'Nell!' he said, and there was such tenderness in his voice that she looked up at him, startled. There was an awkward moment while they looked full into each other's eyes.
'Nell,' he said, 'will you listen to me for a while?'
'No!' she said quickly.
'No?'
'No,' she said. 'I want to say something first.' She turned away from him and busied herself cleaning her brushes and packing away her things. 'I was writing you a letter when you arrived yesterday. I had not finished it, but it was far easier to write than to speak to you, I think.'
'What is it, Nell?' he asked gently. 'We should not find it so hard to talk to each other, should we? There was a time not so long ago when we meant everything to each other.'
'Oh, I think not,' she said breathlessly. 'But no matter. The point is, William, that you were right that night in Richmond. My behavior since I have known you has been far from blameless. The worst wrongs I have done you have been to keep secrets from you, facts that you had a right to know. Before we became l-lovers, I should have told you who I was. You had a right to know that and to decide if you still wanted to… to…'
'It should have made no difference,' he said quietly.
'But I did wrong,' she persisted, 'and thus I had no right to refuse to forgive you for what you did to me. I do forgive you, William. I do not know why you did as you did, and I really do not want to know. But it does not matter. It has been a sordid affair from beginning to end, and perhaps we should forgive each other and have an end to the bitterness at least.'
'Nell,' he said, and he reached out without thinking and put behind her ear the truant lock of hair, which had fallen again across her face.
She pulled away from his hand and turned away from him. 'I think it would be better if you went now, William,' she said. 'I mean away from the house altogether. It is painful for both of us, I believe, to be in each other's company. We do not need to torture each other, do we?'
'I love you,' he said.
She turned back to him and smileu rather wanly. 'It is kind of you to say so,' she said. 'You know my pride will not let me accept you unless you can say that, and you feel that you must convince me because of the child. It is not necessary, William. I have had two months to become accustomed to the knowledge that I am increasing. I am no longer bewildered.' She had been looking at his hessian boots. She looked now into his face and found it white and set.
'It is true, then,' he said. 'I was convinced that it must be so, yet it is still a shock to hear you say it.'
'Did the Marquess of Hetherington not tell you?' she asked.
'Robert?' he said. 'His lips can be firmly buttoned if he feels that honor demands secrecy. No, I did not know for sure until now. Nell, I have caused you so much suffering, and I have let you endure it all alone. You must have been so very frightened. Let me make amends as far as I am able. Let me give you my name and my protection now. Let me care for you.'
She shook her head.
'I wanted to marry you,' he said. 'I wanted you and I needed you, Nell. And I left you because I knew I did not have the willpower to stay away from you as long as I stayed at Graystone. I wanted to marry you but I could not offer for you because I did not believe I could offer you my heart. I fancied myself in love with someone else. And you had said you loved me, Nell. It did not seem fair to marry you when, as it seemed to me, I needed you only to soothe a bruised heart. I did not realize, fool that I was, that my feelings for you were ones of love. It seems incredible to me now that I did not know.'
'You loved someone else?' Nell asked, just as if she had not heard anything else.
'It was over long before I met you,' he said, 'but I had refused to let go. She was a friend as well as the woman I had hoped to marry. But when I saw her again in London, I realized that only the friendship had survived the year of our separation. I had loved you without even realizing the truth. But I had realized it before I met you again, Nell, and I had already decided that I would go back to Yorkshire and find you and see if you would have me.'
'Even if I had been a barmaid or a scullery maid?' she asked.
'Even if you had been a duchess,' he said with a smile. 'Your rank really did not matter to me, Nell. I loved a girl who was unspoiled by life, a girl who could look at the world around her with wonder and awe. And a woman who was unafraid to give herself in love to a man who had promised her nothing in return.'
'Oh,' she said.
'I am truly sorry for the terror the last few months must have brought you, Nell,' he said. 'And I will be very sorry if you insist on going through this alone. But I cannot feel as sorry as I should for those afternoons we spent together. I have not known a great deal of love in my life-perhaps that is why I did not recognize it this time. But you have taught me that love is a giving of one self, that it goes beyond the rules and restrictions that our society imposes on us. I am glad that my child will be borne by you, even if you refuse to acknowledge me as the father. He will be fortunate indeed to have you for a mother.'
'Oh,' Helen said again. She was blinking her eyes, furiously trying to hold back the tears. 'I have always been told that I am an ungrateful, unfeeling girl. I have not known a great deal of love either, William.'
He smiled. 'You will have more than your fair share for the rest of your life, little wood nymph,' he said, 'whether you accept me or not. You can drive me away but you will never stop me from loving you.'
'William…' she said, and stopped, appalled, when she heard how thin and uncontrolled her voice was. She swallowed. 'I thought I would die when you did not come and when I heard that you had gone from Graystone.'
'Did you, Nell?' he said.
'I have been so lonely,' she said.
'Me too, sweetheart.'
'You are not saying all this because I am stubborn and bad-tempered and will not agree to let you do the honorable thing?'
'No, Nell.'
'Oh,' she said.
'Nell,' he said, 'if I come closer and kiss you, are you likely to start yelling and kicking and punching?'
'No,' she said. And she laughed nervously and felt her face crumple up at the same time. 'William,' she said, and she reached out blindly for him, 'I really do not have any courage at all. I have been terrified and I have secretly dreamed that you would come along and sling me over your shoulder and carry me off by force to the nearest preacher. You won't let me go or change your mind, will you?'
He hugged her to him and hid his face against her hair. 'I have just had an idea,' he said. 'If you refuse to marry me of your own free will, I am going to sling you over my shoulder and carry you off by force to the nearest preacher. What do you think of that?'
She laughed and hiccuped at the same moment. 'William,' she said into the capes of his greatcoat, 'I do love you, you know. That has never changed. I am not marrying you because I feel I should.'
'I know,' he said, and he framed her face with his hands and looked down into her eyes. 'I know, Nell. You are wrong, you see. You have a great deal of courage. I know very well that you would not marry me if you felt there was any doubt that either of us loved the other. You will marry me, then?'
'Yes,' she whispered. 'Oh, yes.'
He lowered his head and kissed her. And then his hands moved away from her head so that he could hold her to him again, and her mouth opened beneath his seeking tongue. Somehow she had unclasped the buttons of his greatcoat and burrowed her way inside its heavy folds. Her hands found their way inside his coat and his waistcoat to the silk shirt at his shoulders. Heat flared between them.
'Enough, sweetheart, enough,' he said at last, his lips at her temples and on her closed eyes. 'This time I want to treat you properly. We will be wed as soon as may be, and then I shall take you to a warm and clean bed and make love to you for the whole of one night- and for all of the following day, very like. But not on the grass in clandestine manner again. Not until after we are married anyway,' he added with a smile.
'Will we stay in London?' she asked. 'It is going to be obvious very soon that we did not wait for our wedding.'
