Anne searched his eyes, a pain in her throat that made drawing breath almost a physical effort. "No," she said. "Please do not do this to me, Alexander."
The remains of his smile disappeared instantly.
"Always," Anne said, having difficulty with her breathing, "always you must play the tyrant with me. You have always hated me, have you not? Even when you married me. You treated me with quite calculated cruelty the day after our wedding and then you abandoned me for more than a year. I believe you would have been well contented never to see me again, Alexander. But I have been forced on your attention once more. And now you find that you have not yet wreaked enough revenge on me for taking you away from your chosen bride. I did not miss noticing tonight that you have danced with her twice already. And so you must take me to London with you. Why, pray? So that you can flaunt your flirts and your mistresses before me? So that you can continue to humiliate me by showing me constantly that you have only one use for me?"
Merrick stood very still looking back at her, his face shuttered. "It appears to me," he said finally, "that you have not objected overmuch to the use to which I have been putting you. Or has your acting ability this fortnight extended beyond the stage and into our bed?"
Anne could feel herself flushing and was thankful for the darkness that surrounded them. "No," she said, "there has been no acting involved. You are a very good lover, my lord. I would guess that I am receiving the benefit of the lessons you have learned from a countless number of light-skirts. This has been a very pleasurable two weeks, but I fear that tedium would set in if the period were extended. You see, Alexander, I have used you in the same way as you have used me." Anne smiled and turned to enter the arbor.
Merrick was after her in a moment, grabbing her arm and turning her roughly to face him. "It is not true," he said. "You merely speak this way because I have hurt you and you wish to salvage your pride. Admit it, Anne. I can force you to do so, you know."
She laughed in his face. "Poor Alexander," she said. "It is quite beyond your understanding, is it not, that any female could resist your charms. Have you ever crooked a beckoning finger before and been rejected? You are much like your cousin, Jack, you know. Earlier this evening he, too, was forced to admit that he had failed to add me to a string of conquests. It is ironic, is it not, Alexander? Poor ugly, mousy, fat Anne Parrish! Take me to London if you wish. I shall enjoy the experience enormously. But every time you come to my bed, my lord, know that I am merely using you for my pleasure. In my heart I shall hate you as I have since the morning after my wedding."
Merrick's grip on her arm relaxed. "I had thought to show you some kindness," he said. "Perhaps the best kindness I can show you is to send you back to Redlands?"
"Yes," she said, and her shoulders sagged suddenly. She could feel the fight draining out of her. "Let me go back home, Alexander. It is too late for kindness. Let us only not hate each other. If you force me to live with you, I shall truly grow to hate you, I fear."
He stared at her for so long that she was afraid she would lose control and hurl herself at him. But finally he nodded. "I see," he said. "I am sorry, Anne. I did not fully understand until now. You shall go home tomorrow. I shall not burden you with my presence again."
Silence stretched between them again, a silence during which they continued to stare at each other. And all the unexpressed feelings and the unspoken words were locked inside him and he had no way, no right to speak them. He had forfeited the right more than a year before when he had bedded her and so callously insulted her and left her the morning after. He had forfeited the right every day since, every day during which he had done nothing to show a husband's care for his wife. He had hoped that tonight he would be able to start making amends, but he had not had the chance to say any of the things he had planned. He had been stopped very effectively by her anger and bitterness, her utter rejection of him. And he could not fight back. He had no right. The only way he could show his love now was to leave her, to allow her freedom from his presence.
Anne. He stared at her, at his wife, whom he loved, whom he had thought to have with him for the rest of his life. But this was it, the end. Instead of a lifetime with her, he had only a few more seconds. Very soon he must turn and walk away, and he must never force his presence on her again. He might never see her again. He could never tell her how much he had grown to love her, how much he wished to spend the rest of his life making up to her part of what he had taken away from her since he had stumbled in on her during that winter storm.
"Good-bye, Anne," he said, holding out his hand to her, willing her to accept the handshake. Their final touch.
She looked steadily back at him. "Good-bye, Alexander," she said, and she inhaled with deliberate slowness as she placed her hand in his. Probably the last time she would ever touch him. She held the inhaled breath and let it out with steady control as he raised her hand to his lips. A moment later, it seemed, he was gone, without another word and without a backward glance.
The whole of the star-studded sky above Anne's head and the branches of the trees that ringed her wheeled with dizzying speed around her and she sank to her knees onto the gravel of the arbor path. Her face and hands were wet with her hot tears even before the first sob tore at her throat and chest.
Anne did not return to either the supper room or the ballroom. She did not even consider the discourtesy she was showing to the gentlemen who had signed her dance card for the sets after supper. She went straight to her room, rang for Bella to tell her that she would not be needed again that night, undressed, and climbed into the four-poster bed. She lay diagonally across it for the remainder of the night, facedown, knowing that he would not come, yet taut with expectation through the long and sleepless hours after the music ceased and the sound of voices and laughter died away. She did not sleep at all.
She was the first of the family to leave. The duke's best traveling carriage drew up outside the house just before noon, and everyone gathered either in the hall or on the cobbles outside to kiss her and wish her a safe journey. Even some of the guests who had stayed overnight after the ball were there. But Merrick was not.
Anne saw it all through a fog of exhaustion and distress. She hardly knew that she smiled as she kissed and hugged everyone and had a personal word for each. She hardly realized that she gave an especially big hug to the children and to Freddie, whose eyes were bright with unshed tears. She did not notice that the duchess was unusually tight-lipped and quiet or that the duke, leaning on his cane, looked more thunderous than usual. She knew only that the coach was the haven that she must reach, that once she was inside with the curtains drawn and once it was in motion, she would be safe again and could let go this tension that threatened to tear her apart.
She hardly realized, as she stood on the steps of the carriage, that she looked back at the people gathered in the courtyard and at the empty doorway and at all the windows along the front of the house. She did not look out again once she was inside. She did not wave to anyone.
December 1816-February 1817
Viscount Merrick huddled inside his many-caped greatcoat, trying to keep his neck warm. His beaver hat was drawn over his brow. The snow, fortunately, was not as bad as it had been in that storm a little more than two years before when he had first met Anne. Too wet to settle on the ground, it melted on impact. But it felt deuced uncomfortable against his cheeks and eyes, and was inclined to melt slowly down the back of his neck as soon as it came in contact with the warmth of his body. And it impeded visibility, so that his eyes were narrowed against the falling flakes, almost unable to see the road ahead.