The Dark Lady (45 page)

She had never had much need in her life to read. She knew how, but barely. It was not something that was a necessity for a soldier.

The candles lit the room around them, showing the details in the large portraits that covered the rough stone walls. The windowless room was large, but comfortable. “Where is your new wife and kids?” This was not what she wanted to ask but it was a good beginning she supposed.

“
They are still seeing her parents. They will be here in a few days. If you are still here, you will meet them. If not, we can come there to see you.” His voice shook slightly.

Van turned her attention fully to him. His hands were trembling slightly and his eyes crinkled at the corners. He appeared as nervous and unsure as she felt.

“
Tell me about my mother. What was she like when you met her?” she asked. His nervousness seemed to relax her. Made her feel like she had the advantage, a feeling she much preferred and always had.

His eyes widened and his brow wrinkled as his eyebrows rose in surprise. He narrowed his eyes and seemed to consider the question. “I suppose she was much like she was while you were growing up. She had not changed much as she grew older.” He looked at her questioningly apparently unsure of what she was really asking.

Van leaned back in the big chair and crossed her leg under the wide skirt of her dress. The cool material of the silk slid across her legs and sent a shiver up her spine. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. “I–I did not see my mother much.” She struggled to explain to him why she needed to know about her mother without giving him any real details. She found it impossible so she finally said, “I left home when I was only ten and did not see her again until I was seventeen and not many times after that. I do not know her well. I would like to.”

“
Ten? Where did you go? Where did she send you?” He leaned toward her, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the arms of the chair. His face lit in anger and turned a dangerous shade of red.

She stared at him calmly and tilted her head, smiling patiently.

He waited a few moments in that ready to pounce posture and then took several deep breaths. He released the arm, flexed his hands, and sat back, but the red tint of anger still flushed his features. Features that looked too much like her own to be comforting.

She grinned, thinking that if she looked like that when the Dark Knight was angry, it explained why there were few people who would argue with her when she was him. She laughed lightly, remembering Devon’s words. ‘
I probably do not scare you the way you do everyone around you.
’ Perhaps it wasn’t just the Dark Knight who looked like Matthew.

Matthew took another calming breath, that appeared to do no good, and then continued. “I met your mother when she was only seventeen. I married her even though I knew she was in love with someone else, but I loved her so much.” A look of sadness replaced the anger. “I thought I could make her love me.”

Van forced herself to hold his gaze, but she much preferred the anger to this look of loss and pain. “Who was she in love with?” she asked, but was sure she already knew the answer.

“
Paul Burgess. She went to find him when she left me. It took me awhile to track her down, but I eventually found him. When I found him, I found her.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. “I was told she never had you there. They said it was just a boy, Dr. Burgess’s son. I was told that he was about two years younger than you.” He opened his eyes suddenly and looked at her suspiciously. “You were with your mother until you were ten.”

She nodded her head carefully. She was sure now that she should not have come. She had been worried about what she would learn from him and realized a little too late that she should have been more concerned about what he could learn from her.

“
Why then did no one at the village know about you?” His dark black eyes peered at her intently and she fought a compulsion to tell him everything.

She took a deep breath and answered calmly. “They did, they just did not think I was her daughter.”

That was the truth. It was also the only thing she would say on the subject, no matter what else he asked. Surprisingly though, he asked nothing further, just gave a quick nod. She was sure he didn’t believe her and wanted to know why he dropped it, but asking would only draw out a subject that she could not afford to dwell on.

“
When I met her she was sweet and stubborn,” he said, relaxing back into the story once again. He continued talking, but did not take his piercing eyes from her face. “I loved her dearly and wanted nothing more than her love in return.” His intent gaze clouded over as his mind slipped away into the past. He smiled. “I loved to hear her sweet tinkling voice and to watch the sway of her hair as she danced. I wanted her.”

Van let her eyes wander across the room and tried to picture her mother happy in this home, laughing, and dancing. It was an image that came easily.

Matthew’s voice soothed her as he spoke lovingly of her mother. “The sound of her laughter could lighten any burden I may have had and I was determined to marry her even though she was not a—” He jerked his head up and clamped his lips together.

Her eyes swung back to him in shock. “Mother was not a virgin when you married?” She cringed, not really wanting to hear any more about the woman she had looked up to.

“
Do not think badly about your mother,” he said quickly. “It is not her fault what happened.”

“
How can you say that?” If it was true that her mother had stolen away his beloved daughter when she was a year old and hidden her away from him, then how was it possible that he could defend her now? If he was the monster that his mother portrayed him to be all these years, he would not be defending her at all.

“
I say it because it is true and you are here for the truth, not for what I wish for you to hear.” He smiled sadly. “There are things I would rather not tell you, but they are things you need to know.”

He fell silent and she studied him. A sharp and persistent pain began to throb in the center of her mind. She nodded for him to continue and waited.

He took a few moments to gather his thoughts or perhaps to control his emotions before he resumed his tale. “She was in love with him when I met her. I was just too pig headed to care.” He stared down at the trembling hands in his lap.

Van wanted to go to him. To lay her arm across his shoulders in support as Richard had done for her so many nights as she grew up. But she could not bring herself to do so. She kept her seat and allowed him to continue at his own pace.

“
I wanted her and I did things that I regret now. I bribed her father to get his blessing.” He laughed cynically. “I was a lord and Paul just a surgeon. It was not hard, and she was forced into a wedding with the wrong man.”

Van’s heart pulled for Matthew’s pain, but the ache in her mind confused her and she struggled to know who to believe.

“
Dr. Burgess left the area and she rightfully blamed me. I still loved her. There was nothing I could do to get her to love me.” His eyes shimmered with unshed tears. He did not look up, but continued studying his weathered and sun-darkened hands.

He fell silent for a time as he clenched and unclenched his fists. The sound of creaking knuckles sounded loudly in the overpowering silence of the large room. Van took in his hunched shoulders and deep ragged breath. He appeared to be weighed down by some invisible force that he could not shrug from his wide shoulders.

“
Matthew?” she asked softly after several minutes had spun out.

His shoulders twitched and he stopped flexing his fingers, but did not look up. “I forced her nightly into a physical relationship. She fought me all the way. When she got pregnant with you I left her alone, but it took over a year for you to be conceived.”

A silent tear slid down his cheek and tore at Van’s heart. Then his face darkened.

“
I was so happy that she was to have a baby. I had desperately hoped that it would bring us closer together, but it drove her farther from me.”

“
She did not want you to be my father,” Van said almost silently.

He looked up at her, but not in surprise, and then looked back at his hands. He slid them across the knees of his leggings. Sweat from his palms darkened the blue material.

“
No, she did not like the fact that I was your father. She told me on many occasions that I did not deserve you. Even though she was right, it pushed me from her. I refused to take her unwillingly, again, after you were born.” He smiled a weak smile. “I did not have her again and the nights were hard. It had been over a year and a half since you were conceived and since I had taken her.”

His face tightened in a mixture of guilt and regret. “I begged her to love me, to lie with me. She refused and finally one drunken night I took one of the maids. Your mother caught me and went berserk. She hit me with the chamber pot.”

“
You only cheated on her the once?” she asked in a tight quiet voice. She had been told many times that he had been with lovers throughout their entire marriage.

“
Aye, just the once.” His eyes seemed to plead with her when he drew his haunted gaze to her face. “She did not want me, but she did not want anyone else to have me either. I was well into my cups, angry, and lost. I hit her.” His gaze wandered over her shoulder and he stared off into the empty space behind her. “The next thing I knew was she had packed you up and left. I was surprised. Not that she had left, but that she had taken you.”

“
What do you mean not take me?” Van could hear the angry crack in her voice. Pain filled her with the knowledge that her mother might have not wanted her. Pain and anger, because she was not sure she was surprised.

Matthew caught her gaze and held it.

She could feel her face growing red with frustration. It was a mistake to have come here and now her fragile world was on the verge of falling completely apart. There were only a few options available to her in this. One, her father had changed drastically over the years, two he was lying, or three...her mother had lied to her all her life.

“
I am sorry. Truly I am, for I know that all this is not easy for you.” He stood quickly and walked around to the back of his chair. He stared at her over the top of it and clenched his fingers onto the tall back.

She waved away his words. “What do you mean surprised?”

“
I was surprised because she was never interested in you. Not because of you, but because of me. Because you were mine.” He began to pace.

Van wanted to scream at him to stop. The pain in her head was swelling and she was beginning to see small white flashes. The pacing was making it worse as she tried to concentrate on his movements.

Every word he spoke drew her farther away from her mother. If her mother’s lies had not caused such a big difference in her life, it would not be so hard now. But those lies had created a whole new person—a person who did not want to go away.

“
After you were born she refused to spend any time with me, at night or in the day. When I would search her out, we would fight. So I turned all my attention to you. I spent all the time with you while she was off on her own.” He stopped and turned his full attention to her. “I resented it at first, but my love for you took over my feelings for her. When she took you, she took my life,” he said, his voice shaking.

Her mind reeled at the thought that her mother may not have loved her. That she was only a pawn in her mother’s revenge. She tried to push the thoughts away.

“
How did you remarry when you and mother were still married?”

“
I learned that your mother had had the marriage annulled about four years after she had left me.”

Van’s mouth dropped open slightly and she snapped it shut.

Matthew looked at her in confusion. “Surely you knew that, since she had remarried Burgess.”

She nodded. She wanted to be spiteful and tell him the truth, that her mother had never remarried nor had she gotten the marriage annulled. She wanted to hurt him for the hurt he was bringing to her, but she could not. It did not matter now that her mother was gone and it would serve no purpose to hurt the children or his new wife.

“
Tell me about your wife and children, my brothers.” She thought of the boys and found she was anxious to meet them, even though her father said they were nothing like her...or him.

As Matthew told her about his new wife, marriage, and the two boys, ages seven and three, she let her mind wander. She thought back to the first years she remembered. Not only did her mother want her to be a boy, the woman told her to say she was Dr. Burgess’ son. The times that Van had baulked at the idea she remembered her mother getting very angry. What was it she had told her?

‘
You should have been his son. You should be grateful. There is no reason for you to be curious of that other man. He is not your father anymore. Paul is.
’

Could all Matthew said be true? Could her mother have only loved her after she had convinced herself Van was Paul’s child? That she didn’t love Matthew’s daughter, but she loved Paul’s son?

She realized Matthew had stopped talking and was looking expectantly at her, but she could think of nothing to say. “You looked for me.” It was not a question, because although she didn’t want to admit it, she already knew the answer.