The Dark Affair (21 page)

J
ames paced before the fireplace, unable to feel its warmth and unable to stop the growing frenzy inside him. That cold implacability that he had always drawn upon had disappeared. He’d relied on it for so long; he couldn’t quite make sense of what was happening.

He’d spent years avoiding this topic. Mere contemplation of the topic itself had sent him into black rages or months of inebriation and opium consumption.

He’d certainly never discussed it with his father. Not since the funerals. The two had made a silent pact to never speak of it, and James had let his fury at his father fester away ever since.

But somehow, under Margaret’s care and his discussion with Mary this morning, he’d come to one blaring conclusion. He could no longer place the entirety of the blame upon the old man.

Blame had gotten him nowhere.

Perhaps responsibility would. So, with a quaking voice, he began. “Sophia was always different.”

“Beautiful,” the earl added.

A reluctant smile came to James’s lips. “Yes. Very. Ethereal even. She was so full of life, but when I married her, I had no idea how entirely sheltered from the world she was.”

Margaret sat calmly, her eyes following him. He felt that as intensely as coals upon his skin. Only the tense white-knuckled grip of her hands in her lap conveyed how serious she found this all to be.

“Sophia was ruled by a set of very strict morals given to her by her protective parents.” His mouth turned bitter with regret. All those years ago, he’d been so certain that he’d been destined for happiness. With his young, beautiful bride, whom all society admired and he adored. “It took less than a month before I realized what a mistake I had made.”

“I encouraged the match,” the earl whispered.

James pressed his lips together, bracing himself for whatever his father might say.

His father’s blue eyes dimmed, his focus disappearing into the past. “She came from a good family, had a sufficient dowry, and was a delight to be about. How could any of us have known?”

Margaret inched forward on her seat. “Known what?”

“Sophia often went for days without eating any real sort of food,” James blurted. His father knew. The servants had been unable to keep such a thing secret, and his wife had been determined. “We tried to convince her, but she was determined to be the perfect lady, and a perfect lady barely ate.”

“She had an abject fear of being seen as a woman with desire. I confronted her, but she insisted that excessive eating would lead to unladylike behaviors,” his father whispered. “She seemed so normal in almost every other aspect. One would have had to be close to her to know something was truly amiss.”

James flinched. That was a particularly awful topic.

Margaret’s face paled. “Sadly, it’s not uncommon—”

“She didn’t wish to bleed,” James heard himself say bluntly, as if compelled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“She found the womanly aspects of her body quite repellent.” His stomach twisted, and he had to stop his pacing. “When she became pregnant, she was delighted, because . . .”

“Her courses stopped,” Margaret finished. “I’ve heard of this. It’s a plague on young ladies today. They’re restricting food consumption to stop any sort of unpleasant bodily function. It’s almost impossible to cure.”

It was surreal, Margaret able to speak so freely about a woman’s natural occurrences when Sophia had pretended they didn’t exist to the point of preventing them.

“For once Sophia was with child, she ate without undue restraint because her courses didn’t resume. Thank God for it.” James wiped a hand over his face. “Jane was born. Beautiful and healthy.”

Jane.

“She was so impossibly small; her entire body fit along my forearm.” His voice shook. “Red and wrinkled, she made the strangest little faces. Our eyes met. I swore it. I had never loved anyone like I did when she looked at me.”

Tears slid down his cheeks, and he let them. He didn’t swipe them away. They rolled down, splashing to his waistcoat.

His father stared at him, his own face a harrowing sight to behold. “At first, all seemed well,” the old man supplied when it seemed James couldn’t go on. “Sophia recovered quickly, and as my son said, Jane was remarkably healthy and happy in the care of her nanny and nurses. There was just one thing . . .”

James drew in a painful breath. “Sophia refused to hold the baby. She wouldn’t countenance her own child, as if she refused to believe her daughter had come out of her own body. Oh, she’d look at Jane and stare, but then she’d begin to cry. And then she began to cease eating again . . . for days.”

“Dear Lord,” Margaret said softly.

“It seemed at that time that the Lord had forsaken us,” James said, desperate to finish this tale. Now that he’d begun, he knew he couldn’t stop. “We tried and tried to convince Sophia, but she went about her existence as if she barely had a child. Her days were interspersed with bouts of tears. She said she was too sad to hold the baby and that surely Jane was just as sad as she.”

“But she wasn’t?” asked Margaret.

James shook his head. “Jane grew marvelously well. We adored each other.”

Margaret hesitated, her face pale. “How long did this go on?”

“Two years.”

“Sophia had many good days,” the earl rushed. “She seemed her old self, carefree, but then . . .”

James forced himself to finish his father’s thought. “She’d be found staring down at Jane as she slept, silent, unsmiling. No one knew what to make of it. None of us could ever have imagined.”

“I—I cannot do this,” his father cried, his face creasing into a mask of heartbreak. “I can’t.”

To his own absolute shock, James crossed to his father and took his shoulders in his hands. He crouched down, forcing their gazes to meet. “We must. For our sake. For theirs too.”

“J-James.” His father shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Tears glimmered on his white lashes. “How can you forgive me?”

“Shh, Father,” James soothed. “I never thought you felt you needed forgiveness.”

“How could I not?”

James pulled his father’s head to his chest, cradling it. “We let them both die because we were arrogant fools.”

“Neither of you let them die.” Margaret’s firm voice cut through their grief.

James swung a furious glare at his wife. “You have no idea.”

She stood, her eyes widening with understanding. “It was the water.”

James blinked. “H-how?”

“When you were in delusion, you said your daughter mustn’t go near the water.”

James held his father but suddenly wished that he could be a small boy again, cared for and loved and completely protected. Protected in a way that he had failed at with his own daughter and Sophia. “I never should have left.”

His father pulled away, his eyes open now, wild. Streaks of tears dampened his wrinkled face. “I convinced you to leave. I convinced you it would be good for Sophia to have some time without you hovering over her. I thought . . . I thought she could be toughened a little under my care.”

His father buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

He’d never seen the old man cry, and before he could stop himself, they were crying softly together. But the tale wasn’t done, and he knew he needed to finish it. He rocked back on his heels, keeping one hand resting on his father’s shoulder. “I was away and . . .”

“Sophia sent the servants away,” his father whispered. “They couldn’t argue. None of us ever would have thought there was any actual danger. How could one even imagine . . . ?” His father stared into space, the muscles of his cheeks sinking, despair turning him years older. “She drowned Jane in her bath. And then she must have slit her own wrists. The servants found them together. Of all the strangest things, at last Sophia was holding her baby in her arms.”

James tightened his grip on his father. “I blamed you for all these years. I railed at you for letting them die, but they weren’t your responsibility. They were mine.”

“Please forgive me,” his father whispered. “Please.”

Slowly, James raised his hands to his father’s cheeks. He cupped the older man’s face tenderly. “I forgive you. I’ve punished you far too long. I hope you can forgive me.”

His father gulped, then threw his arms around James’s shoulders.

He tensed at first, unable to remember a time when they had embraced, but then he allowed the weight of his father’s arms around him to comfort and he returned the gesture. They held tight to each other for several moments. Two men who had refused to acknowledge their grief and had abandoned each other for years.

That could end now. Together they could mourn and share their love for the two taken so cruelly.

At last James looked to Margaret, the witness to their pain.

Tears of her own slipped down her cheeks as she stood quietly. “Thank you.”

“For what?” James asked.

“Honoring me with your trust.”

James climbed to his feet, his legs unsteady. “Maggie, without you, I would be dead. Not just my body, but my heart and my soul. I think all three might just have a chance now.”

She smiled, a beautiful smile of joy and pain at once. “I think your chance may be just beginning.”

He held out his arms to her.

When she pressed herself to his chest, then reached for his father to join them, James answered, “I believe you are right.”

•   •   •

Margaret followed the two men out of the morning room, years of pain behind them. Her legs trembled with fatigue, and her heart ached with the knowledge of all that James had faced.

“I haven’t rested in the early afternoon in years.” The earl ran a hand over his silvery white hair, which had escaped its usually immaculate arrangement. “Today I’m going to make an exception. Margaret, do you mind if we meet with my man another day regarding your—”

She waved a hand. “Of course.”

During her time in the Crimea, she’d seen the faces of men ravaged by war, and in truth, both James and his father appeared to have just staggered off a battlefield, but they were alive, if not unscarred.

Both of them had let years of poison fester. This morning had seen the first step in the healing of those old wounds.

The earl reached out and cupped her cheek in his big palm. His whiskers brushed her forehead as he leaned down to kiss her temple before turning away.

James stood waiting, silent, as his father left them.

Margaret was reticent to speak. What could one say after so much had been revealed?

Though his eyes were clear of the ghostly tragedy so frequently there, a tense energy brightened his face as if he’d been freed from a weighty burden.

“There’s something we must do,” he said.

“Name it.”

“We must find you a gown because I wish to take you out this evening.”

She blinked, stunned by the sudden plan. “Out?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s time that you and I start living, and I want all of London to know you are my wife.”

M
argaret had no idea how her gown fit so precisely, but it did. James had mentioned a Madame Yvonne and her mysterious workings. He’d spent several moments whispering with a footman, and that had been that until a large white box had arrived on the doorstep this afternoon.

To her shock, James had then bustled her into her room with an upstairs maid and shut the door. She’d tried to resist. He’d had none of it, and since he’d had such an exhausting day, she supposed she really couldn’t deny him.

She stroked her hand over the amethyst silk and marveled at the way it shimmered in the candlelight. A movement caught her eye, and she gaped at the stranger.

Except it was no stranger; it was herself in a tall, gilt-edged mirror.

“You look beautiful.”

She jumped and whirled toward James, who must have slipped in quite quietly.

“I feel a fool,” she admitted. She’d never owned anything so extravagant in her life.

He was dressed in black evening attire, his hair swept back from his strong face. Margaret’s heart fluttered at the sight of her handsome husband. Luxurious evening clothes suited him perfectly.

In his hands he held a black velvet box. “You could never be a fool, sweetheart.”

She ran her hand back over the full skirt, supported by a wide crinoline. “But this gown . . . It’s hardly me.”

“Do you like it?”

She frowned, then looked in the mirror. The deep purple bodice was cut simply, yet hugged her curves and bared her shoulders. Just a hint of beading shimmered in the light, and her waist was cinched in just above the swishing full skirts. The maid had spent almost an hour curling her hair, sweeping it up about her face in soft locks.

She looked like a princess, or how she’d always thought a princess might look. A blush spread across her cheeks. “Yes, I do.”

“Then it is you,” he said simply. “You deserve to have a little luxury.”

It felt almost wrong when so many had so little, but perhaps he was right. A little bit couldn’t hurt.

“And speaking of luxury?” He crossed the room in a few strides and stopped behind her.

He unlatched the box and pulled something from inside it. “This is for you.”

She gasped at the sparkling diamonds being dangled before her face. “N-no,” she stuttered. “They are too much. The expense—”

“Now, don’t worry about such a thing.” James swept the necklace over her head and fastened it. “I didn’t spend a sou.”

She arched a brow. “Did you steal it, then?”

“Hush your scandalous tongue,” he scolded playfully. “It is one of the family jewels. It was my mother’s and before her, my grandmother’s, and so on. You must take your place amid the women of my family.”

The women of his family
.

She lifted her fingers and brushed them over the small, cold stones. Was she truly becoming his family? It seemed such an impossible thing. “Thank you.”

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

His breath tickled her, and she shivered with the delicious feel of his nearness.

He groaned. “How I would love to take you to bed.”

“We could stay,” she ventured, half hoping he would wish it.

“We could, but we won’t. I want the world to see how proud of I am of my wife . . . and grateful I am to you for sorting me out.”

A laugh escaped her lips. “Aha. So, you truly just wish everyone to see you’re not crackbrained?”

“Oh, Margaret, no one will ever believe I am entirely cured of my old ways.”

She lifted her chin. “Well, I suppose we shall just have to show them.”

His gaze grew warm as a smile curved his lips. “Yes. I suppose we shall.”

•   •   •

The Dowager Duchess of Duncliffe’s ball was not quite a crush, but it was certainly full of the most important people in society. Most of these people he would absolutely have disdained weeks ago. But now James had a perverse desire to share his newfound and growing peace.

He glanced at Margaret, who, for the first time that he could ever recall, did not appear in command of a situation.

Half the ballroom was staring at her, the lady from Ireland who’d married the impossible Viscount Powers. He smiled to himself. Most of those people hated him. He’d said many rude things to many idiots, it was true. But even he knew he’d been a subject of fascination for the
ton
.

Who knew what rumors would be flying tonight?

Still, he wanted them all to see that Margaret was important to him and that if they were unkind to her, they’d have him to reckon with.

He stretched out his arm to his wife. “Might I have this waltz?”

She glanced down at his gloved hand, consternation creasing her brow. “Oh, now. I’m quite all right.”

“I don’t wish you to be all right,” he said. “I wish you to enjoy yourself.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I haven’t danced in absolutely ages.”

“Then it’s about time, is it not?” He stuck his arm out a bit farther, enjoying this.

In some small degree, the tables had turned. He knew the
ton
. He understood its workings and how to navigate it, and while Margaret was a lady by birth, she had never set foot into London society. He wanted to show her that she could enjoy certain aspects of it if she wished.

At last, she nodded and placed her small hand over his. “Lead on, then.”

He led her onto the floor.

As he placed his hand upon her waist, she leaned in. “They’re all looking at me,” she whispered.

“Because you are the most beautiful woman in the room.” And she was. My God, she put them all to shame with her fiery hair and captivating eyes. And she belonged to him.

The bold, bright tones of a Vienna waltz surrounded them, and he swept her around the room.

A smile filled her face with light. “You are quite the dancer.”

“I do a few things well,” he said as he turned them again and again, knowing her toes were barely touching the floor.

A slight laugh slipped past her lips. “It’s almost like flying,” she gasped.

He beamed down at her. If he could, he always wanted to make her feel as if she were flying and with the knowledge that he would never let her fall.

Adding a bit of pressure with his hand to the small of her back, he increased his step, whirling them the entire length of the ballroom, her skirts swishing out behind her.

That oh so glorious smile of hers lit up the ballroom in a way that candles simply could not. It lit up his soul.

As the music came to a close and her body swung up against his, he held her for a moment longer than appropriate before whisking her out of the ballroom and into a dimly lit side hall. He kept ahold of her hands, not wanting to ever let her go. “Margaret, I think . . .”

“Yes?” she prompted, her eyes shining with enjoyment.

“I think . . .” His heart slammed against his ribs. He could scarce believe that he was frightened. Surely, not he. But it was true. Clasping her hands, he locked gazes with her. “I love you.”

Her mouth opened to a slight O of astonishment, and just as she looked as if she was going to throw her arms around him, she stepped back. “James, are you certain?”

Her fingers slipped from his hands and he stood, stupidly, wondering what the hell had just happened. “Yes.”

She looked away, her shoulders sagging a little. “It’s only that you have been through so much. I shouldn’t like you to feel confused about your feelings for me—”

“My God, woman, I love you,” he said gruffly, stunned that one of the few romantic moments in his life had gone so awry. “Is that so hard to believe?”

She bit her lower lip, then replied, “Yes, it is.”

“Why?” he demanded,

“Because I think I love you too.”

“Well, then . . .” he began, ready to make her believe that he did in fact love her, when her words truly registered. “You do?”

She nodded, her smile slowly blooming again. “I do, and it’s terrifying.”

“I’m terrified too.” He pulled her against his chest.

“Kiss me?” she asked, cuddling into his embrace.

“How could I not?” And with that, he lightly took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, dipping her head back. He bent to accommodate the difference in their heights, pressing his lips to hers.

She loved him.

Those words rushed through him as their kiss grew heated.

And with Margaret there would be such happiness.

Her hands circled up, grasping his shoulders, holding him tight.

“Son, the dowager duchess is . . .” A cough echoed from the hall. “Oh, I do beg your pardon.”

Unable to let go of his wife, and completely undaunted by his father’s sudden presence, James leaned back, but couldn’t tear his gaze from his wife. “What is it?”

“The Dowager Duchess of Duncliffe is looking for you. But . . .” A satisfied sound came from his father. “She can wait. I am so happy to see you two—”

“Father, hie yourself off.”

The earl laughed. “Certainly. But an old man can’t help but be delighted. That promised heir won’t be far now, eh, Margaret?”

And then his father was gone.

Margaret rested her head against his shoulder. “I never could have imagined this,” she said softly.

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His father’s last words were echoing through his head.

After a long pause, she lifted her head and caught his gaze. “What is it?”

James blinked, almost unable to believe what he had heard. “What did he mean, Margaret?”

“Pardon?”

A feeling of dread coursed through his veins. “My father, what did he mean when he said
the promised heir
?”

She blanched. “I . . .”

His heart sank. “Just say it, Margaret. Say what you promised my father in return for power and money and protection.”

The joy that had been in her a moment ago vanished, giving her pale skin an unearthly look. “I promised to have your child.”

“No, not exactly that, I think.”

“No, it’s true,” she said quickly.

He took a step back, his heart growing cold, cracking like ice. “You promised to have my heir. A little lord to inherit the title and the estates. It wasn’t even as if you promised to have a child to love.”

She swallowed, her hands falling lifelessly to her sides. “That’s right.”

“Did you even think about it?”

Those glorious eyes of her hollowed, empty of feeling. “Not really.”

The pain of that small sentence knocked the wind out of him. He nodded, slowly turning. He couldn’t be near her just now. After all they’d shared, she’d kept this from him. She’d refused to speak of the bargain she’d made with his father, and worse, she’d made it. She’d been willing to bear a child, his child, when she had no idea if he would give up the opium forever. What kind of a father would he have made? Apparently, she hadn’t cared.

It hurt. It hurt more than anything had hurt since Sophia and Jane had left him.

She followed him, her steps swift. “Wait,” she demanded.

He paused, everything about him suddenly feeling entirely unreal.

“We love each other,” she said.

He ground his teeth together as tears stung his eyes. “Yes, we do.”

“Then you will forgive me?” she asked.

He couldn’t look back. He couldn’t look at the face of the woman he loved who had proved herself to be no better than the rest of society. “I can forgive you for selling yourself, Margaret. Most women do. And I can’t stop loving you.”

“Then?” she asked, a note of desperation straining her voice.

“We’ve discussed it before, my darling. Love doesn’t always bring happiness. I had hoped perhaps we’d be different, but . . .”

She grabbed his hand. “I did sell myself. I suppose you could even say I sold my child, but I had good reason. I would never do such a thing without it.”

His heart broke for both of them. “I’m sure you did. We always do. But when you sold yourself and promised my father that heir, you didn’t give a damn about my feelings about children, which now I do wish to have. You didn’t care that I couldn’t bear the thought of having another child when I had failed my own daughter so miserably. You were so certain you were doing the right thing that you simply went ahead. I love you, but I also don’t know you.”

Instead of the tears he had expected, she folded her hands before her, lifted her chin, and stared him in the face. “I understand.”

A hoarse, tragic laugh twisted from him. Even now, she was doing the
right thing
. Instead of crying or betraying the slightest hint of emotion, she’d climbed back behind her wall as if she had been the one betrayed. “Oh, Maggie, no, you don’t.”

He’d been a fool to think he could help her. He’d not been able to help himself for years. Why had he thought he could tear down that tall wall of hers? He did love her. There was no questioning that, but Margaret was never truly going to trust him or let him in.