The Viscount's Veiled Lady (Whitby Weddings 3)

‘A fever. I was there at the end. She called me to her and asked me to look after Lance and my father.’ He reached down and trailed a path through the sand with his fingers. ‘They were both so stubborn and hot-tempered, whereas I was calmer like her. She knew that they were going to butt heads and she wanted me to prevent it somehow. I promised her I would try, though I didn’t have the faintest idea how. Maybe I ought to have tried harder. Maybe the effort was doomed from the start. In any case, whatever I ought to have done, I failed. Our father became even more intractable and Lance...well, that was when he started to go wild. I felt trapped in the middle.’

‘It must have been awful.’ She placed a hand over his and he twisted his fingers around, lacing them through hers.

‘It was. Father didn’t do anything to stop Lance’s behaviour, almost as if he wasn’t interested in him. Whereas I... I was the heir, the one he wanted to mould, to shape as his idea of the perfect Viscount. My life was one long series of lectures, but I never argued, never stood up for myself. I left that to Lance. He argued all the time, right up until he ran away to join the army without even telling me. That was the very worst time in my life. I was completely alone with my father, but I still never rebelled. I did what he wanted, behaved the way he wanted me to, but I hated my life. I know it sounds ungrateful when I had so much—a home, a comfortable existence, a title at some point in my future—but I wanted more. I wanted to do something with my life, too, but my father thought a gentleman shouldn’t soil his hands with anything like work. I felt so helpless and weak and...crushed. I wanted to be a good son and my own man, too, but the two were incompatible. Then I met your sister.’

‘Oh.’ Her fingers twitched as if she were about to pull them away, but he closed his own around them.

‘I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, like a ray of sunshine in my miserable existence. I couldn’t believe that she liked me, too. I thought that if I married her then somehow everything else would be all right.’

‘So you proposed?’ Her voice sounded flatter than before.

‘No. It was never my intention to keep anything from my father. I would never have asked Lydia to wait for so long either, but then one day I said something about the future and she must have misunderstood. To this day I’ve no idea how it happened...’ He lifted an eyebrow as she gave him a strange look and then pressed her lips into a thin line. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing. What?’

‘You honestly don’t remember proposing?’

‘I don’t remember saying those exact words, no, but I must have...’ He frowned. ‘Mustn’t I?’

‘You know for an intelligent man...’

‘I can be remarkably naive about women?’ He sighed. ‘You think she tricked me?’

‘No-o, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. She might have anticipated you a little, but you were in love with her. I saw the two of you together.’

He clasped her hand even tighter. ‘I suppose I was, inasmuch as I knew her. I thought that I did, but now... Now I wonder if it was all just wishful thinking. Maybe that’s why I didn’t try to talk with her more often either. She was my ideal. Maybe I didn’t want to risk spoiling the one good thing in my life...’ He grimaced. ‘That doesn’t reflect very well on me, does it? My only excuse is that I didn’t like myself very much at the time, but I wonder if it’s even possible to love another person under those circumstances? What kind of love is it when we expect the other person to make up for some unhappiness in ourselves? Love should be about giving, not taking.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I thought that if I did everything else my father expected of me then he’d allow us to marry, but he wouldn’t even discuss it.’

‘Not at all?’

‘I tried persuasion at first. I told him that I was in love, but he refused to listen. Then he told me about the agreement he’d made with Violet’s father—without consulting either of us, I might add—for a marriage based solely on money. I thought about an elopement with Lydia, but there was the promise to my mother... I felt as though I’d already failed her in regard to Lance and I didn’t want to fail her with my father as well. I couldn’t let the whole family fall apart.’

‘I doubt she would ever have asked if she’d known the strain it would cause.’

‘I don’t think she would have either. You know it’s funny, but on that last day she told me that I was the strong one.’ He laughed as if the idea were genuinely amusing. ‘Me...as if I had some quality my father and Lance didn’t!’

‘Maybe she was right. You lived with all that pressure for a long time.’

‘But I failed in the end. I ran away, too.’

Her fingers tightened around his. ‘Why did you?’

He drew in another deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘There came a day when I decided enough was enough. I’d been to your house that afternoon. You were painting in a corner—a picture of horses, if I recall correctly—and I was just one of Lydia’s many admirers. I couldn’t bear for things to go on like that any longer so I made a decision. I went home determined to speak with my father, to demand that he let me live the life that I wanted, but he wasn’t in his study as usual. He was in the drawing room in his armchair by the fire, drinking whisky and looking at miniatures of me and Lance as boys and crying. I’d never seen him cry before. I sat down and asked him what was wrong and we talked. It was the only real conversation we ever had, all about Lance and my mother and me. I realised that he wasn’t such a monster after all, not deep down. He had feelings, only most of the time he had no idea how to open up and show them. That was his tragedy, I think. I told him that I wanted to marry Lydia and he agreed. He even gave me his blessing. It was the best night of my life.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I went to bed happier than I’d felt in ten years. When I came downstairs the next morning I was filled with a new sense of joy and purpose. It was a beautiful summer’s day and I was going to propose, properly this time, to the woman I thought I loved.’

‘And?’

‘And he denied everything. He refused to accept the conversation had ever happened. He was so convincing that I even started to wonder myself. He told me that if I married Lydia then he’d disown me as well as Lance and disinherit us both. That was when I saw red, I suppose. I told him that I didn’t care about the title or the house or the money, any of the things he thought were so important. I said that I’d marry Lydia without his consent and marched out of the house determined to do just that.’

She lifted her eyes to his with a look of sadness. ‘And that was when you saw her with somebody else?’

‘Yes. I realised then what a fool I’d been.’

‘But why didn’t you speak to her?’