Chapter Twenty-Six
Gwen was glad of the darkness surrounding them, glad of the permeating quiet, as if the entire household was abed, save them.
“I had just turned nineteen, and Reggie said he wanted to see me—alone. I assumed he meant to propose. I’m not sure why I thought so, the timing, I suppose? Well past when I thought he’d have broached the subject.
“Broach it he did. He told me he could not marry me.”
With her cheek, and half her torso, lying across Gideon’s chest, she could not miss the sudden tensing of his muscles. He said nothing, however, just continued to scoop up locks of her hair and let them fall.
“I was shocked and incredibly angry. He’d waited to tell me, after so many years? Everything I thought my future would hold, vanished in one fell swoop.”
“I can certainly understand your feelings,” he said.
“His mother came looking for me the following day when I was at chapel.
It was Monday, and every Monday I assisted the sisters preparing food for the needy villagers.
She said Reggie had told her of our row and she suggested I go to him to work things out.
She seemed quite sure I could, shushing me when I tried to explain we had not fought.
“She told me I’d find him in the field, near the old game warden’s cottage, practicing with his fencing instructor.
She urged me not to go alone—for propriety’s sake, and suggested I take one of the sisters with me.
” Anger washed through her as the old doubt resurfaced.
Had Lady Barnes knowingly sent Gwen into an untenable situation with one aim in mind?
“What happened?”
His big hand settled on the small of her back, warm and gentle.
“I found him there, just as she said. Luckily the nun, to give us a moment of privacy, did not enter the cottage with me.” She paused, then blurted, “I found Reggie in a state of dishabille.”
“He was with another woman?”
She shook her head.
“Blood of the Saints,” he muttered. “But he was with someone?”
She nodded. “Leon, the fencing master. Everything happened so fast. I saw Reggie. I saw Leon. They saw me. The door opened, and the sister popped her head in as Leon ducked. Fearing she might have seen him, or would see him if she got a notion to search, I fixed a bright smile on my face and told the nun to congratulate us on our engagement.”
“Thereby saving dear Reggie from becoming a social outcast at best, and imprisoned as a sodomite at worst,” he said.
A tear she had not noticed forming dripped from her eye to roll down his chest. “She took in Reggie, his bare midriff, his rumpled hair, and, I’ll never know, but I think she saw Leon’s shirt, as well.
Perhaps the two swords laid atop the table?
But she gamely accepted my word, and we were married not long after.
“I did love him, always, but my feelings changed after that, after I understood it could only ever be friendship between us.”
“He let you marry him, the selfish bastard,” Gideon said. “I suppose he and the poet had a similar arrangement?”
She shook her head. “No. Though I believe Reggie had feelings for the man.”
Gideon grunted in acknowledgment. “How could he live with himself? He stole your life, Gwen.”
“In truth, many a marriage is based on far less, Gideon, but as it happens, he was of the same opinion as you. He never forgave himself for marrying me, and that’s what he wrote in the note he left me before he went into the woods and…
” she gathered her courage, finally speaking the words she’d held onto so tightly, “shot himself.”.
“Sweetheart.” He pulled her up his chest, pressed her face into his neck and wrapped his arms around her, cradling her close as tears leaked from her eyes.
“So you see,” she said, her voice distorted thanks to the hard lump that had formed in her throat, “he did love me, just not in the way a husband loves a wife. And I do not know if I can ever forgive him for what he did at the last, despite the fact he did it to free me, nor can I forgive myself for being ever-so-slightly relieved.”
“You must,” he whispered. “You will.” He smoothed one hand down her back, over and over. “Thank you for telling me,” he said at last. “It does explain much.” He paused. “Gwen, I want to talk to you about something, as well.”
She burrowed into him, curling her fingers under her chin. “What is it?” she murmured.
“Today, you asked me about my marriage, about Fannie. You’d shared things about your past, deeply personal things, and I did not respond in kind.”
She levered herself up to meet his gaze. “I did not tell you about Reggie to manipulate you, Gideon. This is not quid pro quo. You do not have to—”
“I know.” He smoothed her hair back from her cheek in a lingering touch. “I’d already planned to tell you. I hadn’t decided on when, exactly. But, now seems right if you care to listen.”
She searched his eyes. Just enough light from the lone oil lamp burning enabled her to make out the somber resolve in their gold-green depths.
“Tell me.”
“Fannie, formally Lady Frances Rothman, daughter of Viscount Lord Rothman, was a favorite of Lady Ashwood’s.
The viscount and his wife brought her along one summer during a house party, and from that time on, I believe the duchess harbored hopes of marrying her to Grayson and thereby linking the two families.
“Fannie was a frequent houseguest over the years, starting when Grayson and I were young bucks, and edging into the years we entered society. She had a head of glossy dark hair, a winsome face, and, even at a young age, a woman’s shape.”
“I see,” Gwen said, sounding slightly miffed.
He could tell her he found her vastly more appealing. He could, but he would keep the information to himself. He did not want to find it used against him at some future date as women tended to do.
“She was good-breeding stock as nobility went. The perfect English rose—for my brother. I understood from the start she was not for me.
“Fannie, however, being young and spoilt as many born to privilege are, and boasting above-average looks which she never hesitated to use to her advantage, was a thrill seeker and adventuress, unconcerned with the prospect of marriage at some future date; on any given day, she wanted to have fun in whatever way struck her fancy. It was clear she believed to the core of her being she would never pay a price for her devil-may-care attitude, so long as she kept her true nature from her parents—and the duchess, of course.”
No one had been more surprised than Gideon when she’d taken an undue interest in him.
In retrospect, he understood. Fannie could not resist the lure of seducing the exotic, bastard son of the duke, right under the duchess’s nose.
Especially as, for whatever reason, Gideon’s transition from boy to man made him an object of fascination for many of the women who visited the chateau, and Fannie was nothing if not competitive.
He needn’t go into details about all that with Gwen, however.
The little bluestocking gazed at him with knowing eyes. “She saw you as an adventure waiting to happen, did she not?”
He offered her a semblance of a smile. “I’ll say she saw me as a challenge, and rose to the occasion. And I confess, she turned my head for a while.”
“Beautiful, wild, taboo. How could a young man resist?”
“Indeed.” He had known better, of course. The duchess’s frequent warnings to never step out of line, coupled with her very vocal assertions concerning Fannie’s socially superior status saw to that.
But he had no experience curtailing his body’s sexual clamors, and Fannie had a way of cornering him and tempting him in ways no lady had ever dared before.
When she came to visit, he was torn between excitement and dread as he imagined what compromising position she might engineer during her stay that he’d be forced to circumvent, while his body urged him not to.
“It must have been difficult for you, being no longer a boy, but not quite a man.”
As usual, she understood without being told.
He went on. “The duchess was not then, and is not now, a stupid woman. Somehow she figured out what was going on. She determined to nip any mischief in the bud. No way would she allow the bride she’d handpicked for Grayson to be stolen by her husband’s bastard son.
“On the evening of my nineteenth birthday, I overheard her talking to my father. She said Fannie was coming to visit, and, as such, it was time I went to India to acquaint myself with my eastern heritage. I expected my father to argue. He did not. He not only agreed I should go, but expressed his desire to get me as far from Fannie as possible. It was only later I realized he did not mean it in the way I thought.”
“He did not think her too good for you, but the reverse,” she summarized neatly.
“He always did see me as better than I am,” Gideon admitted.
“I doubt that very much,” Gwen said, then shivered.
“Here,” Gideon said, pulling back the bedcovers for her to climb between the sheets. Once there, she sidled up close to him and propped herself up with pillows.
“In the end, I did as Father instructed. I sailed for India.” That had been the start of his shipping venture, and what he’d thought would be, lifelong friendship with Dirk, a man who had worked for his mother’s family for many years and who smoothed the way for Gideon to step into the role he currently held.
In an unheard-of amount of time, thanks to Dirk’s influence, Gideon became one of the top shipping magnates operating out of Calcutta.
“Having successfully founded my shipping company in the east, I returned to London at age twenty-four to establish the western front of my business. I expected to learn of Grayson’s engagement, or perhaps even marriage, to Lady Francis.