VIscount Besieged (21 page)

‘
If I
have done so,’ she said, low-toned, not looking at him, ‘have I not
had cause?’

‘
Real
or imagined?’ came Roborough’s dry tones.

She spun
instantly, the unsettling confusion flying into fury again. ‘Oh,
and did I imagine what I heard you speak to Thornbury in this very
room? Was I dreaming when I was forced to comprehend Syderstone’s
words to me the other night?’

Roborough’s mood
darkened. Had he not known it? What mischief had the man
brewed?

‘
What
did he say to you?’

Isadora advanced
towards the desk, something between anger and entreaty in her face.
Distress gave her voice a husky quality.

‘
If I
tell you, are you going to swear it isn’t true? Or will you take
your usual method and thrust the matter aside? After all, what
business is it of mine?’

‘
Isadora, I cannot answer you if you will persist in talking in
riddles.’

‘
I
don’t wish you to answer,’ she cried despairingly, ‘for I know what
you will say and I cannot bear it!’

There was
silence for a moment. Roborough found his anger melting away.
Isadora was leaning her hands on the desk, confronting him across
the top of it. But her eyes were luminous with unshed tears, and
something—compassion, what else?—caused his heart to
contract.

Without quite
realising what he did, he came around the desk. She straightened up
as he reached her, staring him defiantly in the eye, although she
blinked the wetness away.

His nearness
seemed to menace her, although he made no attempt to touch her. But
Isadora felt as if a heat radiated from him—a heat that raced like
quicksilver down through her limbs and about her loins, and up
through her bosom to spread over her face.

Roborough saw
her lips quiver and the words that had been hovering on the tip of
his tongue slid away from him. He grasped at them, tried to recall
them. But all he could think about was her features gazing up at
him, something in her eyes that seemed compound of alarm and
bewilderment. Then what came out of his mouth was not what he had
meant to say at all.

‘
What
cannot you bear?’ he asked softly.

‘
The
knowledge,’ Isadora answered out of the extraordinary closeness
that had appeared from nowhere, ‘that you are a reckless and
irresponsible gamester.’

Watching him,
for an instant Isadora thought that her words had not registered.
But then his face changed. The line of his jaw tightened, the
light eyes hardened, and the whole cast of his countenance took on
that bitter look. He curled his lip as he spoke.

‘
Syderstone’s work, I collect?’

Isadora,
painfully conscious of his freezing-up, wished she could recall the
words. But they were out, and she had no choice but to say it
all.

‘
He
told me you owe him money for a gambling debt.’

The bitter twist
to his lip became more pronounced. His voice was harsh.

‘
Which of course makes me a reckless and irresponsible
gamester.’

Isadora bit her
lip. ‘Are you saying it is not true?’

‘
Why
should I? Would you believe me if I did?’

Slowly she shook
her head, aware of a huge weight descending upon her. He was right.
She had expected him to deny it. That he did not, she found, was
not sufficient to allay her ill belief of him. But it should make a
difference. It should
.
Or he should at least, if he was
innocent of the charge, plead it so.

‘
You
don’t deny it, then?’

‘
The
debt?’ he said, and laughed shortly, without mirth.
‘No.’

Isadora felt her
heart contract. ‘Then it’s true.’

The viscount had
not moved from where he stood. But his close proximity now only
served to heighten the dreadful sensation of alienation Isadora was
experiencing. It was a hateful feeling. She wanted to scream at
him,
Deny it! Tell me it isn’t true!
But there was no scream
left in her.

‘
Roborough,’ she said in a forlorn sort of voice, ‘this is not
some hideous notion you have of punishing me for daring to accuse
you? For if it is, I beg you will not continue with it. If
Syderstone was lying—’

‘
He
was not lying,’ he said in the hardest voice she had ever heard him
use. ‘I owe him money. The money is for a gambling
debt.’

Then he turned,
moving away, as if he could not bear to be near her. If he had been
asked to describe his emotions he could not have done so. He did
not understand them himself. He had never experienced so flat a
feeling of finality, such deadly sickness within himself. He knew
that beneath it all there was a hard core of intense and vibrant
fury. But it was directed at Isadora, and some small vestige of
what he had enjoyed in her company—it seemed all at once a very
long time ago—prevented him from allowing himself to unleash
it.

Perhaps, too,
some vague recognition of justice. Syderstone must shoulder part of
the blame—that part that he did not attribute to Isadora. The
rest—well, that had long been brought home to its
source.

He looked back
at Isadora’s still questioning features. The bitter hurt that
underlay the anger thrust itself through. Was there nothing in his
conduct, in his manner, in his very speech to distinguish him from
the real perpetrator of the evils? But it was not that. It was,
pure and simple, her lack of faith. There was no reason in the
world, he acknowledged, why she should trust him any more than she
would trust any man. But her failure to do so was as devastating as
if she had actively betrayed him.

Isadora felt his
thought like a scourging whiplash although she did not understand
it. It had the effect, however, of rousing her ire once
more.

‘
Well, do not glare at me as if I am in the wrong,’ she
protested fiercely, pinning his feeling down with uncanny accuracy.
She moved away herself so that she put distance between
them.

‘
As
if it would make any difference to you if you were,’ he threw at
her across the room.

‘
Oh,
so now we have it, do we? You have done wrong, but I must pay the
price, is that it? Well, I promise you, Roborough, if you have the
idea to pay off your gambling debt with me, you may think
again.’

For an astounded
moment, his anger was suspended. ‘What nonsense is
this?’

‘
Is
that not what this has been all about? You will marry me to
Syderstone and thus cancel the debt?’

He answered out
of the turmoil within him, with neither thought nor
intent.

‘
That, if it were only possible, is the most tempting solution
you have yet saddled me with. But frankly, Isadora, I doubt if he
would consider you worth it. For my part, I would not blame
him.’

With which, he
turned swiftly away and walked out of the library.

***

Disconsolate,
Isadora stared through the outer door of her little parlour,
watching the unending drizzle that had misted down from a brooding
sky day after dreary day for the last—how long? It felt like a
lifetime, although it could only have been a few days. But time had
submerged into one single whole since the precipitate departure of
the gentlemen last week.

She could not
deceive herself that her mood was caused merely by the dismal
weather. The whole household was dull; tempers were peevish and
she herself was at outs with everyone. Not that there was anything
unusual about that. Except that they all blamed her for the
viscount’s sudden decision to leave for Barton Stacey. Even
Thornbury had tried to convince Cousin Matty that he had taken the
step on receipt of a letter from home, which just happened to
coincide with the outbreak of hostilities in the
library.

‘
But
we heard you, Dora,’ Fanny had insisted. ‘Rowland and I both heard
you and Cousin Roborough shouting at each other.’

‘
Then
you should not have been listening,’ Isadora had told her
furiously.

But it would not
do. Fanny had made out enough of the words to report to her mother
that the two of them had been quarrelling over his decision to
marry her to Syderstone, and since Cousin Matty herself disclosed
these tidings only moments before to Isadora there could be no
doubt that she had so much infuriated Roborough that he could no
longer bear to stay in the house. Thus determined the
family.

Moreover, with
his departure—the very next morning, to make matters
worse—Syderstone had felt himself unable to remain. So it was that
the family were deprived of the enjoyment of their company, and
Isadora lost two potential suitors at one blow. In vain did she
remind Cousin Matty of her own understanding of the viscount’s
determination not to marry—least of all herself—for both elder
ladies felt he might have changed his mind if she had only
conducted herself suitably.

Just as if she
had never announced her own feelings on the subject. After
informing her accusers in no uncertain terms that she could not
care tuppence for the loss of two such suitors, either one of whom
she would have married only at gunpoint, she had flounced off to
her parlour to brood on the fact that Roborough had proved himself
as black as she had painted him.

This thought she
could not readily shrug aside. Why she did not know. Had she not
determined his character at the outset? Oh, he was ready enough
with his tongue—a quip at every turn to charm unwary ears. But the
outward show of warmth and friendliness, his very determination to
make everyone like him—had she not known that from the very
first?—was all sham and artifice. Stripped of his mask, had he
proved equal to the challenge of beguiling her into believing in
his integrity? Had he denied the offence, called her doubts into
question and laid them all to rest? No, he had not. Oh, but how
much she yearned for it that he had. But instead he had admitted
the offence.

And, not content
with blackening his own character, he had turned the accusation
around and flung it in her face. He could not think her worth the
price of the debt—that was what he had meant. How dared he? What
had she done to him that he should belittle her so? True, she had
not curbed her temper, or kowtowed to his authority. But nothing
she had said or done could in any way match the heinous crime of
which he had admitted his guilt.

She must
conclude that his real character had showed through at the last. He
would not bother to don that playful act again—how alluring had
been that facade!—now that she knew him for what he was. Though he
had resumed it for the family. Her discomfort in his presence that
evening at dinner had been acute. Such charm; such wit and
laughter! But for herself not a look, not a smile, not the
slightest vestige of acknowledgement that she even
existed.

Though it killed
her to admit it, this omission had afflicted her to no little
extent. He must have known how distressed she was by the outcome of
their confrontation. He
had
known. For had there not been
that one soft moment, just before she had loosed the shaft that
changed the tide? But so callous was he that all he had been
concerned about was consolidating his position within the
family—presumably so that anything she might choose to say against
him would not be believed.

Well, if he
cared so little, she
,
let him be assured, cared not at all.
But she sighed on the thought, drawing her black shawl more closely
around her shoulders, for it was chilly in spite of the small fire
that the butler had lit for her in her private parlour.

If only the rain
would cease. It must be that which weighed so heavily on her
spirits. How long had it been since she had even opened a volume of
Shakespeare? Let the sun but come out again, and she could find
once more that joy in her acting that had illuminated her life
prior to the entry into it of a certain gentleman on whom she no
longer wished to spend a single thought. He was not worth
it.

But this
immediately reminded her of the lowering value he had placed on her
own worth, and for the hundredth time she replayed that dreadful
scene in her mind. She was rescued at length by a light knock at
the door and Hampole entered on her invitation.

‘
Mr
Witheridge is here, Miss Dora, and begging the favour of a
word.’

Edmund? What did
he want? She had not seen either of the Witheridges since
Roborough’s departure, for Harriet had sent a note to say that she
had caught a cold that rainy day of Isadora’s quarrel with the
viscount, and would be abed for a day or so. Perhaps Edmund came in
the guise of a messenger to tell her how Harriet did?

‘
Very
well, Hampole, I will see him in here.’

She had not been
used to see anyone but Harriet in her little parlour. But things
had changed so much, and they were inevitably now to leave this
place, so that there seemed no point in maintaining her undisputed
rights over it.

It was evident,
when Edmund entered the room, that he had ridden over. He had shed
his greatcoat and his hat, but his fair locks were damp at the ends
and his boots showed evidence of recent wiping. Moreover, he was
rubbing his ungloved hands as he eyed Isadora a trifle
self-consciously.