Mary Jo Putney (45 page)

"Another veil falls away," he said sardonically, the mark of her hand reddening on his cheek. "I thought you honest, kind, intelligent, gentle. There isn't much left of my illusions."

Shaking her head in distress, she whispered, "Gervase, I'm truly sorry. But how could you say that about your own son?"

He raised his brows in disbelief. "You want to pass your bastard off as my son? I suppose you can try—he looks so much like you that anyone could be his father. I suppose that's literally true. Any man
could
be his father."

"Don't you ever look at anyone?" she exclaimed furiously. "If you really
saw
Geoffrey, you would know how much he resembles you. That's one reason I didn't want you to meet him. But you no more recognized him than you did me."

His mind worked, trying to find the resemblance. "He's too young. A child of mine would have to be eight years old now, and what is Geoffrey... six?... seven at the outside?"

Her hands were clenching and unclenching as she said with careful precision, "He was born on the tenth of February in the year 1800—nine months after our farce of a marriage. He's small for his age, but he's eight and a half years old now. I couldn't bear to name him for his father, so I chose Geoffrey because it had the same initial as Gervase. Shall I show you the registration of his birth?"

He looked unbearably torn. She saw how much he wanted a son, in spite of his belief that he was unworthy of children. "That would prove nothing. You could have borne a babe who died in infancy with Geoffrey the child of a later liaison."

Defeated, Diana covered her face with her hands. She had known that her identity would be a shock to Gervase, but had never imagined this total, tormented repudiation. If he did not have the desire to believe her, proof would mean very little.

Ignoring her withdrawal, he asked, "Did you pay the barmaid to disappear so you could take her place? I've always wondered just how big a fool I was that night."

She dropped her hands wearily. "You still don't know? It was my room you entered. Since you were drunk, you must have become lost in those rabbity passages."

"I should have known it was a waste of time to ask you for the truth," he said caustically. "It couldn't have been your room—the door opened with my key."

There was a chair behind her, and Diana folded into it, too drained to stand. When Geoffrey was an infant, she used to sit in this chair to nurse him. "Those were old, crude locks. Any one of the keys would probably open every door in the inn."

That gave him pause. Then, "You really are a clever little liar, knowing how to raise doubts. I shouldn't fault myself for having believed you for so long."

She wondered if there was a way to break through his anger to the underlying fairness. Perhaps it was too soon to expect him to be fair. Too soon, or perhaps too late. "Didn't you ever wonder where your luggage was? Not in my room."

He simply looked at her impassively, then turned to leave. She jumped up and went after him. "Gervase, wait! What are you going to do?"

His hard stare kept her at a distance. "I shall walk out and get in my carriage and return to London. If I am very lucky, I will never see or hear from you again."

She lifted one hand to touch him, then dropped it again. "How can you just leave? We are married, we have a son."

He laughed bitterly. "You are truly an extraordinary woman. Did you honestly think that after you made your grand announcement, told me how much of a fool you had made of me, how our time together was a lie from beginning to end—did you really think I would welcome you as my wife and install you as Lady St. Aubyn for all the world to see?"

Contemptuous lines showed beside his mouth. "You wouldn't like the change in status. The gentlemen who now pay for your favors would expect them for free if you were of their class."

"Will you stop talking as if I'm the Whore of Babylon?" she cried. "I didn't tell you the whole truth, but I never lied to you, not once."

As silence lengthened, a muscle twitched in his jaw. Finally he said, "Your whole life was a lie."

The desolation in his voice was so profound that she could no longer suppress the tears she had been fighting. As they flowed unchecked down her cheeks, she made a last desperate attempt to remind him of what they had had. "I love you, and you said that you loved me. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Oh, yes, it meant something," he said softly. "But apparently the woman I loved never existed."

"Gervase, please!" Her cry came from the heart.

He put one hand on the doorknob, but turned back to look with the bleakness that lies beyond hope. "Strange. I was willing to make a whore my wife, but I find it quite unacceptable that my wife is a whore. Good-bye, Diana."

The quiet sound of the door closing was a death knell.

Diana stood very still in the center of the room, knowing that when her numbness wore off, the pain would be overwhelming. Carriage noises sounded outside, the jingle of harness, the clopping of hooves, as Gervase left her for the last time.

She had thought often of how he might react when he found out that she was his wife. Certainly he would be shocked. Possibly he might be a little angry, but it had been equally possible that he would be amused, that the idea that he had taken his wife as a mistress might tickle his dry sense of humor.

Most of all, Diana had thought he would be relieved. When they had married, he had committed an unpardonable assault, but after his fury had died down he had been remorseful and gentle with her. When she came to know him in London, she had learned how honorable he was, and how unworthy he felt himself to be. She had thought he would welcome the news that his wife could forgive him, and that, against all the odds, they had a real marriage.

The one thing she had never expected was that revealing the past would destroy what was between them. How could it, when they loved each other? She had always known him to be logical and fair-minded. She'd never imagined that he would react to the discovery of her identity with such furious condemnation.

When the sound of wheels had faded, she walked out of the sitting room. Madeline's niece Annie waited, her expression concerned. Annie was the eldest child of Isabel Wolfe and she had fallen in love with a young man insufficiently godly for her mother's taste. It had pleased Madeline and Diana to offer the use of High Tor Cottage so the girl could marry her sweetheart.

Annie must be speaking, because her lips moved, but Diana heard nothing. Shaking her head as a sign that she wanted to be alone, she went out the front door, across the marks of carriage wheels and horses' hooves, and down the hill to the stream.

Sitting on the grassy bank, Diana took off her slippers and stockings. Still moving with unnatural calm, she dabbled her feet in the small pool where Geoffrey had almost drowned when he was a toddler. In happier times they had played here, her son exhibiting the normal child's affinity for mud.

Gervase was gone. He was not a man to love lightly, or to leave lightly. Or to change his mind once he came to a decision. She had known they were opposite, in temperament, but had not realized all that implied. For her, love was enough, would always be enough. She had thought that if Gervase came to love her, the bond between them would be unbreakable.

She had been wrong. Instead, she had injured him grievously, had destroyed his love and trust, perhaps irrevocably, given him a wound from which he might never recover.

Where had she made her mistake? Numbly she reviewed the past months. Perhaps it had been at Aubynwood, when they had weathered their first crisis. Instinct had urged her to tell Gervase the truth then, but she didn't. It had been easier to let matters drift. She had thought it better to wait until he could admit that he was in love with her, thinking he would more easily accept the truth then.

Instead, the reverse was true. Loving her, he was far more vulnerable than he had been at Aubynwood. The result was his conviction that he had been betrayed. The thought of his agony was as devastating as her own. More so, because of her guilt.

Rolling over on her stomach, she buried her head in her arms and let anguish take her.

* * *

The return to London was accomplished in dead silence. Except for the barest speech required to change horses and stop for the night, Gervase spoke to Bonner only once, when he asked what the servant had found when he had packed his master's possessions that fatal night on Mull.

Without twitching an eyelid at the question, Bonner replied, "One of the tavern girls was there. She'd been waiting quite some time and was incensed at your neglect. I took the liberty of giving her a small douceur for her inconvenience, from the funds I carried for travel expenses."

"And my luggage was there?" Gervase pulled in the horses to negotiate heavy ruts. He was doing all of the driving; the concentration helped keep thought at bay.

Bonner nodded. "Aye. Appeared to be untouched, but I didn't check because the island Scots are an honest lot. Was something missing?" The servant acted as if the incident had been the previous night, not over nine years before. But of course, it had not been the sort of night one would forget.

"No, nothing was missing." Except his wife, who had not, apparently, been in Gervase's room, but in her own.

He thought back over months of lovemaking and realized that while Diana had always been sweetly responsive, she had never shown the hardened professionalism of the true courtesan. He had been so besotted that he had never even noticed. She might indeed be as innocent as she claimed—or this might be one more example of her brilliant talent for falsehood.

It was only a slight detour to Aubynwood, and the upcoming house party made a convenient excuse for stopping. The necessary orders required very little time. Then, grimly, he asked his housekeeper where his mother's portrait hung. The painting held pride of place in the servants' hall, where its quality was much esteemed. Sir Joshua Reynolds would have been amused, perhaps, to know where his masterpiece had come to rest.

Gervase ignored the beautiful, amoral face of his mother to study the dark-haired boy who looked up at her so wistfully. After he had scrutinized the profile, the shape of the ears, the line of nose and jaw, the conclusion was unmistakable: the picture could almost have been of Geoffrey. Now he understood why the tenant farmer he and Geoffrey had visited at Aubynwood had looked so sharply at the boy.

Though he had half-forgotten it, Gervase had been small for his age as a child. Only when he reached twelve had he begun to grow, matching and overtaking the height of other boys his age.

And the seizures. He had had a few; Geoffrey had more. Were such things inherited? Quite possibly.

So Geoffrey, with his intelligence and courage and sunny nature, was his son. Thinking of his wife as abnormal, not quite human, Gervase had literally never considered the possibility that that one brief, violent act of sexual union might produce a child.

Gervase set the thought aside, not yet able to face it. The fact that Geoffrey was his son didn't make Diana any less a liar or a whore—but it was another complication in the hell of his marriage.

* * *

It was late evening when Diana arrived home, exhausted by the long coach journey. After the scene with Gervase, she had spent more than a week at High Tor Cottage, craving the peace as a balm for her misery.

Now it was good to be with her family. Geoffrey was already in bed, but Madeline and Edith took one look at Diana's haggard face and wrapped her in affectionate care. She had not told her friends why she went north and they had not asked, but the time had come to reveal her history.

After she had bathed and eaten, the three women gathered in Maddy's sitting room. Over endless cups of tea laced with brandy, Diana described her past in a long monologue, from her childhood in Scotland to her bizarre forced marriage, including how her father had abandoned her to her husband's nonexistent care, and ending with the disastrous confrontation with Gervase.

When she ran out of words, Madeline exhaled with sympathetic wonder. "I knew you were a woman of mystery, but this is much more than I bargained for. May I ask questions?"

Diana sighed. She was curled up in the corner of a sofa, wrapped in a shaggy Highland blanket as much for emotional comfort as for protection against the cool evening. "Ask whatever you like. I've always had trouble talking about what affects me deeply, but
not
talking has caused worse trouble."

"What happened to your mother?"

The teacup Diana was sipping from clicked sharply against her teeth. Setting it down carefully, she said, "She killed herself when I was eleven."

"Oh, my dear girl," Madeline breathed, then changed the subject. "It's hard to believe your father would just abandon you in the inn the day after your marriage."

"If you knew my father, you would know it was quite in character. He was convinced that all women were evil, especially his daughter." Diana's deep blue eyes looked black. "The sooner he got rid of me, the better for his own immortal soul."

A thought had occurred to Maddy during the younger woman's story. She hesitated, wondering if it was appropriate, before deciding to speak. "Is it possible your father was... unnaturally attracted to you? And he loathed himself for such feelings, and you for being the source of them?"