Let Me Be The One Page 33

  "Viscount Selden is my father's son," she corrected gently. Tears filled her eyes. "I gave birth to Adam."

  "Ah, Elizabeth." He released one of her hands to cup her face. His thumb brushed her cheek. "Of course. Just Adam. Your beautiful little boy."

  She nodded. A tear spilled over the edge of her lashes and North wiped it away before she could do the same. She drew a shaky breath. "Adam's father... my soldier... he did not know about my pregnancy. He was already gone by the time I realized I was carrying his child. I sent him away, you see. He was... he was married."

  North swore softly.

  Laughter, rife with self-mockery, trembled on Elizabeth's lips. "I said that very thing from time to time," she told him. She accepted the handkerchief he pressed in her hand and wiped her eyes. "I did not know he had a wife. I did not even imagine that such a thing was possible. Not that he could not have been married, but that I could have been fooled. It was only in retrospect that I could comprehend my own naiveté. I suspected nothing. Presented with the same circumstances again, I still would not suspect. He loved me, I think. As much as it was possible when he was already committed to another. I say that now, but it felt boundless at the time. I was sure I understood his feelings then."

  Elizabeth's fingers crushed the handkerchief. Her eyes were dry and the press of tears was gone. She spoke clearly, softly, with little inflection, the raw edges of the open wound less red and angry than they had been only minutes before. "I was just as certain that I understood my own. I loved him. I've told you that. I could not have lain with him had I not, not then. It would not be fair to say he seduced me. I wanted to be with him. I believe I demanded it."

  A faint smile touched North's mouth. "You would."

  Elizabeth marveled that there was no censure in his tone. "You will not be surprised that our... our affair... was conducted in secret. My father met him several times early on and judged him wholly lacking in character. Since this was my father's assessment of most people, particularly those who expressed any interest in me, it seemed of little consequence. Knowing that there would be no approval from that quarter, we saw each other in only the most casual way publicly. I had suitors to fill my dance card—none of whom came up to snuff in my father's eyes—but they served their purpose in diverting his attention."

  Elizabeth bent her head, finding it too difficult to look at North. He did not admonish her, but remained just as he was and allowed her to let the story unfold in its own way. "I met him late at night. It was quite simple for me to leave the house. No one suspected at all, you see. Father's imaginings of my disobedient nature did not extend to what was surely my most outrageous behavior. I always returned before anyone was awake. I came and went as I pleased."

  Something nudged North's thoughts. A tiny prompt. A little niggle. He frowned, trying to bring it to the surface, but could only grasp the vague alarm that accompanied it, not the thing itself.

  Caught in her confession, her head still bowed, Elizabeth did not notice North's slight frown or his momentary distraction. "When the Season was ended I returned to Rosemont. My debut was unsuccessful by the ton's standards, but I had my own measure. Naturally, I saw him less frequently once I was in the country. It was infinitely more difficult for him to get away than it was for me, but I was content with what time we had together." Her voice softened. "We spoke of marriage. I thought we would elope. It was to be Gretna for us."

  North felt a measure of selfish relief that was tempered with an appreciation for how Elizabeth's own dreams had been met with disappointment. "It was wrong of him, Elizabeth." At the risk of raising her hackles, North could not be silent on this matter. "He had no right to hold out that hope."

  Her face lifted and she acknowledged the truth of North's words with the sadness in her own eyes. "In my mind we were husband and wife. I was with him for six months when I learned the extent to which I had created my fantasy. I found a letter from his wife in his coat. He was not at all contrite. Rather, he was angry at me for going through his pockets." She raised the hand that held the crumpled handkerchief, her smile more wry than rueful. "I was looking for one of these."

  North nodded, understanding very well that she never seemed to have her own at the ready.

  "Perhaps I should not have read the letter." She shrugged. "But I did. When he gathered his wits he would have had me believe that his marriage did not matter. It says something about the state of my mind that for a moment or two... or three... I wanted to believe it was so."

  "I think it speaks more eloquently of how much you loved him."

  She nodded weakly. "I told him I would not see him again and he took me at my word. I think it helped that on occasion I resented him for that, sometimes more for that than the fact of his marriage or his lying about it. You will understand that I am not proud of this. I mention it only because you deserve to know the person I am. Petty. Unfair. Unreasonable." The corners of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. "A fool and an ass."

  "Not in my grandfather's estimation," North said, a hint of laughter in his tone. More gravely, he added, "And not in mine."

  Elizabeth laid her hand over the one North had resting lightly on her knee. "Almost two months passed before I realized I was carrying his child. Actually I never accepted it consciously until Isabel confronted me. My admission was more for my own benefit than hers." She paused, remembering how quickly events had transpired after that, and sorted them out in her own mind before she went on. "There were few choices left to me. I could do exactly as my father wanted or I could leave Rosemont to make my own way. Leaving meant I would have no support. My father was firm on that. I could expect nothing from him. I would not see Isabel again and I would not be allowed to return to Rosemont. I had no reason to doubt that he meant it. I could have applied to the colonel for help, but I was too proud. In any event, the colonel could not have kept me from becoming a pariah. Once my pregnancy became known I would not be accepted. That mattered little to me, North. I hope you will believe that. What mattered is that my son would be a bastard."

  North had a sudden recollection of Elizabeth's fierce response to him when he revealed West's illegitimacy. She had adamantly argued that the fact of West's birth made him different from others. Not intrinsically different, she had said. Not at birth. But soon after it changes him in some way. It could be his mother is ashamed or his father is indifferent... He comes to believe one of two things about himself: either that he has no right to hold his head up or that he must hold it higher than everyone else. He had heard the passion in her voice as she spoke; what he had not understood was the source.

  "You might have married," he said. "It is done more often than you think."

  "Perhaps. But I could not do it. To marry someone I did not love and ask him to accept my child... or worse, pretend my child was also his..." Her voice trailed off. She could not leave it there. She had not been so principled that the thought had not crossed her mind. Elizabeth wanted him to know that. "It occurred to me, North. I cannot let you believe otherwise. It was simply not as satisfactory a solution as the one my father presented."

  North nodded. His hand slipped over hers and he gave it a gentle squeeze. He watched her take a steadying breath and prepare to go on.

  "My father arranged for the three of us to tour the Continent. Before we left he placed a few hints about physicians and Isabel's inability to present him with an heir. He was careful to make it seem that there was an underlying reason for our trip. And of course there was, though not quite the one he would have his confidants believe.

  "We saw very little of the Continent but went immediately to Italy. Adam was born in Venice. The midwife placed him in Isabel's arms and they left the room before I was delivered of the afterbirth. I was not allowed to hold him. My father insisted on that. I cannot even say that he was wrong. I might not have been able to give him up had it been otherwise. They left Venice for Rome that same evening. I did not cradle my son to my breast. I did not hear him cry. My mi
lk dried because I could not feed him. From the very beginning he was nourished by a wet nurse."

  Elizabeth glanced past North to the curtain of falling snow beyond the windows. "After a time it did not seem quite real. While I remained in Venice my body returned to a form more familiar to me. My breasts lost their fullness. The ache in my back disappeared. My belly flattened." She looked at him again. "You saw for yourself the only proof that remained. No matter how often I rubbed oil into my distended belly I could not erase those marks. They have faded over the years, but nothing save my own denial could make them disappear. It is not how I meant for you to find out that I had conceived and carried and delivered a child."

  "Did you ever mean for me to know?" he asked.

  Elizabeth could not deny him the truth. "No."

  North let out his breath slowly. It was not an unexpected answer.

  Her heart ached for him. He deserved so much better than what she had been able to give him. "It is not what you think," she said. "At least not what I imagine you think."

  "Oh? Then what is it?"

  "It is not that I did not trust you." She saw one of his brows lift skeptically. "It is that I did not trust anyone. I could not."

  North's brow lowered and he schooled his features. "I'm listening."

  "From the moment Adam was born my father relied on my silence. Isabel's also. It was the only way in which our deception could proceed. In order for Adam to be accepted as Lord Selden, my father's heir, there could be no one who knew otherwise. I have already explained that it was not so difficult for me to believe. It was almost two months before my father sent for me from Rome. Adam was in every way Isabel's son by then. At least I told myself it was so. I denied the ache that tore at my breast when he cried and she comforted him. I would not acknowledge the tears I shed when my own father coddled his son and had so few words to spare for me. Can you appreciate how selfish I believed myself to be, North? They were giving my child everything and I was as resentful as I was grateful. I did not know how to reconcile both things inside me."

  Elizabeth's amber eyes softened as she implored him to understand. "When we returned to London, then to Rosemont, it was simply too difficult for me to continue to live under my father's roof. I chose to return to London and..." She hesitated, her courage failing her. North did not press, but she knew he would die right where he knelt rather than allow her to leave off now. "And I think they were relieved. It was then that I met Lord and Lady Battenburn."

  She saw him nod faintly, as if he had expected this direction and understood its import. She found it easier to continue. "Louise befriended me. I enjoyed her company and she was everything kind. Harrison did not seem to mind that I was forever a guest in their home.

  "I do not know precisely how it came about. It seems so disingenuous to say that I lowered my guard. I do not think I properly had one where Louise was concerned. She did not badger me. She did not even seem to know I had a secret to share, yet one day that was precisely what I did. I told her everything."

  North said nothing. He rose stiffly to his feet while Elizabeth stared at her hands. "She has been blackmailing you since that time?" he asked.

  Elizabeth's head shot up, giving the truth away even before she asked the question. "How did you know?"

  "A guess," he admitted. "One you have now confirmed." Things at the periphery of North's mind suddenly moved front and center. "Your father? He knows what you did."

  She nodded, her shoulders slumping as she did so.

  "Louise blackmails him as well."

  "Yes." The answer was barely audible.

  "I take it Louise is not alone in this endeavor."

  "Battenburn is fully aware. In some ways he tempers her. In other ways he provokes her."

  North closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Christ," he said softly. "What a mess." He dropped his hand and regarded Elizabeth again. "I imagine they threaten you all with exposure."

  "Yes. My father and Isabel would be humiliated for having put forth the deception, but that is of little concern. It is that Selden would know they are not his parents that distresses them."

  "They could adopt him."

  "Of course they could. And they would. We have talked about it. But it is that he would know that keeps us all silent. Perhaps some day we will determine that he can have the truth, but not now. It remains a fact that none of us want others to know."

  "So you are no longer keepers of your secret but prisoners of it."

  "Yes. Exactly."

  North considered this in silence for a time. "This is at the root of your father's anger toward you?"

  She nodded. "He considers the fact that I told someone about Adam more grievous a sin than my having had him in the first place." She saw an objection rise to North's lips and she stopped. "He loves Selden. You know that's true. You observed it yourself when we were at Rosemont. He can't find it in himself to despise me for giving birth, only for wanting to relieve myself of the burden of hurt and grief that surrendering my son caused me. That is what he cannot forgive."

  North leaned against the cool panes of glass at his back. "It would mean he has to accept some responsibility."

  "But he did nothing wrong. He was—"

  "He took your child, Elizabeth. He wanted an heir and he took your son. Have you never wondered how it might have been different if you had delivered a girl?"

  She had. "Isabel would have insisted he keep his word," she said quietly.

  North suspected that was true. "Of course," he said at length. "It is of no matter now. Selden has proved to be a very good son to his father and Rosemont a good father to his son."

  Elizabeth fiddled with the knot in her shawl. "I would see that it remains so. Do you understand why I said nothing to you? Why I would have kept it a secret?"

  "I understand that people you trusted have betrayed you," he said. "Adam's father. Louise and Harrison. In some fashion it is even true of Isabel and your father." He heard Elizabeth's sharp intake of breath. "You do not like to think of the last, do you? Or rather, it is acceptable if you think it and keep it to yourself, but unacceptable if I say it aloud. Were they the ones who convinced you that your son's life would be beyond the pale if he were acknowledged as a bastard?"

  "I... they..."

  "And you? Did they say that you could have no place at all in society, make no match, have no chance at any happiness if you—"

  Elizabeth shot to her feet. "Stop it! My decision was made! I made it! I—" Her voice was caught on a sob. She said the words again, this time with hardly a sound. "I made it." Her shoulders shook once and a second breath rattled through her slender frame. "I have to live with it."

  North closed the space between them in a single stride. He took Elizabeth in his arms and held her, pressing her head against his shoulder. Every tremor that shook her body he absorbed into his own. "You don't have to live with it alone," he whispered against her ear. "And you don't have to fear betrayal or reprisal from me. I love you, Elizabeth. I married you because I loved you. Nothing has changed that."

  "You... you told m-me to l-leave," she said brokenly. "You s-said I sh-should go."

  "Because I was hurt. Not because I no longer loved you. I needed time to decide if I could live with you, knowing it was not the same for you, knowing that I would be hurt again and again by your inability to trust yourself to love me or trust me to love you." He caught her by the shoulders and held her back from him, his shadowed face close to hers, his dark eyes intent. "I cannot do it, Elizabeth. These last weeks... not knowing where you were... it was an agony. Loving you without having it returned would be an agony stretched over a lifetime. I know that now. I am prepared to leave you, tonight if I must, if you can offer me no hope that it might be different." He could not help himself. His hands trembled, then his arms, and when it reached his shoulders he shook hers. It startled him so much that he pulled her to him again, wrapped his arms close about her as though he co
uld cleave her to his heart. "Can you, Elizabeth?" he asked, his cheek pressed to her hair. "Is there hope?"

  "There is love," she said. She lifted her face and cupped his. "Do you hear me, North? There is love. I was certain of it when I left London and I am no less certain of it now. I love you. God help us both, but I hope it is enough."

  He kissed her then. For the moment, at least, it seemed that it was.

  Chapter 14

  The chaise was more comfortable than the stone floor, wider than the bench, and met the critical criterion of being handy. Outside the conservatory the snowfall had stopped. Moonshine glanced off the white landscape. An occasional wind lifted sparkling eddies of snow and reshaped the pasture with drifts like cresting waves. A silver blue ribbon of light marked the path to the chaise, and the palm tree—that South Seas gift from Captain Cook—shaded the lovers with its feathery fronds.

  Hunger born of abstinence, eagerness born of love, sent them tumbling on the chaise. Arms and legs tangled. Mouths fused. Impatience made them ignore clothing except as it presented a barrier to their furious coupling. They filled the air with moist heat until crystalline frost flowers appeared on the panes of glass. Their breathing came in small gasps, surprised and satisfied in turn as they pleasured each other and themselves.

  He came when he was deeply inside her. She held him there with legs that were wrapped around his hips and arms that circled his shoulders. She embraced his shuddering body as if it were an extension of her own and then marveled that it wasn't. Her own cry mingled with the last threads of his and he supported her, whispering against her ear, ruffling her hair with each soft expulsion of air.

  They lay quite still at the end, too replete to move except for the movements they could not help. Her fingers twitched. His calf jumped. Their heartbeats slowed with more delicacy. Their laughter mingled, low and rich, more of a rumbling than an eruption. They said inconsequential things that at the time seemed to have the weight and import of philosophical tenets. Discomfort aside, in fewer minutes than they realized, they slept.