Fated Folly (28 page)

‘
No, you don't,' he said as Clare made to escape.

He murmured soothingly as she fought to prevent him folding her into his embrace. Trapped, Clare pummelled at his chest, uttering soft cries of frustration. But Rupert held her tighter, and gentled her with words.

‘
Softly, my sweet. Don't fight me...hush, now, enough.'

Bit by bit Clare subsided, her breath catching, and the tremors lessening as her incoherent mind began to catch into thoughts, the panic easing. She drew in a juddering breath and the fight went out of her as, without further protest, she allowed Rupert to huddle her closer to his chest and let her head slip to his shoulder. She felt his hand caressing her hair, and sighed.

Rupert's hand travelled down her arm to find her fingers. He lifted them to his lips, his kiss featherlight.

Tenderness warmed a little the desolate places in her heart. Presently, she lifted her head and struggled up so that she might turn at last, warily to meet her husband's gaze. There was a caress in his eyes, as well as mute apology.

A faint smile twitched on his lips. ‘My pistols are on my desk downstairs in the library, if you would care to make use of them.'

For a moment her mind blanked, and then she took his meaning and gave a shaky laugh.

‘
Oh, Rupert!'

The hurt faded a little. She put her fingers to her lips, kissed them, and touched them to his mouth. Rupert caught them and held them there briefly, and she felt the familiar tingle start up. He brought them down and she allowed her hand to rest loosely in his clasp.

‘
Where to begin?' he said on a rueful note.

Clare eyed him, a hush in her breast. ‘We are long past the beginning, Rupert. Where will it end?'

‘
Don't!'

‘
I must.' She curled her hand into his. ‘I had not thought it possible that I could hate you. Even for an instant. But I did, Rupert.'

Rupert was silent for a moment, but she recognised distress in his eyes. ‘Love is very akin to hate, my darling. Would that you had not to learn it through me.'

She could not help smiling. How naïve he seemed for an instant, despite the gap of years.

‘
Everything I learn of love must of necessity come to me through you.'

He did not answer, and Clare braved the question that stood like a solid wall between them.

‘
How old must I be, Rupert, before—?'

‘
If only I knew.' Rupert's breath left him in a long sigh. ‘What can I tell you, Clare? All the years that lie between us, long years while you were growing up—those untainted years—I was—how can I put it?—knowing life. Accumulating bitter experience. Things that changed me, coloured my thinking.'

‘
Meriel!' She said it before she could stop herself. Something flashed in his eyes, and she looked away, half fearing an outburst. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘
Don't be,' he said, though his tone was curt. ‘It's true that Meriel was part of that. She is indeed the cause of my flying into a rage this morning.'

Clare eyed him, afraid to pursue it. But if she did not ask, how was she to know?

‘
Can you tell me why?'

A muscle twitched in his cheek and his gaze was sombre. ‘You deserve no less.'

She waited, her breath tight in her chest, fearing what he might say now he was willing to speak of it. Rupert released her fingers and set his hands on the arms of the chair, gripping them. Clare saw his knuckles gleam white and watched him draw a heavy breath. He was no longer looking at her.

‘
Meriel ran off with a fellow who had been a guest in our house for some days. I went after her. I did not catch up with them until the following day. I found them both in bed.'

Shock swept through Clare, together with sharp and heartfelt understanding of Rupert's reaction to her escape with Christian. She could not help but wonder at the outcome.

‘
Yet you brought her home?'

He looked at her, and the pain he had then felt was reflected in his eyes. ‘I could not face the scandal. And Meriel would have been ruined. Besides, fool that I was, I still wanted her, still cared.'

Clare's heart ached for him, for the agony he must have felt at Meriel's betrayal. She wanted very much to curse the creature, but Rupert's breathing was laboured and instinct held her silent.

‘
You must not think I blamed her,' he said as if he read her mind. ‘Not entirely. That past year, longer perhaps, I had not been—kind.' His gaze raked her face. ‘In some sort, I drove her to it, as I did with you.' His jaw line was taut. ‘It did not end there. Within weeks, it became obvious that Meriel was with child.'

The implication hit and Clare could not keep from bursting out.

‘
But not yours!'

Rupert gave a shuddering sigh, and the words were wrenched from him. ‘That is not the worst. When Meriel died, and the babe with her, I was base enough to feel…relief.'

‘
Because you did not have to give your name to another man's child?'

‘
Just so.'

In the silence Rupert could feel her compassion, sense her understanding. It should have been balm to his wounded soul. He felt nothing but the acrid taste of self-loathing that had been his companion ever since. He had dared to hope that the advent of Clare would assuage it. A hope vain and foolish. But she had heard him out. If it could mitigate his harshness in her eyes, that alone must content him.

‘
That is why you were subjected to my black rage. The worst me, Clare, and I wish you had not seen it.'

She dared to look at him again, and tried to smile. ‘The you I hated, and to whom I said such a vixenish thing.'

Rupert caught her hand again, torment in his voice. ‘Don't let us go over it all.'

‘
But we must, Rupert, because it frightens me.'

He sighed. ‘I never desired to be a real ogre to you, to make you afraid of me. I wish I might undo—'

Irritation seized Clare and she tugged her hand away. ‘You don't understand. It is not for my sake. It troubles me because you hate
yourself
, more than you could ever hate me, or Pippa. Or even Meriel.'

Rupert's gaze was blank with confusion. ‘So young, yet you see so much.' Then he sighed again. ‘I've never hated you, nor Pippa. But I cannot endure it when I lose all control to such violent emotion. My black-hearted temper is my downfall.'

‘
But it is quickly over,' Clare said, taking his hand and squeezing it between both her own as if she could thus protect him from harming himself. ‘You must not mind it so much.'

‘
I mind hurting you,' Rupert said, his anguish visible. ‘As if the years between us are not enough.'

‘
Your years, Rupert. You count them, not I. You called it preposterous, and accused me of greensickness.'

‘
Because I wanted to believe it was only that. It was easier to bear than this.'

Releasing his hand from her grasp, he cupped her face, meeting the helpless forgiveness in her eyes. A barb in his heart and conscience. He remembered suddenly that his purpose in seeking her out had been sidetracked.

‘
Nothing happened at Biddy's, Clare. I intended nothing. It was merely a refuge.'

‘
From me?'

‘
From
us
.'

Clare's lips quivered. ‘Yet you don't want me to leave you. You have made that abundantly plain.'

With a feeling like hunger in his breast, Rupert eyed her, wanting to ask, dreading her answer.

‘
Do you want to go?'

Tears glistened on her lashes. ‘How can you ask me? I was begging Christian to bring me back when we had barely passed Wormenhall. I had rather spend a lifetime of chastity, than live a day without you.'

Though her words spoke to the deeps within him, he could not bear her distress. ‘Don't weep. You rive my heart.'

Wetness trickled down her cheeks, and there was a catch in her voice. ‘I'm so tired, Rupert.'

He drew her back into his embrace. ‘Didn't you sleep?'

‘
Hardly at all.'

‘
Come then.'

He slid his hands under her and lifted her as he rose. Clare snuggled into him, slipping her arms about his neck, and his heart warmed. Rupert carried her through the little-used door that led to his own bedchamber, and laid her tenderly on his bed.

Clare caught his hand. ‘Don't go.'

He smiled down at her. ‘I've no intention of going.'

Removing only his boots and his coat, he lay down beside her and drew her into his arms, placing her head on his shoulder. Clare sighed her satisfaction, her arm creeping about his chest.

‘
I love you,' she breathed.

‘
I know, my darling,' he murmured, cuddling her closer. ‘Let me tell you, it is well you don't want to leave me, because I will never let you go.'

A tiny giggle answered him, and he thought he heard a soft ‘Ogre!' Then she slept.

But her dreams were clearly uneasy, for several times, half dozing beside her, Rupert was alerted by a stifled whimper. When he turned in perturbation to quiet her, he found her eyes still closed in sleep. But the muscles in her face twitched, and her fingers moved restlessly.

She relaxed again, as if she felt his presence, when he cradled her, murmuring words of love and comfort. But the relief was not lasting, and he felt her obvious anxiety as a fresh jab in his touchy conscience. He cursed it, feeling resentment for the thing that held him from giving himself wholly to a love miraculously shared.

How old must she be? Rupert knew how hard it had been for her to ask him such a question. Would that great healer, time, show him at the last a woman rather than a child? One he could legitimately caress and pleasure in the way his loins even now—as she lay at her innocent, trusting rest beside him—ached to do? Yet his heart yearned for the child she was now, not the woman she might become. Could she ever be other than a child to him? Would he might cherish the child forever, could he only reconcile that with his desire for her. Which was, of course, impossible.

Clare woke at length in the late afternoon, ravenous. ‘I have kept you here all day,' she said remorsefully, dragging herself from his bed.

Rupert smiled at her, as he began to tug on his boots. ‘No matter. It was both a privilege and a pleasure.'

‘
Oh, stuff,' Clare said with a tiny giggle. ‘I dare say you were bored to death. Or did you sleep, too?'

‘
A little.'

‘
You must be hungry.'

‘
A little,' he said again.

‘
Well, I am starving.'

‘
We will ask Brookland to supply us with a late luncheon,' Rupert said, shrugging on his coat. He came round the bed to where Clare stood, shaking out the crushed muslin of her petticoats. Taking hold of her, he kissed the top of her head. ‘You look like a ragamuffin, Lady Wolverley. Go and tidy your hair at least, while I arrange for some sustenance.'

Clare lifted her hands to her head and, finding her flaxen curls in utter disarray, emitted a shriek and ran off to her own bedchamber to ring for her maid.

At the dining-table, once more tidy and presentable in a fresh muslin gown, with her hair prettily arranged, Clare greeted her husband with a shy smile, feeling all the consciousness of their earlier meeting and the knowledge that it had resolved little between them.

She was relieved when Berinthia joined them, for she felt tongue-tied, as if the earlier confessions had only added to the seemingly insuperable barrier that was keeping her apart from Rupert. To all appearances, he was just as aware of the difficulties holding them at a distance from each other, for he had as little to say as did Clare.

In a way, Clare was glad of the general silence, for a niggling notion gradually coalesced into a remembrance of vague images that had vexed her dreams with a fear of Rupert in some sort of physical danger. She could not recollect them clearly, but she knew that Christian had come into it, and another man, with a shadowed face she could not recognise.

When they had eaten, Rupert left her to herself with a teasing admonition to her not to disappear again.

‘
Or you will know about it, minx, mark my words.'

Clare was not deceived by his manner, for she felt it as an attempt at lightness rather than a true rendition of the ease they had hitherto enjoyed. She flushed as she recalled how everything had changed after that fatal coupling in the night hours that had given her his heart, but left her in uncertainty and despair.

Rupert had said he was going to attend to the neglected business of the morning in his library, and Claire had to fight the urge to peep in, just for the reassurance of seeing him, if only to remind herself of his love. Instead she betook herself to the apple orchard and wandered restlessly through the trees, beset by alternating bouts of anxiety and dismay, punctured by vague apprehensions to which she could not put a name.