Richard flinched, but he said, “The child will be my niece or nephew.”
“But not yours!” Iris turned away, hugging her arms to her body. “And not mine.”
“You cannot love a child not of your body?” His voice was low, accusing.
“Of course I can. But this is deceptive. It’s wrong. You know it is!”
“I wish you luck convincing him of that,” Fleur said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, be quiet!” Iris snapped. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?”
Fleur lurched back, startled by Iris’s display of temper.
“What will you do when we have a boy,” Iris asked Richard, “and your son—your firstborn son—cannot inherit Maycliffe because you have already given it away?”
Richard said nothing, his lips pressed so tightly together they were nearly gone white.
“You would deny your own child his birthright?” Iris pressed.
“I will make arrangements,” he said stiffly.
“There are no arrangements that can be made,” Iris cried. “You cannot have thought this through. If you claim her son as ours, you cannot make a younger child your heir. You—”
“Maycliffe is not entailed,” Richard reminded her.
Iris drew an angry breath. “That’s even worse. You would allow Fleur’s son to believe he is your firstborn and then hand Maycliffe to his younger brother?”
“Of course not,” Richard nearly hissed. “What sort of man do you think I am?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
He recoiled, but he continued speaking. “I will divide the property in two if necessary.”
“Oh, that will be fair,” Iris drawled. “One child will get the house and the other the orangery. No one is going to feel slighted at that.”
“For the love of God,” Richard exploded, “will you just shut up?”
Iris gasped, flinching at his tone.
“I shouldn’t have said that if I were you,” Fleur said.
Richard snarled something at his sister; Iris didn’t know what, but Fleur took a step back, and all three of them hung frozen in an uneasy tableau until Richard drew a loud breath, and said in an emotionless voice, “We will all travel to Scotland next week. To visit cousins.”
“We have no Scottish cousins,” Fleur said flatly.
“We do now,” he told her.
Fleur looked at him as if he’d gone mad.
“Just recently discovered on the family tree,” he said, with enough false cheer to indicate that he was making the whole thing up. “Hamish and Mary Tavistock.”
“Now you’re inventing relations?” Fleur scoffed.
He ignored her sarcasm. “You are going to enjoy their company so much you decide to stay.” He gave her a sickly smile. “For months.”
Fleur crossed her arms. “I won’t do it.”
Iris looked at Richard. The raw pain in his eyes was almost too much to bear. For a moment she wanted to go to him, to lay her hand on his arm and comfort him.
But no. No. He did not deserve her comfort. He had lied to her. He had deceived her in the worst possible way.
“I cannot stay here,” she said suddenly. She could not remain in this room. She could not look at him. Or his sister.
“You will not leave me,” Richard said sharply.
She turned, not sure if her face belied her disbelief. Or her contempt. “I am going to my room,” she said slowly.
He shifted his weight slightly. He was embarrassed. Good.
“Do not disturb me,” Iris said.
Neither Richard nor Fleur said a word.
Iris stalked to the door and wrenched it open, only to find Marie-Claire, tripping over her feet as she jumped back, trying to look as if she hadn’t been blatantly eavesdropping.
“Good afternoon,” Marie-Claire said with a hasty smile. “I was just—”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Iris snapped, “you already know.”
She brushed past her, beyond caring that she’d made the younger girl stumble. When she got to her room, she did not slam the door. Instead she shut it with a careful click, her hand remaining frozen on the handle. With a strange detachment, she watched as her fingers began to tremble and then shake. And then her legs were shaking, and she had to lean against the door for support, and then she was sliding down, down to the floor where she bent into herself and began to weep.
IRIS WAS GONE for a full minute before Richard could bring himself to look at his sister.
“Do not blame this on me,” Fleur said with low fervor. “I did not ask this of you.”
Richard tried not to respond. He was so damned weary of arguing with her. But he could not see anything but the shattered look on Iris’s face, and he had an awful sense that he’d broken something within her, something he could never repair.
He began to feel chilled, the hot fury of the last month replaced by a devastating frost. His eyes settled hard on Fleur’s. “Your lack of gratitude astounds me.”
“I am not the one who demanded that she commit such an immoral fraud.”
Richard clenched his teeth until his jaw shook. Why could she not see reason? He was trying to protect her, to give her a chance at a happy, respectable life.
Fleur gave him a scornful glance. “Did you really think she was going to smile, and say, ‘As you wish, sir?’”
“I will deal with my wife as I see fit,” he bit off.
Fleur snorted.
“My God,” he exploded. “You have absolutely no—” He cut himself off, raking a hand through his hair as he wrenched himself away, turning to face the window. “Do you think I like this?” he nearly hissed. He clutched the sill with whitened fingers. “Do you think I enjoyed deceiving her?”
“Then don’t.”
“The damage is done.”
“But you can fix it. All you have to do is tell her she doesn’t have to steal my child.”
He whirled around. “It’s not steal—” He caught the triumphant look on her face, and said, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Fleur gave him a stony stare. “I assure you, I enjoy nothing about this.”
He looked at her then, really looked at her. Behind her eyes she was just as broken as Iris. The pain in her face . . . Had he put it there? No. No. He was trying to help her, to save her from the ruined existence with which that bastard Parnell had left her.
His hands curled into fists. If that bloody rotter hadn’t gone and died, he would have killed him. No, he would have marched him to the church with Fleur and then killed him. He thought of how his sister had once been, full of dreams and romance. She used to lie in the grass by the orangery and read in the sunshine. She used to laugh.
“Make me understand,” he pleaded. “Why do you resist this? Don’t you realize this is your only hope for a respectable life?”
Fleur’s lips trembled, and for the first time that afternoon, she looked unsure of herself. He saw in her face the child she’d once been, and it broke his heart anew.
“Why can you not set me up somewhere as a young widow?” she asked. “I can go to Devon. Or Cornwall. Somewhere where we don’t know a soul.”
“I haven’t the money to provide you with a proper household,” Richard said, shame at his financial constraints making his voice hard. “And I will not allow you to live in poverty.”
“I don’t need much,” Fleur said. “Just a little cottage, and—”
“You think you don’t need much,” Richard cut in. “But you don’t know. You’ve lived your whole life with servants. You’ve never had to shop for your food or stoke your own fires.”
“Neither have you,” she shot back.
“This isn’t about me. I’m not the one who will be off in a leaky cottage, worrying over the price of meat.”
Fleur looked away.
“I’m the one,” he said in a softer voice, “who will have to worry about you, wondering what I will do if you fall ill, or are taken advantage of, and I ca
n’t even help you because you’re half a country away.”
Fleur did not speak for some time. “I cannot marry the baby’s father,” she finally said. “And I will not give up my child.”
“It will be with me,” he reminded her.
“But it won’t be mine,” she cried. “I don’t want to be its aunt.”
“You say that now, but what happens in ten years when you realize that no one will marry you?”
“I realize that now,” she said sharply.
“If you have this child and raise it yourself, you will be lost to respectable society. You won’t be able to stay here.”
She went still. “You would cut me off, then.”
“No,” he said quickly. “Never. But I cannot keep you in the house. Not while Marie-Claire is yet unmarried.”
Fleur looked away.
“Your ruin is her ruin. Surely you know that.”
“Of course I know that,” she said hotly. “Why do you think I—”
But she stopped, clamping her mouth shut.
“What?” he demanded. Why did he think she what?
She shook her head. And in a voice low and sad, she said, “We will never agree on this.”
He sighed. “I am only trying to help you, Fleur.”
“I know.” She looked up at him, her eyes tired and sad and maybe even a little wise.
“I love you,” he said, choking on the words. “You are my sister. I vowed to protect you. And I failed. I failed.”
“You did not fail.”
He threw out an arm, motioning to her still-flat belly. “You mean to tell me you gave yourself to Parnell willingly?”
“I told you, that’s not what—”
“I should have been here,” he said. “I should have been here to protect you, and I wasn’t. So for the love of God, Fleur, give me the opportunity to protect you now.”
“I cannot be my child’s aunt,” she said with quiet determination. “I cannot.”
Richard rubbed his face with the heel of his hand. He was so tired. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired in his life. He would talk to her tomorrow. He would make her see.
He walked to the door. “Do not do something rash,” he said quietly. And then he added, “Please.”
She gave a single nod. It was enough. He trusted her. It was the damnedest thing, but he trusted her.
He let himself out of the room, pausing only briefly to acknowledge Marie-Claire’s presence in the hall. She was still standing near the door, her fingers nervously clasped together. He could not imagine she’d needed to eavesdrop; most of the conversation had been amply loud.
“Should I go in?” she asked.
He shrugged. He had no answers. He kept walking.
He wanted to talk to Iris. He wanted take her hand in his and make her understand that he hated this, too, that he was sorry he’d tricked her.
But not sorry he married her. He could never be that.
He paused outside her door. She was crying.
He wanted to hold her.
But how could he be of comfort, when he was the one who had done this to her?
So he kept walking, past his own bedroom door and down the stairs. He went to his study and he shut the door. He looked at his half-drunk glass of brandy and decided he hadn’t had nearly enough.
That was a problem easily remedied.
He downed the dregs and refilled the glass, raising it in a silent toast to the devil.
Would that all his problems had such easy answers.
Chapter Twenty
NEVER HAD MAYCLIFFE been such a cold and quiet house.
At breakfast the next morning, Richard sat in silence, his eyes following Fleur as she selected her food from the sideboard. She sat across from him, but they did not speak, and when Marie-Claire entered the room, their greetings were nothing but grunts.
Iris did not come down.
Richard did not see her all day, and when the dinner gong sounded, he lifted his hand to knock at her door, but he found himself frozen before he made contact with the wood. He could not forget the look on her face when he’d told her what she must do, could not erase the sound of her tears after she’d fled to her room.
He’d known this would happen. He’d been dreading it since the moment he slid his ring on her finger. But it was so much worse than his imaginings. The foreboding sense of guilt had been replaced by soul-deep loathing, and he truly wasn’t sure he’d ever feel at ease with himself again.
He used to be a good person. Maybe not the best person, but he’d been fundamentally good. Hadn’t he?
In the end, he did not knock at Iris’s door. He went down to the dining room by himself, stopping only to instruct a maid to have supper brought up to her on a tray.
Iris did not come down to breakfast the next day, either, prompting Marie-Claire to proclaim herself jealous. “It’s so unfair that married women can take their breakfast in bed, and I can’t,” she said as she stabbed her knife in the butter. “There’s really no—”
She stopped talking, Richard’s and Fleur’s twin expressions of ire enough to silence anyone.
The following morning Richard resolved to speak to his wife. He knew she deserved her privacy after such a shock, but she had to know as well as anyone that time was not their friend. He had given her three days; he could not give her any more.
Once again he breakfasted with his sisters, not that any of them spoke a word. He was trying to decide the best way to approach Iris, attempting to arrange his words into coherent and persuasive sentences, when she appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a frock of the palest blue—her favorite color, he’d deduced—and her hair had been dressed into an intricate twist of braids and loops and honestly, he didn’t know how to describe it except that she looked more done-up than he’d ever seen her.
She’d donned armor, he realized. He could not blame her.
Iris hovered in place for a moment, and he shot to his feet, suddenly aware that he’d been staring. “Lady Kenworthy,” he said with full respect. It was perhaps too formal, but his sisters were still at the table, and he would not have them think he held his wife in anything but the highest regard.
Iris glanced at him with icy blue eyes, dipped her chin in a small nod of recognition, and then busied herself at the sideboard. Richard watched as she spooned a small portion of eggs onto her plate, then added two pieces of bacon and a slice of ham. Her movements were steady and precise, and he could not help but admire her composure as she took her seat and greeted them one by one: “Marie-Claire,” then “Fleur,” and finally, “Sir Richard.”
“Lady Kenworthy,” Marie-Claire said in polite greeting.
Iris did not remind her to use her Christian name.
Richard looked down at his plate. He had just a few bites of food left. He wasn’t really hungry, but it felt as if he ought to be eating if Iris was, so he took a slice of toast from a plate at the center of the table and began to butter it. His knife scraped too hard against the bread, the sound grating and loud in the overwhelming silence.
“Richard?” Fleur murmured.
He looked at her. She glanced rather pointedly at his toast, which, it had to be said, was looking very sad and mangled.
Richard gave her a glare, for no logical reason whatsoever, and took a savage bite. Then coughed. Bloody hell. It was dry as dust. He looked down. All the butter he’d attempted to spread had scraped up onto the knife, all curled up like some sort of tortured dairy ribbon.
With a growl he slapped the now rather soft butter onto the toast and took another bite. Iris stared at him with a disconcertingly steady gaze, then said, with no inflection whatsoever, “Jam?”
He blinked, the sound of her voice startling in the silence. “Thank you,” he said, taking the small dish from her fingers. He had no idea what flavor it was—something crimson, so he’d probably like it—but he didn’t care. Other than his name, it was the first word she’d spoken to him in three days.
&n
bsp; After another minute or so, however, he was beginning to think that it would be the only word for the next three days as well. Richard did not quite understand how silence could have varying degrees of awkwardness, but this four-person silence was infinitely more awful than the one he’d endured with just his sisters for company. A frigid mantle had come over the room, not of temperature but of mood, and every clink of fork against dish was like the crack of ice.
And then suddenly—thankfully—Marie-Claire spoke. It occurred to Richard that perhaps she was the only one who could. She was the only one who wasn’t playing a role in this macabre farce that had become his life.
“It is good to see you downstairs,” she said to Iris.
“It is good to be down,” Iris said with barely a glance in Marie-Claire’s direction. “I am feeling much better.”
Marie-Claire blinked. “Were you ill?”
Iris took a sip of her tea. “In a manner of speaking.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw Fleur’s head snap around.
“And are you well now?” he asked, staring at Iris until she was forced to meet his gaze.
“Quite.” She turned her attention back to her toast, then set it down with an oddly deliberate motion. “If you will all forgive me,” she said, rising to her feet.
Richard stood immediately, and this time so too did his sisters.
“You haven’t eaten a thing,” Marie-Claire said.
“I’m afraid my stomach is somewhat unsettled,” Iris replied in a voice that Richard found far too composed. She placed her napkin on the table next to her plate. “It is my understanding that it is a malady common to women in my condition.”
Fleur gasped.
“Shall you wish me joy?” Iris said tonelessly.
Richard realized he couldn’t. He’d got what he wanted—no, not what he wanted, it had never been what he wanted. But he’d got what he asked for. Iris might not be smiling about it, but for all intents and purposes she had just announced her pregnancy. To three people who knew full well it was a lie, but still, she’d signaled that she would do what Richard had demanded of her. He’d won.
But he could not wish her joy.
“Excuse me,” Iris said, exiting the room.