Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Arabella went down to dinner, arm in arm with Rebecca.
But Alasdair was not at the table. Should she have gone to him when he sent for her?
She still had not been ready to face him once he was sober.
She feared the end of her happiness with him.
And some vain, childish part of her felt he should come after her, rather than her going to him.
Despite her resolve, time and time again, she had been the aggressive one, even kissing him so passionately when his shoulder joint was out of place.
In truth, she had kissed him that way because she thought it was likely the last time she ever would kiss him and she wanted, she wanted .
. . she could not admit what she wanted just now. Even to herself. It hurt too much.
Perhaps he was still too drunk to come to dinner. Or was he in pain? Did he need her help? She was suddenly rent by anxiety and thought of excusing herself to go to him.
She had not noticed Giles was not at the table, either, until Lord Painswick spoke.
“Why have we no host, Andrews?” the marquess demanded of the butler.
Arabella conjured a picture of two men out in the snow, dueling. Giles with pistols and her Alasdair in a sling and swathe, with just a lancet in his left hand, and some bright-red blood staining the white drifts.
“I believe Lord Morpeth is not feeling well,” the butler said.
Lady Lyndmouth got up from table immediately, without offering an excuse, and left the room.
Arabella was washed by relief. The butler Andrews leaned over while holding the serving platter of carved goose for her.
“The doctor did not feel he could be seen outside his own bedchamber with just his shirt over his sling.”
“I see. He will get something to eat, won’t he?”
“Of course, Mrs. Andrews.” The butler almost bristled.
“And he has gone to a different room?” Arabella suddenly felt the piece of goose she was putting on her plate weighed a thousand pounds.
“I will show you to his bedchamber after dinner, Mrs. Andrews.”
“That’s not necessary.” She returned the serving forks to the platter.
“Mrs. Andrews?”
“Yes?”
“In case you change your mind, he is in the third room on the left in the other wing.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
The dinner was dull. The guests felt the absence of their host, the lack of exercise, the sense of being trapped. But the snow had mercifully stopped falling.
Alasdair had been glad to eat alone. He took the shirt off again when he realized how messy the job of eating with just one hand would be.
He could cut nothing. He sat on the floor, cross legged, naked from the waist up except for the sling and swathe and leaned over and forked up the meat from the plate and tore off pieces with his teeth.
He was quite wild with not seeing Arabella for half a day, and eating in this primitive way matched his mood.
A knock. He got up quickly, thinking it might be Arabella. He looked down to make sure there was no gravy on his chest or the swathe. No. Good.
He opened the door.
Arabella averted her eyes when she saw him and how he was dressed. Or not dressed. His heart sank. Down deep, into his abdomen.
“Will you put on your shirt before I come into the room?”
“Aye.” Alasdair retreated, found his shirt, and managed to get it over his head and then the left arm through the sleeve.
He came back to the door, which he had left ajar.
She met his eyes. She had such a serious expression.
He did not think that boded well, and his heart sank to about the level of his knees.
Arabella came in the room and sat in a chair. He sat in another one and faced her.
He ached for her. His shoulder had an ache too, but it was a tolerable ache. He wished he could have a nip of whisky before having this conversation, but he had none at hand. And he knew it would be a mistake. It would be a weakness.
“I want to speak to you about what happened this morning in the drawing room.”
“Aye.” He was surprised. He had anticipated she would want to discuss what he had said to her about lust in her bedchamber.
He was ready to admit he was wrong and, of course, women felt desire.
He even hoped she might be willing to kiss him with that same raw passion again and demonstrate her desire to him.
Because if her desire matched her fiery temper and it was for him, what a fortunate man he would be. The most fortunate man in the world.
But she wanted to discuss his own temper.
“Why did you attempt to strike Giles, Dr. Andrews?”
She used Lord Morpeth’s first name while addressing him as Dr. Andrews. He felt the sour taste of bile rising in his throat.
“He touched ye.”
“Yes, and he should not have. And I would have made it clear to him he should not have. And since you are my friend, you could have done the same.”
Her friend. Five days ago, she had said she counted him among her friends, and he had been filled with such joy he could barely stammer out a reply. But, now, with two days experience as her husband, he wanted so much more.
Arabella went on, “But with words. We were in a room, filled with people. What could he have done in that room, against my will,” she laid heavy emphasis on this last phrase, “that would have merited violence? With all those ladies and gentlemen present?”
“I didnae like the way he looked at ye.”
“I would have thought you might be more concerned with how I looked at him.”
“How ye looked at him?”
Arabella’s gaze went down to her hands in her lap, and she spread her fingers wide apart.
“Why does his desire matter?” she asked.
Because Lord Morpeth is a man used to getting what he wants. And, finally, there’s a chance I might get what I want. And I willnae let him ruin it. Even if I am nae a lord, dinnae I have a right to stake my own demesne? Am I nae a man, too, with a man’s instinct to lay claim, to possess?
“We are back to our discussion from this morning. If you,” Arabella swallowed, “are truly interested in a romance with me, you should be concerned with my desire. And mine alone.”
“What is yer desire, Miss Lovelock?”
She gritted her teeth and looked away. “It is not for him.”
“So why did ye tell me?” Alasdair spoke loudly. He could hear the anger in his voice, but he had no interest in softening it. “Why did ye tell me Lord Morpeth was the man who had enjoyed ye?”
Suddenly, she shrank, withdrawing even as he felt his own fury growing.
“I . . . don’t know why. In the lodge, you asked why I was upset. I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“Why did ye tell me but then tell me nae to tell yer brothers-in-law, yer stepfather?”
“My mother told me never to tell them.” She looked at the table. “She was afraid they would challenge him to a duel.”
“But ye dinnae fear that from me? Ye felt ye could tell me. Safely.”
She met his eyes. “Yes. I did.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
“Because I am weaker, more craven than the duke, the earl, the viscount? That my sense of honor isnae as developed as theirs since I am nae a peer of the realm?”
“Because—”
“Because ye dinnae fear losing me in a duel the way yer mother did for the duke?”
“Because I trusted you! I trusted you would not do something foolish and leave me alone and unprotected. I trusted you to be a man of reason. I thought you were the not-stupid man. And I did not want Giles to have something to lord over you—I could not have borne that, to have him know something about me that you did not.”
“Well, ye are two years too late for that.”
Even as he said it, he knew it was the worst possible thing he could have said and she would never forgive him.
Oh.
He had told her in the carriage she had not been ruined. Exactly what she had longed to hear.
But it was not true. He did not really feel that way. And here was the evidence. He had cast it up to her, her loss of her innocence.
He would only ever see her as something that had been used. He would never absolve her for having let Giles know her first.
She took a deep breath.
“I will remind you that you were late, too, Dr. Andrews.” Her voice trembled, and she hated that.
“I did something that was hurtful to my family, and I will always regret it. Perhaps I should have been like you and done nothing. After all, that is what you and this world want from me. To do nothing. To sit by the fire with my embroidery and to wait.”
“I dinnae want that, Miss Lovelock.” His voice was still angry.
“Well, everyone else does. And I have been punished most thoroughly for my impatience. I threw everything away in my haste and poor judgment. The chance of real love, of a husband, of children. All gone. Do you think I need you to remind me in this hurtful way? To hear it from you, whom I had hoped—but, no. Let me just say that is the unkindest cut of all.” She was about to cry in front of him again, so she stood.
“And this idea that somehow someone could repair my honor by hurting the man who hurt me—it makes me ill.”
There was a knock on the door, and she went to it, turned the knob, and walked out, pushing past the butler Andrews standing in the hallway.
She must give up now.
She must surrender to her fate, just as she had two years ago.
How foolish she had been to hold hope for a different outcome. How cruel life was to give her a glimpse of what she might have had and then take it away again.
She got down the hallway and to the other wing and into her own bedchamber. Somehow. She did not remember the steps she took. She closed the door behind her and sank to the carpet and lay there.
She had made her own bed in that cold London carriage over two years ago.
She could see the years of lying in that lonely bed stretching out in front of her.
And when she rose from that lonely bed in her cottage in Dunburn, there would be an endless parade of red-haired and green-eyed girls she would teach but who would never courie in her lap as they might if they were daughters.
A life of usefulness but one devoid of that which she had been seeking from the beginning. Love. Received and given. By someone who understood her. And whom she understood.
She had hoped he was strong enough to see her. All of her. He had made her think he was.
But either he was too weak or she was too much of a whore. Or both.