The Secret Pearl (51 page)

“Fleur?” he said.

She dropped her hand. She had told him just a little more than a year before that she loved him and always would. Should she be ashamed now that she had spoken the simple truth? Was pride to be guarded at all costs?

“Because it is not only the pianoforte that is my most treasured possession,” she said, fixing her eyes on the top button of his waistcoat. “That is too. I keep them together.”

“Fleur,” he said softly.

“I have nothing else of you,” she said. “Just those two things.”

She wished she could see that button clearly. She wished that he would not see her with tears in her eyes. But she was not ashamed of loving him. She had said she would and she did.

She watched the blur of white as he tossed the letter aside. She watched his waistcoat come closer. She felt his hands framing her face.

Her jaw was set hard. Her face looked as if made of stone. But there were the tears glistening on her eyelashes. And there were her words. And the letter, propped on top of the pianoforte almost a year after she had received it.

“My love,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. If she was to reject him, then so be it. But she would know that he had kept faith with her, that he still loved her more than life and would do so always.

He watched her bite at her upper lip, reach out with trembling hands to touch his waistcoat, withdraw her hands again.

“I love you,” he said. “Nothing has changed in the fifteen months since I told you that. And nothing will ever change.”

“Oh,” she said. She could find no other words and knew that she would not be able to speak them even if she did. She reached out to touch him again and found her hands to be as far beyond her control as her voice was.

But she did not have to find words. Or control. His head bent to hers and his lips touched her own and parted over them, and his hands left her cheeks, one arm to come about her shoulders and the other about her waist. She was drawn against the strength of him, and it did not matter that she was trembling.

Fleur. Soft and warm and feminine, her body arched unashamedly to his, her lips parting beneath his own, her mouth opening to his tongue, her arms coming up about his neck.

Fleur. He allowed himself the full luxury of hope.

“I love you too,” she whispered against his mouth. She kept her eyes closed. There could be no more thought to pride. “I have not stopped loving you for even a moment. And the letter is not always against the vase. Only by day. By night it is beneath my pillow.”

“On the assumption that the pianoforte is too large to put there?” he said with such unexpected humor that she burst into laughter.

He joined in the laughter and hugged her to him.

“Fleur,” he said at last against her ear, “this cannot really be the first time I have laughed in a year, can it? But it feels like it.”

She drew her head back and looked fully at him for the first
time. “I thought I would never see you again,” she said. “When you broke every bone in my hands that morning and jumped into your carriage and drove away, I thought I would never ever see you again.”

“Well,” he said, smiling at her, “that should be no tragedy. I am not much to look at, am I?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head to one side. “Aren’t you? To me you are all the world.”

“A dark and scarred world,” he said.

“A beautiful world,” she said. “A face with character. The face I love most in all the world.”

He took her quite by surprise suddenly by bending down and scooping her up into his arms and sitting with her on his lap on a sofa.

“Guess what I have in my pocket,” he said.

“I don’t know.” She circled his neck with her arms and smiled at him. “A priceless jewel you bought for me.”

“No,” he said. “Try again.”

“A snuffbox,” she said.

“I don’t use the stuff,” he said. “You are not even close.”

“A linen handkerchief,” she said.

“My other pocket.” He was laughing again, and she with him. “What do I have in my other pocket?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “How am I supposed to guess?”

“You should know,” he said. “What, of all other things, would I be sure to bring with me when I came for you at last?”

She shook her head, her smile fading.

“A special license,” he said, suddenly serious too. “A special license, my love, so that I can make you mine without delay once I have got you to say yes.”

“Adam,” she said, touching his scarred cheek. “Oh, Adam.”

“Will you?” he said. “Will you marry me, Fleur? I know I am no prize, and you know some unsavory things about me. But you would have my undivided love and devotion for the rest of
a lifetime. And you would be a duchess, if that is any lure, and mistress of Willoughby. Will you, Fleur?”

“Adam,” she said, tracing the line of the scar downward from his eye to the corner of his mouth. “Think carefully, do. Think of what you know about me, about what I was, what I am.”

“A whore?” he said so that her eyes flew to his in shock and her face flushed painfully. “I am going to tell you something, Fleur, and I want you to listen very carefully. Sybil had consumption. It is very unlikely that she would have survived this year. But she could have had that year or part of it, anyway. She could have had my support and even affection and all of Pamela’s love. But she had had one cruel disappointment in life and another lesser one last summer. She lost her will to live. She would not accept the comfort I tried to give her. She almost totally ignored Pamela. And finally, when she had word of Thomas’ death—before I did—she took what little remained of her life.”

“The poor lady,” Fleur said. “I do feel desperately sorry for her, Adam.”

“So did I,” he said. “But listen to me, Fleur. You were put into a dreadful situation over a year ago. You faced either a noose about your neck or a nightmare of a marriage if you went back home, or starvation if you stayed in hiding. But did you give in to self-pity? No. You fought, doing everything you had to do to survive. You did the ultimate, Fleur. You became a whore. I pity my wife. I honor you more than I can say in words.”

She swallowed. “Perhaps because you know you were the only one,” she said. “How would you feel if there had been a dozen others? Two dozen? More?”

“Fit to kill,” he said. “Before my marriage, Fleur, I slept with more than a dozen women. I could not possibly put a number on them, the women I bedded. How do you feel about that?”

She was silent for a while. “Fit to kill,” she said.

“Does it make you stop loving me?” he asked.

“No.” She laid a palm against his cheek. “That is in the past,
Adam. I have no control over that and you cannot change it. I don’t care about your past.”

“And I don’t care about yours,” he said. “Will you be my duchess, Fleur?”

“Pamela?” she said.

“She seemed a little troubled that I was willing to sacrifice myself by making you my wife just so that I could also make you her mama,” he said. “I had to assure her that it was what I wanted too.” He smiled.

“She adored her mother,” she said.

“Yes, and always will,” he said. “We will have to make sure that she never forgets Sybil, Fleur. And we will hope that memory somewhat distorts the truth. We will hope that she remembers Sybil as a constantly attentive mother as well as a beautiful and indulgent one. You will never be her mother, but you can be her stepmother. And I can tell you from experience that it is possible for her to love both. I have faint, flashing images of my mother and have always associated those images with unconditional love. But I was dearly fond of my stepmother, Thomas’ mother.”

She lowered her head to his shoulder.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, and closed her eyes. There were no other words to say. How could one put into words a happiness that filled one so full to the brim that it was almost a pain?

He settled his cheek against the top of her head and closed his eyes. And felt that there was no further need of words for the moment. It was as he remembered it the night they made love. They could communicate more perfectly through the silence than through the imperfection of words.

“I have a confession to make,” he said at last. “I dreaded having a letter from you to say you were with child, and yet I looked for that letter and hoped for it. You see how in my selfishness I would have made you suffer?”

“I cried when I knew I was not,” she said.

He laughed softly and turned her face up to his with one hand at her chin and kissed her deeply and lingeringly.

“We will have you with child just as soon as can be,” he said. “Tonight maybe?”

“Tonight?” She was laughing against his neck.

“On our wedding night,” he said. “Is it too soon?”

“Tonight?”

“We can wait if you want,” he said. “We can have a planned wedding. We can have it in London if you wish, with half the
ton
in attendance. I daresay even the king would come if we invited him. But I would rather have it today, Fleur. We could spend our first night here in your cottage. Do you have a guest room for Pamela?”

“Yes,” she said, touching his lips with one light finger. “I have dreamed of having you here with me, Adam. My arms have been so empty without you and my bed so cold.”

“They will not be empty tonight, my love,” he said, “and the bed will be warm. And you will not need to dream any longer. It will all be reality.”

“I won’t need your letter beneath my pillow tonight,” she said.

“Or the pianoforte either,” he said, and they both laughed and hugged each other.

“Oh, Adam,” she said, “I have been so lonely without you. It has seemed such an eternity.”

He turned her face up again and they smiled at each other.

“No longer,” he said. “No more loneliness, Fleur, for either of us. Only our marriage and our children and Willoughby and growing old together. Only our love forever.” He lowered his head and kissed her mouth softly. “And longer than forever.”

I
T WAS NOT THAT HE FELT INTIMIDATED, BUT Sydnam Butler was nevertheless moving out of Glandwr House into the thatched, whitewashed cottage that lay in a small clearing among the trees not far from the sea cliffs on one side and the park gates and driveway on the other.

As steward of the estate for the past five years, Sydnam had lived in his own spacious apartments in the main house, and he had always continued to live there even when the owner, the Duke of Bewcastle, was in residence. Bewcastle had always come alone and had never stayed for longer than a few weeks at a time.

But this coming visit was going to be altogether different from what he was accustomed to. This time Bewcastle was bringing his wife with him. Sydnam had never met the Duchess of Bewcastle. He had heard from his brother Kit, Viscount Ravensberg, who lived on the estate adjoining Lindsey Hall, that she was a jolly good sort, who had been known to coax laughter even from such a perennial iceberg as Bewcastle.

Sydnam was somewhat shy with strangers, especially when they were to be sharing a roof with him. And no sooner had he grown accustomed to the idea that the duchess was
accompanying Bewcastle on this particular visit than he received another brief letter from his grace’s secretary to the effect that all the other Bedwyns were coming too, with their spouses and children, to spend a month or so by the sea.

Sydnam had grown up with the Bedwyns. They had all been playmates together, despite a broad range in their ages—the boisterous Bedwyn boys; the fierce Freyja, who had always refused to be treated as a girl; and Morgan, who though the youngest of them all and female to boot had usually found a way to be included in the frolics; and the Butlers, Kit and Sydnam and their late eldest brother, Jerome. All except Wulfric, now Bewcastle, in fact.

Sydnam was not intimidated by the prospect of their coming to Glandwr, then. He was only a little overwhelmed by it. They were all married now. He had met some of their spouses—Lady Aidan, Lady Rannulf, the Marquess of Hallmere—and he had found them all amiable enough. And they all had children now.

Sydnam was not a recluse. As Bewcastle’s steward he had to see all sorts of people on business. There were also neighbors who liked to consult him on farming issues and other matters to do with the land and the community in which they all lived together. And he had a few personal friends—the Welsh minister and the schoolmaster in particular. His acquaintances were almost exclusively male, though. There had been one or two women during the past five years who had indicated a willingnesss to pursue a relationship with him—it was no secret, he supposed, that he was a son of the Earl of Redfield and independently wealthy even though he worked for a living. But he had given them no encouragement. He had always been very well aware that it was his social status and his wealth that had encouraged them to overlook a physical revulsion that none of them had been quite able to hide.

Having to face the bustle of a large gathering at Glandwr was just too much for him when he was accustomed to the
vast, empty, quiet house. And so he was moving out and into the cottage, at least until the house was empty again.

He resented the expected intrusion, if the truth were known, even though he knew that he had no right to object to a man’s coming to his own home with his own wife and his brothers and sisters—and anyone else he chose to invite, for that matter.

He did not look forward to the summer.

He would stay out of the way as much as he was able. He would try at least to remain out of sight of the children. He did not want to frighten them. The worst feeling in the world was to see fear, revulsion, horror, and panic on the faces of children and to know that it was his own appearance that had caused it.

One month, Bewcastle’s secretary had written. Thirty-one days, if that statement was to be taken literally. It seemed like an eternity.

But he would survive it.

He had survived a great deal worse. There had been days—and nights—when he had wished he had not done so. Survived, that was.