The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

‘Not wilfully, but because I was wilful. I never, ever should have married him, but I was so lonely.’ The words shook out of her. ‘It’s no excuse, but it is the truth. That year... I have never felt so alone.’

He put his arm around her, very gently, even though her fingers were digging into his hand. Her body shook against the length of his arm, the words rising out of her like bubbles in water.

‘I meant to care for him. But I was never a good actress and when it became...intimate I couldn’t lie. I began hating it and he would become angry and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘He hurt you.’ His arm stiffened, his body going from cocooning to looming. She shook her head. She wanted cocooning back, she needed it.

‘No, not like that. In every other way, though. He was jealous of the other men I had...flirted with, though I told him he had no reason to be. When he asked me directly why I married him I did the worst thing ever. I told him the truth.’

‘What was the truth?’

She closed her eyes, blocking out even the sight of his chest. She’d accused Edge of lying by omission about the books and she was about to do the same, but it could not be helped.

‘That I did not love him, that I married him because I wanted a family, a home.’

Edge flinched as if she’d jabbed him with a pin. Ricki had done the same.

‘Did you tell him...about the other man?’

‘I told him everything, it spilled out of me and I could not stop. I was horrible, Edge, but he paid me back. From that moment he brought courtesans to the palazzo, telling me they were real women and I was nothing but a stupid child, which I was. When that didn’t work he brought Maria.’

‘The little girl you told me about? His daughter?’

Sam nodded. ‘She was barely three. She wasn’t pretty—she looked like a little owl with enormous dark eyes and cheeks that were always a patchy red, but she had a smile that could...melt you. He moved her into the palazzo and said that I would never have a child of my own until I told him I loved him and meant it.’

‘That is ludicrous. Cruel.’

‘It was sad and pointless. He was often out with his friends and I spent all my time with Maria which only made him more jealous. She even slept in my room, but one night I woke and she was gone and I heard Ricki shouting beneath my window. He was in the gondola. Drunk. Holding her in the air and telling me to come get her if I wanted her. By the time I reached the jetty people were shouting and I realised something was terribly wrong. He tried to tell me later he hadn’t meant to drop her, that she’d wriggled out of his arms. I jumped into the water and so did a few others, but we couldn’t find her. They dragged me out in the end, but I don’t remember. I left Venice as soon as I recovered. Ricki drowned three years later when he fell off a bridge during Carnevale.’

The silence this time was different. Halfway through her tale he’d pulled her on to his lap, his hands moving soothingly on her arms, his breath warm against her hair. But she could feel the distance between them. Edge was with her but far away, watching her battle from his moated castle.

‘Did you go to...the other?’

She shivered, the words piercing her like a rapier.

‘No, I returned to live with my mother until she died and then I went to Sinclair Hall. But there was never a question of that. He was married and did not love me. It was all my own foolishness. I told Ricki that, but it made no odds.’

He breathed in very slowly and even more slowly out, as if consciously arranging his words.

‘The pain of discovering you are second best doesn’t fade because the other party isn’t interested in being first. It is a pain that is wholly personal.’

The sting of his thrust was all the sharper because she could hear the echoes of his own pain. He might love Rafe, but the almost-lifelong belief his brother was better loved and valued would never be uprooted by facts.

‘I meant to make him happy. I truly thought I could.’

‘I’m sorry, Sam.’

‘I don’t deserve your compassion. Maria—’

‘Yes, you do,’ he interrupted. ‘We all make mistakes, some of them terrible, but you loved that girl and I don’t doubt she felt it. You aren’t responsible for everything, Sam. You can’t fix everything. You Sinclairs are always trying to arrange the world. It must be exhausting.’

She hiccupped back the tangle of tears burning in her throat.

‘You are the one who is chasing Rafe like he is the holy grail.’

‘True. Sometimes I don’t understand it myself except that when I was at the ebb point in my life he stood by me and dragged me out of my pit. For a long time he was the mirror reminding me I still existed. There was nothing else. When I received the letter he was dead... I need to hear he is well from his own lips. I need to know I tried everything to protect him if he needs it. We may not have grown up together, but we both are shaped by the same forces. He is part of me. Still, if the advertisement doesn’t elicit a response in a week, I’ll concede defeat and wait until he deigns to remember he has a brother who is worried for him.’