The Prisoner (37 page)

Haydon had never given a damn about his reputation or the sanctity of his family pedigree. But neither had he ever imagined himself caring about a woman with the relentlessly moral spirit of Genevieve MacPhail. Hers was not the kind of morality that took pious delight in judging the rest of the world according to the narrow dictates of religion and the law, the way people like Governor Thomson's wife and Constable Drummond did. No, what Genevieve lived by was an inherent morality of gentle compassion and selflessness.

From the moment she so willingly sacrificed both her position in society and any hope of a life of ease as the wife of the earl of Linton, pompous ass though Charles may be, she had detached herself from the rarefied world of privilege and acceptance that she had always known. All for the sake of rescuing a dead maid's bastard, which any other gently bred woman in her position would have been satisfied to see quietly sent off to an orphanage to languish a while and then die.

But Genevieve was not like any other woman, he realized, feeling awed and humbled by her. There was a magnificent brilliance to her that defied analysis, like the silvery flare of a faraway star. At the youthful age of eighteen she had elected to leap from the path of familiarity and comfort that had been laid before her and fight to survive on her own, not because she wanted to, but because there was a helpless child who needed her. She had promptly been discarded by the man who had vowed to make her his wife, and rejected by the very society that had once celebrated her for being so young and lovely and charming.

What that society could not accept was that she was also profoundly ethical and caring and humane, and these attributes could not be stifled beneath lavish homes and expensive jewels and shallow gestures of carefully calculated generosity. Instead of being revered for her selflessness and determination, she had been ostracized and called mad, as if it were unfathomable that a young, eminently desirable woman might choose to save a bastard child's life over becoming a pampered wife and countess. And then, because her tender spirit found true joy in helping children, who were surely the most vulnerable members of society, she had gone on to rescue five more. Not because she felt driven by a sanctimonious need to please God, or to earn a better place in heaven, or to feel morally superior to the rest of the world. Genevieve helped others because within her breast beat a noble and caring heart, which rendered her incapable of walking away from the pain of someone else's suffering.

Even a brutal, condemned murderer on the eve of his execution.

He had always known that he was unworthy of her. He who had so casually destroyed the lives of not one, but now two people, each ending in a self-inflicted death. But he had never imagined coming to love her so deeply that he would have gladly given up anything and everything for the sole privilege of being the man with whom she shared her life. What he could not do, no matter how much he wished it, was escape the ugly black stains upon his soul. They would torment him forever—the memory of an innocent child's suffering and a betrayed father's unbearable anguish. How could a woman like Genevieve, who had devoted her life to easing the misery of others, accept a callow, selfish bastard like him as her husband and the father to her precious children?

Genevieve watched Haydon uneasily, dreading whatever it was that he was struggling to tell her. Caught in the vortex of events that had consumed her so absolutely during the last two days, she had not permitted herself to consider what was to become of them. But seeing Haydon standing rigid before the fire, his expression twisted with a mixture of guilt and remorse, she knew what he was about to say.

“You're leaving,” she concluded dully.

He nodded, not turning to look at her. “Tomorrow morning. I'm taking Vincent's casket by coach to Oban. From there, I've arranged for a ship to sail us north to Inverness.” His voice was hollow as he finished, “I want to ensure that he is buried next to Emmaline.”

Of course. His title had been restored and his name was cleared. What had she thought he would do? Genevieve wondered. Had she actually thought he might stay with her and—what? Marry her? An outcast spinster living in a shabby old debt-ridden house with her eccentric brood of aged thieves and semi-rehabilitated urchins? The idea was ludicrous—she could see that now as plainly as anyone. Something within her began to crack, like a thin sheet of ice beneath the crushing wheel of a carriage. She gripped the threadbare arm of the sofa, fighting to maintain some semblance of dignity. The gold ring that Haydon had given her in Glasgow gleamed against her finger, a mocking reminder of their charade as husband and wife. For one sweet, shimmering moment she had foolishly allowed herself to forget that it was all a pretense. Somewhere between the nights of feeling his heart pound against her as they joined their bodies and their souls, and the agony of believing she had lost him forever, she had forgotten that they were not truly wedded. But they were not, and they never would be. It was as simple, and as heartbreaking, as that.

She plumbed the depths of her composure, fighting to shield her feelings from him. Realizing how terribly difficult the task of taking Vincent's body back would be for him, she found the poise to comment quietly, “I'm certain Vincent would have appreciated your concern for him, Haydon.”

A harsh, dry laugh erupted from his throat. “I doubt that. Vincent despised me, and he had every right to.” He turned away from the fire, his face shadowed with torment. “I killed him, Genevieve, as surely as if I had been holding that goddamn pistol myself.”

“I don't believe that and neither should you.” Her protectiveness of him instantly overwhelmed her own feelings of anguish. “Vincent was going to kill you, Haydon, as he had been planning to for months, or perhaps even years. But when he realized you were not the monster he had envisioned you to be, he could not bring himself to do it—”

“So he killed himself instead,” Haydon finished harshly, “because I had destroyed his life.” The words were raw with self-loathing.

“You injured him terribly by creating a child that Cassandra convinced him was his own,” Genevieve acknowledged. “But you didn't destroy him, Haydon, and you certainly didn't make him kill himself. It was Vincent's choice to erect a wall between himself and Emmaline. Perhaps at the time he felt he had no choice, but I believe he did. We cannot control much of what happens to us in our lives—we can only control how we allow ourselves to react to it.” Her voice softened as she continued, “Vincent was devastated to learn that Emmaline wasn't his daughter by blood, but no one forced him to withhold his love from her. That was his choice. And the consequences of that choice were insufferable, both for Emmaline and for him.”

Haydon shook his head, unconvinced. “If I had never fathered her—”

“If you had never fathered her then Vincent might never have known the precious love he experienced for her during those first five years,” she interjected, “and the love he continued to feel toward her afterward. Or Cassandra may have become pregnant by one of her other lovers and that child would have been presented as Vincent's own. It is impossible to speculate upon what might have happened, Haydon. Our lives have unfolded as they have, and we have both made choices in response to the situations we have been faced with. When Jamie was born and his mother died, I raged against God for creating him, because I was given the impossible choice of having to either take responsibility for him, or close my eyes and walk away.”

“But you didn't walk away, Genevieve.”

“No, I didn't. And everything that has happened in my life since then has been inextricably tied to the choice I made that day. It awakened me to the plight of unwanted children who exist so tenuously in the dark corners of our society. It brought me my children and Oliver, Eunice and Doreen, who have become my family and filled my life with unparalleled joy. And finally, incredibly,” she finished, her voice beginning to break, “it brought me you.”

She stopped abruptly. She could not bear the thought of him knowing how much he had come to mean to her. Not when he was going to leave her. She could suffer almost anything, but she did not think she could endure his pity.

Haydon regarded her with surprise. She looked away, avoiding his gaze, her hand clutching desperately at the arm of the sofa. In the span of a heartbeat she had gone from being strong and sure and full of fire as she defended his life and his actions to him, to being achingly fragile and uncertain.

And finally, incredibly, it brought me you.

He closed the distance between them in two strides. Kneeling down, he took her chin between his fingers and gently tipped her face up. Her eyes were shimmering with tears as she stared at him, a glaze of agony that cut through his soul. Slowly, tentatively, she grasped his hand and held it hard against her heart.

And then her teardrops began to fall, glittering upon her cheek like diamonds.

Haydon stared at her in awe, feeling the warm softness of her heart beating rapidly against his palm. And suddenly he understood. Genevieve did not condemn him for the dark transgressions of his past, any more than she condemned any one of her children for the lives they had led before coming to the sanctuary of her home. Somehow, she believed that deep within him there was actually good. That was why she had helped him to escape from prison and then risked everything to protect him from the authorities and his kidnappers. It was also why she had permitted him to become part of her closely guarded family. But it was not the reason she had given herself to him, sharing a magnificent, reckless passion that he had never known with any other woman. Nor was it why she now sat drowning in pain, his hand clutched tightly against her heart. The reason for that was far more bewildering and glorious.

She loved him.

A brilliant shaft of joy blazed through him, obliterating the leaden shadows of his tortured past and replacing them with healing light.

“I love you, Genevieve,” he managed hoarsely, leaning into her until his lips were but a breath away from hers. “More than life itself. I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes upon you in the bleakness of prison, and I have grown to love you more every day since. And if you give me the chance, I will spend the rest of my life surrounding you with that love.”

Genevieve stared at him in silence, unable to accept what he was telling her.

“I will also cherish and protect each of our children to the very depths of my soul,” Haydon pledged, wanting her to understand that he would never again fail a child the way he once had. “And I will happily welcome any other children you bring into our lives, whether from the prison or the street, or as a result of our devotion to each other.”

“But—you are a marquess,” she protested tearfully, still clasping his hand tightly against her heart.

“I was hoping you would not hold that against me.”

“You could marry anyone,” Genevieve clarified.

“I'm flattered that you think so. Shall I take it, then, that your answer is ‘yes'?”

She shook her head in misery. “You cannot want to marry me, Haydon,” she told him with painful certainty. “You only think you do because you have been away from your home for so long. My children and I don't belong in the society in which you live—surely you can see that. They would never be accepted by your friends and family, any more than they have been accepted here by those who once welcomed me into their homes as a guest and an equal.” Feeling as if she were tearing out her own heart, she slowly released his hand. “I could not bear to see you scorned because of me and my children, Haydon, just as I could not bear to see my children despised by narrow-minded people who are blinded by the trappings of their titles and wealth.”

“Then I'll give up the bloody title,” he swore fiercely. “I'll sell my estate and my house in Inverness, so none of our children ever have to go there and endure being the subject of idle gossip. We can live here, or we can move somewhere else and begin anew. I don't give a damn about any of it, Genevieve,” he assured her with harsh finality. “Not the title, or the holdings, or what people think about me or my choice for a wife. The only thing that matters is that we are together, as a family. Marry me, Genevieve,” he finished in a raw, pleading voice. “Marry me, and let me spend the rest of my life loving you.” He brushed a silky strand of hair off her face, capturing a silvery drop of her anguish on his hand as he did so. “Please.”

Genevieve bit her trembling lip, staring at him in awe. Firelight was playing across the chiseled planes of his face, etching his grim expression in shadows of gold. There was determination in his eyes, the granite-hard resolve of a man who was accustomed to having his way in virtually every challenge he undertook. But there was fear there as well, like a ragged, bleeding gash from which his very soul seemed to pour as he tensely waited for her answer.

And suddenly she knew that she could never let him go.

With a little cry she wrapped her arms around him and crushed her lips to his, kissing him deeply as she sank to her knees on the floor and pressed herself against him.

“Yes,” she breathed, feeling joy flood through her, washing away her fear as it filled her with newfound strength. And then, because she had no wish to force him to relinquish his title and turn his back on his family and his heritage in order to win her hand, she added with just a hint of playfulness, “I suppose I will marry you, Lord Redmond.”

He laughed and kissed her hungrily, cradling her against his body as he lowered her onto the carpet before the hearth. He pulled the pins from her hair and let it spill in silky waves around her, fascinated by the dance of coral light against the creamy skin pouring from the neckline of her gown.

“There is something I feel I must bring to your attention,” he murmured, nuzzling the tender hollow of her throat as his hands roamed the lush hills and valleys of her breasts. The tiny round buttons of her gown
were quickly released, enabling him to free her from the confines of her corset. Haydon ran his tongue over the claret tip of her breast before drawing it deep into his mouth.