Chapter 16 #2
“Am I to understand …?” The grin was back on Lord Thomas’ face.
“Am I to understand that in more than five years you have never enjoyed Sybil’s favors, Adam?
” He laughed. “It’s true, isn’t it? Good Lord.
Did you play the part of noble lover to the end as she pined for me?
Or did she reject you? You weren’t unwise enough to display your wounds to her, were you? ” He laughed again.
“Do you love her?” the duke asked.
“I have always had a soft spot for Sybil,” Lord Thomas said. “She is lovelier than almost any other woman I have clapped eyes on.”
“That is not what I asked,” his brother said. “Would you marry her if you had the chance to do so?”
Lord Thomas stood up and looked down at his brother assessingly. “You would do that for her sake?” he said. “Or would it be for your own?”
“I would do it,” the duke said, “or at least inquire into the possibility of doing it, if I were convinced that Sybil would have the happiness that you and I between us have deprived her of.”
“And Pamela?” Lord Thomas said. “If there were an annulment, the world would know that Pamela is not your child.”
His grace spread his hands palm-down on the desk and looked down at them. “Yes,” he said. “Could I have your answer?”
“This is sudden.” Lord Thomas strolled back to the fireplace and resumed his examination of the mosaic lion. “I will need some time to consider.”
“Of course,” his grace said. “Take it. But as long as you are in this house under present circumstances, Thomas, Sybil is my wife and I will punish any disrespect shown her.”
“Bent over the desk with the cane on the backside after all?” Lord Thomas said. “Have you perfected the art of swishing it in the air before bringing it down on target, Adam? That used to make me almost lose control of my bladder.”
“I will expect your answer within the next week,” the duke said. “If it is no, I will expect you to leave immediately—and forever.”
“I take it I am dismissed,” Lord Thomas said, turning to look in some amusement at his brother again. “Very well, Adam, I will take myself from your presence. I believe I am being awaited for a fishing trip anyway.”
The duke continued to stare at his hands after the door had closed behind his brother. And he was being seduced by his own bluff, he thought a few minutes later.
In his imagination he was living through the events that his words to his brother had seemed to make possible—a speedy annulment, Sybil gone, himself free. Free to explore his attraction to Fleur. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands on the desk.
It had been bluff, pure and simple. Never in a million years would Thomas agree to marry Sybil.
Had he thought for one moment that Thomas would, his grace thought, then of course he would not even have made the mad suggestion that he had just made.
For though such an arrangement would undoubtedly be as satisfactory to Sybil as it would be to himself, there was Pamela to consider.
And Pamela must always come first, before her mother’s happiness and before his own.
She was an innocent and defenseless child.
No, he knew Thomas well enough. He had always liked him when they were boys, when his younger brother’s mischievous ways and cheerful lack of principle had brought consequences no more drastic than a thrashing or a serious talking-to.
But Thomas had never grown up. He had never passed beyond the irresponsibility of youth.
In his one year as supposed Duke of Ridgeway he had put severe strains on Willoughby’s considerable resources so that it might well be ruined by now had he continued to be its owner.
Thomas, he firmly believed, was incapable of deep feeling.
Doubtless he would have married Sybil had he remained duke, and perhaps it would have been a reasonably successful marriage, but he would never have loved her as she loved him.
Had he loved her, even to some small degree, he could not have abandoned her when he knew her to be with child.
The duke knew that Thomas would continue to harass him and amuse himself with Sybil for as long as it pleased him to do so. And that might be a very long time. The only way to frighten him off was by making it seem possible that he could be stuck with his toy for a lifetime.
Thomas would be gone by the time the week was out. The duke was quite sure of it. So sure that he had risked Pamela’s future on a bluff.
But, God, it was a sweet, seductive idea. He got to his feet and glanced toward the fireplace and the chair beside it where Fleur had sat the night before. It was just there they had stood.
She had stopped shaking at his bidding. And she had lifted her face for his kiss and opened her mouth to it. Her arms had come up about his neck and her fingers had played in his hair.
For a few minutes, at least, she had forgotten her fear of him. She had wanted him, as he had wanted her. As he wanted her.
Guilt gnawed at him. He had been outraged at the impropriety of the embrace Sybil and Thomas had been sharing in the long gallery. And yet he had engaged in his own not two hours later with the governess.
Fleur. She was coming to dominate his thoughts by day and haunt his dreams by night. He was coming to live for the moments when he could see her, listen to her music, listen to her voice, see her eyes on his. She was beginning to give light and meaning to his days.
In her he was beginning to glimpse the precious pearl that he had once expected of life.
It was a hard life he had dedicated himself to—a life of celibacy for the past six years, with the single exception of that one brief, dispassionate encounter in London.
With Fleur. With a thin, pale whore who had turned out to be a virgin, who had quietly obeyed his every command and had suffered his penetration of her body with only that small guttural sound and the biting down on her lips.
Even such a sordid scene she had played out with dignity.
She had been a victim who had sunk to the depths but refused to allow her spirit to be broken.
And he must never hold her again. Never kiss her again.
For last night had been a moment for one time only, something that he had not planned.
Now that he knew it possible, he would have to guard against its ever happening again.
For though his marriage was a heavy burden on him, it was nevertheless a contract he had entered into freely and one he would remain faithful to as far as human frailty would allow.
He might yet have to move Fleur to another post somewhere else, he thought. He was not sure that it would be possible to live in a house with the woman he desired almost more than anything else in life and with his wife, whom he had once loved and with whom he had never lain.
She had cringed from him on their wedding night, screamed at him to get out of her bedchamber.
He had told her about his wounds, and of course the disfigurement of his face was there for all to see.
He had left her and made no attempt to go to her again until after the birth of Pamela. He had tried to make a friend of her.
But of course, she had believed him the villain who had sent her lover away and then forced her into marriage with himself. What a foolish hope it had been that he could bring her to love him.
The same thing had happened when he went to her two months after Pamela’s birth—the same hysteria and look of deep revulsion.
He had talked to her about it the following day and she had told him in her usual breathless, sweet manner, tears swimming in her large blue eyes, that if he ever again tried to touch her she would return to her father’s house.
It was probably at that moment that his love for her had begun to die a rapid death. He had seen finally, and had admitted the truth of what he had seen, the cold selfishness that was hidden only just behind the angelic exterior.
All that was left after his love had died was a deep pity for her.
For clearly her love for Thomas had been a monumental passion that she could not kill, even if she had tried.
And of course, she had not accepted the truth, and believed that only his own cruelty had separated her from the man who loved her as dearly as she loved him.
The duke sighed and turned to the door. At last, he thought, he could proceed with the day he had planned. At last he could put his own problems behind him for a short while and concentrate on listening to other people’s.
It was only when he was striding toward the stables that he realized he had not eaten breakfast.
And it was only much later that he realized that calling on Duncan Chamberlain was not the thing to have done if he was seeking forgetfulness.
For Duncan had asked him how he would feel about losing his governess if she could be persuaded to accept a marriage offer, and he had been forced to smile at his friend and shake his hand and assure him that the whole thing was entirely a matter between him and Miss Hamilton.
He wondered how Chamberlain would feel if he knew how perilously close he had been to having a fist planted right between his eyes.
PETER HOUGHTON ARRIVED BACK from his holiday three days later and regaled Mrs. Laycock, Jarvis, Fleur, and the other upper servants, as they sat at luncheon, with stories of the christening.
“A headful of curls at the age of two months?” Jarvis said, interrupting the speaker. “Is that not unusual, Mr. Houghton?”
“Yes, indeed,” Houghton said. “My cousin’s wife says that it runs in her family.”
“Teeth?” Mrs. Laycock said with a frown a minute later. “At the age of two months, Mr. Houghton?”
“Yes,” Houghton said. “Unusual, is it not, ma’am?”
“What was the christening robe like, Mr. Houghton?” Miss Armitage, the duchess’s personal maid, asked.