Authors: Diane Davis White
"Hush your impertinence, woman, and let an aging rake make his demned amends in peace." He glared at her, though his eyes twinkled despite the angry thrust of his jaw.
Mary snorted at his remark, and rising with none to steady a gate, went to pour yet another whiskey. Her taste for it was strong and her need for surcease from the rigidity of her posture was more so. The drink was doing its work... she was feeling rather peaceful.
"Are you of a mind to have another?" She did not turn to look at him as she spoke.
"Yes... but not so full this time, please. My eyes are becoming blurred. But you, my dear, are still a beautiful sight. Indeed you are quite the woman, Mary Strongbow."
Mary stiffened at his words, affronted at the lust in his voice, even after all these years. Did he think to woo her? Nay, not with his withered body. Still, it was an insult to her dignity that he thought he could be so familiar with her. Trying once more to retain her angry stance, she spoke with a sneer in her voice.
"Cease your foolish prattle. Are you then done with this confession? For I vow you will have me not in tears. I am beyond those and beyond your scheming. Do your worst, master arse, for I have not much time left before I sleep... right here in this chair."
She handed him his glass and plopped into her seat.
Her use of the insult, the last thing she had said to him that final day in the cottage, did not fail to irritate the old Marquis, and his cane thumped heavily upon the carpet, the jarring motion spilling his drink. "Told you not to fill the glass... "
"Ha! As if you could not see that your stupid thumping has caused the spill!" She reached across him, and, grabbing his cravat, whipped it loose from his neck and began to wipe at the stains on his shirtfront, her eyes gleaming darkly.
He clutched her wrist in his bony fingers, his strength naught compared to the last time he had touched her, but still, he was not so weak that he could not stay her hand. "Leave off and stop fussing. I will finish, and you may sleep where you will."
He then grinned at her and began to laugh, for Mary had reared back, pulling her hand away from his grip so suddenly that the whiskey soaked cravat slapped back into her face. She looked stunned, and slightly blotted—her normally severe demeanor having disappeared into the glass at her elbow.
He could not help hoping there might yet be a chance to gain her forgiveness. It sobered him, and he sat up straighter, ignoring yet another derisive snort she sent his way.
"I wanted, for the first time in my life, to gain the favor of another. For that brief time it was important to me... what you thought of me, if you could... come to love me. I tutored you in order to prepare you to be my wife. When you were sixteen... "
"Leave off. I recall when I was sixteen, you need not expound on
that
."
"Oh, but I must. For it is part of the tale."
"Aye, and your tale has begun to turn into an epic, for I vow I am sleeping already. Let me aid you so you will more quickly reach an end to this pointless drivel. You seduced me with your handsome person, your fancy clothes, haughty manners, your promises and your lust."
"My promises were true and as for my lust, Mary Strongbow, I was not alone in that. Every buck in the county who had blood in his veins lusted for you. Though, with me it was more. And you know it well. I loved you... "
She snorted again and grinned foolishly at him. Her eyes were not quite focused, and her hair had come undone from its neat pins. Mary was well in her cups. Something softened in her face as she looked at him, and she swung her feet up onto the ottoman, proclaiming with a sweep of her glass in his direction. "Ye well may be crippled but 'tis certain that you will have to refill this for I am less able to walk than to drink. Be quick about it, old man, my throat is parched dry."
She had adopted the manner with which she had dealt with him so many years before, teasing and coquettish, but now, with the passing of years and the drink muddling her brain, she was not so delightful to behold. Yet the Marquis found her behavior charming still, and he went to do her bidding.
He arose from his chair and leaning heavily upon his cane, went to the drinks tray and brought back the bottle, setting it on the floor between them. "Fill your glass and be silent. I have not done."
"Aye... and it sounds as though you never will be."
At her words he stilled and looked straight into her eyes. "It is certain that I will not be until you have forgiven me. 'Tis unseemly that you should hate the father of your child... and now there is the heir."
"Aye, our grandson no doubt will have a better life, for his mother is to the manor born. He will surely not suffer from a lack of social graces."
Their conversation had turned from a silent struggle into an open battle, though in truth there was no real hostility in their quips at one another. They had simply fallen into their old habit of quarreling. But where once this sparing had led them to make it up in a small bed tucked into the corner of the cottage, there would be nothing left for them this night but to part at conversations end.
"What mean you, our grandson? He is the heir, Mary Strongbow, and you will never say otherwise." Not surprised at her knowledge, he did not insult her with a denial. The Marquis was truly enjoying himself for the first time in years, and his spirits lifted, if only for this night.
"Well, I would not say it except to you. Think you my son would withhold from me such an important piece of news?" She looked smug and sly as she glanced at him, a habit she had had as a young girl when she knew she was winning an argument.
Her eyes were at half-mast and her mouth had lost its bitter line, and the Marquis could tell she would soon be asleep.
"Well, I am nearly finished then, so keep your eyelids apart and your lips closed, that I might be done with this." He tried to sound petulant, but it was the laughter in his voice she heard.
"You were once wont to say '
keep your eyes closed and your legs apart
... "
"Be still, I tell you. 'Tis that behavior which got us into this fix... " He tried to speak sternly, but remembrance of the girl she had once been, coupled with the sight of her now precluded this. He began to laugh, heartily, his ancient body quaking, tears of mirth streaming from his eyes.
Mary, whose neat bun had slipped to the side of her head and whose eyes were owlish with drink, had slipped deeply into the chair, her skirts hiked over her knees as her long, still graceful legs, lay stretched before her on the ottoman. She waved the half-full glass in time to a tune only she could hear, and tapped her toes together in the same rhythm.
Quietly, with a very hesitant manner, he broached the subject uppermost in his mind. "Are we done with this quarreling then? I would that you could forgive me, sweet Mary Strongbow. I would have your regard, if not your affection."
"You have yet to explain to me... " She sat up at his words and clumsily pulled her skirt over her legs, "... how you came to steal my son and leave me groveling and mud spattered in the road."
Her voice held a note of pleading, though her face had once more turned implacably cold.
"I will tell you then. When you denied me the last time, I was mad with grief. I fled this place, thinking never to return. You had shattered me, Mary, taken away the one reason I had found for happiness... yourself.
"And of course, now there was the babe. I went back to wandering and living that life of uselessness, and began to drink... and I used opiates as well, which further befuddled my thinking. I vowed that I would come for the child once he was of an age to attend school. That I would see him raised as a gentleman and there is more... "
Bowing his head, he spoke into the fire, his voice lower now and so full of repentance that Mary—who had spent over a quarter of a century hating him—experienced a rising compassion that had little to do with the drink. "I would punish you, for I, too, hated. I had given myself leave to hate you. I had told myself so many times that you had deceived me and toyed with my affections that I was wont to believe it. By the time David was six, I was well addicted to the opiates, and my only goal was to avenge myself on you... by taking the child." He whispered so low as he finished, she barely heard him. "'Twas my obsession."
She waited in silence, sensing that he was not done, and when he lifted his tortured gaze to her, her heart thumped in sympathy, despite her desire to retain her hate. She leaned toward him unconsciously as he went on, her eyes glittering with interest.
"I... I cannot tell you how I regret that moment. When I looked back and saw you standing in the muddy road, screaming and calling to David, I nearly turned back. And he cried out for you as well. But the opiates had such control that I could not remember from one moment to the next what my inclinations were, and, in truth, I slept almost immediately."
"Were you then so unfeeling? How could you leave your son in his fear while you slept?"
"You would needs be an opiate eater to understand... the drug takes your senses... enslaves you with a craving so strong you might do anything for it. I also makes you sleep when you are most anxious and disturbed. I had trained myself over the years to rest at will, and the opiate would take over during times of distress, without my will involved in the process."
"But you cared for him, did you not? And he for you?" She prompted anxiously.
"David could not like me. He showed his resentment in so many small ways. He withheld all affection and no matter what toys or gifts I brought the boy, he shunned them... and me." Seeing the look of satisfaction on her face at that revelation, he was struck with pain.
"I began to resent him as well, for this child of my flesh was no son to me. He would not even call me father... he called me always, sir or Milord, as though he were a servant. I put him into the boarding school after a few months, thinking to give him time to adjust. But, each time I visited him, he had become more sullen and withdrawn from me so that at last I ceased my visits altogether."
"Did he... call for me?"
"Yes, in the beginning. I vow that was all he did. But I gave him such a stern set down for it that he ceased to do so... at least in my presence."
"Had you no compassion for a small boy's grief?" Her voice, though slurred a bit, had lost all gaiety and her eyes were turned inward, seeing the child alone and bereft. A tear drifted down her cheek, but she ignored it and asked, "Was it nothing to you that he needed to be loved?"
"I told you! I tried to gain his affection, but he would have none of it... just as his mother would have none of it when I asked her to wed me."
He gave a great, heaving sigh and shifted his body once more, away from the accusation in her voice and manner. "I was, in truth, well gone with my addictions and had no patience for a child. My mind was not a functioning thing, and I was probably quite delusional."
"How then, Clayton, did you rid yourself of the opiates? For you do not appear addicted to such now." Her voice was merely curious and as she spoke she reached for the bottle and splashed the liquor into both their glasses, waiting for his answer.
"I had an accident, my carriage overturned. Nearly crushed my legs. I was abed for months. Came close to dying. During that time I was fortunate that my body servant—Dobson, you know him—was a good man who saw beyond my abominable behavior and helped me.
"He nursed me through the withdrawal and would allow no laudanum to pass my lips, no matter the pain. He worked the muscles of my legs, willing them to respond. He allowed me to drink myself senseless upon occasion when the pain was so intense I called out to die. But never once would he allow me anything else against my pain."
"Aye, then you had not been abandoned by God, at all, had you Milord?"
"I did not see it that way at the time, but you are correct. And though I wound up badly crippled by my accident, I found peace, of a sort, during that time of recovery."
"And now? Do you find peace in this lie you have perpetrated? Whose lives will you ruin next with your scheming and manipulations?" The whiskey made her bold and she used the same words she had used to David when explaining her loathing for this man, but her voice had mellowed to a gentleness by now and her eyes no longer held anger. Though she could not like him, she no longer hated him.