The Secret Pearl(31)

“Yes,” the duchess said, “of course she does. My darling is just a baby.”

“In future,” he said, “it will be the other way around. I trust you will inform Nanny of the change. She will pout when you tell her, though you will do so. I will inform Miss Hamilton of the new rule.”

Two tears spilled over from the duchess’s eyes. “You are a cruel and hard-hearted man,” she said. “You will do anything to thwart my will, won’t you, Adam? Just because you once did me a kindness, must I be in your debt forevermore?”

He looked down at her tight-lipped. “You know that there has never been any question of any such thing,” he said. “And never will be. Only in your imagination, Sybil. Sometimes you almost have me persuaded that I am a tyrant and a villain.”

She brushed at her eyes with her handkerchief and twisted it in her lap. “So I am to subject myself to having my daughter taken from my care and from her nurse’s care and put into that of your doxy,” she said. “Very well, Adam. I am too weak to fight you.”

“My doxy?” he said. “Have a care, Sybil. Perhaps I should suggest that you make it unlikely that I would wish for the services of any doxy.” The right side of his face smiled fleetingly when she glanced up at him, startled. “No, I didn’t think that idea would appeal to you.”

“Sometimes I think you will force me to hate you,” she said in a low voice that shook from her tears.

“You become tedious,” he said.

He watched her as she coughed and sank back against the cushions of the daybed and pressed the handkerchief to her lips.

“I should have insisted that you have that cough looked at by another doctor months ago,” he said quietly. “Hartley seems quite unable to cure it. Let me send for a physician from London, Sybil. Let me do something for you. Let there be some kindness between us for a change.”

“I think I would like to be alone,” she said. “I need to rest.”

“I did not plan this,” he said wearily. “I did not plan that we would come to bicker and set our wills against each other. I did not foresee that you would come to see me as a tyrant and that sometimes I would be forced into acting like one. I hoped for a good marriage. I did not foresee that we might come to hate each other.”

“Sometimes,” she said, burying her face in her handkerchief, her voice a thin thread of misery, “I hate you for pretending to be dead and coming back alive. I hate you for driving Thomas away when you knew what we had become to each other. Sometimes I find it hard not to hate you, Adam, though I try not to. You are my husband.”

She started coughing again and could not stop.

White-faced, he crossed the room to her, took out his own handkerchief, went down on one knee before her, and held it out to her. But she slapped his hand away.

“Sybil,” he said, and rested a hand lightly against the back of her head while she coughed.

But she squirmed away from him, got to her feet, and fled to her dressing room, slamming the door behind her.

The Duke of Ridgeway remained on one knee, his head bowed forward. And he wondered, as he had done dozens of times before, if she had ever loved him. Had she said she did only because she wanted to be his duchess and mistress of one of the most splendid homes in the kingdom? Had all the kisses, all the melting looks and sweet smiles, been artifice?

He had grown up knowing that he would be expected to marry her. And the idea had never disturbed him. But he had not fallen in love with her until he came home from Spain to find her grown up and lovely and fragile, her blue eyes wide with admiration for him. He had fallen deeply in love, painfully in love.

And had it all been completely one-sided? Had her protestations of love been all lies? Or perhaps she too had been bound by the expectations of years. Perhaps she had tried to fall in love with him or at least to develop a regard for him. Perhaps she had tried.

He supposed that she might have felt some regard for him then, when his face was whole, when perhaps he could have been described as a good-looking man. He would never forget the look of deep revulsion on her face when he had caught her up on their first meeting after his return and twirled her about and kissed her.

She had hurt him badly. But he had expected the look to disappear once she had got used to his new appearance. It never had. But by the time of his return, of course, she had been betrothed to Thomas. He had made far too light of that fact at first.

The duke got wearily to his feet and put his handkerchief away in his pocket. If someone had told him that spring of Waterloo and the spring after, when he was coming home, that his love for Sybil would ever die, he would have laughed in derision. A love like his could never die this side of doomsday.