Obsession (17 page)

“What have you done with my daughter?” she asked.

“Our daughter, Maria.”

“Nay.” She shook her head and her thin fingers fiercely gripped the chair arms. “The child ceased being yours the moment you chose another over me. The moment you sent me away. How handsomely did your grandmother reward you, Your Grace?”

“I’m a duke. There is little she could provide me that I didn’t already have.”

Her lips curved and her eyes narrowed. “As I recall, you had a proclivity for whores and gambling. A few hundred pounds would go a long way toward satisfying your debts.”

“Maria—”

“And of course there is your upstanding lineage. God forbid that a bastard born of a lowly commoner’s daughter would sully the Hawthornes’ blue blood.”

I gave her a smile as cold as her own, the irony of her words making my teeth clench.

“I assure you I would not be the first titled blue blood to father a child out of wedlock. There are, no doubt, as many illegitimate offspring of my illustrious peers as there are pampered darlings counting the seconds until their fathers stop breathing.”

Her gaze followed me as I moved to a chair near her and sat down.

Maria tipped her head to one side as she appraised me, her expression one of smug pleasure.

“The years haven’t been kind to you, Your Grace. You’re gaunt. Graying. Your brow has been lined by your degenerate life.”

She leaned toward me, her fingers digging into the chair arm. “I’m glad.”

“Maria. Think rationally—”

“Rationally? Can you not recognize madness when you see it? Hatred for what it is? Your Grace, you expect me to be rational when I have languished in brutality for the last years? When I have known little but starvation and humiliation?

“You expect rationality when I have given birth amid fetid squalor, and watched helplessly as that child was torn from my arms and taken from me? If so, you’re more insane that I ever was.”

I looked away, my face burning at her contemptuous words. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.”

For a brief moment the insanity came roaring back, flashing in her eyes. Her body trembled. Her breathing came in short, audible gasps.

“You’re sorry. How very laughable. Did you honestly expect that with such a miserable utterance, I would forgive you?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“I’ll never forgive you. I’ll curse your name until the day I die, Your Grace. I live for the moment when I witness the heart being ripped from your body, ravaged by fear, confusion, disillusionment, and grief. I would tear it out with my own hand if I could, and crow with pleasure as it convulses in its final struggling beat within my bloodied fingers.”

“Jesus.” I stood.

Maria jumped to her feet, her palm connecting with my cheek with such force I was rocked back on my heels.

Again, she struck. And again. Each blow more forceful, the fiery sting of pain more urgent.

I stood there, my feet braced apart, tasting the coppery blood upon my tongue until, exhausted, she dropped into the chair and covered her face with her hands.

“Get out! Get out!” She wept, her body rocking forward and back.

I ached to reach for her. I yearned to prostrate myself at her feet. To beg her to listen to the truth, but most of all forgive me.

’Twas not my own trespasses, but the manipulations of the dowager duchess that had brought us to this pitiful moment.

As I knuckled the thread of blood from my chin, I looked into Maria’s eyes, which no longer embraced me with love and compassion. They were bright with fury and hatred.

“Were I to blame for your grotesque fate, why would I have rescued you from that dismal place? Why would I bring you back to Thorn Rose and minister to your body and soul?”

“Perhaps your conscience gnawed at you, Your Grace.”

“Would a man with such a conscience have interred you there in the first place? If I truly be the sort of beast who would subject you to the brutalities of Menson, who would deprive you of our child, you would yet be shrinking from abusive hands and existing in the vacuum of insanity—chatting with the ghost of your brother—”

“Stop!” She covered her ears with her hands; her bloodless lips quivered.

I forced myself to look away.

Conscience.

How dare I even contemplate the possibility? Had I a conscience, I would even now be searching for our daughter.

Yet here I stood, posturing like some guiltless, misunderstood victim, while the woman I loved was being torn apart with grief for her child.

What a despicable fraud I was.

A
H, TORTURE.
I
T WAS ALL TORTURE.

Torment. Refined to some twisted, self-inflicted brutality that kept me pacing throughout the night—shivering still from the cold of the frigid water from which I had rescued Maria.

Chill crawled under my skin. Scraped at my bones. Thickened my blood until my heart became a weight that felt crushing within my chest. Chill filled up every corner of my bedroom, despite the hearth flames licking at the darkness.

My mounting anger ignited a fire of indignation that Maria, even in her sane moments, would think me the kind of man who would subject her to such misery and grief. One word spoken from her lips, one glance from her eyes could so easily slay me without drawing a single drop of blood from my veins.

Useless. Pure folly to even attempt a conciliation with her.

Thanks to the dowager duchess, I had made an eternal enemy of the only woman I had ever loved—would ever love. This I knew to the marrow of my bones.

I coughed and shivered. Despite the chill that crawled through my body, sweat rose in beads upon my forehead. Heat had begun to coil in my chest, its tentacles creeping through my lungs and squeezing gradually harder and harder until, just before dawn’s light forced its way through the bleak, snow-heavy clouds, I collapsed on my bed, exhausted by my frantic pacing and the mounting burden of breathing.

The candles had burned low. The hearth fire had diminished until only embers glowed and hissed as they expired. The hours passed. The condensation that had formed on the windowpanes became ice crystals.

Yet I felt afire.

C
URSED SANITY.

As the hours passed, the days crawling by in isolation, Maria yearned with desperation for the insanity that had allowed her to escape within her mind. There the gentle caress of oblivion brought her peace. Peace from the fear, the pain, the heartache. And the hatred. Only within that oblivion would Paul come to her.

Paul—what folly! His presence had been nothing more than an aberration born of her madness. Paul—the only human in her life who had ever truly loved her.

Nay, her mother had not loved her—a weak and pitiful creature so fearing of her husband that she would shrink and quiver as he espoused his fire and brimstone declarations on his children.

Nay, her father, the fierce Vicar of Huddersfield, had not loved her. Had not loved his son. They were objects to be loathed and berated. Seeds of Satan spawned by his weakness for lust.

How desperate she must have been, to believe that a man such as Hawthorne would truly love her. How naive, to believe he would defy the obligations of his title and lineage to commit his life to a mere vicar’s daughter.

Ah, but she had loved him. Despite the madness that had once turned him into a beast.

Nay, not madness, but an infirmity brought on by a wound to his head inflicted by highwaymen who had robbed him and left him for dead. The world thought him mad. She had not.

She had loved him even as the dowager duchess’s coach bore her away from Thorn Rose, and Salterdon. How often, as she rotted away in her dismal cell, did she recall that night, standing face to face with the ashen-cheeked old woman whose loathing had been palpable enough to cause Maria to tremble in her presence.

“You’ll ruin him.

“You’ll make him a laughingstock.

“Your children will be ridiculed. Mocked. They’ll go through their lives scorned by their peers.

“If you truly love him…

“If you honestly desire his happiness…

“He doesn’t love you. You must know that. This emotion he’s experiencing is nothing more than gratitude for your nursing him back to normality. This…lust he experiences is simply the carnal cravings of the male beast.

“What will you do when he finally acknowledges these feelings for what they really are? Will you content yourself to languish, loveless, within the isolation of Thorn Rose while he contents himself with his mistresses?”

The old woman had cocked her head to one side and her eyes had glistened with a malevolence that had jolted Maria.

“Perhaps I’m making too much of it all. I doubt that he would marry you anyway. Perhaps he’ll plunk you in a Mayfair town house, to crawl between your lovely young legs when he’s in London.

“But he’ll grow tired of you eventually, as he does all of his pretty little slatterns. He’ll cut you off financially, and where will you be?

“How will you survive?

“No decent man will marry another man’s whore.”

Her thin lips had curled.

“Leave here, young woman. Now. No goodbyes. Vanish. By the time you arrive back at Huddersfield he will have forgotten you, as he has a hundred others.

“Let this be a lesson to you, lest you make the same mistake twice. I know of no man who is capable of love. ’Tis the rutting they crave, and nothing more.”

The door opened and Maria ceased her pacing. The woman called Edwina entered the room, a breakfast tray in her hands. She placed it on a table, next to the tray that contained the untouched meal the maid had delivered the night before.

Edwina gave Maria not the briefest glance as she turned to quit the chamber.

“Who are you?” Maria demanded.

The woman froze.

Gradually, Edwina turned to face her, her usual contempt for Maria displaced by a mien of distress. She placed one hand upon her rounded belly, her lips parting slightly as she grimaced.

“Are you Salterdon’s wife?” Maria asked.

“Wife?” Her lips quivered. “You dreadful little beast. How dare you feign such ignorance? You know perfectly well who I am. Please spare me your insane theatrics; you’re as lucid as I.”

“Answer me.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I wonder if you’re the reason I’ve spent the last years languishing in Menson.”

Maria’s gaze shifted again to Edwina’s belly, and a fresh spasm of pain and anger rushed through her. “The child. ’Tis his, isn’t it?”

Edwina’s eyes narrowed as Maria approached her.

“Mayhap you’re only his whore.” She laughed. “Mayhap the dowager duchess spoke truthfully that night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get away from me.” Edwina backed toward the door.

“Where is Salterdon? I want to see him.”

“Why? So you can attempt to claw out his eyes again?”

“Fine. I’ll find him myself.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

Edwina planted her feet, blocking the doorway. “Leave him alone. You’ve caused enough damage. Had it not been for you, we would be married now.”

“Ah.” Maria smiled. “So you
are
only his whore.”

Edwina’s enormous, frantic eyes were like a lance to Maria’s heart. Her own devotion, the mindless, heart-stopping emotion she had once felt for Salterdon, cut into her heart with such pain that tears roused in her eyes. Edwina saw them—yes, because Maria could not stay their course down her cheeks.

“Stay away from him,” Edwina declared with a trembling voice. “I shan’t allow you to harm him any more than you already have.”

“I? Harm him?” Maria lifted her chin, refusing to swipe the scalding tears from her cheek. “The idea is ludicrous.”

“He’s dying.”

The words stopped Maria short.

Her hands fisted, tears streaming down her cheeks, Edwina let out a sob. “I fear he cares little if he lives or dies, thanks to you.”

In that instant Maria’s every nerve felt unstrung, beyond her mastery to control. What did it mean?

“What are you saying, woman? Speak! Nay, you will not speak, because ’tis a lie. ’Tis nothing but his vile manipulations; I don’t believe you. Now tell me where he is!”

“He’s been ravaged by fever the last three days. We can’t control it. We’ve summoned the physician from Haworth. But Jules Goodbody is a bungling, inebriated idiot who actually suggested we prepare to confine his body to the family mausoleum.

“ ‘Summon the vicar,’ he told us. ‘Pray for his soul, for if anyone on this earth cries out for absolution from his sins, ’tis His Grace.’ ”

Edwina stepped toward Maria until they stood toe to toe, eye to eye.

Maria felt the heat of Edwina’s body. Her trembling hand grasped Maria’s, vise-like, her short nails cutting into Maria’s palm.

“This must please you. You want him to die. Admit it.”

Maria could not respond. Why? Why! Why did the possibility of Salterdon’s passing so painfully swell upon her heart?

Nay, it was not grief. She loathed him!

Unfeeling, lying fiend!

Nay, she did not still love him. ’Twas folly to have cared for him before. Folly to have believed his words of adoration. Folly to have melted beneath his touch. Folly to have allowed him to seduce her into believing that he would sacrifice all to marry her.

Her heart felt rent. Some hateful emotion roused within her, filling up her throat so she could not swallow. It settled like fiery embers in her eyes, inviting tears that she fought unsuccessfully to stop.

“He shan’t die!” she suddenly cried. “He cannot!”

Surprise widened Edwina’s eyes. Some queer desperation made her cover her lips with one hand, her body shaking.

“You love him still,” Edwina whispered.

The words stunned Maria. Frantically, she shook her head, causing the tears to spill down her cheeks. Confusion muddled her thoughts.

“Nay, I do not love him still. ’Tis…”

She swallowed and smeared the trickles of dampness across her cheeks with a trembling hand.