Before Maria could even answer, he was kissing her, his mouth a feast of excess, his arms crushing her to him as if he wanted to absorb her into his body.
For one heady moment she gave herself up to the embrace, letting herself revel in the joy of it. Then reality sank in. Just because he’d come after her didn’t mean anything had changed between them.
She pushed him away. Though his eyes darkened, he let her go.
“How did you find me?” she asked as she edged away from him.
His gaze never left her. “Pinter’s coachman let it slip to one of my grooms. When I arrived I saw a pie shop, so I just waited until Freddy showed up. Then I followed him here.” He arched one eyebrow. “Your cousin never can resist a good English pie.”
A heavy sigh escaped her. “I swear, Freddy will be the death of me one day.” Painfully conscious of how dowdy her attire must look to him, she removed her bonnet and tossed it onto a chair. “But where did he go? He’s not here.”
“That I can’t help you with.”
“So how did you get into my room?”
He shrugged. “Climbed in through the window. It wasn’t locked.” His eyes gleamed at her. “Through the years, I’ve gained quite a bit of experience at climbing through women’s windows. Though usually I’m climbing out.”
That reference reminded her why she’d fled him in the first place. “You shouldn’t have come.”
She regretted the blunt statement when an expression of pain crossed his face. “Look here, Maria. I made a mistake by trying to push you into marriage. I should have given you more time to consider it, before running off to gain a special license.” He fisted his hands at his sides. “But you can’t marry Hyatt. You don’t believe me when I say it, but he’s clearly a fortune hunter—”
“I know.”
He blinked. “What?”
She just couldn’t tell him the whole story. It was too mortifying to have him know what a fool she’d been, putting her faith in such a man. “I’m not marrying him. You needn’t worry about that.”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “All the more reason that you should marry me.” He strode up to grip her arms. “I know that the only thing I have to commend me as a husband is my title, but—”
“Don’t say that,” she protested. “It’s not true.”
“Then why did you leave me without a word?” he asked, his voice so hurt that she cursed herself.
“Because you don’t really want to marry me. You’re only doing it to assuage your conscience for having taken my innocence.”
He uttered a harsh laugh. “You’re the first woman ever to accuse me of having a conscience.”
“That’s only because they don’t know you.” Her throat raw with feeling, she reached up to stroke his stubbled cheek. “But I do. I know that you’re a good man.”
Bleakness showed on his sharp features as he released her. “Don’t lie to yourself about that. I want you as my wife, but not if you’re convinced I deserve you. I assure you, I don’t.”
The flat tone of his voice made her heart ache. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You are a good man. You just don’t trust yourself to behave like one—and how can I trust you when you don’t trust yourself?”
“You can’t,” he said coldly. “You don’t know who I am . . . what I am. If you did, you would never even consider marrying me. I long ago proved myself to be—” A low curse erupted from him.
Long ago? Her blood began to race. “This is about what happened to your parents that night at the hunting lodge, isn’t it?” She laid her hand on his arm. “You still feel guilt over that. But just because you weren’t there in time to stop it doesn’t mean you caused it.”
“That isn’t why I feel guilty!” He snatched his arm free and paced to the window, where he stared out over the inn yard.
“Tell me,” she pleaded. Mrs. Plumtree was right—he desperately needed to talk about this cancer that was eating at him.
His only answer was silence.
“I know that you quarreled with your mother,” she persisted. “Your grandmother told me that. But she didn’t know what you quarreled about.”
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“It can’t be that bad.”
He shot her a blistering glance. “You don’t know a damned thing about it.”
“Which is why you must tell me. So I can understand.”
“You can’t possibly understand.”
“Was your quarrel over your father? Is that it?”
“The quarrel was over . . . I did something so . . . unconscionable that . . .” Dragging his fingers through his hair, he gave a shudder. “I can’t tell you. If I do, you won’t marry me.”
“I won’t marry you if you don’t,” she said softly.
“Damn it all to hell.” His voice was desperate.
“I mean it, Oliver.”
He faced her, eyes blazing. “My mother caught me in bed with a guest at our house party, all right? She caught me in the act of tupping a married woman.”
She stared at him, not sure what to make of that.
He went on in that same awful voice, “It was the last time I saw Mother before she ran off to the hunting lodge to find Father. That, my dear, is why she killed him.”
Maria could see that he believed it, that he was tormented by it. But she couldn’t understand why. Yes, it would be a shock for a mother to find her sixteen-year-old son in bed with a married woman, but would it anger her enough to make her kill her husband? That seemed highly unlikely.
“But why . . .”
He let out a strangled oath. “Lilith Rawdon was an army wife. She and Major Rawdon had been invited to Halstead Hall for my parents’ house party. When they arrived, Lilith seemed upset over something. But it didn’t stop her from flirting with me when no one was watching.
“I was flattered. At that point I’d never bedded a woman. I’d kissed a tavern maid or two at Eton, but nothing more.” His voice hardened. “It didn’t take long for Lilith to realize how ripe I was for the plucking. When everyone else was at a picnic on the second day of the house party, I cried off because I always hated watching my parents make cutting remarks to each other in the guise of being witty and sophisticated.”
Maria didn’t speak, afraid to stop the flow of words.
“Lilith found me in my bedchamber reading some dry tome about farming that Father had assigned me to read. I was bored to tears. So you can imagine my reaction when she walked in, closed the door, and began to remove her clothes.”
Though shock at the woman’s blatant wickedness coursed through her, Maria fought to keep her expression neutral.
“I couldn’t look away. Lilith was remarkably beautiful, and she acted as if she found me attractive.” He shook his head. “God, what an idiot I was.”
Maria wanted to cry at his self-loathing. The cursed woman probably had found him attractive. Maria could easily picture Oliver at sixteen—a lithe, olive-skinned Adonis with the energy and vitality of youth. Having watched her male cousins at that age, she could also see how he would have been dazzled by the attentions of a beautiful older woman.
He went on, his breathing ragged. “She climbed on top of me and . . . well, you can guess the rest. I was happily engaged in losing my virginity to the very talented Mrs. Rawdon when the door swung open and Mother walked in.” A dull flush rose in his cheeks.
Poor man. Given how furiously one of her cousins had blushed when Maria had found him merely kissing his future wife, it must have been ten times more awful for Oliver.
But she still didn’t see why it would lead to such tragedy.
Oliver stared as if the scene were playing out before him. “Instead of covering herself,” he went on, “Lilith rose up to stare boldly at Mother. When a vicious smile crossed her face and the color drained from Mother’s features, I knew. Lilith had intended for Mother to find us—to find me—in that state all along.”
“Why on earth would she want such a thing?”
“Apparently I was part of some sick need she had to strike at Mother. That was confirmed when Mother looked at Lilith and said, ‘Isn’t it enough that you have him? Must you take my son, too?’ ”
So Lilith Rawdon must have been his father’s mistress. Great heavens.
Oliver’s face was a mask of revulsion. “I’d always wondered why the Rawdons spent so much time with my parents. Mother didn’t seem to like Lilith, and Father made fun of Major Rawdon in sly ways that even I could recognize. But that day, when Mother saw me . . .”
He balled his hands into fists. “Oh, God, there was so much pain in her voice. It has haunted me all my life. Mother told me to get out of her sight, and fairly tossed me from the room. The last thing I saw was Lilith smiling at my mother like a cat in the cream.”
“But why did the woman do that? If she and your father were engaged in an affair, why taunt your mother with it?”
“I’ve spent years trying to figure that out. Several rumors were circulating back then about the Rawdons—that their marriage was in trouble, that there was talk of a separation. Divorce was out of the question, of course, but perhaps Lilith hoped to convince Father to run off with her somewhere they could live together. How better to accomplish her purpose than to make Mother angry enough to ask for a separation herself? She would never have left without a strong impetus.”
“Or maybe the whole thing was just how it seemed,” Maria pointed out. “Lilith Rawdon, clearly a woman of low character, couldn’t resist taking a young man into her bed whom she found attractive. Did she try to see you again after that?”
“No. They left that night. I tried to see her later, to get the truth out of her, but when I went to her home, the servants informed me that she and her husband had gone to India. I wrote to her—she never wrote back. My other letters came back marked as undeliverable, so they’d apparently moved on.”
He fixed Maria with a tortured gaze. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that Lilith had a purpose in what she did that day. And that I, in my stupidity and my weakness for women, let her use me to hurt my mother, to cause her to—”
“Oh, my darling,” she said, fighting back tears as she went to him. “It wasn’t your fault!”
“Wasn’t it?” he choked out. “Mother’s last words to me, while I scrambled to hide my nakedness, were, ‘You’re a disgrace to this family! You’re behaving exactly like your father. And I’ll be damned if I let him turn you into the same wicked, selfish creature as he is, sacrificing anyone to his pleasures!’ That’s why she shot him. To prevent what she saw as his bad influence on me.”
Oh, her poor dear. What a curse, for that to be the last memory of his mother. No wonder he had lived all these years trying to forget the past. Who wouldn’t?
Anger at his mother for putting that burden on him rose up in her. “She shouldn’t have said those things.”
“They were true.”
“Maria, all my life, I watched Mother suffer over Father’s affairs. He was rarely discreet and she, having foolishly given her heart to him, became more brittle with the passing years. She always said that we children were her only joy, that we made up for everything. Then, in one careless moment, I drove the dagger in her heart.”
The anguish on his face tore at her. She grabbed him by the arms, forcing him to look at her. “You did not cause your mother’s rash act. She made her own choice. When she said those cruel things to you, I’m sure she didn’t mean them. She was just angry at your father and took it out on you—because you were the only one available, and because she couldn’t take it out on him.”
“Ah, but she did take it out on him.” His eyes blazed at her.
“Yes. And that is a tragedy. But not one you’re responsible for.”
“You can’t possibly understand,” he bit out.
“I understand far better than you think. My mother died in childbirth, remember?” Tears clogged her throat, but she pressed on. “For most of my childhood, I felt responsible for her death. I’m sure you can imagine how it feels to know that one’s very existence is owed only to the suffering and death of one’s mother.”
“It’s not the same.” The stark anguish in his features tugged at her heart. “You didn’t intend—”
“And you did? You knew that this Lilith woman hated your mother? That she was involved with your father? That by sharing her bed, you might set off such an awful chain of events?”
He tried to thrust her from him, but she wouldn’t release him. He scowled down at her. “I may not have known about Lilith and Father, but I knew she was married. I knew what I was doing was immoral. I just didn’t care.”
“You were sixteen! You had a father who daily broke those rules. And you knew that other men of your station behaved that way, as well.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she paid them no mind. “Tell me this: while you were enjoying yourself with Mrs. Rawdon, did you have any thought about your mother and how she might disapprove of your behavior?”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“Exactly. Young men don’t think before they act. They’re impulsive and selfish and randy as goats. I have four male cousins and when they were that age, all the moral training in the world would have flown right out of their heads if a pretty married woman had undressed in their bedchambers and climbed into bed with them.”
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“No. But it doesn’t make you culpable for the tragedy, either. You have cobbled them together in your mind. It’s time that you un-cobble them.”
He clasped her head in his large hands, his gaze hot with anger. “You forget that I’ve spent my life proving Mother right. I’m just like my father.”
His grandmother’s words leapt into her mind: You seem to think he is like his father, but he is actually like his mother. I do not know why he has pursued his father’s path all these years, but it is not his real character, I swear.
The truth hit her with sudden clarity.
“No,” she said softly. “You’ve spent your life thumbing your nose at her, furious at her for leaving you and the others, for forcing you into the untenable position of having to hide what really happened that night. You’ve been striking at her ghost, screaming, ‘If you didn’t want me to turn out like him, you should have stayed to stop me!’ ”
As his throat worked convulsively, she covered his hands with hers. “But she can’t hear you. So all you’re doing is trudging a path that isn’t your own, growing more weary of it by the day, wanting more from your existence but believing you’re cursed to having less. That is no sort of life for anyone, especially for a man with so much potential.”
A shuddering breath escaped him. “How can you have such faith in me?” he asked hoarsely. “How can you believe in me when I’ve given you no reason?”
“You’ve given me plenty of reasons, but there’s only one that matters. I love you, Oliver. I can’t help myself. That is my reason.”
He began to shake, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“I love you,” she repeated as she kissed his cheek. “I love you.” She kissed the other cheek, now damp, though she wasn’t sure whether from her tears or his. “I love you so much.” She brushed his lips with hers.
He held her back to search her face. “God help you if that is a lie,” he said in an aching voice. “Because those words have sealed your fate. I’ll never let you go, now.”