“Then we will do what we have to do,” Lord Beecham said, and wondered silently exactly what that would be.
“I don’t want to be married to him, Spenser. Perhaps it is just better to go along as we have, not to put our hands in the hornet’s nest. Perhaps I won’t ever hear from him again.”
“We will marry, Helen. We will not be lovers.”
“If he is alive, then we can never marry, unless I divorce him. I cannot do that, Spenser. It would be a horrible scandal.”
“We will speak of that again when and if the fellow shows up. If he is alive, he will come. If he isn’t, then we will marry. If he comes later, then we will deal with it when and if it happens. If there is nothing else, then you will divorce him. If the scandal proves too great, then we will move to Italy, a lovely place. To Tuscany, I believe, our own snug little villa. You will buy a local inn and run it. I speak Italian and will teach you all the curse words. What do you think?”
“I think you are wonderful, but that isn’t to the point. There is something you’re ignoring here, and you simply can’t.”
“What is that, pray?”
“You are Lord Beecham. You must have an heir. I am barren.”
“I have already given that all the thought it deserves. My nominal heir is a cousin, a sailing captain in the Americas. He’s a good fellow, as are his sons. Don’t worry about it. I want you more than I want anything else in this entire benighted world. Believe it.”
“It isn’t right.” He said nothing more, just looked at her. She nodded, finally, then nearly leapt off his lap. “Oh, goodness, I forgot about the lamp. How could I possibly forget about the lamp?”
“I’m here with you and my hands are stroking up and down your beautiful back. How could you think about much of anything other?”
“I see. Thank you for that explanation.” She turned to kiss him, but he held her off.
“No, Helen, I’m not going to make love with you again until we are wed. I am committing myself to you for the rest of my life. I have no intention of—”
He looked down at her breasts and swallowed. “You must help me with this. I am set upon a noble course, but I need help.”
“If Gerard doesn’t come by the time our wedding is to happen?”
“Then we will wed, just as I told you. Perhaps the letter was a forgery, for some reason that we will discover, particularly after we announce our engagement. Everything will work out, Helen. Trust me.”
He was still staring at her breasts when she said, “He wasn’t a very nice man. I thought he was when I first met him, way back in the summer of 1801. I was only eighteen and he was at least thirty—perhaps more, he never told me—and I worshiped him. He enjoyed that, I think. Since he was a hero, naturally he knew everything, and I listened reverently to every word out of his mouth. He swore that he adored me, worshiped me. He didn’t care if I was taller than he was, it didn’t matter. He was a naval hero, the pride of the Admiralty, a man who had fought against Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Lord Nelson promoted him for his bravery. Yes, of course I saw soon enough that I’d been dazzled by his reputation, by the illusion of a hero. But I really hadn’t known him as a real man.
“But now that I have had time to look back on those two years we were together, I don’t believe he did love me. He desired me, but he didn’t care if I ever felt anything for him.”
“He never gave you a woman’s pleasure.”
“You already know that he did not. But he wanted a child, desperately.”
“But you said he was the younger son of Sir John Yorke, not the heir.”
“That’s right.”
“Then why the immense drive to produce a boy child? There was no title or estate in the balance.”
?
?I don’t know. There is a lot of wealth in the Yorke family, but no title.”
Lord Beecham sighed. “This is as puzzling as that bloody lamp and where King Edward stashed it six hundred years ago and why he stashed it at all if the damned thing was so powerful. And why didn’t Burnell ever write about it being in that iron cask with the leather scroll that was itself ancient six hundred years ago?”
“He obviously never discovered its power. As to the other, goodness, I don’t know.”
He sank his chin onto his hands and stared down at the floor, at the way the planks seamed together, a habit of long standing, when he was thinking hard. “If Gerard Yorke is alive, why would he write to you now? So many years have passed with everyone believing him dead. You can’t give him his precious child, he already knows that. Why does he care? What does the bounder want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Another thing. Why did he select you, Helen? No, don’t try to convince me that you were the most beautiful girl available, that you were obviously the pinnacle of young, nubile womanhood, because that didn’t really matter—at least I don’t think it did.”