “I lied to you earlier, did I not?”

“Lied?”

He would not look at her now. “When you asked me what was the last reckless thing I had done.”

Madeleine pondered it for a moment. She rolled onto one elbow and looked at him quite directly. “Merrick, did you never do anything reckless unless…well, unless
I
was involved?”

“No,” he said pensively. “No, Madeleine, I think not.” He did not miss a beat, however, the strong muscles of his back working rhythmically with his arms to punt the raft smoothly along the water.

She watched his muscles work, the moonlight white on his linen shirt. “Well in any case,” she finally went on, “your old cologne smelled more of lime. But this one—” She sniffed the air almost indelicately. “Yes, it is a woodsynutmeg sort of scent.”

He laughed. “It is whatever Phipps bought,” he said. “I can assure you no thought went into the matter.”

Merrick’s every sense was acutely aware of Madeleine’s presence. He was a little astounded by the fact that she still remembered his old cologne. He could feel her eyes upon him, and he wondered what was on her mind. Was she thinking, as he most certainly was, of their intense, almost desperate lovemaking in Treyhern’s pantry? The memory of it should have been laughable, yet it was anything but.

He shook off the thought, and drove the pole deep. He was still striking the bottom, but barely. Madeleine had surprised him tonight with her sudden revelation to Geoffrey. He had almost looked forward to more of a skirmish on the issue. He was not a quarrelsome man by nature, but where Madeleine was concerned—well, any sort of dialogue, any kind of emotion, no matter how vitriolic or passionate, seemed better than nothing.

But this time, it was over. She would sacrifice anything, she had said, even her own peace of mind, for her child’s happiness. Well, he had no wish to strip away that last vestige of comfort from her. So far as he could see, she’d known damned little of it. What he wanted to do was…well, to salvage something of this mess they had made. What he wanted was…
her
.