Fated Folly (27 page)

But Clare could not know the depth of his hurt at this untimely flight. And with Christian, of all people. Never mind what he meant by it. That question paled beside the fierce rage that consumed him at Clare's defection. Her betrayal. After his confident assertion last night? He had been fool enough to believe in her, and she had left him. Without a word of explanation. Deserted him. Her vaunted love had been tested—and found wanting. She had failed him. Just as Meriel had done years before.

He could barely stand to be near her, let alone touch her. Arrived at the Manor, as his groom jumped down and went to the horse's heads, he leapt down, intending to march straight into the house. But his glance caught Clare struggling to descend on her own, and in spite of himself, he could not help going to her aid. He was hardly aware of the strength of the grip with which he seized her as he lifted her from the carriage. Nor that she had half to run to keep up with him as he marched her into the house without releasing his grasp of her arm.

He came to himself as they entered the hall, and looking down, found her gazing up at him in mute supplication. God, but he wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until the teeth rattled in her head! How could she have done it? He wrenched his eyes away, and turned for the library.

Agonised, Clare ran after him, pushing at the door before he could close it, finding her tongue in a despairing cry.

‘
Rupert! This isn't fair. Let me explain!'

No, it was not fair. He knew that well enough. But he was so choked with rage that he knew equally he had no fairness in him at this moment. He turned to say this, and did not realise that his face might as well have been carved in stone. So deep in his own hurt was he that Clare's frightened breath and trembling lip passed him by.

‘
I cannot discuss it now,' he said deliberately, almost spitting the words through his teeth.

‘
Please,' Clare whispered.

It seemed to her that he forcibly ungripped his jaw to enable himself to speak. His eyes were granite hard.

‘
Go away. Don't make me say—what I will regret.'

Clare gazed at him. Was this intimidating stranger the man she loved? The man who allegedly loved her? All at once, the fear of his molten rage was consumed by a violent blaze that leapt up within her own breast. Her eyes matched his for hatred. Momentary, but hatred all the same. The voice, husky and venomous, was not her own as it spoke the most vicious words that came to mind.

‘
Regret? Do you think there is anything you could possibly do or say to hurt me more than you have already done?'

Rupert felt it like shot from a cannon. His guts jerked in protest. His defences sprang up stronger still. His heart hardened against her. But Clare saw the impact in the brief flicker of his eyes. Triumphant, she left the room, slamming the door behind her.

The big hall was deserted. But Clare was far too taut to register the anxious eyes of Berinthia Flimwell, peeping through a crack in the drawing-room door. Or to notice the other eyes that watched from hidden vantage points about the house.

Breathing hard, she crossed the hall with an unusually heavy tread, all but stamping, and mounted the stairs with no very clear idea in her head of where she was going. She found herself in her bedchamber, and the sight of the big four-poster pierced her unaccustomed rage.

Now she saw the hardening in the memory of Rupert's eyes, like a door shutting. What had she done? Her heart began a tattoo in her breast, and everything that had gone before—all the distresses, the misunderstandings, the then agonies—seemed as nothing to this appalling breach. Where was she? Where was Rupert? The gulf between them yawned wide—insuperable.

Exhaustion swept over her in a wave and she sank down onto the bed, crawling up to the pillows, and curling there, hugging herself into a forlorn little ball. But sleep, that balm of troubled hearts, refused to come. She'd had but an hour or two all night, but it made no difference now. She began to feel cold, and started to shiver. She must move, get between sheets. But it did not seem as if she could. It did not seem as if she could do anything now. She lay there, her eyes wide and staring, her heart numbing over, while tremor after tremor attacked her slight frame.

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Although Rupert's temper had cooled, the sense of corroding disillusionment remained. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his conscience, the lurking remembrance of Clare's parting words twisted a knife, cutting painful grooves into the fabric of his ill-thought foray into wedlock. But the hurt of what he conceived to be his wife's betrayal had thrown him helter-skelter into the past and he was as yet unable to drag himself back to the present reality.

When the library door opened, he was seated at his desk, his unseeing gaze on the long box, open before him. He glanced up, a flitter tracing the hurt as he half-expected to see Clare. Instead, he gazed blankly at Blanche Dearham's countenance, taking in only in the periphery of his mind that it was decidedly grim.

‘
Blanche!' He rose automatically. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘
I came on an errand of mercy, Rupert,' replied Mrs Dearham, and now he could not mistake how her expressive voice quivered with anger. ‘An errand which should not have been necessary.'

A rapid review of possibilities ran through Rupert's head, leaving him with only one plausible explanation. He turned away from her, moving to the windows.

‘
Clare sent for you, then.'

‘
No, Clare did not send for me. Berinthia sent for me, because she did not know how to help Clare, and she did not dare to approach you, Rupert.'

His chest tightened and he looked round. ‘To help Clare to do what? Run away from me again?'

Blanche paused, eyeing him with a look he found hard to meet.

‘
Your temper has not improved, I see.'

With difficulty, he forced down the urge to retort. ‘I am not in a temper, if you must call it that, now. I am, however, disillusioned, with all that that entails.'

‘
You are not alone,' Blanche said tartly.

His patience snapped. ‘Very cryptic, Blanche. What does it mean?'

Mrs Dearham came further into the room. As she passed the desk, she looked down, evidently catching sight of the box he had set there. Her eyes came sharply up to meet his, shock in them.

‘
As disillusioned as that, Rupert?'

He frowned in momentary confusion, glancing at the box. Then he understood. A short laugh escaped him, and he came across to shut the lid on the pair of gleaming pistols reposing within.

‘
Don't be stupid, Blanche. They are here for quite another purpose. Did you suppose I meant to blow my brains out?'

‘
It did occur to me, yes,' Blanche admitted. ‘Not but what I was almost ready to do it myself a few moments ago.'

Rupert's conscience gave a jerk, and he flung back to the windows. ‘What would you, Blanche? Of course I was angry. I imagine you must know by this that Clare ran off with my heir. Do you think me any less jealous than the next man?'

‘
I think you inordinately stupid.'

Rupert winced, but he said nothing.

From behind him came Blanche's voice again. ‘Clare is not Meriel, Rupert. You have no right to punish her for what was done to you years ago.'

The words bit hard. Denial was useless. Now that the roiling burden of the past had lifted a little, the snaking coil of conscience threatened deep inside.

‘
I am aware of that,' he said, low-voiced.

‘
Then use your head, Rupert! This flight of Clare's will not bear comparison with what Meriel did. She did not run away with Christian, she only meant for him to escort her home, to her father. And there was an excellent reason to explain why she left you. Christian told her that you had been at Biddy Arksey's last night.'

Dismay flooded his breast as he turned. ‘Oh, my God! But how the devil did he know? And why should he say anything?'

‘
I have no more notion than you,' Blanche snapped. ‘Rupert, how could you? Berinthia tells me you had not been home all night. Clare knew it, for her maid found her asleep on your bed when she went to fetch her on Christian's arrival.'

Rupert groaned, the remorse leaping from its craven hole and flying into his throat. The earlier scene swept into his head, when he'd been in the grip of the events of the past, unable to see the present for what it was. And Clare had suffered for it. What had he done? What had he said? He put his hands to his head and his fingers wreaked havoc in his hair.

‘
And I would not let her explain! I would not even let her speak!'

‘
Yes, it is time you woke up!' Blanche came up to him, urgency in her voice. ‘Rupert, you must go to her. I have no wish to distress you further, but she is in the most appalling state.'

Alarm swept through him. ‘What do you mean?'

‘
Berinthia found her lying on her bed, her eyes wide open and shaking like a jelly. She would not respond, nor utter a sound. Berinthia became frantic. That's why she sent for me.' She must have seen his horror in his face, for she put out a hand and seized his arm. ‘Don't look like that! She is better now. At least I managed to rouse her from that terrible stupor, and persuade her to tell me what happened. But the poor girl is in despair, Rupert. She thinks she has lost you.'

Appalled, Rupert wasted no words, but started for the door.

‘
Wait!' cried Blanche, intercepting him before he could reach it. ‘Think, Rupert, before you go hell for leather into this. What are you going to tell her?'

He looked at her blankly. ‘The truth, of course. What else?'

‘
What, that you have been with your mistress all night? Are you mad?'

‘
I did not touch Biddy. I went to her only because I could not be in the house with Clare, for I knew I would—succumb again.'

‘
You expect the poor child to believe that?'

Writhing under the lash, Rupert fended her off. ‘You don't know the whole, Blanche. We are in the devil of a mess, Clare and I—all my doing, I swear—but I never meant to drive her away.'

‘
What mess?' demanded Blanche, seizing his arm once more so that he was obliged to pause again. ‘What do you mean?'

Rupert sighed. ‘I cannot explain. And you wouldn't understand my—dilemma, for want of a better word. Her youth—my age. Somehow, I must find a way to live with what I have done. But to do that, without hurting Clare—'

He broke off and found Blanche watching his face, a frown in her eyes.

‘
What? You think I'm cruel, is that it? The only cruelty is in the fate that brought Clare and I together.'

She released him abruptly. ‘If that is how you feel, then heaven help you! Lord, Rupert, have you not yet realised how deeply she loves you?'

His heart felt suddenly bleak, and empty. ‘As deeply, as desperately, as I love her. That is our tragedy.' Briskly then, he turned again for the door, adding, ‘But she need not suffer this.'

He found Berinthia hovering in the hall and brushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time. He thrust into Clare's bedchamber, a sliver of dread rising up at what he might find, his eyes going directly to the four-poster.

It was empty. His gaze swept the room, and the silence yawned back at him. The hideous thought rose up that she had run away again. Had Blanche told her she meant to accost him?

He walked out of the bedchamber with the intention of calling down to the women, but an odd sound reached him, as of a chair scraping on floorboards, and he paused. Turning his head, he looked down the gallery, and a thought leapt into his mind.

Rapid steps took him down the gallery until he reached the door to the little antechamber where he and Clare had talked the day she found that accursed sketch. He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

In the big throne-like chair Clare was huddled. Her feet on the top rung, she had hidden her face in her folded arms, which were clutched tightly about her drawn-up knees. She was shaking uncontrollably.

Rupert's heart cracked. This must be laid to his account. He closed the door, and crossed to the chair, crouching down before it.

‘
Clare, my poor girl,' he said, reaching to touch her.

She hit out wildly, uttering a mewl of angry complaint as, like a protesting little child, she buried her face further into her knees.

Rupert tried to shush her, catching at the flailing fists. It was a mistake. A wild creature, Clare erupted, like a bird in a trap, fighting him off. One leg fell to the floor and her hands thrashed aimlessly above her bent head, connecting only by accident with any part of him.

‘
Softly, my love,' Rupert begged, but she paid no heed.

Without thought of the consequences, he rose and plucked her bodily off the chair, a wriggling, kicking, squirming package of arms and legs, squealing under its breath, and taking his seat in the huge chair, Rupert captured her into his lap.