“It wasn’t as bad as that!” he said, flushing. “I meant then to marry her! If that curst Adonis of yours had won you, what did it signify whom I married? I must marry someone, and Emily was as good as another—better! I knew I could mould her into whatever shape I pleased; I knew she would be happy enough with what I could give her; I knew the Laleham harpy would jump at my offer. And I knew you would hate it, Serena! Oh, yes, infamous, wasn’t it? I did it because I was mad with anger—but I never meant to play the child false!”
“And what, most noble Marquis,” inquired Serena scathingly, “made you change your mind, and decide instead to be rid of her?”
He set his hands on her shoulders, and gripped them, holding her eyes with his, “Years ago, Serena, you fancied yourself head over ears in love with a devilish handsome lad! I didn’t think then that he was the man for you—and when I saw you both together here, I was even more certain of it! But when I heard of his reappearance, and of the reception he got from you, I was shaken as I never was before, and hope to God I never shall be again! But the instant I saw the pair of you I knew that I had rolled myself up to no purpose at all! I don’t know what madness seized you, but I do know that you don’t love Kirkby, and never did, or will!”
She wrenched herself away. “Did you? Did you, indeed? Perhaps you thought I loved you!”
“No—but I knew that I still loved you! I could see you would break with Kirkby—Lord, Serena, if I hadn’t been in such a damned tangle myself I should have laughed myself into stitches! My poor girl, did you really think you could be happy with a man that would let you walk rough-shod over him? For how long did you enjoy having your own undisputed way? When did you begin to feel bored?”
“Let me tell you this, Rotherham!” she flung at him. “Hector is worth a dozen of you!”
“Oh, probably two or three dozen! What has that to say to anything?”
“It has this to say! I am pledged to him, and I shall marry him, so let me recommend you to lose no time in reinstating yourself in Emily’s good graces! How dare you talk to me like this? And to think I didn’t believe the things Emily poured out to me today!” She paused, almost choking. “You deliberately tried to make that girl cry off!”
“Well, how the devil else was I to get out of a marriage that was going to wreck the pair of us—and Emily, too, for that matter?”
“You made your bed—”
“—and we could all of us lie on it, I suppose?” he interjected witheringly.
She drew a breath. “Good God, had you no compunction? You had offered her a great position, a—”
“Yes, I had! And if you fancy that her mother forced her to accept my offer, you’re out, my girl! I never tampered with her affections: don’t think it! Had I thought she cared one jot for me it would have been a different story, but she didn’t! She wanted nothing from me but rank and fortune, and she made that abundantly plain!”
“Ivo, did you, or did you not make violent love to her, and tell her that if she played the coquette with you after you were married it would be very much the worse for her?” Serena demanded.
“Oh, not then!” he replied coolly. “That was later! God knows what she thought I had in store for her, little fool!”
“Oh, how I wish she had slapped your face!” raged Serena.
“So did I wish it!” he retorted. “Lord, Serena, I even made her think I should be such a jealous husband that she would do better to marry a Bluebeard! I ran the gamut of impatience, jealousy, intemperate passion, veiled threats, and nothing I could do or say outweighed my coronet!”
“In her mother’s eyes!”
“Oh, yes! I don’t deny that woman had a good deal to do with it! But make no mistake about it, Serena!—until I convinced Emily that she would not enjoy all that stuff by half as much as she had thought she would, I could have been as brutal as I chose, and she would still have married me!”
She gave a gasp. “Delford! Ivo, you—you fiend! When she told me about that visit—the pomp and the ceremony you overwhelmed her with—the people you filled the house with—the formality you insisted on—I thought that either she was exaggerating to impress me, or that you had run mad!”
He grinned at her. “You never saw such a party! I had the state apartments opened, and shut my own rooms up, and dug out the gold plate, and—”
“How you can stand there and boast to me—! No wonder Emily stared at me when I told her you had no turn for ceremony!”
“Grandeur she wanted, and grandeur I gave her—full measure, and brimming over! Lady Laleham revelled in it, but Emily didn’t. That was when I saw the scales begin to tip. Then she was ill—by the bye, Serena, that was the best thing I’ve ever heard Gerard say! I told him Emily had been suffering from an attack of influenza, and damme if he didn’t rip back at me that it was more likely an attack of the Marquis of Rotherham! I never thought the boy had it in him to land me such a doubler!”
“Or to elope with Emily?” she demanded. “Was that your doing too? I can believe you capable even of that!”
“No, it never entered my head that he had enough spirit for such a stroke as that. All I did was to try whether I could sting him into coming here, and enacting his tragedy to Emily. He prated about the attachment that had existed between them, and for anything I knew it might have been true. If it was true, and he had enough courage to come here in defiance of me, I thought he might be the very thing that was wanted to weigh the scales completely down against that damned coronet. I gave him a couple of days’ grace, and then sent Emily a letter, calculated—as you so correctly pointed out to me, my clever one!—to scare her out of her wits. I can’t say I expected an elopement, though.”
“And if you had? Do you expect me to believe that you would not still have used the wretched boy in that unprincipled way?”
To her seething anger, he appeared to consider this quite dispassionately for a moment or two. “No, I couldn’t have helped him to a Gretna Green marriage,” he decided.
“This is something indeed! No doubt, if I had not frustrated that crazy scheme, you would now be posting north to do it yourself!”
“What I should be doing at this moment, if you had not wrecked everything with your damned meddling, would be thanking God for deliverance!” he returned trenchantly. “What I thought to find here was Emily playing Juliet to Gerard’s Romeo! His heroics may not appeal to me, but they are just the thing to put a little spirit into her! All she needed to make her cry off by the time her mother sent her here, was someone to support her! The fool that I was, I believed I could rely on you to scotch what you must have seen was the worst marriage ever! Very free you are with your condemnations of what I did, you shrew! Reserve some of your censure for your own behaviour! Instead of telling the chit she had better go hang herself than cling like a damned limpet to a man you knew would make her a hellish husband, you did all you could to persuade her I had all the amiable qualities which no one knows better than you I have not! By the time Gerard burst in on me, I knew you were failing me, but that you were ranged on the side of the Laleham harpy I never dreamed! What was in that red head of yours, my sweetest scold? Spite?”
Quick as a flash she struck at him, but he was quicker still, and caught her wrist in mid-air. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll hit me when I choose to let you, and at no other time, Serena! Why did you try to push me into that marriage? Answer me, damn you!”
“I never pushed you into anything!” she replied pantingly. “Wiser men than you have fallen in love with pretty featherheads! You to talk to me of spite! It never entered my head that you had offered for Emily because you wanted to be revenged on me, and hoped I should be hurt! You have gone your length, Rotherham! I may be every one of the things you are so obliging as to call me, but the only thought I had was to save you from the humiliation of being twice jilted! You may let me go: I would not touch you, any more than I would touch a toad!”