The Accidental Bride (37 page)

John smiled darkly. ‘I’d better go,’ he repeated. With a last squeeze of her hand, he released her, and slid off the bed. He looked like a man going to the dentists or some other unpleasant ordeal, rather than have a discussion with a woman he’d once loved.

‘I’ll wait here. Come back straight away, though … Afterwards. I want to know everything as soon as possible. Even if it’s not good news.’

John paused. ‘I’d say come with me, love, but I doubt she’ll disclose anything meaningful if you’re there. She just won’t say what she really means, or what she really wants. It’ll be all light and airy, Clara the charming, Clara the gracious, for your benefit. She won’t show her true colours.’

‘It’s all right. You need to have this out with her one to one.’ Lizzie leapt off the bed, and stood against him, her fingers spread over his heart. ‘I trust you, John. I trust you to tell me all afterwards. No secrets between us now.’

‘I love you,’ he gasped, hugging her tight. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’

With a last embrace, he turned and strode from the room.

Barefoot into battle, in the Red Salon.

‘So, what’s this all about?’

Clara looked up sharply, as if she hadn’t heard John’s bare feet on the stair carpet. Or it could just be a ploy? She was full of these tricks, he remembered, little strategies to get the upper hand.

‘Why so combative, Jonathan? We’re old friends … so much more than old friends. And yet you come charging down here as if you’re spoiling for a fight.’

The woman he’d once loved had prepared the scene well. The Red Salon was softly lit now, creating a flattering ambience, and she was dressed for bed, in a silk wraparound dressing gown and matching nightdress. It was a demure ensemble, in a flattering dark rose shade, but even though it revealed nothing of Clara’s body, it suggested much.

Intimacy.

‘I am spoiling for a fight. I want to know why you chose to come to Montcalm on this particular day, and why you brought your son with you.’ He strode across the room, ignoring her subtle indication that he share the sofa with her, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace, trying
not to glare. Despite what he’d just said, aggression was a poor tactic. ‘It can’t be a coincidence, Clara, and you can’t believe for a moment that I’d think it was one.’

‘Won’t you have a drink, Jonathan? Let me get you one.’ She started to rise.

‘No. No, thank you. I’d prefer an answer.’

He watched her schooling her face into one of her inscrutable icon-like smiles, making him wait. ‘I simply thought it would be a good opportunity for you to meet Charlie.’

‘Why now? Why would I need to meet him, other than by chance?’ Trying for inscrutability himself, he slid his hands into his jeans pocket. It was either that or clench his fists. The situation was surreal. Clara was acting as if nothing had happened. As if there’d been no betrayal. As if they’d been lovers only yesterday.

‘Oh, Jonathan. Don’t be obtuse. You know why.’ In a measured movement, she reached for her glass, and sipped her gin and tonic. It was she who’d started him on gin, all those years ago, and in perversity, he’d decided never to drink it again. But then later, he’d decided he missed the clean, juniper bite of the spirit and decided it was absurd to cut off his nose to spite his face.

‘Pray enlighten me.’

‘Because Charlie is your son, and I thought you’d better be made aware of the fact before it was too late. Before you do something silly.’

The words had far more impact than they ought to have had. It was like being hit. Hit in the face, and filled with the need to strike back. Not so much at the woman in front of him, but at life, and fate. Intellectually, he knew that the likelihood that Clara was lying was high, but on a gut
level, it seemed as if a hammer had fallen, a hammer heavy enough to knock him to the ground.

Reeling inwardly, he summoned self-control. And the other great source of his strength.

Lizzie. Oh Lizzie … whatever happens, I’ve got to resolve this without hurting you. Or hurting you in the least possible way.

The thought of her beauty and composure granted him composure too. He could almost feel her with him, warm and close.

Crouched behind a pillar on the gallery above the Red Salon, Lizzie almost toppled back onto her arse.

Idiot. You should never have followed him. You knew it was going to be awful.

Almost as soon as John had left her room, Lizzie had crept out after him, keeping her distance. She knew it was monumental foolishness and childishness to eavesdrop from up here on his confrontation with Clara, but she’d lost the battle with her own good sense at the very first skirmish.

And now all her silly little hopes that the presence of John’s ex and her son here might still actually be a pure coincidence were shattered. It was everything they’d feared. And even if it wasn’t, the fact that Clara was prepared to go to such lengths at all was still a blow.

‘What do you mean, something silly?’

John’s voice was low. Even. Beautifully modulated. The more aristocratic timbre Lizzie had noticed as soon as he’d arrived here at Montcalm was back in full force. Austere and subtly cutting.

‘Before you commit yourself elsewhere, instead of to your son.’

Instead of answering, John strode to the sideboard and poured himself something colourless from a decanter. Gin. He must be rattled. Lizzie had never known him to drink in response to stress, not really. If anything, he avoided alcohol in such situations, preferring a clear head.

‘In case it’s escaped your memory, we used condoms when we were last together,’ he pointed out, returning to his station by the fireplace, and taking a single sip of gin before placing his glass very precisely on the mantelpiece.

Lizzie wanted to run down and stand beside him, his spear carrier, but she knew he was right to face Clara alone. At least that way he might get some answers, of a sort.

I should go back to bed. This is stupid.

Yet still she lingered.

‘Condom’s aren’t infallible, darling,’ said Clara, adjusting her position on the settee, leaning back. Displaying her poise. ‘Remember that time in Scotland, all those years ago, when we had a scare?’

‘But if you discovered you were pregnant with my child, why didn’t you want to marry me?’ John demanded, ignoring the invitation to reminisce. ‘Wouldn’t that have been the obvious thing to do?’

‘I didn’t realise I was pregnant until I was married to Robson. I thought it was just a little irregularity. I …’ For the first time, the woman sitting below seemed to falter. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do. So I pretended Charlie was premature. But I knew he was yours as soon as I saw him.’ She paused, sipped her gin. ‘Luckily Robson’s mother and sister are both blonde, so he didn’t look like a cuckoo in the nest.’

Lizzie watched John run his hands through his hair, those blond curls, so very like Charlie’s. ‘But when you split
from Robson, why didn’t you approach me then? Surely by that time, I was rich enough for you?’

Lizzie almost laughed. Ooh, bitchy. Such bitter humour.

‘I’d already met Ernesto.’ For the first time, Lizzie detected a touch of the shamefaced in Clara’s demeanour.

John reached for his drink again, turning away. ‘And now that’s over, you’re at a loose end again and, finally, after all these years, you think you’ll give me a whirl again,’ he said, over his shoulder.

‘Don’t make it sound so sordid, Jonathan. It’s not like that. It’s just the right time. The right time for you to meet Charlie, and to be his father at last. I’ll soon be free, and you’re not yet committed.’ Lizzie sensed a stiffening of resolve. ‘You always said you wanted to marry me, Jonathan. Well, now is the time to make it happen.’

John spun towards her, and Lizzie almost thought he might smash his glass in the fireplace like a Cossack. But instead he just stared at the seated woman with a look of raw astonishment on his face.

We both know what she’s after, but it’s still gobsmacking to hear it, isn’t it, love?

‘Don’t be idiotic, Clara. I love Lizzie. I love her with all my heart. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life.’

A torrent of relief sluiced through Lizzie’s heart. He loved her, she knew, but hearing him almost roar it out was like knocking back a jolt of that gin. Intoxicating, despite the situation.

‘But you once loved me, and felt that way about me. You could feel that way again, if you gave us a chance.’ Was Clara’s self-belief cracking? Was there a strident edge to that low, melodious voice?

‘I did love you. I loved you crazily. But I’m not sure
we’d ever have been happy, and what we did have seems insubstantial now. Faint, like a faded dream.’ He paused, and from her vantage point, Lizzie saw the ghost of a smile warm John’s face. ‘While what Lizzie and I have is Technicolor, rich, full of life. Like never before.’

‘Of course it’s Technicolor,’ cried Clara, snapping, ‘you’re nearly forty-seven now, and she’s what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? Of course she feels like fun to you! What man isn’t flattered by the attentions of a pretty younger woman? But you’re not an ageing rocker, Jonathan; you’re a man with responsibilities. Not to mention the fact that you need the right sort of woman.’

Bloody cheek … but she’s right.

In every aspect the woman below was far more suited to these surroundings than Lizzie knew she herself was.

‘We’re straying from the point,’ said John, teeth gritted. ‘What you need to understand, Clara, is that even if Charlie is mine – which I still doubt – and even if you and I were to marry, you would eventually become the Marchioness of Welbeck when I succeed George, but Charlie can never be the Marquess. We would have had to have been married at the time of his birth for that to happen.’

Lizzie frowned, and felt a plume of probably premature triumph. She’d wondered about that, but knowing next to nothing of peerage and inheritance, she’d feared that Charlie as a ready-made male heir for Montcalm was Clara’s strongest card.

‘I thought there might be some act of Parliament or something.’ Clara sounded more petulant than disappointed.

‘No, Clara! There isn’t. And even if there was, I love Lizzie and she’s the woman I’m going to marry. The next Marquess after me will be her son.’

Clara rose to her feet, moving jerkily now. ‘But I could give you more children, Jonathan. I’m still young and healthy. I could give you a future Marquess, and Charlie could have his real father around and we could be a proper family.’ She appeared as if she might dart forward, and hurl herself at John, but the look in his eyes seemed to stop her in her tracks.

‘No, no and no. Even if Charlie is mine. No. If it turns out I am his father, I’ll support him, and expect joint custody, so that I can help him and guide him and be a friend and a father to him. But I’m not marrying you, Clara, and that’s that.’

‘Well, then, you shan’t have custody or rights or anything!’ Clara whirled away, her beauty made suddenly ugly. ‘I’m his mother. I’ll just say that Robson is his father, which is what everyone believes anyway. That way you’ll have no rights whatsoever, Jonathan. I’ll make sure that you never see him again.’

‘But what if a blood test proves he’s mine?’

‘There will be no blood test,’ Clara cried. ‘When did you become so vulgar and petty? I can’t believe that you won’t take my word … That you won’t trust me.’

‘Trust you? Trust you? Can you hear yourself, Clara? Look at what you’ve done in the past when I’ve trusted you. I’ve no reason on earth to trust you ever again.’ John’s voice was ragged now too. He was at the end of his tether.

‘Growing older has made you small-minded, Jonathan. Or maybe it’s spending time with women half your age. You need a partner of your own age and your own class … especially when you eventually become Marquess.’

Lizzie expected an angry retort, but instead, her beloved just sighed. ‘I’m marrying Lizzie. Whatever happens. There’s an end of it.’

‘You’d turn your back on your own son?’

‘Not willingly, and not happily. But you give me no choice.’ There was sorrow there, and Lizzie ached for him. If the unlikely was true, what was he giving up for her? Too much?

‘You have a choice. Choose me.’

‘No. I don’t want you, Clara. I choose Lizzie.’

‘Then there’s nothing more to say.’ The older woman straightened her spine. She had such grace, even now.

‘No, there isn’t. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’ John moved away from the fireplace, heading for the stairs, and Lizzie began backing away from her hiding place, treading softly on the carpet.

‘You go there, Jonathan. Do you manage to get any sleep with her? Or do you still have those tiresome “issues”? I can’t imagine your conscience ever letting you sleep peacefully with anyone ever again. Not when you’re prepared to abandon your own son.’

‘Fuck you, Clara.’

He was moving swiftly now, and Lizzie darted for the end of the corridor, just making it by the time she heard his footsteps on the grand staircase.

Idiot. He’ll know anyway.

Halting, she walked towards the staircase, not away from it, and John’s wry smile, when he reached the top and spotted her, made her wonder if he’d known of her presence all along.

She held out her arms and he walked right into them, hugging her tight.

The next morning, Clara – and Charlie – had gone, after a night during which John and Lizzie had achieved little or no sleep.

On that point at least, her beloved’s ex had been correct.

For a couple of hours they’d discussed the conversation in the Red Salon, returning again and again to the chief question.

Could Charlie really be John’s son?

‘I think it’s highly unlikely. Especially as she went ballistic at the mention of blood tests,’ John had said, lying beside Lizzie in the darkness. ‘But we can’t rule it out. Not yet. Not until we’ve sussed out a few facts … which shouldn’t be too difficult.’

He sounded calm and confident now, but Lizzie had seen him shaken, down in the Red Salon.