His dark skin drew sharply taut over his high cheekbones. Sitting back on his heels, he said, "I suppose I deserved that."
She had no more intended to hurt Gervase than he had intended to hurt her. The fact that neither of them wished to wound did not make it any less devastating.
"I spoke the truth, Diana. I love you as I have never loved any other woman." His sincerity was too raw to be feigned. "If it were possible, I would marry you. Since it is not, I hope love is enough to hold you, because it is the most I can give."
The room was utterly silent. Diana felt faint as the blood drained from her face. He had come the entire distance that she had wanted, and now that he had, she was terrifyingly uncertain how to proceed. Finally she said unevenly, "It is a compliment that you contemplated marriage, but of course a man of your position and consequence could not possibly take a courtesan to wive."
His detachment shattered and he stood, looming over her as he gripped her chin with one hand and forced her to look at him. All the passion she knew he was capable of burned in his eyes as he swore, "Consequence be damned! Make no mistake, Diana, if I could, I would marry you tomorrow."
As Madeline had said, passion was dangerous, a double-edged sword, unpredictable in its consequences. Diana had wanted to break through Gervase's hard shell of control. Now, terrifyingly, she had. He had always been gentle, careful with his formidable strength, but now he was frightening in his intensity. His clear gray eyes were no longer like ice, but were windows to the fierceness of the emotions burning inside him.
"I would most certainly marry you"—his grip tightened convulsively, and a dozen heartbeats passed before he could continue—"because that would give me the right to kill any other man who touched you."
Chapter 19
His fingers tight around Diana's jaw after those too-revealing violent words, Gervase felt the pulse in her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment, the thick dark lashes shadowing her delicate skin, then opened them again. She had been bewildered and defensive, but now she challenged: "If you feel that strongly, then why won't you marry me? A wife swears fidelity, and I would honor my vows."
He let go of her and spun away. Nine years ago he had known that someday he must pay the penalty for his unforgivable crime against an innocent, and now the price was being exacted from his very marrow. He kept his back turned to Diana to conceal how difficult it was to answer. Taking a deep, deep breath, he replied, "I can't marry you because I have a wife."
The silence stretched, unbearably empty, until finally he turned to Diana. She was curled tightly in the chair, her knees drawn under her, her face unreadable but her body tense and rejecting. "So the rumors of the mad wife in Scotland are true?"
Except for the barest explanation to his lawyer, he had never once spoken of that black night in the Hebrides, but he owed Diana the truth of why he could not make her his wife. Besides, he felt obscurely that having to confess his crime to the person he cared most about was part of his punishment. "She is in Scotland, but she's not mad. She's... simple."
Diana's beautiful eyes widened in astonishment. "You mean... you married a girl who is mentally deficient?" At his nod, she continued, "Why on earth did you do that?"
His fingers raked his dark hair in agitation; then he sat opposite Diana, knowing he must tell her the full damning story. "I married her at the point of a gun, or close enough. "
As she sat in waiting silence, he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, his head bowed over his linked fingers. "It happened nine years ago. I was touring the Hebrides and stopped at an inn on the Isle of Mull. One of the barmaids was easily persuaded to visit me after she finished work."
His fingers tightened. "I'd had too much to drink, and when I went to my room I didn't realize that the woman in my bed was not the barmaid. The girl who was there started screaming and her father burst in. He was certainly mad, a crazed, sex-obsessed vicar named Hamilton who insisted that I had compromised his daughter and must marry her."
"I suppose this is where the gun comes in," Diana said in a voice of studied neutrality.
"Yes, although I was drunk enough and angry enough that I took the pistol away from him." The viscount stared down at his interwoven hands, remembering the hoarse voice and compelling eyes of the mad vicar, who believed his witless daughter was an irresistible temptress luring men to sin. The mad vicar, who had been his father-in-law for all these years.
"Why do you say the girl was simple?" Diana asked, curiosity overcoming her detachment.
"She could hardly speak. The few words she said were almost incomprehensible. And her eyes and face were... wrong. Empty. As if there was no one there."
More wondering silence. Then, "Under the circumstances, why on earth did you go through with the ceremony?"
Gervase shook his head. "I'm not really sure. I didn't realize something was wrong with her until later. At first I believed Hamilton and his daughter had arranged it all to trap me, and perhaps they did—I still don't know. But then I found out he was a clergyman, a gentleman of sorts, so his daughter could be considered gently bred." He shrugged helplessly. "Even though it was unintentional, I had compromised her. And so, because I was confused, uncertain of the right thing to do, raised to be a 'gentleman,' I married her." With bitter humor he added, "I have never gotten drunk from that day to this."
Diana still sat in that tight withdrawn knot, her eyes hooded and inscrutable. Ironic that they were reversing their earlier roles; now she was composed but he was distraught. Her gaze strangely intent, she asked, "When you had had time to think clearly, why didn't you have the marriage annulled? After all, it took place under coercion."
Shaking his head, he returned his gaze to his hands. "I never thought I would want to marry, so an annulment didn't seem important." He gave a twisted smile. "I never imagined that a woman like you existed. But even if I had wanted it, an annulment was impossible."
"Why?" Her gentle voice was relentless.
"Because... the marriage was consummated."
"So you seduced a girl of feeble mind? I suppose it wouldn't have been difficult." Her cool voice had a knife-sharp edge. "You can be very persuasive."
"I didn't know then that there was anything wrong with her." The blank child's face, slack and swollen with tears, was vivid to his inner eye. Then his guilt forced him to add, "And I didn't seduce her."
"Oh, she seduced you?" Diana said, caustic now.
"That's not what happened." Gervase was unable to sit still any longer and he stood, his agitation needing physical release. "I was angry, she was my wife... and I forced her." He turned to Diana, willing her to understand, to extend some of her infinite compassion to help him, but she simply stared at him, wearing the blind mask of Justice.
"She was scarcely more than a child, she didn't really understand what was happening, and I raped her." His anguished voice rose. "In my anger and wounded pride and drunkenness, I overpowered and injured a helpless innocent."
He closed his eyes, trying to block out the memories of the girl's pain and panic as the walls reflected echoes of his guilt and self-loathing. Hoarse and low, he said, "Don't bother to say anything, I've already said it to myself a thousand times."
He whirled away again, covering the length of the room in angry strides, wishing as he had so often before that he could repeal that moment of time, that he had left the girl without touching her, that he did not have to admit such base behavior to the woman he loved.
Diana's caustic voice followed him. "How nobly you are suffering for your sins. I'm sure your guilt has been a great comfort to the child you ravished and abandoned."
Gervase swung back to face her, shocked by the bitter condemnation of her words. Defensive, he said, "I couldn't undo my actions, but I made a settlement on her behalf, contingent on her being properly cared for. I could do no more."
"Oh?" Diana inquired with a mockery of sweetness. "You have visited her, seen to her welfare, made certain that her mad father has
n't abused her?"
He flushed at her sarcasm. "I went to India within a fortnight. My lawyer took care of the arrangements. He would have informed me if anything was wrong."
"And of course you didn't want to know more. You signed over some money, then left her to rot." Her voice was a whiplash. "Or does your lawyer visit her, to see for himself that she is well-treated?"
"I don't think he has ever gone in person," was the reluctant acknowledgment.
"All your guilt and regret are for your unhappiness, your failure to live up to your own standards of honor." Diana uncoiled from the chair, her slim body radiating fury. "Nothing you have said shows genuine concern for the girl you married. Nothing! Her mad father may be keeping her locked in a stinking cell. He may have sold her to a brothel. She may be dead. How would you or your precious lawyer know?"
"Why the devil are you so outraged?" Gervase said incredulously. He strode across the room, stopping a scant arm's length away from her. "I should think you would be praying that she's dead. Then you could be a viscountess. Isn't that what you want—position, security, comfort?"
In their months together, he had never seen her truly angry, and it was shocking to see such rage in the woman who had won him with her gentleness. In a voice that trembled on the edge of hysteria, she cried, "In a world where men rape innocents and abandon them without another moment's serious thought, you wonder why I am outraged? Ask any woman who has ever been victim of a man's selfishness and violence why she is angry. Ask Madeline. Ask Edith. Ask the child you married."
Gervase had wondered how a woman like Diana had turned to harlotry, and now he knew, not in detail, but in essence. She, too, had been grievously injured, and her grief and hard-earned compassion made her a champion of all women's anguish. Her fury came from some well of torment buried deep inside her. Understanding that, he could not return anger.
And Diana's accusations were just. The thought of what he had done to Mary Hamilton had tormented him, but more because it was proof of his own deeply flawed nature than because of empathy with his victim. After making a minimal reparation, after handing over money he would scarcely miss, he had thought no more about the girl's welfare.
No matter that their marriage was a mockery. She was his responsibility, one he had not properly discharged. He closed his eyes, shuddering. He had dismissed her as barely human. In its way, that was a crime as wicked as the initial act of violence. God only knew what kind of life she lived with that evil father of hers.
Gervase had faced black truths about himself before, and he did not let himself turn away from this one. He took a deep breath, then said flatly, "You are right. I have behaved as badly over the last years as I did at the beginning."
Diana had been staring at him, her fists clenched with the force of her feelings, but his words undercut her anger. Calmer now, she asked, "Are you going to do anything about it?"
"I'll find out from my lawyer where she is living and visit her myself. I imagine I will know what to do when I see her condition." He thought a moment. "The sooner it is done, the better. I can leave the day after tomorrow. I suppose I'll be gone a fortnight or so."
Even though she was under control again, Diana still looked unapproachable, her face set and remote. Now more than ever Gervase wanted to hold her, to forget his transgressions in the sweet depths of her body, but there was still too much anger in the air. Nor did he deserve comfort or reward until he had discharged the debts of the past.
Instead, he picked up his hat and left. As he went out the front door, he humorlessly considered the irony of having a mistress who was so concerned about the welfare of his wife.
* * *
As the door closed, Diana sank back into her chair, her shaking body huddled in the circle of her arms as the scene with Gervase replayed in her head. You were watched in my absence.... Did you sell the information to a French spy, or casually mention it to one of your other lovers? Did he really think that she could betray him? Or give herself to another man when there was such intimacy between them?
I have a wife... she's simple.... She was scarcely more than a child, and I raped her. Diana had known that some crisis was imminent, that long-buried secrets would erupt from the depths like lava, but still his words astonished her. She had never anticipated such a confession, nor had she expected the shattering fury that had possessed her.
Because I love you... because I love you. The words she had longed for with hope and uncertainty echoed in her mind, and she let the tears she had been fighting flow unchecked. The crisis was far from over, there was still much to be resolved—but he loved her, as she loved him, and surely that would be enough to carry them through what lay ahead.
Exhausted though she was by emotional storms, when Diana returned to her rooms she began to pack.
* * *
Gervase made no attempt to sleep that night, knowing that his feelings were strung too tightly to permit rest, and that he had much to do before he headed north. He wrote a short note to his lawyer, asking for his wife's current direction, and no more; it would be better to learn everything else himself.
Through the rest of the night and into the day, he swiftly dealt with the most urgent of his business. Though all of it was important, nothing unexpected appeared until late in the afternoon, when he received a dispatch from one of his agents. Enclosed were documents taken from an enemy courier captured in Kent just before embarkation to France. Under the seal of the Phoenix, Gervase found a neatly coded summary of the information that he himself had just brought back from the Continent.
He stared at the tiny, cribbed notations on the thin sheets of paper as a wave of nausea broke over him. He had been back in England for less than three days and already the Phoenix had learned what he had discovered and was alerting his masters. Perhaps the information had been sold by a spy at Whitehall, but with cruel clarity Gervase recalled leaving his pack in Diana's drawing room. He had slept late the next morning, and when he woke his cleaned clothes and pack had been waiting by her bed.
There had been ample time for her to search his belongings, to copy the terse notes he had made. There's a fellow hanging about, a French lord, the Count de Veseul. He had asked her about Farnsworth and Francis, but they had not discussed Veseul. She had denied selling information or taking any new lovers in his absence, but perhaps Veseul was an old lover. Or perhaps she was simply a liar, beginning to end, and he was a gullible, passion-poisoned fool.
Sitting at his desk, Gervase buried his head in his hands. He'd had only one good night's sleep in weeks, had not slept at all the night before. He was in no condition to judge Diana's truth or falsity. All he could do was face his problems one at a time.
First the trip north to locate his wife and make what provisions seemed necessary. Diana's outrage had shown him that this was a task that must be accomplished for its own sake, as well as to demonstrate his remorse and good faith to Diana. He must assure himself that Mary Hamilton was alive and well-treated, and as comfortable as possible.
He must also talk to the mad vicar. Though he had not mentioned the possibility to Diana, it was conceivable that he could buy off Hamilton and purchase his freedom, though he would not do it at the price of the girl's welfare. Not again. While technically the marriage was not eligible for annulment, it would be a simple lie to say that it had not been consummated.
He would continue to support Mary Hamilton so she would not be injured by an annulment. A lie that hurt no one was a small price to pay to have Diana as his wife, always by his side, always in his arms... Always assuming she was the woman he thought she was, rather than the traitorous bitch that the evidence pointed to....
He rubbed his eyes and sat up, battling his fatigue. The work he did for his country was more significant than his tangled personal affairs. The endless wars with France were entering a new phase now that Britain had troops on the Iberian Peninsula. If Veseul was the Phoenix, he needed to be stopped once and for all.
Gervase though
t for a while, then gave a smile of bleak, humorless satisfaction. There was a way to bring the pieces together. It was time for an Aubynwood house party. Once a year he would invite a number of government ministers and other prominent folk to his estate to relax and discuss politics and make policy without the distractions of London. This year the list would include the Count de Veseul. He would also invite Diana.
He began jotting down names of persons for his secretary to write. If Diana were innocent and loving, he would have her with him, and could begin to introduce her to society. And if she were a traitor, perhaps she would betray herself with Veseul.
At the thought, he halted, a drop of ink poised on the tip of his quill until it fell on the paper in a black, spreading stain. If Diana were not what she seemed, it would be, quite literally, unbearable.
* * *
Traveling only with his servant Bonner, who could act as both valet and groom, Gervase headed north early the next morning. The location his lawyer had given him was a surprise, but of course the Hamiltons would not have been staying at an inn if their home had been on Mull. At least the journey would be shorter than he had expected. They traveled fast and long, changing horses at every posting stop, taking turns at the reins. In the silences, there was ample time to think of Diana, to wonder what the future held.
The farther north they went, the more optimistic Gervase became. Quite simply, he could not believe his mistress to be dishonest; he had seen her with her son and her friends as well as himself, and no actress could counterfeit such warmth over so many months.
There was no proof that she was anything other than what she appeared to be. Veseul had not been observed entering her house. Perhaps the sly apothecary had been incorrect in his identification. The stolen information could have been copied at Whitehall by an underpaid clerk who was looking for extra income. It had been foolish to think otherwise.