Mary Balogh: At Last Comes Love

She crept forward with exaggerated stealth as Duncan lunged again and Toby shrieked and laughed. And then she tapped Duncan on the back with her imaginary spear and drove him off with a blood-curdling yell when he turned to her in exaggerated surprise and terror. "Come," she said, reaching up her arms to lift the child down. "You can pet him now. He realizes that you are a cub just like his own except that you are human. He will not harm you." Duncan snarled and then purred.

Toby giggled.

A few minutes later they were all reclining on the ground, Margaret with her back against a tree trunk, Duncan cross-legged, Toby on his stomach, his chin propped on his hands, his feet waving in the air. "Tobe," Duncan said, reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair, "I am getting too old for this. Once the summer is over, we are going to have to find a governess for you." "Oh," Margaret said, "is he not a little young for that yet? He is only four." "I am four and a half," Toby said with some indignation. "I'll be five just after Christmas. Will she teach me to read, Papa? Then I can read a story to /you/ when I go to bed." "And put me to sleep?" he said. "Would there be room in your bed for me, do you think?" "I'll move over," Toby said. "And will she teach me to do sums? I can do two and two. It is four. I can do three and three too, and four and four and right up to ten and ten. Do you want to hear, Aunt Meg?" "I certainly do," she said. "Is ten and ten twenty-one?" "Twenty," he said. "Ah," she said, "silly me." /Four and a half/. At first she was simply amused by the preciseness of a child not wanting to appear younger than he was. /Just after Christmas/.

The Christmas after Mrs. Turner left her husband and ran off with Duncan. And that had happened during the Season, just before she herself had arrived in London for the first time with Stephen and her sisters.

Mrs. Turner had been with child when she ran away.

That must mean she had been Duncan's mistress before then.

It was a fact that surely changed everything. /Everything/.

He had lied to her.

To make himself look better. To appear the big hero. And she had passed on the lie to her family, and he had repeated it to his mother and grandfather after the wedding.

So that they would all admire him and forgive him and deem him a worthy husband for Margaret. /Or…/ Oh, dear God, there was an alternative explanation too.

But it was one so horrifying that she dared not contemplate it.

If the first explanation changed everything, then this one… Oh, God. Oh, dear God.

The unwilling thoughts hammered through her brain as she somehow managed to listen to Toby's prattling and even answered him when he spoke directly to her. She smiled at him with wooden lips. She felt as if the blood had drained from her head. "You look tired," Duncan said after a while. "I am a little," she said.

He rumpled Toby's hair again. "We have worn Aunt Meg out," he said. "We will go back to the house and let her rest, and perhaps I can take you for that ride I have been promising you." "Y-e-e-e-s-s-s!" Toby cried, jumping to his feet. "May I hold the reins, Papa?" "Probably not," Duncan said. "I will be getting you a pony soon, and then you can learn to ride." Toby jumped up and down with excitement and then dashed off ahead through the trees. "Take my arm," Duncan said, offering it. "I must have kept you awake too long last night." He was grinning at her. "I do not need assistance, thank you," she said, and was aware of his grin fading even though she was not looking at him. "What is it?" he asked.

She swallowed. "Nothing," she said. Coward that she was, she wanted to obliterate the last few minutes, to go back beyond those words of Toby's – /I am four and a half/. What the mind did not know … "You make /nothing/ sound like a whole lot of something," he said, his face turned to look closely at her.

She opened her mouth to speak. Closed it again, the words unspoken.

There could be no happy answer to her question once it was asked, could there? Either way, everything would be changed. And if her worst fears were realized, everything /must/ change.

Oh, dear God, no, not that. /Please/ not that. "Maggie," he said, his voice soft and even trembling with some emotion, "I need to – " "Duncan," she began at the same moment. "Tell me the tr – " But even as they both stopped to allow the other to finish first, Toby was dashing back toward them, yelling as he came. "Come /on/, Papa," he cried. "I want to go riding." And he inserted himself between them, took a hand of each, and half trotted along what remained of the path, pulling them along with him and prattling excitedly.

Despicably, Margaret was relieved. She did not want to know. She needed to demand the truth, and she would do it. She /must/ do it. But, ah, God forgive her, she /did not want to know/.

For the truth, whatever it was, was going to change things. Was going to lower him in her opinion. Was going to call for some action. Was going to create some conflict. She did not want things to change. She liked everything as it was – and as it was becoming.

She was falling …

Oh, never mind. /Why/ could she not have let Toby's protest about his age pass her by without noticing its significance?

She feared that the courtship might be over.

How could it possibly continue if … Had she really married a liar? And possibly worse than that?

Perhaps the marriage would be over too, for all intents and purposes.

She was going to have to insist upon hearing the truth – at last.

Margaret swallowed panic.

SHE had not missed it, then. If Toby was four and a half years old, if he had been born just after Christmas, then he must have been conceived during the previous spring – before Laura left London.

It was inevitable that she discover the truth sooner or later, of course. It was foolish of him to have delayed, to have waited until his hand was forced, until she was upset and bewildered and had undoubtedly jumped to all sorts of seemingly obvious conclusions.

She was still subdued when he went down to the drawing room after tucking Toby into bed for the night. She had avoided his company until now, and he half expected to find the room empty. Perhaps he had half /hoped/ to find it empty. Would he have gone in search of her or put off the confrontation until tomorrow? It did not matter. She was sitting beside the empty fireplace, bent over her embroidery.

She did not look up or stop stitching.

She did not look like a woman waiting for the daily hours of courtship.

He knew beyond all doubt that he had not misunderstood this afternoon. "Were you lovers before you ran away together?" she asked, drawing her needle out of the cloth, trailing green silk behind. "No," he said. "Maggie – " "It was his child she was bearing, then," she said. She attempted another stitch, but her hand was shaking. She rested it on the cloth, the needle pointed upward. "Randolph Turner's." "No," he said. "Maggie – " She looked up then and her eyes were swimming in tears. "It has to be one or the other, Duncan," she said. "It cannot be both, but it cannot be neither. It is /one or the other/. Either you were lovers and fled when she discovered she was with child. Or she fled with you, taking her husband's unborn child with her – in which case you have withheld a legitimate child from his father all this time. Which is it, Duncan?" He stared at her, grim-faced. "Neither," he said.

She moved her embroidery frame to one side and stood up. Her hands closed into fists at her sides, and she took one step toward him, her face pale. "You cannot tell the truth even when you are cornered, can you?" she said. "I try to tell myself that at least there is a noble motive behind your lies – that you love Toby and cannot bear the thought of relinquishing him to his real father. But there is no real excuse. I wish it were the other – that you and she were lovers and ran off together and then concocted the story of violence and abuse to excuse yourselves.