“When did your mother die?” he asked.
“When I was—” But she stopped to set her cup very carefully in the saucer, and she leaned forward to set them rattling down on the tray. “She did not. As far as I know, she is still alive.”
He stared at her as she came to sit beside him again and spread her fingers over her lap to examine the backs of them with careful attention.
Hang on a minute. Her father had remarried, had he not?
“She left when I was five,” she told him. “My father petitioned Parliament soon after and divorced her. It took a great deal of time and trouble and money, though I knew nothing about any of it as a child. All I did know was that she was gone and was not coming back and that I missed her and cried for her night after night and often in the daytime too. But Dora was still there, and was staying after all instead of going to London for her come-out Season and the husband she had dreamed of finding there. I was very happy about that. She had always been my favorite person in the world—apart from our mother, that is—and she assured me over and over again until I believed her that she would far rather stay with me than go anywhere else. How innocent children are. She stayed until our father remarried, and then the year after thatImarried William. It was only then that I understood that we had once had very decent dowries set aside for us, Dora and I, but that most of the money had gone on the divorce, and almost all of the little that remained had been used to set Dora up at Inglebrook before she started to earn her own way. Not many men would have taken me when I was virtually portionless. William always assured me that it wasmehe had wanted to marry, not money.”
Good God! Dideveryonehave a story to tell when one took the time to listen to it—or when the person concerned could be persuaded to tell it?
“Andhe was willing to take me despite the disgrace,” she added, still addressing the backs of her hands. “He knew about it, of course. He had always been our neighbor. I did not give you the choice, did I?”
“What happened to her?” he asked. “To your mother, I mean.”
She shrugged her shoulders and kept them up close to her ears for a few moments. “She was never spoken of,” she said, “especially around me, I suppose. I heard snatches of things anyway, of course, from servants, from the children of neighbors. I believe she married her lover. I do not know who he was. I believe, though I do not know for certain, that he had been her lover for some time before she left with him. I have a few memories of her. She was dark and beautiful and vibrant with life. She laughed and she danced and she lifted me high and tossed me upward until I shrieked with fright and begged for more. At least Ithinkshe was beautiful. Perhaps a mother always looks beautiful to her infant child. And she cannot have been really young. Oliver was fourteen when I was born.”
“Are you c-curious about her?” he asked.
She raised her eyes to his at last.
“No,” she said. “Not even to the smallest degree. I do not know who he was or is, and I do not want to know. I do not know whosheis or even for surewhethershe is. I would not recognize her name or her face, I daresay. I would not wish to recognize either. I do not want to knowher. She abandoned Dora as well as me, and the consequences for Dora were far more dreadful than they were for me. No, I am not curious. But there is something else you ought to know—something you ought to have known before this morning.”
He had set down his own cup and saucer and taken one of her hands in his again. It was cold, as he had expected it to be. He sensed what was coming.
“I am not even sure,” she said, “that my fatherismy father.”
Her eyes were flat, her voice toneless, and he simply did not believe that she was not curious. Ah, his calm, quiet, disciplined,safeAgnes, who had carried inside a universe of pain since she was little more than a baby.
“Has anyone ever said he is not?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Has he ever treated you differently from your brother and sister?”
“No. But I do not look like him or Dora or Oliver. Orher.”
“Perhaps you resemble an aunt or uncle or grandparent,” he said. “Your fatherisyour f-father regardless, Agnes. Birth and b-breeding do not always depend upon small matters like who provided the seed.”
She looked away from him.
“You may have married a bastard,” she said.
He might have laughed if she had not looked so serious.
“There will be those who will tell you that it is y-you who have married the b-bastard,” he told her, and then he did smile as he raised her hand to his lips. “I have something in common with your W-William after all, it seems, Agnes. I married you this morning because, even though I s-scarcely know you, I wanted you for my wife. I still w-want you, even if you are a bastard ten times over. Is it p-possible to be ten times a bastard? It s-sounds rather dire, does it not?”
He had moved his head closer to hers, despite the infernally giant size of the sofa cushions, until she was forced to gaze into his eyes. And she... laughed.
“You aresoabsurd,” she said.
And he kissed her while her hand clung to his and her lips trembled against his and then pushed back, and he wound one arm about her shoulders.
She was, he thought, as horribly damaged as he was.
***
They managed to keep a conversation going for the hour that remained before their supper was brought and during the meal itself—and one that was far lighter in tone. The two footmen who came with their food set up a table in the middle of the sitting room with a crisp white cloth and the finest china and silverware and crystal and wine Lord Darleigh had to offer. They lit two tapers set in silver holders. It was a gloriously romantic setting.
