The Notorious Lord

radically different. It was still Cory sitting beside her, but a different Cory-someone she knew inside out in some ways and in others was only beginning to know. But what she did know was that he was not going to like what she had to say to him.

‘I asked you to marry me a few days ago,’ Cory said, ‘and you refused. Now will you marry me, Rachel?’

Rachel looked at him-at the expectation in his face and the tension she could see just below the surface. It was so similar to his previous proposal and yet so different. Now she knew that she loved him with every fibre of her being and would always love him. Now he had told her he loved her too. He had made love to her with passion and tenderness and taken her heart and soul for his own. And now she had to let him go.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I fear I must refuse you again.’

She felt Cory go very still and held her breath, waiting for the explosion of temper. Instead he took her hand in his.

‘Must you, Rae?’ His tone was very quiet. ‘Please tell me why.’

His gentleness brought a lump to Rachel’s throat. His voice had been even, but one quick glance at his face told her that she was hurting him and that in the course of the conversation she would inevitably hurt him more. It felt wretched. She knew him so well and cared for him so much that the pain was her own and yet she knew her resolve could not waver. Not if they were to avoid a lifetime of misery.

‘I cannot allow what has happened between us to weigh with me,’ she said miserably. ‘When I refused you before, Cory, it was because we did not want the same things from our lives.’ She put a quick hand out to stifle his protests. ‘I know now that I love you and you love me. But the things that we want are utterly incompatible. That has not changed.’

There was a silence.

‘You say that you love me,’ Cory said dully.

The lump in Rachel’s throat intensified. ‘Yes, of course I do. You know it. I love you with my whole heart. But that does not alter our situation.’ She hurried on. ‘From the first you have known that I wanted nothing more than a settled home. That has not changed.’ Her gaze searched his face desperately. ‘But you…Travelling and exploration are your very life. And a wife must adapt to her husband’s style of living. I understand that. I would not ask you to give it up! Which is why I must give you up.’

‘You could travel with me,’ Cory said. ‘I would like nothing more-’

The first tear rolled down Rachel’s cheek and splashed on to her skirts. ‘Cory, I cannot! How soon would it be before you came to resent me, knowing that I travelled with you under duress? I hate the very thing that you love! I need a home of my own!’

‘You would have Newlyn.’ Cory had gone a little white now, as though he could see the futility of his arguments, but did not want to accept it. ‘I understand how important it is to you to have a home, Rachel, and I know that we could make matters work.’

A second tear splashed beside the first. ‘I could not bear it,’ Rachel said, her voice cracking. ‘To sit at home in that great barn of a place with a brood of children, waiting for you to come back or not knowing where you were or when I would see you again.’ She shook her head. ‘Better to suffer the pain of separation now, than to suffer it constantly throughout our life together.’

Cory ran an agitated hand over his hair. ‘Rachel, I understand what you are saying, but I cannot give up my travels or my excavations! It is my life’s work! Not even for you-’ He broke off and gathered her into his arms, pressing his lips against her hair. ‘I love you so much. I want you with me…’

Rachel wriggled free of his embrace. ‘Please do not make this any more difficult. Cory. You know it cannot be.’

Cory was shaking his head. His mouth had set in obstinate lines. ‘You cannot simply dismiss what has happened between us and pretend that nothing has changed.’

‘I do not,’ Rachel said. ‘But we may carry on as before. No one need know.’

Cory got to his feet. ‘No one need know? I know! And you know! Do you think you will ever forget?’

‘I doubt it,’ Rachel said, with a watery smile that wobbled a little. ‘But I can school myself not to think of you all the time.’

‘Not if I am always there before you, reminding you of what could have been!’ For a moment Cory looked furious. ‘You cannot deny the passion between us, Rachel. You cannot simply put it away and pretend that it does not exist-that it has never existed!’ He made a noise of disgust. ‘I suppose that you have not relinquished your dream of finding a prudent man with whom to settle down? What kind of a pale, cold existence would that be compared with what we could have together?’

Rachel was shaking now. ‘I do not plan to marry, Cory. Even I can see that that would probably be a mistake now.’

Cory’s eyes blazed into hers. ‘Why? Because of what happened between us? There is nothing shameful in that, Rachel. Do not, I beg you, force yourself into the box society dictates for you just because of your wish for an ordinary life.’ His voice was savage as he caught her to him. ‘It would crush your spirit. Do you really wish to become the perpetual spinster who suffered a disappointment in love in her youth or the wife to a worthy man who discovers that you were indiscreet enough to have a love affair and makes you pay for it every day in petty little ways? Have the courage to marry me instead! I love you so much!’

Rachel clenched her fists with fury and grief. ‘Very well, Cory! You have thrown down a challenge to me and now I offer one to you! Give it all up. Give it all up for me to prove how much you do love me! Take the risk that it will not be as bad as you think!’

They stared at each other for a very long moment, then Cory let Rachel go and she fell back in her chair. ‘You cannot,’ she said. ‘I knew it.’

Cory’s grey eyes were full of pain. ‘How odd it is,’ he said, almost conversationally, ‘that I cannot give up all the things that I hold dear for you, Rae, and you cannot risk all for me. Even in that we are well matched.’

He got up, but stopped when he reached the door, pausing with his hand on the panels. ‘You once wished that someone would break my heart,’ he said. He smiled at her. ‘I know you well enough, my love, to realise that it will give you no satisfaction to have been the one to do it.’

Rachel heard the front door bang and the sound of his footsteps on the gravel, and then there was nothing but silence.

Chapter Twenty-One

Time crept by with astonishing slowness for Rachel. Sir Arthur and Lady Odell returned from Saltires later that day full of concern for her, but strangely less worried at the watery fate of their excavations. They exclaimed over Rachel’s wan appearance, sympathised over her hopeless attempts to save the site from flooding and asked no awkward questions at all about the whereabouts of Cory Newlyn. It was the first time that Rachel had ever blessed their absentmindedness. She concluded that they had forgotten that they had despatched Cory to Midwinter Royal to find her and she prayed devoutly that they would not raise the subject again. She went to bed early and cried and cried with a mixture of exhaustion and emotion as soon as her bedroom door was closed.

The following morning, Deborah Stratton called, and in the course of the conversation Rachel heard that Cory had left for London. It was not known when or if he would be back. Sir Arthur, when applied to, was equally vague. He had commissioned Cory to take some pieces of pottery and other artefacts to the British Museum and the work might take some time. Rachel had felt both sick and relieved at the news. She wanted to see Cory desperately; she missed him with an aching longing that seemed to worsen as the days went by. Occasionally she would see his writing on some of her father’s documents and her heart would jump and the misery intensify into a sharp pain in her chest. Her parents spoke of him constantly, careless references to events and memories that could not help but torment Rachel further. And yet she knew that this was something she would have to live through and accept for the rest of her life. She had made her choice and could only hope that the pain of loss would diminish in time.

The flood waters receded slowly. Sir Arthur sat in the library and wrote articles for the Antiquarian