He walked back toward Hetty, and she saw naked pain in his eyes. She drew back from that knowledge of him. She drew back from the humanness in him, the honesty of that pain. She didn’t want to see pain, only guilt. But an instant later, his face was expressionless. But she wasn’t wrong, she’d seen that pain. She felt a small seed of doubt begin to grow within her. She hated it, wanted to squash it, but she couldn’t. When he spoke again, his voice was curiously flat, as if he were reciting an impersonal story.
“As I told you, after I married Elizabeth, we immediately left for Billingsgate. By the time we reached Blanchley Manor, we were scarce speaking to each other, nor did I ever again touch her. After but a month of marriage, her belly was round with child. I pressed her to tell me the truth of the matter, but she only laughed at me and hurled half-veiled taunts until I could bear the sight of her no longer. I had no desire to return to London and instead visited some cousins in Scotland until I knew her time was near.
“Upon my return to Blanchley Manor, her hatred of me was as heavy as her huge belly. The night the child was born, she had consumed a great deal of wine at dinner. I remember to this day thinking that her angel’s face had become cold and hard, as if mirroring her true nature. How she laughed at me that evening, for she knew that I wouldn’t divorce her, that I would accept her child as my own.” He could still picture her face, hear her low laughing voice. “Ah, so you do not care for your fine, beautiful wife, your grace?” He remembered how she had bared her swollen breasts, leaning over the table. “See all the milk I have! What a fine bouncing child I shall present to you, your grace.” He drew a breath and got a grip on himself.
He continued with an effort, and she saw it. “There is more ugliness, of course, but suffice it to say that my fury grew to such heights that finally I grasped her shoulders and shook her. She tore away, all the while laughing at me. In her drunken state, she tripped and fell heavily over a chair. The fall brought on her labor, and it was I who delivered my wife of another man’s child. It was a little girl and she lived but a few minutes. Her mother lay in a half-drunken stupor, uncaring.”
He paused a moment, then added in a voice devoid of emotion, “Elizabeth didn’t die in childbed as I have allowed everyone to believe.” He pictured again in his mind for perhaps the hundredth time what must have happened from his frightened groom’s account. Elizabeth had ordered his curricle without his knowledge, his half-wild bay stallion harnessed between the shafts. She’d whipped the animal about his head until in a spate of fury the stallion had kicked out the flooring of the curricle and sent Elizabeth hurtling down a steep incline. He said to Hetty, “She died in a curricle accident about two weeks after the birth of her child. That is all, Hetty, there is no more that I can tell you. It is, of course, up to you if you wish to believe me.”
He turned and walked away from her. As he had spoken, she had felt almost as if she had been there, standing near to him and Elizabeth as they wreaked their anger on each other. She had seen the bitter pain lighting his eyes, had sensed his unwillingness even now to unbury his painful ghosts. But the letter, she always came back to the letter. The letter and Damien’s unhappiness, as described by Pottson.
She lay staring into the dark shadows about the room, trying to make sense of things. She realized something she didn’t want to realize, but she had to. Deep within her she knew that he had spoken the truth. She simply had no doubts even though she wanted them, wanted to curse him for his lies, but they weren’t lies and she knew it. She simply knew it. She also realized that she wanted to believe him.
She thought of her life as Lord Harry, of the decision to make herself into a gentleman. Lord Harry had given her life meaning and focus. The sharp pain in her side was preferable to the wrenching pain that now filled her. Had Lord Harry’s existence been for naught? She felt hollow as she forced herself to ask, “You said that Elizabeth would never tell you who fathered the child. Yet you believe that it was Filey.”
He turned to face her and she saw surprise in his dark eyes, surprise that she was no longer challenging him. “Yes, that’s true. I told you that if I had been certain, I would have killed him. The babe carried his general features, very fair with a thatch of reddish hair. There was no resemblance whatsoever in the babe’s features to Damien or to me. There is nothing more I can tell you, Hetty.”
She lay back against the pillow and closed her eyes. “No, there’s nothing more. I believe you’ve told me everything.” Suddenly she felt such relief well up inside her that she wanted to shout with it. She was awash with it until it hit her hard what she’d done. She’d set out to kill a man, a man who was innocent. She struggled up on her elbows. “God, I’ve been like Don Quixote, fencing with windmills, searching for vengeance, when I had naught to do but speak to you, to show you Elizabeth’s letter, to ask for the truth. You were my vendetta. I used you to help pull me from my grief. I made you my
