Rosina found her tongue. “It — it is like, but it is not you,” she managed, as calmly as she could.
Raith turned his gaze to the portrait. “You are observant.” He strolled past her, and went to stand beside it, turning. “Pray continue your investigation.”
He spoke quite coolly, but Rosina felt the bile welling within him. It caught at her curiosity, and she found herself less affected than usual. Had this significance in his virulent self-hatred? She looked from his face to the portrait, and saw at once that the resemblance was not nearly as strong as she had thought.
The unknown man on the wall had, she now saw, a look of — yes, dissipation — that had been drawn by the artist, perhaps without intent, in a swarthy shadow that edged the jaw and ran down in strong lines from nose to mouth and below the eyes. It was only, she realised, looking back at Lord Raith whose far less mocking eyes were regarding her with concentrated attention, the addition of the ridged and ragged white lesion which gave him that sinister air. It was that which increased the similarity. The other, she decided, looked sinister without any adorning cut.
“Who is he?’
Raith came away from the portrait, and turned to look at it with her. “My brother.” His jaw tightened. “My half-brother, to be exact. My predecessor, the tenth Baron Raith. And to whose untimely demise you may count yourself indebted, for I would never otherwise have thought of marriage.”
Indebted! Was she not rather cursed? But to say so would be to provoke precisely the sort of contretemps she wished to avoid. Besides, he had faced her without hiding the scar, and she guessed it had taken an effort for him to do so. Moreover, when he moved back he was standing on her left, leaving it exposed. From this side, and so close, it was indeed cruelly ugly. A shaft of emotion seemed to crush her chest, and she wanted to weep for him.
“I am sorry if you were distressed by his death,” she ventured, faintly husky.
He glanced at her briefly, but his gaze returned to the portrait. “Only because it meant that I must inherit this doubtful windfall.”
“When did he die?”
“In the summer.”
Rosina felt suddenly desperate to ask more, but she was already too aware of the dangers of probing too far with her touchy spouse. His nearness was having an unsettling effect. Was it the sight of that graven cut?
To her surprise, Lord Raith appeared disposed to talk of the matter, though he continued to study the portrait. “Ottery had written to me, warning me that Piers was travelling all too swiftly on the road to perdition. But I was in the midst of a campaign against the French, and paid no heed. Besides, I had no wish to watch him breathe his last. He would not have thanked me for it.”
His voice was even, but Rosina could read beneath it a wealth of unspoken emotion. Again she was swept with the oddest flood of feeling. It must be pity. Here must be the reason for his bitterness. She forgot caution.
“I am of the opinion that you did not care for your half-brother.”
Raith looked at her. “Astute of you.”
He noted emotion in her eyes and took it for reproach. He gave himself a mental kick. How could he have spoken to her in so curt a fashion? After all his good intentions. He sought to repair the damage.
“Pay no heed to me. It is not your fault that I was at enmity with Piers.”
Her eyes became questioning, and he avoided them, moving to the window. Easier not to look at her. The effect upon him of her expressive countenance was his undoing. Last night’s petty bungling had ruined his sleep. He had tossed and turned, fighting the desire to go through to her chamber and beg her forgiveness for his ill-mannered departure. Had he not feared she would think he had the intention of taking his pleasure of her, he would have done it. She could not possibly trust him. Nor, for that matter, did he trust himself.
He had spent the entirety of that interminable dinner in a state of anguish, so badly did he want her. On her departure from the table, he had gone across to the window and flung open the shutters, letting in the freeze of the night to cool his ardour. He had tossed off his port, resolved to give her no cause for distress, and broken the resolve within minutes of being in the same room with her.
This morning, her non-appearance at breakfast had been to him a relief, and he had set out with his agent on horseback, determined to remain out of doors until sunset. But memory, that intrusive betrayer, had fed him images of his conduct, and he was riven with remorse. He had come back expressly to find her, and make amends. He drew a breath, and spoke without turning round.
“Rosina.”
“Yes, my lord.”
There was a quality in her voice — of sympathy? That was the last thing he wished for. Never mind it. This was not about what he wanted, but about what she deserved.
He did not turn around, but kept his eyes on the view from the window: a deserted formal garden, the stables and outhouses just visible beyond, behind a belt of trees.
“I have behaved abominably since our marriage. More so since we arrived here. I do not know what to say to you. If I were to make you a promise to mend in future, I know I should break it. I am not fit company.”
Her voice came from behind him, a trifle diffident. “It has, I think, to do with your half-brother. Your bitterness, I mean.”
“Bitterness. It was his own disease. I had it not, until he gave it to me.”
“But he is dead. Can you not forget it?”
Would that he could! But how, when the very core of it had brought him to this pass? Else he would not have put himself on to the market and purchased an impossible dream. But that could not be said. Easy enough to find another reason. They were all of them valid.
