He lowered his forehead to rest on his arms.
“The family she married into has turned out to be a ramshackle one, hasn’t it?” she said, her voice bright. “Though it has struck me that perhaps—just perhaps—Papa would have turned out differently if Mama had not done that to him. My mother would have to take the family prize, though, no matter what. She was always so proper, always so much the lady. She always despised Papa even after she had Boris with him. And she always favored me over Boris. I suppose she must have loved my real father. I don’t know. But those are the facts. I am a bastard. You have married a bastard, Miles.”
“Your father accepted you,” he said. “He gave you his name. He allowed you to grow up in his home with his own children even after your mother’s death. He legitimated you, Abby. That is why you loved him despite everything, I suppose.”
She pushed herself off the bed with undignified haste and crossed the room to straighten some ornaments on a dresser.
“Bad blood was drawn to bad blood,” she said. “Like found like. I don’t think I really loved him. He needed me, that is all. He was ill. I know people despise drunkards and think they can straighten out their own lives whenever they want. But they cannot. My father was ill just as surely as if he had had consumption or a cancer. He was ill and he needed me and I tended him. That is all. It was as simple as that.”
“You loved him, Abby,” he said.
“He left us all in a terrible case,” she said. “We had always been together despite everything. Yet suddenly he was gone, the children were with a great-aunt who dislikes them intensely, and Boris was burdened with debts he had done nothing to incur, and with no possible prospects for himself. And I was all alone. So very alone.” She wrapped her arms about herself.
“Come here,” he said, getting to his feet and moving the chair to one side. “You are not alone any longer.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I thought no one else in the world knew about me,” she said, “with Mama and Papa both gone. But he had told Rachel. And she is going to come to you for the two thousand pounds after the week is over, Miles. If she does not receive the payment, then the whole world will know.”
“Abby . . .” he said, walking across the room to her.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, hugging herself more tightly. “Please don’t. I shall go away somewhere. I don’t know where. But I will think of somewhere soon. I have some money left of the six thousand. Indeed, just two weeks ago I would have thought it a fortune. I should be able to—”
“Abby,” he said harshly, and he took her none too gently by the arm and pulled her into his arms. “What nonsense are you talking? Stop it this instant.”
“I ought not to have done it,” she said. “I would not have done it if I had not been so tempted. But I was overwhelmed by temptation, Miles. You cannot imagine what it was like, coming here knowing I was quite destitute, afraid to hope too strongly for any help at all, and suddenly finding that I could be a countess and married to a man as rich as Croesus. But I didn’t know that anyone else knew about me, Miles. I swear it. I didn’t even know that Rachel was still alive. I would have fought the temptation if I had known that there was a chance of dragging you down into such a dreadful scandal. I would have. You must believe me. I know that I have done terrible things, and I am a bastard and all that, but—”#p#分页标题#e#
He stopped her mouth with his own.
“I may have to take drastic measures if I hear that word on your lips again,” he said. “You are in no way responsible for the circumstances of your birth, Abby, and you are not that ugly thing you keep calling yourself.”
“But I am,” she said. Her eyes were enormous with unshed tears.
“By an accident of birth,” he said, “you are not a product of the marriage of your parents, Abby. But from what I have heard, you have proved yourself your father’s daughter and your brother’s sister and your half-sisters’ sister over and over and over again. Abby—my love—forgive yourself.”
“For deceiving you?” she said.
“For that too if you like,” he said. “But I meant for being an embarrassment to your mother and a shock and a disappointment to your father—if you were. You were the only one he did not mistreat a great deal? The only one who had any influence over him? I think perhaps he realized what a gem had been brought so strangely and unexpectedly into his life, Abby. Forgive yourself.”