Chapter 21

Rufus was the first to break the slightly stunned silence. “What in God’s name is going on today? Miss Carswile, nobody is killing your brother.”

“Then”—she glanced up, her beautiful eyes wild—“where is he?”

“In the water trough in the stable yard, thinking about what he’s done.”

“Oh. Oh. ” Miss Carswile sat back on her heels, one hand pressed to her heart as she tried to steady her breathing. “What a relief. He swore blind he would challenge you.”

“I was not,” Rufus told her, “particularly inclined to be challenged.”

“Well. Thank you. That was very kind.”

“I’m, um, sorry to interrupt again,” said Gil. “But is this a theatrical performance?”

Rufus shook his head and bore Belle, who was looking pale and droopy, away to bed. As he got her settled, she reached out, curling her fingers weakly over his wrist.

“You will be careful, won’t you?” she said.

“I always am.”

Her fingers tightened. “You are absolutely not .”

“Miss Carswile cannot hurt me, Belle.”

“Can’t she?”

“I do not get the sense she wishes to.”

“That doesn’t stop people from doing so. Also,” she went on urgently, “I have been thinking about it, and it was probably wrong of me to encourage you to duel Mr. Carswile.”

“A Tarleton?” He lifted his brows. “Probably in the wrong?”

“It does happen,” she admitted. “ Rarely. But I was being selfish. I had not fully considered the consequences, nor how it would make you feel to bring harm to another person.”

She had flustered him, as she had been doing all too often of late. In trafficking with Tarletons, one accepted that this kind of heedlessness was part of their charm. Indeed—baser considerations aside—it had been some element of what drew him to Bonny, for he had always seemed so very free , when Rufus felt anything but. The boundless care, however, offered with the same freedom, was unexpected. Or had perhaps simply gone unrecognised because it had always come from the sister rather than the brother. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of duelling with anyone.”

“We will bear whatever slights he casts upon your reputation together.”

“That’s very wifely of you,” he said, smiling. “But since I introduced him to the water trough, I do not think Mr. Carswile will wish to speak widely of these events.”

She gave a great yawn, unselfconscious as a cat. “Would that I could have seen his face.”

“I will do an impression for you ...”

“Will you?”

“After you’ve rested.”

“Oh. Bribery, is it?”

“Yes.” He leant down and put his lips to her brow. “Now fucking well go to sleep.”

Returning to the parlour, he found only Miss and Mr. Carswile in situ. The latter was gratifyingly drenched and accompanied by the unmistakable aroma of horse.

“—will not apologise to that degenerate,” he was saying, as he dripped onto the hearthrug.

Miss Carswile, having recovered much of her composure, had taken a seat upon the little sofa Gil had previously occupied. At his entrance, she addressed herself to Rufus. “Your companion has tactfully gone for a walk. And my brother will apparently not apologise to a degenerate.”

“That is quite all right. The degenerate neither seeks nor desires an apology. You should, however, tender one to your sister.”

The young man continued to drip, though now with a faint air of outrage. “On what grounds?”

“For putting her in fear for your life. And for doing your utmost to turn her into a subject for gossip and speculation.”

“You did that when you cast her aside on the eve of your wedding.”

Rufus sighed. “And duelling over it will help the situation how?”

“He’s right,” said Miss Carswile. “This was immeasurably foolish of you, Valour.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Her brother’s manner was slipping inexorably from righteousness to sullenness. “Let him discard you like yesterday’s newspaper?”

She turned her too-sharp gaze upon him. “Are you concerned for my feelings or simply insulted by proxy?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Verity, I . . .”

Her self-control slipped a bare inch. “Oh, please just dry off and go back to Cambridge, Val. Though heaven knows what they’re teaching you there because it doesn’t seem to be common sense.”

“It’s ancient Greek,” retorted Mr. Carswile, which was not perhaps the damning line he had intended upon which to make his exit.

Nevertheless, exit he did, leaving Rufus alone with his former fiancée for perhaps the first time. At least the first he could recall, since he had spent the months preceding their wedding in a state of mild to excessive inebriation. It had not, he would be the first to concede, been well done of him.

Miss Carswile was much as he remembered—a sharp-angled woman, slightly beyond what fashion deemed marriageable age. She had been described to him as handsome, but he had never quite been able to see it. There was, perhaps, too much about her that reminded him of his aunt. Austerity, pride, and cold watching eyes. Then again, he was hardly a connoisseur of female beauty. For most of their acquaintance, he had taken it for granted that what he mostly saw in Belle was the echo of Bonny.

“I suppose,” he said aloud, “I owe you an apology.”

Her lips, which were elegant more than they were generous, thinned. “I suppose you do.”

She was not his aunt, he knew that, but some part of him reacted as though she was, with shrivelling shame and seething resentment. Pushing such sentiments aside, he offered with what dignity and sincerity he could muster, “I am sorry for breaking our engagement the way I did.”

It was not, however, the right thing to say. The chill of her brilliant eyes intensified. “Is that why you think you owe me an apology?”

“Well”—he risked a light laugh—“not if you don’t, my dear.”

“Please,” she said tightly, “can you at least try to give some consideration to my feelings?”

“I would if I knew what they were. Of course I can see you’re annoyed with me, and I do not pretend it’s anything other than justified.”

“I’m so glad we agree on something.”

“But”—he wished he could have steadied the words, wished he could have said them to his aunt, to any number of people, to the whole damn world—“I cannot ... I will not ... apologise for who I am.”

“Do you think I am asking that from you?”

“Frankly, I have no idea what you’re asking.”

Abruptly she rose, taking a few swift turns about the room. “I am not upset at the ending of our engagement because we should never have been engaged in the first place.”

“My aunt didn’t leave me much choice.”

“Oh, please.” He had never heard such sharpness in her voice before. “Try being a woman for five minutes and then lecture me about choices.”

“Try being a sodomite.”

She paused at that. “Are we in opposition, then, Sir Horley?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does my wish to live a life of truth and dignity impinge upon your wish for the same?”

“I mean,” he said, laughing, “if you think that’s what I’ve been aiming for, you’re drastically mistaken.”

Her lip curled, and even Rufus could admit she was rather magnificent in her scorn. “Clearly it hasn’t been. But running away with Miss Tarleton seems to have at least been honest.”

“To be fair”—and this time the amusement was real, soft with affection—“she didn’t give me much choice either.”

“Could you not at least have spoken to me?”

“About eloping with another woman?”

“About any of it. At any point.”

“Would you have listened?” he asked mildly. “You gave every impression of being entirely committed to the salvation of my mortal soul.”

“Should I not have been?”

“With all due respect, ma’am, the condition of my soul is none of your business.”

“And if you were walking along a mountain road and you met a stranger, dangling by their fingertips from the cliff edge, you would also consider that none of your business?”

He gazed at her in mingled frustration and confusion. “Of course not. I wouldn’t just leave someone in harm’s way if it lay in my power to help them.”

“Well, that is how I feel”—her eyes were steady upon his, unflinching—“about those who have fallen from God’s grace.”

“And I’ve fallen from God’s grace because I seek the love of men, not women?”

“You have fallen from God’s grace because you deny yourself all love. Or so I thought.”

“How nice to know I’m moving up in the Lord’s estimation.”

She just sighed and shook her head. “You have treated me with disregard verging on contempt, Sir Horley. The distaste you hold for my faith does not excuse that.”

“I ...” The fact of the matter was, she was right. He knew she was right. But there was a curdled bitterness inside him that made saying the necessary words feel almost impossible.

Her eyes searched his face. “Do you believe me so deserving of hurt?”

“Do you believe that of me?”

“I believe that of no-one.” For a second so brief he wasn’t sure he imagined it, her self-possession faltered again, and her hand crept to the crucifix she wore about her neck. “I did not agree to marry you to hurt you, Sir Horley.”

“No, you agreed to marry me to save me from something I don’t need saving from.”

“You did not tell me otherwise. When your absurd friends kidnapped us, you insisted to them that they were wrong. That you wanted my help.”

“At the time, I thought ... I thought they were wrong. I thought I was worth no better.”

There was a long silence. And then, “How dare you.” Miss Carswile’s voice trembled with suppressed rage. “You may not like me, and you may like yourself even less, but how dare you treat me like a punishment .”

“For my aunt’s purposes, you were.”

Her hand came up. And froze, shaking in the space between them.

“Are you going to hit me?” enquired Sir Horley, with gentle interest. “Will this cheek do, or should I turn the other?”

To his horror, she did not. Instead, she dropped back onto the sofa and burst into tears.