Cressida's Dilemma (11 page)

One more week.

That’s all she wanted. One more week so she could learn how a man could come inside a woman without making her pregnant. It was possible. Having learned this for fact, she knew she couldn’t become a tacit collaborator in her own destruction, however much she wanted it at this moment.

Dragging her mouth from his, she struggled beneath him, pushing him away and wriggling her hips in clear objection rather than escalation of the sexual act.

“No!”

Her cry sounded much too harsh and her breathing, fast and clearly distressed, reverberated through the room.

Instantly he released her and she rolled onto her side. “Cressida?” His voice was thick with concern. “What is it?”

What is it?

What could she say? What
should
she say?
I don’t want your child, Justin, and am busy investigating ways to ensure I need never become pregnant again, if you’ll just be patient another week.

If they were having this conversation before becoming intimate, she might have fumbled her way into making some semblance of sense. Right now, however, with fear and terror and guilt bombarding her with equal relentlessness, she did not know what to say.

“I’m so sorry, Justin,” she whispered, withdrawing from his embrace and putting her hands to her temples as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, “but I feel another megrim coming on.”

He dropped his hands, the faintest of exhalations stirring the hair at her temples, and Cressida felt his withdrawal, both physical and emotional, as he slowly got out of bed.

“You should have said something before, darling.” He rose up before her, his look puzzled, but suspicious.

At the irony in his tone, she nearly abandoned her resolve not to hurl herself right back into his arms.

Nearly.Only the fear of a fate equal to death in nine months stopped her.

Chapter Six

“You seem distracted, Justin. Bad news?”

Justin glanced up from the little writing desk in the corner of Mariah’s sitting room at which he’d been working for the past hour, reconciling, yet again, the list of orphans who’d been delivered to and removed from Sedleywich eighteen years ago.

“I wish I could offer you concrete answers, but we have to be patient, Mariah,” he muttered, though it was not his apparent preoccupation with the task with which Mariah had charged him that accounted for his distraction.

Cressida. Her behavior defied logic. Last night it was as if she’d enticed him to her merely so she could repulse him when that was not at all her nature. He closed his eyes and shivered with remembered longing as he recalled the brief feeling of being wanted once more by his wife.

Brief. He nearly snarled his bitterness. Where had she learned such a thing? Why had she started on an act so calculated to whip up his desire only to reject him at the end?

He was confused and hurt. Suspicious, too. Not that she’d indulged in activities he’d not condone, but as to the source of her inspiration for such extraordinary bedroom antics. Antics that
she
had initiated.

Only to reject him.
That’s what it all came down to.

For the first time since he could remember, Cressida had not been at breakfast this morning. Though he’d endured a hellish night, he’d forced himself to take his seat at the usual time, hoping to glean
something
over their habitual haddock and toast, even if no actual allusion were made to the previous evening’s several extraordinary encounters.

Mariah came to stand beside him, bending to look over his shoulder. Her still lovely face bore a pallor and tightness that hinted at her stress, and Justin reached up to squeeze her hand.

“I agree with you, Mariah, that the most likely candidate is this Miss Madeleine Hardwicke, Lord Slitherton’s betrothed. As you know, I am Patron of Sedleywich, and Miss Harwicke’s sister-in-law, Annabelle Luscombe, is on the committee.”

“Which makes muddying the trail all the easier.” Mariah sighed. “Miss Hardwicke looks just as I did as a young girl, Justin, with her blue-black hair and Castilian features, yet she has Robert’s strong nose.” She twisted her hands. “Surely you can trace her origins and reveal the deception? I’m going insane, Justin, unable to think of anything but the growing suspicion my beloved Robert’s evil mother retrieved my child from the Sedleywich Home for Orphans and somehow engineered that she be brought up as the child of Robert’s sister.” She covered her face with her hands and turned away, her words muffled as she continued, “Lord knows I was in no position to keep the child, I know that, but I was used, deceived, abandoned. Where was Robert when I needed him? We were so in love.”

Justin reached up and squeezed her fingers tight, then he got to his feet and put his arms around his old friend. “Hush, Mariah, you are overwrought,” he murmured as she clung to him and her body convulsed with tears. “Do not blame Robert. You think men are all-powerful creatures? They are equally at the mercy of women when the balance is not in their favor.” A frisson of despair speared him at the thought of Cressida and the power she wielded over him. “Love is a wonderful thing when two people are of one mind
and
that love is sanctioned by those around them who wield the power. Robert was not yet of age. He could do nothing in the face of his mother’s opposition.”

Mariah drew back, sniffing and attempting to smile, then she resumed her seat on the sofa while Justin returned to his desk. “You are a sensible man, Justin. Of course, I know what you say is true.”

He drummed his fingers upon the document. “But I have to tell you that another possibility has presented itself.” His smile failed to banish the rawness of her feelings. He knew desperate hope hovered beneath the surface of her restraint.

Wearily, she said, “Who is she, Justin?”

He shook his head. “It would be unfair to divulge names until her identity is confirmed.”

Mariah rose and trailed to the window.

“If you have narrowed down the list to two, and indeed you know Miss Hardwicke’s family, tell me if your investigations have concluded this at least…” She closed her eyes and the whitening of her knuckles, which matched the pallor of her face, tugged at Justin’s heartstrings. “Will she want to know me?”

Justin pondered the question. Although he was navigating these dangerous emotional waters as best he could, he felt close to being overwhelmed.

He shuffled the papers, wishing he’d been able to confide in Cressida from the start and cursing his promise to Mariah that he not breathe a word of her affairs to his wife. Cressida’s wise counsel would have helped ensure he was dealing with the matter as sensitively as possible.

God, he certainly needed a lesson in that!

His overtures to Cressida last night only proved how utterly lacking in sensitivity he was. He’d completely misread the signals she’d sent him. Had she been deliberately teasing him?

Impatiently, he pushed aside the document, desperate suddenly to leave Mariah’s sitting room. He needed to return home so he could confront Cressida and learn why she ran hot and cold with him these days.

Why had she followed him to Mrs. Plumb’s and enticed him so overtly only to reject him later?

“It is never possible to predict a person’s desire to know another,” he said, hoping to do justice to Mariah’s question while his thoughts remained with his wife. “This other young woman whose identity I discovered yesterday was removed from the orphanage the same day, and it is possible the two names were confused. I can tell you this, however—she lives in desperate poverty with a family named Potter, and your patronage would be gratefully received, I’m sure.” He hesitated, then pressed on, his voice tinged with doubt. “However, the initial subject of my inquiries—”

“You mean Madeleine Hardwicke? Please suspend the lawyer speak, Justin.”

Mariah’s voice was bleak as she crossed the room to stand before Justin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “If it
is
Madeleine Hardwicke,
she
won’t want to know me…” she drew out the pause, adding quietly, “will she?”

Taking Justin’s lack of response as confirmation for her worst fears, Mariah whispered, “Then my daughter is as lost to me as she ever was.”

She turned away, saying brokenly, “I know I am being selfish and unreasonable. Would I wish her to have spent
her
life in poverty? Of course not. But what can I offer…someone like that…in my current position, when I was so hoping my suspicion to be entirely off the mark and that you would discover a young woman to whom I could be of some small use?”

Insensible to his soothing answer, her agitation increased as she paced. “I just cannot believe it of Robert’s family. They wanted nothing to do with me. Robert, himself, abandoned me! Now this! Surely the risk would be too great if the truth were discovered?”

Justin tapped the desk with his fingers, mulling over everything he had learned during the past weeks. He’d spent hours studying the Sedleywich orphans register and following the complex chain of events that had obscured the origins of the child later presented to the world as the legitimate daughter of one of London’s leading families. The daughter Mariah believed was her own.

“It’s all in my report, Mariah,” he said, indicating the document on the desk. “Soon, I shall receive information which will confirm, I suspect, that this second girl has no relevance to my investigation. As I’ve told you, Miss Hardwicke’s family has gone to great lengths, and expense, to guard against any possibility of discovery, making my task so difficult. The only thing they could not take into account was family resemblance and a mother’s need to know.”

Mariah appeared not to have heard him. Only the rise and fall of her bosom revealed her feelings as she stared through the window into the street. “After all these years to finally discover my child…” Her voice trailed away, before she added bitterly, “A child I can never claim!”

Her pain sliced at him, but he had nothing to offer except platitudes. She spoke the truth.

Turning back to him, Mariah gave a wry laugh. “Only yesterday I told a young woman I was childless. Indeed, it is the truth, for I have never known my daughter and, now, it appears, I never will.” Dropping her eyes, she added, “In a twist of irony, this poor young woman’s anguish was caused by her ever-growing brood. Five, she said she’d had, in eight years, and suffering torments because she believed a sixth would kill her.”

Justin watched her push her dark hair back from her high forehead and wondered when it had become so tinged with gray. Just as he’d been struck by her handsome Castilian features when he’d first met her, he’d been struck by the continued rich gloss of her hair when she’d approached him three weeks before. Now it seemed dull and lifeless.

She was talking again, and he realized she was still referring to the young woman she’d met the previous day.

“I’d never have guessed it. She looked as innocent as a child, herself. And as frightened. This was no place for her. She admitted as much, but I think she’d have entered a tiger’s den if she could have reclaimed her husband and poured out her heart to him.”

Justin, who had been scanning his report once more while preparing to leave, looked up.

“She was here to
reclaim
her husband, did you say?”

Mariah nodded, chewing her thumbnail as she continued to stare into the street. “If we women were only given rudimentary knowledge of the facts when it came to the realities of marriage, this poor woman would not be so desperate and I”—her shoulders slumped— “might still be happily married.”

He could barely attend to her reflections and hoped his voice did not betray him. Trying to assimilate the multitude of questions jostling for precedence, he asked carefully, “How did you and this woman meet?”

“She was near fainting in the corridor, so great was her fear of discovery. She’d been told her husband was here, though she seemed to have scant notion as to what she would do when she found him.”

“She ventured to this place, alone, to find her husband?” Justin balled his fists and forced himself to breathe evenly. Mariah could be describing no one else but his wife. “Because someone told her this is where she’d find him?”

“I think she just wanted to know if he was here. She said she was terrified of more children. Apparently, her mother died giving birth to her sixth.”

“What!” Justin gave no thought to the force of his exclamation.
Afraid of more children?
Cressida doted on their offspring. Increasingly, she chose to spend her time with them, rather than her husband.

Mariah was speaking once more. He tried to concentrate on her words while the implications of her assertion filtered through to his brain. He’d begun to think his wife’s earlier enthusiasm for the marriage act was purely for procreation, not recreation. That while she sought a cessation of marital relations with the nursery full, she’d also lost interest in the shared intimacy he still so greatly craved. Not once had she ever suggested he take precautions to protect against further pregnancies.

Shock was swept away by the most intense dismay as he acknowledged they’d never properly had the conversation. Such talk was lewd, sinful… Good Lord, he thought with a start, perhaps Cressida did not even know such prevention was possible. It was not a conversation one had with one’s wife, though he had tried…

The realization of Cressida’s real and terrible fears swamped him, and the words of his report, upon which his eyes were unconsciously trained, blurred. Uncurling his fingers, he raked his hand through his hair.

He straightened in his chair, breathing carefully as he acknowledged how gravely he had failed his innocent, lovely wife. It was his duty to comfort and protect Cressida, to make her happy. He was ten years older, with experience beyond anything she could ever know. Just as Cressida had no knowledge of sexual relations outside their own bedroom, she’d have no idea how to translate her fear into words. Lord almighty, she’d known nothing on her wedding night, and when her first pregnancy had been confirmed, she’d asked from where the baby would emerge!