Page 15

It was much later, and the house was quiet.

Lavinia had dined en famille with Marcus, Helena and their mother, hours ago, and spent a quiet enough evening in their company.

It happened that they had no engagements to call them away, and if Lavinia had previously committed herself to attend some event, she had missed it without the least compunction.

She had kept up a flow of easy conversation all the while, showing a pretty deference to her mother-in-law and even making Helena smile in reluctant amusement once or twice, reminding Marcus of how charming she could be if she put her mind to it.

She stored a fair quantity of clothes in her former home for herself and for her child, and was therefore as immaculate as ever. As beautiful.

He had undressed, his main concern as ever to prevent his valet from suspecting that anything was at all out of the ordinary, and sat in his dark-grey silk banyan in one of the large armchairs by his bedroom fireplace, staring into the empty space.

It was too warm for a fire, and would be warmer yet in a short while.

He could not delude himself that she would fail to come, for this illicit interview was the only reason she was present in the house tonight.

It was almost a relief when the door opened; as with a battle, the thing itself was always easier to deal with than the waiting beforehand.

Lavinia had her hair down, reaching almost to her waist, and it fell in a lovely, shining curtain over the delicate silk and lace of her peignoir.

This garment was respectable enough, but she had not fastened it, and as she moved he caught glimpses of her much more flimsy nightgown beneath.

Against his will – always against his will, now – his blood stirred at the sight of her.

And she knew it, counted on it. Later, she would seek to inflame him, to overturn his self-control, but not yet.

First, she would speak her mind and make him pay for his offences, real or imaginary.

‘You have been seeing a great deal of Lady Amelia Wyverne, have you not, Marcus?’ Without being invited, for they had passed far beyond that, she came and sat in the chair opposite him, and the robe slipped open, revealing more of the flimsy night-rail and the warm skin beneath it.

Nothing she did was ever accidental. He’d learned that recently, though he should have realised it long ago.

‘She is a friend of Helena’s,’ he said shortly.

‘So I am told. But you should not take me for a fool. Do you mean to woo her?’

‘I first met her less than a week ago, but if I did, Lavinia, it would be no affair of yours.’

‘I would have thought that her reputation might have put you off. The thought of her father and her stepmother and all the shocking things they are rumoured to have done should be enough to make one shudder, and avoid the whole pack of them like the plague. Was not the actress whore the son’s mistress for years while she was the father’s wife?

The whole world knows as much. Come, Marcus!

The Wyvernes are the last family in England that a man with a name as proud as yours should wish to ally himself with. ’

‘Not the last,’ he replied steadily. ‘And I must ask you not to slander them. Whatever the rest of her family may or may not have done – I don’t know and I honestly don’t care – Lady Amelia is innocent of all of it, and you shall not smear her name.’

Her crystal violet eyes filled with tears as she looked at him.

She let them fall. How could anyone so beautiful be guilty of anything ugly?

‘You are so cruel now,’ she said brokenly.

‘You were not always so. But to compare me, and my poor parents, with such a disreputable family… to speak to me in such a cold tone of another woman, as though you hated me. What have I ever done to deserve such cruelty from you? What have I ever done but love you, that you should throw our past back in my face when none of it is my fault?’

‘Lavinia, you are right. I cannot blame you for failing to resist your father’s pressure, and my father’s, when we were little more than children, for I did not resist it myself.

Our marriage was impossible then, or so I believed and you did too, or said you did, and it is impossible now.

That at least is not in question. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, I will not wed you.

Must I repeat it incessantly, every time you force this sort of painful meeting on me?

And you accuse me of cruelty. Hear me now and believe me at last: I will not do it . ’

‘You will not be honest, will you, even now when we are alone? We were more than children,’ she said, low and seductive. ‘Much more. Must I remind you of it?’

In a moment, the peignoir would slip from her bare shoulder.

It always did. ‘I remember everything, Lavinia, and with distress, but I still will not change my mind. Even though we did what we should not have done, we were innocent and loved each other, and so I cannot truly regret it. We stopped once it was clear that you must marry my brother, did we not? So that at least I cannot reproach myself for. I did not betray him. I do not reproach you either, for anything you did then, so many years ago. It is your actions now that I question.’

‘We stopped, Marcus, but not straight away. Not quite straight away. If you remember everything, as you say, then you will remember that. I certainly cannot forget the night we were both so terribly distressed, and sought comfort from each other. The night when we conceived our child.’

The terrible thing was, she’d told him this before, to his enormous shock, and he still wasn’t sure he believed her.

Understandably, he supposed, no mention had ever been made by anybody of Priscilla’s parentage being in doubt when Ambrose was alive.

There had been no frantic letter sent to him in Spain, no word from Lavinia – no communication at all from her in eight years, in fact.

She could have written to him with perfect propriety as his sister-in-law and enclosed any sort of message for his eyes only; she had not.

It was not even as though he’d counted on his fingers and wondered; if Priscilla was supposed to be an eight-month child, nobody had ever said as much in his hearing.

Ambrose had never shown the least sign of doubting his wife, or his brother, in any of his frequent, affectionate letters.

She’d sprung the news on him when he’d returned, when his wound had almost healed and he could no longer avoid her, since she had free run of the house, both here and in Somerset.

The rumours she had caused to be spread about him had carried no hint of this.

Of course they had not. Their early love had been painted as chaste and pure.

The fact she always taunted him with – if it was indeed a fact – cast quite a different complexion on the story, and set her in quite a different light, and him too.

The Friends of Lavinia might reconsider their support, might pull back in horror from their idol.

Her reputation would suffer, and the child be branded a bastard.

He’d no longer be the noble, self-sacrificing hero either, but God knows he did not care for that.

‘Lavinia, I will not insult you by questioning your truthfulness. It’s not as though I enjoy making you weep, though I know you think I do.

But the plain fact is, if Priscilla really is my child, she had much better not be.

Ambrose accepted her as his, and if it is a secret we alone share, we should take it to the grave together, if you have any concern at all for your child and her future.

It does no good to anyone to set any of that in question.

Can you not see? If I married you fifty times now, it would not make her legitimate again.

She would always be an object of scandal, almost of incest, and you too.

I wish you could bring yourself to admit that I am right, however cold you think me. ’

‘You do not love her, or me. I would never have believed you could be so heartless.’

‘You have reason to know that I am not. I care for her as a niece, though indeed I do not know her very well, which is neither my fault nor yours, but a matter of circumstance, so you need not upbraid me with that as well. But I do not like – you know this already, so I may as well not waste my breath – Lavinia, I do not like the way you set her as a messenger between us. I do not like the way you put words in her mouth. Let her keep her identity as my brother’s legitimate daughter, and let her be an innocent child.

Childhood is short enough, and adult life sufficiently hard.

Do not drag her into this twisted thing that lies between us.

Do not continue to make a public spectacle of her. It cannot be good for her.’

‘It cannot be good for you, you mean.’ Her silvery voice had an edge to it now.

‘None of this is good for me, and I don’t understand why you seem to believe that it is good for you, or for Priscilla.

What’s past is gone forever. You would be much better marrying another man, if that is what you want.

You could make a new life for yourself with a man who would adore you and treat you like a queen.

I am sure you would not lack for highly eligible suitors if you would give up this ridiculous story of our great lost love. ’

That was when she stood and let the peignoir slip, and the night-rail fall to the floor after it. Naked, she stood and looked down at him, confident of her power.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, my dear, I will not. You need not prove how enormously desirable you are – I know it already. But you must really think me a fool if you imagine I will risk everything for another night with you. If it is true that you have one illegitimate child already, it would be sheer madness to risk making another. And Lavinia, if you force me to say it again, I will not marry you .’

‘You can’t tell me you don’t want me.’

‘I am sure I will never be able to say that if I live to be ninety. But I can resist you, and I will.’

‘Are you sure?’

She stepped forward.