Only Beloved (21 page)

And with what sounded like an overprotective mother. But
,
Dora thought, she did not want to involve herself in a conversation like this. She would not have come if she had known this was what he wanted to talk to her about.

“Really, Lord Eastham,” she said, “I must be—”

“It was done to punish my sister,” he said as they walked past the gap in the cliff face where it had collapsed at some time in the distant past and provided a steep way down over stones and pebbles to the beach below. They would be in sight of the house soon. Dora really did not want to be seen with the earl before she could tell George about this meeting. At the next gap in the gorse bushes she really must be firm and make her way through it and back to the house. Clearly he had nothing to share with her except stories that reflected badly upon George.

“With respect, I really do not wish to listen to any of this, Lord Eastham,” she said, stopping a little farther along the path, just where it curved outward to follow the contour of the cliff top. The house was in sight from here. “I can understand the concern you must have felt for your sister and nephew if you believed them unhappy, but I would suggest that perhaps you did not know all the facts, or, if you did, you knew them only from your sister's point of view and not also from your brother-in-law's. What went into the decisions that were made within that family group really concerned them alone, not you, and certainly not me.”

He had stopped beside her and regarded her with a peculiar half smile on his lips. The path was narrow here, she noticed, and it was impossible to put more of an acceptable distance between them. Prickly gorse would be snagging the muslin of her dress if she took so much as a half step back.

“One essential fact was indisputable, Duchess,” he said. “Brendan was not Stanbrook's son.”

She stared at him in incomprehension.

“He was mine,” he added.

Her confusion grew. “But the duchess was your sister.”

“Half sister,” he said. “Do you think a man and a woman cannot love in that way just because there is a forbidden degree of relationship between them, Duchess? You would be wrong if you do. I had been away from home a number of years, doing what a young man does while sowing wild oats. When I returned, I saw the changes those years had wrought in the daughter of my
father's second wife. She had grown up, and she was breathtakingly lovely. Did you know that of her? She blushed and smiled when she saw me for the first time in almost five years, and—we fell in love. It was entirely mutual and quite total. We never fell out of love. Never. Ours was that rare sort of passion that holds firm and immovable for a lifetime and beyond. Our father tried to tear us asunder by marrying her off to an insipid young pup of a duke's son, but he succeeded only in the sense that he gave
my love
into the hands of a coldhearted boy—he could hardly be described as a man—and
my son
into the hands of a man who eventually found a way of killing him without having to wield the weapon himself. And in so doing he found a way too of ridding himself of the wife he had finished punishing.”

They had been standing still too long, Dora thought, and her body had been held at an unnatural angle, bent back slightly from the waist to gain some distance from him. She thought she might well faint. There was a sort of buzzing in her ears. Full comprehension had not quite caught up yet to what she was hearing.

“This has
nothing
to do with me. I do not even wish to hear it.” Her voice sounded fuzzy to her ears, as though it were coming from a long way off. But it was too late
not
to hear it.

“But, Duchess,” he said, and he was frowning now, “it has
everything
to do with you.”

She had had enough—more than enough. She would listen to no more. She turned sharply about and took a step forward, desperately hoping she could forge a way through the gorse bushes without proceeding even
another step along the path with him. But two things happened simultaneously. The earl caught hold of her arm above the elbow, none too gently. And in the distance, close to the house, she saw three men, one of them George. It was obvious too in that brief moment that he saw her. But she was spun back to face the Earl of Eastham before she could see more.

“Release me, sir,” she said indignantly, and was almost surprised when he did so.

“Why, Duchess,” the earl asked her, his face close to hers, “should Stanbrook be allowed to have a child of his own when he took mine away from me? And why should he be allowed to have a woman to comfort him when he deprived me of mine?”

Her head turned cold. He knew of her pregnancy?

“If all you have told me is true, Lord Eastham,” she said, “the Duke of Stanbrook was tricked into taking a child who was not his own and the woman who was bearing him. If you are telling the truth, it was your father who did the tricking, though perhaps he did not know there was to be a child or even that the two of you were lovers. In either case, my husband was a victim at least as much as the two of you were. But
however it was,
it is none of my concern. I came at your request and I have listened to you against my will. Now I must bid you farewell. I have business to attend to at the house.”

She tried to turn from him again—but with even less success this time. He caught both her arms so that she could not turn at all. And it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she had something to fear. She heard his
last words like an echo in her brain—
Why, Duchess, should Stanbrook be allowed to have a child of his own when he took mine away from me? And why should he be allowed to have a woman to comfort him when he deprived me of mine?

She looked at him, coldness in her eyes and in her body. “Unhand me,” she said.

This time he did not comply with her demand. “Has anyone ever pointed out to you, Duchess,” he asked her, “where exactly on the cliff top my sister was standing when she was pushed to her death?”

No one had. But she could guess the answer.

He pointed downward with one finger.

“Here,” he said. “Or actually a little closer to the edge. Let me show you.”

“No, thank you,” she said.

But he still had her by one arm, and he was moving her off the path onto the coarse grass, which ended suddenly no more than seven or eight feet away.

But even as she saw that distance closing, she heard a distant voice. It was George's. “
Eastham!
”

“
Keep your distance, Stanbrook. You have no business here,
” the earl shouted back without taking his eyes off Dora. He lowered his voice again. “It is in the nature of an eye for an eye, you see, Duchess. A woman and a child for a woman and a child—and in almost the exact same manner, though I cannot, alas, arrange for the child to become fodder for enemy guns.”

“And you cannot arrange for me to jump unassisted as your sister did,” Dora said, amazed to hear the calmness
of her voice. She seemed suddenly to have turned to icy calmness all over, in fact, a strange thing when she ought to be incoherent with panic and terror.

“He has you hoodwinked, Duchess,” he said. “But I daresay that as an aging spinster you were ripe for the picking and did not much care what sort of a man you married. However, I do not mean to insult you. I do not dislike you. I meant what I said when I told you I have no grudge whatsoever against you. It is just unfortunate for you that you have become the perfect instrument of revenge.”

Poor George, a dispassionate part of Dora's mind thought. He was going to have to go through this nightmare for the second time in his life.

“My husband can see everything,” she said. “So, presumably, can the two gentlemen with him. It would be more than foolish for you to do what it is in your mind to do, Lord Eastham. Do you imagine that you will feel better after you have taken the life of an innocent woman and her unborn child? Do you imagine that you will be able to escape and to continue living as a free man?”

He smiled at her. “I will know the answer to your first question for only a moment, Duchess,” he said. “And yes, I will escape—into the freedom of eternity, which I will share, it is to be hoped, with Miriam and Brendan. It is life on this human plane, you see, that is hell to me.”

“
Eastham.
” The voice came from somewhere farther along the path they had been walking. It was not George's voice this time.

The earl looked up, the smile still on his face. “Oh, yes,” he called out, “I know you are there, creeping up on
me, the three of you. It is too bad you cannot get me completely surrounded, is it not? And unfortunately for you, it is by the fourth, unguardable side by which the duch—”

As he spoke, his hand had loosened infinitesimally on Dora's arm. His attention had been very slightly distracted. It was now or never, Dora knew as she wrenched her arm free, caught up her skirts with the other hand, and dashed back onto the path and along it the way they had come. There was no time to break through the thick barrier of the gorse bushes. There was no time to escape, no time for George to run to her rescue. The earl would be upon her in a moment.

“Behind you, Eastham!”

She half heard George's voice, but she could already sense the earl just behind her, his hand reaching out to grab her. She was back to the fault in the cliff face. If she stayed on the path, which bent around it, he would catch her long before she was halfway to the other side. If she went straight forward . . .

She did just that and found herself on the fall of boulders and rocks, all of them loose to varying degrees, all of them different sizes and positioned differently on the steep slope, which was a treacherous descent even when one had the leisure to make one's way carefully downward and had a steady male hand to help one every step of the way. Dora had no such luxury. She went hurtling downward and heard the earl shout out just behind her. She heard the sound of his boots on the loose stones. And then another shout. And now she was blind with terror, her icy calm having deserted her. She expected every moment to lose her balance, and
she expected every moment to feel a hand grab at her back or her arm. In her panic, she realized, she had turned away from safety rather than toward it.

But the second shout turned almost instantly to a long scream, at the same time she heard a shout of warning from another voice that caused her to twist away to one side in order to claw at some coarse grass growing there and a rock that jutted from the cliff face. The rock held, and she came to a jarring halt and watched in horror as the Earl of Eastham went sliding and somersaulting past and down the steep fall of rocks, until he came to a stop against one particularly large boulder close to the bottom and lay still and spread-eagled on its face. He looked curiously broken.

“
DORA!
”

She was aware of someone else coming down the rocks behind her at an incautious speed, and then, before she could turn, she was gathered up into someone's arms and pressed to his chest, his head against the side of hers.

“
Dora!
” There was a universe of pain in his voice.

There was a buzzing in her head, a coldness in her nostrils as she went limp in his arms and slid down a different kind of slope.

“What kept you, George?” she heard herself say.

But there was no chance to hear his answer or to revel in any sudden sense of safety. She kept sliding until everything went suddenly cold and dark.

G
eorge had been walking back from the stables to the house with Julian and Sir Everard Havell after a pleasant ride they had all enjoyed. He hoped Dora had found time to rest or that her mother had insisted upon it. She was endearingly excited about the upcoming festivities, but the servants had all the preparations well in hand and really did not need her assistance. Some of the guests would be staying overnight, though, and would therefore be arriving earlier than the rest, in time for dinner, at least. Dora would no doubt wish to be the perfect hostess and greet them at the door and see them settled in their rooms. For a moment George felt a twinge of guilt about not remaining to do it for her while she rested.

It was Havell who drew his attention to the two figures standing on the cliff top away off in the distance.

“I hope they are not as close to the edge as they look to be,” he had said, nodding in their direction. “I have never had much of a head for heights.”

George looked, and his first reaction was a fond sort
of exasperation, for if one of those persons was not Dora, he was much mistaken. Whatever was she doing out walking, though, today of all days when the sun was rather hot and she ought to be resting for the busy evening ahead? He did not immediately recognize the man with her, but he assumed it was one of the early arrivals. Could he not have explored on his own if he had felt so inclined?

His stomach lurched with discomfort then, for he realized that by unhappy chance they were standing just where Miriam had stood when . . . And with that realization came sudden recognition—and a certainty of understanding. By God, it was Eastham! At the same moment he realized this, Dora took a step away from the earl and turned toward the house—but only for a moment. George was not even sure she had seen him.

“Dear God!” he said, stopping in his tracks.

“Is that not Aunt Miriam's brother with Aunt Dora?” Julian asked at the same moment, shading his eyes with one hand. “What the devil is he doing here after the ass he made of himself at your wedding? You have not invited him to the ball tonight, have you?”

But George had already turned and begun to hurry across the south lawn toward the wilder land above the cliffs. The lawn seemed a mile wide. But the exact distance did not signify anyway, for he knew with a desperate hope that he was wrong that he would not get there in time. Eastham was facing toward the house. He must be able to see the three of them.

The other two were now running along either side of him.

“Is that the man who almost ruined Dora's wedding day?” Havell asked. “What in thunder—”

“He is going to push her over,” George said. “He is going to kill her. Eastham!” He yelled the last word, but of course it was hopeless. The man was not going to take fright just because George was hurrying to the rescue. Indeed, he would revel in just this situation.

“Keep your distance, Stanbrook,” he yelled back.

“What in thunder—” Havell said again.

“It is just the spot where Aunt Miriam jumped,” Julian said. “But . . . he must just be showing Aunt Dora where it happened. He surely wouldn't push her over. It would be madness. He has three witnesses.”

“That will not deter him,” George said. He had stopped, but his mind was racing. If he moved any closer, he would merely provoke Eastham into pushing her over sooner. But if he stayed and did nothing, Eastham would do it anyway. He had already drawn her off the path closer to the edge of the cliff. “God!” He plummeted off a cliff of his own into the sheer hell of terror, panic, and despair. There was nothing—

That was when Sir Everard Havell took charge of the situation.

“Crabbe,” he had said crisply, addressing Julian, “go to your right. I will go left. Get through all that gorse and then call his name. I will do the same directly after you. Perhaps we can distract him long enough to give Dora a chance to break free. Get ready to dash in to help, but only if she has managed to get back a bit from the edge. George, stay here and keep his attention focused on you.”

George stayed there because he could do nothing else. It was all hopeless. Just as it had been the last time, though this situation was different. There was no course of action that would prevent catastrophe. Yet inaction would not prevent it either. He was scarcely aware of the other two moving away to the sides. What should he do? Move forward? Utter threats? Beg and plead? None of those options would do any good whatsoever. Miriam had jumped, and Eastham would push. But he took a few steps forward anyway and drew breath to say something.

“Eastham!” It was Julian's voice, not his own, coming from down on the path to the right.

Eastham answered him, his voice raised in mockery.

But miraculously, terrifyingly, Dora jerked away from him and fled in the opposite direction. Eastham recovered his focus almost instantly. She could not possibly escape.

“Behind you, Eastham,” George yelled, and Eastham's pursuit was slowed while he turned his head to look in the direction from which Julian's voice had come. But only for the briefest of moments.

He was after Dora again in a flash. Within moments he would have her in his grasp once more. But those moments offered a slim sliver of hope, and George sprang into action. He never afterward knew how he got past the gorse bushes, but get through them he did, leaving deep scratches in his boots and tearing his breeches and drawing blood from his knees and thighs and hands. The path bent around the steep fall of rocks that they used as an access to the beach, but Dora did
not go around. She kept on going forward instead, and, even as Eastham's hands reached for her, she disappeared over the edge, moving at a full run.

George felt that nightmare sensation of trying to run at full speed through air grown thick and gummy. But this was reality, not nightmare. He had failed to reach her in time, and Havell was on the other side of the gap in the cliff and too far away to grab her and haul her to safety. Havell was not too far away, however, to raise one booted foot as Eastham turned downward in pursuit. The foot caught Eastham at one ankle, and he tripped and lost his balance.

There were shouting voices—one of them may have been George's—and then a scream.

George arrived at the top of the slope as Havell, teetering on the edge, regained his balance and called a warning down the slope. But George saw only one thing. He saw Dora partway down, her body spread across a jagged, jutting rock.

He was quite unaware of going down to her. He was just
there,
and he was gathering her to him, calling her name, knowing that she could not hear him, that she was dead.

“Dora!” he said again, and he felt his heart shatter and sanity slip from him. He held her for what seemed an eternity before he heard a sound.

“What kept you, George?” she asked, her voice faint and slurred.

He jerked his head back and stared down at her. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then she was gone, her face as white as parchment.

“Ah, Dora,” he whispered against her lips. “My belovèd. My
only
belovèd.”

“Is she hurt?” It was Julian's voice, and he was crouched beside George and pressing two fingers to the side of her neck. “A strong beat, thank God. She has just fainted.”

George looked at him in incomprehension. “She is alive?”

Julian clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard.

“You look as though you are going to be the next one to faint,” he said. “She is alive
,
Uncle George. Can you hear me? I do not even see any wounds. I believe the only blood is coming from the scratches on your hands. I have some on mine too. Those damned gorse bushes. But she is
alive
.” He squeezed George's shoulder again.

“He is dead,” a voice called up from below—Sir Everard Havell's. “I have killed him, and by Jove I am glad. Is Dora hurt?”

*   *   *

Dora woke up wondering if it was time to get up yet. But there was something about the angle of the light coming through the window of the bedchamber that was not quite right. It brought her eyes snapping open. What time was it?
When was the ball?

She would have thrown back the bedcovers if her hand had not been imprisoned between two larger hands.

“George?”

He was sitting on the side of the bed, looking as pale as a ghost. “Thank God,” he said. “You recognize me.”

“Recognize—?” She frowned, and remembered.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “How did I get here?”

“I carried you,” he said. “You fainted. More than fainted actually. We could not bring you around. You have been unconscious for more than an hour.”

She stared fixedly at him. “He was going to kill me. An eye for an eye, he said. A woman and child for a woman and child. He had no personal grudge against me, he assured me. It was revenge against you.”

“And a very effective one, had it worked,” he said. “A thousand times more effective than killing me.”

“What happened to him?” She tried to sit up, but he coaxed her back against the pillows with one hand on her shoulder.

“Sir Everard tripped him as he turned to follow you down the slope,” he said. “He fell almost to the bottom. He is dead.”

“Dead,” she repeated. “He meant to kill himself too, you know. That was why he was unconcerned about you and the others witnessing what he did. I think he actually wanted to be seen, especially by you. But what did you say? Sir Everard tripped him?”

A stifled sob drew Dora's attention to the foot of the bed. Her mother was standing there, clinging to the bedpost on the other side, just as pale as George.

“It was all my fault, Dora,” she said. “I sent you to talk to him. You almost
died
.”

“But I did not,” Dora said. “And I did not have to go out there to him. It was my decision, remember?” She closed her eyes again for a moment and licked dry lips.

“Sir Everard saved your life, Dora,” George said.
“He arranged the diversion with Julian to distract Eastham to give you a chance to break away, and then he stopped Eastham before he could pursue you down the slope.”

Dora's eyes filled with tears as she looked at her mother.

“He fears heights,” her mother said.

Dora smiled wanly. How could it be that they had come full circle now? That the very man who she had always believed had ruined her life by stealing her mother away had now saved her life? And then her eyes widened in sudden panic. “But what time is it? There must be guests arriving. It must be almost time to—”

The hand that had pressed her shoulder back down to the bed was still there.

“It is time to lie where you are,” George said. “There are other people to show the guests to their rooms. Dodd ought to be here soon. Julian went dashing off to fetch him.”

“But I do not need a doctor,” she protested. “I need to get ready for dinner and the ball. What time
is
it?”

“It is still only late afternoon,” he assured her. “Listen to me, Dora. You have suffered a severe shock. I do not suppose you have felt the full effects of it yet. And there is the added complication that you are with child. You will lie there until Dodd has examined you, and you will lie there even after that if he feels you ought. And that is a command. Dinner and the ball will proceed without you if they must, though everyone will regret your absence, no one more so than I. Philippa has agreed to host the evening's events if necessary, and she is perfectly capable of doing so.”

“I will stay here with you, Dora, if the doctor advises rest,” her mother said. “You will not be alone. And no one will blame you for not putting in an appearance. Word of what has happened has no doubt spread through the village and beyond by now. And your condition is common knowledge. Indeed, I would think everyone would be more surprised if you did appear tonight.”

Dora looked in dismay from one to the other of them. “But this is our first grand entertainment together,” she said to George. She turned back to her mother. “And we deliberately planned it for the time you and Sir Everard would be here.”

“There will be other balls and parties and concerts, Dora,” George said. “But there is only one of you.”

“It is enough that we are here,” her mother told her. “Everyone has been most kind. You and His Grace especially.”

Dora clutched a handful of the bedcovers with her free hand. “I am not going to lose the baby, am I?” she asked.

Her mother shook her head, but it was George who answered.

“It is to be sincerely hoped you will not,” he said, “but you must listen to the doctor, Dora, and do as he says. I would not risk our child or—and, frankly, far more important at this stage—you for the sake of a mere ball, important as I know it is to you. My God, I almost lost you today. I almost
lost
you and would have had it not been for Sir Everard and Julian.”

His eyes glittered down into hers, and she realized that he was on the verge of tears. She relaxed back against the pillows.

And the image came suddenly and vividly to mind of the vast emptiness of space that had yawned a mere foot or two in front of her with the Earl of Eastham's hand gripping her arm and propelling her forward. She thought of the desperate flight when she had somehow managed to wrench her arm free and of her split-second decision to take the slope down rather than the path around—and the almost simultaneous realization that she was never going to make it to the bottom alive. She remembered a tumbling, screaming body hurtling past her. She remembered arms holding her tight and a voice from the encroaching darkness as she lost consciousness, calling her name. She remembered a voice from the depths—
Ah, Dora. My belovèd. My
only
belovèd.

George's voice.

“I ought to have heeded you when you begged me to have nothing more to do with him,” she said. “But I thought I knew better than you. I thought there might be a way of reconciling the two of you.”