CHAPTER TEN #3
Denzell stopped dead, a frown forming between his brows. His voice was hard. “Good evening, Miss Chaceley.”
Verena took in the tone. Dear heaven, but he had taken it amiss! He must not speak to her. Not in that mood. Not in any mood. From panic at what he might say, she jerked out under her breath, “Go away from me, for the love of heaven!”
Instant hurt registered in his eyes. Verena’s heart gave an involuntary twist. Oh, heavens! But she could not afford the tiniest degree of sympathy. Turning away, she moved towards a knot of people by one of the graceful pillars and engaged herself in their conversation.
Denzell gazed after her. There was an actual physical pain inside him.
He’d had no notion one could be subject to such a sensation.
It dulled after a moment, leaving him with a sense of bleak disillusionment.
He had not deserved that. Had his conduct been so alien to her that she could not give him credit for any degree of thoughtfulness?
Did she not know that as far as she was concerned, he must ever be endlessly considerate? Oh, Verena.
Turning away from the distressing sight of her icy mask, he recollected all at once that he was in company, and must behave accordingly.
Only he could not. Making as swift a passage through the throng as he might, without drawing attention to himself, he left the Assembly Rooms and made his way out onto the Pantiles.
There were a few couples taking the air — or engaging in light dalliance — but Denzell was too preoccupied to notice them.
Darkness had not yet fallen, although the shadows were gathering, hollowing out caverns within the spaces between the slim pillars of the colonnade.
Unknowing where his feet led him, Denzell wandered up the paved walkway, and down again, dallying foolishly between a desire to make away with himself or to shake Verena until the teeth rattled in her head.
The realisation that he was even contemplating such a violent act towards the woman who held his heart captive so much disgusted him that he turned again, and paced restlessly back up the Pantiles once more.
“Denzell!”
The whisper came at him out of one of those dusky holes in the colonnade. He halted, turning to peer into the blackness there. A shadow moved in a gap between two of the houses that made up the sequence of little shops running the length of the Pantiles.
His heart thrilled, for although he could see only the ghostlike wisp of a gauzy outline, he knew it was she. He moved swiftly in that direction.
“Verena!”
“Hush!” she begged, and he saw the whiteness of her hands reach out.
He took them in his, and they pulled to draw him into the shadows with her so that they stood together in the narrow gap, barely silhouetted in the fading light.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, low-toned.
Heaven only knew, she thought. Except that she did know.
She had seen him — with that peripheral vision that betrayed her into watching him when everything dictated she must not — moving steadily out of the big room towards the entrance.
Without even thinking, she had sought some excuse and sneaked forth to waylay him thus clandestinely.
“I slipped out unseen,” she answered. “I could not bear you to think me so ungrateful.”
“If that is what you believed me to think,” he uttered in a rough tone, “then you are vastly mistaken. Besides, I have no use for your gratitude!”
Her fingers tightened on his, for both tone and words were poison to her. “Don’t be angry, Denzell, pray. There is — there is a reason for the way I acted.”
“So I should imagine,” he retorted. “Only I was not aware that you thought so little of me.”
“Think little of you? But that is not true.”
“Is it not?” He released her hands. “I do not know why your mama should take it into her head to encourage me. But could you not trust me to obey your wishes rather than hers? Could you not, Verena?”
His eyes were adjusting to the lack of light, and he thought he discerned a tear glistening on her pale cheek. It had the effect of turning his anger against himself, but it did not assuage the hurt. Such hurt as even her rejection of his initial declaration had not dealt him.
“You need not weep,” he said in a dead voice. “I have brought all this upon myself. You owe me no vestige of trust, nor loyalty. It is my own misfortune that I should have crossed your path. I am not the first man to be disappointed in his hopes of marrying the woman he loves.”
Verena blenched, her distress deepening. But so attuned was she to him at this moment that she recognised the underlying pain beneath his words.
Quietly she asked, “Is that designed to repay the hurt I have inflicted upon you?”
Denzell’s tone hardened. “I am not trying to make you feel guilt, if that is what you mean. I have no secret desire to hurt you, Verena.”
“No more had I, Denzell, when I spoke to you so harshly in the Rooms. I was in no case to be thinking of what you might or might not do, not with any rational consideration. You see, Mama has conceived the notion that I —”
She faltered on the words hovering on her tongue. That was not an admission she wished to make, not even to herself. But Denzell had caught it.
“That you…?” he prompted, an eager note in his voice.
She was silent.
The sudden spurt of hope died again in Denzell’s breast. Yet her words had lifted him. She had not intended to repulse him. She had been victim of her own emotions — would they might be what he so ardently desired.
“Forgive me,” he offered, “if I have misjudged you.”
No, that was more than she could bear. “You have not misjudged me. I am so little mistress of my own heart, Denzell, that I cannot answer for myself. Yet I must distance you. If Mama thinks there is any slight possibility of my finding a future with you, she will return to Nathaniel. He is even at this moment waiting for her answer. Now do you understand?”
“Deuce take it, yes!” he said at once.
In some dim recess he treasured those hasty words she had uttered about her own heart, but the purport of this speech hit him all too strongly.
“Even were it possible, Denzell, that I could think of — of loving you, or of marriage, I could never seek my happiness at the cost of Mama’s renewed sufferings.”
“No, nor ever forgive me for making it happen.”
“You do understand!”
“For what do you take me?” He caught at her shoulders, unheeding that he crushed the delicate fabric of her gown. “Verena, why did you not send to me, and tell me this? You must know I would not dream of putting you to the risk of such a thing.”
“I should have known. Had I not been set so much into a frenzy, had I been able to think rationally —”
“Never mind it. Rest assured that I will not approach you or show by the flicker of an eye that I have any serious intent towards you. I can dissemble almost as well as you when necessity arises, you know.”
A choke of laughter escaped her. “I had not noticed it.”
He grinned at her in the darkness. “No, because all my effort with you has been in the direction of proving my sincerity.”
“There is no need of that,” she said, so warmly that he reacted without thought, jerking her towards him, his arms slipping about her. She stiffened against him.
“No, Denzell!”
He did not release her, but held her so, looking down into the pale oval of her face, her features barely discernible except as a silhouette — the mere shape of her lips all too enticing.
“Verena,” he breathed. “Am I to hold aloof forever? Is this all there will ever be?”
His closeness sent her senses soaring, and her stiffness melted away. She felt too weak to resist, even to protest. Her eyes closed without volition as the shadow moved above her. Then a gentle pressure, soft and yielding, caressed her lips. A kiss so tender she all but lost her senses.
It could only have been an instant or two later, although it felt to Verena like an age, and he drew back, his hands dropping from about her. Intensely she felt it. So intensely that she almost cried out. She was bereft.
“You had better return to the Rooms.”
His tone was roughened by the strength of the passion he was resolutely keeping in check. To Verena it seemed harshly alien, a painful distancing that threw her on the defensive. But she answered with a calm born of her instant resumption of the control that had ever come in against pain.
“Yes, I shall be missed.”
She began to move away, but Denzell’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“One moment! How long do you wish me to keep up a pretence of disinterest?”
“Only until Nathaniel has gone. After —” She hesitated, for she knew that her next words must wound him.
“After? What then?”
Had he guessed what she would say? There was suspicion in his voice. She drew on her remaining strength.
“After he has gone, we will find another refuge.”
There was a silence. Then Denzell rapped out, “Where?”
“I don’t know. I only know we must remove from here. I cannot trust Nathaniel to accept Mama’s rejection.”
Denzell gave a soft laugh. “I see I must prepare myself to search the length and breadth of England’s watering places to find you again.”
“No!”
“What do you mean, no? Dare I imagine you will tell me where you decide to go? No, that is asking too much.”
Verena came a step closer and reached out to place a hand on his chest. “Denzell, it will be kinder — to both of us — if you let me go.”
His hand closed over hers. “Then I fear I must be unkind.”
She did not withdraw her hand, but a distinct plea entered her voice. “You said this morning I might command you in anything.”
“I didn’t mean I would be willing to commit suicide!”
“Don’t jest!”
“I’m not jesting.”
“Denzell, you will do me the greatest service imaginable if you will only leave me.”
His breath was ragged, but she could see even in the dim light that he was shaking his head.
“I cannot do that, Verena. I would die for you, but leave you I cannot!”