Let Me Be The One (47 page)

Elizabeth glanced past North to the curtain of falling snow beyond the windows. "After a time it did not seem quite real. While I remained in Venice my body returned to a form more familiar to me. My breasts lost their fullness. The ache in my back disappeared. My belly flattened." She looked at him again. "You saw for yourself the only proof that remained. No matter how often I rubbed oil into my distended belly I could not erase those marks. They have faded over the years, but nothing save my own denial could make them disappear. It is not how I meant for you to find out that I had conceived and carried and delivered a child."

"Did you ever mean for me to know?" he asked.

Elizabeth could not deny him the truth. "No."

North let out his breath slowly. It was not an unexpected answer.

Her heart ached for him. He deserved so much better than what she had been able to give him. "It is not what you think," she said. "At least not what I imagine you think."

"Oh? Then what is it?"

"It is not that I did not trust you." She saw one of his brows lift skeptically. "It is that I did not trust anyone. I could not."

North's brow lowered and he schooled his features. "I'm listening."

"From the moment Adam was born my father relied on my silence. Isabel's also. It was the only way in which our deception could proceed. In order for Adam to be accepted as Lord Selden, my father's heir, there could be no one who knew otherwise. I have already explained that it was not so difficult for me to believe. It was almost two months before my father sent for me from Rome. Adam was in every way Isabel's son by then. At least I told myself it was so. I denied the ache that tore at my breast when he cried and she comforted him. I would not acknowledge the tears I shed when my own father coddled his son and had so few words to spare for me. Can you appreciate how selfish I believed myself to be, North? They were giving my child everything and I was as resentful as I was grateful. I did not know how to reconcile both things inside me."

Elizabeth's amber eyes softened as she implored him to understand. "When we returned to London, then to Rosemont, it was simply too difficult for me to continue to live under my father's roof. I chose to return to London and..." She hesitated, her courage failing her. North did not press, but she knew he would die right where he knelt rather than allow her to leave off now. "And I think they were relieved. It was then that I met Lord and Lady Battenburn."

She saw him nod faintly, as if he had expected this direction and understood its import. She found it easier to continue. "Louise befriended me. I enjoyed her company and she was everything kind. Harrison did not seem to mind that I was forever a guest in their home.

"I do not know precisely how it came about. It seems so disingenuous to say that I lowered my guard. I do not think I properly had one where Louise was concerned. She did not badger me. She did not even seem to know I had a secret to share, yet one day that was precisely what I did. I told her everything."

North said nothing. He rose stiffly to his feet while Elizabeth stared at her hands. "She has been blackmailing you since that time?" he asked.

Elizabeth's head shot up, giving the truth away even before she asked the question. "How did you know?"

"A guess," he admitted. "One you have now confirmed." Things at the periphery of North's mind suddenly moved front and center. "Your father? He knows what you did."

She nodded, her shoulders slumping as she did so.

"Louise blackmails him as well."

"Yes." The answer was barely audible.

"I take it Louise is not alone in this endeavor."

"Battenburn is fully aware. In some ways he tempers her. In other ways he provokes her."

North closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Christ," he said softly. "What a mess." He dropped his hand and regarded Elizabeth again. "I imagine they threaten you all with exposure."

"Yes. My father and Isabel would be humiliated for having put forth the deception, but that is of little concern. It is that Selden would know they are not his parents that distresses them."

"They could adopt him."

"Of course they could. And they would. We have talked about it. But it is that he would know that keeps us all silent. Perhaps some day we will determine that he can have the truth, but not now. It remains a fact that none of us want others to know."

"So you are no longer keepers of your secret but prisoners of it."

"Yes. Exactly."

North considered this in silence for a time. "This is at the root of your father's anger toward you?"

She nodded. "He considers the fact that I told someone about Adam more grievous a sin than my having had him in the first place." She saw an objection rise to North's lips and she stopped. "He loves Selden. You know that's true. You observed it yourself when we were at Rosemont. He can't find it in himself to despise me for giving birth, only for wanting to relieve myself of the burden of hurt and grief that surrendering my son caused me. That is what he cannot forgive."

North leaned against the cool panes of glass at his back. "It would mean he has to accept some responsibility."

"But he did nothing wrong. He was—"

"He took your child, Elizabeth. He wanted an heir and he took your son. Have you never wondered how it might have been different if you had delivered a girl?"

She had. "Isabel would have insisted he keep his word," she said quietly.

North suspected that was true. "Of course," he said at length. "It is of no matter now. Selden has proved to be a very good son to his father and Rosemont a good father to his son."

Elizabeth fiddled with the knot in her shawl. "I would see that it remains so. Do you understand why I said nothing to you? Why I would have kept it a secret?"

"I understand that people you trusted have betrayed you," he said. "Adam's father. Louise and Harrison. In some fashion it is even true of Isabel and your father." He heard Elizabeth's sharp intake of breath. "You do not like to think of the last, do you? Or rather, it is acceptable if you think it and keep it to yourself, but unacceptable if I say it aloud. Were they the ones who convinced you that your son's life would be beyond the pale if he were acknowledged as a bastard?"

"I... they..."

"And you? Did they say that you could have no place at all in society, make no match, have no chance at any happiness if you—"

Elizabeth shot to her feet. "Stop it! My decision was made! I made it! I—" Her voice was caught on a sob. She said the words again, this time with hardly a sound. "I made it." Her shoulders shook once and a second breath rattled through her slender frame. "I have to live with it."

North closed the space between them in a single stride. He took Elizabeth in his arms and held her, pressing her head against his shoulder. Every tremor that shook her body he absorbed into his own. "You don't have to live with it alone," he whispered against her ear. "And you don't have to fear betrayal or reprisal from me. I love you, Elizabeth. I married you because I loved you. Nothing has changed that."

"You... you told m-me to l-leave," she said brokenly. "You s-said I sh-should go."

"Because I was hurt. Not because I no longer loved you. I needed time to decide if I could live with you, knowing it was not the same for you, knowing that I would be hurt again and again by your inability to trust yourself to love me or trust me to love you." He caught her by the shoulders and held her back from him, his shadowed face close to hers, his dark eyes intent. "I cannot do it, Elizabeth. These last weeks... not knowing where you were... it was an agony. Loving you without having it returned would be an agony stretched over a lifetime. I know that now. I am prepared to leave you, tonight if I must, if you can offer me no hope that it might be different." He could not help himself. His hands trembled, then his arms, and when it reached his shoulders he shook hers. It startled him so much that he pulled her to him again, wrapped his arms close about her as though he could cleave her to his heart. "Can you, Elizabeth?" he asked, his cheek pressed to her hair. "Is there hope?"

"There is love," she said. She lifted her face and cupped his. "Do you hear me, North? There is love. I was certain of it when I left London and I am no less certain of it now. I love you. God help us both, but I hope it is enough."

He kissed her then. For the moment, at least, it seemed that it was.

Chapter 14

The chaise was more comfortable than the stone floor, wider than the bench, and met the critical criterion of being handy. Outside the conservatory the snowfall had stopped. Moonshine glanced off the white landscape. An occasional wind lifted sparkling eddies of snow and reshaped the pasture with drifts like cresting waves. A silver blue ribbon of light marked the path to the chaise, and the palm tree—that South Seas gift from Captain Cook—shaded the lovers with its feathery fronds.

Hunger born of abstinence, eagerness born of love, sent them tumbling on the chaise. Arms and legs tangled. Mouths fused. Impatience made them ignore clothing except as it presented a barrier to their furious coupling. They filled the air with moist heat until crystalline frost flowers appeared on the panes of glass. Their breathing came in small gasps, surprised and satisfied in turn as they pleasured each other and themselves.

He came when he was deeply inside her. She held him there with legs that were wrapped around his hips and arms that circled his shoulders. She embraced his shuddering body as if it were an extension of her own and then marveled that it wasn't. Her own cry mingled with the last threads of his and he supported her, whispering against her ear, ruffling her hair with each soft expulsion of air.

They lay quite still at the end, too replete to move except for the movements they could not help. Her fingers twitched. His calf jumped. Their heartbeats slowed with more delicacy. Their laughter mingled, low and rich, more of a rumbling than an eruption. They said inconsequential things that at the time seemed to have the weight and import of philosophical tenets. Discomfort aside, in fewer minutes than they realized, they slept.

The second time they made love it was in Elizabeth's bed. Frantic behind them, this union was lingering. Sweet. Sometimes playful. Sometimes gentle and grave.

Their clothes were scattered on the floor from doorway to bed. The heavy drapes were closed, blocking moonshine. It was the warmer glow from the candles that lent their perspiring flesh a sheen of gold and orange.

Lying back on the bed, her head resting on North's shoulder, Elizabeth lifted one arm and turned it so the soft patina of candlelight was visible along its length.

"Beautiful," North said, watching her. "You should always wear light."

"But—" Then she realized what he was saying. Elizabeth let her arm drop and she turned slightly, for a moment wearing only her smile. North noticed that looked excellent on her, too. "You're a very sweet man," she told him. "But as careful with a shilling as your grandfather. I suppose I shall have to be content with the wardrobe I have."

North chuckled. "Then you've heard his lectures on the virtues of thrift and the vices of gambling."

"The entire repertoire." She laid her hand flat on North's chest. "He's not going to be pleased that you overturned two of his orchid pots. He's very proud of them, you know." Elizabeth's breath caught as North shut her up with a thorough kiss. When he raised his head she was smiling up at him. "If that is your idea of a consequence for my idle chatter, I doubt I shall ever find anything important to say again." She welcomed his rumbling laughter. Her fingers ran along the edge of his jaw and touched the corner of his mouth. Raising up on one elbow, Elizabeth's eyes searched his face. The toll their separation had exacted was still visible in his features; a deep weariness that was only partially ameliorated by their lovemaking was still there.

Elizabeth's index finger traced the line of his cheek from his mouth to his temple. Her own expression was both solemn and curious. "How did you find me?"

"Madame Fortuna." He smiled as Elizabeth's mouth opened and closed. He had actually rendered her speechless. He recalled that surprise had the same effect as kissing her. "I wish I could say that I was clever about it, but you left virtually no trail. No one remembered seeing you after you arrived at the inn. When pressed, the innkeeper could not even recall you leaving. Eastlyn watched the baroness's London residence and determined you had not come back to London to stay there. South went to Battenburn. West questioned innkeepers and coach drivers along the most traveled roads. There was no hint of you at any turn."