The Chadwick Ring (24 page)

“But I don’t want to be protected!” She glowered at him, but he remained obdurate, and she knew further argument was useless. Slowly she turned away and shuffled across the room, her steps weighted with despair. In the center of the worn rug she halted, and she stood gazing down at the faded design. With one silk-stockinged toe she began to trace the pattern. The room was so quiet she could hear birds beginning to sing outside in the virgin morning, and somewhere in the distance a horse whinnied. In a husky voice that he had to strain to hear, she asked, “Bysshe, what is it you want of me?”

There was another silence; then, “I want you to love me,” he said simply.

She completed the outline of one arabesque and began another. “I do love you, Bysshe. You’ve always been my very dear friend, the brother I never had.”

“But that’s not what I want, Ginnie.”

She looked up at him now and smiled faintly, ironically. “I know. You want me to be your whore.”

Bysshe blanched. “Ginnie!” he gasped, outraged.

She shrugged and glanced away again. “Isn’t that what you want? Forgive me for misunderstanding you, but I don’t see what other alternative there might be. I am a married woman, Bysshe, and the only way I could ... be with you as you wish is by becoming your mistress, your harlot.”

“But there must be some—”

In exasperation she gritted, “No, there isn’t! Have you forgotten that I am your
stepmother,
that within me I carry a child who will be your sister or brother, just as Tom was? How can you dare to hope that—”

From the doorway a deep voice drawled, “It’s of no avail to argue, Ginevra. Haven’t you learned yet that the rutting male simply will not be gainsaid?”

Golden curls aswirl, she jerked her head around. The marquess loomed behind Bysshe, his tall, massive frame overshadowing the youth, who shrank from him.

“Richard!” Ginevra cried, her face alight with joy and relief. Ignoring Bysshe, she flew across the room to her husband. Her stocking feet scarcely touched the floor, and he caught and enfolded her to him in powerful arms that crushed her with sweet savagery. “Oh, Richard,” she sighed against his chest as she clung to him. She nuzzled her face in his lapels, and her nostrils were full of the masculine scents of leather and horses and sweat. Beneath his coat his shirt was drenched, and she realized with wonder that he must have galloped through the night to find her. She marvelled, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t ... you wouldn’t...”

He trembled as he brushed his lips across her gleaming hair, shaking with fatigue and something she could not yet identify. “Did you think I would not discover you, little Ginnie? Don’t you know that I love you so much that there is no place you can hide from me?”

She looked up at him with shining eyes, unable to believe what she had heard. “Love?” she questioned, and he nodded wryly.

“Quite madly, my dear. I’m afraid you’ll never escape me now.”

“But I don’t want to escape,” she declared, and he caught his breath sharply. Her thin arms slid under his coat and tightened about him fiercely, so that her breasts were crushed against his chest and her hands stroked the powerful muscles of his back. Leaning against him, she could hear the heavy thud of his heart under her ear; then his strong fingers caught her chin and tilted her head so that his mouth could close hungrily over hers. For endless moments they stood entwined in the silent room, heedless of the youth who watched them. Then gently, reluctantly, Chadwick eased her away from him.

He stared down at her with tender concern, but when he saw the deep bruise on her cheekbone, his expression hardened ruthlessly. He rasped, “Tell me what happened, Ginevra.”

Her gold eyes flicked charily between her husband and Bysshe, whose swollen lip glared against his livid countenance. The tension that had ebbed during those mindless seconds in Chadwick’s arms now flooded back into the room. Ginevra stammered unconvincingly, “N-nothing happened. I ... I fell.”

“Ginevra...” Chadwick warned.

“Please, Richard, it’s not important now.” She reached up to stroke the stern line of his mouth, still wet with her kisses. “I am unharmed. Let us put an end to this.”

He caught her wrists and drew them away from his face. “No,” he said, “it’s not that easy.” He squeezed her fingers for emphasis, and she grimaced at his strength.

“Stop hurting her!” Bysshe shrieked. “Keep your hands...” and with shock, he ripped Sir Charles’s old duelling foils down from the wall over the mantel and flung one hilt-first at Chadwick.

Quickly Ginevra’s husband shoved her aside, and she stumbled against one of the armchairs, sinking feebly into it as she watched. Chadwick caught the thrown sword easily, the thin, deadly steel flexing and flashing in the morning light. With an agile flick of his wrist he bowed the blade to test it, and when Bysshe moved toward him, Chadwick fell with lethal grace into the guard position, the well-balanced crouch that gave him freedom of movement and yet presented the smallest possible target to his opponent. His graven features were expressionless as he studied Bysshe with hooded eyes. “I wondered when it would come to this,” he murmured.

Ginevra stared numbly at her husband and the youth who faced him. Bysshe was already sweating with tension, his lank hair plastered to his forehead, and it required no knowledge of swordplay to realize that Chadwick could swiftly overpower him. She supposed the boy must have taken fencing lessons in school, but to the marquess were all the advantages of stamina and agility and experience. Bysshe had only recklessness and the wild, seething anger that drove him.

“
En garde
,” the boy choked, raising the tip of his foil in salute. The point described little circles as his fingers trembled.

“
En garde
,” Chadwick echoed, and when he slowly lifted his sword, his hand was rock-steady.

Ginevra had once seen two of her father’s friends mix with swords on the lawn behind Bryant House. It had been a game, an impromptu exhibition of skill, no more, yet it had sickened her. While the other members of the house party shouted raucous encouragement, she had watched the darting blades, heard the jarring clang of steel and the labored grunts of the combatants, smelled the feral odor of their heaving bodies, and she had wanted to scream. Now the prospect of such violence unleashed seemed even more terrible, almost blasphemous, in the sedate confines of the Dowerwood parlor.

She leaped from the chair and shouted, “For the love of God, Richard, don’t do this!”

His blue eyes never wavered as he waited for his opponent to make the opening thrust. Through lips that barely moved, he noted almost conversationally, “The challenge was his, Ginevra. Would you have me delope?”

“But, Richard...” she pleaded, her voice trailing off when she saw that his features were adamantine. She spun instead toward the boy, now poised for the attack. “Bysshe, I beg of you, stop this madness: don’t take arms against your own father!”

Rather than showing remorse as she had hoped, Bysshe swore viciously and blurted, “Father! Devil take you for a fool, Ginnie, are you the only one who doesn’t know? He doesn’t believe he is my father. He’s never believed it!”

Ginevra stared, stunned, as his words pounded into her, shocking and yet almost ... almost soothing as at last she began to see a reason for the bewildering antagonism between her husband and his heir. With pallid face she turned again to Chadwick. “Richard?” she asked uncertainly.

He glanced at the boy, who still crouched with sword in hand, and he said, “This is hardly the time.”

“Tell her!” Bysshe spat, brushing his sandy hair from his eyes. “Why try to wrap it in clean linen? It’s common enough knowledge.”

“It’s common knowledge only in your mind, Bysshe,” Chadwick averred. The boy began a halting, sideways circuit of the room, moving awkwardly around the furniture. Chadwick kept a cautious distance, neither retreating nor approaching, and Ginevra marvelled that he could talk and watch so warily at the same time. After a moment, in a voice that betrayed deep spiritual weariness, he said, “I
could
be Bysshe’s father, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. My last leave from the Navy coincided with one of Maria’s infrequent visits to Queenshaven, and...” He shrugged. “Some eight months later, while aboard ship I received a letter from my mother informing me jointly of the birth of my second son and the death of my wife. It was not until after Copenhagen, when I returned to Surrey to recuperate from my wound, that I discovered that Maria had died not in childbed as I thought, but in a carriage accident while absconding with her latest lover.”

“And ever since then,” Bysshe gritted, “you have treated me not as your son but as the bastard that was foisted off on you!” His fingers tensed on the hilt of the foil.

As Chadwick made ready to parry, he said tightly, “On the contrary, I have dealt with you exactly as I did with your brother.”

“Then why—?”

“Oh, stop it!” Ginevra bellowed, her usually quiet voice exploding in the strained atmosphere of the small room. “For God’s sake, both of you, just stop it!”

Startled, Bysshe and the marquess paused in their deadly dance to stare at her. Her face was ashen except for two gaudy spots of color painting her cheeks under her sparking eyes, and her breast heaved with annoyance. “Just stop it, both of you,” she repeated hoarsely, her throat raw from the force of her cry. Angry tears beaded her lashes, and she scrubbed her aching eyes with hands that quivered as if palsied. She looked first at her husband, then at Bysshe. “I don’t know which of you is worse,” she declared, “or perhaps it is that you are of a kind, with your violence and your vanity and your overweening pride. What difference does it make whether you share the same blood? In every way that counts, you are exactly alike!”

She turned to the boy and pleaded, “Bysshe, I implore you: put away the sword. You claim to love me; don’t make me hate you.”

He retreated quickly from her, and his brown eyes were regretful yet defiant. “I can’t, Ginnie. It’s been all my life...”

She pivoted toward her husband, lifting her head to meet his gaze that was made equally of admiration and ironic self-mockery. He said, “You ask much, Ginevra.”

She shook her head. “I ask only that you make an end to something that ought never to have begun. Think, Richard: you and your father, now you and your son—if you will not finish it, how long must this sorry hostility continue?” She took a deep shuddering breath. “Richard, your seed grows inside me. I love you, and I can think of no greater joy than to bear your child, but if that child be doomed to live under a cloud of resentment and jealousy, then ... then I hope it dies aborning.”

He gazed down at her pale, intent face, the wide amber eyes watching him accusingly. “You love me although I am vain, violent, proud?” he asked curiously.

“You are not always thus, my lord,” she replied shyly.

Slowly he lifted his free hand to caress her tender cheek, his long fingers brushing gently over the bruise. “Oh, little Ginnie,” he sighed wryly, “how you do defeat me.” He glanced sidelong at the boy, who still confronted him, weapon in hand, and he made his decision. “I will not fight you, Bysshe,” he said, and he threw down his sword.

The foil fell to the floor with a clatter, and its tip caught on the nap of the worn rug. It swung in an arc, rolling on the round guard, the blade flashing as it rotated. When the foil bumped against Bysshe’s ankle, he scowled down at it as if he did not recognize it. He shifted his gaze to the sword in his own hand; then deliberately he looked at the distracted couple before him. The tall man was smiling lovingly into the joy-stung features of the girl. Dark angry color suffused Bysshe’s face, and he grated, “An apology isn’t enough.” His voice rose stridently, and he lifted the foil. “Damn you, it’s not nearly enough!” With a wild goaded cry he lunged at the marquess.

He moved too quickly for them to react, and his blade might have found its target had he not tripped over the foil that lay at his feet. Unable to catch himself, momentum carrying him forward, his sword turned awry, and as he fell he could only watch with sickened shock as the point of his weapon slashed the muslin skirts of Ginevra’s gown and with ghastly ease cut deep into the white flesh of her thigh.

“Ginnie!” Bysshe wailed, picking himself up from the floor. He flung the foil away from him, and it skittered over the furniture and hit the wall, dislodging one of the framed pictures. Ginevra did not seem to notice. She blinked at her husband and gave a little cough of surprise. Then her legs crumpled beneath her. Instantly Chadwick scooped her into his strong arms and bore her away to the sofa, where he settled her on the worn cushions, trying not to see the blood that smeared in smoky contrast to the faded upholstery. When he eased the shredded fabric of her dress away from the wound, revealing the long raw cut, he heard Bysshe choke sickly. With bleak and terrible eyes the marquess looked up at the boy. They glared at each other, and Ginevra, who watched as if through a dim red haze, waited helplessly for her husband’s rage to erupt. She could feel him shake. Tentatively she touched his arm. Her voice came in short, strained gasps. “P-please, darling, it ... it was an accident—you know it was. I ... the babe and I ... will be all right.” She tried to chuckle weakly. “With a scar on my h-hip, you ... you and I will m-make a matched pair.” Chadwick’s blue eyes were opaque and unreadable in his dark face. “If you care for me ...” she cried desperately, and at last he nodded. Without looking up, he hissed through clenched teeth, “Go find the caretaker, Bysshe. Go find help—and then never let me see you again.”