CHAPTER EIGHT
Aghast, Verena gazed at him. “Oh no,” she uttered faintly.
Denzell stared back, quite as shocked himself by his own words. An odd laugh escaped him.
“My God, I have fallen in love with you. Oh, Verena.”
Without any warning at all he released her hands, but only so that he might take her in his arms, gently, and in wonderment, oblivious to the stunned expression on her face. Next instant he was kissing her.
Verena’s knees gave way. Had Denzell not been holding her she would have fallen.
Sensation crowded out thought as the pressure at her mouth sent waves dizzying across her brain.
Then a wash of heat engulfed her and she groaned, unaware that her lips were answering his, moving in a hunger that had nothing to do with sense or fear, or even consciousness.
Her arms, her hands, all moved seemingly without any volition on her part, snaking up to enfold the hard warmth of his chest closer still.
The pressure on her mouth intensified, and her lips parted at the implicit command, leaving her vulnerable to a searing belt of flame that raced through her at the velvet touch that followed.
It was too much! She was burning, suffused with intolerable sensations that threatened to deprive her of her senses. Struggling, she fought free and staggered back, panting with effort and hysterical with frantic protest.
“How could you? How could you? Never — never — dare to do such a thing again!”
Denzell, as charged as she, as much affected, yet realised how wrong, how inconsiderate he had been.
“Verena, forgive me! I did not mean to do it, I swear. I couldn’t help it. I promise you, I had no such intention when I brought you here. I had no notion that I had fallen in love with you.”
“Don’t say that,” uttered Verena, trembling. “It isn’t possible … you must not…” She drew a ragged breath against the uneven pounding of her pulse. “You must not — cannot — love me.”
“It’s too late, Verena. I do love you. Nothing can change that.”
She drew back. “No. Please, no.”
Denzell reached out and caught her hand. “Why are you so afraid? What is it that you fear?”
Verena tried to pull her hand away, but his fingers tightened.
She was conscious that she was trembling, and could not doubt but that he felt it.
He drew her mittened hand up to his mouth, kissed the bare fingertips, and then let it go.
The tenderness of the gesture left her helpless, warmed inside, despite the denial she was trying to hold to.
He must not love her, because she could not — must not — love him. She did not love him!
“Never speak to me of such m-matters again,” she said shakily. “I could not love you, Mr Hawkeridge — or anyone.”
“There is someone else,” he uttered, in sudden anguish.
“No one.”
“Then —”
“No one,” she reiterated harshly. “No man shall be permitted to steal away my heart. I have long determined it. Not you. Not anyone. I wear an iron shield and you need not suppose that you have the power to penetrate it. You must go elsewhere with your love, Mr Hawkeridge, for I will never accept it.”
The look on his face almost caused her to retract. Was he so very much hurt? She was conscious of a rising feeling of guilt, but she thrust it down. Guilt in this instance was a luxury she could not afford. She must remember Mama.
The thought gave her strength. What, had she forgotten Mama’s sufferings? Was she so vulnerable, so easily swayed by a kiss, by soft words? No — if only he did not look so devastated. Without will, she put out a hand and her fingers lightly touched his cheek. “I am sorry, Denzell.”
Then she turned away, and sped back towards the dancing arena, but skirting it so that she passed around the crowds. She was still overset, her heartbeat irregular, and she did not wish to meet anyone now. All she wanted was to go home. To go home — and to weep.
All the way home in the chair that carried her, she clutched her light cloak about her, beset by an unwelcome image of Denzell Hawkeridge’s face.
Clearly he had not imagined for a moment that he might meet with such a comprehensive rebuff.
She could only trust he was mistaken in the depth of his feelings, that he would soon recover and fall in love with someone else.
It must be that he would, for was he not an accomplished flirt?
Perhaps he fancied himself in love with her because she had not fallen victim to his wiles.
He barely knew her, after all. As she barely knew him.
Which had not, a small voice whispered, prevented her from finding him dangerously attractive, nor from melting with desire at his kiss.
With a smothered exclamation, she put her hands over her own ears, as if she might stop herself hearing such things, even in her own head.
He should not have kissed her. Her face burned at the memory.
He had no right to — to set up a furnace in her body, to throw her into a state of such unutterable confusion.
She arrived home in a condition almost as bad as that in which she had run from Denzell, her heart beating less raggedly, but heavy with a weight of oppression that threatened every instant to overcome her.
She would have gone directly to her own chamber, but her footsteps must have been heard, for Betsey’s head popped out of the parlour, a candle in her hand. The maid both sounded and looked grim enough to seize Verena’s attention from her own dismal thoughts.
“I thought it must be you, Miss Verena. You’d best come in here straight.”
Still cloaked, Verena moved towards the parlour door, frowning. “What is the matter, Betsey?”
The maid was apparently too distracted to notice the trouble in Verena’s face. “It’s Mr Adam.”
“Adam is here?”
“Right enough he is — and with such tidings as you’ll not be wanting to hear, neither.”
For a moment the shadows left by the difficult events of Verena’s evening prevented her from understanding. But as she walked through the door, and saw the instant apprehension in the faces of her mother and brother alike, the portent of Betsey’s words hit home.
“Oh, dear heaven, don’t tell me, Adam. He is coming after you, isn’t he?”
“Dearest, do not be angry,” said Mrs Peverill at once.
Not be angry? Verena was on the point of wild and hysterical laughter. All that she had been through tonight, and now this. Oh, but the fates were cruel.
Adam was speaking, and she tried to concentrate her attention on his words.
“…never meant to say a word, you must know that, Verena. But I believe he more than half suspected these visits I have been making.”
“That was the reason, Verena,” pressed Mrs Peverill.
“You cannot blame Adam, dearest. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but Nathaniel drove him to speak, indeed, indeed he did. Cannot you imagine it, Verena? Such taunts at me he made, such dreadful things he said of me. Poor Adam could not abide to hear them.”
“What did you tell him?” Verena asked, her tone flat.
“Why, I threw back at him what he had done to Mama,” explained Adam.
“And lost his temper into the bargain,” put in Betsey shrewdly, for she had followed Verena back into the parlour.
“What did you tell him, Adam?” Verena repeated, her eyes on her brother’s face.
Adam shrugged. “I hardly know. Except that when he taxed me with having seen Mama, I was so angry I must have let it out that I had done so. Indeed Verena, I did not think I had mentioned Tunbridge Wells, but —”
“But you had,” she finished for him. “And what does he intend?”
There was silence for a moment. Mrs Peverill came forward, trying to intercept herself between her son and daughter. “Dearest —”
“Mama, I must know!”
“But there is nothing to be done about it now, Verena,” pleaded her mother. “He will come here, and we must face him. I can face him, Verena. I am stronger now.”
Verena was still regarding her brother’s tense face. “Adam, what did he say?”
Her brother drew a heavy breath and sighed it out. “He has sworn that he will come here and fetch Mama away. I came as fast as I could — to warn you both.”
“To warn us both,” repeated Verena.
She closed her eyes for an anguished moment.
It had come. The moment she had been dreading for months and months.
It did not seem as if she could take it in.
All she could think was, why now? Why at this particular instant, when she was so full of that other matter she had no strength left to deal with this one?
She became aware of the quiet surrounding her, and opened her eyes to find Adam’s face — pale in the candlelight, the look of anxiety so pronounced that she wondered at the power she must wield. He was afraid of her, of her anger, of what she might say to him.
Her glance went to her mother’s face. Heavens, here was that look she dreaded most. One of supplication — of fear and pleading. A look that had so often met Nathaniel’s hideous anger. Yet it was directed at herself!
Verena’s heart contracted. Had she become so hard?
Had she, in her anxiety to protect — whom, dear heaven?
These most beloved creatures or herself?
— assumed as forbidding an aspect as the hated spectre who threatened them all?
Into what species of monster had she herself been turned?
Oh, she could see it. They were almost as much afraid of what she might say as she was afraid of what Nathaniel might do.
They loved her, both of them, yet they knew — expected almost — that she could, or would, hurt them.
Unbidden, the image of Denzell’s stricken face came into her mind.
Stricken! At her words. Oh, heavens, did he then indeed love her?
And she — brutally unkind — had flung his declaration back in his face.
Without so much as a word of compliment, honour or thanks.
And all, all of it, out of her own sick terrors.
What had Nathaniel done to her? She was pitiless.