A Gentleman Undone (41 page)

H
E FELL
almost immediately to sleep—he was thoroughly wrung out—and when the slumberous breaths started, she slipped from the bed and left the bedroom, pulling the door soundlessly to. In the corner where her trunk still sat was just space enough for her to wedge herself in by the wall. She slid down to sit on the floor, knees up, and she put her face in her hands and wept until she shook with grief.

He would never know what it had cost her to hear his story. Never. If she’d shown the smallest sign of being affected he would have bottled up his own anguish and turned his energies to comforting her, when for God’s sake he’d borne his burden long enough and it was damn well time someone was strong enough to listen, to bear witness to the enormity of what he’d undergone, beginning to heart-lacerating end.

Had she done wrong, though, in speaking to him so? She curled her hands into fists and pressed them against her eyes. She might have been kind, and told him the truth.
You
are
a good man, the finest I know. You drew a dismal hand, and played it as well as anybody could. The state of your soul is not for you or me or any church to pronounce upon
.

But surely these were the things he’d expect a listener to say. And he would not believe them. He’d think she said them because she shrank from beholding the awful corruption that crawled beneath his skin.

Now he knew she shrank from nothing. The worst thing he could tell of himself would not be enough to drive her away. She’d listened unflinching to his darkest confessions and she’d answered with the darkest confession she could make in her turn.

I love you
. She wiped, with open palms, where tears ran down both cheeks. He’d been so grateful to hear it. So relieved. She wouldn’t be sorry she’d told him, even if only pain could follow.

A few minutes more she cried, and when she’d poured out sorrow enough to make her steady again she crept back to the bedroom. A lone candle still burned; she snuffed it and crawled under the covers. He muttered in his sleep and turned, his hand brushing hers. She lay motionless, measuring his breaths and the intervals between, marveling at the place—his first and second knuckles, the back of her hand—where their bodies met.

“Will.” One word only. If he woke, they’d speak. If not, she’d let him sleep on.

“Hmm?” Her need was like a fishhook, drawing him unerringly out of the deep.

Long breath in. Long breath out. “I can’t let you fight that duel.”

She could feel him groping, sleepily, for the best way to reassure her. “Don’t fret yourself.” His hand moved in soothing strokes up and down her arm. “Go to sleep. Let me worry about the duel.”

“I can’t let you die. And I can’t let you …”
I can’t let you have another man’s death on your hands
. Couldn’t he see how important that was?

“There isn’t always a death.” He was coming all the way awake, now. “Sometimes only wounds result. One or both parties might miss the target altogether.” His hand stopped at her wrist and he made a bracelet of his thumb and first two fingers. “Regardless, for me to walk away from the defense of your honor is more than ever unthinkable. Surely you see that.”

“I
don’t
see.” Her voice was raw with desperation. She’d played all her best cards: his duty to the living, her need of him in the gaming hells, even the heart that would break with the loss of him. What else was left to try? “I should think a woman’s honor would be her own concern and no one else’s.”

“A wife’s honor would be her husband’s concern.” His words pooled out to fill every corner of the room in the two or three seconds it took her to gain command of her tongue.

“I’m not your wife.” That was all the reply she could manage.

“Not yet.” His fingers let go her wrist; that hand skimmed across her belly to take a grip at her waist and pull her whole body close to his. “Will you marry me, Lydia?”

Her heart twisted like laundry fresh out of the tub. He didn’t mean to be unkind, of course. But to know he loved her, to know he would bind himself to her, honorably, if he could, only made the remaining insurmountable obstacles that much crueler. “You know that’s impossible.” She would remind him of the reasons one by one if she must.

“Circumstances are very much against it. That’s not the same as impossible.” She could feel the strong beat of his heart where her upper arm touched the middle of his chest. “I love you. You’ve said you love me. I trust you won’t doubt me if I say that, after tonight, I cannot think of making a life with any woman but you.”

The choice of words sent a sharp stab of laughter halfway up her throat and pricked her eyes with tears. “
Making a life
is the very thing I cannot do. Have you forgotten?”

For several seconds he was silent, leaving her to imagine what transpired on his face. “I’m a youngest son,” he then said. “The world does not clamor for a copy of me.”

“You know I refer to more than that.” He’d hesitated for a reason. He was not so sanguine on this topic as he’d like her to believe. “Think what it would be, to know your line would die out with you. No descendants to have a care for you in your old age. No infants to cherish. No little faces growing to resemble yours.” Oh, Lord. Already she was maudlin.

“I don’t say I won’t think of that sometimes, and grieve the loss. But we’ll grieve it together. And I’ll have you for consolation. That’s no small thing.” He rolled from his side to his back, his sizable palm guiding her head to a place on his shoulder. “I’ve told you my mother died in childbed.” In the darkness, this near, his every syllable sounded like an exquisite confidence. “It was her tenth confinement and she’d been worn down to nothing. I don’t think my father ever recovered from losing her, and I don’t think he ever ceased to blame himself.” He’d caught a lock of her hair between his fingers and was twisting it, slowly, round one finger and then another. “I’ve seen my eldest brother nearly crawl out of his skin when his wife was brought to bed. I’ll never know that fear, if I marry you. We can enjoy one another with no such cloud hanging overhead. Not many men are so lucky.”

She allowed herself four seconds to just drift, his words and aching-sweet sentiments buoying her up like warm sulfured water. “It’s not that simple,” she finally said.

“Of course it isn’t. It’s not simple at all.” He let go the lock of hair and brought his palm against her scalp again. “My family will probably throw me off, I’ve got to find a way to put things to rights with Mrs. Talbot, I need a home and income suitable to share with you, and I have to get through that damned duel. It’s the farthest thing from simple.” His voice slowed, shifted, like a violin changing keys as it moved toward the resolution of an intricate concerto. “But we both have some experience with difficulty, haven’t we? We’ve been tried, and tempered. Beyond doubt we’ll meet with obstacles and adversity. Haven’t we ample reason, though, to hope we’ll be equal to whatever challenges come?”

It was the prettiest, grandest, best-argued marriage proposal a lady could ever hope to hear. Her heart bobbed in its wake like an empty cask tossed into choppy seas.

The hour was late, though. He’d been glutted with pleasure, and likely was still light-headed, tenderhearted, from the relief of finally bringing his secrets into the light. He might feel differently in the morning. At the least he might recognize the folly of plotting out his future when the meeting with Edward loomed so large in his way.

She found his hand and wound her fingers between his. “If you love me—if you want a life with me—then I should think you’d want to give up the duel.”

He sighed, his chest swelling and subsiding under her head. She’d answered poorly.
Yes
, she ought to have said.
I love you. I want to face adversity with you at my side
. Instead she’d circled back round to where they’d begun, receiving his declarations and promptly converting them into ammunition for her single-minded campaign. “Let’s go to sleep now, Lydia.” He shifted out from under her, consigning her to the inferior comforts of her pillow. “We’re at a stalemate for the night, I think.
We can speak again in the morning. I’ll convince you to marry me then.”

B
UT WHEN
morning came he found he only wanted to let her sleep. Devil of a long night it had been, in hours alone. And hours were the least of it.

He lay on his side, facing her. She lay on her back. She knew now, and here she still was. Once or twice he closed and opened his eyes, just to make sure.

This was the woman he would marry. Life had shaped them for each other. He would wake every morning to this view: the stark lines of her nose, her brow, her chin, and the soft, slightly parted lips that undercut her fearsome mien. He had only to convince her that there could be no other course.

Well, no. He had a great deal more to do than that. He rolled onto his back, very slowly, so as not to disturb her. This interlude in a room with a cracked ceiling was just that, a brief connective chapter, a respite from the world in which they must find their way. He had arrangements to make, failures to confess, people to disappoint, and Lord, that damnable duel with which to contend. Might as well get a start on all of it.

He rose. An hour’s worth of dressing and letter-writing later she still hadn’t woken, so he went back to his table and penned one more note, this time to her. The paper whispered as he laid it on the pillow where he’d been, a hushed promise, a token of all he would bear and sacrifice in exchange for a life with her.

E
ARLY THAT
afternoon he stood on the threshold of the first sacrifice, in his eldest brother’s drawing room, and looked a bit too long at each of the assembled faces, the way he might if he were getting set to board a ship to
India. Andrew and his wife. Kitty and her husband. Martha and Mr. Mirkwood. Nick, by himself in an armchair with the same keen expression he must wear in court.

“Out with it, Will.” His eldest sister, bossy as she’d always been. “We know well enough it can be nothing good.”

He clasped his hands behind him and stood straight, back to the fire. His toes curled and uncurled in his boots, all his nervous energy pushed down out of sight. “You’re quite right. I’ll get straight to it. I’m engaged to a duel in several days’ time, for a cause that can bring no credit to the family. I’ve involved myself in the fortunes of another man’s mistress.”

He’d imagined, beforehand, what might be each sibling’s reaction to the news. More or less they stayed true to pattern: Andrew, a muscle in his jaw flinching as his hands tightened on the arms of his chair. Nick, his brows ascending to give his eyes all the room they needed for spelling out
Have you taken leave of your senses?
Kitty, her disapproving countenance suddenly swamped with sisterly concern. And Martha, straight and serious, her mouth pinched small.

“Is it Miss Slaughter?” His younger sister addressed him quietly, as though he and she were the only ones in the room.

He nearly bit his tongue, the question came so unexpected. “How the deuce did you know?”

“Her maid is an inexpert dissembler. We spoke a bit, when I drove her to Somers Town, and she said things that led me to suspect her mistress might be living in such an arrangement as you now say she is. I didn’t realize—” Her mouth shaped and reshaped itself as she sought for the proper phrase. “I had supposed her but a slight acquaintance of yours.”

“Who issued the challenge?” Andrew had no use for such details as the lady’s name, or the terms of her acquaintance with his brother, but must go directly to the meat of the matter; the part he could get his hands on and repair. “Can it be withdrawn?”

“There’s no chance of that.” Behind his back he flexed his fingers, the one slight expression of impatience he’d allow. He was six and twenty, he’d been to war and back, and still his brother seemed to think he could not manage these things for himself. “I knocked him down after seeing him strike the lady. For me to apologize is out of the question.”

“For you to
die in a duel
is out of the question. Have you any idea how your sisters worried while you were on the Continent?” Andrew’s face was flushing red and he looked to be some few seconds away from snapping the arms of his chair with his bare hands. “We’ve had you back for less than a year. I’ve no intention of—of …” Abruptly he jerked one hand from the chair and passed it over his brow. And for the first time Will understood, in his sinews, how much his loss could grieve his family.

Would
grieve his family. If they didn’t lose him through the duel, they would lose him by what would come after. He shoved himself a step forward. “I’m sorry. I wish there might have been some way to spare you. But I mean to fight this duel, and provided I’m neither killed nor arrested, my intention is then to marry Miss Slaughter.”

Oh, Lord. He ought to have worked up to it gradually. Kitty was staring as though he’d suddenly sprouted boils all over his face, Nick was leaning farther and farther forward in his chair, and Andrew looked ready to combust.

“I’m not insensible of what this will mean to your families. Please believe I don’t make this choice lightly.” He could feel six and twenty years of fondness, of needling,
of shared jokes slipping through his fingers. But he’d known this must be the cost. It didn’t, at least, take him by surprise. “I can only say that the war wrought certain changes in my views. Among other things, I’m unwilling to condemn a lady—a lady every bit our equal by birth—for choices that were forced upon her by the most unenviable circumstances.”

Martha’s already straight posture went straight enough to lay bricks by, and she sent her hand abruptly to cover her husband’s. “You’ll honor Mrs. Mirkwood and myself with the first introduction, I hope,” the man said as if nothing untoward had passed.

Will nearly sagged to the floor under the sudden warm weight of gratitude. He clenched his jaw and nodded, his sentiments too raw and unwieldy to shape into words.