There was satisfaction in seeing that her words affected him like physical blows, that he felt some shadow of her suffering. Contempt in every syllable, she finished, “As if your damned fortune could ever compensate for what you did to me! There isn’t enough money on earth to buy you a clear conscience.”
“I know,” he whispered, his face contorted with despairing guilt. “If there were anything on earth I could do to make amends, I would do it. You are furious and have every right to be.” He drew in a shuddering breath, then finished in a voice raw with pain. “Can you listen to your own words and still deny that you wanted revenge?”
His question was like a splash of ice water in the face of her fury. Hearing the echoes of her words, Diana was appalled by her own bitterness. Shaking her head in vehement denial, she buried her face in her hands, her curtained hair isolating her with her thoughts. She had believed that she had transcended the anger about her marriage, that she had become a loving, forgiving woman. Now she stood condemned by her own words.
Terrified that she was not the person she had believed she was, Diana searched the darkest corners of her heart with harsh, relentless will, to learn if vengeance had truly been her motive. It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done.
She found anger, some of it for Gervase and her mother, more directed at her father. She found guilt, the tormented doubts she had known at bringing Geoffrey to London when she embarked on a life of shame. But she found no malice toward anyone, no desire to torment and destroy her husband.
When she was sure, Diana raised her head and said with the stillness that comes after storm, “In the years between our marriage and our meeting in London, I despised you, and had no desire to see you ever again.” Then, with utter conviction, “But vengeance I left to God.”
He shook his head, able to believe her anger but not her conclusion. “Finally, the ugly truth that lies at the bottom of the well, the rage you had hidden even from yourself. You should thank me for helping you discover it. You hated me and sought revenge. And you achieved it beyond your wildest dreams.”
“You are wrong, Gervase.” She brushed her hair back wearily. “Yes, there was anger. Only now do I see how much. But that is only part of the truth. Though I hated you in the beginning, that passed. I swear before God that I never truly wished to harm you in any way. I wanted you to be sorry, to regret what had happened, but that is far from the viciousness you think me capable of.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Diana. How could I fully comprehend the injury I did to you andnotsuffer from the knowledge? You have sown the seeds of your hatred, and I will be reaping the harvest as long as I live.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, their gray depths transparent in the candlelight. “You wanted your pound of flesh, and you got it. It was just bloodier than you expected.”
The truth of his words struck her. Indeed, she could not have it both ways. A just man like Gervase could not turn aside from the consequences of his actions. Because he was strong and honorable, his torment at betraying his fundamental values was all the more acute.
As much as she hated to admit it, she could no longer deny that shehadwanted to hurt him, just a little. Then, after he had shown proper remorse, she would have graciously forgiven him and they could have lived happily ever after in their love. She would have the added satisfaction of knowing how generous she had been.
Instead, because there were already deep wounds in his soul, she had injured him far more profoundly than she had intended, and that injury had rebounded on her. She wished she hadn’t come here, had not opened this Pandora’s box of dark and twisted motives. But too much had been said to retreat; she could only go forward. The past and present were unbearable. Only the future held hope, and that meant driving away all the dark shadows.
With sudden insight, she knew what must be done. Quietly she asked, “What is the truth that lies at the bottom of your well, Gervase? Who convinced you that you were unworthy of being loved? Who made it easier to believe that I was a liar than that I could love you?”
She stood and stepped toward him, remembering what Francis had told her the day before. “Was it your father, who neglected you and considered you an inferior heir? Or was it your mother? You never speak of her.” Her voice catching, she continued. “My mother killed herself, and I felt betrayed. What did your mother do that wounded you so deeply you cannot trust another woman?”
She raised one hand tentatively, then dropped it, afraid to touch him. “Why are you so terrified that you will send me away rather than risk love?”
“My God, youarea witch.” He twisted away from her, his long muscles rigid with anguish. “Before I met you, my mother was the only woman I had ever loved, and it meant nothing to her. Less than nothing. I only wish that shehadkilled herself! It would have been a blessing by comparison.”
“What did she do to you?” Diana pursued him implacably, stopping so close to his chair that the soft folds of her gown brushed his leg. “As you yourself have just shown me, wounds that are hidden from the light of day turn poisonous.”
He gasped for breath as if he had been running, his voice ragged behind his hands. “You don’t want to know. I swear before God, Diana,you . . . do . . . not... want . . . to . . . know!”
Diana placed her hands on his and gently pulled them from his face. As he flinched from her touch, she was shocked to see tears, his features distorted by unbearable memories. He was a grown man, but his expression was that of a devastated child. Softly she asked, “What did she do to you, Gervase, that you are letting it destroy your whole life?”
“You really want to know, mistress mine?” He knocked her hands aside, using fury to disguise his agony. “I warned you, but you insist on knowing the darkest secret of my soul, so I will make you a gift of it.” Hoarsely, painfully, his eyes not meeting hers, he spat out,“The first woman I ever lay with was my mother!”
Diana stared at him in horror. Nothing had prepared her for this, and she was shocked to the depths of her being.
He could not stop, his words pouring out with chaotic power. “Do you think only women can be raped? You are wrong. My mother raped me, though not with force. She did it casually, because it amused her at that moment. Because she was unhappy about the loss of a lover. Because she had drunk too much wine. Because it never occurred to her to deny her impulses.”
He shook his head violently, as if to dislodge the memories. “I was thirteen years old. At first I didn’t understand, then I didn’t believe, and finally I could not stop my body from responding even though I knew how unspeakably wrong it was.”
He stood abruptly and she jerked back, uncertain of what he meant to do. Grasping the brandy decanter, in one smooth, furious motion Gervase hurled it across the room to shatter against the wall.
As crystal shards spun across the polished hardwood floor and the sharp tang of brandy filled the room, he cried out, “Is that ugly enough for you? Is that a powerful enough reason to doubt that women can be trusted?”
He had been avoiding her eyes, but now he turned to face her, all vestige of control vanished. “It repulses you, doesn’t it, knowing that your husband is a man who committed incest with his own mother? Incest is the vilest, the most forbidden of crimes. Oedipus was hurled down from his throne, blinded, and cast out into the wilderness for it.”
Half-wild with devastation, he finished in a hoarse whisper, “It is more than a crime, it is an abomination, a sin against God. There is nothing, nothing at all, that can absolve that.”
His agony was a fiery, tangible thing, and it struck Diana to the heart. She didn’t want to believe that any mother could do such a thing to her son, that the man she loved had lived most of his life with such grief and shame, but the intolerable truth was written in every tortured line of his face.
With instinctive desire to offer comfort, she cried out, “It wasn’t your fault! She was a woman grown and you were scarcely more than a child. It is horrible that any woman could abuse her child so, but you are not horrible for having been a victim of her. Don’t let your guilt destroy you.”
Then, with fierce entreaty, she begged, “And don’t punish me for your mother’s sin.”
