CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
She stopped, her hand flying to her mouth, as if she would push back the words. But nothing came either from her husband, or the lawyer, and the quivering fingers shifted.
“You see? I cannot even speak of it, for fear of awakening that bitterness with which you scourge yourself, with which you distance me unbearably.”
“No longer!”
“My lord!”
“Ottery, I cannot remain silent.” He was up, moving towards her.
“Rosina, if you are to leave me because of that —! Don’t you know how your presence in my life has changed me?
” He took her by the shoulders, but his hold was light.
“I know how ill I have used you on that account. But only because I was afraid you could not favour me.”
She wrenched away. “You assumed it. You would not let me near you.”
“Do not forget your own reluctance. If common decency led me to refrain from forcing you to endure this repulsive countenance of mine —”
“Anton, it has never been repulsive to me,” Rosina cried on a note of despair. “That is what I am trying to make you understand.” She caught sight of the lawyer’s face, and shifted towards him. “Mr Ottery, I appeal to you.”
“I have always believed his lordship to be over-sensitive,” agreed Ottery, looking at Raith.
Rosina turned. “There! You need not imagine I do not know why it is so. You had not been nearly as aware of it had it not been inflicted by your brother Piers.”
There was a silence. Raith’s cheeks paled and he shot an accusatory look at his lawyer.
Ottery shrugged. “This does not come from my lips, my lord.”
His eyes shifted to Rosina. “How did you know? Unless — was it Kirkham or my housekeeper who told you?”
Rosina sank into the chair before the desk, sighing deeply. “Release me, Mr Ottery, I beg of you.” Her gaze misted and she looked at the lawyer, her voice quivering. “See how useless it is? He supposes me to be so great a fool I cannot guess at it.”
Instant remorse showed in her husband’s face as she glanced towards him. “My defences are too quick for me, Rosina. I didn’t mean it.”
“No, you never do. That is the tragedy.” She saw that Mr Ottery was frowning down at her. “Pray don’t look upon me thus severely, Mr Ottery.”
The lawyer’s face cleared. “Nothing of the sort, ma’am. I was merely trying to decide how best to acquaint you with his lordship’s history.”
“Ottery!”
“My lord, you gain nothing by your silence. Her ladyship has a right to know. If you will be advised by me, the more she knows, the easier it will be for you to communicate upon the subject.”
Raith crossed to the window. It was not a pretty story, and the very mention of it brought to mind the memory of his brother’s vicious act.
The whistling lash, the distorted witness faces, the shocking violence of the pain and the welling blood.
Behind him, he heard Rosina’s voice, the tremble of it a stronger reproach than what she said.
“He n-need not tell me, if he does not w-wish to. Rather let me speak, Mr Ottery. You do not want to hear this, Anton, but I will say it now.” He did not turn, and her voice came again, husky and low.
“When the first shock had died, I was consumed not with repulsion, but with curiosity. I wanted to touch your face, to know how it felt.” He flinched, willing her to silence.
Yet he knew she would not spare him this time.
“I was ashamed of myself, and so I did not know how to respond to you, when you spoke of it so bitterly. At last, when you allowed me to touch it, in one of your vile moods —”
“Don’t remind me!” He muttered the words, but remained with his back to the room, staring unseeingly out of the window.
“When you allowed me to touch it,” Rosina resumed, “the sensation under my finger did not offend me. It was even pleasurable, so that I did not dare to speak of it. For you had told me of that other creature, and —”
“Enough!” Raith swung round and he saw Rosina wince.
“Oh, don’t look so afraid! If I am angry, it is not with you, but with my brother.
He follows me even into my marriage.” A mirthless laugh broke from him.
“Why would he not? It was to prevent me finding a wife that he slashed at my face, with his whip.”
Rosina gasped, her fingers flying to her mouth. “Was he insane?”
“That, or merely vengeful.”
It was Ottery who took up the tale. “I must bear part of the blame. I had foolishly told his late lordship of the inheritance, which, as you know, Lady Raith, was dependent upon matrimony.”
“It was money left to me by my maternal grandfather,” Raith put in.
“But why should the fact of the inheritance affect Piers?”
Raith looked at Ottery. “You tell her.”
“Sheer malice, ma’am, for it gave him independence, which prevented the late Lord Raith from giving vent to his lunatic envy.
Mr Raith, as your husband was then styled, desired to take up a commission in the army.
Provision had been left by his father, but his brother refused to honour it.
Since it was not in the will, I had no power, even as executor, to force him. ”
“I took him up on it, and we quarrelled,” Raith said. “Piers had guests. Gambling cronies, Forteviot among them.”
Rosina’s face paled. “Then that is why…”
“Yes, that is why. I imagine it must have been grist to his mill to discover that it was I who had married you.”
“He saw it all?”
“He was witness to my humiliation, yes. We were in the hall, I remember, and the altercation became public. Piers snatched up his weapon too suddenly for me to know what he would be at.” His burned at the memory. “The blow felled me.”
“Oh, Anton!”
“It was viciously done, but I felt more rage than pain. I scrambled up and closed with Piers. I know I managed to get the whip out of his hand, but I was overcome. By the servants, or his friends, I don’t know.”
There was fury in Rosina’s voice. “I wish I had known this when that vile man came to the house.”
“The next thing I knew, I was sprawling on the ground outside the mansion.” Raith’s glance met and held Rosina’s. “That is when Piers chose to jeer at me, bidding me try now to find myself a wife.”
“What happened to you? How did you manage?”
“He had the sense to come to me,” Ottery cut in.
“Kirkham helped me to a horse, and I rode to Banbury.” He came across the room and placed his arm about his lawyer’s shoulder.
“You see now why this fellow can never be sufficiently repaid. Ottery not only took me in, but nursed me until the wound was healed. Finally, he furnished me with the means to obtain a commission —”
“It was, I need hardly say, a loan, which has long since been repaid,” put in Ottery. “And as for the rest —”
“— and then he packed me off to the army.”
“— it is only what anyone would have done,” finished the lawyer in the same breath.
“No friend could have done more.” Raith removed his arm, and took a step towards his wife. “It does not end there, Rosina. He has done more to help me through the exigencies of our marriage than you can ever imagine. If you needs must run away from me, you could not have chosen better.”
Hastily, Rosina rose up from her chair, whisking away.
“I don’t know what to do. I wish you had not told me this.
No, I don’t mean that. I am glad you have told me.
” She turned to face both men. “But I am doubly determined Forteviot shall not harm you. Pray, Anton, if the only way it can be prevented is for us to part —”
“Here is a change of tune.” He came up and she found her hands seized. “Rosy, stay with me, my dearest love. Let us fight him together. Ottery will find a way. And if he cannot, I shall know how to do. That scoundrel will not dishonour your name.”
But Rosina hardly heard him. Her attention had caught on that precious endearment, and her pulse began an irregular beat. Did his feeling for her truly run so deep? She said the only thing in her mind. “What did you call me?”
Raith’s gaze softened. “If you look at me like that, I can’t recall anything I said.”
“You said —” She found herself unable to repeat it. She swallowed. “Never mind it. What can Mr Ottery do?”
“A great deal,” came from the lawyer behind them. “Better, I feel sure, than what I suspect to be your intended solution, my lord.”
Rosina pulled away, and turned quickly to face him. “What do you mean, sir?”
But it was Raith who answered. “He means that, left to myself, I will slaughter the villain.”
“You mean to call him out? But he may as readily kill you, Anton — and I should die then!”
“If you care so much, how could you leave me?”
“If you care for me, how can you put yourself in danger?”
The lawyer intervened. “My dear sir, there is no need for any such foolishness. I have the matter well covered.”
“Then, if it will change her mind, for pity’s sake tell her what you may do.”
Ottery retired behind his desk, and sat down. “The most obvious thing would be to go to Mr Cambois and extract a written statement of the true version of events.”
“You may rely on me for that! What else?”
“If you will hand into my safekeeping all the pertinent correspondence, I will face Lord Forteviot with the intelligence that I am in possession of sufficient evidence to have him up on a charge of attempted blackmail.”
“Will that suffice?”
“Oh, I think so, my lord. He cannot raise a scandal without involving himself in a public exposure of villainy. If her ladyship is pilloried, we will have enough counter-evidence to support an attack upon his own reputation. I doubt Lord Forteviot will take the risk for a paltry twenty thousand pounds. Men of his stamp drop that much in one night’s play. ”
“By thunder, you’re right, Ottery! There will be no point in it. I will see to it that Cambois keeps mum.”
Rosina heard it all with a leap of the heart. She had not thought it possible there might be a solution other than the one she had sought. Her veins were rioting, and it was with a burgeoning of hope that she saw Anton turn to her again.
“Rosy, what do you say now?”
She glanced at the lawyer. “May we — can we speak alone?”