He shrugged and said, ‘I don’t claim fully to understand what drives him. Perhaps I do him an injustice and he is entirely indifferent to me; I cannot say. But I can imagine Rosanna finding my refuge and deciding to wreck it out of malice. I don’t think for a second that he would stop her – he’d merely laugh.’
‘She hates you that much?’
‘She does. She cannot endure that I rejected her. And that is why, I suppose, she spread the vicious rumour that she was my mistress, which all the world now believes.’
‘Lord Wyverne at least must know that it is untrue.’
‘He has good reason to know that much. Shall I tell you what happened? I have shared this story with very few people.’
‘Only if you want to.’
He leaned back against the pillows and said with an unconscious sigh, ‘I’d like to. You have seen so much of how things are here – you at least will not be shocked or disbelieve me.’ Thinking of the night of Lord Wyverne’s Roman orgy, she could only nod her agreement and understanding. He continued in a level tone, ‘I was fifteen or sixteen when he married her. She’d been his mistress for a while, I suppose, but he hadn’t brought her here, or if he had done so I had been at school and had not been aware of it. She was – even now she still is – very beautiful, and she can be amusing; have you seen any sign of that?’
Sophie thought of Rosanna when she’d first met her, and how she had described the Dowager’s previous companions. ‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘Just briefly, but yes. She has a clever turn of phrase; she made me smile.’
‘She was wittier then, before the years of marriage had worn her down. I was a little shocked that my… that Wyverne had married her so quickly after my stepmother’s death, but after all, that wasn’t her fault but his. She set out to charm me, and I was happy enough to be charmed, until one day… She’d summoned me to her sitting room and asked me to fetch her some trinket or other – as I passed it innocently to her, she put her hands on me and pulled my face down for a kiss. Not at all the sort of kiss a stepmother should give a boy of sixteen, I need hardly add. I froze for a moment in shock and then pushed her away from me, and as I stood some instinct made me look into the mirror. Init I saw Lord Wyverne watching me from the half-open door to the next chamber. No emotion in his face, just observing us very intently. He saw that I had seen him, I make no doubt. And then I fled, as far from them both as I could contrive. I’ve never been alone with her since, and avoid him as much as I am able.’
She digested this slowly. ‘You believe she knew he was there.’
‘More than that, I believe he set her to seduce me. I’m sure the whole thing was planned out between them. What I don’t know, and I’m not sure I ever will know, is whether she is as wicked as he, and glories in it, or simply accedes to his demands – all his demands, you’ve seen just how far they extend – as part of the devil’s bargain she entered into when she became his wife. It is no small thing, for a woman who came from poverty, to be a marchioness, I suppose. And I hardly need tell you how cruel he can be when he is crossed. She may be numbered among his victims too, rather than as an accomplice; even after so many years, I can’t say.’
‘It would almost be easier to think her wicked. Otherwise she must be terribly unhappy, even perhaps terrified of him. Consider the other night, too, and the horror of what she did so publicly, if she did not do it entirely of her own free will.’
‘It does not bear thinking of. But whatever the truth of the matter, I do not believe she would welcome any intervention from me. My friend Simon – he is the rector here, I believe I may have mentioned him to you before – tells me that I have a constant desire to rescue people, to make amends somehow for Wyverne’s behaviour. But rescuing Rosanna, even if I could be sure she needs it, is a task far beyond my power.’
‘You’ve been trying to rescue me,’ she said with a smile. ‘So perhaps your friend is right.’
He sighed. ‘I know you want nothing more than to leave this place, and I cannot find it in my heart to blame you. All yousaid the other day was true, of course it was. We should not be together. It is madness to think otherwise. And yet…’
And yet…
She didn’t make any reply, but stood, crossing to the bed, as he moved aside to make room for her to lie by him. He reached out and pulled her close, and said, his big hands warm on her back as he held her, ‘Normally when I contemplate Wyverne a great black cloud sinks over me and depresses all my thoughts and feelings. But somehow with you it’s different. The effect you have on me is far too powerful to be suppressed. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. Even though it would be the height of folly on my part to think it could last, I’m glad you’re here with me, no matter how it’s come about.’
‘So am I,’ she said, and kissed him.
28
It was a sweet kiss, as much a reaction to the shock they had both suffered as anything else, and as she kissed him Sophie relaxed into the knowledge of his decency, his openness; how much he had shared with her, and how little she had told him in return. He knew what she had been once, and what she was now, but he did not know who she was, not really, and she was possessed of a great desire to tell him. She was teasing him with little kisses, he was letting her set the pace, and she moved away to put her head on his shoulder, saying against the comforting warmth of him, ‘You didn’t seem shocked when I told you I had had a lover.’
‘Well, I assumed you must have.’ He was choosing his words carefully, she thought. It was a delicate topic, after all, her past, with many traps, both obvious and hidden, that they could easily fall into. ‘I didn’t want to assume anything else. If it was a happy experience – and I thought it must be, given your confidence when you were with me out there on the roof – then I can only be glad for you. I know nothing of your life, but I would be honoured to know, Sophie, if you care to tell me.’
‘I would like to. I don’t want to dwell too long on the bad things that happened to me, though I cannot help but mentionthem if I am to make you understand. I was lucky, really – I could very easily be dead. I was destitute, alone, and faced with only one way of making a living. My landlord had already made it clear to me precisely how my arrears of rent could be paid. I was frightened, grieving, but most of all I was angry, like a cornered animal. I knew that sooner or later I would have only one choice, which is no choice at all, or some man would overpower me without even the illusion of choosing. It seemed inevitable, but I resolved at least to make that man pay for it. It was probably foolish and dangerous, but I wouldn’t submit willingly and accept the value they all placed on me.
‘And then a stranger came to me and said that he had heard of my plight – people tell him things, to win his favour, I found out later – and that we might help each other. I thought he wanted what they all seemed to want, but I was wrong, he didn’t. He still wanted to use me, but in a different way – to make me into a thief, a weapon of sorts – and that seemed better to me. Itwasbetter.’
She saw his expression and said, ‘He’s not my lover, he never has been. His name is Nate Smith, and though I’m sure you’ve never heard of him he is a very dangerous man, but we’re friends, or something of that kind, as far as that is possible in his world. I know after all these years together and the way he treats me, people think I’m his mistress. That’s useful in a way, because it makes them frightened of me, because they’re so frightened of him, and I have sometimes thought that he quite likes them to believe it too. For his own complicated reasons, he has protected me. No one who knows him would ever dare lay a finger on me to hurt me. We’ve been so close for so long, people fear he might kill them for harming me, though I don’t know if that’s true or not. He has shared some of his secrets, but not all of them. He hates your father, I am certain of that, though I have no idea why.’
‘After all, lots of people do,’ he said drily. ‘It would be much harder in all honesty to find people who are even slightly acquainted with him and don’t loathe him. But go on.’
‘I felt safer, you see, under Nate’s protection, and I was learning all sorts of things, good and bad, that I’d never have dreamed of in my previous life. Doing things Clemence de Montfaucon would never have done in a thousand years. After a while I realised how much I had changed, and I thought that I should take a lover.’
He smiled, though she could not tell exactly what he was thinking of what he had heard. ‘And why should you not?’
‘Perhaps you’re teasing me, but really it was a sensible decision. I wanted to give my body to someone I chose, rather than be taken against my will as could so easily have happened, and also, I suppose, I needed to remind myself that I was no longer Clemence de Montfaucon, and never would be again. My virginity began to seem – a useless sort of a thing. A mockery, almost. I thought, if by some miracle my old life was restored, nobody would ever believe that I was still an innocent, given the way I had been living. So I might as well not be, in practice as well as in theory. I wanted some pleasure for myself – I understood from all that I had seen around me that it could be pleasure – and some company, some comfort, I must admit that too. And I chose Bart.’
‘The artist.’
‘Yes. He was very poor – he’s richer now, I hear – living in cheap lodgings and drinking in Nate’s tavern. This was some years ago. Bart told me he wanted to paint me, and I thought, That’s not all he wants. I’d been saying no to everyone for a long time, and then I decided to say yes. I liked his looks, and let him know I did.’
