Beyond A Wicked Kiss (40 page)

She nodded. "Please."

He handed it to her and put on his drawers. For the second time this night, she held the covers up for him, and he climbed in beside her. He offered the shelter of his shoulder, and she accepted it. One of her arms lay across his chest; her head fit neatly into a hollow that seemed carved for it.

"What do you make of us?" he asked her when she had settled at his side.

The question was not asked lightly. Ria did not have to lift her head to know that his eyes were grave, and there was no humor shaping his mouth in that singular curve. "I don't allow myself to think on it," she said. "I think it might make me very sad."

He nodded slowly. "You would not consider being my wife, then?"

"No."

"My mistress?"

"In London, do you mean? With a house and servants and a phaeton to take me to the park? Your Grace has already taught me how to sing—there is no need to cage me as well." She regretted her words as soon as they were out. Not only did they seem flippant and vaguely cruel, but they were in her mind because of what the dressmakers had said about Jane Petty. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, rising up to see his face and know that he could see hers. "It was a horrible thing to say. You have done nothing that I have not asked you to do. Even tonight, I hoped you would come back. I wanted to lie with you again. This will have to last me the whole of my life, you know." Tears welling at the lower rim of her lashes spilled over and fell on his cheeks. "I don't expect there will ever be anyone else, not because you say there shouldn't be, but because I am not a woman who will ever go from one man's bed to another, seeking naught but my own pleasure. What you have taught me, I shall cherish." Her tears fell in earnest now, and her body began to shake with the force of her sobs.

She had cried before in his arms, but this was different. The last time it had been for fear of what she had done to Jane. This time she feared what she had done to herself.

West let her cry. A woman's tears did not frustrate or frighten him. He had known them at an early age at his mother's knee. She had laughed through them sometimes, tousling his head so that he would not be alarmed. At other times she would excuse herself and hide away in her bedroom for an afternoon, an evening, sometimes an entire day, emerging when the melancholia had passed, or when the duke came to take her away.

He did not know why he began to tell Ria these things, but once the first words came, it was a little like weeping, and he discovered there was good reason to see it through to the end. Life had been an ache in his chest for a very long time; humor had never served to deflect it, only to keep it contained.

"My mother's name was Meg," he said. "Did you know that?"

Ria shook her head, knuckling the last of her tears away. She used a corner of the sheet to erase the trail they had left on his cheeks as well, then slipped beside him again.

"Not Megan or Margaret or Meggie. Just Meg Marchman." He felt Ria's arm slide across his chest, and he laid his fingers over her elbow and stroked the soft inner curve. "She was the daughter of the widowed tutor employed by the seventh Duke of Westphal for his son, the future eighth duke. She grew up with my father as her companion and confidante until he was sent away to school. The duke arranged a good living for her father as schoolmaster for the village's children. You might not credit it, but both of my grandfathers were progressive in their ideas about education."

Ria had not known this, either. She wondered if it did not perhaps explain why the duke had finally indulged her decision to teach. It seemed that his tutor, as well as his own father, had had some measure of good influence on him.

She closed her eyes and let the images form in her mind's eye as West unfolded his tale. She saw the young Meg, winsome and quite lovely at seventeen, become more than a companion to William Fairchild as he came into manhood. Straight, broad of shoulder, he cut a handsome figure and could have had his pick of any of the young ladies presented to him during the Season. He vowed he would have no other than Meg, but he spoke the vow only to her. They were not so naive that they believed either of their fathers would bless a union between them, but neither were they willing to be parted. They married in secret, by special license, and William promised that it would not remain secret forever, that he would wear his father down eventually. Their love was true, his father would come to understand that, and they would prevail. Once again, he spoke the vow only to her.

Ria tried to imagine William broaching the subject of his feelings for Meg with his father. It would have been difficult for him. He would have wanted to appeal to his father's reason and found the going treacherous. Perhaps he had not even tried so very hard. West was of the opinion that he had not.

"My mother told her father about the marriage as soon as she realized she was going to have a child. She begged him not to go to the duke, but to allow her husband more time to influence his own father. He agreed, most likely against his better judgment, but he honored his promise and spoke to no one, even when he saw his daughter's belly begin to swell and knew the truth of her pregnancy would become apparent to all."

West threaded his fingers through Ria's and tapped his thumb lightly against hers. "The fact that my mother was going to give birth put pressure on William to do something quickly. What he did was confess to his father that he was my mother's lover and that he had got her with child. If he hoped to add that he had already married her and that the child had been conceived in wedlock, he never had the chance to speak of it. His father vented his spleen by striking him across the face and then offered his reluctant congratulations on the impending bastard birth."

Ria winced. It was less a reaction to West's description of events than it was to the edge of ice in his tone. It was not overtly chilly; rather, it spoke to a hard-frozen center that had never known a thaw.

"I don't know what my father thought—I can only judge him by what he did," West said. "And what he did was agree to marry his father's choice for him, Lady Jane Caldwell, the proper daughter of an earl with an inheritance in her own right. My father demonstrated neither courage nor charity by not telling my mother himself. She heard of the impending marriage when the first banns were read."

Lifting her head, Ria glanced at West again. His features remained stoic, almost without expression, and she had a sense now of the cost to him. She laid her cheek back against his shoulder and quietly wept the tears he could not.

"She went to the duke," he said, squeezing her fingers so they folded around his. "And she told him about the marriage. He demanded proof, and she could offer none. Those papers were left in her husband's care, and when he was confronted, he not only did not produce the proof, he denied every part of her story. Official record of the marriage also disappeared. My mother was made to be desperate—which she was—and scheming—which she was not. Her lawful husband married Lady Jane the following year, shortly after I was born. That is how I escaped the name William for my own. As the first son, it surely would have been mine, just as it was for every duke before me."

West's chest rose and fell on a deep sigh. "Lady Jane and her bigamist husband conceived one son who lived and five others who did not. The miscarriages took a considerable toll on her health, and she was confined to her bed through many of the pregnancies and then afterward as well. My mother's father died when I was yet an infant, and without his income, my mother had to find employment. She was a good seamstress, so she began to take in mending and later, fashioned dresses. She accepted money from the duke—not my father, but the man who was rightly her father-in-law—and opened a shop in the village. Do not think my mother was not a proud woman. She was, but circumstances compelled her to also be practical."

Ria dashed surreptitiously at the tears still welling in her eyes. "Do you think the duke believed her story, and that is why he offered her money?"

West shrugged. "He may have, but he was also of a pragmatic nature. He had ambitions for his own son, and he wanted to assure that my mother would not raise the subject of the alleged marriage again. The money was foremost a bribe, though it may also be as you said. Even if the duke came to realize his son had lied, what could he do? There had been a very public wedding with Lady Jane. He could not expose his son as having two wives."

Easing his fingers free of hers, West gave Ria a corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes. In return, she gave him a watery, slightly embarrassed smile. He shook his head. "No one has ever cried for me before."

Ria glanced at him, frowning. "But your mother... you said she cried a great deal."

"She did, but not for me." He bent his head and kissed the crown of hers. When he spoke, his breath brushed silky tendrils of her hair aside. "For all intents and purposes, I was a bastard, but she was a bastard's mother. In a village so small as Ambermede, it did not make her an outcast, but it always set her apart. The duke died when I was three, not long after Tenley was born, and my father was made Duke of Westphal. That is when he began to come around again."

"She took him back?" asked Ria.

"On occasion. She loved him and hated herself, or hated him and hated herself."

"But she loved you," said Ria. "She always loved you."

His smile was a trifle crooked a little weary. "Is it so important that she did?"

Ria simply stared at him, her heart in her throat.

"Ease your mind Ria," he told her gently. "I was not unloved."

Her mind was not eased not when he said it in such a fashion as he had. "What was she like, West?"

He was a long time in answering. "I think you will not believe me in light of what I have told you, but she was cheerful. Determinedly so, perhaps. She held her head up and made no apology for what others believed about her. What she knew to be the truth was her shield. She was my champion, after a fashion. No one called me a bastard in her presence."

"But when she was not around?"

"A different kettle of fish."

"You did not know the truth then?"

"No. Never. I understand now that she did not trust me with it. My father was becoming considerably influential in politics, and his continued success depended upon her silence—and mine. I was always recognized to be the duke's son. No one questioned it. That he had a bastard was never more than a nine days' wonder except in Ambermede. My mother also pitied Lady Jane, though this feeling was hardly mutual. The duchess hated my mother, but she probably feared her more."

"She knew about her husband's other marriage?"

West gave a short bark of laughter at the thought. "No. Most definitely not." He sobered gradually. "What she eventually learned was that the duke was still visiting my mother and had deeded her the cottage I told you about. She discovered that he was paying for my education at Hambrick and had every intention of supporting me at university should I decide to go. She thought such attention to his bastard was excessive."

Ria ventured her opinion softly. "It does seem he was rather more generous than most."

"Does it? It was the price my mother exacted. That the duke was willing to pay it says something about how very much he wanted her."

"Perhaps it says something about his guilt."

West shook his head. "The duke was not disposed toward the same base emotions that plague other mortals."

Now Ria sat up in bed, unwilling to let his comment pass with no rejoinder. She looked down at him, her attention frank, even a little challenging. "How do you explain, then, the duke making a confession of his first marriage before his death? I do not think you could have become the ninth Duke of Westphal if not for your father's guilt."

"Do you think I wanted this inheritance under those circumstances? To give the selfish bastard peace of mind? That's what his deathbed confession was in aid of. He could have set things right at any time, yet chose what caused him the least inconvenience. He despised me, Ria. If I stirred an emotion in him, it was loathing."

"Self-loathing," she said quietly. "I do not think he despised you at all. I think he despised himself for not being a better man, one who could bear the stain upon his reputation if the truth were known. He wished he were a man who could suffer what others might say about him and remain standing tall and straight and proud. It is probably truer that he cared too much about how he was thought of, not too little. It seems to me that he should have liked to have been a man who could do what was honorable, not merely what was convenient."

Ria placed her hand lightly on West's chest. "I believe he wished he were more the man you are."

West felt a pressure in his chest that was out of all proportion to the weight of Ria's small hand. The tightness of his throat made his voice sandpaper rough. "Being a bastard helped shape the man I am. Do I thank him for that, Ria?" He put his hand over hers. "Should I dismiss the years of torment he visited upon my mother because he was unable to do what was right? My father did not know enough about the child I was to understand the manner of man I became."

"He was weak," she said. "A weak man, not an evil one."

West was uncertain if he believed that. "Weakness begets evil."

"Yes." She did not think he realized how tightly he was squeezing her hand. She let him do it because she sensed she was his lifeline now, and she could not set him adrift. "Weakness can do exactly that."