Secrets of a Lady (29 page)

Edgar made a strangled sound. “Good God.”

“Quite,” Charles said.

Mélanie’s nails pressed into her palms. She began to have a sickening sense of where the story was headed. “Her husband was away as well?”

“Oh, yes. Ashford hadn’t been home in two months and wasn’t expected to return until after the campaigning season. Her options were not pleasant.”

“Charles,” Edgar said in a hoarse voice.

Charles glanced at his brother with something between defiance and apology. “It’s an ugly story, Edgar. But it’s got to be finished. I’m sorry for the associations.”

Edgar made no reply. Rain pattered against the long library windows. Mélanie felt the heat of the fire, the hardness of the chair at her back, the dull ache of her wound. “Kitty’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“No. She threw herself off a footbridge in the garden during a reception at the embassy.”

The silence was broken by the sound of crystal shattering. Edgar’s whisky glass had fallen from his fingers, hit the leg of the bench, and broken into shards on the chestnut and gold of the carpet. Without speaking, he got to his feet and strode from the room.

The pungent smell of whisky filled the air. Mélanie closed her eyes for a moment. “How do you know?”

“Velasquez. He was the only person in whom she’d confided about her predicament. When I returned to Lisbon, he came to see me, told me the truth of her death, and challenged me to a duel.”

“You fought him?” Charles was a crack shot, but he abhorred dueling as an archaic way of settling differences.

“I fought him. At the time I rather hoped he’d put a bullet through me, but he was drunk and only grazed my arm. I deloped.” He looked up at her with a gaze from which he had forced all emotion. “So you see, it wouldn’t necessarily help if Victor Velasquez knew we want the ring to get Colin back. Kitty wasn’t the only one who took the family honor seriously. I think Velasquez feels he has yet to avenge her. He might weigh Colin in the scale against the baby who died with Kitty.”

Mélanie got to her feet and walked to the fireplace without knowing what she meant to do. She stared down into the fire, the leaping flame, the wrought-metal grate, the sticks of pine with their sweet, clean smell, redolent of her first memories of Britain when she came here as Charles’s wife. With a few words, an illusion that had been at the heart of her marriage had shattered like the crystal of Edgar’s glass. “You already did that,” she said.

“Did what?”

“Weighed Colin in the scale against Kitty’s baby.” She turned, leaned against the mantel, looked at her husband, the father of her children. For a moment, she wondered if she’d ever really understood him at all. “It was only—what? seven months?—after Kitty died that you were sent after the ring. And you found me, a woman without protection, with a fatherless child on the way. I know you’re not one to believe in fate, darling, but it must have seemed the perfect opportunity to make up for failing Kitty and your own baby.”

He shook his head. “If you think that’s why I asked you to marry me, you aren’t as good a judge of character as I always thought.”

“No?” She studied the face she knew so well, the eyes that mirrored so many of her memories. His head was tilted down in that way that gave him the unexpected look of a vulnerable schoolboy. It hit her, with the force of a blow, the full horror this would have been for Charles. Charles, who planned, who foresaw consequences, who seldom—if ever—let his passions rule his head, who took his responsibilities seriously, who loved his children without condition. “It wasn’t your fault she killed herself, Charles.”

“It was my fault she was pregnant.”

“Both your faults. I assume the affair was mutual.”

“Yes. It was that.” Something shifted in his eyes. For a moment she realized he was speaking to her not as a woman who had betrayed him, not even as his wife, but as his closest friend. She hadn’t thought he would ever speak to her in that way again. He leaned forward. “But Kit had more to lose, so I was the one who should have been careful. Don’t try to tell me I’m blameless, Mel. Not you, of all people.”

“Of course you aren’t blameless, darling. No one should bring children into the world without being in a position to care for them. I know that better than anyone. I also know it’s far easier said than done. Once the mistake had been made, there were other options. She could have waited until you came back and told you about the baby.”

“And given me the chance to do what pathetically little I might to help?”

“If she knew you at all, she must have realized you wouldn’t abandon her. She could have gone to Italy with you. You could have taken her to Scotland. It wouldn’t have been easy. You’d have been ostracized by polite society—or at least she would—but none of you would have starved and she and the child would have been sure of your love. That’s more than most children have.”

“Then my failure is all the greater. Perhaps if she’d had more faith in my love she would have waited.”

“It was your baby, too. You deserved to know about it.”

He held her gaze for a moment. “Did you tell O’Roarke about Colin?”

“Yes. But I told you first. I didn’t realize I was pregnant until Blanca and I were in the mountains waiting to intercept you.” She saw his face twist at the memory. “I wasn’t trying to play on your sympathies that morning you found me being sick by the stream, darling. I swear it. I was honestly trying to decide what to do about the child I was carrying. I’d realized I wanted to keep the baby no matter what, you see. I wanted him, Charles. I didn’t do it to trap you. Acquit me of that at least. I was shocked when you asked me to marry you.”

“You hadn’t bargained on the extent of my idiocy, I suppose.”

“I didn’t know your mistress had just killed herself while pregnant with your child. If I’d known that, not to mention that you had questions about your own paternity—”

“You think
that’s
why I married you? To replay the farce of my own childhood?”

“No, but I think you were determined to be a better father to Colin than Kenneth Fraser was to you.”

“That goes without saying. But it wasn’t until later—after Father died—that I realized he probably wasn’t my father at all.”

“Darling, you’d wondered for years, perhaps without even admitting it to yourself.”

“Perhaps.” Charles glanced into the fire. “O’Roarke didn’t want his child?”

“Raoul lived his life as though he might be killed at any moment. He still does. He couldn’t afford to think about his own future, let alone a family.”

“And he couldn’t have married you in any case. Last I heard, he had a wife in Ireland.”

“Yes, though they haven’t lived together for years. He offered to send me to France and provide for me and the child. I couldn’t—” She grimaced, a rank taste in her mouth. “I told myself I couldn’t turn my back on my work and my comrades and my cause. But to be brutally honest, darling, I also couldn’t bear the thought of being shunted off out of the fray. If I’d truly put Colin first, I suppose I’d have taken Raoul up on his offer. And yet Colin would have been immeasurably poorer, not having you for a father.”

“But that wasn’t why you agreed to be my wife.” His fingers curled round the brocade arms of his chair. “You consulted with O’Roarke before you gave me an answer, didn’t you? That’s why it took you three days to decide.”

“I couldn’t very well have made such a decision without consulting him.”

“No. I don’t suppose you could.” Anger leapt in his eyes. “How the devil did you think it would end? You couldn’t have expected to stay married to me forever. You couldn’t have wanted to.”

She twisted her hands together, but she didn’t let herself flinch from his gaze. “I’d scarcely known you a month when we were married. I knew you were a remarkable man, but I didn’t understand in the least why you’d proposed to me. You didn’t exactly wear your heart on your sleeve, dearest. You still don’t. I thought your proposal was some sort of quixotic, chivalrous gesture. I didn’t realize—”

“That I have feelings just like a normal person?”

“I didn’t realize how deep your feelings ran. I didn’t realize how completely you gave your loyalty. I didn’t realize how much I could hurt you.” She swallowed, remembering the quiet conviction in his voice as he spoke his wedding vows. It had been like a shock of cold fire, the realization that whyever he was marrying her, this man took those vows as a solemn promise. What she hadn’t known until now was that that promise was more than half a debt he felt he owed to another woman. That the loyalty he gave to her was the loyalty that belonged to Kitty Ashford. “I’m not saying I’d have acted differently if I had known,” she said. “I can’t be sure. But when I agreed to be your wife, I hadn’t the least idea what marriage meant to you.”
Or to me
.

“And Colin?” Charles’s voice was harsh. “What was supposed to happen to Colin when the marriage had served its purpose?”

Her fingers locked together. “I was used to thinking of immediate objectives and not giving much thought to the future. I hadn’t yet realized one can’t do that when one has children. But to the extent I considered the future at all—I thought I could walk away from the marriage and take Colin with me. Until I saw how much you loved Colin. And how much Colin loved you.”

“And then?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“I was actually mad enough to tell Raoul that we’d made a horrible mistake and we had to tell you the truth. Raoul told me not to be a bloody idiot. He said if you knew the truth the marriage would certainly be over and I’d either have to leave and take Colin with me or give Colin up to you. Not to mention the fact that I might be arrested as a spy. He said if I really couldn’t handle it any longer, he’d send Colin and me to France. I took that as a challenge. Like you, I don’t care to admit there’s any challenge I can’t meet, dearest.”

“And O’Roarke knew that challenging you was the best way to keep you at your post.”

“Oh, yes, Raoul’s fiendishly good at getting people to do what he wants. Besides, by then it was late 1813 and Wellington had pushed his way into France. Raoul asked me if I wanted to turn my back on the cause I’d worked for so long just when things were desperate.” His voice echoed in her head, at once caustic and impassioned. She looked at Charles. “And the truth is, my darling, I didn’t want to turn my back on it.”

“So our farce of a marriage continued. A marriage born of your duplicity.”

“And your guilt.”

He started to protest. Then he looked away. When he spoke the words seemed to be dragged out of him. “Oh, Christ. Can we ever really be sure of why we do anything? I’d failed Kitty when she needed me most. If you’re asking if I thought of that when I saw you in trouble, then of course I did. If you’re asking if I thought of my own unborn child when I learned you were pregnant, then of course that’s true as well. I told you the truth when I said I’d never expected to marry. I didn’t think I’d be much of a prize as a husband, and my parents had given me a singularly low opinion of the institution. If it hadn’t been for your predicament and my guilty conscience, I might never have found the courage to offer for you. But—I didn’t need guilt or duty to make me want you for my wife or love your child.”

Her fingers ached to smooth the shadows from his eyes. She wondered if she’d had this same urge to ease hurts before she was a mother. She couldn’t remember. “I’ve tainted it for you, haven’t I?” she said. “Whatever your reasons for marrying me, you gave your love to Colin freely, without condition. Now you feel as though I manipulated you into it. If you think everything between you and me was false, what does that do to what’s between you and Colin?”

His eyes went cold. “I’d never,” he said with precision, “let what’s happened between you and me affect how I feel about Colin.”

“But Colin’s inextricably bound up in everything that’s happened between us, from that moment you found me being sick by the stream. I didn’t mean to use him to trap you, but I did drag him into the deception with me. That’s probably the most unforgivable thing I’ve ever done.”

He stared at her, his gaze steady, appraising. “If I’d known the truth,” he said, “I’d never have let myself become Colin’s father. But that doesn’t change the fact that I
am
his father.”

And he always would be. But what did that mean for their future life when he couldn’t bear to live with Colin’s mother?

The fire gusted behind her and let loose a puff of smoke that prickled her eyes. She unhooked the brass dustpan and broom from the stand beside the fireplace and stared down at the wreckage of the glass Edgar had dropped. “At least now that I know about Kitty, I have an idea of what went wrong between you and Edgar.”

“What?” Charles turned his head.

“Why you aren’t as close as you once were.” She dropped down on the carpet. A jolt of pain reminded her of the wound in her side. She swept the sparkling shards of crystal into the dustpan. “It can’t have been easy for him to learn you’d been the lover of the woman he loved himself.”

In seven years, she could count the times she had taken her quick-witted husband completely by surprise. This was one of them. “My brother broke his share of hearts in the Peninsula,” Charles said, “but he wasn’t in love with Kit. He scarcely knew her.”

“He may have loved her from afar, but there’s no doubt he loved her.” She stood and emptied the dustpan into the fire. The fragments of crystal sparkled diamond-bright in the flame. “Didn’t you see his face when you were talking, darling? He couldn’t even bear to hear the whole story.”

“Of course he couldn’t. A story about a woman killing herself cuts a bit too close to the bone. Not because he loved Kitty. Because her fate is rather too much like Mother’s.”

Which must have burned Charles all the more. Mélanie returned the broom and dustpan to their stand. “There is that, of course. But it was more than the painful associations that drove him from the room. You could see it in his eyes.”

Charles picked up his whisky glass and stared at it. “I’d have noticed.”

“Under normal circumstances I don’t doubt it, but you can scarcely have been yourself at the time, dearest. You never talked to him about Kitty. And Edgar was away with his regiment most of the time in those days.”