White Lace and Promises (38 page)

 
“What exactly are you saying?”

“I am saying she could become sicker and lose her child if you don’t make her your first priority. She’s terribly unhappy.”

“Her child?”

“Yes, she’s pregnant. Surely you guessed? The sudden dizziness, the nausea, her paleness—among other signs. I’ve suspected since I arrived here but—” He paused and cleared his throat. “But she hasn’t been open to the idea.”

“Yet you’ve told her now?”

“Yes, I have.”

“You have some attachment to my wife?”

Dr Wade stared back at him blandly. “Yes, I have the deepest love for her.”

“And yet you were the one who debauched her when she was young and vulnerable.”

The younger man flinched “Debauched?” Dr Wade’s ears reddened. “That’s a strong word.”

“I tell it as I see it.”

Dr Wade rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. “I suppose it is close enough to the truth. She trusted me and I was weak. I caved in to the pressure from my family. I married someone else. I took her innocence knowing I would never marry her.”

“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to ask you to answer for your craven deed.”

Dr Wade paled. “Yes, I can see how you would feel that way.”

Grey nodded. “But the scandal wouldn’t do.”

“You needn’t feel threatened. Beth doesn’t care for me. Not any longer. Do you have any idea of the punishment in that? I was a fool—that’s done. But the question is, are you going to prove yourself a fool as well?”

Wanting only to be done there and to get up to see Beth, to have a competent physician, someone he knew and trusted, examine her, Grey scowled. “How much do I owe you, doctor?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Grey sat on Beth’s bed, holding her hand as she slept. Why had he been so willing to think her pallor had been owing to her unhappiness? Why hadn’t he noticed how frail she was becoming? He’d been too caught up in his own concerns—the coming trip to Philadelphia and the case.

He let his gaze linger on her face. On the deep purple shadows under her eyes and the dry cracked lips. In sleep, her delicately etched features and silver-gilt hair spread on the pillow—God, she looked so damned young right now. Vulnerable. Dependent on him to do the correct thing for her. The love he felt for her pressed on him. Filled him with energy, spurring him to take some action, to do something,
anything
to make her well. He clasped his fists and took several deep, long breaths trying to calm himself. There was nothing to be done now except watch over her.

“Grey?” Her voice sounded hoarse and breathlessly weak, so unlike Beth.

“Yes, my love.”

“Did Joshua tell you…about the baby?”

“Yes.”

A small smile curved her pale, dry-looking lips. “He said he was going to ring a peal over your head.” She paused and swallowed. “I could not talk him out of it.”

Her broken voice tore at his heart. “Don’t speak now.”

“Grey, what do we do now?”

It was the question he had dreaded most of all.

“I don’t know.”

She reached up and touched his face with her soft hands. “I love you—I have never said it seriously, I know, but I love you and I think I always have. Since that first day.”

He pressed her hand. “And I love you, too—so much, Beth. I don’t want to be without you. But you will not understand me and I don’t know how to live with a woman who refuses to understand me.”

“Yes, correct—I love you but I do not understand you. But not because of wilfulness. I cannot understand you because there are things you will not share with me.”

He took a long, deep breath. “I thought my first marriage failed because of my lack of understanding. My lack of ability to love.”

“Did you love each other, in the beginning?”

“I thought we did but I married when I was only nineteen. I did not understand that the depth of devotion between Juliana and her father was unnatural.”

“Devotion? Isn’t every girl devoted to her father?”

“Juliana was twenty-six but she acted as if she were sixteen and her father treated her accordingly. He didn’t want her to grow up and to detach from him. She was spoilt and vain. I was too young to see it.” Then he laughed with his old, cynical edge. “All I saw was her beauty.”

“Her father had no sons and needed a grandchild of her body. Whether she married me only to have a child or she simply didn’t understand what it would be like to live separate from her father, I do not know. But after our son’s birth, she had no further use for me. It wasn’t enough for her to simply bar her bedchamber door. No, she had to return to de Lange’s house. She had to make sure everyone knew of our broken home.

“She liked to flirt with other men. She craved their admiration. She didn’t care much for lovemaking, however. When these would-be lovers turned on her, I was forced to deal with them. To protect her. She was my son’s mother, after all. She got herself alone with one of them and allowed him to ply her with too much wine. He took rather forceful advantage of her. I resented her for that, but I took care of him—I challenged him.”

Beth’s eyes, bright with fever, rested on him with quiet compassion. Of course she wouldn’t judge him. He’d been a fool not to tell her all of this before. But he’d been afraid. Yes, why not admit it now? Now, when there was nothing left to lose.

“We did not love each other. She wanted to be wife to the Sexton heir and I lusted for her. I always thought that, if we had loved each other, things would have somehow worked out. I thought when I did, sincerely, fall in love with you, that a marriage between you and I could work. Now I see that love is not enough to make a marriage.” His fingertip described small circles on her hand. “My parents were a sad example. My father was consumed by business and my mother withdrew into herself. I never wanted a marriage like that but it appears a companionate marriage and business are not compatible.”

Beth put her hand over his. “You were correct—I could have tried harder to understand your pressures, your burdens. But I was too self-absorbed. Oh, everything is such a frightful disaster now.” Her voice grew weaker, more breathless. She paused to cough. “We’ve torn our love to shreds.”

His heart caught and he pulled the covers up to her chin. “You mustn’t speak any more. Just listen. I shoulder all the blame. I knew from the situation with Juliana that I was unsuited for marriage. I made her miserable, and I have made you miserable…”

“Grey, don’t—”

“Shh,” he said, caressing the hair off her brow. “Just close your eyes and rest.”

Her eyes closed. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest with both hands. He didn’t know what to say. Words couldn’t fix what lay between them.

In time it came to him that there was only one thing he could say. “I am so very sorry, my love.”

She hadn’t heard him. She was sleeping again. He sat beside her and held her hand for a long time.

He awoke with a start. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. Soft, squeaky sounds issued from her mouth. He frowned and leaned close, listening carefully. The sound came again.

She was wheezing.

His mouth went dry and, spurred by sudden nervous energy, he jumped up and went to call for the doctor to return.

* * * *

“They went riding together every day in the country. Jan’s housekeeper told me,” Watson said in the tones of one who cannot wait to impart a particularly delectable bit of gossip. But why? Surely he realised that Grey trusted his own son with his young wife.

“She has been lonely. It was a hard adjustment for her to move away from her family. Jan wanted merely to cheer her,” Grey replied tersely. Watson’s interruption wasn’t a welcome one. Grey had been sitting here in his office, gazing unseeing at the ledger books strewn over his desk. The sore throat had spread to Beth’s lungs. The doctor had done what he could, which had turned out to be damned little.

Grey hadn’t been able to bear sitting around her bedchamber, watching her wan face while she wheezed in her sleep. He’d felt so powerless, useless. So he’d come here to his Washington Street offices, out of sheer habit. Yet now, after only an hour, he wanted only to return. He’d been slipping into his greatcoat when Watson had come bursting in. Now he rolled his eyes at his long-time friend. “I am eager to be gone, so out with it. Say what you feel you must.”

“Grey, I saw them on the balcony, last night. They were whispering and embracing.”

Good God, this was almost farcical. Grey knew his son, knew he was still terrified of women. Jan lacked the swagger a young man took on once he’d bedded a woman. If Grey hadn’t already been so heartsore over Beth being ill, he might have laughed aloud at Watson running here and bearing tales like an old fishwife. But Watson’s eyes were perfectly sincere and Grey wasn’t in the mood for levity.

He fixed Watson with a wry look. “Whatever you saw, it was innocent. They have grown fond of each other. Beth is an affectionate woman.”

Watson smiled, as if he was being patient with a slow child. “Yes, that’s the point—quite too affectionate in the wrong ways.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled and stained paper. “Jan dropped this, before they went inside. Read this and then tell me it’s all innocent between them.”

Grey took the paper and let his eyes scan over his son’s unmistakable neat script. For a moment, the words didn’t seem to make sense. Then he recognised the lyrics of a poem. An appallingly bad poem. At the innocent earnestness expressed in the sentimental words, a warm sensation began to take up in his chest. A grin stretched itself over his face. Jan was still so innocent and found it so easy to express his feelings. It boded well for his future happiness.

Full awareness of how much he loved his son burst in upon him. His smile increased. Poetry… Good God.

Thomas scoffed. “How can you smile? Do you not see it for what it is?”

Grey looked up at his oldest, dearest friend and chuckled. “It’s a lot of boyish nonsense, that’s what it is. Don’t you remember being that age?”

Even Grey could hear the fondness softening his tone. It made Watson’s amber-coloured eyes seem to bug. “I can’t believe you can dismiss this.”

“What’s he really said here, except that he finds her beautiful and he cares for her and wishes he could protect her from the world? He’s suggested nothing untoward.”

“It sounds like a declaration!”

“Thomas, he’s just a boy.”

“He’s soft on her. You can’t deny that.”

Grey smiled. “I think that, if I’d had a stepmother like Beth when I was Jan’s age, I’d have been a little soft on her, too.”

“Well, you’ve a decidedly liberal attitude about it.”

“He’s my son, Thomas—I trust him. Anyway, I suspect he’s still terrified by women.”

Watson’s gold-red brows drew together and his eyes narrowed. “What about
her
? What about how she will react to his declaration? His desire to protect her? To comfort her? We both know the type of comforting she prefers.”

“I warned you before, take care what you say about my wife.”

Watson stood back and shook his head. “I never thought to see you, of all men, turned into a fool over a pretty piece of petticoat.”

* * * *

“Watch what you put to paper, Jan,” Grey said later that afternoon in the parlour of his house as he handed his son the crumpled page.

Jan glanced up at him, open-mouthed, then his face coloured. For a moment, Grey was reminded of Jan in his boyhood days.

“Where did you get this?” Jan demanded.

“Watson found it on the balcony, last night.” Grey smiled thinly. “He quite distorted it all into something we both know it is not.”

Jan’s eyes flashed with anger. “He would not dare.”

“He says you were embracing.”

“I didn’t touch her—not like he means. I wouldn’t do that. She came over faint.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I tell you, I didn’t
touch
her.” Jan’s voice rose with strong emotion.

Grey flinched inwardly for his son’s embarrassment. He tried to touch Jan’s arm but his son jerked it away. “She was feeling poorly and you offered her some comfort—it is no great thing. But you must be careful what you do when you may be observed. People will often think the worst.”

Jan crushed the paper in his hands and grew very quiet.

* * * *

Beth awoke to the clock chiming in her chamber. She swallowed against a dry, bitter medicinal taste in her mouth. She glanced over at the clock’s face. The time was six in the morning. A sense of impending dread rose to the surface of her mind but she couldn’t place the reason.

“I am going to take care of Watson once and for all. So he can’t make trouble for you.”

She recalled Jan sitting by her bed, saying those words. It seemed like a dream. But she knew with certainty that it wasn’t. She sat up, dizzy feverishness making her head swim.

How long had it been since he’d come to her? She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Nothing made coherent sense. Shortly after she’d gone to bed on the night of the ball, Joshua had been there to see her, to examine her, and Nellie had been with him. But Beth remembered nothing they had said while there.