The Wild Marquis Page 21

  Your father rejected you because you were a dissolute rake and everything you’ve done since has proven him correct.

  How those words must have hurt. She looked at the door and wished he’d return so she could apologize. She wanted to tell him she had been wrong, dreadfully wrong. That he was a wonderful man and worthy of her love.

  She could no longer deny the truth. She did love Cain.

  And, she thought sadly, she was, in more than one way, unworthy of his. Though he still claimed to wish to marry her it was becoming less and less likely that she would be proven of suitable birth for a match with a marquis. In fact it was absurd.

  Cain needed a bride of impeccable standing to fight for Esther’s guardianship. And he would have no difficulty finding one. Setting aside the obvious advantages of his fortune and position, no woman would be able to resist his looks; his charm; his intelligence, wit, and kindness; his beautiful blue eyes; his skill as a lover…

  Then the door opened and Cain appeared. Juliana’s heart leaped at the sight of him. He lacked his usual unperturbed grace. His stance was tense and his expression cautious, as though expecting a resumption of their quarrel.

  She walked straight to him, reached up to place her arms around his neck, and rested her head on his chest, rubbing her cheek against the rough cloth of his greatcoat. She felt his arms surround her and heaved a sigh of content.

  “I’m sorry about your mother, my dear,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I said such things to you,” she murmured into his chest. “I didn’t mean them.”

  “It’s all right. You were upset.”

  “I was unfair to you. Whatever my mother, father, or grandfather did, it isn’t your fault.”

  He maneuvered under the brim of her bonnet to kiss her forehead. “Don’t give it another thought. Now we need to find out where your parents were married.”

  For a short time, perhaps just for an hour or two, she decided, she’d give in to the luxury of sharing his optimism and believing they might have a future together.

  They’d passed back through Bath and almost reached Chippenham when it occurred to Cain that Juliana had scarcely uttered a word in over an hour. He’d passed the time wondering how one went about searching for evidence of a wedding, knowing only the bride’s name and a date when the ceremony might have occurred. Anywhere in England or Wales. Or Scotland, for God’s sake. That’s where most runaway marriages were performed, though Cassandra had been of age and not needed her father’s consent. Still, it wouldn’t do to overlook the obvious. Cain made a mental note to send someone to Gretna Green. And there was Ireland too.

  On the outward journey from London Juliana had been full of theories about her parentage, eager and willing to discuss any possibility. Then her desire to defend her grandfather had entered the arena and she’d had plenty to say about that. He hesitated to raise the subject and spoil their rediscovered amity. If life was to offer only a short time more in Juliana’s company, he didn’t wish to waste it with a quarrel.

  Yet her lack of response to his occasional uncontentious suggestions was unlike her. Juliana seemed distracted, as though thinking of something quite different.

  Finally she cleared her throat, interrupting his mental instructions to Robinson about the marriage search.

  She’d removed her bonnet, revealing her tawny gold hair in all its disheveled glory. Ecstatic as he was to see her discard those hideous caps, he could appreciate their practicality for a woman as incompetent at hairdressing as Juliana. The fact that her coiffure looked ready to descend with any sudden movement did nothing to detract from her beauty. Sitting across from him she was ravishing as a Titian goddess, though rather more clothed.

  The dove gray of her traveling dress contrasted with the red seats. She’d look good in red.

  After a few moments’ hesitation she spoke. “While I was waiting for you, I looked at Mr. Howard’s Bible.”

  “A very proper thing to do,” he answered gravely. “Of course, you don’t read books, do you. Was it a good edition?”

  Normally this mild provocation would be enough to start her off on a lengthy discussion of the bibliographic history of the Authorized Version, until she realized she was being teased.

  “As it happens I did read part of it,” she said. “The Book of Samuel. About David’s son Amnon.”

  He felt he’d been punched in the gut. “Now that story,” he managed to answer, “is not, I believe, very proper. Not a suitable tale for a gently reared lady.”

  “No. I’d never read it before. But I’d heard the name. You told me your father called you Amnon.”

  “Was I drunk?” he asked with studied nonchalance.

  “No, I was.”

  “Oh yes. I remember the occasion. Are you sure you do? Perhaps it never happened. You were somewhat the worse for wine.”

  His feeble attempt at deflection had no effect. “Cain, is that why you left home? Is that why you weren’t made Esther’s guardian once you came of age?”

  He didn’t want to answer the question. He’d never minded owning up to any other sin. Indeed he positively reveled in his reputation. But the one charge he feared was the last one leveled by his father, the offense too terrible to name, or even contemplate. He’d lived much of his life in terror that someone knew of it. And now someone did. The person whose opinion meant the most to him had heard the worst.

  “I didn’t do it,” he almost whispered. “I’d never hurt my sister.”

  Her eyes widened. “Of course not! It’s utter nonsense. You would never, never do such a thing!”

  Until the constriction in his throat loosened he hadn’t known he could scarcely breathe. “You believe me? Just like that?

  “Of course I do. I don’t wish to pry, but would you like to tell me what happened?”

  “Why not? No one has ever heard the whole story.” He leaned back on the bench seat and folded his arms, staring at nothing.

  “Looking back, I can see that the last year or two I spent at home my father was becoming less and less rational. By the end I think he was quite insane. He was obsessed with sin, specifically sins of the flesh. He decided I was guilty of them in every form. He even removed me from Eton, claiming I was learning debauchery from my fellow pupils. Such nonsense. Schoolboys talk about a lot more than they actually experience. I was an innocent then. I more than made up for it later. Became as wicked as he’d always said I was.”

  “Stop, Cain. You aren’t wicked, but when you say things like that people believe you.”

  “I always thought I might as well have the pleasure of living up to my reputation.”

  “I have no doubt you’ve committed some deeds not strictly sanctioned by the church. But nothing like what your father accused you of.”

  “No, not that. That day I came in from riding. That was part of my regime; His Lordship had a notion that exercise calmed the demons of lust. I climbed the main staircase. Very impressive the main staircase at Markley Chase Abbey. You must see it one day.”

  He was procrastinating. He feared he was going to weep. He forced himself to continue.

  “I made for the family wing. I had my own rooms there from the age of ten when I removed from the nursery. I entered the long passage and met Esther coming out from my mother’s sitting room. She was only eight then, and the sweetest little thing. I didn’t see her as often as I would like since she was still in the nursery and our lessons were completely separate. She was crying and she called my name. I crouched down and caught her in my arms, asked her what had upset her. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak but I could tell she was terrified.”

  Closing his eyes, Cain relived that moment for the thousandth time, trying to make sense of it. “Then I heard my father’s voice, coming from my mother’s rooms. ‘Daughter,’ he cried. His voice was angry. All I could think of was that I must hide Esther from him. I picked her up and ran to the end of the corridor into my room.”

  He breathed heavily, as thou
gh he’d been running, but Cain found himself growing calmer as he neared the end of the story.

  “My father must have heard the door slam. He followed us. Esther was still in my arms, clinging like a mad thing. He bellowed at me, like an incensed bull, grabbed me by the collar and pulled me away from her, dragged me downstairs to his study.”

  He relived the moment in his head, the certainty that his father’s temper had slipped its moorings and that he was about to endure the worst beating of his life.

  “I begged him to tell me what I’d done.” The memory of his abject supplication left a bitter taste in his mouth even now. His father had been a large man with a strong right arm when wielding a cane or a switch, depending on the perceived severity of his son’s offense. The sixteen-year-old Cain had been terrified. “He gave me no reason for his anger until he’d finished with the whip.”

  “He beat you?” Juliana asked, horror in her voice.

  “He whipped me. Not for the first time. But it was the last, and the worst.”

  Even now he remembered how much the lashes on his back and rear had hurt. “In the end I tried to defy him. I told him, through my pathetic snivels, that he was a bully and a lunatic. A stupid thing to say to a large man with a whip. I was lucky he didn’t start again. Perhaps his arm was tired. Instead he went to his desk, quite calmly, and opened a drawer. He walked over to me and threw a purse on the carpet. He didn’t touch me again. Just ordered me to leave the house and never return.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Let me see if I can recall the words.” Of course he recalled them. They were branded on his memory. “‘You are guilty of the sin of Amnon and I cast you out of my house. From this day you are no longer my son.’”

  “Did you understand what he meant?”

  “I had no idea at the time. My studies, believe me, especially with the Reverend Josiah Ditchfield, included plenty of Bible reading. I thought I’d found every spicy story the Good Book contains. Somehow I missed that one. I probably would have found it amusing.”

  He drew his lips into a ghastly semblance of a grin. Instinctively he wanted to climb out of the emotional trough he’d dug and return to his habitual state of cavalier insolence.

  “Cain, please.” Her soft protest told him she wasn’t fooled. “What did you do next?”

  “I left, with the hundred pounds he’d given me. It seemed a fortune.” He shook his head in wonder at his own naïveté. “I packed a few things, walked five miles to the nearest mail stop, and took the coach to London. I was happy to escape.”

  “When did you realize?”

  “About Amnon? On the coach. One of the passengers had a Bible and I borrowed it.” All trace of humor, feigned or otherwise, vanished. He couldn’t begin to express his revulsion. “I thought I was going to be sick when I found it.

  “The worst of it was I knew I would likely never see Esther as long as my father lived. How could I even write to her without appearing to confirm his accusation?”

  “And after his death?”

  “I returned to Markley Chase for the funeral. I thought it was all over. That I could go back and live at home. I even looked forward to seeing my mother again.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “She wouldn’t even let me see Esther. Repeated my father’s accusation and forbade me to go near my own sister. I could have made her leave the house. My father had no power to disinherit me. But the one thing he could withhold from me was my sister. If my mother left, so would she. And I couldn’t punish Esther by making her an exile from her home. I knew what that was like. For three years my mother and I maintained an uneasy truce. I left her in possession of my house and my sister. She refrained from publishing my sins to the world.”

  “Until Esther ran away.”

  “Until then,” he agreed. “I will fight for her in the courts, but I take the risk that my mother will openly accuse me of incestuous rape of my eight-year-old sister.”

  Juliana blanched at the words in all their ugliness. “Surely no one would believe anything so vile?”

  “God knows I’ve done enough damage to my own reputation.”

  Little did Cain expect so bitterly to regret his years of merry dissipation. “You don’t know the worst,” he said.

  “The worst!” Juliana exclaimed.

  “I learned why Esther was crying that day. It was because she had found my father beating my mother. And I left them. I left my mother and sister behind while I went off and enjoyed myself. I escaped and left them in his hands.”

  Chapter 21

  The black chariot with its red appointments had become home for the past three days. How many hours had she and Cain spent in this small velvet cave, a space too small to be comfortably shared for any length of time save by lovers?

  By some strange contradiction, she’d learned, two people so confined could feel either powerfully close or leagues apart.

  Now as she sat across from him, knees almost touching, she could sense a deep shame that he had, in his own estimation, abandoned his mother and sister.

  “You didn’t fail them,” she said.

  He slouched on the bench seat, thumbs tucked into the pocket of his waistcoat, his chin resting on the linen ties of his neck cloth. Unfocused blue eyes stared at nothing. The sensual mouth appeared pinched and unhappy.

  “I should have known,” he said. “He must have been beating her for years.”

  “You can’t be certain of that. And if it’s true I’m sure he was careful to keep you from the knowledge.”

  “I never spent much time with her. For most of my life she was increasing and kept to her rooms and her endless prayers. I was cared for by servants.”

  “Yet there are only two of you,” Juliana whispered, appalled by the thought of what violence might have wrought on a pregnant woman.

  “Only Esther and I lived. She must have lost half a dozen children, at least, some at birth, some earlier. I wonder if he punished her for it. I should have known and I should have done something.”

  “You were a child, Cain, still only a boy when you left. How could you have stopped him?”

  “I grew older. At least I could have tried to protect her. Esther says he went on beating her until he died. Had he lived longer he might have started on Esther too. And I had no idea. I resented my father’s treatment. But it was nothing to how he treated my mother. I enjoyed a life of happy dissipation while she was living in hell.” He raised his head and sat up straight to look at Juliana full-on. “I am as bad as my father.”

  “Stop! If there is one thing I know about you it’s that you would never hurt a woman. You have too much esteem for them.” The words emerged unconsidered but she knew them for the truth.

  “I have spent most of my life in the company of men,” she continued slowly, “and none of them has shown me as much respect and consideration as you have. You never treat me as an ignorant fool, just because of my sex.”

  “I’d be an ignorant fool myself, to do so. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my misspent life, it’s that women are just as clever as men, and a lot nicer.”

  “I don’t know very many women,” Juliana said. “If by ‘nice’ you mean honest and honorable, then many men of my acquaintance qualify for the word.”

  “Lucky you. I can’t say I share in your good fortune.”

  “But, despite their virtues, men, in my experience, expect women to bend to their will. And there isn’t much we can do about it.”

  “The law sanctions it, encourages it even,” Cain said. “My mother had no redress against my father. She and Esther were completely in his power.”

  She leaned forward. “Look at me,” she said, willing him to meet her eye-to-eye. “You are nothing like your father. Any woman who, thanks to the law, found herself under your authority, would be safe and well cared for. I know what you have done for so many of them.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Your housekeeper, Mrs. Duchamp, told me the other morning whil
e I was getting dressed.”

  This drew a fleeting grimace. “Mel has a big mouth.”

  “You are giving a considerable portion of your fortune to make sure your former servants and others like them have a sanctuary.”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t either.”

  “Why would you keep such acts of generosity to yourself? Besides, I’ve seen one of your…objects of charity myself. I came to your house one day to deliver a book.”

  “Did you, by God? Was I out?”

  “No. When I saw this young person leaving I decided not to call after all.”

  A shadow of amusement crossed his features. “Clearly you leaped to the same conclusion all my neighbors have done for three years. They believe me a man of Herculean vigor.”

  “It’s sad they are so wrong about you,” she murmured.

  “That, my dear, is an ambiguous statement,” he drawled. “I hope you don’t mean it the way it sounds. I would be very sorry to have disappointed you.”

  A wave of heat went through her and she blushed. She realized how much she enjoyed Cain’s wicked innuendos. “I see you’ve returned to your usual outrageous self,” she said, maintaining a straight face.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. Years of habit, making fun of everything.”

  “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself. I like that in you. I like your jokes, and your…irreverence.”

  “Truly?”

  “You sound surprised. Don’t you understand? It makes you…” She waved a hand, searching for the right words. “I have fun when I’m with you.”

  “You mean I’m a comic figure, a clown?”

  “Never that.” She shook her head. “It makes you wonderful company. I’ve never enjoyed myself as much as when I’m with you. I scarcely recall my grandfather or Joseph laughing.”