Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Hyperia West, you have just disclosed a monumental betrayal of my trust by my own late brother, a serious lapse in your judgment, if not your trust in me—I do not fault you, but I am stating a version of the truth as you have conveyed it—and an attempt to blackmail my fiancée by a party too dishonorable for proper description short of the most vulgar profanity. Allow me a moment, please.”
She rose and moved to the wing chair so we faced each other. “You can sound much like Arthur sometimes. I should not be surprised. Is this how you’ve been feeling for the past year?”
As if my puzzle-box mind was jammed at every hinge? “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m waiting for you to admit that I’ve made such a complete hash of matters that our engagement is at an end.
You’ve been waiting for me to set a date.
You’ve had no idea what held me back, what weighed more heavily on me than the desire to become your wife.
I have no idea why you’d still want to marry me, Julian.
I wait, in a state of dreadful bewilderment, for you to admit we would not suit. ”
Call me Jules. Only Hyperia called me Jules and only when she was in charity with me.
“I love you,” I said, though my tone was far from loverlike. “You owed me nothing at the time Harry inveigled you into canoodling with him, and I should not have neglected you.”
“If we were not engaged, my lord, then according to any available logic, you could not neglect me. That aside, spouting off about duty and who was owed what and when won’t address our disappointments and regrets.”
My lord. Worse and worse. “You forbade me to murder Duquette.” She was confident enough of our mutual regard to issue orders, knowing I would follow them.
“I am still forbidding you to even do him an injury. Injuries and unexplained removes to the Continent cause talk, and I will not be the cause of any scandals that might discredit you.”
“You make your point very fiercely, Miss West. Permit me the same degree of emphasis. You shall not cry off this engagement unless and until we are agreed that course is for the best.”
A sauce-for-the-goose argument, and it spiked her guns, albeit momentarily. “Julian, why put off the inevitable?” The question was nearly plaintive.
“Punish yourself if you must, Hyperia, for a regrettable lapse with a handsome scoundrel, but do not punish me. At the present moment, fresh from an ice-dunking, unwelcome in two notable households, a disappointment to my mother, and failing my obligations to Carstairs, I am in no fit state to decide which knot to tie in my cravat much less where I’d prefer our path to lie. ”
The recitation was more true than I’d have liked it to be.
“You need time?” Hyperia asked.
“Precisely. I need time.” She did too. Time to forgive herself, time to forgive me for my neglect—and I had neglected her. An occasional letter would not have been too much to ask. Kind regards passed along by my sisters or mother, to whom I had written regularly.
“We are to repair to neutral corners?” she asked, frowning.
The frown was her thoughtful frown, not her winding-up-for-a-knockout-punch frown. I took courage from that.
“We are to remain engaged,” I said, “to continue as the most cordial of courting couples, and to muddle onward with as much good grace as we can muster in the moment.”
“You’re certain that’s what you want?”
“For pity’s sake, Hyperia, I am an adult in possession of most of my faculties most of the time. Take me at my word.” Trust me, as she had not trusted me regarding her past.
“I do,” she said slowly. “I know you to be honest to your bones. Too honest sometimes. I like that about you.”
The battle had turned in my favor. I wanted to summon the old hedgehog of a butler and order a tray of champagne.
“If that is settled, then might you ride out with me tomorrow morning? I have no wish to follow the hounds, but neither will I miss an opportunity to spend some time with you.”
She offered me the barest hint of a smile, more a glint in the eyes than an expression. “You intend to dote?”
“I intend to get some fresh air in good company, pursue the present inquiry, and fortify myself against the looming ordeal of the banquet. Speaking of which, will you save your good-night waltz for me?”
The smile warmed a few degrees. “Since you ask so prettily, I can but concede. The maids are placing bets on whether Miss Philomel will give Algernon or Sandy her good-night waltz.”
Small talk. Blessed, mundane, boring small talk. “Back Sandy for tuppence. Algernon’s last waltz is pledged to Miss Quiggan at present. I’ll take my leave of you. Keep Duquette’s letter. He’ll expect you to burn the evidence of his blackmail. Avoid behaving as the enemy expects whenever possible.”
“I’ll keep it if I must, then. Good day, Jules. I will look forward to our ride.”
Jules. She’d called me Jules. “One question before I go, dearest Perry. You were moved nigh to weeping by the sight of me with Mrs. Carstairs’s baby in the schoolroom. May I inquire as to the sentiments inspiring your tears?”
“That.”
Yes, that. I waited.
“You referred to being taken captive, to the baby being a little jailer, and you were jesting. You joked about captivity and imprisonment, Jules, and you were entirely sincere in your good humor.”
I stared at her. What was I to say to that? Hyperia’s recollection was accurate. Entirely accurate and significant—she was right to be moved—and that was why I was determined to sort through our latest difficulties.
I kissed her cheek and quit the house in guarded good spirits, also more than a little preoccupied.
My preoccupation cost me dearly.
As I marched along in the deepening gloom of an early winter evening, I considered a puzzle: Hyperia had granted her favors to other men and had been willing to grant them to Harry. She claimed, though, that her fear of childbirth prevented her from being intimate with me.
As darkness fell in earnest, I lit upon the hope that her claim had been another deception.
Every sensible woman regarded childbirth with the same dread a soldier felt when considering a looming battle.
The outcome was far from certain and might well involve a harp and wings or lingering misery.
Many a mother died shortly after giving birth, knowing that her death substantially reduced the odds for her newborn.
What greater sorrow could burden a soul than that?
I had thus believed Hyperia’s reservations were genuine. She might have taken precautions with her passing amours, been careful with the timing, or otherwise reduced the risk of conception.
With Harry, she had risked everything. Her good name, conception of a possibly illegitimate child, her future in Society…
How much did Hyperia truly fear childbirth, and how much had she been using any credible argument to hold me at figurative arm’s length while she dodged the reckoning we’d just embarked on?
What was the least antagonistic means of posing that query and when to pose it? She had been intimate with Harry—which in itself bothered me enormously—tried to lie to me about it, and had been prevented by her own conscience from taking the deception all the way into our marital bedroom…
And lurking beneath that bewildering course of events: Harry had known that Hyperia and I were intended for each other, despite the fact that, before taking ship, I’d offered her the usual speech about releasing her from any obligation to me or to my memory.
Harry had known of my attachment to the lady, and he’d gone on his usual wrecking spree anyway.
Never had such a quagmire of emotions befallen me, and Hyperia had to be in a similar muddle. I walked on, glad for the exercise but by no means clearing my head.
An overcast had crept across the sky at sunset, and thus when I entered the woods, I was again in a nigh-Stygian blackness.
Darkness was usually my friend. My night vision was excellent.
My hearing seemed to improve with less light, and the creatures that habitually stirred during the night had no business with me nor I with them.
Not so on this occasion.
I had reached the little plank bridge spanning the stream between the Keep and Lady Clotilda’s demesne.
Earlier in the day, the boards had been treacherously slick.
Lower temperatures would only have increased the hazard.
I thus took a firm hold of the single rail on the upstream side of the bridge and prepared to creep and glide rather than stride to the far bank.
Like the bridge, the stream was crusted over with ice, though the current below the frozen surface sang its trickling wintry tune. I was halfway to safety when I suffered a hard blow between my shoulder blades. I went down and banged my noggin on the rail I’d been clutching so firmly.
As unconsciousness tried to merge with the living darkness of the forest, my boots hit the surface of the stream, and once again, ice broke beneath them.
With the certainty of a mute beast fighting for his life, I knew I could not lose awareness of my surroundings. Too many soldiers had died of simple exposure to cold in Spain. Too many had told themselves they’d sit down in the snow for a little rest and then had drifted off into an eternal sleep.
The current swirling around my boots was surprisingly strong.
I scrabbled to hang on to the upstream side of the bridge and attempted to heave a foot out of the water.
Two failures later, my desperation was rewarded.
I gained enough purchase to hoist my way free of the water and lay on my back, panting.
The night sky was devoid of stars, but a paler patch revealed the position of the moon lurking behind the clouds.
Darkness had not been my friend on this occasion, and cold was becoming my affirmative enemy. I rolled to my belly, pushed up onto hands and knees, and crawled the distance to the far bank.