The Book Of Scandal (13 page)

She made another sound, but it was different—it was a small cry of desire, one he recognized and knew well. Her hands loosened on his lapel; one slid up, to his neck, to his jaw. The other went around his neck as she pressed her breasts against his chest, her pelvis against his erection.

He kissed her reverently, and with remorse, too, for all the years they’d lost, for the chasm they’d created and could not seem to cross.

She plunged her hand into his hair, and dug her fingers into his shoulder, digging through fabric to bone. Nathan slipped his hand into her dressing gown, covering her breast, kneading it. Evelyn responded with a moan and moved seductively, sliding against him, driving him wild.

His body flared with excitement; there had never been a woman who affected him, who moved him quite the way she did now and always had. Familiar feelings of wanting her, needing her, roared to the surface of his mind.

He couldn’t wait another moment. He held her head with one hand and dipped down, intent on picking her up and carrying her to her bed—but Evelyn suddenly gasped and shoved against him with all her might.

All her might was not enough to move him, but it was enough to give him pause.

She shoved him again and jerked back, out of his grasp. Her eyes were blazing with passion and anger as she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and glared at him. “How dare you!” she cried, and scrambled off the chaise, pushing him so hard with her foot that he lost his hold and had to stop his fall with a hand to the floor.

“How dare I?” he demanded as he pushed himself up.

She pressed her hands to her abdomen as if she were going to be ill and turned from him. “Surely you do not expect me to just…just fall into your arms!”

Nathan’s vexation turned to white-hot anger. Honestly, he didn’t know what he expected, but the sound of revulsion in her voice angered him. “You seemed to be falling quite readily, Evelyn,” he snapped, and leapt to his feet.

“Only because you seduced me!” She jumped out of his reach again. “I must be mad—this house makes me mad!”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Is it not as obvious to you as it is to me that we are not the same people we were three years ago? Six years ago? Ten years ago? We’ve changed, we’ve grown apart!”

“Who’s to say we can’t grow together still—”

“No,” she said, adamantly shaking her head. “No, no, no, Nathan! I will never go back to the way we were!”

“I’m not asking you to go back!” he said angrily. “Do you honestly believe that I want to go back to that wretched time? But Evelyn, it has been more than three years since Robert died—”

“Please!” she cried, throwing up a hand.

The pain in her eyes was so real that Nathan checked himself. He caught her by the shoulders; she pushed against him, but weakly. He looked at the delicate beauty of her features, the depth of color in her eyes, and felt sorrow for her. How she had loved that boy! “It’s been more than three years since Robert died,” he said again.

Evelyn pressed her lips together and closed her eyes.

Nathan shook her. “But we have mourned, Evelyn! God knows we have mourned him, and mourned him deeply. It has long been time for us to put it behind us.”

She gasped and pushed his hands from her shoulders. “I can never put him behind me! How can you expect me to put my child, dead or alive, behind me?” she cried, pressing her hands to her heart. “But lest you think I have not moved forward, I have. I have gone forward from the worst moment of my life and now…now I want a divorce.”

The very word, so unexpected, sent him reeling. He stilled, gaping at her. “What in the bloody hell did you just say?”

Evelyn defiantly lifted her chin. “I want a divorce. What more is there for us?” she cried, throwing her arms out wide. “We were never suited, we’ve not seen each other in three years, we scarcely speak, we are not husband and wife—”

“No,” he said sharply. “Never utter that word to me again, do you hear me?”

“You won’t even listen to me?” she cried. “Having endured this…this sham of a marriage for three years, you won’t even listen to what I would say?”

“This sham of a marriage, as you put it, was not a sham until Robert died and you went to London. I agreed to that only to help you, Evelyn! I gave you precisely what you wanted—to leave Eastchurch and all that had happened here,” he cried, sweeping his arm wide. “I did it to make you happy because God knew everything else I tried failed! I wanted to take the sorrow from you in any way that I could, and that seemed the only way. So I let you go—for you!”

“Oh dear heavens!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “You wanted to make me happy? You never thought of me at all, Nathan! You were constantly gone, constantly in the company of your friends, constantly in the company of Alexandra DuPaul! You left me alone to suffer through the greatest tragedy of my life!”

“Because you would not let me in!” he roared to the ceiling. “As God is my witness, you sat in that chair,” he said, pointing angrily to the chair before the hearth. “You would not eat, you would not sleep, and you would not talk to me, Evelyn! And on those occasions you did deign to speak to me, it was to complain.”

“What did you want me to do? Gladly accept your affair?”

“There was no affair!” he shouted. “She was my friend, Evelyn. She was my friend because God knows I found none here!”

Evelyn blinked. And turned away from him. “Please do not make this so difficult,” she pleaded with him. “I cannot return to the life we had. I want to make a new life. I want a divorce.”

He gaped at her. It felt almost like a dream, so odd, as if he were standing outside his body. How did one respond to such an outrageous request? Divorce was impossible. Impossible! Even if he were so inclined, and assuming they—she—could survive the scandal, for society would be much harsher on her, no one would marry her after it was all said and done, she would be ruined. There were few options open to them to even attempt a divorce. Any legal divorce, short of an act of Parliament, which would be a costly and public affair, would render their dead son a bastard.

Surely he did not need to tell her so. Divorce was unthinkable, unconscionable. “Was it truly so wretched?” he asked low. “Was I so unkind? Did I raise my voice to you? Did I deny you anything?”

“Nathan—”

“What is it, Evie?” he asked, meaning the question quite sincerely.

A tear slid down her cheek. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Nothing is obvious—nothing makes any sense. What do you think is so damn obvious?”

“I don’t love you anymore,” she said, and quickly put a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.

The words cut right through him and released the wind from his lungs. He supposed he had known it deep inside, but hearing her say the words aloud—he clenched one hand at his side, tried to find his bearings. “Did you ever?” he asked tightly.

Two more tears slid silently down her cheek. “How could you possibly ask me?”

“Because I need to know.” For some insane reason, he desperately needed to know. “It seems a logical question,” he said numbly. “Did you?”

“Of course I did,” she said, her eyes rimmed with anguish.

Nathan felt another slice of pain and looked down at the carpet in something of a fog.

“Did…did you love me?” she asked with a hollow voice.

Nathan slowly looked up. He was surprised to see how hopeful, how uncertain she looked. If he were brutally honest, he’d tell her that he hadn’t loved her in the beginning, and now…Now? At that particular moment, he couldn’t say what he felt, other than a cold pain.

Evelyn gave a soft sob and turned away from him, gripping the back of the chair as if she was feeling unsteady.

“The scaffolding of our marriage was rather complicated, Evie. It was weak in some places, stronger in others. Perhaps it was too weak to survive Robert’s death. But…but that doesn’t mean we can’t build anew.”

“No,” she said with a somber shake of her head. “You weren’t there, Nathan.” She hugged herself tightly and glanced helplessly at the window. “There were days I thought I would collapse under the weight of it all, and I didn’t know what to do, and you were gone.”

“I was there, Evie,” he said quickly. “If you had collapsed, I would have picked you up and carried you. I was there.”

She looked at him skeptically—she did not believe him. She did not believe he would have been there for her if she had called out to him. And really, why would she? His grief had been just as great if not greater—he’d lived every day of Robert’s short and sickly life wondering if his debauchery had made his son weak. Perhaps he’d drunk too much ale in his life, or the recklessness of various sports had weakened him somehow, and he passed that along to his son. He’d tried to understand why Robert had been so sickly, and nothing made sense.

When his son had died, he’d not been able to bear it any better than Evelyn. At least Alexandra had offered a shoulder to lean on when all the world expected him to be strong. For that, he would be eternally grateful to her.

But there was nothing else between him and Alexandra as Evelyn believed. In truth, Nathan had never looked at another woman until she’d gone, and even then, only here and there when he could deny the physical need no more.

Nathan turned away, pushed his hand through his hair, confused and angry.

“I would prefer to be in London,” Evelyn said quietly.

He felt depleted, empty, emptier than he’d felt in a very long time. He was broken into pieces all over again. He looked back at Evelyn, saw that she was trembling slightly. He reached out, touched his fingers to her cheek, then her jaw. “I will not divorce you, Evelyn. And you will not return to London.” He removed his hand.

“Nathan—”

“Never speak of it again,” he said, and turned away from those tearful eyes and the invisible wounds that still oozed after three years.

He walked out without thinking, his path old but familiar, his feet moving almost of their own accord. He walked down the corridor, not noticing the chambermaid who stepped back to allow him to pass, or the footman who hastily swung the pail of coals for a brazier out of his path.

Nathan walked, stretching the palm that had touched her.

It burned.

It burned with his own private pain, his own conflicting, churning emotions that the touch of her skin, the smell of her hair, the feel of her in his arms had caused to erupt in him. He walked down the main staircase, nodded at the footman in the grand foyer, strode to the back of the foyer, took a candle from the wall, and opened a door to stairs leading to the lower floors.

The corridor below was dark, but Nathan knew his way under the east wing. Using his burning hand as a guide, he groped his way to the very last door, the room that had once served as a grain store, and pushed it open. The room was empty now, and he walked in, carefully shut the door behind him, and placed the candle in a holder on the wall.

He turned and looked at one stone wall, dimly lit by the flickering light of the candle.

He’d first come to this room the night his son had died. He’d been here so many times since then that he could no longer count them. The wall was scarred and stained, bearing the marks of his rages these last few years. Very calmly, almost by rote, he raised his arm and crushed his fist against the wall.

He continued to hit his fist or palm against the wall until he could no longer feel the burn in it, until he’d beaten his overwhelming desire and suffocating disappointment into submission.

Panting, and perspiring in spite of the bone-chilling dampness of the room, Nathan finally stopped and braced himself against the wall with both hands, gulping air and swallowing down a pain that ached so deep, it felt like a mortal wound.

E velyn went about the business of methodically sealing the letters she’d written this morning: to her mother, her sister, Princess Mary, and Harriet. She wrote to Claire, too, and asked her—in vain, she knew—to continue Harriet’s dancing lessons.

She did not write to Pierce.

She had intended to. She’d thought carefully of what she would say, of perhaps even asking him to help her. But after last night, after sharing that fiery, searing kiss with Nathan, she didn’t know what she thought anymore. Everything felt different somehow. She didn’t know where exactly she fit in her own life any longer.

There were some things she needed to work out, things that had kept her awake until the early morning hours. “The scaffolding of our marriage was rather complicated, Evie. It was weak in some places, stronger in others…”

She folded the foolscap, melted the wax, pressed the Lindsey seal into the warm wax, and stacked the letters neatly on the edge of the small dining table she was using as a writing table.

The scaffolding of their marriage, as Nathan had so eloquently put it, had been built on too many lofty expectations and assumptions about what marriage truly entailed. Evelyn had been naïve when she’d agreed to marry for money and position. She’d been so young, and she believed that was what she was supposed to do—it was an expectation her parents had put on her even in her earliest memories.

A knock at the door roused her from her thoughts. “Come!” she called.

Benton opened the door. “Kathleen Maguire, madam.”

Kathleen, her friend, companion, and ladies’ maid, entered behind him. She barely reached Benton’s shoulder, but what she lacked in height she made up in girth. She grinned at Evelyn but stepped aside so the footman could carry in the trunks and place them in the dressing room. “There you are, lads,” she said cheerfully. “Leave them be, I’ll tend to them as needed.”

Evelyn leapt up from her seat and threw her arms around Kathleen. “Never have my eyes seen such a welcome—Harriet!” she cried, spotting the girl over Kathleen’s shoulder.

Harriet wandered in behind Kathleen, looking a little lost.

“Harriet, darling, what are you doing here?”

“My mother left me,” she said. “She said she needed the waters at Bath.”

Evelyn blinked, but Kathleen said cheerfully, “There’ll be time to chat after we’ve fed this girl, eh, milady?” She gave Evelyn a look that suggested they talk privately.