He heard her draw an audible breath as she examined the desktop with lowered head. “Home,” she said. “I need to go back there.”
To her father? In a way it was surprising she had not fled there soon after Gilbert’s death. Surely being with her father would have seemed a more pleasant fate to her than remaining here when he was the new earl. Why had she been forbidden to communicate with her father? Why had she almost fainted when she had received his letter? Had it been the first in over ten years?
“The answer is yes,” he told her. “Yes, you may leave. Yes, you may take your children with you—and the quarterly payments that are rightfully yours. Was that your first letter from him, Christina?” But she had been bound to remain here over Christmas because she had agreed to be his hostess?
“The first in his own hand,” she said. “I have had two other letters in the past year, both written by someone called Horrocks.”
“Your father is ill?” he asked gently. He remembered his impression from the handwriting on the outside of the letter that it had been written by an elderly or infirm person.
She shook her head slightly but did not immediately answer.
“It must be a shock,” he said, “after ten years to find that his health has broken down. Would you have gone to him immediately if you had been under no obligation to me? I am sorry, Christina. Shall I arrange to have my carriage take you tomorrow. I will even escort you if you will allow me.”
He was, he realized without any real surprise, quite irrevocably in love with her. Her joy was his; her pain was his. There was no point in further denial—not to himself at least.
But she was shaking her head more firmly.
“I think I should go alone at least at first,” she said. “I shall leave Rachel and Tess with Aunt Hannah and Meg. They will not mind, I think. I do not know quite what I will find.”
He acted from instinct. He had not realized he had moved up behind her until his hands were clasping her shoulders. She turned and looked at him with a pale, wan face—the shadows beneath her eyes were quite pronounced now.
“What happened?” he asked her. “May I know? Was it me, Christina? Did I do something? Did Inotdo something? It was not just Gilbert’s fortune in comparison with my mere competence, was it?”
She was shaking her head slowly and biting her lower lip. “You did nothing wrong, Gerard,” she said. “Nothing was your fault. You were young and high-spirited. You did some foolish things, like risking your neck by racing a curricle to Brighton. You used to tell me some of your escapades. I daresay you drank and gambled and—and had women—”
“No!” he said sharply. “Not after I met you, Christina. Ilovedyou. I wanted to marry you. I could not crave any other women when there was you. I can remember only three occasions in my life—not one of them during the months I knew you—when I drank to excess. Each time I vowed never again. The most I ever won at the gaming tables was fifty guineas. The most I ever lost was sixty. Both times I decided afterward that I had been rash. Money is not easily earned. It should be spent wisely and well. Did you believe at the time that I was irretrievably wild?”
“He told me what I already knew and then made me realize I did not know the half of it,” she said. “He made me— see you as you really were. Or so it seemed at the time. I believe now that I was mistaken. IknowI was.” She closed her eyes and rested her forehead with every sign of weariness against his cravat.
“Gilbert?” he said. That bastard Gilbert! He might have guessed it. That had always been one of his favorite methods of getting his cousin in trouble at Thornwood—establishing the truth, twisting it and turning it without ever lying a great deal.
“Yes,” she said.
“And he convinced Pickering too, I suppose,” he said.
“And your father forbade you to see me again. You believed that you had been deceived in me and married Gilbert instead.” It was simple really—and quite worthy of Gilbert. “You might have trusted me more, Christina. You might have confronted me, given me a chance to defend myself.”
She lifted her head and looked into his face. She raised one hand and cupped it lightly about one of his cheeks for a few moments. “I had to believe it all,” she said. “I had to go on believing it all these years. Only so could I remain sane.”
She drew away from him and walked over to one of the long windows. Melted snow was dripping from the eaves across her line of vision, he could see. He did not attempt to follow her. He stood where he was.
“The whole world loved my father,” she said. “Everyone thought him amiable and charming. Even I was not immune to his charm.”
Why should she have been?
“And I knew him.” She rested her forehead against the glass of the window. “I do not suppose there were many people who suspected that he was two persons—the gay and charming and very likable public gentleman and the dark, moody, often violent private man. He had enough control over himself or enough pride—call it what you will—to do most of his drinking alone. He drank only enough in company to be the life of every party. In his defense I believe it was like a disease with him—if drinking can be called a disease. He could not stop even though he always said he could if he wanted. He did his heavy gambling in private halls. The public gentleman appeared comfortably wealthy—he was generous and spent lavishly. The private man was often plunged dangerously deep in debt. The two conditions—uncontrolled drinking and reckless gaming—made his moods very unpredictable. My mother was the one who suffered from them.”
He gripped the edge of the desk with one hand as if he needed it to prop himself up.
“She used to shield me from his wrath,” she said. “So much so that until recent years I have not really admitted to myself that she was the innocent party, the victim of his violence. He was almost always loving and indulgent with me and I would not face what I did not want to see. I came to despise her almost as much as I loved her. Why did she always have to provoke him and bring on those dark days when everyone had to tiptoe about the house? Why did she hide away for days at a time until the bruises faded when she might have avoided them in the first place? I was even angry with her when it became clear that she was consumptive and Papa used to shut himself up and weep and drink more. Everyone pitied him for his grief in the loss of a wife he had loved so tenderly in public.”
Even at the age of eighteen, he thought suddenly, she had been an expert in the wearing of masks. One would never have known that the sunny-natured girl had grown up in such a home.
“By the time I was eighteen and my mother had been dead for two years,” she said, “I understood the situation better. Not that he was ever violent with me, but I could see the instability of his character, his total inability to control his addictions. I did not stop loving him—he was my father. But I was determined when I went to London to make my come-out and to look for a husband that I would not make my mother’s mistake. I swore to myself that I would not be beguiled by a charming man whose life and character had no substance. I was determined to choose with my head and to marry a man of steady character. But I fell in love with you.”
But?She had fallen in love against her will? He felt suddenly cold.
“You were so like him in many ways,” she said. “You had all his best qualities. I persuaded myself that you were unlike him in all the ways that mattered. But I was vulnerable, you see, to anyone who told me otherwise—especially when he was a man of sense and good character.”
