Miracle (51 page)

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all,

What has thou then more than thou
hadst
before?

No love, my love, that thou
mayst
true love call,

All mine was
thine
before thou
hadst
this more.

Then if for my love thou my love
receivest
,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou
usest
,

But yet be
blam'd
if thou thyself
deceivest

By willful taste of what thyself
refusest
,

I do forgive thy
robb'ry
, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

And yet love knows, it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Chapter Twenty

The hired hackney bounced along the old track from Paddington to Islington. Along each side of the highway the landscape took on a more countrified aspect, lined with gardens and pleasure bowers with wooden arbors and mulberry trees. Miracle had learned enough about London's surroundings to know that this area was the resort of city tradesmen's families on summer Sabbaths. There were fields dotted with dairy farms and merchants' weekend boxes. Beyond Islington's meadows there climbed an enormous circus of aristocratic mansions, grouped round
ely
-
sian
groves and lawns.

With a brief stop at a local pub, the hackney driver learned which residence belonged to Lord Cavendish.

For a long while, Miracle sat in the hackney outside the gates of Cavendish House, staring up at the elaborate
fíl-
igreed
wrought-iron entry with its giant swirling C framed with twining vines. How pretty was the distant brick and stone house, its windows lead-paned and reflecting the sunlight like a kaleidoscope. And the gardens: earthen patches of rich color with an occasional bird path or fountain. Footpaths of crushed shells wove through labyrinths of hedge groves. How her mother would have loved this. Miracle could imagine
Lorraina
meandering down the pathways, basket in hand, humming to herself as she gathered bouquets for the house.
Lorraina
, of course, would have known the name of every twittering bird, each blooming flower.

Miracle disembarked and walked to the house. A petite maidservant answered the bell.

"To see Lord Cavendish," Miracle heard herself explain, and thought how disjoined she seemed to be from her own voice. A whisper in her head urgently reminded her that there was still time to leave. She could return to London to her
fiancé
and forget this incredible scheme.

"Miss?" the servant queried. "Who may I say is here to see his lordship?"

Miracle blinked. She swallowed. "Lady . . ."

"Miss?"

"
Aimesbury
. Yes. Tell him Lady
Aimesbury
is here to see him. He'll recognize the name."

The servant scurried away.

A clock ticked somewhere in the distance.

A door opened. Laughter. Then a young man, perhaps a year or two older than she, walked into the foyer, obviously on his way out. Seeing Miracle, he stopped short, a smile on his face.

"What's this?" he declared, regarding her appreciatively. "I certainly hope you're here to see me."

"Lord Cavendish?" she replied. "Of course not. You're—"

"His son. Nigel."

They regarded each other in silence, and for an instant Miracle was swept back in time, to twenty years ago, the moment her mother must have set eyes on a brash, handsome young lord Cavendish, with dark hair and blue eyes and a smile that could melt iron.

Then not so long ago, when she, herself, had looked into gray eyes and felt herself fall under the spell of irrational love.

Had she and her mother both loved too deeply—so deeply that subjectivity had obliterated all common sense, robbed them of dignity, of self-respect? Must love become so all consuming?

"Lord Cavendish will see you now," came the servant's voice from a nearby door.

Nigel shrugged on his cloak and moved toward the door. He spoke to Miracle, but she barely noticed. All senses were tuned to the corridor ahead and how difficult it was to force her feet to move forward.

The servant disappeared through a doorway ahead, and her voice said faintly, "Lady
Aimesbury
, my lord. Shall I bring tea?"

"No," came the gruff reply. "And close the door when you leave. Should my wife return, tell her I'm occupied with business and not to be disturbed."

"Yes, my lord."

The servant darted from the room just as Miracle moved to the threshold.

Cavendish's presence filled the chamber. He stood by a desk: tall, distinguished, handsome—incredibly handsome. His face looked white, his blue eyes panicked. At last, he cleared his throat and said, "Come in. Please."

She forced her feet to move. The door closed quietly behind her.

His hands in tight fists at his sides, Cavendish opened and closed his mouth several times before finally managing to speak again. "
Aimesbury
was your mother's maiden name."

"How good of you to remember. I wondered if you would."

"My God, you look just like her. For a moment I thought I was seeing her ghost."

Miracle allowed him a dry smile. "Barely more than a fortnight ago, I would have thought the same about you. All these years, I thought you were dead. How long has it been since I last heard from you, my lord? Eight years?" Her voice mounted with anger. "Of course, I've only recently learned of your
other
family.
This
one. The one you apparently had when you supposedly married my mother."

"I was young, Miracle, and honestly believed—"

"How many other 'wives' did you have scattered throughout the countryside? Were they also doomed to languish away in gloomy, impoverished surroundings? I hope they've fared far better than my dear mother, who continued to love you despite your less than desirable considerations."

"There were no others," he said wearily, his shoulders sagging. "In the beginning, my dear, I honestly believed that I could make things work with your mother.
I . . .
loved her very much." His eyes became distant. "She was the most incredibly beautiful woman I had ever known. Her lust for life, and living—her laughter filled up my existence. Made me a little insane. Made me willing to sacrifice anything to have her, to spend my days luxuriating in her special sort of madness. I purchased Cavisbrooke with every intention of building her the grandest castle any man could gift the woman he loved."

"Liar," she said through her teeth.

He lowered his eyes. His face went from white to ashen. He seemed to age before her eyes, and he sank against the desk.

"In my infatuated dreams, I imagined demanding a divorce from my wife. But it was my wife's dowry, and her father's wealth that supplied me with this." He motioned around them. "And the respect that my own father's inconsequential position in society could not afford me. Marriage to your mother wouldn't have benefited me whatsoever. By the time that realization had sunk in, I learned
Lorraina
was with child."

He ran his hands through his gray-streaked hair. "I couldn't just abandon her. An unmarried woman with child, my God. And whether you believe it or not, I still loved her. So I married her, and took her to Cavisbrooke, naively believing that, at some point, things would work out. Then my wife began to suspect that I was keeping a mistress. There were threats, tantrums, her father became involved, and I risked losing everything."

His gaze came back to Miracle's. "Then, of course, you were born, and
Lorraina's
demands became more frantic and frequent and angry. Eventually, my love turned to resentment. I lived in constant fear that my bigamy would be discovered."

"Did you kill her?" Miracle asked in a dry voice.

"Kill her?" He shook his head adamantly, and clenched his hands together. "No. God no."

"I don't believe you. John told me—"

"John?" He laughed mirthlessly, his lip curling derisively. "John. Groom and trainer extraordinaire. The only servant I chose to accompany her to Cavisbrooke. Did John also tell you that he once worked for me, or rather my father? We grew up together, John and I. He was the only person I could trust not to divulge my secret life.

"Well?" he demanded, his voice now rough and angry. "Exactly what did our friend John tell you, my dear? That I pushed your mother off Saint Catherine's Hill? Bastard," he growled. "Lying bastard if he did. He was there. He saw the argument. The wind was fierce. The rain driving. Your mother and I were forced to shout as loudly as we could just to make ourselves heard. She'd demanded an audience of me, informing me that she'd learned of my other family—my legal family and marriage. My sons .. . She threatened to tell them about us, to wreak havoc on my name and my sons. I told her fine. I told her that I would gladly go before any court and demand custody of my daughter . . . of you. I told her there wasn't a court in this or any land who would not grant me the right to take my own flesh and blood, considering the vast differences in our backgrounds. I pointed out that the courts would look upon her as nothing more than a concubine and unfit to raise a gentleman's offspring . . .

"For the love of God, lass, don't look at me like that," he said to Miracle's eyes. "You look just like she did, standing there with rain running down her face, her eyes brimming with pain and outrage." He covered his face with his hands, as if to block out the image of Miracle, to escape the memory of her mother.

At last, he took a ragged breath and lowered his hands; he stared at the floor. In a much weaker voice, almost distant, perhaps lost in the past, he said, "Then she confessed . . . I suppose the reality that she might well lose you, that I might take you—God knows if I would have or not; I knew how much she loved you; you were her life, after all, but I was angry and desperate."