She had no more to say. And he could think of nothing else either. He had never been good at talking from the heart. With a few close friends—all male—it was possible, but never with a woman. Certainly not with her. Taciturnity, the need to be a man and bear every burden on his own shoulders, was so inbred in him that he now found it impossible to speak his mind. He had been given the impression over the years that that very quality made him attractive to many women. Lady Katherine had never been one of them.
But it was too late for him to change. He thought it was too late.
She stopped when the path bent sharply to the left and he could see the buildings of a farm a short distance away. She turned and looked downward, and he did the same.
Yes! he thought instantly as the full force of the wind whipped his breath away for a moment. Oh, yes. Yes, it was incredibly beautiful. The grass- and gorse-covered hills curved about the beach, the church and the cottages of the village huddled against them as if for shelter. The tide was almost full in, the foam of the breakers stretching in a seemingly unbroken line for five miles. The water sparkled in the sunshine. The freshness of the salt air bit into his face.
He could almost understand why she had called it the most beautiful place on earth to live.
“Yes,” he said, “it is lovely.”
“But not nearly as lovely as Hyde Park or Vauxhall Gardens,” she said, sarcasm in her voice. She had not believed him, he realized. She had thought him being merely polite. Perhaps his tone of voice had lacked conviction.
The wind had torn long strands of her hair free of the pins. It lay over her shoulders, and one long strand blew across her face. She reached up with both hands as he watched and pulled all the pins free before shaking her head. He swallowed, watching her long fair hair, wild and tangled and lovely, stream out behind her.
It was something she would never have done five years ago. Five years ago she would not even have ventured out of doors without a bonnet. Her cloak and dress were flattened against her in front.
“Katherine,” he said quietly. “give me a chance.”
She turned her head sharply and looked at him for the first time—with wide eyes that brightened with tears. Perhaps it was the wind that brought them there. Certainly her face was without expression.
“A chance for what?” she asked. There was incredulity in her voice.
He shrugged. How could he put it into words? “To persuade you that life with me would not be the horror you seem to think it would be,” he said. “To give you the chance of a home of your own and marriage and motherhood.”
“I want nothing to do with you,” she said. “Can you not see that I have a different life now? That all that happened seems like something that must have happened to another person? That I want no reminders of it?”
“But you must have a woman’s needs,” he said. “And you must want children, surely?”
If it was the wind, it was causing two tears to spill over and trickle down her cheeks.
“No,” she said. “I am happy as I am. And even if I did need those things, it would not be from you.”
“But it could not be with anyone else,” he said. “I had your virginity.”
He remembered suddenly how he had hoped and hoped that his seed had taken root in her. How he had waited for weeks for Lambton to summon him back. How he had sent his old lodgekeeper on his first trip into Wales three months after she had been sent there. He remembered the acuteness of his disappointment when they returned to report that she showed no sign of being with child. And he had despised himself for wanting so desperately to have that unfair hold over her.
“You do not need to blame yourself,” she said. “It was not rape. I felt a lust to match your own that night. And it was all my fault. All of it. Do you think I enjoy being reminded of all those sordid details? Do you wonder that I shudder at seeing you again?”
Her words tormented him like a thousand devils. He swallowed.
“I hate you because you were a witness to my shame and stupidity,” she said, “and because you had been right all the time. I hate you because I hate myself as I was then. I am different now. At least, I like to believe I am different. And yet my hatred of you is as raw as ever. And worse because I know you do not deserve it.”
“Let me put it right, then," he said. “Let me marry you.”
She turned her eyes on him again. They were brimming with fresh tears. “You do not understand, do you?” she said. “There is nothing in that past life I can admire. There is nothing I wish to recapture. I have no wish to go back to any of it.”
“You were very young and inexperienced,” he said. “And he was a practiced charmer. You must learn to forgive yourself.”
“I have made peace with myself,” she said, looking away from him again and gazing down at the scene spread below them. “Here. This place has been my salvation. I want you to go away. Please. If you feel you owe me anything, though you do not, then please go away. I do not want you in my life.”
The words could not be plainer. Yet there was a huge sadness in her voice and in her face as she spoke and during the silence that followed her words. And there was a terrible sadness in him, a final loss of the faint hope that had sustained him through five long years.
He reached out with one hand and cupped it beneath her chin. She closed her eyes and stood very still. He touched the pad of his thumb very lightly to her lips. He was memorizing her, the look of her, the feel of the smooth coolness of her skin, the smell of her hair. He wondered how he would live his life with the illusion of hope finally gone.
And then she jerked her head away from him.
“You were always so totally without feeling,” she cried, her control gone, her voice shaking with passion. “All was propriety and duty and obligation with you. Always, from the first time I met you. There was no knowing you, and I came to discover that there was nothing to know. You were always as cold as ice and totally lacking in all emotion. Even in your lust. I woke afterward to find you gone from my bed, and the next day you were as controlled and as passionless as ever. The day after that you were offering me propriety, urging propriety on me. And it has lasted five years? Duty has brought you here even after so long? I needed comfort later that night and the morning after, but you would not be able to understand that I needed the comfort of your arms even if not of words. But you had nothing to offer me, nothing that I could possibly have wanted. Why would I want your name when there was nothing else? I would rather be dead.” She stopped suddenly and drew a shuddering breath. “I would rather be dead,” she repeated hoarsely.
