Captain Fawley turned for support to his brother. ‘Tell her, Charles. Tell her that I just can’t—’
Charles cut him off with a peremptory wave of his hand. ‘You had as well give in graciously. Once she has the bit between her teeth, there is no stopping her. You cannot argue with her logic because it is of that singularly female variety which always completely confounds we mere males.’ So saying, he swept her a mocking bow.
Robert sank back into the cushions, looking as though he had been hit by a whirlwind. Heloise was still watching him, her head tilted to one side, a hopeful expression on her face. And all of a sudden the dour cripple let out a bark of genuine laughter.
‘I quite see why you married her, Walton.’
‘Indeed, she left me no choice.’
‘Very well, madam. I will come with you when you start your riding lessons,’ he conceded. Then he frowned. ‘Since I expect we will both fall off with monotonous regularity, I recommend we take our lessons early in the mornings, when nobody will be about to see us.’
She clapped her hands, her face lighting up with joy. Something twisted painfully inside Charles. Nothing he had ever done or said to her had managed to please her half so well.
‘I dare say,’ he said brusquely, ‘you would like to see your rooms now, madam wife, and freshen up a little?’
Heloise pulled a face at Robert. ‘What he means, no doubt, is that I look a mess, and that also he wishes to take me aside to give me a lecture about my appalling manners.’
‘No, I am sure not,’ Robert replied, regarding the stiff set of Walton’s shoulders with a perplexed frown. ‘Your manners are delightfully refreshing.’
Heloise laughed at that, but once they had quit Captain Fawley’s suite she turned anxious eyes on her husband.
He made no comment until he had taken her to the suite of rooms he’d had his staff prepare for his bride. On sight of them, Heloise gasped aloud. She had her own sitting room, with a pale blue Aubusson carpet upon which various comfortable sofas and chairs were arranged. Her bedroom, too, was carpeted almost to the wainscot. With a smile, Heloise imagined getting up in the morning and setting her bare feet on that, rather than the rough boards of the little room she had shared with her sister. No shutters on any of the windows, she noted, only heavy dark blue velvet curtains, held back with self-coloured cords.
‘I hope you like it—though of course if there are any alterations you wish to make, you have only to say.’
Heloise spread her hands, shrugging her utter bewilderment at such opulence. ‘How could I not like this?’ she managed to say, when it became apparent that her husband was waiting for her to say something.
It seemed to have been the right thing to say, for some of the tension left his stance. ‘I will ring and ask for refreshments to be served up here in your sitting room,’ he said, crossing to the bell-pull beside the chimney breast. ‘You may rest assured I shall not intrude upon your privacy. This is your domain. Just as the rooms downstairs are Robert’s. The only time I shall enter, save at your express invitation, will be to bid you goodnight. Every night,’ he finished sternly.
So that the servants would believe they were a normal husband and wife, she assumed. She sighed as a group of them came in and laid out the tea things. She supposed she should be grateful he wanted things to look right. At least she would get to see him once each day. Otherwise, the place being so vast, they might not bump into each other from one end of the week to the other.
Once the servants had retreated, Charles said, ‘Come, Heloise, I can see you are bursting with questions. I have a little time to spare to indulge your curiosity before I must be about other business.’
There was no point in questioning their living arrangements. She had promised not to be a nuisance. But she would like to know what on earth had happened between the two Fawley brothers for them to come to this.
‘Why does your brother accuse you of imprisoning him here? Is this something to do with the rift in your family you spoke of to me?’
‘You do not need to have tea served if you do not like it,’ he remarked, noticing the grimace of distaste with which she had set down her teacup after taking only one sip. ‘The kitchen can provide anything you wish for.’
‘Don’t you wish to tell me? Is that why you talk about tea? If you do not want me to know about your family secrets then you only need to say, and I will not pry any further!’
‘That is not the issue!’ This was not a topic he found it easy to discuss. She would have to make do with a succinct account of the facts. ‘Robert’s mother was my father’s second wife,’ he bit out. ‘In their zeal to protect me from her influence, when my father died the people he had nominated my guardians sent her back to her own family—with a modest annuity and penalties attached should she try to inveigle herself back into my life.’
‘What was she, then, Robert’s mother?’ Heloise asked, fascinated. ‘Something scandalous? An actress, perhaps, or a woman of easy morals?’
Charles smiled grimly. ‘Worse than that, in the opinion of my stiff-rumped maternal relatives. She was a doctor’s daughter.’
At Heloise’s complete bafflement, he continued, ‘She was, with her middle-class values, the kind of person who might have influenced me into thinking less of my consequence than they thought I should. They reminded me that my real mother was the Duke of Bray’s granddaughter, and set about instilling me with pride in my true lineage. Rigorously.’
Heloise shook her head. What a miserable little boy he must have been. But worse was to come.
‘I did not even know that I had a brother until, when I came of age, I began to go through all the family papers with my lawyers, instead of just ratifying them as my guardians assumed I would. I discovered that Robert had been born some five months after my father’s death. Instead of having him raised with me, and acknowledged as second in line to my inheritance, they consigned him to the care of his mother’s family. By the time he was sixteen, so vehemently did he hate my mother’s relations that he began to refuse even the meagre allowance they had arranged for him. Instead he requested they purchase him a commission, so that he could make his own way in the world without having any need for further contact with relatives who had made no secret of the fact they wished he had not been born. Which they did—hoping, no doubt, that his career would be short and bloody. It was not long after that when I discovered his existence. And by then he was beyond my reach. He neither wanted nor needed anything from the brother he had grown up hating.’
‘Oh, Charles,’ she said, her eyes wide with horror. ‘How awful. What did you do?’
He looked at her with eyes that had grown cold. ‘I did as I was trained to do. I acted without emotion. I severed all connection with those who had systematically robbed me, my stepmother and my brother of each other.’
‘And what,’ she asked, ‘happened to Robert’s mother?’
‘She scarcely survived his birth. The story he had from his family was that she died from a broken heart, at the treatment meted out to her whilst she was still in shock at being widowed.’
No wonder Charles appeared so hard and cold. The one person who might have taught him to embrace the softer emotions had been ruthlessly excised from his orbit. Then his relatives had taught him, the hard way, that there was nobody upon whom he could rely.
No wonder he had been able to shrug off the loss of a fiancée with such panache. Her betrayal was nothing compared to what he had already experienced.
And yet, in spite of all that, he had never stopped reaching out to the brother who repaid all his overtures with bristling hostility.
‘Oh, Charles,’ she cried, longing to take him in her arms and hold him. Tell him he was not alone any more. She was there.
She