Edith Layton (23 page)

“W
hat a risk you took! And without me? Of course I heard about it!” Gilly raged the next afternoon when Damon came to take her for their afternoon ride. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Damon wasn’t sure how much she’d heard. It tempered his answer. He watched her pacing and had to hide his smiles. She was all in yellow and white today, looking ethereal as a sunbeam. Lord, but she broke his heart! So fragile, so lovely, and pacing like a dock worker, grumping and waving her arms.

“He told me everything!”

“Did he?” Damon asked carefully.

“You can read the letter yourself,” she said, thrusting a piece of paper at him, “I just got it an hour ago.”

Damon took the paper and ran his eyes down it.

“I don’t see what he’s telling you except that he’s sorry,” Damon lied.

She didn’t honor that with an answer. She just glowered at him with those tigress eyes.

“I convinced him the only way he understood,” Damon admitted. “It was my honor as well as yours, Gilly.”

“Oh, I suppose,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “It’s just that I was surprised. Drum said he’d take care of it. I wish I could have.”

“But you wouldn’t have left enough of him to leave on the next fair tide,” Damon said with a tilted smile.

“True,” she said, looking downcast. Then she looked up eagerly. “Tell me. How did you do it? Don’t skint on details, if you please.”

So Damon sat, and told his lady the particulars of
his encounter with Lord Dearborne. She hung on every word as if a few hundred years had rolled away and he was telling her about a dragon he’d slain for her. When he was done, she sighed with pleasure.

“Good,” she said, “very good. And not just for me, mind. It may make him think harder next time he tries to hurt someone he thinks is weaker than he is.”

Damon’s smile faded. “I don’t think so,” he said, his drawl suddenly pronounced. “It’s my experience that events don’t alter people for the better or worse. People don’t change from the outside. It’s their realizing they have to change that does it. Dearborne’s a bad lot, like his father and brother before him, or so everyone says. So I think it would take more than a beating or banishment to change a mind like that. In his case, nothing less than a holy annunciation would do it. He’ll probably amuse himself being cruel wherever he goes. People have to change themselves because they themselves feel the need for it. It can’t be imposed.”

He looked troubled as he added, “On that score…Gilly, I have to talk with you. About just that kind of thing. About people, and changes of attitudes and minds…and things.”

“What kind of things? What’s the matter?”

“Everything, I think. And since I know my family’s mousing around here, and it’s of a personal nature, do you think we can take this talk outside? It’s something we have to discuss alone. Are you willing to come with me now, so we can?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, as her chest grew tight. She didn’t say another word as she flung her shawl over her shoulders and went to the door with him.
They both knew that was odd. But she felt guilty and was hoping she was wrong about what he had to say. And he knew what she was thinking.

He waited until they got to the park. He left his carriage with a willing lad and, taking Gilly’s hand, began to walk with her on the path that went round the Serpentine, where he’d met her with the Earl of Drummond the other day.

Gilly recognized the locale. It was too specific a place to take her just to walk and talk to be simply a coincidence. Her heart began to pick up its beat. She knew what he was going to talk about, and didn’t dare speak.

Everything was different today. It wasn’t gloriously sunny as it had been then. There were clouds, and a new autumnal chill in the air made the strollers walk more briskly. The leaves on the trees had grown dull edges, as if summer had given notice to quit.

“I was going to wait,” Damon finally said quietly, when they’d paced along the path a few minutes. “I was going to keep watching. But I can’t anymore. Gilly, I wasn’t cut out to play the fool. I don’t like myself this way. I’ve learned a lot about myself these past days. There are a lot of things not to like. I didn’t know I was so full of myself, for example. I didn’t know I was so complacent, so vain. I’ve always been loved, I once joked it made me a monster. But in truth, it may have.” He paused for a moment, nodded, and then said in gentler tones, “We’ve come to know each other too well to lie to each other. Or at least, I’ve come to respect you too much to try.”

He saw how white she’d grown, and it hurt him. But
now he knew he was doing the right thing. If he wasn’t, she’d be jumping up and down, telling him to get on with what he meant, asking questions, blazing with curiosity. Instead, she paced meek and downcast at his side. The right thing to do was just about killing him, so he went on quickly.

“I offered for you. You accepted me. After you got to know me, I thought your only objection was that you felt your early life and experiences made you somehow ineligible. I thought I was well on the way to showing you that wasn’t true. I even thought you’d learned to…But that doesn’t matter. Gilly, the plain truth is I suspect your heart’s otherwise engaged. And I cannot,
will not
try to fight that. There’s that vanity I was just telling you about.” He laughed, hollowly. “That—and the fact that I just don’t think it’s possible. You can win someone’s love. But I don’t think anyone can ever win someone’s love
away
from someone they already love.”

He hated to remember her this way, looking guilty and reserved and uncomfortable with him. But he knew what he had to say. He glanced down to see how she was taking it. She had her head bent. Her hair had been pinned up and the nape of her neck was exposed, pink and downy as a baby’s crown. He longed to place his lips there and inhale the sweet fragrance of her sun-warmed skin and hair. He’d done that once. He knew he never would again, now. His heart was heavy, his voice dropped low.

“And so,” he sighed, the harder because she still didn’t speak, “let’s have an end to it, then. Autumn’s coming fast. Our wedding day’s bearing down on us, we’ll be run over if we don’t get out of the way. The
sooner we unhitch ourselves from this engagement, the better it will be for everyone. I can’t pretend. And for all your charms, Gilly, you’re a terrible actress. Honesty has its penalties,” he tried to joke. But neither of them could laugh.

“So!” he said. “I can’t send the notice to the T
imes
. It would be considered vile of me. Gentlemen don’t end engagements. And I’m not ending it, Gilly. I’m just letting you go your way, freeing you of a decision I can tell has been getting harder for you to live with every day. You can put in the announcement, or rather, you can have Sinclair do it. I’d like it if you could tell him the truth. But if you can’t?” He shrugged. “That’s all right, too. You can just say you changed your mind. They adore you. And it’s your prerogative. I may be a monster of vanity but anyone can understand a woman may feel she was mistaken in the man she chose.

“Marriage is a long time,” he said, “and I don’t want to pass that time knowing I can never be what you want. I thought I could love you very well, and for all time. But it seems I was wrong. I find I’m not that gallant. I’m too human. I didn’t realize love’s a thing that changes, too, and your not being able to return my affection would surely poison my regard for you in time. No. Enough dancing around it. A
ffection
is such a feeble word—like
regard
,” he said with distaste. “It’s become more than that on my part. I will not live with less from you. I cannot. I’m learning all kinds of bad things about myself, Gilly. Let me do something good, and release you before my hopes and your dreams bump heads and destroy even our friendship.”

But now he saw her hand was pressed to her mouth.
He heard a strangled sob. He looked around. The path was busy with foot traffic, as always on a fine afternoon. Without speaking, he led her from it, onto the grass, past some shrubbery, into a clearing behind the trees. Then he stood looking at her while she fought for composure. It tore at his heart. Other women could weep like taps, and wail like banshees, but not his Gilly. She was trying to be manly about it, and it was almost tearing them both apart. But he also knew it was important to her, so he only stood by and handed her his handkerchief when she began scrabbling in her recticule for one.

“Gilly, Gilly,” he asked softly, “was I wrong?”

“No,” she said, and couldn’t go on, and blew her nose, and tried again. “Damon,” she said and choked, shook her head, and paused, while his heart just about broke for her. And himself. “Damon,” she finally said. “Oh my, oh my. Look at me. About to blubber like a girl.”

“But you aren’t far from being one and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “It’s one of the advantages of your sex. Tears are a powerful weapon. They can stop any man in his tracks better than a knife or a gun. And wound him as much, too. They make a fellow feel guilty even if he hasn’t done a thing, because he’s always been warned not to make his sisters cry,” he invented rapidly, giving her time to recover, trying to tease her from her tears even as he lauded them.

She lifted her head. Her eyes were pink, her nose was, too. She looked terrible, and he wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe.

But he knew he couldn’t, so he only went on, “And
since tears are a thing a man’s not allowed to use, whenever a woman cries a fellow feels such a mixture of helplessness, guilt, and envy that he’s immobilized. T
hen
you can kill him at your leisure. Now, what we ought to have unleashed on Napoleon was a legion of weeping women—Oh, better now?”

“Oh Damon!” she wailed, and came into his arms and frankly wept.

He held her, his cheek against her hair, his arms ’round her tight. He tried to hold her close as a lover but with the passion of a brother, and could only curse himself and fate and the Earl of Drummond, and all in silence as she cried herself out.

“I don’t want you to leave me,” she finally muttered.

He saw how her hand was clenched in his jacket, and brought his lips to her forehead. It was warm and damp, and again his heart cracked. “But you don’t want to marry me,” he said gently, with a spurt of rising hope he tried to tamp down, “do you?”

“I don’t know what I want!” she said in a blaze of anguish, lifting her tearstained face to his. She clutched the front of his jacket hard, as though trying to force him to understand. “I don’t know, Damon, there’s the
damnedest
thing of it. I—I am all at sixes and sevens. I had a dream, all my life, well, at least, since I came to the Sinclairs. But then because I couldn’t have it, I was lucky enough to dream another, and it came out almost as well, maybe better. But nothing’s like your first dream, is it? I don’t know,” she wailed, “too many of my dreams are coming true!”

He rocked her in his arms. “Oh Gilly, I can’t say. I’m the last person to know about something like that. I’ve
always been lucky enough to have all my dreams come true—until now. And see how badly I’m taking it? Don’t vex yourself. I understand.”

“That makes it worse,” she wept. “Don’t you see?”

“I do, and it makes it worse for me, too,” he laughed, though it cost him to do it. “But I can’t go on if you’re not sure. You understand that?”

She nodded.

“I don’t want to be a good loser or a good sport, either,” he said, on a broken laugh. “I’d feel much better right now if I could go out and kill my rival. Bedamned to my wonderful upbringing, I’m being so nice about it, I could bawl myself!”

She giggled, and wept, and finally drew away from him. He let her go instantly.

“Your mama will be pleased, at least,” she sniffled.

“No. You’ll be surprised. But on that score…do you want to tell them or shall I?” She looked horrified. “All right, I’ll do it,” he sighed. “But I have to know. When? I mean, when will you return to the Sinclairs? When will they let the world know? I think it will be better for everyone if the thing’s done quickly and quietly.” L
ike the best murders
, he thought bleakly.

“Not yet,” she said. “Give me a little more time? Can we pretend for just another few days? I can’t get used to it myself yet. It’s wrong of me, I know. I don’t want to give you up. But I don’t want to…”

“Give up the dream. Yes, I know.” He hesitated, and then spoke his mind to her, because he had to. “But there is one thing I don’t know if you’ve thought through. I see—who better?—his obvious interest in you.” He didn’t have to say who he meant, she cast her eyes
down as he said it. “And it doesn’t look like a man’s interest in a child. Or in a good friend, either. That’s true. But there is the possibility he might not be more than
interested
. Have you thought of that? I’m not saying he’d ever trifle with you. But he hasn’t actually come out and declared anything for you to pin your hopes on yet, has he?”

She shook her head.

“I thought not,” he said. “You’ve burned your bridges behind you, haven’t you? How like you. Oh Gilly, what am I to do with you? I mean that literally. Because I…” He tipped her chin up and looked into her eyes, his own fathoms sad. “I am yet enough of a man to have to tell you that even if he isn’t interested—I couldn’t be anymore. Not if I wanted to respect myself, or have you respect me. You do see?”