Chapter 35

35

The two largely sleepless nights that succeeded her discovery left Isabella still very uneasy and divided in her mind. She had given herself another day, imagining that her courses might magically come then and solve her dilemma for her, to her regret but also her relief, but they did not, and as the hours passed it had become clearer and clearer to her that she didn't really have a choice. All the world would say so, and in this case, all the world would be right. She had to tell Leo. Anything else would be unfair. He hadn't deserved such treatment from her. She couldn't lie to everyone, deceive him above all and one day deceive her child, their child, and still face herself afterwards.

She had to tell him. If Ash was looking down on her, she hoped he would be able to forgive her. She had to tell Leo, and to marry him.

To realise this was one thing, but it was not by any means easy to find a way to be alone with him. Not in the daytime. This was another irony. At night it would have been simple enough – she could have crept to his chamber as he had so often come to hers, but she didn't want to do that, didn't want to have any misunderstandings between them, not even for a moment or two, as to why she was there. He'd think she was coming to his bed to start again. Would he be glad or furious? She couldn't bear it, either way.

At last, she was reduced to an unpleasant stratagem: she required Lady Carston to pass a message to him, to tell him that she would be alone in a certain room at a certain hour, and very much wished to speak to him on an urgent matter. Luckily, she was a guest in a castle; there were many rooms in which one could in privacy tell one's recently spurned lover that one was carrying his child. Jane had raised an eyebrow when approached but nobly refrained from asking her anything at all, and she was grateful for the forbearance. Her composure was a very fragile thing.

He came at the hour she had appointed, to a small panelled Tudor sitting room that nobody ever appeared to use, down an obscure corridor that seemed to lead nowhere in particular, and stood in the doorway in silence, frowning a little as he looked at her. He was pale, holding himself under rigid control, as he had been ever since their estrangement, and she was aware that she must look much the same.

‘I think you should sit down,' she said. She was sitting in a faded tapestry chair, her back very straight and her hands clasped in her lap.

‘I can't imagine what you can have to say to me,' he replied as he obeyed her with every appearance of reluctance, his countenance set and grim. ‘I cherished some brief hope that you might have changed your mind, or discovered that you were mistaken in your feelings, but that hope died when I saw your face. It is not such happy news, is it? Have you summoned me to tell me that you are leaving? You need not have troubled, for I had assumed as much, and wonder in truth that you are still here.'

‘No,' she said. ‘No, it's not that.' She felt an impulse to call him Bear, to recall the intimate moments they'd shared, but there was no point to any of that now. He was looking at her with a kind of weary patience, and she knew she must speak, before all her courage deserted her or before he rose and went away. ‘I'm with child.'

He didn't appear to understand her, so she repeated it. ‘I'm with child, Leo.'

He sat as one frozen. At last, he spoke. ‘How can you know?'

It was a reasonable question, if a cold one, and she hadn't expected him to be pleased, after all. ‘I'm late. I'm never late. I've never been late in my life. But I realised I am, and several days at that. I had lost track, not believing it to be possible. My courses are not coming; I'd know if they were. I know it is very soon, but I could not be mistaken. I feel… different.'

‘You told me such a thing was quite impossible,' he said blankly.

‘I thought it was. I was told it was. It was one of the worst moments of my life, when I heard that. And I believed that to be true, or I never would have…'

‘I don't suppose you would. And good God, Isabella, nor would I!'

His words pierced her with sudden fierce pain, though she could not accuse him of cruelty. Of course he was horrified. How could he not be? She could not afford to regard it. ‘I know you would not have done. I feel I should apologise to you, but indeed, indeed, I did not know.'

She could not hope to separate out the emotions that were warring on his face. ‘Why are you telling me?'

She reared back as though she had been struck and tears started in her eyes, though she had with a great effort preserved her composure up till now. ‘Who else should I tell? For heaven's sake, what kind of a question is that?'

He swore, and rose to his feet, coming over to her chair and dropping down awkwardly to kneel by her side. He took her hands in his, clasped them tightly and said urgently, ‘That's not what I mean! Good God, I'm sorry, my dear Isabella! No, I meant… I meant to ask, to say, curse my clumsiness, I must assume you're telling me this because you are resolved to marry me. You don't think to go away, to… I don't know.'

‘You haven't asked me to marry you,' she replied, suppressing a foolish desire to burst into sobs.

‘I was about to, the other night,' he said in low tones. ‘You know I was.'

She was a hopeless mess. ‘I did think of going away,' she said with painful honesty. ‘Not giving up the child, I could never contemplate that, but – not telling you. Doing it in secret, under an assumed name. Devising some ridiculous scheme by which I could later adopt it. Her. Him.' She saw the horror on his face and hastened to add, ‘I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be fair to you, or to the child. To deny you both…'

‘No, it wouldn't,' he said. A little silence fell between them. It wasn't pleasant. He broke it by saying drily, ‘So, Isabella, Lady Ashby, will you marry me?'

‘Yes.'

He was still holding her hand. She hadn't pulled away. He looked as though he wanted to speak, and at the same time didn't, but at last he said heavily, ‘And then what?'

She was conscious of feeling cold; she was shivering. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I understand that we must marry. There is no point me saying again that this – your hand in marriage, you as my wife, I mean – is what I wanted, for you knew that, and it can be of no possible concern to you since you did not. Want it, I mean. Want me.' My God, how she had hurt him. ‘But how shall we live?'

‘Together, with our child when it arrives. How else?'

‘Really? You will live with me, and share my bed, for all the years that may lie ahead of us, when you have told me in very plain terms that you cannot love me? That you can never love me?'

Her voice cracked as she said, ‘What else would you have me do?'

He sighed, and in a dull tone said, ‘Love me, as I love you, I suppose. Say you will try, at least. I think I could be content if you would say that you would at least try.'

‘How can you try to love someone? Did you try to love me?' She was crying now, despite all her efforts to suppress it, and she thought he might be too, only her eyes were so blurred she could not see.

‘No. You are saying, then, one loves, or one does not. And once again you make it very clear that you do not. I suppose you are right, and it is out of our control.'

She had known this interview would be difficult; she had not anticipated this. ‘You won't marry me, then?' Was that what he was saying?

‘Of course I will, I have said so. I must.'

‘Then I don't understand.'

‘I don't either. I had thought that nothing in this world could make me so happy as you agreeing to be my wife. I thought that if I could have you in my life and at my side, my God, with our dear child too, I would want for nothing else in this world. But I find it's not true.'

He took a deep, harsh breath and said, ‘I'll marry you. I must obtain a licence in order to do so quickly, it will take a few days and a trip to London, but it may easily be arranged. And obviously it must be soon. But… but if you think you can never love me, if you are determined you will not, I'm not sure I can live with you afterwards.'