A Matter of Temptation (21 page)

The pain of bitter betrayal sliced through him.

“Torie—”

“She knows the truth now, brother,” John said. “Knows you are John and I am Robert.”

Ignoring his brother, he focused his attention on his wife. “Torie, you must believe that I am Robert. You must.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the beginning? Why did you pretend—”

“I wasn’t pretending!” His words echoed around them. “I’m Robert.”

“You pretended to be the man who courted me, who asked me to marry him. You knew all along that I thought you were someone else…I trusted you with my heart.”

“And I trusted you with everything.”

“How poetic, John.”

He glared at his brother. “I’m not John and well you know it.”

“Of course you are.”

He fought futilely to break loose of the hold these men had on him. “I’m Robert Hawthorne, the Duke of Killingsworth.” He shifted his gaze to his wife. “You must believe that, Torie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? If it is true, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You doubt the truth of it.”

“How can I not when you have deceived me from the moment we met?”

“Deceived and betrayed her as well as betraying me,” John said. “Take him to the Mausoleum.”

“Why the mausoleum?” Torie asked.

“Because it is the only building that he wouldn’t dare desecrate in an attempt to escape.”

“Torie—” Robert tried one more time, but she turned away from him, and he saw the look of triumph in his brother’s eyes.

“Be sure and bind his feet once you get him
there,” John said. “I don’t want to take any chances that I might have misjudged what he will not desecrate. After all, he stole my titles, my land, and my love.”

The pain ripped through Robert’s chest as he watched Torie welcome John’s arm going around her in a comforting gesture, and he realized that she was well and truly lost to him.

Torie thought she would forever remember the look of devastating betrayal that had crossed her husband’s face when he realized that she’d knowingly led him into an ambush. Only she hadn’t known it would be like that. She’d been as surprised as he was, but she’d also still been in a fog after the revelations of the afternoon.

Now she wasn’t certain what she was supposed to think, what she was supposed to do. She sat in a chair in her bedchamber, gazing out into the darkening twilight.

Utterly and completely exhausted from the ordeal, confused about her feelings, worried about…the man she’d betrayed.

Two men claimed to be Robert Hawthorne.

One she had promised to marry.

The other one she had married.

One she had liked.

One she loved.

Did it matter if she was married to John? Her heart didn’t care if she was a duchess. But if he was John, he needed help. Desperately.

She heard a door open, the door separating the duke’s bedchamber from hers. She’d been so looking forward to his coming to her tonight, and now she wished only that this man would leave.

He came to stand beside her, pressing his shoulder against the window casing. She could feel his gaze fixed on her.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m trying to decide if I am married to the man with whom I exchanged vows or the man whose name appears on the marriage license.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing. However, until we know whether or not you carry my brother’s child, it is a moot issue.”

She turned her attention to him. “I don’t understand.”

“I shall not visit your bed for a month. If after that time, we determine you are not with child, then I shall take you as my wife—as we originally agreed. However, if you are with child…” His voice trailed off.

“What then?” she asked.

“I can’t risk that it would be a boy, an heir. I would have to divorce you on grounds of adultery.”

“You would divorce me when you never married me.”

“The fact that I was not at the altar does not change the fact that my brother exchanged vows
with you and that you in good faith thought you were marrying
me
.”

“We’ll simply explain that your brother”—she couldn’t quite bring herself to call her husband John—“was pretending to be you.”

“No. I won’t have that sort of scandal rain down on my family. What has happened will be kept between us.”

“You think it better for London to believe your wife was unfaithful?”

“Let’s hope it’s not a decision we must make.”

“What are you going to do about…your brother?”

“I’ve yet to decide”

“What if I could convince him to give all this up, and he and I could go away—”

He released a brittle laugh. “He’d not give all this up, not even for you.”

“He told me that he loves me.”

“He also told you that he was Robert, the duke. Lies flow from his lips like wine from a bottle. You can’t trust him, Torie.”

“I don’t know why you had to lock him in the mausoleum.”

“It was either that or the village jail.”

“What will you do about him? You can’t leave him there forever. It’s a cold, cold place.”

“He’ll only stay there until I decide how best to handle him.”

He shoved himself away from the window,
reached down, and cradled her chin. “He had no right to you. The dukedom, I could forgive him for taking that from me. But you. That I shall never forgive him for.” He leaned down, his face close to hers. “Because you see, I love you as well.”

Releasing his hold on her, he straightened. “Now let’s go dine.”

He said it as though her heart hadn’t been devastated, her world crumbled.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You must keep up your strength. Our ordeal has only just begun.”

Robert barely felt the biting cold or the hunger gnawing at his gut. His bound hands and feet had grown as numb as his heart.

He lay on his side, where he’d been unceremoniously dumped by his brother’s henchmen—how was it that John could always manage to find the dregs of society?

At least there had been light at Pentonville. Now there was nothing but the bleak darkness of despair.

Torie doubted him, and the pain of that doubt was like a finely honed sword stabbed through his heart. It had taken more strength than he’d known he possessed not to cry out his anguish as he’d watched John lead her away.

If Torie doubted him, what did it matter if he proved his claims?

The dukedom, the estates, the titles…none of them seemed important anymore.

He caught sight of light wavering on the stained-glass windows at the front of the mausoleum. He heard a grinding of the key into the door. It opened, and he heard his wife’s soft voice.

“Thank you, I’ll be fine. The duke told me to tell you to go up to the house and have yourselves something to eat. I’ll stay until you return.”

Torie stepped into the chamber and closed the door. In one hand she held a lantern, in her other arm a bundle of blankets, as though she didn’t realize that physical comfort no longer mattered to him.

He cast his gaze downward to the floor, preferring to stare at it rather than her. He heard her footsteps echo hollowly around him, then a clatter as she set the lantern down.

“I brought you some blankets,” she said quietly, as though she feared disturbing him.

He shifted his gaze over to her, then turned his attention back to the floor.

“Would you like me to help you sit up?” she asked.

“No.”

“I hate the thought of you being kept here,” she said, “but your brother fears that you’ll try to usurp his authority—”

“As well he should, as he has none.” He glared at her. “He tells you stories and you believe them.”

Hugging the blankets closer to her chest, she knelt on the hard stone floor. “I was in shock. Do you have any idea what it is like to discover that you’re not married to the man you thought you were?”

“You thought you were marrying the Duke of Killingsworth and that is exactly who you married.”

“Not according to your brother.”

“He lies, Torie. Why are you so quick to believe him and not me?”

“Because he never deceived me—”

“But he did deceive you, he deceived all of London, pretending to be me.”

“And you could have righted that by telling me the truth in the beginning, but you didn’t. You knew you weren’t the man who proposed to me. Why didn’t you cancel the wedding?”

“Because I couldn’t fathom that it would be anything other than a marriage of convenience. That you wished to marry a title, not a man.”

“A title can’t warm me at night.”

“At the time, I didn’t know you well enough to know you felt that way.”

“And now?”

“I know you very well, but you apparently don’t know me.”

“So tell me what I don’t know.”

He didn’t want to tell her anything. He wanted her to believe him based on what she did know now. That should be enough. If she truly loved
him, it should suffice. But he also recognized that in her mind, her request appeared reasonable—because it was.

“I’ve decided I’d like to sit up after all.”

She set the blankets aside, took hold of his arm, and struggled to pull him into a sitting position until he was resting his back against his mother’s tomb, his knees raised for balance as much as comfort.

“Would you like me to wrap a blanket around you?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

“You’re trussed up like a holiday hog and yet you state that you’re fine.”

“Trussed up thanks to your suggestion that we take a walk farther into the garden.”

She looked down at the floor. “I didn’t know he was going to—” She shook her head. “He told me he wanted to talk.”

“And yet still you believe he is the true Duke of Killingsworth.”

She raised her gaze to his. “Tell me what I should know.”

“You should know without me telling you that I am Robert.”

“Let’s say you are. You still deceived me. You’re not the man who asked for my hand in marriage.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I’d not planned…”
To come to love you
. But he left the words unsaid for they, too, no longer mattered.

“You asked me to tell you what you don’t know. I don’t know what you
do
know so I’ll simply tell you what I know.

“Shortly before we were to turn eighteen, John suggested that we have one long celebration that would begin at dusk on my birthday and end at dawn on the day of his. We mapped it out: the establishments we would visit, places he assured me we would be welcomed. I should have suspected something then. I’m not sure why, but I should have.

“We traveled around London, drinking whiskey in the coach. We went to a house on the outskirts of the city. I wasn’t familiar with it, but apparently John was because everyone seemed to know him. Inside there was more drinking, revelry, and ladies. I remember John giving me a glass of whiskey, slipping a lady’s hand into mine, and telling me to drink up and leave the work to her.” He shook his head.

“I remember going up the stairs, going into a room…my next memory is waking up in a cell, wearing prison garb, calling out for help, and receiving a beating because of it. I was Prisoner D3, 10. And when I realized that I was at Pentonville Prison, I knew I was in a great deal of trouble.

“I thought perhaps John was there as well, in another cell. That we’d stumbled onto some sort of slave trade or something. Or that the people in the house we’d visited were using us to replace
their friends who were to be sent to prison. Any and all explanations seemed ludicrous, but then so did the entire situation. I was stupid, naïve, and unable to comprehend why any of this was happening.

“As you know, we had to wear hoods when we walked in the exercise yard, but I would try to look in the prisoners’ eyes, find eyes similar to mine. Sometimes I tried to whisper to the man in front, but that only got me complete isolation for a time.

“Then one day, I have no idea how many days had passed, but one day I received a letter. Inside was a clipping from the
Times
. It was the obituary for the Duke and Duchess of Killingsworth.”

“Your parents,” she whispered.

He nodded. “The letter simply said, ‘Thought you should know.’ It was signed by Robert Hawthorne, the Duke of Killingsworth. And that’s when I knew that I wouldn’t find John in the prison. That our birthday celebration had been an elaborate ruse to get rid of me.”

“But why that night when you weren’t yet duke? And surely someone would have noticed that one of the sons wasn’t around.”

“Countless times John had told our parents that he wished to travel to America. I think, pretending to be Robert, that he might have told them that John had followed his dream and gone across the Atlantic, following our birthday cele
bration. Maybe he’d told them that he’d gotten a bit drunk and taken off. But that is only a guess on my part.”

She began briskly rubbing her arms, and he didn’t know if she was cold from the air surrounding them or his chilling tale.

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

“He said your father had made the arrangements because he knew you would try to take what wasn’t yours.”

“What did my father stand to gain by doing that?”

“What did your brother stand to gain?”

“The dukedom.”

“But not for years. He had no way of knowing that your parents would succumb to death so soon.”

Robert swallowed hard, forcing himself to say the one thing that had haunted him the most all these years. “Unless he knew that the dukedom would soon fall to me.”

She stopped rubbing her arms. “But the only way he could know…”

Robert nodded. “Was if his plan included killing our father.”

Torie suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold marble surrounding her.

“Why didn’t you cancel the wedding?”

“I’d thought about it, but you must realize
that I’d been isolated for so long, unable to share my thoughts with anyone save myself, and I found myself standing at the altar trying to determine the best course of action. I didn’t know how to prove I was Robert, and I feared that if I didn’t go through with the ceremony, questions would be asked that I wasn’t yet prepared to answer. After the ceremony, I couldn’t tell you the truth because you told me that you cared for me desperately, and I thought confessing would result in your going to the authorities before I had a chance to determine how best to prove my claims.