Unforgiven (The Horsemen Trilogy) (15 page)

“You do not know either me or my ways, Moira,” he said. “We had a dozen or so encounters when we were very young. We had no dealings at all for longer than eight years. We were not even living in the same country. In the four months since my return, we have had a few brief encounters and the unfortunately more lengthy one in the hermit’s hut. We do not know each other at all. Yet tomorrow we will become man and wife. Can we not agree to make tomorrow a start of something wholly new? Can we not make an effort at least to tolerate and respect each other?”

She seemed to be considering the question. “No,” she said finally. “I cannot so easily forget the past.”

He released her hands and got to his feet. “Perhaps you are more honest than I am,” he said. “I cannot so easily forget, either, that you stood in the hollow on the cliff top one night and held a pistol pointed at my heart and told me to go off home and mind my own business when you had kissed me in that same hollow just the day before and smiled when I told you I loved you.”

“I should have laughed rather than smiled,” she said, “at hearing such a lie.”

He strode over to the door and pulled it open. But there was no one in the hallway. He strode across it and tapped on the door of the sitting room where he had been received earlier. Lady Hayes’s voice bade him enter.

“If you would be so good as to step across to the book room, ma’am,” he said with a bow.

She looked as surprised now as she had earlier, but she came without further prompting and preceded him back across the hall.

“Moira?” she said, hurrying inside. “What is the matter? Have you taken another turn? She has been in poor health for most of the winter, my lord,” she explained, turning her head toward where he stood just inside the door, his hands clasped at his back. “I do hope—”

“Miss Hayes has just consented to marry me tomorrow morning, ma’am,” he said.

She looked at him in blank amazement.

“I am more than three months with child, Mama,” Moira said, looking into her mother’s widening eyes. “I did not spend the night of the Christmas ball at Dunbarton Hall. I foolishly tried to walk home through the storm. Lord Haverford came after me and found me taking shelter in the baptistry. We were forced to spend the rest of the night together there.”

Lady Hayes was fortunately close to a chair. She sat hurriedly down on it. She looked at Kenneth and her lips thinned.

“Lord Haverford offered me marriage the very next morning,” Moira said quickly. It was not strictly true, of course. She had not allowed him to make the offer. “He offered several times after that. He even tried to insist. I would not have him. I wrote to him the same morning I wrote to Sir Edwin. But I found when I took the letter to Dunbarton that he had left for Kent a few hours
before. He came as soon as it had been sent on to him. None of this is his fault.”

He half smiled. Moira was defending him?

“I should, ma’am,” he said, “have spoken to you when I escorted Miss Hayes home that morning. I should have written to Sir Edwin Baillie myself that same morning. A great deal of anguish would have been avoided if I had not made grave errors of judgment. I blame myself. But there is little to be gained now from castigating myself for past actions or inaction. I am in possession of a special license and Miss Hayes and I will be married tomorrow. The day after, I will see to it that she is properly attended by a physician.”

Lady Hayes had both hands to her cheeks. “I can only be thankful, my lord,” she said, “that neither your father nor my husband lived to see this day.” She turned her head to look at her daughter. “Moira, why did you not tell me? Oh, why did you not
tell
me?”

“I suppose,” Moira said, “I thought that if only I did not speak of it or even think of it, the whole nasty nightmare would go away. It seems I have been nothing but foolish since Christmas.” She looked at Kenneth. “It will never go away, of course. It is with me for a lifetime.”

He strode in the direction of the bellpull. “With your permission, ma’am,” he said, “I will summon your maid. I believe both you and Moira would be better for a cup of tea.”

“Moira?”
Lady Hayes said, and frowned.

She had not failed to notice the familiarity with which he had referred to her daughter. Well, it did not matter now. Miss Moira
Hayes would be his wife within one day. Tomorrow she would be Moira Woodfall, Countess of Haverford—for whom the nightmare of the present was to last a lifetime.

He jerked grimly on the bell rope.

*   *   *

THE
church in Tawmouth was almost empty when the Earl of Haverford married Miss Moira Hayes. Apart from the two principals and the Reverend Finley-Evans, the only people in attendance were Lady Hayes, Mrs. Finley-Evans, a hastily summoned Harriet Lincoln with Mr. Lincoln, and his lordship’s steward.

It was nothing like the wedding she had dreamed of in the long-ago days of her youth, Moira thought. Nothing like it in more ways than the absence of guests. There was no groom to be gazed at adoringly. Only Kenneth. He looked knee-weakeningly handsome, of course, dressed as immaculately as if he were on his way to court to make his bow to the king—or to the prince regent. He was wearing shades of pale blue and white, which looked quite glorious with his blond hair. He looked like the prince of fairy tales. Although she wore a favorite white gown she had almost chosen to wear to the Dunbarton ball at Christmas, she knew she was not by any means in good looks. His own handsome appearance served only to make her feel uglier.

And she felt so very ill that for a few minutes after she had got out of bed in the morning she had considered sending a message to inform him that she must postpone the wedding. It had not been possible, of course. As he had pointed out and as she had
realized for herself, she had allowed far too much time to pass as it was. But she felt ill in almost every possible way: Her head ached; she felt faint and nauseated; she was cold and lethargic. And she hated her symptoms, her self-pity. She wanted to break loose and run and run and run. She wanted an impossibility. Perhaps, she thought with grim humor, she was indulging a death wish.

It was not the wedding any woman would have dreamed of. And yet it was startlingly real. It was not, after all, just a nasty necessity that had to be lived through in order that decency be restored to her life. It was a wedding. It was something that was joining her fate to Kenneth’s for the rest of their lives. Perhaps because the ceremony was a physical ordeal for her, it also took on a stark reality. She listened to every word the Reverend Finley-Evans spoke and every word seemed something new, as if she had never heard the wedding service before. She listened to Kenneth’s voice, low and pleasant and very masculine, and heard the words he spoke. He told her he worshiped her with his body. She listened to her own voice and what it said. She promised to love him and to obey him. She felt the shining gold ring surprisingly warm against her finger. She watched him ease it over her knuckle and slide it into place. She heard a hastily suppressed sob behind her: Mama? Harriet? She felt his kiss, warm, firm, his lips ever so slightly parted, his breath warm on her cheek.

Kenneth. She looked into his eyes as he lifted his head. They looked steadily back but told her nothing. They were absent of all expression.
Kenneth. I loved you so very much. You were every dream I ever dreamed. You were every breath I breathed.

“Please,” he murmured, leaning closer as the Reverend
Finley-Evans began to speak again, “stop yourself from crying. Don’t do this to me.”

He had misunderstood. He thought that her tears were ones of revulsion. They were tears of regret for youthful dreams and ideals. Once, she had believed in heroes and in perfection and in romantic love—all of them embodied in Kenneth. When she had woken up to reality, everything had come crashing down. If she had not loved him, she thought now, perhaps she would never have hated him either.

But she could not imagine reacting to Kenneth without passion of some sort. She could never be simply indifferent to him—unfortunately.

Her mother hugged her and kissed her; Harriet and Mrs. Finley-Evans, both looking puzzled and curious, kissed her cheek; the Reverend Finley-Evans, Mr. Lincoln, and Dunbarton’s Mr. Watkins bowed to her and kissed her hand. And suddenly and strangely, anticlimactically, it was all over. She was leaving the church on her husband’s arm, and he was handing her into his carriage. Everyone else was to come to Dunbarton for breakfast in two other carriages.

It felt even more real when they were alone together, sitting side by side, not quite touching, looking out of opposite windows of the carriage.

“If you are feeling too ill to sit through breakfast,” he said as his carriage labored up the steep hill beyond the village, “you must retire to your rooms. If you feel able to sit with our guests, I would be grateful if you would force a smile or two.”

“Yes,” she said, “I will smile.”

“At the very least,” he said, “try not to weep.”

“I shall smile,” she said. “It is your first command to me, my lord, and I will obey it.”

“Sarcasm is unnecessary,” he said.

She laughed softly and blinked her eyes determinedly, her head turned away from him. He would never again see her tears. He would never again see her vulnerable.

Kenneth.
She felt a fiercely nostalgic longing for the man she had loved—just as if he were not the same man as the one who sat beside her now, his shoulder almost touching her own. Her husband. Father of the child she carried inside her.

T
HE
drawing room was too large for two people, Kenneth decided. In future they would have to find some other, smaller room in which to spend their evenings except when they were entertaining. The coved and painted and gilded ceiling, the massive doorframes, the marble fireplace, and the huge, framed paintings all succeeded in dwarfing his wife as she sat near the fire, her head bent to her embroidery.

His wife! Only now, on the evening of his wedding day, with their guests gone, did he have the leisure to comprehend the reality of the past week—not even a week. Despite his earlier resolve to make Dunbarton his home, he had been intending after all to stay in London to enjoy the Season with Nat and Eden. He had been quite prepared to participate to the full in all the frivolities and excesses and debaucheries that town had to offer.

Being at Dunbarton, near Penwith, near her, had become insupportable to him. He had hated her and loved her. He had resented her and wanted her. He had despised her and admired her. At the time, perhaps, he had not recognized the duality of his feelings. But he had felt his helplessness. She had rejected him. He now knew that she had even gone to the lengths of lying to him in order to be rid of him.

She looked up from her embroidery and met his eyes across the room. Her hand, holding the needle and silken thread, remained poised above her work. Pale and out of looks as she was, there was still a natural grace about her. But she was thin. Her cheeks were hollow. The evening dress into which she had changed for dinner hung loosely on her. After more than three months, should not the opposite be happening?

They had looked at each other long enough in silence. “You are tired,” he said. “Shall I escort you to your room?”

“Not yet,” she said.

She had been in a state of near-collapse by the time her mother, the last of their guests, had left. But she had refused to miss dinner—though scarcely a mouthful of food had passed her lips—and she had insisted on coming to the drawing room afterward only because he had suggested both times that she retire to her own apartments, he suspected. Had he told her, in a brisk tone of command, that he expected her to bear him company at dinner, she would probably have stayed upstairs and dared him to go to fetch her down.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He looked down at the paper on the desktop before him and
at the quill pen he held in his hand. “I am writing to my mother,” he said, “and to my sister.”

She had lowered her needle though she was not stitching. “They will be thrilled,” she said.

“Their feelings are immaterial,” he said. “You are my wife. We are to have a child in less than six months’ time. They will have no choice but to accept those facts cheerfully.”

“Cheerfully.” She smiled. “They almost had an apoplexy apiece when they expected that I would be spending one night here after the Christmas ball.”

“You exaggerate,” he said. “Had they been consulted on the matter, they would have been pleased to insist that you stay rather than endanger yourself by returning home.”

She continued to smile. “I decided to endanger myself, Kenneth,” she said, “after overhearing each of them in turn express to you her objection to my continued presence at Dunbarton.”

Was it possible? He supposed it must be if she said it. They had both been outraged, after all.
That
was why she had so recklessly walked off into the storm.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Doubtless they did not intend you to hear.”

“Eavesdroppers rarely hear good of themselves,” she said. “Or so it is said. When they read your letters and make some calculations, perhaps they will wish they had urged me to stay. One night at Dunbarton and they would have been rid of me forever.”

“Their wishes are of no significance,” he said. “And you may rest assured that they will behave toward you with perfect good breeding.”

She smiled at him once more before plying her needle again. He watched her for a few minutes before returning his attention to his difficult letter. They would be horrified, of course: at the identity of his bride, at the manner of his wedding, at the circumstances that had dictated its haste. But they would accept her. By God, they would, if they expected to have any further dealings with him.

He finished the first letter and began the second before looking up again. When he did, she was sitting with her embroidery in her lap and her eyes closed.

“What is it?” He got to his feet and hurried toward her.

“Nothing.” She picked up her needle.

“Put your work away,” he said. “I am taking you to bed.”

“Another command?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth. “If you wish,” he said. “If you choose to make this marriage intolerable to both yourself and me by forcing me to issue commands and to insist upon obedience to them, then so be it. If you wish to make some sort of game of our marriage in which I am always the oppressor and you the victim, then I cannot stop you. But at this moment you are tired and unwell and need to be in your bed. I am going to take you there. You may stand and take my arm if you will. If you will not, I shall lift you from your chair and carry you upstairs. I leave you a choice, you see.”

She took her time about threading her needle through the cloth and folding it with the silks inside and setting it aside before getting to her feet. She leaned so heavily on his arm as he led her slowly upstairs that he knew she must be weary indeed.

“I will send for Ryder tomorrow morning,” he said. “We will see what he can do for you, Moira. You cannot go on like this.”

She would not even argue with the truth of his final statement. Her head slumped sideways against his shoulder, alarming him. He sat her down on a chair in her dressing room, pulled the bell rope to summon her maid, and went down on his haunches before her chair to take her hands in his.

“I have done this to you,” he said. “Men escape lightly in such matters, do they not? But I will take every burden except this off your shoulders, Moira. I will try to be a good husband. Perhaps we can learn to rub along well enough together if we try.”

“Perhaps.” Her eyes were on his. It was the first concession she had made.

He raised her hands one at a time to his lips and then released them and got to his feet as her maid arrived.

“Good night,” he said to his wife. He went back downstairs to finish the letter to Helen, but he did not stay up late. He undressed in his dressing room, donned a dressing robe over his nightshirt, and proceeded to stand at the window of his darkened bedchamber well into the night.

It was not the sort of wedding night a man dreamed of. It was not the sort of
marriage
a man dreamed of. And yet it was real enough. And one thing had been alarmingly clear to him during his wedding. As he had spoken his part of the marriage service, he had meant every word. He had heard it said that the nuptial service was a pious farce, that bride and groom were forced to utter solemn and ridiculous vows that neither had any intention
whatsoever of honoring. He feared that he would have no choice but to honor his.

It was not a happy thought. He felt that he had doomed himself today to perpetual unhappiness.

And yet at one time happiness and Moira had seemed synonymous terms. She had seemed made for happiness: lithe and bursting with health and energy and high spirits. She had scorned the feud that should have kept them apart and the social restrictions that should have kept her always within view of a chaperone. She had scorned the rules of ladylike propriety that would have kept her hair pinned up and her shoes and stockings on her feet and her pace at a sedate walk. He could see her now running across the hill above the waterfall, his hat in her hands, while he chased after her to retrieve it, and twirling about on the beach, her arms outstretched, her face turned up to the sun, and sitting in the hollow on the cliff top, hugging her knees, gazing out to sea, wondering what life in other countries must be like. Talking, smiling, laughing—so often laughing. And kissing him with warm ardor and smiling at his protestations of love.

It was hard—almost impossible—to believe that she was the same woman as the one he had left sitting on a chair in the dressing room next to his own. Except that the soreness about his heart told him that she was indeed the same and that he was responsible for the differences.

“Moira,” he whispered, but the sound of his own voice startled and somewhat embarrassed him. He closed his eyes and set his forehead against the glass of the window.

*   *   *

IT
was a strange room in a strange house—large, high-ceilinged, warm. The bed was large and comfortable. Everything was far superior to her room at home—at what had been her home. But she could not sleep.

She wondered where he was, where his own rooms were. Close to her own? As far away as they could be?

She had been perfectly horrid all day. She had not quite understood herself. He had made an effort to be civil, even amiable. She had twisted everything, thwarted him at every turn. She had behaved like a spoiled child. She had not seemed able to stop herself. But they were married. She could not continue like this for the rest of their lives.

She touched her thumb to the smooth gold ring on her finger. They were
married
—she and Kenneth. She had reached the summit of her girlhood dreams. He was surely the most handsome man in the whole world, she had once thought—and still thought.

Tomorrow she must try to do better. Tomorrow she must be civil. No marriage could be so bad that a little effort at civility could not make it bearable, unless the man was abusive or had some uncontrollable addiction. Neither applied to this marriage. Tomorrow she would try.

She could not sleep. The room tilted beyond her closed eyelids, bringing on the too-familiar nausea; her head pounded, and the muscles in her abdomen were clenching involuntarily and causing discomfort and even pain. She wondered if her confinement would
take a more normal course now that all the anxiety and uncertainty and secrecy and guilt were at an end. She wondered if Mr. Ryder would be able to suggest something to make her feel well again. It would be so
embarrassing
to have to admit the truth to Mr. Ryder, to have him examine her. She wondered if Harriet had suspected the truth—and Mrs. Finley-Evans. She did not know how they could not have done so. She was so very tired. She would sleep for a week if she could but nod off, she was sure.

And then she was waking up, clawing her way out of a nightmare that had left her hot and sweating, gasping her way free of claws that had clamped onto her and were knifing into her flesh. She lay staring at the canopy over her bed, breathing loudly through her mouth. And she knew that only a part of what had happened had been a dream. She lay very still, closed her eyes, tried to relax. She had almost succeeded before it happened again.

There was a bell rope beside her bed. There was another in her dressing room. She forgot about both. She stumbled barefoot to the door of her bedchamber and flung it open. But she did not know where he was. The house was strange. Everything was strange.

“Kenneth,” she said. She filled her lungs with air.
“Kenneth!”

A door opened somewhere close as she clung to the doorframe, and then two hands were on her arms, drawing her to rest against the silken warmth of a night robe. She buried her face against him and tried to draw sanity from him.

“What is it?” he was asking her. “What is wrong?”

“I do not know,” she said. But it was starting to happen again and she clawed at him, moaning as she did so. “Kenneth—”

“My God.” He had swept her up into his arms and was setting her back down on the bed. But she clung to his neck, in a panic.

“Don’t leave me,” she begged him. “Please. Please.”

He wrapped his arms about her, kept his head close to hers, talked to her. “Moira,” he said over and over again. “My love. Moira.”

He must have pulled on the bell rope. There was someone else in the room, someone with a candle. He was instructing whoever it was to send for the doctor immediately and to inform him that it was an extreme emergency. He was using the voice he must have used on the battlefield, she thought. And then the pain gripped her again.

She did not know how long a time passed before Mr. Ryder came. But she knew what was happening long before he arrived. There was the waking nightmare of recurring and tearing pain without the sustaining expectation of joy waiting at the end of it all. Her maid was in her room. So was the housekeeper. So was
he
, talking to her, smoothing his hand over her head, bathing her face with a cool cloth. Eventually, she heard another man’s voice—Mr. Ryder’s—telling him to leave, but he did not go.

He did not go until it was all over and she had heard Mr. Ryder tell him—she did not think he had intended her to hear—that he did not believe her ladyship’s life was in danger. But he would return in the morning, early.

“Moira?” Kenneth’s voice. She opened her eyes. “Your maid will stay here with you. She will come for me if you have need of me. You must not hesitate to ask. Sleep now. Ryder has given you a draught that will help you.” His face was a cold, impassive mask.