His raw gaze met hers. He stood a bare foot away, the fevered warmth of his lean body palpable. “I may have been more sinned against than sinning at thirteen, but I can’t escape the knowledge that I am far more her child than my father’s.”
His mouth twisted. “My father was as dry and unfeeling as dust. It is my mother’s passionate, wanton nature I inherited, and I am no better than she was. You of all women know what I am capable of. I have tried to control myself, to spend passion where it will do no harm, to expiate my sins by working for goals greater than myself.”
His shoulders lifted in a gesture of despair. “I have tried to believe that I am no worse than other men, but in spite of all I have done, I have been unable to escape the truth. I am flawed beyond redemption.”
“No one is beyond redemption! You are no more flawed than any other mortal man.” In her fierce desire to defend him from himself, she grasped his upper arms, trying to break through his guilt and self-hatred.
She knew instantly that she had made a disastrous error. Her touch dissolved the fragile control that held Gervase’s violent emotions in check, and his taut muscles spasmed under her hands. He pulled her into a fierce, painful embrace, his mouth devouring, his arms crushing her against his hard body. She felt nothing of love and tenderness, only anguish and a bitter desire to strike mindlessly at the darkness within him.
In two steps he had dragged her to the bed and thrown her onto it, trapping her body beneath him, bruising her lips as he invaded her mouth. Wrenching the neckline of her silk robe, he exposed her breasts to his hungry grasp.
Diana fought him, trying to get enough leverage with arms and knees to free herself, but he was too strong, too lost in his own private hell, for her to escape. If he had wanted her in any other way she would have given herself gladly, but not like this, not in an act of violence that would sear them both beyond the possibility of healing.
He half lifted himself to get a better grip on her robe, and she used his shift in weight to reach down to the knife sheath on her leg. Lost in darkness beyond thought, Gervase didn’t even see the bright flash of blade as she raised her knife and slashed it across his left forearm.
Pain penetrated his madness as words could not have done. As blood dripped onto her bare breasts, Gervase rolled away, his features contorted with horror at what he had almost done. His rigid body was an eloquent reflection of his despair as he buried his face, his hands clenching the heavy quilt. Even though his assault on his wife had been unsuccessful, the attempt was bitter confirmation of his own worst beliefs about his nature.
Trembling with shock, Diana laid the bloodstained knife on the bed and used one hand to pull her robe together as she struggled to draw breath into her lungs. The room seethed with the force of the emotions that had been unleashed, and she wondered helplessly how a man and woman who had loved could hurt each other so profoundly.
After an endless time Gervase spoke, his voice dead, devoid even of pain. “Don’t speak to me of redemption, Diana. Some souls are beyond forgiveness. Surely even you will admit that now.”
When language failed in the past she had always used touch to convey what words could not, but when she laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder he twisted violently away from her. “Don’t touch me.In the name of God, don’t touch me!”
Shocked, she jerked back, huddling on the edge of the bed, her arms clenching across her. Trying to be matter-of-fact, to bring this nightmare scene back to normal, she said, “Your arm needs bandaging.”
He had rolled onto his back, his good arm screening the upper half of his face. Utterly hopeless, he said, “Not by you. Get out, Diana. Just get out.”
She stood, clutching her torn robe around her as she gazed down at him. She had never been more aware of his strength than now, when he was on the verge of breaking. She had known more than her share of suffering, but she had also known love, from her mother, even from her father when she was very young. Later, Edith and Geoffrey and Madeline had warmed her life. In spite of receiving so much love, she saw now that she had not fully recovered from her experiences.
Gervase had had no one, ever. A father who wasn’t there, a mother who abused him in the most unpredictable and poisonous ways. Yet even so, he had not succumbed to cruelty. He had the wealth and power and intelligence to cause great evil, yet he was fair and honorable to those who depended on him. As a lover, he had been more than fair; he had been generous and kind, even tender. Repeatedly he had risked his life for the greater good, both in the army and in the mysterious, thankless work he did now.
Never having known real warmth and love, no wonder he feared accepting it, feared the power she might gain over him. As starved as he was for intimacy, no wonder he had been desperately jealous and possessive, unable to believe in her constancy. No wonder he had been shattered by her apparent betrayal. It wasn’t just that he believed her to be treacherous. Her actions had released the dark trauma that lay at the very roots of his soul.
She had never loved him more than now, when she was aware of the full dimensions of his valor. It wasn’t hard to be good when circumstances encourage it. How incredibly more difficult it must have been for Gervase, who had been raised by the examples of selfishness and neglect. Yet he had done it, become a far better man than his upbringing had decreed. If not happy, he had been content, had known his place in the world and was living an honorable life.
And in her heedless self-righteousness, her unacknowledged desire to exact a subtle payment for what he had done, she had brought him to this. She remembered the words Madeline had spoken long ago in a sunlit garden:Some people . . . can be brought to their knees, with all their pride and honor broken by the ones they love.
Diana was bitterly ashamed for having played on Gervase’s uncertainties. To feed her own desire for power, she had refused to promise fidelity when he had so desperately craved it. Yes, she had been injured by him, but she had been in a position to know better than to injure him in return, and she had failed.
Diana sensed that he was now in some black place beyond light or hope, and feared that nothing she could do or say would make any difference at all. But she could do no less than try.
Her voice shaking, she said softly, “No matter what you have done, or how much you hate yourself, I love you, because you are worthy of being loved. I think it was fate that drew us together. We have both been wounded, but together, if we try, we can heal each other. You are part of me, and I will love you as long as I live, and beyond.”
She could see a quick, convulsive tightening in the part of his face that was visible, but his harsh breathing was his only reply. The abyss between them was too wide to be bridged, and she feared that the damage was beyond repairing. There was nothing more to be said, so she lifted her candle, now burned low and guttering.
She also took her knife. If he wanted to destroy himself rather than live in his pain, she knew he could find a way, but she would not make it easy for him.
Only the knowledge that her presence was hurting him made it possible for her to leave.
Chapter Twenty-Three
For Gervase, it was a night without end. After improvising a crude bandage to stop the flow of blood, he lay in the shadow-haunted room, unable to face full dark. He had been too profoundly scarred by the fact of his mother’s seduction to have forgotten, but for years he had walled off the event in his mind, rigidly suppressing all memory of the details.
Now his spinning head was full of her beautiful, corrupt face, her amused murmurings, her mocking incomprehension of his horror. Medora was a form of the name Medea. Medea, the sorceress who had murdered her own children. He sometimes wondered if she would have been different if she had carried a different name.
He’d never seen her again after that afternoon. He ran away, blindly, heedlessly. When his father’s men had found him weeks later, he refused to go back unless it was understood that he would never, ever set foot under any roof that sheltered his mother. His father had raised his brows in mild surprise but had no desire to know more. It had been a simple matter to leave his son at school or send him to remote properties where Lady St. Aubyn would never go.
Gervase had been seventeen when his mother died, an age when young men are most fascinated and caustic about sexual peccadilloes. In spite of his youth, he had fought two duels before his classmates realized just how unhealthy it was to refer to the late, notorious viscountess within earshot of her son. Gervase had been careful not to kill, since nothing could be said about his mother that was more insulting than the truth, but the duels increased the sick, angry ache deep inside him.
