Let Me Be The One (46 page)

North quickly moved to the bench and knelt in front of her. He took her hands that were pressed so tightly against her midriff and held them in his. His thumbs brushed against her white knuckles. "Elizabeth. Please. I do not mean to cause you such pain."

She was cold everywhere except where his hands lay over hers. She wished he would take her in his arms. She wished she could ask him. "You are not the cause of any pain," Elizabeth whispered, her voice thick. "The pain is always there. I live with it. Sometimes better than others. And because you have lived with me, you have lived with it, too." She managed a shaky breath. "That is why I left the way I did, North. Or part of it. It was wrong to make you share what you could not even understand. You were right to want me out of your life." Elizabeth tugged on his hands, not to be free of them but to urge him to stand. "Will you not get up?" she asked. "Please. It is not right that you should be on your knees."

The stone floor was cold and uncomfortable and if he was to stay there much longer he would need his grandfather's cane to help him rise, yet North had no intention of moving. "Tell me about him, Elizabeth. Just once. Allow me to understand and allow yourself to heal. Life is not meant to be experienced as an open wound."

Elizabeth searched his face. The pale moonshadow was insufficient to close off his features to her and she could not mistake the sincerity of his expression. His eyes were not implacable but patient. He was like an army laying siege to the keep. He did not storm the front gate or try to climb over the walls. He would gain entry simply by waiting her out. She was vulnerable because he was infinitely more tolerant and restrained than she was.

Was he right? she wondered. Could her life, at its very core, be something other than pained?

"You won't get up?" she asked softly.

He shook his head, his smile rueful.

"I won't tell you his name," she said after a moment.

"You don't have to. It is the least important thing. Tell me about him."

Elizabeth took a quick shallow breath and began. "You will be disappointed, I'm afraid. There is really very little to tell. I did not know him so well as I thought." She laughed a bit self-consciously, without humor. "My father's perspective of my childhood is quite different than my own. For all that he believes I was most imprudently spoiled, I was also sheltered. That changed ever so slightly when my mother died and the colonel became an important figure in my life. He was rarely around. My father would not have him at Rosemont and his duties kept him away, but he opened another world to me through his letters. You will find it perhaps odd that I understood so little of what was beyond the boundaries of my home. Oh, I was a good student in the schoolroom. I knew of other places, of course. I had read about them avidly. But reading the colonel's letters made things different somehow. Everything seemed more real. Someone I knew was experiencing what I had only marginally grasped from the pages of a book."

Elizabeth squeezed North's hands. "Can you understand that?"

He nodded, returning the slight pressure. "Go on."

She caught her lip a moment, worried it, and then continued. "You will have probably already surmised that he was a soldier. An officer, as you were. I met him during the Season. That I was allowed to make a London debut at all was Isabel's doing. She made that argument to my father on my behalf. I like to think that she does not entirely regret winning her point. It has not all turned out badly for her... or him."

"Selden, you mean," North said quietly.

Elizabeth gave an involuntary start. She would have pulled her hands away from North had he not been holding them so firmly. "How did you—" She stopped. "Did they tell you?"

North shook his head. "No. I don't believe I should have ever discovered it that way. Your father and Isabel are as committed to the secret as you. It was young Selden himself who gave it away."

Elizabeth's brows rose. "But he could not have. He doesn't—" She stopped because North was already confirming this with another tolerant shake of his head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It was not my intention to alarm you. You're right, of course. Selden doesn't know he is your son. Unless someone tells him, I cannot imagine that it will ever occur to him."

"Then how did you come to know it?"

"He ran after me as I was leaving Rosemont. I imagine he must have overheard your father tearing a strip off me, or perhaps it was Isabel's imploring me to find you that he heard." North shrugged. "It does not matter how he came to know that you were gone from London, only that he did. He would have run me to ground if I had not stopped for him. He demanded that I find you. He just stood there on the bridge, blocking my path, hardly tall enough to reach my mare's nose, and ordered me to bring you back safely."

Elizabeth had been holding her breath. Now she let it out slowly. "Did his chin come up just so." She lifted her own.

"Just so," said North. "And his eyes flashed. And his hands rested on his hips. His head cocked to the side. It was all there for a moment.
You
were there, in him, just for a moment. The precise inflection in his voice. The tension in his frame. I knew. It came and went in the space of a heartbeat, but I knew. Viscount Selden is your son."

"Viscount Selden is my father's son," she corrected gently. Tears filled her eyes. "I gave birth to Adam."

"Ah, Elizabeth." He released one of her hands to cup her face. His thumb brushed her cheek. "Of course. Just Adam. Your beautiful little boy."

She nodded. A tear spilled over the edge of her lashes and North wiped it away before she could do the same. She drew a shaky breath. "Adam's father... my soldier... he did not know about my pregnancy. He was already gone by the time I realized I was carrying his child. I sent him away, you see. He was... he was married."

North swore softly.

Laughter, rife with self-mockery, trembled on Elizabeth's lips. "I said that very thing from time to time," she told him. She accepted the handkerchief he pressed in her hand and wiped her eyes. "I did not know he had a wife. I did not even imagine that such a thing was possible. Not that he could not have been married, but that I could have been fooled. It was only in retrospect that I could comprehend my own naiveté. I suspected nothing. Presented with the same circumstances again, I still would not suspect. He loved me, I think. As much as it was possible when he was already committed to another. I say that now, but it felt boundless at the time. I was sure I understood his feelings then."

Elizabeth's fingers crushed the handkerchief. Her eyes were dry and the press of tears was gone. She spoke clearly, softly, with little inflection, the raw edges of the open wound less red and angry than they had been only minutes before. "I was just as certain that I understood my own. I loved him. I've told you that. I could not have lain with him had I not, not then. It would not be fair to say he seduced me. I wanted to be with him. I believe I demanded it."

A faint smile touched North's mouth. "You would."

Elizabeth marveled that there was no censure in his tone. "You will not be surprised that our... our affair... was conducted in secret. My father met him several times early on and judged him wholly lacking in character. Since this was my father's assessment of most people, particularly those who expressed any interest in me, it seemed of little consequence. Knowing that there would be no approval from that quarter, we saw each other in only the most casual way publicly. I had suitors to fill my dance card—none of whom came up to snuff in my father's eyes—but they served their purpose in diverting his attention."

Elizabeth bent her head, finding it too difficult to look at North. He did not admonish her, but remained just as he was and allowed her to let the story unfold in its own way. "I met him late at night. It was quite simple for me to leave the house. No one suspected at all, you see. Father's imaginings of my disobedient nature did not extend to what was surely my most outrageous behavior. I always returned before anyone was awake. I came and went as I pleased."

Something nudged North's thoughts. A tiny prompt. A little niggle. He frowned, trying to bring it to the surface, but could only grasp the vague alarm that accompanied it, not the thing itself.

Caught in her confession, her head still bowed, Elizabeth did not notice North's slight frown or his momentary distraction. "When the Season was ended I returned to Rosemont. My debut was unsuccessful by the
ton's
standards, but I had my own measure. Naturally, I saw him less frequently once I was in the country. It was infinitely more difficult for him to get away than it was for me, but I was content with what time we had together." Her voice softened. "We spoke of marriage. I thought we would elope. It was to be Gretna for us."

North felt a measure of selfish relief that was tempered with an appreciation for how Elizabeth's own dreams had been met with disappointment. "It was wrong of him, Elizabeth." At the risk of raising her hackles, North could not be silent on this matter. "He had no right to hold out that hope."

Her face lifted and she acknowledged the truth of North's words with the sadness in her own eyes. "In my mind we were husband and wife. I was with him for six months when I learned the extent to which I had created my fantasy. I found a letter from his wife in his coat. He was not at all contrite. Rather, he was angry at me for going through his pockets." She raised the hand that held the crumpled handkerchief, her smile more wry than rueful. "I was looking for one of these."

North nodded, understanding very well that she never seemed to have her own at the ready.

"Perhaps I should not have read the letter." She shrugged. "But I did. When he gathered his wits he would have had me believe that his marriage did not matter. It says something about the state of my mind that for a moment or two... or three... I wanted to believe it was so."

"I think it speaks more eloquently of how much you loved him."

She nodded weakly. "I told him I would not see him again and he took me at my word. I think it helped that on occasion I resented him for that, sometimes more for that than the fact of his marriage or his lying about it. You will understand that I am not proud of this. I mention it only because you deserve to know the person I am. Petty. Unfair. Unreasonable." The corners of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. "A fool and an ass."

"Not in my grandfather's estimation," North said, a hint of laughter in his tone. More gravely, he added, "And not in mine."

Elizabeth laid her hand over the one North had resting lightly on her knee. "Almost two months passed before I realized I was carrying his child. Actually I never accepted it consciously until Isabel confronted me. My admission was more for my own benefit than hers." She paused, remembering how quickly events had transpired after that, and sorted them out in her own mind before she went on. "There were few choices left to me. I could do exactly as my father wanted or I could leave Rosemont to make my own way. Leaving meant I would have no support. My father was firm on that. I could expect nothing from him. I would not see Isabel again and I would not be allowed to return to Rosemont. I had no reason to doubt that he meant it. I could have applied to the colonel for help, but I was too proud. In any event, the colonel could not have kept me from becoming a pariah. Once my pregnancy became known I would not be accepted. That mattered little to me, North. I hope you will believe that. What mattered is that my son would be a bastard."

North had a sudden recollection of Elizabeth's fierce response to him when he revealed West's illegitimacy. She had adamantly argued that the fact of West's birth made him different from others.
Not intrinsically different,
she had said.
Not at birth. But soon after it changes him in some way. It could be his mother is ashamed or his father is indifferent... He comes to believe one of two things about himself: either that he has no right to hold his head up or that he must hold it higher than everyone else.
He had heard the passion in her voice as she spoke; what he had not understood was the source.

"You might have married," he said. "It is done more often than you think."

"Perhaps. But I could not do it. To marry someone I did not love and ask him to accept my child... or worse, pretend my child was also his..." Her voice trailed off. She could not leave it there. She had not been so principled that the thought had not crossed her mind. Elizabeth wanted him to know that. "It occurred to me, North. I cannot let you believe otherwise. It was simply not as satisfactory a solution as the one my father presented."

North nodded. His hand slipped over hers and he gave it a gentle squeeze. He watched her take a steadying breath and prepare to go on.

"My father arranged for the three of us to tour the Continent. Before we left he placed a few hints about physicians and Isabel's inability to present him with an heir. He was careful to make it seem that there was an underlying reason for our trip. And of course there was, though not quite the one he would have his confidants believe.

"We saw very little of the Continent but went immediately to Italy. Adam was born in Venice. The midwife placed him in Isabel's arms and they left the room before I was delivered of the afterbirth. I was not allowed to hold him. My father insisted on that. I cannot even say that he was wrong. I might not have been able to give him up had it been otherwise. They left Venice for Rome that same evening. I did not cradle my son to my breast. I did not hear him cry. My milk dried because I could not feed him. From the very beginning he was nourished by a wet nurse."