Текст книги "Until You"

Автор книги: Judith McNaught

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

55

The full realization of what she had done last night had set in long before Sheridan dragged herself out of bed and got dressed the next morning. In the bright light of full day, there was no way to deny the awful truth: she had sacrificed her virtue, her principles, and her morals, and now she would have to live with the shame of that until the end of her life.

She had done it all in one desperate gamble to regain his love-if he had ever really loved her-and how had he reacted to the enormity of her deed? The agonizing answer to that question was below her bedchamber window-on the side lawn, where everyone was having luncheon-and it was there for her to see in every humiliating detail: the man she had lain with last night was dining with Monica, who was turning herself inside out to entertain him, and he looked perfectly willing to be entertained this morning. As Sheridan watched from her window, he leaned back in his chair, his gaze intent on Monica's face, then he threw back his head, laughing at whatever she was telling him.

Sheridan was a mass of shame and anxiety, while helooked more contented and more relaxed than she had ever seen him. Last night, he had taken everything she had to give and thrown it in her face with an offer to prolong her humiliation by making her his mistress. Today, he was socializing with a woman who'd never have been stupid enough to do what Sheridan had… a woman worthy of his own inflated opinion of himself, she thought bitterly. A woman to whom he would offer marriage, not some tainted liaison in exchange for her virtue.

All those thoughts and more marched through Sheridan's tormented mind as she stood at the window, staring down at him, refusing to cry. She wantedto remember this scene, she wanted to remember it every single moment of her life, so that she would never, ever soften in her thoughts of him. She stood still, welcoming the icy numbness that was sweeping away her anguish and demolishing all her tender feelings for him. " Bastard," she whispered aloud.

"May I come in?"

Sheridan started and whirled around at the sound of Julianna's voice. "Yes, of course," she said, trying for a bright smile that felt as strained as her voice sounded.

"I saw you standing up here when I was having breakfast. Would you like me to bring something up here for you?"

"No, I'm not hungry, but thank you for thinking of me." Sheridan hesitated, knowing some explanation was in order for her behavior yesterday when she had offered Stephen her favor, but she hadn't been able to think of a single reasonable excuse.

"I was wondering if you would like to leave here?"

"Leave?" Sheridan said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt to do exactly that. "We aren't to leave until tomorrow."

Julianna walked over to the window and stood beside her, quietly looking down at the same tableau that Sheridan had been torturing herself with. "Julianna, I feel I ought to explain about what happened yesterday, when I said what I did to the Earl of Langford about holding him in deepest respect."

"You don't need to explain," Julianna answered with a reassuring smile that made Sheridan feel like the seventeen-year-old ingenue instead of her paid chaperone.

"Yes, I do," Sheridan persevered doggedly. "I know how much your mother was hoping for a match between you and Lord Westmoreland, and I know you must wonder why I-why I behaved to him in such a forward, and familiarway."

In what seemed like a change of subject, Julianna said, "Several weeks ago, Mama was quite despondent. In fact, I remember that it was less than a week before you came to stay with us."

Seizing her conversational reprieve like the coward she was at the moment, Sheridan said brightly, "Why was your mama upset?"

"Langford's betrothal was announced in the paper."

"Oh."

"Yes. His fiancee was American."

Uneasy under the unwavering gaze of those violet eyes, Sherry said nothing.

"There was some gossip about her, and you know how Mama adores being privy to any gossip about the ton. His fiancee reportedly had red hair-very, very red hair. And he called her 'Sherry.' They said she'd lost her memory due to a blow to the head, but that she was expected to recover quickly."

Sheridan made one more bid for anonymity. "Why are you telling me this?"

"So you'll know you can ask me for help if you need it. And because you are the real reason we were invited here. I realized that something was very strange when I saw the way Lord Westmoreland reacted to seeing you at the pond yesterday. I'm surprised Mama hasn't figured out what's in the wind."

"There is nothing in the wind," Sheridan said fiercely. "The whole awful matter is closed, over."

She tipped her head toward Monica and Georgette. "Do they know who you are?"

"No. I'd never met them when I was-" Sheridan broke off as she started to say, When I was Charise Lancaster.

"When you were betrothed to him?"

Sheridan drew in a long breath and then reluctantly nodded.

"Would you like to go home?"

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Sheridan. "If I had anything to trade for the opportunity, I'd do it in a trice."

Julianna turned on her heel and started from the room. "Start packing," she said with a conspiratorial smile over her shoulder.

"Wait-what are you going to do?"

"I am about to draw Papa aside and tell him I'm feeling unwell and you must accompany me home. We'll not be able to pry Mama out of here early, but she will not want me to stay and give Langford a disgust of me by becoming quite terribly ill in front of him. Would you believe," she said with an incorrigible laugh, "she stillcherishes hope that he'll look up at any moment and fall madly in love with me, despite everything that should be very obvious to her."

She was closing the door when Sherry called to her, and she poked her head back into the room. "Would you tell the duchess I'd like to see her before we leave?"

"All the ladies left for the village a bit ago, with the exception of Langford's ladies, that is, and Miss Charity."

The last time Sheridan had left them, she'd made herself look guilty and ungrateful. This time, she did not intend to flee in secret. She intended only to flee. "Would you ask Miss Charity to come up then?" When Julianna nodded, Sheridan added, "And don't say a word about our departure to anyone except your father. I intend to tell the earl myself, face to face."

56

Miss Charity's face fell as Sheridan explained that she was leaving.

"But you haven't had a chance yet to speak to Langford alone and make him understand exactly why you disappeared," she argued.

"I had that chance last night," Sherry said bitterly. She glanced at her bedroom window as she packed the few things she'd brought into a valise. "The result is out there."

Charity walked over to the window and looked down at the two women who were entertaining the earl. "How very vexing men are. He does not care in the least about either of those two women, you know."

"He does not care about me either."

Charity sat down on the chair, and Sheridan thought poignantly of the first time she'd seen her and been reminded of a china doll. She looked like one now-a very perplexed, unhappy one.

"Did you explain to him why you ran away and never came back?"

"No."

"Why didyou do it?"

The question came so quickly that it took Sheridan aback. "I told you most of it yesterday. One minute I thought I was Charise Lancaster, and the next minute, Charise was standing there, accusing me of deliberately impersonating her, and threatening to tell Stephen that. I panicked and ran, but before I could recover from the shock of realizing who I really am, I began to realize that everyone else had been lying to me about who theywere. Among the things I remembered was that Charise had been betrothed to a baron, not an earl, whose name was Burleton, not Westmoreland. I wanted answers, I needed them, and so I went to see Nicholas DuVille. He at least was honest enough to tell me the truth."

"What truth did he tell you, dear?"

Still embarrassed by what she had learned, Sheridan looked away and pretended to check the neatness of her hair in the mirror as she said, "All of it. Every mortifying bit of it, beginning with Lord Burleton's death and why Stephen felt obliged to find another fiance for me-for Charise Lancaster, I mean. He told me everything," Sheridan finished, pausing to swallow over the lump of humiliated tears in her throat as she thought of her gullible belief that Stephen had wanted to marry her. That same deadly streak of naivete had led her to sacrifice her virginity and her pride to him last night. "He even explained the greatest mystery of all, though I let myself believe otherwise when I talked to all of you yesterday."

"What mystery was that?"

Sheridan's laugh was choked and bitter. "Stephen's sudden proposal of marriage, the night we went to Almack's, coincided exactly with the news he'd received earlier that day of Charise's father's death. He proposed to me out of pity and responsibility, not because he cared for me or even wanted to marry me."

"It was very bad of Nicholas to put it exactly that way."

"He didn't have to. I am only a fool when it comes to that man out there."

"And you discussed all this with Langford last night?"

"I tried, but he said he wasn't interested in conversation," Sheridan said bitterly as she picked up her valise.

"What washe interested in?" Charity tipped her head inquiringly to the side.

Something about the sudden way she asked made Sheridan look swiftly at her. There were times when she wasn't certain whether the Duke of Stanhope's sister was quite so vague as she seemed, times like right now, when she was studying the hot flush staining Sheridan's cheeks with a distinctly knowing look. "I suppose he would be interested in proof of my innocence, if he were interested in me at all, which he is not," she evaded hastily. "When you look at it from his side, which I tried to do yesterday and last night, I ran away and hid because I was guilty. What other excuse could I have had?"

Charity stood up and Sheridan looked at her, knowing that she was never going to see her again, and tears burned the back of her eyes as she enfolded the tiny lady in a swift hug. "Tell everyone good-bye for me, and tell them I know they truly tried to help."

"There must be something else I can do," Charity said, her face looking as if it were going to crumple.

"There is," Sheridan said with a fixed, confident smile. "Please tell his lordship that I would like to see him privately for a moment. Ask him to meet me in that little salon immediately off the front hall."

When Charity left to do that, Sheridan drew a steadying breath and walked over to the window, watching a few minutes later as Charity went over to him and delivered the message. He got up so quickly, striding swiftly toward the house, that Sheridan felt a sharp stab of hope that perhaps-just perhaps-he wasn't going to let her leave. Perhaps he would beg her forgiveness for his callousness last night and ask her to stay.

As she walked down the steps she couldn't stop herself from indulging in that last, tormentingly sweet fantasy. The frail hope made her heart accelerate as she walked into the salon and closed the door, but the hope began to die the instant he turned and looked at her. Clad in a shirt and riding breeches, with his hands shoved into his pockets, he looked not only casual, but supremely unconcerned. "You wanted to see me?" he suggested mildly.

He was standing in the middle of the small room, and a few steps brought her almost to within arm's reach of him. Displaying a calm she didn't at all feel, Sheridan nodded and said, "I came to tell you I'm leaving. I didn't want to simply disappear this time, as I did the last."

She waited, searching that hard, sardonic face for some sign that he felt something, anything, for her, for the fact that she was leaving, for the gift of her body. Instead, he lifted his brows as if silently asking her what she expected him to do about it.

"I'm not accepting your offer," Sheridan clarified, unable to believe he could be so completely uninterested in a decision that affected her entire life-a decision made after a night spent in his arms, after she had surrendered her virginity and her honor to him.

He lifted his broad shoulders in a slight shrug and said in an indifferent voice, "Fine."

That did it-that single bored word sent her from the depths of humiliated despair to a fury that was almost uncontainable. Turning on her heel, she started to walk out on him, then she stopped and turned back.

"Was there something else?" he prodded, looking impatient and unconcerned.

Sheridan was so infuriated, and so pleasedwith her intention, that she actually gave him a bright, disarming smile as she stepped up to him. "Yes," she said lightly, "there is something else."

One brow lifted in arrogant inquiry. "What is it?"

"This!" She slapped him so hard his head jerked sideways, then she took an automatic step back from the rage in his face and held her ground, her chest heaving with fury. "You are a heartless, evil monster, and I cannot believe I let you touch me last night! I feel filthy and defiled-" A muscle began to tick in the side of his jaw, but Sheridan wasn't finished and she was too infuriated to care that he looked murderous. "I committed a sin when I let you do what you did to me last night, but I can pray for forgiveness for that. But, I will never be able to forgive my stupidity for trusting you and loving you!"

Stephen watched the door crash into its frame behind her, and he stood perfectly still, unable to shake off the image of a tempestuous beauty with blazing silver eyes and a face alive with fury and disdain. The picture branded itself on his mind along with a voice that shook with emotion. " I will never be able to forgive my stupidity for trusting you and loving you!" She'd actually looked and sounded as if she meant every single thing she'd said to him, including that last. Christ, she was a superb actress! Better by far than Emily Lathrop. Of course, Emily hadn't had the advantage of Sheridan's aura of virtuous innocence or her tempestuous temper. Emily had been sophisticated and carefully restrained, so she couldn't have pulled off this scene.

On the other hand, Emily probably wouldn't have flung his proposition in his face…

Somehow, he hadn't expected Sheridan to do that either. She'd been clever enough and ambitious enough to turn a brief loss of memory after her accident into what appeared to be a full-fledged case of amnesia that seemed to last for weeks, and to very nearly raise her status from a governess to a countess as well. The proposition he'd offered last night wouldn't have made her a countess, but it would have given her a hell of a lot more in the way of a luxurious life than she could possibly expect otherwise.

Either she wasn't as clever as Stephen had credited her with being…

Or she wasn't as ambitious…

Or she wasn't interested in luxury…

Or she'd been innocent of deviousness all along-as innocent of it as she'd been sexually innocent before last night.

Stephen hesitated uneasily and then rejected the last possibility. Innocent people did not run away and hide-not when they had Sheridan's kind of courage and daring.

57

Out of consideration for Noel's birthday, and in a futile effort to maintain a semblance of a festive atmosphere, Whitney declared the subject of Sheridan Bromleigh and her departure off limits for the rest of the weekend, but the failed attempt at a reconciliation hung like a pall over most of the guests at Claymore. Within hours after Sheridan left, storm clouds rolled in and rain began to fall, driving everyone indoors and further dampening feminine spirits. Only Charity Thornton was immune to the atmosphere and so energized that she declined to follow suit when all the other ladies and most of the men repaired to their chambers for a nap before supper. In fact, their absence suited her perfectly.

Seated upon a tufted leather sofa in the billiard room, with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands folded in her lap, she watched the Duke of Claymore playing billiards with Jason Fielding and Stephen Westmoreland. "I have always found billiards so very intriguing," she lied, just as Clayton Westmoreland poked a long cue stick at the balls on the table and missed his shot entirely. "Was that your strategy-to miss all the balls on the table so that Langford will now have to deal with them?" she inquired brightly.

"That's an interesting way of looking at it," Clayton replied dryly, stifling his annoyance with her outburst that had caused him to miss his shot.

"Now what happens?"

Jason Fielding answered with a chuckle. "Now Stephen will take over and neither of us will have another opportunity at this game."

"Oh, I see." Charity smiled innocently at her intended victim as he rubbed something on the end of his cue stick and bent over the table. "Does that mean you are the most skilled player here, Langford?"

He glanced up at the sound of his name, but Charity had the feeling he wasn't listening to her or concentrating on the game either. Ever since Sheridan had left, he'd looked as grim as death. Despite that, when he took his shot, balls clattered against one another, collided against the sides of the table, and three of them rolled into the pockets.

"Nice shot, Stephen," Jason said, and Charity saw the opportunity she'd been waiting for.

"I so enjoy the society of gentlemen," she announced suddenly, watching as Clayton Westmoreland poured Madeira into his guests' glasses.

"Why is that?" he asked politely.

"My own sex can be quite petty and even vindictive for no cause at all," she remarked as Stephen aimed and made his next shot. "But gentlemen are so very stalwart in their loyalty to one another and their own sex. Take Wakefield, for example," she said, smiling approvingly at Jason Fielding, Marquess of Wakefield. "Had you been a female, Wakefield, you might have felt jealous of Langford's superior shot a moment ago, but were you?"

"Yes," Jason joked, but when her face fell he quickly said, "No, of course not, ma'am."

"Exactly my point!" Charity applauded as Stephen walked around the table for his next shot. "But whenever I think of loyalty and friendship among gentlemen, do you know who immediately comes to mind?"

"No, who?" Clayton said, while he watched Stephen line up his next shot and aim.

"Nicholas DuVille and Langford!"

The cue ball slid sideways off of Stephen's cue stick and rolled to the side of the table, where it gently nudged the ball he'd intended to aim at. That ball slowly headed for the pocket, hovered at the edge, and finally dropped in. "That wasn't skill, that was blind luck," Jason told him. Trying to change the subject, he added, "Did you ever stop to calculate how many times you win a game with luck instead of skill? I've meant to do that."

Ignoring Wakefield's attempt to divert the topic, Charity forged ahead, carefully directing her animated conversation to Jason Fielding and Clayton Westmoreland and avoiding a glance at the earl as he walked around the table for his next shot. "Why, if Nicholas hadn't been such a loyalfriend of Langford's, he would have sent Sheridan Bromleigh straight back home the day she ran away and landed on his doorstep, crying her heart out, but did he do that? No indeed, he did not!"

She glanced at the mirror on the opposite wall and saw Stephen Westmoreland arrested in the act of shooting, his eyes narrowed to slits, his gaze levelled on the back of her head. "Sheridan begged for the truth about why Langford wanted to marry her, and even though it wasn't poor Nicholas's responsibility to tell her everything and break her heart, he did it! It would have been so much easier to lie to her, or send her home to ask Langford, but he took it upon himself to help his dear friend and fellow man."

"Exactly what," Stephen asked in a low, savage voice as he slowly straightened without having taken his shot, "did my friendDuVille tell Sheridan?"

Charity looked around at him, her face a miracle of startled, vapid innocence. "Why, the truth, of course. She realized she wasn't Charise Lancaster anymore, so Nicholas told her about Burleton's death and how responsible you felt for it. That is why you pretended to be Sheridan's fiance, after all."

Three silent men were staring at her in various states of shock and anger, and Charity looked brightly at each of them. "And of course, being a romantic girl, Sheridan still wanted to think-to believe-that you might have had some other reason for asking herto marry you, but dear Nicholas had to tell her, very firmly, that you'd only proposed after you got word of Mr. Lancaster's unfortunate death-out of pity, as it were. Which was dreadfully distressing to the poor girl, but Nicholas did what needed to be done, out of unselfishness and loyalty to his own sex."

Stephen slammed the cue stick into the rack on the wall. "That son of a bitch!" he said softly as he strode swiftly out of the room.

Startled by the use of profanity in front of her but not by his departure, Charity looked at Jason Fielding. "Where do you suppose Langford is going?" she asked, hiding her smile behind a blank frown.

Jason Fielding slowly withdrew his gaze from the doorway through which the earl had departed, then he glanced at Clayton Westmoreland and said, "Where would you say he's going?"

"I would say," the duke replied dryly, "that he is going to have a 'talk' with an old 'friend.' "

"How nice!" Charity said brightly. "Would either of you consider letting me play billiards with you, now that Langford is gone? I'm certain I could learn the rules."

The Duke of Claymore studied her in amused silence for a very long moment, so long in fact that Charity felt a little uneasy. "Why don't we play chess instead? I have a feeling that strategy is your particular forte."

Charity considered that for a moment and wagged her head. "I think you're quite right."