Chapter Fifteen
Hope sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for the clock to strike one so she could return to London. At all costs, she avoided her own reflection, afraid to see the change that everyone else had noticed in her own face. She had considered and rejected the idea of staying behind in the country to lick her wounds and sending Mr Drake back with Charity. Though it might be more pleasant to avoid confrontation, it did not change the fact that this house no longer belonged to her.
And there was still the matter of the missing diamonds. Mr Drake’s promise of help was likely as fleeting as everything else about last night. That left her with explaining their loss to the new Earl of Comstock. She could not imagine he would have been as personable as Grandmama thought him had he known the truth.
There was a knock on the door.
‘Go away,’ she said. He did not have to say a word for her to be sure it was Gregory on the other side.
‘We have to talk.’
‘No, we don’t,’ she said. ‘Never again.’
He opened without permission, came in and closed it behind him. ‘Then I have to talk and you must listen.’
‘If you mean to apologise, do not bother. I do not wish to hear it.’ She kept her eyes focused on the floor, not daring to look at him.
‘I am not sorry about last night, if that is what you are referring to,’ he said. ‘I refuse to apologise for the most wonderful night of my life.’
‘If it was so wonderful, then why didn’t you speak when my grandmother wondered about it?’
‘You did not give me a chance,’ he said, then dropped to his knees in front of her so that it was impossible for her to evade his gaze. ‘Just as I had no chance to refuse you last night, or in the library in London.’
‘Are you suggesting that this is all my fault?’ she said, trying to pull away from him.
He reached out to grasp her hands before she could escape. ‘There is no fault. No one is to blame because we did nothing wrong. We love each other.’
‘Do we?’ Had he ever said so, before this moment? Or had she simply assumed that he must love her to do the things he did.
‘I thought it was understood,’ he said, giving her the same narrow-eyed look she was giving him. ‘But after what you said to your grandmother, it seems I was mistaken. You talk as though you would still prefer to wed an earl.’
‘Not an earl,’ she said, yanking her hands free. ‘The Earl of Comstock.’
‘Now that you know he is everything you dreamed he might be, I am no longer worthy of you,’ he said, standing up again.
‘That is not true,’ she snapped, averting her eyes so she did not have to look into his. To do that was like staring into the sun, blinding and confusing. ‘There is nothing wrong with you. It is me.’ She did not have the words to explain what had changed in her, but something had.
‘Perhaps it is you,’ he said. ‘Did you not understand that we would be obligated to marry, after what happened last night?’
‘Obligated?’ she said. That was what she had wanted. To make sure he had no choice. But now that it had happened, it was an empty victory.
‘Yes,’ he said. There was a faint softness in his voice. ‘You might be carrying my child. I am not capable of doing what was done to me and abandoning a son or daughter, allowing them to be raised by strangers.’
She had not considered the possibility of a baby. But neither did she think that a child would be the first thing on his mind when making the offer she had hoped to hear. Now that she had fallen, what she had thought would be an act of love was nothing more than a duty. She stood up and walked past him to open her door. She pointed to the hall. ‘You may think we have to marry, but I have no intention of forcing you to wed me. Nor can you force me to wed you.’
Now, he looked baffled. ‘No one is being forced to do anything. If, after what has happened between us, you do not want me, I cannot make you. And if there is a child...’
‘There will not be,’ she said, terrified for the future. What child would want a mother bearing the mark of licentiousness that her sister and grandmother had spotted so easily? ‘I will not be with child. I refuse to be. I will not have it. Or I will and I will give it to you, since that is all that you seem to care about. Now please leave me alone.’
‘You think I do not care about you?’ He laughed. ‘Hope Strickland, I care more for you than I have ever cared for a woman in my life.’ His hands reached out to her in supplication.
She could feel herself weakening and turned away. ‘I care for you as well.’ The words sounded false, even to her. They were far too weak to encompass her true feelings which ranged from love, to fear, to confusion and back to love again. ‘I care for you. But that does not make it right.’ She walked to the door and opened it, praying that he would understand and leave.
He shook his head, amazed. ‘Very well, Miss Strickland, I suppose I must thank you for changing a lifetime’s assumptions about the world and my place in it. I have wasted far too long trying to be a better man than the father I never knew. I thought he abandoned my mother to bear me and die. But perhaps she sent him away for no reason, just as you are doing to me. You have taught me that in matters of the heart women can be every bit as cruel as men.’
* * *
The four of them rode back to London in ominous silence. Or rather, three of them did. Charity disappeared into her book the moment she was seated, blissfully unaware of the tension inside the coach.
The Dowager was her usual self as she entered and sat down, smiling brilliantly and joking that she would enjoy playing chaperon for the young people. Still smiling, she took the seat next to Hope and gave Gregory a look that said if he as much as stretched a finger in Hope’s direction, she would have him thrown from the coach and whipped by the driver.
Hope might as well not have been there at all. She was not just quiet; she hardly seemed to breathe. Nor did she move, staring straight ahead at her sister on the seat across from her for the whole trip.
Gregory tried to tell himself that it was better than the alternative. When a love affair ended, some women were prone to hysterical tears, or angry tirades. They went out of their way to make the parting as difficult as possible.
But not Hope Strickland. After hours of nothing, it would have been a relief to see any emotion at all. The woman sitting on the other side of the coach from him might have been a total stranger instead of the most passionate lover he’d ever known. It made him wonder if he had imagined the last week. He could see no sign on her face that she had been in any way moved by him.
It was not until they were alighting back in London that he could be sure she still remembered. He offered his hand to help her down and she hesitated as she took it. But it was not from fear or revulsion of him. There was something in her eyes that hinted at a fear of her own reaction. Her heart was not totally lost to him, if she had to fight the response to his touch.
But what did he feel when he looked at her? He looked after her as she moved across the pavement towards the town-house door. In a few steps, she might be out of his life, which would return to its comforting routine. Jobs would be started and completed. Clients would come and go. He would remain safe and unaffected.
Her rejection had hurt him, of course. But that was almost a novelty. He had been rejected by women before and had never experienced a pain like that caused by her denial during breakfast. He had gone to her room sure that a simple explanation would be enough to set things right. Surely a girl as proper as she was would see that a hasty marriage was the best protection for her honour. Instead, she had rejected him again. A part of him did not want to try a third time.
But then his thoughts had turned to his father again. He had always imagined a rake or a rogue who did not care about the pain he’d left behind when he left. But perhaps he was just a coward. Perhaps he had slunk away from the woman he’d loved and the family he might have had, because he’d not been brave enough to claim them.
He had formed his character with no other plan than to be different than someone he did not know at all. Perhaps that was why he’d fallen in love with the sort of girl who caused more trouble being good than any enthusiastic sinner ever had.
He hurried down the path until he was one pace ahead of her, blocking her way to the door. Then he smiled at her as he had when they were nothing more than client and employee. ‘If it is convenient for you, I shall return tomorrow at our usual time.’
‘Return?’ she snapped. ‘What makes you think I would wish to see you again?’
‘We have one item left to retrieve,’ he reminded her, pulling out the list that was still in his pocket. ‘A Chinese vase.’
‘You said you would locate it without my help.’
He shrugged. ‘I was mistaken.’
‘You are mistaken now.’ Her voice was shrill as if the idea of seeing him again drove her one step closer to madness. ‘I have no wish to see you, ever again.’
‘I have no wish to force my attentions on you,’ he said, as mildly as possible. ‘But I have a job to complete. It will go faster, and I will be gone sooner, if I have your help.’
She paused for a moment, as if weighing temporary discomfort with eventual freedom. ‘Very well. One day. If the search takes more than that, you must complete it on your own.’
‘Excellent,’ he said with another one of his professional smiles to put her off her guard. ‘We will do our best to settle the matter tomorrow.’
* * *
When Hope returned to the house, her grandmama was waiting just inside the door. ‘Well?’ the Dowager said, arms folded across her chest.
She stared expectantly back at the Dowager, wondering if, after all the stories she had heard about the foolishness of overly strict morality, she was about to receive a dressing down for her own fall from grace.
‘You were speaking with Mr Drake,’ the older woman said. ‘Have you settled the problem between the two of you so I can book St George’s for the wedding?’
‘There is no problem between us,’ Hope said, with a forced smile. ‘He was employed by Mr Leggett to help us fix the problem you created. Tomorrow, we are going out to find the Chinese vase. Then his job will be finished and we will see no more of him.’
‘What utter fustian,’ her grandmother snapped. ‘When I arrived at the manor, he was staring at you like a moonstruck idiot, unable to string two words together. And you looked like Eve, waiting for God’s judgement with the apple still in her hand.’
Had it really been so noticeable? How was she to go about London with him? Or without him, for that matter? Was it something that would fade with time? Perhaps it could be washed away.
‘Stop playing with your curls, Hope Strickland,’ the Dowager snapped. ‘If you are trying to look less guilty, you are making matters worse and not better. I’d blame your parents for dying before they could teach you to lie, but it did not seem to matter in Charity’s case. She is younger than you and there are days when I cannot get a single truth out of her.’
‘What am I to do?’ she said at last, dropping the charade and pressing her palms to her face to hide the blush. ‘I cannot see anyone looking like this. I certainly cannot meet the new Comstock. He will think me unchaste and want nothing to do with us.’
Grandmother shook her head in pity. ‘Do not waste time worrying that men will want nothing to do with you. There are more than enough of them who prefer a girl with a glow in her cheeks and a twinkle in her eye. They are nothing to be afraid of. If you are walking out with the man who put it there, they will leave you alone.’
‘I cannot spend the rest of my life in the company of Mr Drake,’ she whispered.
‘Well, not every moment. But once everyone is calling you Mrs Drake, it would be rather stupid of people to show surprise that he is bedding you.’
She turned back to her grandmother. ‘For the last time, I am not going to marry Gregory Drake. He has not even asked me to.’
‘He has not asked?’ Surprisingly this seemed to bother the Dowager more than anything else. ‘Then I shall have him dragged back here immediately to do right by you. And there will be none of this nonsense about punishing him for his hesitation by refusing.’
‘That is not the problem at all,’ Hope replied. ‘He said it was his duty to marry me.’
‘And so it is,’ the Dowager said, with an exasperated shake of her head.
‘But when I went to his room, I thought...’
‘Did he invite you?’ her grandmother said with a confused frown.
‘He would never do something as dishonourable as that. Before we went to Berkshire he said that he did not think it wise for us to see each other again,’ Hope explained.
‘But then you insisted that he accompany you. And you went to his room when the household was asleep,’ her grandmother said, her voice raising. ‘You pestered the poor man until he succumbed, instead of giving him the chance to court you properly. And now you are complaining about the quality of his proposal.’
She had been so focused on her plan to marry Comstock that it had never occurred to her to flirt with him as Grandmama had suggested and allow things to develop slowly, as was proper. It was just as it had been at the ball, when she had resorted to theft, rather than asking permission. ‘This is like the inkwell, only worse,’ Hope said, closing her eyes in shame.
‘My dear, I have no idea what you are going on about. But if it in any way resembles the current situation, please do not enlighten me. All I want to know from you now are your feelings towards Mr Drake.’
‘I love him,’ she said. But instead of making her happy, the words came out on a sob.
‘Then stop torturing the poor man,’ her grandmother said with a sigh. ‘You say he is coming back tomorrow morning to see about finding the vase from the hall?’
Hope nodded.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It is growing late and he has probably had quite enough of our family for the day. We will not try his patience further. But if he is planning to return, he has either forgiven you, or can be persuaded to do so. Do whatever is necessary to mend the breach between you. I will make myself available in the drawing room, tomorrow between two and seven, should he wish an interview to discuss your future. But as I informed Mr Drake at breakfast, I will not see you moping about the house for more than a week. After that time, if you have not found a husband for yourself, I will arrange a marriage for you, just to get you out of the house.’