Andrew Lord of Despair(96)

Gareth shook his head, but Andrew hadn’t finished. He went on in a detached tone, but settled his arm more snugly around Gareth’s shoulders.

“I told you, not long ago, that when the accident occurred, I faced a decision.”

It was Andrew’s turn to pause, to gather the strength needed to push heavy, hurting realities into spoken words, and to labor those words into the darkness he shared with his brother.

“When the boat foundered, I faced a decision,” Andrew said. “I could throw the rope to either Mother or Father, but Father made that decision for me, at least.”

Another silence, laden with grief, pain, and despair.

“There were others in the water, however. Our uncle, our cousin, our grandfather… They were not close enough that I could have reached them. I am almost sure I could not have reached them.”

Andrew’s throat ached with dread, as if he could choke the words off at their source. Beside him, Gareth had gone still.

“Your fiancée, however, was within the range of my assistance, and screaming for help. Mother was swimming, while Julia had already begun to sink. I made a choice, Gareth, a deliberate, conscious choice to save Mother before Julia, to let Julia die, as it turned out, knowing…”

When Andrew was sure his brother would turn from him, Gareth shifted so he sat on the step above Andrew, and then Gareth’s arm came around Andrew’s shoulders.

“She carried my child, Gareth. Your fiancée carried my child, and I let them both drown.” Andrew tried to turn from him, but Gareth wouldn’t allow it. He vised his arm around Andrew with a soft, bitter oath, and wouldn’t let go.

Andrew had thought himself beyond tears, beyond the ambit of regret and grief, but they rose up to drown him, just as surely as the sea had engulfed his unborn child. His body would not hold the despair inside him; there was neither air enough to breathe through the despair, nor light, nor love enough to heal it, and there never would be.

When he attempted again to escape his brother’s hold, Gareth let him go, but only far enough to sit up and fish out a handkerchief. Gareth’s arm stayed around his shoulders, and Andrew had the sense when Gareth withdrew that support, he, Andrew, would die. He would simply cease, collapsing from the weight of his guilt, weakness, and utter failing as a man, as a brother, a son, a father.

As a husband and a lover.

“I let the woman you were to marry, and my own child, die,” he repeated, contempt rising into his voice.

“I did hear you. I do not understand you.”

Gareth wanted to hear mitigating circumstances; that was why this companionable arm remained around Andrew’s shoulders, why the warmth of Gareth’s body still kept the chill and darkness of the night at bay. Andrew could offer no mitigation, but he could offer an explanation.

He needed to offer it, in fact.

“That summer, I was fifteen,” he said, struggling to reclaim an earlier tone of detachment. “Mother and Father marched me around to the usual series of house parties, in the hopes I might meet some of the fellows who would be in my form at university the next year. I found, to my surprise, I enjoyed these gatherings, because they were planned to allow the young people plenty of socializing. I polished my manners, and for the first time, the ladies—not the dairymaids and laundresses and more generous tavern wenches—but the ladies were susceptible to my flirting.”

“You were a lamb to slaughter,” Gareth bit out.

Andrew went on as if his brother hadn’t spoken.

“I began that summer as a virgin in the most literal sense. I met Julia and was delighted, delighted beyond my wildest dreams, to find she was willing to accommodate me in the loss of that burden. At twenty years of age, she was to me a sophisticated lady, and that she’d bestow her favors upon me, miraculous.

“Imagine my surprise, when that selfsame woman appeared with her parents at our family gathering in Scotland, claiming she was pregnant with our cousin Jeffrey’s child. Of course, she soon took me aside and explained it would be better for all were my son to be raised as the heir to the marquessate, and I, craven, witless, conscienceless coward that I am, said nothing. I did nothing, not when talk arose of wedding her to you, not when she let Jeffrey believe the child was his, not when Jeffrey protested that he could not be the father. There was never a man who behaved as dishonorably as I.”

Still, Andrew felt the weight of his brother’s arm around him, the quiet bulk of Gareth’s presence at his side.

Soon would come the stiffening in outrage, the drawing away in horror.

“Gareth, don’t you understand what I am telling you? I dishonored a young woman, allowed her to lie about whose child she carried, failed to take responsibility when she became your chosen bride, and then committed murder, with the result that my perfidy might go unnoticed.”