Married: The Virgin Widow (18 page)

When he tried to unfold the paper, Laura seized his wrists with surprising force, holding his hands apart. She gazed up at him with a pleading, panic-stricken countenance. “It is…a letter my mother left…for my eyes only. I will thank you to return it to me.”

He wasn’t sure which enraged him more. That she would tell him so blatant a lie? Or that she thought him daft enough to believe it?

“What kind of fool do you take me for?” He slipped into his old glacial severity like a familiar greatcoat he had put away for the summer, but now found himself urgently needing. “If this is from your mother, as you claim, you should have no objection to my unfolding it
enough to view her signature. If it is hers, I will return it to you with my sincerest apologies.”

Laura gripped his wrists even tighter. “Do you suppose any apology would be sufficient to excuse such an intrusion?”

“I will take that as a refusal.” Ford’s lip curled. “Which surprises me. I should think you would be eager to prove your innocence.”

“I resent having to prove anything to you! Especially after all we have been through. Very well, it is not a letter from my mother. It is something you are far better off not knowing. Now please, if you care about our happiness, give the thing to me so I can destroy it. Then we can put it out of our minds and—”

“And what?” Ford demanded. “Go back to ignorant bliss? I fear that will not do for me. You talk about our happiness, but how am I to be happy with a secret like that between us?”

With each word his voice grew harsher. His hands balled into fists, the right one still gripping the paper. He shook his arms, shaking Laura as she clung to them. “You might as well wish me pleasant dreams, then put a scorpion in my bed!”

Sensing he was in danger of losing control altogether, Ford froze and dropped his voice to a murmur. “I thought we were done keeping secrets. They have caused nothing but trouble between us.”

His sudden icy calm seemed to affect Laura more than his passionate outburst. “Any secrets I kept were to protect the people I love. That is what I am trying to do now. Do you think I should have told my mother the truth about how my father died or the way Cyrus mistreated me?”

“I am not like your mother. I do not need to be shielded from the slightest unpleasantness. Tell me, is this the instrument of my ruin you threatened me with the night of the ball? Would you try to protect me by destroying it? Or do you plan to keep it as a weapon to use against me some day?”

Laura recoiled from his charge. He thought she might crack, but she was made of sterner stuff. Disappointed and enraged as he was, Ford could not stifle a flicker of admiration for her spirit.

“Go ahead then!” She threw her hands up, releasing his. “I can see you will not rest until you know, even if it means destroying everything we were beginning to build. I want you to know one thing first. I paid a high price to protect this secret even when I believed you had forsaken me. If you cannot believe that, you can never trust me. And if you cannot trust me, you cannot love me as—” her voice broke “—as I deserve to be loved.”

Ford ached to rip the paper to shreds as he might throttle a venomous snake that menaced Laura. He pictured her tearful smile and her arms held open to forgive him the doubts he had fought and conquered for her sake.

But the paper seemed to burn his fingertips, mocking him with its vile mystery. How could he protect himself against a phantom peril? If life had taught him one harsh lesson, it was that what he did not know could harm him most.

“Forgive me.” He unfolded the paper and stared at its contents, surprised to discover it was not a letter, as he’d supposed, but some kind of document. “I have to know.”

Ford peered at the words, struggling to make sense of them. “What in blazes is this?” he muttered. “It looks like—”

“A marriage certificate.” Laura finished his sentence in a flat, dead tone. Even if Ford could forgive her for destroying his life, she was not certain a marriage so blighted by suspicion and past hurts was worth saving. “Don’t you recognise any of the names?”

“My mother’s—her real name. Her family didn’t approve of her becoming a paid entertainer and since Italian sopranos were all the fashion, she took the stage name Alicia Forelli.”

Why did Ford bother to explain all that? Laura wondered. Was he desperate to postpone the moment he must acknowledge the shattering truth? “I know. Cyrus told me. He said your father’s family was not happy about the marriage. Cyrus decided to investigate your mother’s background. He found…that.”

Ford read the words over and over, as if trying to
devise some meaning he could bear to believe. “It says she was married on the third of November, seventeen hundred and eighty-five, to a Daniel Witheridge, hostler of Dartmoor parish. That’s four years before I was born. I never knew my mother was a widow.”

“For God’s sake!” cried Laura, “Do you suppose I would have tried so hard to keep this from you if she’d been a
widow
? Cyrus got this certificate from Daniel Witheridge himself, six months after your parents were married! He meant to show it to your father, but when he returned to Hawkesbourne he learned your mother was expecting a child.”

A child whose parents were never legally wed because his mother had a previous husband still living. A child whose birth was therefore illegitimate, barring him from holding the family title and estates.

“Why have I never heard a whisper of all this in thirty years?” The significance of what it meant seemed to be dawning on Ford at last.

“Your grandfather dreaded the scandal it would make. He forbade Cyrus to reveal it. By the time Cyrus inherited the title, your mother and father were both dead, as was Mr Witheridge. I suppose he felt there was nothing to gain by dredging up the past and humiliating you unless…”

“Unless what?” Ford shook the marriage certificate at her. “And how do you come to have
this
in your possession?”

“You might call it a wedding present,” said Laura. “Along with the money to pay off my father’s debts. I know you despised me for putting your inheritance in jeopardy by marrying your cousin, but I never wanted
to do that. When Cyrus first offered to give my family a home and pay my father’s debts in exchange for marrying him, I refused. It would have been as bad as stealing money from you to provide for my family.” Her voice trailed off.

Ford continued to stare at the paper in his hands. Was he gazing into the abyss of ruin that had suddenly opened before him? Or could he not bear to look at the agent of his destruction?

Though Laura doubted he would believe a word she said, she still felt compelled to explain. “When I told Cyrus why I could not marry him, he said it did not matter because you would never inherit Hawkesbourne. He said if I bore him a son, there would be no need for anyone to know your mother’s secret—least of all you. If I refused to marry him, he threatened to make the scandal public. As proof, he gave me the marriage certificate.”

Ford said nothing. He did not have to. Desolation was written on his face in deep, cruel strokes. Part of Laura yearned to comfort him, though she feared he would never accept. Another part still burned with anger that he had brought this upon himself and her with his insidious mistrust. Again and again she’d proven his worst suspicions about her false—that she was a fortune hunter, that she had betrayed him, that she had schemed to jilt him for Sidney Crawford. Yet when she had given him an opportunity to trust her at last, he had tossed it aside with scorn.

“I suppose you wonder why I kept the marriage certificate all these years. While Cyrus was alive, I almost forgot I had it. But when you returned from abroad and proposed, I thought I might need it as security, something
I could use against you if you ever tried to hurt me as Cyrus had. The night of the ball, I thought that was what you were trying to do. But when you swore you would not force me and when I realised how much my past actions had hurt you, I could not go through with it.”

Ford looked up at her at last with haunted eyes. “You took pity on me?”

Angry as she was, she pitied him now. And she pitied his tenants if they should lose him. Whatever his failings, he had been a better lord than his cousin, who had every legal right to the title. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

For all the havoc this revelation had wreaked upon them both, Laura experienced an unaccountable sense of relief once the burden of that lurking secret no longer weighed upon her conscience. It no longer stood like an invisible but impenetrable barrier between her and Ford. It had emerged from the shadows to be acknowledged and sorted out somehow.

And perhaps to be overcome?

Laura opened her mouth to ask Ford how they would go on from here. But before she could get the words out, he spun away from her with his mother’s marriage certificate still clutched in his hand. Then he strode to the door and marched away without a backward glance.

That night, in a room at the Brighton inn where he and Laura had spent their honeymoon, Ford sat staring at his mother’s marriage certificate in horrified fascination. The thing seemed to devour his identity as Lord Kingsfold, master of Hawkesbourne and the son of a virtuous woman, making him feel like a hollow shell of himself.

His first desperate instinct had been to doubt it was
real. From Laura’s bedchamber, he had gone straight to the one they were to have shared, where all his belongings had already been stored. He’d opened a small but handsomely carved box of teakwood—the one possession he’d taken with him to the Indies and kept close throughout his exile.

It held an old playbill from Vauxhall with his mother’s name listed as featured soloist, along with some items cut from newspapers of the day, which lauded her divine voice and dusky beauty. There was also a gold locket engraved with two A’s entwined, for Anthony and Alice. Inside the locket were miniatures of his parents, painted at the time of their marriage. Ford had tossed these and other treasured trinkets aside until he found what he sought—a letter written by his mother to his father during their courtship. She had signed it twice, with her stage name and her birth name.

Comparing that writing to the bride’s signature on the marriage certificate, Ford gasped as his brittle bastion of denial was smashed to splinters.

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he’d thrust the marriage certificate into the box, seized a few articles of clothing and ridden away from Hawkesbourne without any clear idea where he was going. Finding himself on the Brighton road, he’d decided that was as good a destination as any. In mid-November, the seaside resort would be deserted by society, giving him the solitude he craved to grasp this devastating development and decide how to deal with it.

The account Cyrus had given Laura dovetailed so perfectly with what Ford knew of his mother. Little wonder she and his father had eloped to Scotland—no doubt at
her insistence. She must have feared any publication of banns might reach the ears of someone who knew about her earlier marriage. It also explained why Ford knew so little about her family, except that they’d lived in Devon and had not approved of her singing career. In light of the evidence, her taking of a foreign stage name was suspicious too. His father’s second marriage proved he’d been an easy dupe for designing women.

Taking out his mother’s locket, Ford flicked it open and stared at the tiny likeness of her. How he wished he could have her alive for an hour to demand an accounting for what she’d done. No matter what she told him, he doubted he would understand. His sympathy lay with Daniel Witheridge, the man whose wife had deserted him to build herself a new life upon a precarious foundation of lies.

That thought nudged a memory of something Laura had said when he’d pressed her for information about her father’s death.
If you start digging now, everything you have built on those foundations may come tumbling down
.

At the time, he’d suspected it was threat. Now he sensed it had been a warning, issued for his own good.

Casting aside his disillusionment and self-pity, Ford contemplated Laura’s role in all of this, though he could hardly bear to. For seven long years he had reviled her for jeopardising his inheritance. From the moment of his return, he had sought to punish her in dozens of subtle ways for what she’d done, while all the time she had been suffering his cousin’s cruelty in order to protect him from a far worse fate. And when she’d tried to protect him again today, pleading with him to trust her, he had repaid her love and sacrifice with vile suspicion.

Ford thrust his mother’s locket and marriage certificate back in the teak box and slammed the lid on them. He did not need that damning piece of paper to prove he was a bastard—his contemptible behaviour spoke for itself.

When morning dawned at last, Ford put on his hat and greatcoat and spent several hours roaming the chalk cliffs, listening to the remorseful lament of the sea. He tried to rally his spirit with the reminder that he had faced ruin once before only to overcome it.

Then he recalled what had saved him before—his intense twisted passion for Laura, his obsession with reclaiming her and proving himself worthy of her.

That very objective proved quite the opposite. No man who viewed the woman he professed to love as a possession to be won or lost could truly be worthy of her. Least of all if that woman was Laura. From the depths of his exhaustion and anguish, the dark siren song of despair urged Ford to hurl himself to the rocks below. That way Laura would be free of him, as she deserved, and he might escape the disgrace and loss of everything that made living worthwhile.

He might have gone through with it if he had not reflected on what it would mean for Laura. She would be engulfed in scandal, the object of malicious gossip. With Hawkesbourne gone to its rightful heir and his fortune forfeit to the Crown, she would be dependent on the Crawfords’ charity. Worst of all, she might hold herself to blame for his death, her spirits forever shrouded in unmerited guilt when she deserved all the happiness in the world.

In the end, he concluded there was only one way he could begin to repay Laura for every contemptible thing he’d done
to
her and every good thing she had tried to do
for
him. Now that he knew the truth, he could not continue to live at Hawkesbourne and carry a title that rightly belonged to someone else. But he would not entangle Laura in his disgrace, or encumber her with a husband who never had been, and never would be, worthy of her.

If she had any sense, she would walk out on him now without a backward glance. But she had given him too many undeserved opportunities to redeem himself in the past. He could not take the risk that she might find it in her bountiful heart to forgive him one time too many.

The greatest kindness he could do her now would be to make her hate him.

Ford must hate her, as she’d been certain he would. Laura stifled a yawn as she picked at an array of her favorite foods Cook had prepared for tea. But must he torment her by riding away with no hint of his destination or when he intended to return…if ever?

She had scarcely slept or eaten since he’d gone. She walked through the house with quiet steps, seldom raising her voice above a murmur. It felt almost as if she were holding her breath, waiting for the storm to break or the axe to fall.

Of course she had only to send word and her family would have rallied around to offer their support. But she could not face Sidney’s bafflement, Belinda’s grieved looks or Susannah’s probing questions. They were so happy again after many years of grief and worry. She
could not bear to spoil it. Besides, she was accustomed to shouldering her troubles alone.

But not altogether alone.

The servants knew something was wrong, as they might have guessed during her marriage to Cyrus. But they did not intrude with questions or unsought advice. Instead they went about their work as quiet as ghosts, closing ranks protectively around her. Cook prepared the most tempting dishes at mealtimes while Mr Pryce hovered nearby, more solicitous than ever. Though he never presumed to intrude upon Laura’s privacy, his manner invited any confidence she might wish to share.

When, three long days after Ford’s abrupt departure, Mr Pryce entered the dining room with a brisk, purposeful stride, Laura sensed he bore some news. She tensed, waiting to hear it.

“Lord Kingsfold has returned, my lady.” There could be no mistaking the relief in the butler’s tone. “He awaits you in the drawing room, at your convenience.”

Laura let out a shaky breath. At least Ford was alive. After the shock of discovering that he was not the legitimate heir to the Kingsfold lands and title, she’d feared he might do something desperate. But his request to see her in the drawing room, like a stranger come calling, did not bode well. Surely if he understood why she’d acted as she had, he would have come to her himself, without any formality.

A vindictive impulse urged her to keep him waiting while she changed into her finest clothes, dressed her hair and perhaps resorted to a subtle application of paint to hide the dark shadows beneath her eyes. Perhaps if Ford spent an hour pacing the drawing room, wondering
when she would come, he might have a taste of what the past three days had been like for her.

But she was tired of playing tit-for-tat. It had never done anything but build thicker walls between them. With their marriage hanging in the balance, there had never been a more vital need to show forbearance.

“I will come at once.” Laura rose from her chair and smoothed out her skirts. With her insides constricted as tight as they’d been on the day Ford first returned to Hawkesbourne, she headed to the drawing room.

Seven months after that first encounter, the place looked altogether different. The furniture had emerged from beneath its dust covers to stand proudly, all cleaned and polished. The new window curtains were open, letting in plenty of pale November daylight. A fire burned in the marble hearth, taking the chill off the air.