The Undoing Of A Lady

much. I will always want more than you can give.

She stood looking at him, seeing the puzzlement and the frustration in his face, seeing how much he cared for her and how that very deep concern and protectiveness only served to emphasize that he did not love her as she loved him. The pain of it felt like a red-hot coal against her heart. She had to send him away before he hurt her all the more, unknowing but none the less painful for that.

“Thank you,” Lizzie said again, wrenching her gaze from the burning demand of his, “but I would rather be alone.”

Nat swore again and walked off and Laura got ponderously to her feet and put a hand on Lizzie’s arm. Lizzie knew Laura must be able to feel her shaking.

“Lizzie,” Laura said gently, “would you like to come inside out of the sun for a little? You may lie down if you wish, or have a cool drink, perhaps…”

Miles kissed Alice’s cheek. “I will see you later, sweetheart,” he said. “We must try to find Fortune now.”

Lizzie realized with a shock to the heart that he meant Tom. Now that Monty was dead Tom would be Sir Thomas Fortune. She could think of no one less appropriate to be the squire of Fortune’s Folly. Worse, she would not even put it past Tom to have murdered his brother for the title and the potential riches that the Dames’ Tax and the other medieval laws would afford him. She shuddered at the thought. Then she saw Lydia’s face. It was a tight, white mask of misery. Lizzie felt dreadful. Lydia had been betrayed twice over by Tom. Bad enough for her that Tom had returned to Fortune’s Folly and was lording it about the place with his whoring and his gambling and drinking. Now he was Sir Thomas he would be intolerable.

She went across to Lydia and put her arms about her friend. “It will be all right,” she whispered, though she hardly believed it herself.

They went into the cool darkness of The Old Palace and Lizzie sank gratefully into one of the chairs in the drawing room. Alice poured her a glass of brandy and brought it over to her, pressing it into her hand.

“I know it is probably the last thing you want,” she said with a smile, “particularly if you took too much wine last night, but you probably need it.”

Lizzie forced some of the spirit down, recognizing as it bloomed inside her, hot and strong, that she had needed it. She shivered and Alice grasped her cold hands in her own.

“Lizzie,” she said. “Why do you not want to marry Lord Waterhouse?”

“You don’t have to tell us,” Lydia hurried to add. “We only want to help you and to be here if you want to talk…”

“And none of us will moralize,” Laura said. She looked down ruefully at her hugely swollen belly. “Goodness knows, I shall be producing what the matrons euphemistically call a seven-month baby which we all know was conceived before Dexter and I wed, and Alice was the talk of Fortune’s Folly when Miles seduced her-”

“And I am ruined twice over,” Lydia finished, “so who are we to criticize? We are the most scandalous ladies in the village.”

Lizzie tried to smile. It came out very lopsided. “Nat wants to marry me because he…because we…”

“We guessed that bit,” Laura said dryly. “You made love on the night before his wedding to Flora.”

“Yes,” Lizzie said dully. “We made love.”

Except that they had not made love. She knew that now. Oh, she had slept with Nat, had sexual intercourse with him; she had fornicated with him, as her old nurse, Mrs. Batty, would probably have put it, in her deeply disapproving way. But she had not made love with him because although she had loved him-and all the terrible hurtful things that he had said to her about wanting him for herself had been so shamefully true-he had not loved her in return.

“I asked Nat to come to me that night because I wanted to talk to him,” Lizzie said. “I told myself that I wanted to save him from making a huge mistake in marrying Flora, but the truth was that it was because I loved him and could not bear for him to marry someone else.”

“I remember that you were quite vehement on the subject of Lord Waterhouse’s betrothal when we discussed it a few months ago at the spa rooms,” Alice murmured.

“Then you will also remember that when we spoke of it you told me that if I had feelings for him I should do something about them before it was too late,” Lizzie said.

“I scarcely meant that you should seduce him,” Alice said wryly. “Perhaps you took me a little too literally.”

“Oh, I am not blaming you,” Lizzie said hastily. She knitted her fingers together, pressing hard. “I know that this whole affair is no one’s fault but my own. Not even Nat’s, for I goaded him beyond endurance and provoked him and made him exceptionally angry with my interference and all the time I was pretending that it was for his own good.” She sighed. “Anyway, it was a disastrous mistake, for he does not love me.” She looked up and saw Alice watching her with nothing but gentleness in her blue eyes, and saw Laura’s sympathy and Lydia’s kindness and wanted suddenly to cry.

“I am not naive,” she said. “I understand that men and women come together for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with love and in our case it was frustration and fury and lust-” She stopped and shrugged a little hopelessly.

“But you do love him,” Laura said softly.

“Yes,” Lizzie admitted. “I do. I love him so much…” She hesitated. “If you had asked me even two weeks ago I think that I would have denied I loved Nat,” she said. “I was trying to fool myself as well as everyone else.” She made a brief, impatient gesture. “Oh, it does not matter how I feel! What matters is that for one stupid, deluded moment I thought that Nat might love me, too, but the truth is that he does not, and that is what hurts.” She pressed her hand to her heart in an unconscious gesture. “I have been so foolish,” she said starkly, “but I will not compound my stupidity by marrying Nat when he does not love me.”

“But he cares deeply for you-” Alice began.

“Would you want to be married to Miles if he merely cared for you?” Lizzie said bitterly. “If you loved Miles, adored him as you do, with every fiber of your being, and in return he cared for you?” She saw Alice’s stricken look and felt terrible. “I’m sorry, Alice,” she said remorsefully. “But it would be such an unequal match. It would break my heart each and every day.”

“But love can grow,” Alice argued.

“And if it does not?” Lizzie said. She thought of her mother again. “What if you wait and wait and that never happens? What then?” She shook her head. “It would be the worst match in the world,” she said. “You all know that Nat and I simply would not suit.”

No one contradicted her and that, Lizzie thought, rather proved her point.

“So you are saying that Nat has proposed simply out of a sense of honor,” Laura said slowly, “and because he cares for you and wants to protect you? That sounds good enough to me.”

“I do not deny he is a good man,” Lizzie said.

“But you want more than that,” Lydia said.

“I do when the whole of the rest of my life is at stake.” Lizzie shrugged, uncomfortably aware that Lydia, betrayed by her parents and her lover, would probably feel she had nothing to complain about. “I could not bear it if Nat fell in love with someone else after we wed,” she said honestly, “someone like Priscilla Willoughby. Better to lose him now, when he is not truly mine, than to another woman after our marriage.”

“But if you were to have a child,” Lydia began hesitatingly, her hand resting protectively on her own stomach, “then surely it would be better for it to have a loving father?”

Lizzie felt humbled. There was a huge lump in her throat and a raging anger inside her for her feckless, libertine brother and what he had done to Lydia. “There won’t be a child,” she said. “It was only once and anyway I do not feel in the least bit pregnant-” Her voice broke a little.

“Oh, Lizzie,” Lydia said, reaching out to her. Lizzie could see pity in her eyes. “Don’t be afraid. Everything will be well-”

The fear and the misery fused in Lizzie’s chest in one tight, hot ball. She wanted to take comfort from her friends but she did not want them to see her cry. She had always preferred to be alone with her misery, ever since she had been a child.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “I must go back to Fortune Hall now. There is so much to be done.”

Alice put out a hand. “Would you like me to come with you, Lizzie?”

Lizzie shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I will manage quite well on my own.”