She gave him an unsteady smile. "Why didn't you do something to protect yourself when Wilkins was reloading?"
"I knew that Michael would take care of him. And when I knew that you had been hit..." His voice broke off.
"You risked your life for mine, love. Can't I do the same for you?" Clare said with a gentle smile.
His face worked as he tried to control his chaotic emotions.
Before Nicholas could speak, Michael said, "Lady Aberdare is all right?"
Nicholas inhaled, his expression smoothing out. "Yes, thanks to you." He touched Clare's hair with fingers that still trembled slightly.
"Stand up and move away from your wife, Aberdare," Michael said harshly. "It's time to settle what brought us here, and I don't want her to get hurt."
The note in the other man's voice cut through Nicholas's preoccupation. He looked up, suddenly wary.
Michael was standing silhouetted against the setting sun, his pistol locked in his hands.
The gun was pointing straight at Nicholas's heart.
Chapter 32
His gaze on the pistol, Nicholas stood and stepped away from Clare. "So we're back to that," he said conversationally. "You never did say why you want me dead."
Michael moved closer. With the sun no longer behind him, Nicholas could see the wild despair in his green eyes. Whatever madness Michael carried had been triggered by the violence that had almost engulfed them all.
White-faced, Clare struggled to her feet and leaned against the stone wall. "If you kill Nicholas, you'll have to kill me too, Lord Michael," she said fiercely. "Do you think I'll keep silent if you murder my husband?"
"Of course not. You'll see me hanged, and justly so. That doesn't matter." He stepped over to the whip. Keeping his gaze on Nicholas, he stooped and tossed it out of reach. "Perhaps I'll save the hangman the trouble of executing me, because I can't imagine living with myself after this."
"Then don't do it!" she cried. "What has Nicholas done to warrant death at your hands?"
"I promised that justice would be done, never thinking that I would be called on to fulfill my vow," Michael said bleakly. "When the time came, I turned coward. I spent four years in the army, hoping that a bullet would spare me from having to do this. Yet fate preserved me and brought me here." Pain crossed his face. "I can no longer fight fate."
"To whom did you make your vow?" Nicholas asked softly. "My grandfather? He hated me and did his best to alienate my friends, but I never thought he would try to have me killed."
"Not your grandfather. Caroline."
There was a moment of frozen silence. Then rage exploded through Nicholas. "Christ, so you were one of her lovers! I should have guessed. The evidence was all there, but I didn't want to believe it." His voice cracked. "I wasn't able to believe it, not of you."
"We loved each other from the first time we met, at your wedding, when it was already too late," Michael said, his face stark with guilt. "Because you were my friend, I fought against my feelings, and so did she. But... but we could not stay apart."
"So you became another victim of Caroline's lies," Nicholas said with furious disgust.
"Don't speak of her that way!" Michael's fingers whitened on the butt of the pistol. "She would never have been unfaithful if you had not mistreated her so wickedly." His words poured out as if they had been festering. "She told me all about you—your cruelty, the revolting things you forced her to do. At first I had trouble believing it. Yet how much does a man know about how his friends treat women?"
"And how much does a man know about how a woman treats other men?" Nicholas said caustically.
Before he could continue, Michael cut him off. "After I saw the bruises on her body and she had cried in my arms, I came to believe. Caroline was terrified of you. She said that if she died mysteriously, you would be to blame, and that I must avenge her. I gave her my word, never thinking that I would have to carry it out. Even though you had treated her monstrously, I never believed you capable of murder."
"If Caroline had bruises, it was because she liked her sex rough—as her lover, you must have noticed that," Nicholas snapped. "And she died in a coach accident because she insisted that the driver go too fast. I had nothing to do with it."
"Perhaps you caused the accident, perhaps not. It doesn't matter. If she hadn't feared you, she would not have fled Aberdare when you were caught in the act of bedding your grandfather's wife! You are as responsible as if you shot her in the heart." Michael wiped the sweat from his face with a trembling hand. "Did you know that she was pregnant when she died? She was carrying my child, and she was running away to me. I had begged her to leave you earlier, but she refused from some mistaken sense of honor."
"Caroline didn't know the meaning of honor." Nicholas's mouth twisted. "But maybe you did father her child. Certainly it wasn't me—I hadn't touched Caroline in months. You weren't the only candidate for the honor, though."
"Don't slander a woman who can't defend herself!"
The hysterical edge in Michael's voice forced Nicholas to rein in his anger. Though he had never truly believed that his old friend wanted to kill him, the fact that Caroline was involved changed everything. Now Michael was holding a gun, and if he snapped, Nicholas was a dead man.
He would have to reveal the whole ugly story; there was no other choice. Unable to suppress his bitterness, Nicholas spat out, "Caroline was my grandfather's mistress!"
There was a moment of horrified silence, and he heard Clare gasp. Then Michael shouted, "You're lying!"
As Michael's finger tightened on the trigger, Clare cried out desperately, "No! I beg you, don't do this."
The urgency of her plea caused Michael to hesitate, his face reflecting the struggle raging inside him.
Swiftly Nicholas said, "Damn it, Michael, we've known each other for twenty years, and for most of that time we were closer than brothers. Don't you owe me a chance to be heard?"
The wildness faded a little, though Michael didn't lower the pistol. "Go ahead then, but don't expect to change my mind."
Nicholas drew a deep breath, knowing that he must be both calm and convincing. "As you know, my grandfather arranged the marriage to secure the succession. Once I met Caroline, I agreed to the match quite willingly. But the marriage was a lie from the start. When I made my offer, she tearfully confessed that she was not a virgin—that an older man, a friend of the family, had seduced her when she was fifteen years old. She wept very prettily, and was so convincing that I would have called her seducer out if she hadn't said the man was already dead."
"I was willing to overlook what had happened, yet after we married, I began to wonder if she had told me the truth—she was remarkably skilled for a girl who claimed to be the next thing to a virgin. At the very least, she had had a serious affair. I didn't like the idea that she had lied, but women have never had the freedom to sin that men have. I decided that Caroline thought that she had to conceal the truth in order to make a respectable marriage."
The planes of his face went taut when he thought of his gullibility. "I wanted to make excuses for her. She said that she loved me, you see, and she was so responsive that it was easy to believe her. And I... I don't know if I loved her, but I wanted to." Nicholas started to say more, then cut himself off; he would rather be shot than reveal more of himself.
Returning to the safer topic of his wife's behavior, he said, "I thought we had a good marriage until the night I went to her bed and found love bites on her breasts. She made no attempt to deny her infidelity. Instead, she laughed and said that she didn't expect fidelity of me, and I shouldn't expect it of her. She claimed to know how to prevent conception, and gave me her word that she would not bear a child that was not mine."
Once again he felt the disgust that had swept through him when he realized that the marriage he had begun to need was a travesty. "I flatly refused to accept those conditions. Thinking she could change my mind, she tried to seduce me. When I refused, she became furious, sa
ying that no man had ever left her, and swearing that she would make me regret it. And she did. Christ, she did." He caught Michael's gaze with his own. "That little scene took place in April of 1809. Would it be fair to say that her love for you overcame her moral scruples about adultery within a few weeks of that night?"
The grayness of Michael's face was answer enough.
Nicholas took an unobtrusive step closer to Michael before continuing. "I packed her off to Aberdare and stayed in London myself. In retrospect, I should have been suspicious of how tamely she went, but I was too confused to think clearly. After a spell of trying to find the meaning of life in bottles and boudoirs, I decided that it was time to go to Aberdare and talk to Caroline. I thought that she might have had a change of heart and we could try to cobble the marriage together again."
"Instead, it was a classic theatrical farce: the foolish husband returning home unexpectedly and finding his wife in bed with another man. And the other man was my grandfather. "
It was betrayal beyond his worst nightmares, and even now his stomach knotted with remembered horror. "They both laughed at me while the old earl happily explained how clever he had been. Very like Madoc, now that I think about it. From the beginning, my grandfather had despised my Gypsy blood and schemed for a way to get around it. He was hampered by the long illness of his first wife, but as soon as she died, he married again. However, Emily failed to conceive, in spite of his best efforts."
"You're lying," Michael said tightly. "Why should your grandfather go to such efforts to have another son when you would inherit anyhow?"
"You underestimate his ingenuity," Nicholas said dryly. "He prepared a set of obviously false documents about the marriage of my parents and my own birth. If he had managed to sire another son, he would have destroyed the real papers and taken the false ones to a lawyer, saying sorrowfully that his desire for an heir had encouraged him to believe that I was legitimate, but he could deceive himself no longer. I would have been disinherited and thrown out like the piece of rubbish he always thought I was."
Clare made a soft exclamation. "Those were the duplicate documents I discovered in the family Bible. The ones you burned."
"You understand now why I was angry?" Nicholas continued, "But he didn't manage to impregnate Emily, so he had to find another way to cut me out. He had always been a lusty old bull, though he was discreet about his affairs. He didn't want to jeopardize his reputation for piety. Since Caroline was already his mistress, he came up with the notion of marrying her to me. She probably agreed because the sheer decadence of the arrangement titillated her. Bloody hell, she might have suggested it herself."
"The reason my grandfather was so willing to explain all this to me was because Caroline had just told him she was pregnant. He was triumphant, absolutely convinced that it was his child and male. My Gypsy blood would disappear from the Davies line because after my death, I'd be succeeded by my grandfather's son. Charming little scheme, wasn't it?" Nicholas's voice became sardonic. "He went on to say how clever Caroline was, and how she had taken precautions to insure that she would not become pregnant by me. My guess is that since he failed with Emily, the child was probably yours, not that it matters.
"If ever I was to commit murder, it would have been that night. But I didn't lay a hand on either of them. Instead, I said that I was going to take Emily to London. Then she and I would institute the two ugliest divorce suits in British history so that my grandfather and Caroline would be revealed for what they were. I had inherited money from my grandmother, so I was in a financial position to do it."
His hands clenched. "Perhaps I could be accused of causing my grandfather's death. Adultery, betrayal, and incest didn't bother him, but apparently the threat of exposure triggered a heart seizure almost as soon as I left the room to go to Emily. He died in his own bedchamber. I think Caroline helped him there to conceal their misconduct. Then she took her jewels and abandoned her lover and went tearing off into the storm to you, as you were clearly the best choice left."
"Even in death, her luck held. When my grandfather's valet came to inform Emily that her husband was dying, he found us together, Emily in her nightgown. So she and I got the accusation of adultery, and Caroline died with the reputation of the saintly, injured wife."
"You're lying," Michael said again, his face ashen. "You're making this up to conceal your own crimes."
Clare spoke up, her voice soft. "Lord Michael, I am Nicholas's wife now. Our courtship was a difficult one, and many men might have been driven to violence. But not Nicholas. I, who know him better than anyone, swear that he could never abuse a woman the way Caroline claimed."
As Michael wavered, Nicholas began walking toward him, one step at a time. "In all the years we've known each other, did I ever lie to you?" He stopped moving and held his breath when wildness flared in the green eyes again.
"Not that I know of," Michael said hoarsely, "but I saw you lie to others. You would spin outrageous tales about being an Indian prince, or a Turkish warrior, or God knows what else. Later we would laugh about how convincing you were. You were so persuasive that one of the most avaricious courtesans in London bedded you for free because she thought you were royalty. Why should I believe you now?"
"Those were innocent games. I don't lie to friends." Nicholas began moving slowly forward again. "Christ, if I were lying, do you think I would make up a tale so utterly humiliating? To be cuckolded by my own grandfather! Not only is the very idea obscene, it makes me look like a weak fool. I preferred to be thought a monster whose wicked selfishness had destroyed his own family."
A last step brought him face to face with the other man. "When I left Britain, I didn't think I would ever come back. But running away didn't take away my pain, any more than returning to the army took away yours. Murder won't help, either." He held out his hand. "Give me the pistol."
Michael took a step back and the gun sagged toward the ground. His face was a deathly gray and he was shaking, like a man being torn apart from within.
Quietly Nicholas took the weapon from the other man's unresisting hand. After unloading it, he tossed it aside.
Michael crumpled in on himself, folding to the ground and burying his face in his hands. "I knew that what I was doing was utterly wrong," he said with anguish. "Yet I couldn't keep away from her, even though it meant betraying everything I believed."
Clare crossed the grass and knelt beside him. "To love and be loved is the most powerful of human needs," she said with deep compassion. "The fact that Caroline was unworthy of your love was tragedy, not a crime." Gently she took his hands in hers. "It was a terrible thing to be caught between two loyalties, but that's over now. Don't torture yourself any longer."
"What I did was unforgivable," he said dully.
"Nothing is unforgivable if there is true repentance."
She spoke with a power that reminded Nicholas of her father. Her kindness and warm certainty were balm to the soul, and he felt his own bitterness begin to dissolve. What was done, was done. He must not let anger poison his life with Clare.
For Michael it was harder. He raised his head, tears marking his gaunt cheeks. "In London I called you a whore and I came within a hair's breadth of killing your husband. Can you forgive that? I can't."
"But you didn't do it." Clare brushed his hair back as if he were one of her schoolchildren. "Deeds are what matter. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't force yourself to commit that ultimate betrayal of your friendship." She cast an appealing glance up at Nicholas, silently asking him to help.
Nicholas's fists tightened. It hurt, badly, to know that one of his closest friends had been Caroline's lover. It had been easier to accept madness than betrayal. Yet as he studied Michael's tormented face, he felt unexpected pity. Though Caroline had put Nicholas through hell, he had never had to suffer the bitter self-reproach that was shattering Michael.
He knelt beside the other man. "Caroline was the most convincing liar I've ever met, and she made
fools of all of us. I never loved her as you did, yet even so, she almost destroyed me. She did her best to wreck our friendship, too, because she knew how much it meant to me. Will you let her have that success beyond the grave?"
Clare still held Michael's hand, so Nicholas laid his own on top of theirs. "I've missed you, Michael. We've all missed you. It's time to come home."
Michael made a choked sound. Then his hand turned and grasped Nicholas's with desperate strength.
The three sat like that for a long time. Nicholas sent his mind back, past violence and betrayal, to the best memories of his long friendship with Michael. As a foreign-looking schoolboy who didn't fit into the smug world of Eton, Nicholas had needed his friends badly. Michael had been a rock—utterly loyal, and utterly reliable. As dusk enfolded them, the warmth of those memories dissolved Nicholas's anger; he hoped that some of the warmth of that shared past was reaching the other man.
Finally Michael took a deep breath and lifted his head. "Nicholas, can you forgive what I've done?" he said with stark, painful humility. "If the positions were reversed and you had been involved with my wife, I don't know if I could."
"We're different in many ways—that's part of the point of friendship. Besides, though you considered killing me, you didn't. Instead, you saved my life, and that of Clare. For that, I can forgive anything." Nicholas held out his hand. "Pax?"
After a moment of hesitation, Michael shook it, his grip ferociously tight, as if he were grasping a lifeline that had dropped into hell. "Pax. And... thank you, Nicholas. You're a better man than I."
"I doubt it, but I do know that it's easier to forgive when one has a full heart." His gaze touched Clare.
Movements stiff, Michael got to his feet. In a heartbreaking attempt at humor, he said, "What does one do after making a supreme fool of oneself?"
Nicholas stood and helped Clare up. "One gets on with life. Show me a man who has never made a fool of himself and I'll show you someone who is supremely boring."