Douglas: Lord of Heartache (25 page)

“Shall we be seated?” Guinevere suggested after making the requisite curtsy.

“Will you pour, Miss Hollister?” Westhaven asked.

Guinevere made a pretty picture over the shining silver tea service—a far finer display than even the best available at Enfield, the tray itself being approximately half a cricket pitch in size.

“You look well, Miss Hollister,” Victor observed.

“I am. I confess, I do not recall how you like your tea.”

First
point
to
the
lady.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of having you pour for me before. I like it plain, if you can believe that.”

“Certainly. And perhaps while we’re enjoying our tea, you might share your reasons for requesting this gathering? Our time is limited.”

Douglas silently applauded Guinevere’s directness. She realized Victor was gravely ill, but she wasn’t letting sentiment sway her.

“I wanted to see you,” Victor said, “so I might resolve to my satisfaction matters that arose between us when last we encountered each other. My conscience is not at peace, and I am quite honestly running out of time to address the situation.”

“Victor—”

“Hush, Westhaven,” Victor said, rueful humor in his expression. “My brother is protective of me and would prefer I not acknowledge the extent of my illness. I am consumptive, you see, and quite near the end of my rope.”

“You don’t know that,” Westhaven said, his tone losing a measure of its reserve.

“I do know it,” Victor countered. “My family does not accept it, but I know it just the same. Consumption is tiresome beyond all telling.” As if to emphasize the point, he was seized with a fit of coughing.

When Victor regained his breath, Guinevere handed him his tea and gestured with the pot toward Westhaven, who shook his head.

“I am sorry you are ill.” Her tone was sincere, and Douglas could see in her eyes that she was measuring the present Victor Windham against the more robust, charming version she’d eloped with years earlier. “How long have you been unwell?”

“I have been ill since before we last had dealings.”

“I see.”

Douglas also silently refused tea, lest he miss some innuendo or expression relevant to the conversation.

“I don’t think you quite do see,” Victor said, all humor leaving his expression. “This is difficult to put into words, particularly with others on hand, but you deserve to know the truth.”

“And I want to hear the truth,” Guinevere said, picking up her teacup. “My existence at Enfield is prosaic, to say the least, and your summons is quite the most extraordinary thing to happen in years.”

Well.
The damned signal had been his own brilliant idea, hadn’t it?

“Westhaven,” Douglas said, getting to his feet. “I’ve heard your teams are exactly matched. Perhaps you’d offer me a tour of your stables?”

“Delighted,” Westhaven said, looking vastly relieved as he bowed to Guinevere. “If you’ll excuse us?”

“Of course.” Guinevere rose and bobbed a curtsy. Victor had risen as well, but the move had cost him and was executed mostly by pushing himself up with his arms, as if he were elderly.

“This way,” Westhaven said, moving off toward the back of the house. “And mind you, my cattle can’t hold a candle to the Moreland teams.”

***

When she was alone with Victor, Gwen resumed her seat, allowing him to do likewise.

“They certainly cleared out in a hurry,” Victor said as he settled back in his chair. “Are you comfortable unchaperoned with me?”

Gwen regarded him over her teacup and struggled to balance honesty with compassion. “Not entirely, though I believe you are frankly too unwell to do me bodily harm, and you’d rather discuss certain matters without an audience.”

“Kind of you,” Victor said, brows knitted. “Now I don’t know where to begin.”

“Find a place, because you have only forty-five minutes left to conduct this business, Victor. If you’ve left your explanation this late, the least you can do is deliver it well rehearsed.”

“Ah, Gwen.” He gave her a sweet smile that harkened back to all of the charm and appeal he’d had when in good health. “I have missed you so.”

The sentiment and the affection of it were honest, which was a bewildering surprise. “I have not missed you.” Also quite the truth—lately.

“Well, good. I did not want you to miss me.”

He sounded sincere, and Gwen was reminded that part of what had upset her so about their elopement was that Victor had never, previous to that night, struck her as capable of unkindness. “Why wouldn’t you want a former amour to miss you?”

Amour.
Vapid, silly, innocent word—and it had applied, six years ago.

“The place to start this explanation,” Victor said, “is where it is ending, with my illness. I was aware of my condition when I courted you, Gwen. Although three different physicians had confirmed the diagnosis, I did not accept their judgment.”

“You didn’t seem ill.” He’d been the picture of dashing young manhood, blast him and the fate that had befallen him. Gwen reached for her drink then drew back, something about the blinding shine on the service rendering the tea unappealing.

“The illness is worst in the autumn and winter, when the coal fires are lit,” Victor explained. “The spring of your come-out, I rallied, as I do every spring and summer. I threw myself into every entertainment available to a duke’s younger son, and that included flirting with the debutantes.”

“I was long in the tooth for that designation.”

“You were not yet twenty and so lovely—you’re still lovely, of course, even more so—but you were different from the simpering widgeons and scheming bitches haunting the social scene. You were bright, shy, beautiful, graceful… I fell for you harder than I’ve fallen before or since.”

“And I fell for you,” Gwen said, which was only part of the relevant truth. “I have since remedied that misstep, lest you harbor any delusions to the contrary.”

“No delusions, my dear,” Victor murmured, regarding her wistfully. “I courted you then, sincerely, intensely, and with a burning awareness my time with you would be limited.”

“So you proposed that we elope?”

He shifted in his chair, the way an old man does, one who has so little flesh to pad his bones that even a cushioned seat becomes uncomfortable. It occurred to Gwen that if he tried to sip his tea—even that—he’d likely be afflicted with more coughing.

“I proposed an elopement, yes. I didn’t want my more sensible siblings talking me out of something as selfish as taking you to wife when I knew I would not be a healthy spouse. I had not disclosed the nature of my affliction to them, but Westhaven in particular is canny. I knew I could provide for you well, of course, though I would make a widow of you all too soon.”

Gwen put a tea cake on her plate—chocolate, Douglas’s favorite—mostly to distract herself from the emotions flitting across Victor’s ravaged face.

“Victor, what business would it have been of your brother’s if we married or not? Many couples don’t have even five years together before one or the other of them dies, goes off to war, perishes in childbed, or otherwise leaves.”

“True, but I did not tell you I was ill, Gwen, and in that I wronged you.”

“That is hardly to the point”—especially considering the further transgressions he committed on their wedding night—“and I can’t think, as infatuated as I was with you, it would have made a difference.”

Victor smiled faintly. “I do note you used the past tense.”

Gwen scowled at him, tempted to dump the teapot in his lap, illness notwithstanding. “I am not in the habit of remaining enamored with people who treat me badly, deceive me, and then disappear from my life for years on end.”

His smile vanished. “Nor should you be. If you believe nothing else, though, believe I regret the manner in which we consummated our vows.”

Gwen got up and paced away from him, unwilling to hear his damned manly
regrets
. “You all but
raped
me,” she said, whirling to skewer him with her gaze. “
Why?
”

He still had beautiful eyes—a lovely, perfect green, capable of mirroring such sincerity, his gaze alone could have destroyed the common sense of her nineteen-year-old self. And those eyes were so sorrowful now. Not angry, not defensive, but… profoundly sad.

“I was losing my nerve, hence the state of semi-inebriation,” he said. “I wanted to seal your commitment to me as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t look into your eyes while I did it. It certainly wasn’t healthy for you to be in close face-to-face proximity with me, either.”

“You hurt me,” Gwen said bitterly. “And I do not refer to the physical discomfort some women experience on the occasion of their deflowering. You abused my sensibilities, Victor, and that…”

He waited, his gaze unflinching.

He wanted her to administer a sound tongue lashing, to excoriate him with her words, and she simply hadn’t the heart for it. Hadn’t the energy.

“I was so disappointed,” Gwen said. “Then you railed at me for being disappointing to you. Victor, I was as ignorant of how to please you as a grown woman can be.
Why
did
you
treat
me
that
way?
”

This was why she’d consented to meet with him. Not because he’d asked, but because she needed to have answers, however painful or difficult it was to put her questions before him.

“I cannot excuse my behavior in any way, Gwen, but I have had years to reflect on it, and I’ve arrived at an explanation of sorts.”

To her horror, Gwen’s eyes had filled with tears, and she was too upset to reply. She visually cast around the room for something interesting to glare at while she blinked away her lachrymose impulses.

Victor held out one thin, pale hand. “Come sit with me, Gwen, lest manners require I struggle to my feet. You are entitled to cry, so let’s have no stiff upper lip nonsense.”

He was charming still. He was winsome, urbane, and thoroughly self-possessed, even as death stalked him. She hadn’t stood a chance with this man. His social skills, his intensity, the driving needs originating in his illness—they’d all conspired to render her powerless in his unfolding personal drama.

“So explain,” she bit out, using a handkerchief—
Douglas
Allen’s handkerchief
—to blot at her tears. The little scrap of linen bore Douglas’s scent, a significant comfort.

“I wanted to live,” Victor began. “Being a young fellow, raised in the ducal household, I thought I was entitled to live my three score and ten, of course, and so I was angry. I was also, understandably, terrified. I wanted to live, and I did not want to be alone with my illness. The solution, it seemed, was to find a devoted bride, in whose arms I would be able to at least forget my condition for moments at a time. When I was with you, Gwen, I did forget—or almost forget.”

“When I was with you I forgot what day it was.” In no way did she intend that as a compliment.

“You can’t imagine what a tonic that was for me, to be found absolutely fascinating by someone as vital and attractive as Miss Gwen Hollister. But the nasty thing about consumption is it can be contagious, or so some physicians believe. As we made our plans and then journeyed from London, that began to prey on what remained of my conscience.”

Consumption could be contagious, and yet it also often wasn’t. “Victor, you should have told me.”

“No doubt, I should have. You would have had two choices then, Gwen. You could have left me, showing the good sense to put your longevity ahead of your infatuation, or you could have agreed to stay with me, as my wife, and run the risk of infection to both you and any children we might have had. Neither choice had much appeal from my perspective—recall, please that I was a younger man, in many regards.”

“So when it was all but too late, and the opportunity presented itself,” Gwen said slowly, “you gave me a third option: I could part from you enraged, happy never to see you again, and you could tell yourself you had done me a favor. You never had to suffer the fear you would indirectly cause my death, but neither would you see my regard for you fading as you grew more ill.”

And—Gwen admitted this only silently—he’d ensured she could abandon him without guilt on her part, a kindness as backhanded as it had been profound.

Hence his bad behavior and insults had been an effort to drive her away even before Westhaven had arrived. The scheme was stupid, desperate, and yet credible, for Victor had been young, scared, and given to dramatics.

He was not being dramatic now. He looked disgruntled, as if Gwen had divined in a moment of hindsight what might have taken him years to put together.

He twiddled a gold cuff link in a gesture reminiscent of the younger man, though the cuff was woefully loose on his wrist. “With the benefit of hindsight, I conclude I tried to control the terms of our parting because I was too immature, selfish, horrified, and inebriated to allow you or my illness that prerogative—and I succeeded, may you and God forgive me.”

I
will
not
allow
us
to
part
in
anger
or
confusion, Guinevere… Oh, Douglas.

“When your brother showed up the next morning, you simply turned coward,” Gwen summarized, though this honesty—and oversimplification—offered no gratification.

“I did,” Victor acknowledged, head bowed for a long moment. “I would not give you the chance to reject me for a good reason when I could make damned certain you would for a bad one, and I told myself I was acting in your best interests at the time. I cannot think,” he paused again, “I cannot think how you can stand the sight of me even now. I can barely stand the sight of myself when I consider how terribly hurt and angry you must be, all because I could not cope with the sadness every grandfather faces when his chest pains him, or he can no longer see to read stories to his grandson.”