The Secret Mistress

His hand on the back of her neck was hypnotic. She felt so embarrassed and so close to tears. And if she was so lovable, why did he not love her?

“If your mother had lived,” he said, “perhaps you would have come to discover that she did not have to grow to love your adult self. Perhaps she always loved you. I never really doubted that I was loved, but I always felt I had to earn love, that I had to work extra hard for it because my brother was so much more easily loved than I was. He was always a charming rogue. Everyone adored him despite all his faults— sometimes even because of them, it seemed. And he was selfish. He did not really care when he hurt people’s feelings, or even if he did care, gratifying his own desires was more important. It always seemed unfair to me that I tried so hard and yet was loved less. I discovered two things after he died.”

“What?” she asked into her knees.

“One was that I was loved,” he said. “More than I had known, I mean. I never had been loved less, in fact, only differently. And I learned that I tried to do what was right by my family and friends and even strangers because I wanted to, that I tried not to hurt other people because I did not want to hurt them. I was as selfish in my own way as Maurice was in his, for even if I had had the choice I would not have lived his life.”

Angeline swallowed.

“I tried to talk him out of that curricle race,” he said. “I reminded him that there was Lorraine to consider. And at the time Susan was ill. She had a fever. Lorraine was beside herself with worry. She needed Maurice to be there with her. He called me a pompous ass. And then I said something that will forever haunt me.”

Angeline lifted her head and looked at him. He was staring off across the top of the tower with unseeing eyes. His hand fell away from her neck.

“I told him to go ahead,” Lord Heyward said. “I told him to break his neck if he wished. I told him I had everything to gain if he died, that I would be Heyward in his stead.”

She set a hand on his thigh and patted it.

“And what you said was provoked,” she said. “It had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. Did you want him to die?”

“No,” he said.

“Did you love him?” she asked.

“I did,” he said. “He was my brother.”

“Did you want to be Earl of Heyward?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and pressed his head back against the wall.

“I did,” he said. “I always felt I could do a better job of it than he did. I wanted the title and position for myself. Until I had them—and did not have him. And now I have to watch his wife marry someone else. I am going to have to watch another man bring up my brother’s child. And I have to know that for Lorraine it is a happily-ever-after. I have to be happy for her because I am fond of her and know her life with Maurice was hell. But he was my brother.”

She gripped his thigh and said nothing. What was there to say? Except that no one is without pain, that pain is part of the human condition. And there was nothing terribly original in that thought, was there?

“As Tresham and Ferdinand are my brothers,” she said. “Perhaps they will never marry. Perhaps—But I will always love them, no matter what.”

He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her.

“It was your brother with whom mine was racing that day, you know,” he said.

“Tresham?” She frowned, and her stomach churned.

“I have always blamed him,” he said. “I even did it to his face at Maurice’s funeral. I suppose when sudden tragedies occur, we always feel the need to nominate some living scapegoat. But in reality Tresham was no more to blame for what happened than I was. For even if he was the one who suggested the race—and it was just as likely to have been Maurice—my brother did not have to accept. And even if Tresham overtook him just before that bend, he did not force Maurice to take the risk of pursuing him around it at suicidal speed. And Tresham did apparently turn back as soon as he saw the hay cart and realized the danger. He did try to avert the collision. He must have done, else he would not have seen it happen—he would have been another mile farther along the road. And he did see it. I have been unfair to your brother, Lady Angeline.”

“As you have been unfair to yourself,” she said. Oh, it could just as easily have been Tresham who had died in that race. How would she have borne it? Would she have blamed Maurice, Earl of Heyward? She probably would have.

“Yes.” He sighed. “Love hurts. And how is that for a clichй?”

She sighed. They were growing maudlin.

“I suppose my bonnet is lost for all time,” she said. “I liked it particularly well when I bought it last week. The blue and yellow reminded me of a summer sky, and the pink—well, I always have loved pink.”

“Last week,” he said. “It is number fifteen, then?”

“Seventeen, actually,” she said. “And today was the first time I had worn it. Well, perhaps the birds will enjoy it until it fades and rots into shreds.”

“Let’s go and have a look,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her to hers.

They made their way carefully down the ladder and out of the tower back to the path. They stepped off it a little farther along and looked downward. The slope, covered with long grass that rippled when the wind gusted, was long and far steeper than the one they had climbed. Her bonnet was an impossible distance away, though impossible had never figured large in the Dudley vocabulary.

“I can get down there if I go carefully,” he said.

“Carefully?” She laughed. “One does not go down a hill like that carefully, Lord Heyward.”

And she grasped his hand in hers and started downward with him—with long strides and at a dead run. She whooped and screeched as they went and felt a few more hairpins part company with her hair. And then they were both laughing again and hurtling along as fast as their feet would carry them— and ultimately, alas, faster even than that. Angeline lost her footing first and then he came tumbling down too and they rolled together until the level ground with its longer grass close to the lake brought them to a halt. By some miracle they had missed colliding with any trees.

They lay still for a few moments, laughing and half winded, side by side, hand in hand. And then he raised himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her, their laughter suddenly gone, their eyes locking.

Her arms came up about his neck at the same moment as his pushed beneath her, and they were kissing in the long grass as though their lives depended upon melding together with no space between them or in them or through them. As though they could somehow become one person, one whole, and never ever be lonely or loveless or unhappy again.

When he lifted his head and gazed down at her, into her eyes and into her very soul, Angeline gazed back, and knew only that she had been right. Oh, she had been right to fall in love with him on sight, to continue to love him, to want more than anything else in life to spend the rest of it loving him. And she had known—oh, she had known that he was not a dry old stick at