The Old Maids' Club 02 - Pariah (33 page)

“Will you please reconsider?” she mumbled after a moment, sniffling against her will. “Lord Roman has reasons he cannot marry me, Isaac. He’s only wanted to help us. Surely you can see why we need him here, after how he handled Aunt Rosaline.”

“Reasons which make it all right that he’s been living with you in sin? Reasons which would satisfy Father on the score of your honor? I’m sorry, but there are no reasons I can fathom which would make any of this acceptable…despite the fact that he is very good with our aunt. Speaking of which, why haven’t you informed anyone how severe her…her situation is?”

She shouldn’t have expected any other response from him. In truth, she hadn’t expected it…just hoped, perhaps. A fool’s hope.

Mrs. Temple bustled in, set the tea service down before them, and then was gone in a trice. Isaac poured himself a cup. “Do you want some?”

She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“You should drink some tea. Mother always said it would help.” He started to pour her a cup, but stopped when she put her hand over his. Reluctantly, he nodded and then lifted his cup to his lips to take a sip.

With the need to cast up her accounts pressing at her throat, Bethanne wiped the tears from her cheeks and settled her resolve. Losing Miranda’s trust was not an idea she relished, but perhaps in time that could be rectified. Perhaps Miranda would understand why she’d had to betray her trust.

She hoped so.

Bethanne cleared her throat and stood, moving to stand before the hearth for courage. “You should know, and I think you do,” she finally began, wishing that her voice held more conviction, “that Lord Roman Sullivan is not Finn’s father. Lord Loring was.”

His teacup crashed to the floor and shattered, sending tea and shards of china flying.

Pacing had always seemed such a waste of time before, so Roman had rarely been one to pace—he was not a man to waste anything, least of all time. At the moment, he had nothing but time to waste, however, and so he had been pacing since almost the exact moment he’d arrived at the clearing. A well-trodden path through the snow had formed at his feet, marring the perfection of the night’s new fall.

He reached for his watch fob, and his fingers brushed over the glass vial in the process. Still intact. Still just as it had been since his commanding officer had placed it in his hands and ordered him to take it to Wellington, leaving his men behind.

But those thoughts would not serve him well today. Roman brushed them aside and pulled out his fob. Almost nine o’clock. He’d been out there for well over thirty minutes, without a sign of Shelton.

Had the man decided against following through with their duel? It was possible, of course. But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he have let Roman know of his decision?

No, that didn’t seem too very likely.

Another possibility was that Lady Rosaline had fallen into another fit. Roman believed, however, that if such a thing had happened, one of the servants would have come out to fetch him. He doubted that, after Shelton had witnessed the means by which Roman had calmed his aunt, the younger man would object in this instance.

This was just an assumption, to be sure, but Roman was fairly confident in making that assumption.

Was Shelton staying with Bethanne to calm her? While Mrs. Temple was more than capable of completing the task, perhaps Shelton felt it to be his responsibility. They did appear to have a close relationship, where siblings were concerned—at least if one disregarded the fact that she’d kept any number of secrets from him and the rest of her family. Yet that didn’t seem to have diminished the care they both felt for the other.

This final possibility appeared to be the most likely. It also was the possibility fraught with the least certainty as to when Roman might expect Shelton to join him for their duel. And so, in lieu of interrupting whatever Shelton was doing, Roman continued to pace, dreading the upcoming confrontation. Whatever the outcome might be, he knew one thing for certain—Bethanne would be the one to suffer.

He’d been at it for another half hour or so before finally a figure emerged, making its way toward him across the field. Roman finally stilled and he strained his eyes, and then his heart stopped.

It was Bethanne, not her brother, wearing the same pink redingote she’d worn on the day he’d first met her.

Roman tried to move, tried to meet her, but his boots suddenly felt as though they had become blocks of ice in the snow. He couldn’t move a muscle.

With each step she took, some new part of his body seized…his hands, his mind, his lungs, his heart. It was more than he could comprehend.

Bethanne drew up before him with tears glistening on her cheeks in the morning light. He couldn’t stop himself. He removed his gloves and reached his hands up, brushing the wetness away and reveling in the softness of her skin.

“What…what are you doing here?” he asked when she simply stood there staring deeply into his eyes. “You shouldn’t be out here, Bethanne. Your brother and I are—”

“No.” Bethanne reached up and placed a single finger to his lips, instantly stopping his objections. The delicate touch of her kid-skin gloves against him turned his world on its axis. “Isaac isn’t coming. There will be no duel.”

Like a simpleton, he shook his head, unable to wrap his mind around what she had said. “But…?”

“Come. Sit with me.” Taking his large hand in hers, Bethanne led him to a stone bench off to the side of the clearing, with a clear view of the rose garden behind the cottage.

Roman was powerless to do anything but what she asked.

Even after they were seated, she didn’t relinquish her hold on him. The heat of her tiny hand somehow warmed his entire body, flowing through him to settle in his gut.

“I told my brother the truth of Finn’s parentage, though I had to break a promise in order to do so.” She winced, as though breaking a promise had caused her physical discomfort.

Almost subconsciously, he twined his fingers with hers, seeking a way to touch more of her than he already was. She was finally going to trust him with the truth, and he couldn’t help but want to ease her way in the telling. “I promised—I promised you I would never ask you to reveal your secrets to me.” At his halting words, she looked up at him. Roman cleared his throat. “I still won’t, but I—”

“My sister was ravished several years ago. Most of the family did not know what happened, but Isaac did. He challenged the man to a duel…and killed him.” Bethanne stared down at their joined hands for long minutes.

Roman watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, the slight parting of her lips, the moist heat of her breath hitting the frozen air. A great sense of awe stole over him. He’d known for some time now, it seemed, that he loved Bethanne, but there was something different now. He sensed that the tale she was set to reveal might portray her as even more noble than he’d already known.

After a tear fell, she started again. “Miranda was inconsolable and unfit to take part in society, so Isaac convinced Father to allow her to come to the cottage for a visit, telling him only that Miranda had been jilted by a man she thought to marry someday. Isaac believed that Aunt Rosaline and I could help her. But once she’d been with us for a few weeks, it became clear she was with child.”

Finn truly was her sister’s boy. The truth of it struck Roman like a hammer to the head. Lady Rosaline had told him as much, but he’d privately let himself believe she had confused her stories again. What an extraordinary woman Bethanne was, to sacrifice herself and her future not only for her aunt, but for her sister…and for Finn.

“Aunt Rosaline and Miranda and I fretted for months over what we ought to do. But then it came to me, as clear as day. I was already a spinster, and I’d already committed to caring for Aunt Rosaline as her illness progressed. But Miranda was young and vibrant and vivacious. She deserved the chance to make a good match.”

“And you don’t?” he barked before he could stop himself. She looked up at him in stunned disbelief. Good God. She truly didn’t think she deserved such a chance. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why. But they could discuss her baffling misunderstanding of her own worth after she’d finished. Roman bit down on the inside of his cheek to calm himself. “I apologize. Go on.”

“We wrote to the family and let them know Miranda wished to stay with us for the remainder of the year, so that no one would suspect she’d had a child. It was decided that I’d raise him as my own son, and should there be any questions from the family, we’d let them think he belonged to Joyce. I suppose we didn’t think far enough ahead, to the point where he could speak. He was only a newborn, after all.”

Every time she stopped speaking, the knot in her throat bobbed and her eyes closed, and Roman had great difficulty refraining from kissing her eyelids to offer her some semblance of comfort or reassurance. His silence, at this point in time, was what she needed more than anything, however. So he waited and watched, ignoring the agony he felt at his inability to relieve her discomfort over revealing everything she’d kept hidden for so long.

Instead, he prodded her to continue. “So none of your family knew the truth before your brother arrived?”

“Well, Miranda has known, of course, and her husband. Otherwise, we’ve not informed anyone but my cousins Jo and Tabitha…and now Tabitha’s husband, Lord Devonport.”

“And now your brother, as well.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “The rest of the family will know as soon as Isaac’s letter reaches them. He’s writing to Father and Uncle Drake now.”

Roman nodded. He realized that he was massaging her hand, trying to offer her what little comfort he could provide. He ought to stop, but couldn’t be bothered to do so. It felt too perfect to hold her in what little way he could, for these few moments.

Bethanne stared at her lap again. After a moment passed, she snatched her hand away from him and pink stained her cheeks. “He knows you’re not Finn’s father, and he’s seen how good you are for Aunt Rosaline, so he’s decided it wouldn’t behoove him to duel with you.” Her words were a fervent prayer in the brief distance between them.

His heart clenched, but he steeled himself against what must be done. “Even with the knowledge that I still cannot marry you?” As much as he loved her, he could not banish her to the sort of marriage theirs would have to be. She deserved to have a husband who could hold her through the night, a man who wouldn’t have to bar himself away from her, lest he accidentally cause her harm.

Her head came up and her lips parted, and she stared at him for a moment, her gaze filled with heartbreak. And then, before he could curse himself for the blackguard he was, she shot up from the bench and raced back across the clearing through the same path in the snow she’d formed on her way to meet him.

The sound of her weeping carried back to him, etching permanently into his memory. Roman wished he could rip his heart from his chest and kick it until it was as physically bruised and scarred as it felt.

Bethanne’s pained sobs might well haunt his sleep more effectively than the battlefields of war had done.

Bethanne stopped outside the front door of the cottage, bracing herself against the frame as she waited for the wave of despair to finish its course.

She’d been such a ninny to think Roman might change his mind and agree to marry her, simply because her brother no longer wished to duel. The duel itself had nothing to do with his reasons for rejecting her—he’d made that perfectly clear, though she was not certain she believed his refusal rested entirely upon his fears for her safety.

But now, even more than before, the pain of his rejection broke through her wall of self-protection, stinging her already battered and weary heart. She’d bared herself to him, told him everything she’d kept hidden, trusted him with her most intimate secrets and also those which were not hers to tell—and still he would not have her.

If he sought only to ensure her protection, wouldn’t he offer for her to protect her against the censure of society? Surely they could find a way to work past his fears. Yet that would require him to not only wish to protect her, but also to love her…