Confessions of an Improper Bride, page 19
The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that the ruse had something to do with him.
“Why?” he asked out loud.
She turned to him. “Why what?”
“Why did you engage in this deception?” he asked in a low voice. And suddenly, he realized there was no reason to be quiet. They were alone, in total privacy, for the first time in years.
She blew out a breath, and her gaze returned to the window. “My mother was determined to make something out of me. Redeem me, though it was quite impossible for Serena Donovan to be redeemed after…” Her voice dwindled.
Watching a blush suffuse her cheeks, it struck him, not for the first time, how differently men and women were regarded. To be a rake was something a man could enjoy. Yes, a rake still endured whispers and gossip, but in some ways, his exploits made him more popular, more accomplished, more accepted by other men of his class.
Jonathan had enjoyed the scandals that surrounded his name. They were little jabs he could throw into his father’s grave. But those were nothing compared to what a woman in the same situation would be forced to endure. She would be irrevocably labeled as an outcast and a whore.
“Your mother was always determined to make something of you, wasn’t she?” he murmured. Serena had told him how Mrs. Donovan’s single-minded goal had been to make fine ladies of all five of her daughters, to ensure they married someone of fortune and title, and how she’d been insistent that they not make any mistake similar to the one she had in marrying a near-penniless Irishman.
Serena made a small sound of agreement. “Always. But, happily for her, she had twins. And right away, she realized that while I had ruined myself beyond repair, Meg hadn’t. Unbeknownst to me, the scheme began the very day Meg died. The day she read the letter from my aunt that detailed my disgrace.”
Jonathan nodded, his throat suddenly feeling very dry.
“Almost immediately, she started to pen letters to Will in which she pretended to be Meg. My younger sisters and I knew nothing of this. Nor did we know that the obituary she’d sent back to London contained my name and not Meg’s.” A cloud of pain darkened her face before she turned away again, focusing on the shadowy trees rolling by outside. “I wasn’t aware of what my mother was doing, but I knew she hated me for what I’d done to myself. How I’d destroyed not only my own reputation, but hers and my sisters’ by association.”
He couldn’t answer that. What was there to say? Except that he was the one who should have been held responsible. Not her.
She spoke without turning to him, her voice so quiet he had to strain to hear. “Sometimes—often—I wished it was me who’d died instead of Meg. A part of me knew that my mother wished it, too. She’d wished so hard that it became the truth. The world believes I died out on the Atlantic Ocean, and so I suppose I did.”
“No, Serena. You didn’t. You’re here.” God, no. Now that he knew she was alive, he couldn’t imagine her any other way. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—lose her again.
Jonathan stared at her profile, drinking in her creamy complexion disrupted only by the row of freckles across her cheekbones almost invisible to the naked eye. He probably wouldn’t have seen them unless he’d remembered them. Remembered counting them—thirteen on one side and seventeen on the other—and kissing each of them one by one. He wondered if there were still thirty or whether some of them had faded away. It looked like they’d faded. She must be remembering to don her sunbonnets before going outside.
“I keep thinking that this must all be a dream,” he said in a low voice, “like so many of the dreams I’ve had through the years, and you’ll fade away like you always do.”
Slowly, she turned to face him. Her eyes shone silver in the dim light of the carriage. “Did you dream of me?”
“All the time.”
She tilted her head, probing him with her shining stare. “Why?”
He blew out his breath. He’d ruined himself a thousand times over in the past six years, and she knew it. If he told her it was because he loved her, because he’d never stopped loving her, because his devotion to her had never died, she wouldn’t believe him for a second.
“I never forgot you,” he said instead. “I never forgave myself for what I’d done to you.”
She gave a small, bitter laugh. “It’s far too late for such regrets.”
“If I’d known you were alive…” His voice faded. What would he have done if he’d known she was alive?
Everything would have been different.
He’d have boarded a ship bound for Antigua the day after his father died, that’s what he’d have done.
The day he’d been forced to cut her, the day he’d turned away from her despite the desperate longing in her eyes, his mind had been frantically at work, conjuring ways for them to be together. He had been too damned cowardly to defy his father by accepting her publicly, but he’d still been searching for some way to escape his family and be with her.
“I wanted to apologize to you.” Jonathan ached to reach out and touch her softly rounded cheek, to brush his knuckle over that silky skin, but she was stiff, wedging herself between the soft velvet squabs and the window. Cold and rigid, unwelcoming of his touch. “But it was too late. I didn’t know you’d be sent back to the West Indies so quickly. By the time I had an opportunity to come to you, you had already left London.”
She didn’t respond. Obviously, words were not enough. A simple, “Well, I meant to apologize” could not make up for being forced into years of grief and inadequacy. He understood that. But God, how he wanted her forgiveness.
“After you left, I would dream of finding you somewhere, and I’d tell you I was sorry. I’d ask for your forgiveness.”
“And did I grant it?”
“Never,” he said, his lips curling. “You would just stare at me, then fade into the mist.”
Serena made a small sound, halfway between a smirk and a laugh.
“You haven’t asked me to forgive you,” she said. “Dreams don’t count, since I was never actually present in any of them.”
And now, it wasn’t for only his behavior six years ago that he wanted her forgiveness. It was for his behavior after she’d left him.
Jonathan had made a shambles of his life. He’d done it deliberately, thinking of her every day. He’d been on a singular, determined path of self-destruction. But she wouldn’t want the weight of any of that on her shoulders, and he couldn’t blame her for it. It was his own fault.
“No, I haven’t asked your forgiveness,” he agreed.
“Will you?”
“If I do, will you grant it?”
She gave him a cynical look. “Are you brave enough to ask me to find out? I don’t see why you need a preemptive answer. That rather destroys the purpose of the apology, doesn’t it?”
“Serena,” he murmured, fighting against capturing her hand with his own, “if I ask your forgiveness now, you won’t grant it.”
“And you think you know that?”
“I do know it.” And he did. She wasn’t ready to forgive him. Not yet. “I learned you’d been lost at sea a month after the first dream I had about you.” That was when the true self-destruction had flared to life… when he’d gone to Bath and made an even bigger shambles of things.
Her expression crumpled, but the break in her façade lasted for only the merest of seconds before she rebuilt her features into stiffness. “I know the demands your family placed on you were very great, Jonathan.”
“And yet…”
“And yet, how can I possibly forgive you? Not only for what you did to me, but for what you’ve done during the past six years?”
He could feel the pain in her voice, like shards of glass raking over his skin. Why hadn’t he stopped them? His father and his brother? Society as a whole, who mocked her for what he’d done to her? If only he could have sheltered her from all that. He had been so young, so green. If it happened now, it would be different.
The day after that old shrew had discovered them making love in her ballroom, Jonathan’s father and brother had summoned him. Despite his acute embarrassment from the night before, Jonathan had sauntered into his father’s study in high spirits, for he’d wanted to marry Serena since the first time he’d bedded her, and now he knew he had no choice but to marry her—and quickly. He assumed his father and brother intended to discuss wedding plans, but instead, his father announced, “You are not to see that little wanton again.”
Shocked, Jonathan had frozen in place. So many arguments crowded his thoughts, he hadn’t known where to begin. What of my responsibility to her? What of propriety? She’s not a wanton, she’s a gently bred lady. And I love her. I will see her again, no matter what you say.
“And you, you wayward young buck, are for Stratford House,” his father continued. “I’ve no desire to see you until this storm has passed. Perhaps you may return to London next year, but until then you are banished from Town.”
Well, he certainly could respond to that. “I won’t go. Not without her.”
His older brother, Gervase, leaned negligently against the wall behind their father. “C’mon, Jon. She’s a pretty piece, but you’re a Dane, for Christ’s sakes. Surely someone like her is hardly worthy of your distress.”
Jonathan glared at Gervase, then returned his attention to his father. “I intend to marry her. I want her. It is the right thing to do.”
His father burst out in laughter. “Do you even know who the girl is? She’s Charles Donovan’s daughter. You didn’t know him, of course—you wouldn’t have. The man was an Irish lout. Penniless. Her dowry wouldn’t add up to a week’s worth of your allowance.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Jonathan ground out.
Gervase smiled smugly. “You will once you’re living in poverty.”
Jonathan clenched his fists at his sides. “I said I won’t leave London without her. I won’t abandon her to be slurred by the gossips and scandalmongers.”
His father seemed unperturbed. “If you don’t leave, if you dare speak to that piece again, I shall see that she is known for what she really is—a whore. And then the gossips and scandalmongers will have their day.”
“You are only feeling this way because she’s your first.” Gervase pushed away from the wall. “You’ll find plenty of accommodating flesh to tumble in Sussex. Trust me, you will forget all about her. She’s a mere slut, Jon, just like all the others.”
Slowly, Jonathan swung his head to his brother. Gervase had insulted Jonathan’s beloved. He’d insulted Serena. And Jonathan was going to wipe that damned pompous look off his fat face.
Overcome by blinding rage, Jonathan had advanced on him, aiming to kill. But Gervase had beaten him soundly, breaking his nose in the process.
That was the year Jonathan had begun to box.
He looked at Serena now, six years older, but even prettier than she’d been at the age of eighteen. Even more alluring to him now. Many women had baited him, but none had the effect on him that the Serena of six years ago had. And now… how could it be stronger?
“I cut you for no other reason than stupidity,” he said in a low voice. “I was young; I was inexperienced; I was immature. I was cowed by my elders, but in the end I cannot blame anyone but myself.”
“Jonathan,” she said, her voice infused with a sadness compounded by many years, “please tell me the truth. Was everything you said to me a lie?”
“Oh, God, no. They weren’t lies,” he said. “Not one of them. The only lie I ever said to you was when I turned away from you on that day and said I didn’t know you. And that lie…” It had destroyed him. Worse, it had destroyed her.
“But they must have been lies. I just can’t understand how you could treat a woman so coldly after saying such things to her.”
After he’d fought Gervase, his father rescinded the order of exile, but persisted in the decree that he not see Serena. He’d come across her in St. James’s Square, and with his father looking on, he’d cut her. Then, a few days later, he’d discovered that she’d left London. Determined to follow her to the West Indies, he secretly began to hoard money from his allowance.
After the closing of the autumn session of Parliament that year, he’d received a summons to the Blue Bell Inn in Whitechapel by his brother, to whom he hadn’t spoken in several weeks.
By then, he’d nearly saved enough. He’d planned to leave for Antigua in the spring, and he decided it was time to make amends with Gervase. He might never see his older brother again, after all.
It was a blustery day, unseasonably warm. As Jonathan rode to the Blue Bell, he carried a letter to Serena in his pocket. He’d never been much of a writer, and it had taken him hours to compose it. He found it difficult to express thoughts and feelings on paper, and his thoughts and feelings for Serena were so powerful, it seemed impossible to turn them into letters and words. This was the first letter he’d managed to write to her since she’d gone. He’d finally completed it that morning, and he was anxious to send it.
He had stared at the single sheet of paper for many days afterward until he finally tossed it, crumpled and stained, into the fire. Even now, he remembered it verbatim:
Dearest Serena,
I hope this letter finds you well and prospering. Our last meeting did not go well, I am afraid, and it is my fault, so I must apologize for my grossly ungentlemanly behavior. My family is determined to keep me from you, but they will not succeed. It is my fondest desire and wish to make you my companion for the whole of my future life. Take this to heart and wait, for I will be with you this summer. I can only hope to remain seated firmly within your affections until then.
Believe me,
Dearest Serena,
Your most affectionate and devoted lover,
Jonathan
He had burst into the inn, sweating despite the bite in the air, slapping his gloves in his hand. Gervase rose hastily as he approached their table, and Jonathan stopped short at his brother’s expression. His face was a deathly shade of yellow, and his frame so drawn, it appeared he had lost a stone since Jonathan had last seen him. Little did he know, his brother was already suffering from the sickness that would take his life a few months later.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” Jonathan asked.
Gervase gestured to a chair. “Sit down, Jon.”
Jonathan sat. Without another word, his brother slid a sheet of newspaper across the table. Jonathan scanned the page. When he reached the center, he stopped cold.
Serena Donovan of Antigua,
dau. of Chas. Donovan, drowned at sea
on the 27th day of August, aged 18.
He’d looked at his brother, whose face had finally taken on a bit of purplish color. The bastard had been smiling.
He succumbed to consumption in eight months, unmarried and childless, leaving Jonathan heir to the earldom. Jonathan’s father followed Gervase a few months later with an apoplexy. At his father’s deathbed, Jonathan had stared coldly into the earl’s eyes and presented his revenge. He announced that he would never marry, never father an heir, that he would spend his life gambling away his fortune and living in debauchery, and in the end, terminate his father’s line.
The dying earl begged for Jonathan to see reason, but Jonathan was finished with his sire and determined to end his days without becoming leg shackled to some strange woman he could never love.
So far, Jonathan had kept his word.
Now, he wished he had kept that letter to Serena, wished he could give it to her right now. He wished she could have been in the Blue Bell Inn and seen the expression on his face the day he’d learned about her death. He wished she could have been at his father’s bedside when Jonathan had told him he’d never love another woman but her.
If she’d been in any of those places, it would have left no doubt in her mind as to his feelings for her. But how could he convey all of that now, after so long, after he’d done so much? It seemed impossible.
He shook his head. “I cannot force you to believe me.”
“No,” she said tightly, turning to the window again. “You cannot.”
Chapter Fifteen
They spent the night at an inn near Gloucester. Jonathan took on the unoriginal false name of Mr. Smith and introduced Serena as his wife.
She’d turned hot with annoyance, but then he’d glanced at her and given the innkeeper a sheepish grin. “My wife cannot abide my snoring, sir, so I must beg you for separate rooms.”
The innkeeper, seeing Jonathan’s rich clothing and fat purse, complied instantly, and they were given adjoining rooms, of course “the best rooms in the establishment.”
After a fawning servant had left them in the simple but thankfully clean sitting area separating the two bedchambers, Serena went into the bedchamber assigned to her to remove her traveling cloak.
As she reentered the sitting room a few minutes later, Jonathan was seated in an upholstered chair near the simple fireplace, his fingers wrapped around an untouched glass of brandy. He wore bone-colored skintight trousers and a billowing white shirt with a V-neck. A sardonic tilt lingered about his lips as he stared into his glass.
Jonathan was such a handsome man, appealing in a roguish, permanently windswept sort of way. She fought the compulsion to flee before it was too late. He was far too alluring for such a weak-willed woman as herself.
He raised his head, but he didn’t speak. His body bristled with a familiar wariness.
Serena scowled at him. “You didn’t have to say all that to the innkeeper.”
He raised a blond brow. “Didn’t I? I believe you earlier had expressed some concern about your reputation. About Langley potentially learning of this adventure.”
She didn’t like the way he said Will’s name. As if it were a piece of bad meat that he needed to spit out.
