He put one hand on the doorknob but turned back to look with the bleakness that lies beyond hope. “Strange. I was willing to make a whore my wife, but I find it quite unacceptable that my wife is a whore. Good-bye, Diana.”
The quiet sound of the door closing was a death knell.
Diana stood very still in the center of the room, knowing that when her numbness wore off, the pain would be overwhelming. Carriage noises sounded outside, the jingle of harness, the clopping of hooves, as Gervase left her for the last time.
She had thought often of how he might react when he found out that she was his wife. Certainly he would be shocked. Possibly he might be a little angry, but it had been equally possible that he would be amused, that the idea that he had taken his wife as a mistress might tickle his dry sense of humor.
Most of all, Diana had thought he would be relieved. When they had married, he had committed an unpardonable assault, but after his fury had died down he had been remorseful and gentle with her. When she came to know him in London, she had learned how honorable he was, and how unworthy he felt himself to be. She had thought he would welcome the news that his wife could forgive him, and that, against all the odds, they had a real marriage.
The one thing she had never expected was that revealing the past would destroy what was between them. How could it, when they loved each other? She had always known him to be logical and fair-minded. She’d never imagined that he would react to the discovery of her identity with such furious condemnation.
When the sound of wheels had faded, she walked out of the sitting room. Madeline’s niece Annie waited, her expression concerned. Annie was the eldest child of Isabel Wolfe and she had fallen in love with a young man insufficiently godly for her mother’s taste. It had pleased Madeline and Diana to offer the use of High Tor Cottage so the girl could marry her sweetheart.
Annie must be speaking, because her lips moved, but Diana heard nothing. Shaking her head as a sign that she wanted to be alone, she went out the front door, across the marks of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves, and down the hill to the stream.
Sitting on the grassy bank, Diana took off her slippers and stockings. Still moving with unnatural calm, she dabbled her feet in the small pool where Geoffrey had almost drowned when he was a toddler. In happier times they had played here, her son exhibiting the normal child’s affinity for mud.
Gervase was gone. He was not a man to love lightly, or to leave lightly. Or to change his mind once he came to a decision. She had known they were opposite in temperament and in the ways their minds work, but she hadn’t recognized all that implied. For her, love was enough, would always be enough. She had thought that if Gervase came to love her, the bond between them would be unbreakable.
She had been wrong. Instead, she had injured him grievously, had destroyed his love and trust, perhaps irrevocably, given him a wound from which he might never recover.
Where had she made her mistake? Numbly she reviewed the past months. Perhaps it had been at Aubynwood, when they had weathered their first crisis. Instinct had urged her to tell Gervase the truth then, but she didn’t. It had been easier to let matters drift. She had thought it better to wait until he could admit that he was in love with her, thinking he would more easily accept the truth then.
Instead, the reverse was true. Loving her, he was far more vulnerable than he had been at Aubynwood. The result was his conviction that he had been betrayed. The thought of his agony was as devastating as her own. More so, because of her guilt.
Rolling over on her stomach, she buried her head in her arms and let anguish take her.
* * *
The return to London was accomplished in dead silence. Except for the barest speech required to change horses and stop for the night, Gervase spoke to Bonner only once, when he asked what the servant had found when he had packed his master’s possessions that fatal night on Mull.
Without twitching an eyelid at the question, Bonner replied, “One of the tavern girls was there. She’d been waiting quite some time and was incensed at your neglect. I took the liberty of giving her a small douceur for her inconvenience, from the funds I carried for travel expenses.”
“And my luggage was there?” Gervase pulled in the horses to negotiate heavy ruts. He was doing all of the driving; the concentration helped keep thought at bay.
Bonner nodded. “Aye. Appeared to be untouched, but I didn’t check because the island Scots are an honest lot. Was something missing?” The servant acted as if the incident had been the previous night, not over nine years before. But of course, it had not been the sort of night one would forget.
“No, nothing was missing.” Except his wife, who had not, apparently, been in Gervase’s room, but in her own.
He thought back over months of lovemaking and realized that while Diana had always been sweetly responsive, she had never shown the hardened professionalism of the true courtesan. He had been so besotted that he had never even noticed. She might indeed be as innocent as she claimed—or this might be one more example of her brilliant talent for falsehood.
It was only a slight detour to Aubynwood, and the upcoming house party made a convenient excuse for stopping. The necessary orders required very little time. Then, grimly, he asked his housekeeper where his mother’s portrait hung. The painting held pride of place in the servants’ hall, where its quality was much esteemed. Sir Joshua Reynolds would have been amused, perhaps, to know where his masterpiece had come to rest.
Gervase ignored the beautiful, amoral face of his mother to study the dark-haired boy who looked up at her so wistfully. After he had scrutinized the profile, the shape of the ears, the line of nose and jaw, the conclusion was unmistakable: the picture could almost have been of Geoffrey. Now he understood why the tenant farmer he and Geoffrey had visited at Aubynwood had looked so sharply at the boy.
Though he had half forgotten it, Gervase had been small for his age as a child. Only when he reached twelve had he begun to grow, matching and overtaking the height of other boys his age.
And the seizures. He had had a few; Geoffrey had more. Were such things inherited? Quite possibly.
So Geoffrey, with his intelligence and courage and sunny nature, was his son. Thinking of his wife as abnormal, not quite human, Gervase had literally never considered the possibility that that one brief, violent act of sexual union might produce a child.
Gervase set the thought aside, not yet able to face it. The fact that Geoffrey was his son didn’t make Diana any less a liar or a whore—but it was another complication in the hell of his marriage.
* * *
It was late evening when Diana arrived home, exhausted by the long coach journey. After the scene with Gervase, she had spent more than a week at High Tor Cottage, craving the peace as a balm for her misery.
Now it was good to be with her family. Geoffrey was already in bed, but Madeline and Edith took one look at Diana’s haggard face and wrapped her in affectionate care. She had not told her friends why she went north and they had not asked, but the time had come to reveal her history.
