Chapter Nineteen #2
“No, it’s not,” I said. “I should have concluded the same thing, regardless. There is only one way to handle a situation like this, and it’s to be civil with the woman in question. She is afraid of me.” I gestured to the letter. “And I am not that sort of man.”
“Of course not,” said Richard. “But you will really forgive her?”
I stared down at my palms again. “It may take time. Perhaps there will be no child at all, however, though that seems unlikely, considering our… it’s likely my child. How often could he possibly have—I spend every night with her.”
“But he was first,” said Richard darkly.
“Damn you, Richard.”
“Apologies.”
A long pause.
“But,” I continued, “she is my wife, and I shall have to forgive her, and I shall have to get other children on her, and all of that. There is no other alternative, Richard. What would you have me do? Kill her?”
“No, obviously, no,” said Richard, affronted.
I tilted my head at him. “This reminds me. You came in and said we should kill him, but before that, you said you were going to pay him? Did you give that wretch money?”
“No, of course not. I meant I was going to pay him the wages of his poor decisions, and I told him that if I saw him again, he should likely run the other way, because I would end him.”
“And then you let him go?”
“I couldn’t shoot him down on the street there, in that part of town, outside of a ball, could I?” said Richard. “But we shall go after him and do exactly that.”
I thought it over, saying nothing.
“Will, he has polluted your wife.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, he has.”
I brought the letter back to her. “I am not having you send this out of the house,” I said to her.
She was cowering on the other side of her bedchamber, tucked into a corner, and she let out a defeated cry. “No?”
“No,” I said, setting it down. “But only because it casts aspersions on us both, and because we did not agree to be that sort of a scandal, my darling.” I laid the letter down.
“Let me leave,” she said. “Let me go back to my family. Please. If you wish not to tell them any of it, I shan’t.
I shall say it was all my idea to leave you, and they will believe it, because I did not like you, and I spent a great deal of time talking about that, about how much I did not like you—”
“So, then why did you marry me?”
She bowed her head.
“I cannot let you go back to your family, Elizabeth,” I said softly. “But I know you are saying this because you are afraid, and I want to assure you that you are in no danger.”
She swallowed, looking me over. “Perhaps not… physically. You wouldn’t do that.”
“No danger at all,” I said. “Not even to your reputation. We shall keep it quiet. I am going to go and look for him now and take care of him. You will need to stay here until that is settled, but then I think we shall both go to the country together. Hopefully, your bleeding comes and that will make everything much easier, but if it doesn’t—”
“Oh, Lord!” she cried. “You think he… you think…” She turned and pressed her face into the wall and she started sobbing loudly, broken sounds.
“Stop that,” I said, dragging a hand over my face.
She did not stop.
I went to her and she shied from me when I tried to touch her, so I didn’t.
She hunched into the corner and her face was wet with tears. “Fitzwilliam, he never touched me. You are the only man I’ve ever even kissed.”
“Well, you would say that regardless,” I whispered. “It doesn’t matter anyway, Elizabeth. Whatever happened, it is not your fault, and I have determined to forgive you.”
“Forgive me?” she said, and there was iron in her voice. “How dare you?”
I took a step backwards.
She looked into my eyes and flinched and then curled into herself. “Apologies, please. I did not mean—”
“I am not going to hurt you!”
“Oh, yes,” she said in a tight and teary voice, “you wish me to trust you, trust in your character, trust that you are the man you present yourself to be. And yet, you will not afford me the same courtesy.”
This cut me. I regarded her there for some time, and I did not know what to say or do. Finally, I found my voice, and I said, “What have I done, what have I ever done, that would make you think I would harm a woman, any woman, let alone one that I love?”
“You love me?”
“I do,” I said. “God help me, I do, and I do not think there is anything you could do, anything I could find out about you, that would make me stop. Believe me, I wish I could stop, but I cannot, and if you are some snare designed to lure me in and trap me, you are my perfect ruin.”
She let out a wild and harsh laugh. “If you loved me, Fitzwilliam—”
“What have I done to make you fear me?”
“It is only the way of everything with us, I suppose. None of it has been easy or quiet or safe. It has all been so very fiery, so quick, so intense. I do not know if I love you or if I simply get drunk on you. I thought myself a very practical sort of person, you know, and you come into my sitting room and sit down and tell me you want me and I go to pieces. And this would be a fitting end, would it not? Is this not what love is, in the end? Madness?”
“No,” I said. “No, I won’t believe that.” I reached out for her.
She let me touch her, let me caress her face.
“You deny it, then?” I said. “He is lying. He said it to do this to us? This is his triumph?”
She nodded. “I absolutely deny it. I categorically deny it. Do I seem to you like the sort of woman who would go to bed with someone who was not my husband?”
“My sister did not seem as if she would have done such a thing either.”
She sucked in a sharp and noisy breath through her nose. “Well, there it is, I suppose.” Her voice was full of tears again.
“I wish to believe you,” I said, taking my hand back, tucking it into my pocket, the feel of her warmth against my fingertips a memory of a sweet and simple past that I wanted to escape back into. I wanted this never to have happened.
“But you do not,” she said, devastated.
“I wish to,” I said, and my voice wasn’t strong.