Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

‘I have always been six months older than you, although you never noticed the fact. You were too busy dangling after my brothers, or the neighbours, or the duke.’

The words wounded her, for it made her feel like a fortune hunter, or, worse yet, the foolish young girl she had been.

‘You were most interested in anyone else but me, as I remember it,’ he reminded her.

Although the smile hid it, she could hear the pain in his voice, as though the wound was fresh. And perhaps it was, for she had been intimate with him, had loved him, and still not seen him for who he was.

‘Oh, Eustace…’ the name stuck on her tongue and she forced it out ‘…I am so sorry. So very sorry, not to have known it was you.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘I have never favoured the name Eustace, nor has it favoured me.’

‘But…but it is you, isn’t it? To see you sitting there with your head in your hands, you are just as I remember you. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘So that I could listen to you dismiss me as “little Eustace”? Not a memory I needed to renew. Perhaps if you had recognised me. But there seemed to be no risk of that.’

She stared into his face as he peered at her from over his glasses and wondered how she could not have seen it. He looked very like his handsome older brothers. She blushed to remember that she had been quite taken with the older Smiths. ‘You do not wear your glasses any more?’

‘I only ever needed them to read, and that was all I ever did, when you knew me last. Now I do so much of my work in the dark, glasses are really quite useless. It is easier to operate by touch.’

She blushed, remembering how good he was in the dark, when operating by touch. ‘It was a very long time ago. And you are most different than you were.’

He sighed. ‘And you are very much the same as I remember. Every bit as beautiful as when you left home. And still in search of a title. How goes the husband hunt?’

‘Better than it had been, now that Barton is out of the way.’ Her voice was a little tart. ‘I have you to thank, for clearing the way for more honourable men.’

He looked tired. ‘I would have removed Barton, in any case. But it pleases me you benefited from it.’

‘So when you took the deed for me?’

‘I was helping out an old friend.’

‘And I am just an old friend to you?’

He looked at her long and hard. ‘If that is what you wish. But I suspect that you came here for a matter more personal than friendship. Enough nonsense, Connie. I was right in my surmise, was I not? You were not to blame for the barren union at all.’

She shook her head.

‘Have you come to torment me with the knowledge that by removing Barton, I have helped clear the path for some other man? Or do you need me, again? Have you come as you promised to? Come, out with it. What is the truth?’

She nodded. She needed him again, to fix yet another problem. He must be terribly tired of women in distress to look after and change one’s plans for. He had just got free of his sisters, and now he would be saddled with her. And when she opened her mouth to speak, she sobbed.

He rose from behind the desk quickly and caught her in his arms. ‘I am sorry that I spoiled your plans to catch another peer. I know you do not want me, and that I am not nearly good enough for you.’ His voice was rough. ‘But if you are carrying my child, I really must insist.’ He swallowed, and when he spoke his tone was strong and confident again. ‘Let me take care of you.’

‘No.’

He stiffened against her.

‘I am honoured that you will have me. But I am so sorry, Tony. So very, very sorry. I do not want you to have to take care of me, yet again. It is not fair to you, to never have what you want, but to have your future forced upon you by a foolish woman. Once you have married me, you need hardly take care of me at all. I will not be a bother. And I will do my best to take care of you.’ She erupted in a fresh bout of tears.

‘There now, do not cry.’

‘I cannot help it. I cry at every little thing, I am sick in the morning, tired during the day, restless at night.’ She sobbed into the wool of his coat. ‘And I was afraid to come here, but afraid to stay away.’

‘You have nothing to be afraid of, any more.’ He was stroking her hair and holding her tight against him. ‘Everything will be all right, if you will just say yes to me. Everything. I promise.’

‘You warned me this would happen. But I wanted you, and I wanted a baby as well, no matter the consequences. And then I forgot all about the risks and wanted to feel what I felt whenever I was with you. I did not think what it might be like for the poor baby to have such a fool for a mother, or care that you would not want to marry.’

‘When did I ever say that?’

‘You said you loved elsewhere. And you would marry me for the sake of the child. I have been in such a marriage, Tony, and do not want another.’

‘Were you so unhappy with the duke?’ His voice was strange in her ear, shaky and hoarse. ‘I always told myself that you were happy, and had what was best for you. And that I needn’t concern myself.’

‘After a fashion. I was fond of him, and he of me. We did comfortably together. And I did not love him, so it did not hurt so very much when he grew bored with me and visited with other women.’

‘My poor darling.’ He stroked her hair again.

‘Now you will marry me, because you promised to. And I will be happy. I have always wanted children. Always. I will be very happy. And I will be a good mother, and a good wife to you.

‘But some day you will say you are going to your club, but you will not come home. And I will lie alone in my bed, knowing that you have gone to her, and because I love you, but you can love only one woman, I fear it will break my heart.’ She let loose with a fresh batch of tears.

He wrapped his arms even tighter around her, and waited for the sobbing to abate, passing her his handkerchief. ‘You love me that much, do you?’

‘Mnnnhmmm.’

‘And you sent me away because…’

‘It was foolish of me to fall in love with you. I could not keep you, and I could not control myself when you held me in your arms. I only ever felt alive when I was with you. The longer I kept you, the more I wanted you, and the more disgracefully I would behave to keep you with me, and the harder it would be to let you go. And it was already too late.’

The tears were ready to start again, but before they could, he kissed her and, for a moment, she forgot what it was that she was crying about.

‘There, now. No more tears. Lay your head on my other shoulder where it is dry and comfortable, for the coat on the right is cried through to the shirt front.’ He kissed her temple. ‘Better?’

She nodded.

‘Then I have a riddle. If I loved one woman my whole life, which is as long as I’ve known you, but she would look right through me if she saw me on the street, and she is as lovely and as far above me and unattainable as you are yourself, and I have kept myself apart from matrimony, until now, hoping for a miracle, can you not guess the identity of my great undying passion, the love of my life, the woman I would brave oceans and fight lions, and crawl in and out of three-storey windows to steal deeds for?’

She held very still, hoping he would just tell her what she wanted to hear. It couldn’t be. But it must be, for he would never tease her so, if it weren’t.

‘And yet I was terrified to tell you the truth. I could not speak to you when we were children, and I could not speak to you now. There was only ever room in my heart for you, Constance. But if fate had not forced my hand, I might have been fool enough to let you marry someone else.’