AT HALF-PAST FOUR the following morning, Ralph was sitting in his brother's darkened bedroom. He had not bothered to light any candles. He was feeling worried and had to force himself to sit still. Pacing up and down the room would bring Stanley home no sooner. Indeed, his worry stemmed not so much from the lateness of the boy's return as from his fear that he would not return at all before his dawn appointment with Roger.
Ralph had searched for him. The trouble was that he did not know which places Stanley was in the habit of frequenting and could find no one who knew of his plans for the evening. Finally, at well after midnight, he had been forced to give up the search. There was always the possibility, anyway, that while he was wandering the streets, Stanley would be at home in his bed.
He had been in this room for two hours, interminable hours during which every sound outside the house drew him to the window. He had had no idea that a street in London could be so noisy at night.
Ralph tried to force his mind to stay on the main issue. He must see his brother in time to stop the duel. Duels were rare enough in these days to become immediate items of news. By noon of tomorrow-no, today-half the population of London would know the location of the fight, the outcome, the identities of the duelists, and the cause of the quarrel. The thought did not bear contemplation. Georgiana would be the talk of the town.
Besides, it was an unjust quarrel. Roger was not keeping Georgiana as his mistress. Stanley, probably in a burst of youthful idealism, had decided that challenging his cousin was the only way to preserve the family honor. As it was, he was about to make a fool of himself. An expensive fool. He might end up dead, though Ralph recalled suddenly Roger's decision to delope, to shoot his pistol into the air rather than risk injuring his opponent. But Stanley could well end up killing Roger, and he would have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. Indeed, he would be in a great deal of trouble with the law if any such thing occurred.
That madcap Stanley! Ralph felt a return of the intense anger he had felt when he left Roger's house. If there were a quarrel, if there were reason to challenge anyone, it was not Stanley's place to do any such thing. Georgiana was Ralph's concern, not his brother's. Yet Stanley had not even come to him with his suspicions. Why not? Did he wish to spare him pain? Or did he consider his older brother too weak to set his own house in order?
And was he too weak? Ralph could no longer keep his mind away from the thoughts he had been blocking all night. What was the truth concerning Georgiana? She was with child. The doctor had said he could not be certain yet, but he must have been quite well satisfied of the fact to drop the hints he had the previous afternoon. And his mother seemed confident that Georgiana's symptoms fit such a condition. He knew it was true. There was a dull certainty inside him that it was true.
She was not Roger's mistress. He did not know quite why he should trust the word of his cousin, but he did. Roger was not her lover, but someone was. And Roger knew who. His mind passed wearily among all the male acquaintances who danced with her and talked to her and occasionally even walked out with her or took her driving. There were several, notably Dennis Vaughan, whom she had known quite well before their marriage. But there was no point in trying to fix the blame. He had no way of knowing.
Ralph closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the palm of his hand. He would never have thought it. He would have wagered his life on her honor even against some of the most damning evidence. But one could not argue against a pregnancy. She had a lover. She, whom lie had been afraid to touch in the last two months lest lie give her an everlasting terror of physical love, had taken someone else for her lover. She had threatened at one time to do so, and he had not believed her. He had thought her merely overwrought.
And their relationship had seemed to be improving so well. He had thought that she was growing to like him, even to feel affection for him. Yet she had a lover. He wondered if she had made love with this unknown man just once or if they had a regular relationship. He could not bear to think of either possibility. He felt terribly depressed. Pictures of an unutterably dreary future came to his mind unbidden. No longer could he hope for a close marriage relationship. Perhaps she would leave him entirely now that she was to bear this other man's child. And if she stayed, what? Would he be willing to forgive her? Would he be willing to accept her child as his own? He would have no choice but to do so unless he chose publicly to denounce her.
He could never do that. She was Georgiana, his wife. His love.
He tried to feel anger. He tried to work himself into a fury. His wife of little more than three months had been unfaithful to him. She had taken herself a lover. She had let him think her a shrinking virgin and all the time she had been sneaking off to make love with another man. And Roger, by the sound of it, had aided and abetted her. He should hate her. He had every right to turn her off.
But he could not do it. He could not whip himself into a rage. And did that denote weakness? Would he not be burning with righteous fury if he were any sort of a man?
The truth was, he could not find it in himself to condemn his wife for a sin of which he was equally guilty. He had taken a lover too, had he not? For the past two months almost he had been conducting an affair with an opera dancer, and enjoying it too. He had been finding the experience so thoroughly satisfactory that he had been unable to force himself to give it up. And he had begun and continued the affair despite the fact that he had a wife whom he loved and with whom he was trying to build a good marriage. The affection he had shown to Georgiana in the past weeks was not hypocritical merely because at the same time he had been making love to another woman.
Of course, it was different for a man. A man's freedom to taste pleasures other than those offered in his wife's bed was generally recognized. Most men would not even think of feeling guilty about keeping mistresses. Most wives probably knew of their existence. Many perhaps did not care. They would be called upon less frequently to perform the tedious duties of the marriage bed. And a man could do no great harm by his extramarital affairs. He did not run the danger of bearing bastard children.
The trouble was, Ralph thought, getting up restlessly from his chair and wandering to the window yet again, he could not convince himself of the truth of this argument. The truth was that both he and Georgiana had pledged themselves to fidelity at their wedding. They had sworn before God. Could his breaking of that pledge be less serious than her doing so? The answer could only be no. He could not possibly stand in judgment of her when he was at least equally guilty.
At least equally! He was probably more guilty than Georgiana. Had he shown more force of character after his wedding and in the months since, it was probable that she would not have been tempted or driven to err. He had not been a husband to her at all. In the last few weeks, perhaps, he had been a friend. But a woman needed more than friendship from her husband.
Tomorrow-later today-he was going to have to confront Georgiana. He must let her know that he was aware of her condition and he must get her to tell him the identity of the father of her child. He must confess his own infidelity. And together they must talk long and seriously about their future. He was really not sure if anything of value could be salvaged for that future. Could they begin again to build their relationship? Could they recapture the affection that had been growing? Could they learn to trust each other again? Would he ever be able to win her love?
They must try. He must persuade her to try. It would not be easy. Even without her pregnancy it would be difficult. But it must be done. Somehow he must bring himself to accept what could not be changed. He must accept the child as his own, even if it was a boy and must be named as his heir. Even if a son of his own, if there ever were one, would have to take second place. He loved Georgiana. And she was his wife. And no one had ever said that marriage was easy.
Ralph looked up startled as the door was opened abruptly and his brother stepped inside. After dozens of visits to the window over the last two hours and more, he had after all missed Stanley's arrival.
Vera was preparing to walk to Middleton House to visit her sister the following afternoon. Her mother, of course, had whispered the news of Georgiana's probable condition. Unlike her mother, though, Vera could not feel any elation. She had a dreadful fear that perhaps her brother-in-law was not the father of the child. Perhaps responsibility lay with that unspeakable rake Lord Beauchamp.
She was more than ever sorry that she had been to talk to Ralph the day before. It had been an incredible faux pas on her part to assume that he would know about his brother's suspicions. She had merely wished to discover the truth and to ask if there were anything she could do. All she had probably done was to alert Ralph to the possibility that, Georgie's child might not be his,.
She felt that she must go to see her sister and somehow offer her support. Besides, she needed some outing to cheer herself up. She had been thoroughly depressed since two evenings before when she had committed the great folly of allowing Lord Beauchamp to kiss her. She could not imagine why she had done so. She had never liked the man, had never for a moment been deceived into thinking him worthy of her regard. Yet she could not even feel the satisfaction of knowing that he had forced his attentions on her. She had actually given him permission to kiss her!
Vera was pulling on her gloves as a footman opened the doors into the drawing room so that she might bid her mother farewell. She felt a lurching of the stomach and almost lost her poise when she saw Beauchamp himself standing there talking to her mother. He looked as cool and as elegant as if he had never entertained a sinful thought in his life.
Vera inclined her head stiffly in his direction. "I shall be on my way, Mama," she said. "I shall see you later."
"You are on your way to see Georgie," Lord Beauchamp stated. "I have your mama's kind permission to escort you. Do I have yours, Miss Burton?" He made her an elegant bow.
"It is merely a sisterly call that I make," she said stiffly. "I would not put you to any trouble, my lord."
"No trouble in the world, I assure you, ma'am," he said cheerfully. "It would be my pleasure."
With her mother sitting there smiling affably, Vera had no choice but to accept the offered company. She turned and preceded him from the room.
"If you held your spine any straighter," Lord Beauchamp said conversationally when they had reached the pavement outside, "it would shatter from the tension." He took Vera's hand and tucked it beneath his arm.
"Kindly release my arm, sir," she said staring straight ahead. "I am perfectly capable of walking without any support."
"But consider my reputation," he said, "if I should be seen to be walking along beside you without offering you the use of my arm. I should never live down the ignominy, Vera."
"And I have not given you leave to use my given iminc," she said.
"Ah," he said with a sigh, "can this be the same young lady who melted into my arms but two nights ago and enslaved me with the passion of her kiss?"
"I would have thought the least said about that evening the better," Vera said tartly.
"Why?" he asked, looking down at her with raised eyebrows. "Do you find words inadequate to express how you felt? You are quite right. Perhaps we should drop the topic of kisses until we are in surroundings conducive to a repetition of the action."
"You have deliberately misunderstood my meaning," she said. "And why are we turning at this corner, sir? My sister's house is straight on."
"So it is," he said. "But the park is in this direction."
"I am not going to the park, my lord," Vera said quite firmly. "Certainly not with you. If you will kindly release my arm, you can continue to the park and I shall continue on my way to my sister's."
"Now, why should I wish to walk to the park alone?" Lord Beauchamp asked. "Sometimes I wonder about your intelligence, Vera."
She stopped walking, resolutely drawing him to a halt. "Enough!" she snapped. "I am tired of this verbal sparring that we always seem to become involved in. I have no wish to walk with you, sir, and no wish to speak further with you. I wish you will leave me alone. And Georgie too."
"Ah, Georgie," he said, turning to her and covering her hand with his. "She is at the root of all this, is she? Come, Vera. You will walk to the park with me-"
"No, I will not."
"Don't interrupt," he said. "It is ill-mannered to do so. You will walk to the park with me and we shall talk about this quarrel that you seem to think we have. And if you still believe you have a grievance at the end of it, I shall conduct you to my cousin's house and say goodbye to you. I shall not bother you ever again. Is that fair enough?"
"Fair enough!" she agreed abruptly after a moment's consideration.
"Good girt," he said, patting her hand and resuming their walk. He chatted about inconsequential matters while they picked their way through the more crowded streets around the entrance to the park, and steered her through the gates. Inside, the paths and the grass were nearly deserted.
"Now," he said at last, "you may let fly at me, my dear."
Vera said nothing for a while. "Tell me if it is true," she said finally, looking away from him toward a clump of trees.
"No," he said, not even pretending to misunderstand, "of course it is not true. I am wounded to think that you have even had any doubts."
"How could I not have doubts?" she cried passionately, turning a flushed face to him. "There is your reputation, your very forward behavior to me, your familiarity with Georgie, your admission that she has been leaving home late at night in your carriage, her pregnancy. How could I avoid being suspicious?"
He was grinning suddenly. "Is Georgie in a delicate way?" he asked. "That is new to me. And that will certainly put her into a nasty predicament."
"Then there is something going on," she said, "and you know about it. How can you stand there and smile?"
"Merely because your sister has got herself into an unbelievable scrape," he said. He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to speak. "And it has nothing whatsoever to do with immorality, Vera. I can tell you with some certainty that the child is Ralph's, that there is no possibility of its being anyone else's. And I believe I can assure you with equal certainty that those two are almost indecently in love with each other. There are merely a few tricky misunderstandings to clear up. I am not at all sure which of them is in the worse tangle. But to be quite honest with you, at the moment I do not feel like affording them another thought."
Vera looked doubtful. "And has Lord Stanley accepted the fact that he made a mistake?" she asked.
"I have no idea," he told her. "He made a very formal and abject apology this morning. But I could not tell if it was spontaneous or not. It struck me at the time that he might have been under pressure from whoever gave him the black eye and swollen lip."
"Ralph?" Vera asked, saucer-eyed.
"I think you must be right," he said, "though Ralph always seems the veriest lamb. But there was once a similar occasion when he became quite unreasonably violent on behalf of a female. It was only that memory that made me give up my conviction that Georgie was the architect of Stanley's morning face. I cannot think how Ralph found out, but he knew by last night, when he appeared in my dressing room breathing fire and brimstone. Only now does it strike me that I was probably most fortunate not to share young Stan's fate."
"I told Ralph," Vera admitted. "I assumed that he knew already, you see."
"Then you are probably my savior," Lord Beauchamp said, raising her hand to his lips and making her a bow. "My brains might be splattered on a barren field by now had it not been for you."
"A duel?" she said, her eyes wide with shock. "Lord Stanley challenged you?"
"Vera," he said, "I do wish you would not do that with your eyes in such an exposed part of the park. It is most unfair. Knowing how your lips taste is far more tantalizing than merely imagining, I find. Yet the two occupants of that barouche and those two pedestrians on the horizon would doubtless have forty fits apiece if I did what I badly want to do."
"I wish you would not talk so," Vera said, turning abruptly and beginning to walk again.
"We are very different from each other, are we not?" he said, falling into step beside her, and taking her arm again. "Do we have anything in common at all, Vera?"
"No," she said, "I think not. Unless it is a tendency to speak our minds."
"Is that why we have all these deliciously exhilarating arguments?" he asked.
"I fear so, my lord," she agreed.
"Would we be very unwise to marry?" he asked.
Vera looked at him, startled. "To marry?" she said faintly. "Surely there is no question of such a thing."
"What did you expect?" he said. "An offer of carte blanche? I would not dare, you know. It must have taken a full hour a few nights ago for my face to recover from the sting of your slap. And that was only from a supposed dishonoring of your sister!"
"I have not expected anything," Vera said. "I am an old maid, my lord, past the age of marriage."
"Ah, yes," he said. "I had forgotten. Do you wish to lean more heavily on my arm, ma'am? You need not fear that I shall totter under your weight, though I am far more advanced in years than you.' '
"Don't make fun of me," she said. "I think you should take me back now, or I shall be too late to visit Georgie. "
"To hell with Georgie," he said cheerfully. "I really want to know if a marriage between you and me would have a chance of success. I believe I must be quite mad to consider such a possibility, of course. You have been prim and disapproving since I met you, if one disregards those minutes when you were kissing me. Why do I feel that there is a deeper, more passionate nature to love if I can but penetrate your defenses?"
"Perhaps there is nothing," she said in some agitation. "Perhaps I am as dull and as much of a killjoy as I appear to be."
"Perhaps," he said. "And And perhaps I am no more than the shallow rake you take me for. Do you believe there is more to my nature, Vera? Do you think there is anything of value to make it worth your while to become better acquainted with me?"
She hesitated. "I sometimes like to believe so," she said. "I do not know."
"Or is love alone enough?" he asked.
"Love?"
"Well," he said, "I certainly am quite in love with you. and I am almost certain that your own feelings are engaged a great deal more than you will admit even to yourself. Could you bring yourself to marry me, Vera? I have not lived an utterly worthless existence, you know. I manage my estates myself and have made them solvent again since my father's death. Much of what you seem to have heard is true, I will admit. There have been many women in my life. But I have never ruined an innocent girl or cheated with any man's wife. And I believe I can safely promise that you will be the only woman in my life from this moment forward."
"Oh, please," Vera said. "Please, I am so confused. I do not know what to say."
He drew her to a halt again. "I think I will not make you a formal offer now," he said. "I have not spoken with your father, though I thought of doing so earlier. You are going down to Chartleigh for Gloria's wedding and for Christmas, are you not? I shall be there too. Shall we agree to an unofficial understanding until after Christmas? In the meantime we can get to know each other without the barrier of this apparent hostility that has been between us from the start. And we can discover if there is anything to bring us together in addition to love. Shall we, Vera? And plan a spring wedding if we still feel after Christmas that we cannot live without each other?"
"I have not said that I feel that way at all," Vera protested feebly.
"Then say it now," he said urgently, "Don't fight with me any longer. Tell me."
She looked up at him and smiled ruefully. "Very well," she said. "I do love you, Roger, though I cannot think of a single reason for doing so. There, are you satisfied, sir? All this is quite against my better judgment, you know."
"Quite," he said. "I think in consideration of your very advanced age and my fast approach to my thirtieth birthday that we should perhaps make that wedding very early in the spring, don't you?"
"But there is no official betrothal, is there?" she asked.
"Absolutely not," he agreed. "Shall we say unofficially early in the spring? You know, love, if we veer to our right just a fraction, we shall be on a collision course with those trees. A mere twenty paces if we sharpen the angle slightly thus. And this particular tree trunk in front of us looks to me like a very suitable shield from prying eyes. Come and kiss me."
"But, Roger," she protested, "is it not dreadfully vulgar to embrace almost in public?"
"Oh, dreadfully, love," he agreed amiably. "But I shall not tell if you will not. I take it your answer is yes, since I have riot had to drag you back here. And you see how slender you are in comparison with the tree trunk? No one who is not a determined prowler will even know we are here. Kiss me, Vera."
"I really ought not," she said, putting her arms up around his neck and lifting her face to him. "Roger, you cannot really love me, can you?"
"No, not at all," he said, feathering his lips across hers in a manner that set her to tightening her grip on his neck. "I could think of no other way of maneuvering you behind this tree than to say I did. And I fear that I shall have to marry you just in order to get you into bed. How you do blush, darling. You will probably force me to extinguish the candles on our wedding night, will you not?"
"Roger," Vera said from between her teeth, "will you stop this very improper talk and kiss me!"
He drew his head back and grinned down at her. "My apologies ma'am," he said. "I had not realized you were quite so desperate."
He lowered his mouth to hers and leaned his weight against her so that she was pressed against the tree, only his arms wrapped around her protecting her from its rough surface. But it is doubtful that Vera would have noticed anyway. She had melted into his embrace, her body molded against his in a manner that would have severely shocked her in a more rational mood.