Portrait Of A Lover (18 page)

They climbed the stairs, and Magnus looked up at the enormous ancestral portraits on the walls, some dating back as far as the fifteenth century. He was barely watching where his feet were going.

When they reached the top and entered the drawing room with its ornately carved, gilded ceiling, Annabelle watched him with a mild sense of trepidation. His eyes scanned over everything—from the massive gilt-framed mirror over the fireplace, to the Chippendale furniture, the statues, the harp, the grand piano, the gold wall sconces, and the tall tree ferns.

“You could feed half the orphans in London for a month with what it must have cost to furnish this one room alone,” he said bluntly.

Annabelle didn’t know what to say.

“It’s a far cry from the place where I grew up,” he added, approaching the eight-foot portrait of his grandfather on the wall and looking up at it. “There he is.”

The derision in his voice was unmistakable.

Annabelle approached Magnus and linked her arm through his, seeking to remind him that the man in the portrait was part of the past and it was time to leave all that behind. Isn’t that what he’d tried to tell her when he asked her to return to America with him as his wife?

“I never knew him,” she said, looking up at the portrait. “He died long before I was born.”

“Which was probably fortunate for you, because I doubt he would have taken you in.”

Startled by the severity in Magnus’s tone, Annabelle shot a surprised glance at him.

His expression gentled. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head at himself. “That was thoughtless of me. I just never expected to see the inside of this house. It brings back old memories.”

He took her into his arms and held her, calming her misgivings with the affection in his embrace.

Just then someone cleared his throat in the doorway, and both Annabelle and Magnus stepped apart. It was her brother.

Annabelle took an anxious step forward. “Whitby…”

He appeared horror-struck. “What in God’s name…?”

Annabelle gestured toward Magnus. “I’ve brought someone.”

Whitby remained in the doorway. “I can see that for myself, Annabelle.”

There was a long drawn-out silence while Annabelle’s gut began to churn and her heart hammered against her ribs. These two men—both of whom she loved—despised each other. They had fought as children, each blaming the other for unfortunate circumstances in their lives, and Annabelle wasn’t sure it would ever be possible to change that.

She glanced anxiously at Magnus, who stood motionless, facing Whitby. “Why don’t we all sit down?” she suggested.

After a moment’s hesitation, her brother slowly entered the room, and Annabelle took a seat at one end of the sofa. As soon as she was settled, Magnus sat beside her, while Whitby took the facing chair.

“Where have you been?” her brother asked, sounding more than a little displeased. “We expected you home sooner.”

She squeezed her hands together on her lap. “I’m sorry about that. I was…detained.”

Whitby’s piercing gaze flicked to Magnus. “Detained.”

Magnus said nothing. He merely crossed one leg over the other and let Annabelle do the talking. She was very glad of that.

“Yes,” she said, resolving to be firm and forthright, for there was no point dancing around the issue. “You see…Magnus and I have spent the past few days together and we have come to realize that…that we are still in love.”

How foolish she must sound to Whitby, who no doubt could not believe his ears. She even sounded foolish to herself.

Whitby’s tolerance seemed to snap like a tangible thing in the room. Annabelle almost feared the ceiling was going to come crashing down on their heads.

“I’m sorry, Whitby, but I hope you can understand,” she said.

“Understand, Annabelle?” To her utter surprise, he spoke not with anger, but with gentle pleading, as if Magnus were not even there. “How can I? I’ve watched you go through your adult life without hope or optimism because of what he did to you. All this time, you’ve hated him.”

“Only because I was hurt,” she explained, though she did not feel confident. She felt ridiculous, for she had changed her opinions—opinions she’d held for thirteen years—virtually overnight, even after Whitby had warned her that Magnus would try to seduce her. Which he certainly had done, quite effectively.

Whitby wet his lips and shifted in his chair. He appeared shaken, but determined to convince her that she was making a mistake and was merely confused.

Meanwhile, Magnus was watching all of it, sitting back with quiet fortitude.

“No, Annabelle, you forget,” Whitby said. “Do you not remember the lies you could not forgive?”

“I do remember that,” she said, “but it was a long time ago, and I’m a different person now and so is he.” Magnus gave her an encouraging nod, and she was so very, very thankful he was here, because she wanted to be with him. She did. She could not let anything change her mind.

Whitby, however, watched the exchange from where he sat across from them, and all his gentle pleading flew out the window. He stood up. “Annabelle, you’re not stupid. Use your head.”

She shot him an exasperated look. “I am using it.”

“No, I don’t believe you are.”

She stared dumbfounded at her brother. “You need to give him a chance, Whitby. He’s not the villain you think he is. There have been misunderstandings, and he regrets what happened between us. He never wanted to hurt me.”

She looked at Magnus then, needing him to intervene, to defend what she was saying.

He recognized her entreaty, and turned to Whitby. “Indeed I am not the villain here. And I do regret what happened between Annabelle and me. But you have played a part in her unhappiness, too, Whitby. Annabelle has felt trapped here, as if she owes something to you because your family took her in. She needs to feel that she is free.”

“Is this true, Annabelle?” Whitby asked.

She paused. “You have been very kind to me, Whitby, which makes it difficult to do something that will disappoint you.”

Whitby shook his head at Magnus. “I’m not going to apologize for being kind to her.”

“Well, I have apologized to her,” Magnus said, “and she has forgiven me.”

Whitby’s face screwed into a disbelieving grimace. “You can’t be serious, Annabelle! You believe him? Tell me you were not so gullible. You assured me you were not.”

“I was not gullible, Whitby. It’s the truth. He is not the man you think he is.” She fidgeted and cleared her throat, striving to maintain a confident tone. “I think it’s time you stopped hating Magnus so much, and put the past to rest.”

“Put it to rest.” Whitby shook his head and strode to the other side of the room.

Annabelle felt like she was suffocating. She glanced desperately at Magnus, but he was sitting forward, watching her brother.

Finally, Whitby faced them again. “What do you mean to tell me today, Annabelle? Why did you bring him here?”

She sensed he already knew the answer to that question, but he needed to hear it just the same.

“We are engaged,” she said, feeling her heart break at what should have been the happiest moment of her life.

The ensuing silence carried enough weight to crush the house.

Annabelle sat motionless, immobile. She was aware of Magnus beside her, waiting for Whitby to oppose the engagement, and she wasn’t sure what would happen after that.

Whitby strode closer. “Can’t you see? He came back here to use you again, so he could finally feel he has won.”

“No, you’re wrong,” she replied, hearing her voice break because it was not something she wanted to hear, not after she’d suffered so much, fighting against her doubts and fears.

“It’s just because you are lonely,” Whitby spat. “You are not thinking clearly because you are desperate for a marriage of your own.”

Her lips fell open. “I am not desperate.”

At that moment Magnus stood, tall and ominous in the room. “I think I’ve heard enough.”

“I beg your pardon?” Whitby said bitterly.

“Shall I repeat it for you, cousin? I have heard enough.”

Whitby slowly blinked. “May I remind you of the fact, sir, that you are not welcome here.”

Annabelle stood also. “Yes, he is. It’s my home, too, and he’s my guest.”

But they both ignored her.

“Your sister is coming with me,” Magnus said. “She has agreed to become my wife, and I will be taking her back to America with me.”

Whitby spoke through clenched teeth. “You will do no such thing.”

Annabelle stood there stunned as she watched them, not knowing what to do or say.

“I will do exactly as I please,” Magnus shot back. “She belongs to me now.”

“I don’t belong to either of you!” Annabelle cried out, but again they both ignored her. They were glaring at each other like a couple of angry wolves.

“You insufferable bastard,” Whitby said, his voice low, but brimming with a dangerous, repressed fury.

The grandfather clock chimed once, and before Annabelle had a chance to say another word, they both simultaneously charged at each other.

M agnus and Whitby grabbed hold of each other in the drawing room, knocked over a plant, then slammed hard up against a tapestry on the wall. The heavy fabric jostled as they shoved each other, then they hurled back to the middle of the room, shouting as they fell against a table, knocking over a lamp, which smashed on the floor. They fell beside the broken glass and rolled in the other direction, grunting and cursing until Annabelle shouted, “Stop it! Both of you!”

Whitby pinned Magnus down and punched him in the jaw, then Magnus sat up and bashed his forehead against Whitby’s. Her brother fell backward.

“Stop!” Annabelle shouted again, and suddenly Lily was beside her, grabbing her husband under the arms and scrambling to pull him off Magnus.

“What’s going on!” she shouted in disbelief.

The sound of his pregnant wife’s voice seemed to arrest Whitby on the spot. He sat back on the floor, cupping his forehead.

Magnus staggered to his feet and wiped the back of his hand across his bleeding lip. He was out of breath and panting.

Magnus jabbed a finger at him. “I’m warning you, Whitby. Don’t even try to come between us. We’ll be leaving for America tomorrow, and don’t expect to visit, because you won’t be welcome in my house.”

Shocked and shaken, Annabelle turned to her brother and sister-in-law, who were waiting for her to say something.

All the weight of the world descended upon her at that moment, and she wasn’t sure she could find the words to speak.

Then Magnus’s arm curled around her waist and he closed his eyes and pressed his face against her cheek, and she found herself holding tight to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

She looked back down at Whitby and Lily and felt a wretchedness of heart she’d never imagined possible. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going with him.”

With that, she and Magnus left the drawing room.

They made it only as far as the staircase, however, before Annabelle stopped and took hold of the railing, her anger finally spilling over the edge of her composure. “What in the name of God was that?”

The fire from the struggle was still burning in Magnus’s eyes. “What do you mean? He insulted you.”

“How?”

“He said you were lonely and desperate.”

Annabelle shook her head at him and descended the stairs, hearing him follow fast behind her.

“That wasn’t about me,” she said accusingly. “It was about you seizing the opportunity to fight him. You were waiting for it.”

They were practically sailing down the stairs now.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to make it seem like it was me. I sat there calmly through all of that. It was your brother who wanted to fight from the first minute he set eyes on me. He wanted to crush me, like always.”

Annabelle walked quickly across the entrance hall, her strides snapping her skirts between her legs. “You think it’s him and he thinks it’s you. I’m sick of it.”

Magnus followed her out the front door and down the steps to the coach. She climbed in and sat down, and he climbed in beside her, slamming the door shut, but the coach didn’t move.

“How can you be angry at me?” he asked. “I was a bystander.”

“Oh, yes, you were very unassuming when you smashed him up against the tapestry!”

“I did it for you, Annabelle. I was defending your choice to marry me. I was not going to let him stop us.”

“But I saw the fury in your eyes! You were out of control, and all this time you’ve been promising me that Whitby no longer has any power over you—that you had left all that behind, and the only reason you came back to England was for me. I believed you. I trusted that you were telling me the truth.”

“Don’t do this, Annabelle,” he said. “Don’t let yourself. You’re so ridiculously loyal to him! Just because he took you in and raised you does not mean you have to live your life only to make him proud. You must find your own way and your own happiness. Be true to yourself. You don’t owe him your whole future.”

“It’s not as easy as that. I trust him to know what is best for me and what will make me happy, when I don’t really trust myself.”

“Or me,” he said.

She did not reply.

“Say it, Annabelle. I am the reason you don’t trust yourself.”

“Yes!” she shouted. “I made an error in judgement years ago. I was fooled. Duped. And after what just happened, how can I not still have doubts? How can I believe that there is not some truth to what Whitby just said—that you want me because you want to feel you have won. You simply want to take something from him.”

His eyes darkened with frustration. “That’s not true. You’re letting him influence you. Trust your heart, Annabelle. You know I love you.”

“But you were still fighting the same battle today that you always were! What has changed?”

Magnus sat forward and wiped his lip again, examining the blood on his hand.

“Whitby is not a bad man,” she told him. “He only wants me to be safe and happy, and I don’t think either of you really knows why you hate the other.”

That statement caused him to lift his head and look at her with dismay. “I know very well why I hate him, Annabelle.”

“Why?”

“Because he has always taken pleasure in making my life a living hell! He has deprived me of my birthright, beaten me to a pulp on numerous occasions, spread cruel gossip about my father and me, causing us to be treated as outcasts and lunatics. As a child, I was spit upon in the streets, kicked and beaten by those who enjoyed thrashing a fallen aristocrat. But it was my father I pitied the most, because he died a broken man. That is why I will always hate your brother—for continuing his grandfather’s legacy of heartlessness.”

Stunned by his outburst, Annabelle could feel her throat closing up. “But you told me you didn’t care about Whitby anymore, that that was behind you. How can I trust completely that there is not a part of you that is using me? Do you even know it yourself? I saw the satisfaction in your eyes when you told him I belonged to you now, not him. At that moment, I was nothing more than a weapon to use against him. And I can see the hatred in your eyes now. I just heard it in your voice.”

She looked out the coach window toward the horizon over the treetops in the distance.

“You can’t blame me for hating Whitby,” Magnus said. “But it has nothing to do with you.”

“But that’s just it! I do blame you for hating him. It’s not his fault you and your father were cut off from the family. Your father was dangerous. He tried to light his own brother on fire.”

The shock of hearing that seemed to stir Magnus’s anger all over again. “That’s a blatant lie! My father was not dangerous. He was sick and weak. That is the reason why my grandfather didn’t want him. He lacked the appropriate stature of an aristocrat.”

Annabelle felt her brows pull together in a frown. “That’s not what Whitby believes.”

Magnus shrugged and looked off in the other direction, as if what Whitby believed was of no consequence to him.

Hope sparked anew in Annabelle’s veins. “I feel a great need to get to the bottom of this.”

He shook his head at her, as if he was puzzled by that desire. “Why? It’s in the past.”

“It is not in the past, because you are still bitter about it.”

“I’m bitter that you won’t trust me!” he shouted, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “You continue to trust Whitby over me, when what I need is for you to take a leap of faith. Just believe in me now. Forget about the past.”

Annabelle shifted uneasily on the cushioned seat. “Perhaps I could talk to Whitby and tell him you think there’s been a mistake,” she said. “He might listen to me.”

Magnus took hold of her shoulders. “Annabelle, it was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter. Just trust me now and come away with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? What are you looking for? Concrete proof that you can trust me?Because you will never get that. The trust has to come from here.” He touched her chest, over her heart.

Annabelle gazed at him in despair. “But there is so much to be sorted out here.”

“Annabelle, I’m asking you…Don’t confuse all this with your fear of letting yourself love me. Just look in your heart.”

He regarded her intently with eyes dark and beseeching, and she did as he asked. She did look into her heart, where she felt passion and love and hope and desire. She wanted Magnus with every breath in her body. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

But he was asking her to take a blind leap of faith and simply believe him, when she could not. She was afraid to, especially when there were still so many unanswered questions.

She wished it was not so, but she needed something more than Magnus’s word—his word against Whitby’s—to hang her trust upon.

She lowered her gaze, knowing it was going to kill her to say this, and it was going to kill him to hear it…

“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Magnus tipped his head back on the upholstery and stared up at the dark ceiling of the coach. “You’re going to trust Whitby’s word over mine?” They sat in silence for a moment. “Don’t do this, Annabelle. Come with me now.”

“No, not like this. Don’t make me choose between you and them when I’m not ready. If it’s me you love, you’ll be patient.” She crossed in front of him to climb out of the coach.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Back inside.”

“Please tell me you’re going to collect your things.”

She opened the door and stepped out. “No. I can’t go with you, Magnus.”

She backed away from him, toward the house.

He climbed out of the coach, too. “Please, don’t go back in there.”

“I have to. I need to fix this.”

“You can’t fix anything!” he shouted. “Even if you find out there had been a mistake and my father was wronged, it won’t give you what you are looking for. Why can’t you accept that?”

She stopped and sucked in a breath, overcome suddenly by self-doubt, but then she kept going, because she simply could not take that leap of faith. She wished she could, but she could not.

He called to her one more time. “Annabelle!”

But she kept going.

Magnus pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, then strode back to the coach and pounded his fist against the outside of it over and over. He grunted with fury and frustration as he kicked a wheel, then got back inside, slammed the door and shouted at the coachman to drive off.

Gathering her skirts in her fists, Annabelle strode purposefully up the stairs and returned to the drawing room, where Whitby and Lily were standing together in front of the window. Whitby was holding a cloth to his forehead.

She stopped in the doorway, and Lily immediately came hurrying across the room to hug her.

“Oh, Annabelle.”

When they stepped apart, Annabelle gazed at her brother, who was still standing at the window. He must have seen what had occurred out front.

“Thank God,” he said, lowering the cloth and tossing it onto the marble table beside him. “I’m relieved you had the good sense to come back.”

Annabelle loved her brother, and she knew he only wanted what was best for her, but she had never, ever been more angry with him.

“I have not come back,” she said, “at least not the way you think.”

He shook his head at her, as if he couldn’t get over her foolishness, then turned and faced the window.

Annabelle strode toward him. “How could you, Whitby?”

He faced her again. “How could I? You were the one who brought an enemy into our home and told me you wanted to marry him. Marry him, Annabelle! Of all the men in England, you had to choose him!”

Annabelle tried to explain. “I fought it every step of the way—honest, I did—but then I just couldn’t. I am in love with him.”

Whitby’s eyes fumed with shock and dismay. “So you are determined? You’re going to choose that scoundrel over us?”

“I have not yet made that decision,” she said. “I am still…unsure.” And that was putting it mildly.

He seemed to relax at hearing that. “So you still have some reservations about him?”

Annabelle paused, nodding her head. “How can I help but have reservations? I’ve had a broken heart since I was twenty-one. I’m not capable of trusting any man.” She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. “Heaven help me, I’m still such a misfit.”

Whitby crossed toward her and touched her shoulder. “You’re not a misfit, Annabelle. You’re just cautious, and wisely so.”

“I’m not so sure. I love him, Whitby. Why can’t I just trust him? Why must I live in constant fear that the rug is going to be pulled out from under me, with no warning whatsoever?”

“Because that’s what happened the last time.”

Her brother’s eyes softened with compassion, which Annabelle greatly appreciated at that moment, when she felt so very alone and was worrying that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life, walking away from the man she loved.

She sighed heavily. “Maybe it would help if I understood more about his father being sent away,” she said, still fearing that Magnus was right—that she was using the past as an excuse, giving it more importance than it deserved because she was simply afraid of letting herself love him.