Hands that weren’t Colin’s touching her . . . another body driving into hers the way his had done. Their single night had shattered her. Reduced her to this—a woman who hid in her town house, both terrified and hopeful that she might see him again.
Mary Rebecca selected another biscuit, unaware of her tumultuous thoughts, and plopped it on Graciela’s plate. “Here. Have one. I know how much you love them.”
She shook her head, her stomach too knotted to eat. She pressed a hand to her belly as though she could quell the churning. “Perhaps later. My stomach is a little off at the moment.”
“Since when do you turn down lemon biscuits? I’ve been sitting here eating half a dozen and you’ve yet to consume one. They are your favorite.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. Suddenly speech seemed much too taxing.
Mary Rebecca leaned forward to look her over more closely. “Now that you mention it, your color is a little off, too.”
Graciela sighed. “My appetite has been off lately.”
“Hmm.” She scrutinized Graciela. “You look a bit weary. Have you been sleeping well?”
“No,” she confessed. Even without thoughts of Colin and Marcus plaguing her, it had been impossible to get comfortable in the giant four-poster bed. Granted, it was the bed she always slept in when she came to Town, but she almost believed someone had gone and changed the mattress on her. Try as she might, she could not find a comfortable position where her back and muscles did not ache. She wondered if she had some manner of ague.
“It shows.”
She let out a single rough laugh. “Well, thank you,” she grumbled. “I might be coming down with an ague. You should probably keep your distance. Perhaps you should take your girls home . . .” If a little hope laced her voice, Mary Rebecca didn’t detect it.
In fact, she didn’t seem to hear the suggestion at all. She continued, “Then you should wait before traveling. You would not want to fall ill along the way and be stuck at some roadside inn with your girls.”
She gave a slight nod, acknowledging the wisdom of that. “Perhaps. A few more days wouldn’t hurt . . . until I’m feeling hale again.”
“I wonder if Lord Strickland is ill, as well.” Mary Rebecca’s lips twitched as though amused. “You were in close proximity, after all. I hope he’s not unwell.”
Graciela shook her head in forbearance of her friend’s wicked sense of humor. “Unlikely. It’s been a little over a week since we were together . . .” Her voice faded.
Clara squealed and danced in delight as she knocked Enid out of the game. Enid shook her head, smiling indulgently over her half sister’s unfettered glee.
Graciela lost herself for a moment, gazing at the girls swinging their mallets and contemplating her night with Colin. It had been more than a week since they’d come together. Multiple times in one night. She’d never known such a thing was done. She hadn’t known that such stamina was possible, that any man could possess such virility.
The silence stretched as her mind raced, retracing, counting . . .
The silence came to an end when Mary Rebecca sucked in a sudden breath, practically making Graciela jump. “Perhaps he in fact did . . . infect you with something?” She waved her hand in a small circle, nudging toward a point that Graciela was grappling with herself. She didn’t want to acknowledge it. She didn’t want to say the words aloud . . . as if that would somehow make them real.
“Infected?” Graciela echoed. It was a distasteful way to word it.
“Yes.” Mary Rebecca nodded doggedly.
She stared at her friend warily. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying. I can see the dread in your face.” Mary Rebecca set her plate carefully on the service table and leaned forward. Casting a glance about as if she, too, was aware of the enormity of her forthcoming words and that an abundance of servants lurked in the vicinity—any of whom could overhear—she whispered, “Perhaps he planted a babe in your belly?”
She flinched. There it was. Uttered aloud, however quietly. She was certain that so crass a topic as a Dowager Duchess of Autenberry with child and out of wedlock had never been discussed in the vaunted Autenberry town house.
“I can see you are thinking the same thing, Ela. Is it possible? Did you take any precautions?”
Trust Mary Rebecca, much more experienced and blunt than she, to ask the direct and important questions.
Graciela stared in long silence at her friend, her mind awhirl.
A babe! In her belly.
She let that thought roll around and sink its teeth deep.
Finally, at last, she reacted. Something loosened inside her chest and she laughed.
Mary Rebecca leaned back, bristling. “I’m glad to know that you find such an utterly serious topic amusing.” She crossed her arms over her chest in uncharacteristic huffiness.
“Why, Mary Rebecca.” She shook her head. “It was just the once.” One night, anyway.
Mary Rebecca smirked. “My dear friend, once is all that is required. As a matter of fact, that is usually how it works.” She held one finger in the air.
Graciela’s face heated a little at that bit of truth. She sounded foolish, she knew, but there were other glaring facts. “I’m not a young girl, Mary Rebecca.”
“So?”
“I’m too old to conceive a child,” she stated baldly as if Mary Rebecca failed to understand her words. She was no female in the first blush of youth.
“Women your age and older have been conceiving children since time immemorial!”
Graciela shook her head, struggling to believe that this possibility could apply to her. She wasn’t normal in that sense. She hadn’t been even when she was young.
She could not be with child. She had to deny this as a possibility lest she lose her mind and fall victim to hope. Hope had crushed her before. She couldn’t let it creep back in. Because even in this less than ideal situation, she felt the old stirrings of longing for another child.
It was like a vague, nearly forgotten dream. Something that teased at the edges of her memory. As ephemeral as smoke, but not forgotten. In moments like this the yearning returned in a swift rush.
“It’s not simply my age. I’ve shared with you how difficult it was for me to conceive. I was a great disappointment for Autenberry in that regard.” One of many disappointments for him pertaining to her. “I endured one miscarriage before delivering Clara and two after her birth. The physician pronounced my womb . . . defective.”
Mary Rebecca reeled back where she sat. “Defective?”
Graciela remembered the word clearly because with her limited English at the time she had not understood its meaning. It had to be explained to her, which her late husband had done in excruciating and scathing detail.
You’re useless. A limp rag doll in bed and you cannot even carry out the one thing for which you were put on this earth to do.
Defective. She was well versed in that word’s meaning now. She had failed to give Autenberry the son he required . . . the spare he had wanted like so many men of his rank.
“Men,” Mary Rebecca scoffed, patting her hand. “What do they know about such matters? Perhaps the fault rested with Autenberry? Have you considered that?”
Graciela shook her head slowly. “No, he had Marcus and Enid. And he did give me Clara.”
Mary Rebecca tossed her hands. “There are things that cannot be explained in this life. Perhaps you and he were merely . . . ill matched.”
“Ill matched? I am not certain I understand your meaning.”
“I mean, my dear, that your body and his were not ideally suited for purposes of procreation.”
She winced a little. Ill matched would be an apt description of her relationship with her late husband even beyond the scope of their physical bodies.
Mary Rebecca shook her head and sighed gently. “You cannot be so very naïve to think you’re incapable of begetting another child.”
Hushed or not, the utter
ance did not stop Graciela from swinging her gaze to where the girls frolicked, panicked they had overheard the words.
Heat rushed to her face as she thought of their joining. It hadn’t been civilized. She certainly hadn’t thought about taking precautions.
“By the expression on your face, I gather you did not take precautions.”
She snapped her gaze back to Mary Rebecca and shook her head. “I am due any day now to . . .” Her voice faded as her mind settled on one realization. She was wrong. Her cycle was past due. She frowned. Granted, she wasn’t the best at keeping track of such things. There had been no need. She had not been intimate with a man in well over ten years. She had no reason to pay close attention to her menses.
“Ela, dearest.” Mary Rebecca squeezed her hand, her voice softening. “When did your courses last come?”
Her mind raced feverishly, counting how many days she had been in Town and then the days before that in the country. She reflected on the last time she had required napkins.
“By my accounting,” she whispered, a prickly cold sensation washing over her, “I should have started . . . six days ago.”
Chapter 17
She did not leave Town after all.
Traveling in her possible condition didn’t seem the wisest course. Yes, she was still convinced that it wasn’t true, but she was unwilling to take the risk even so. After so many miscarriages, it was an instinctive reaction, even all these years later.
She might have decided not to leave Town, but she didn’t leave the house either. She complained of not feeling well and excused herself from, well . . . the world.
She spent her time pacing her bedchamber, working on embroidery—never a particularly favored task—and letter writing. She wrote to her sisters in Spain and to Poppy. Anything and everything to fill the hours as she waited for her courses to begin. For reality to return. She told herself there could be another reason for being late, far-fetched and desperate as it seemed. Perhaps it was simply stress.
The second afternoon of her self-imposed quarantine, Mrs. Wakefield knocked on her door. Graciela bade enter.
“Your Grace,” she greeted. “Lord Strickland awaits in the drawing room.” Her gaze flickered over Graciela still garbed in a dressing gown. “Shall I convey your regrets?”
She froze, unable to disguise her reaction for anything but what it was. Panic. She couldn’t see Colin. Not after that terrible scene at his house. Not after her good-bye. Not with the possibility that they had created a child.
She sank down on the edge of her bed, clutching the lapels of her robe close.
“Are you well, Your Grace?” Mrs. Wakefield inched forward, concern writ all over her face.
She shook her head. “I fear I’ve still a headache. Please convey my regrets. I think I should like to rest.”
“Of course. I’ll send Minnie to attend you. And perhaps I should send one of the grooms to fetch the apothecary?”
“Thank you, no. I don’t think that necessary. A nice nap should do me wonders.”
Mrs. Wakefield sent her one last lingering look of uncertainty. “As you wish.”
As she slipped from the room to send Colin away, Graciela fell back down on the bed, where she did in fact drift into a restless sleep.
In it, however, she dreamed that she was lost in a dark wood, running and carrying a great basket of heavy rocks. She didn’t know why she carted the rocks about, only that she did, only that they strained her arms and back but she could not let the basket drop even when hungry hounds appeared to nip and snarl at her heels.
She called for help amid sobs, at first shouting for her father, but when he never came, she cried out for Colin. She begged him to come.
He never came either. And then she remembered.
She’d sent him away.
Three more days passed. Then three more.
Mrs. Wakefield and the girls grew concerned even though Graciela assured them she was well and surfaced from her bedchamber to prove it. It was either that or Enid vowed to send for the physician. She was a stubborn chit and Graciela had no doubt she would do just that. Given that she was not yet ready to meet with a physician and have her condition confirmed (much less known), she relented and joined the girls for a stroll through the courtyard and gardens.
Her menses had not come.
Her breasts had grown sensitive and there was a decided darkening of her nipples. She knew this because she stared hard at herself each morning in the cheval mirror in her bedchamber without a stitch of clothing on, noting all the small signs. And they were in evidence. Or perhaps she was going mad. She certainly felt out of sorts.
She contemplated secretly seeing a physician, but fear held her in check. How could she trust him to be discreet? She was an unwed lady and could not risk word of her condition, real or imagined, leaking out.
She continued to try to convince herself it wasn’t possible, that her body was defective as she had once been told. And then she thought of Colin, of his young, virile body, the strength and power of his physique as he buried himself deep inside of her. Such thoughts always produced a flicker of doubt. When she closed her eyes, she could still recall the throb of his manhood, the pulse of him as he released his seed into her. Several times. If ever a man exuded potency and vigor, it was he. He certainly was the very picture of virility. He could probably impregnate a woman if they waltzed too close together. Was his potency perhaps enough to plant a child in her womb?
Could Mary Rebecca be right?
Perhaps Graciela hadn’t been the barren one. Perhaps Autenberry had been the problem. While not infirm, he had not been a young man when they married. A fact that time, naturally, did not improve as the years of their marriage progressed. She knew he’d cavorted and taken lovers. He never hid the fact. And yet she’d heard no rumors of any by-blows he’d fathered—aside from Struan Mackenzie, whom he had fathered when he was a young man.
Or perhaps the problem had been Graciela and Autenberry . . . together. As Mary Rebecca suggested.
Standing before the mirror on the eighth evening of her self-imposed confinement, she splayed a hand over her belly and frowned. Her stomach appeared the same as it always did, perhaps only a little less pliant.
She’d retired after dinner, leaving Enid to her books and Clara to her drawing. She’d spent most of the day with them and even adopted a cheerful air so they didn’t look at her with such concern anymore. It had taken a toll. She couldn’t go on hiding from her predicament forever. A decision would have to be reached, and soon.
She’d taken a long bath, letting the warm water ease her muscles if not her mind.
She moved away from the mirror and slipped on her dressing robe, covering her nakedness. She passed by her writing desk, where she had abandoned the missive Mary Rebecca had sent earlier today demanding that they meet tomorrow. Additionally, she demanded Graciela stop hiding in her house. She sighed. Her friend knew her too well. Mary Rebecca doubtlessly wanted to be apprised of her condition.
She seated herself at her dressing table and began to brush out her hair in long strokes. Minnie knocked once before entering. “Your Grace, can I get you anything? Your Madeira perhaps?”
She smiled and shook her head. The idea of her favorite Madeira didn’t appeal to her uneasy stomach right now. “I’m fine. That will be all for the night, Minnie. Thank you.”
Minnie smiled, nodded and ducked back out into the hall, closing the door softly behind her.
The house settled into the quiet sounds of the night. The wind howled outside and a log popped and crackled in the fireplace. Even the constantly barking puppy couldn’t be heard, likely snuggled in bed with Clara, who had confiscated her. She stared at her bed for a long moment. Sleep did not call to her.
Belting the robe snugly at her waist, she slipped from her bedchamber and made her way downstairs. The town house hummed in the late night silence and she reveled in the solitude.
She made her way to the library, enjoying
the sensation of carpet under her bare feet. Enid made certain the library was well stocked with popular titles. Perhaps a book would take her mind off her worries for a bit, and in the morning a solution would present itself and she would know what to do.
She browsed the spines, tucking her hair behind her ears as she decided against the romantic novels of Mrs. Radcliffe. Moody Gothic romances were likely not a good notion.
Instead she selected a heavy book entitled Treatise on the Catacombs of Ancient Rome. Such material did not lend itself to emotion. She had enough of that churning through her presently. She could do without it this night.
High emotions were what brought her to this state. Longing. Fear. Fear of loneliness. Fear of regret. That’s what drove her to Sodom. From there, other emotions drove her into Colin’s arms, most notably blood-pumping desire. She turned the leather-bound tome over in her hands. Perhaps this dry material would help her forget.
“So now you’ve become a hermit.”
She whirled around with a yelp and dropped the weighty book she held. It hit the carpet with a thud. It was as though her thoughts had materialized in front of her. Colin stood in the threshold, one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed casually over his chest.
“What are you doing here?” He was making a habit of breaking into her home uninvited and unannounced.
She clutched the lapels of her dressing robe together, achingly conscious of the fact that she was naked beneath it. What had she been thinking? She really should have donned her nightgown. She just hadn’t thought she would run across anyone at this late hour in her home . . . especially not him.
“I know how we left things,” he said, his voice gravelly thick. “But I wanted to see that you are well.”
She knew how they’d left things, too. She’d left things with a good-bye that felt an awful lot like the end.
And yet here he was sending butterflies spinning through her.
Perhaps she had been deluding herself. She was starting to wonder if there could ever be an end between them. If what they’d started wouldn’t echo through her for all the rest of her days.