Sophie had been walking by the lakes, only dimly aware of the beauty around her since she would soon be leaving it behind, as she surely must despite all that the Dowager had said. She climbed the steps slowly to see Rafe standing at the top, tracking the vehicle’s lumbering progress until it was out of sight.
‘Saying goodbye to your stepmother?’ she asked.
‘You might describe it rather as escorting her off the premises,’ countered the Marquess with a slight smile. ‘I thought I wouldn’t believe she was really gone until I saw it for myself.’ And then he said abruptly, ‘We must talk. Not here. Would you be amenable to a short walk, or are you tired?’
‘Of course I’m not. I’d sooner not go to the Gothic Tower, though,’ she added, aware that the conversation they were about to have could only be painful.
‘I’m in complete agreement that we should avoid it for a good while. And also the church – they’re digging a grave. May I suggest the Temple of Friendship?’
She assented, and they set off in that direction in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. ‘Has it fallen into ruin, or was it built that way?’ she asked a little awkwardly as they drew closer. The temple sat on a small rise and had a fine façade with a portico, but the building behind it appeared to be roofless, with trees pushing up where a large room might once have been.
‘It was complete once. But many years ago, before I was born, my father held one of his notorious parties here. A fire broke out – I have heard tales, possibly exaggerated, of drunken people, with their garments aflame, running down to plunge into the lake. Though I believe for a wonder no one was seriously injured. He escaped entirely unscathed, naturally.’
‘It must have been quite early in the evening, if his guests were still clothed,’ she responded drily.
‘That’s sadly true. Since then it has been left as a folly – just one among many.’ They’d reached the pretty, damaged temple now, and by common consent sat down on the broad steps. ‘I understand you’ve been having a tête-à-tête with my grandmother. She upbraided me for not making you a formal offer of marriage, and she is quite right, for I have not.’
‘It is impossible that you should. If you were so foolish as to do so, you know I must refuse you. Why should we give ourselves unnecessary distress?’ said Sophie with a little constraint.
‘The only thing that can distress me now is losing you, and so I refuse to hear talk of impossibility. I know you do not want me to speak, and I understand why, but Sophie, will you hear me out at last? I think you owe me that much.’
She looked down at her booted feet beneath the drab fabric of her gown. They were surrounded by a beautiful landscape of fine buildings, water and trees, all in perfect harmony of nature, design and execution, but neither of them had eyes for any of it just now. ‘Yes,’ she answered quietly. ‘I will, but I should tell you plainly that I must leave in a few days, as I always planned. I’ll stay until after the funeral, but then I must go. Your sister will be back soon enough, and I cannot be here when she returns. Her reputation and her future must not be endangered, and I will not allow them to be placed in jeopardy by any actions of mine. I’ve done enough damage to your family – I will do no more. I am sure your staff care enough for you to hold their tongues, and if Lady Wyverne talks I doubt anyone will listen to her – no one who matters, at any rate. You will be free to restore your family to its rightful place in the world.’
‘And if I said I don’t give a fig for any of that, because I need you as my wife, and cannot contemplate life without you?’
‘You must contemplate it. There is no other way.’
‘I won’t believe that. I love you, Sophie. To talk of freedom is nonsense, for what use is freedom without love? With you at my side, I can do anything – without you, nothing. And I know you love me. I know it in my heart and my bones. If you try to tell me you don’t, I won’t believe you, so don’t waste your breath on the attempt. None of this would be so hard for you if you didn’t love me just as much as I love you.’
She stood, and turned away from him, gazing blindly out across the peaceful sylvan scene. Why must he make this so damned difficult? ‘Very well,’ she said, rounding on him. ‘It’s true. I do love you, even though I don’t want to. But it doesn’t signify, because love is not enough. It isn’t. Your father married a woman with a scandalous past, but she was scandalous in an ordinary sort of way, really. Peers have married actresses before. I’m much worse – I’m a thief as well as a woman of ill repute,and anyone who knows I exist believes me to be Nate Smith’s mistress.’ She was very distressed, and her voice broke on a wild laugh as she said, ‘I’m supposed to be the mistress of your illegitimate uncle, the most notorious thief and master of thieves in England! He trained me to pick pockets, and do worse than that. Can’t you see why that might just possibly be a problem?’
‘I don’t care. As long as you and I both know who we are, we need not heed the opinion of any other person alive. And it is just as well, for all the world believes that I took my stepmother as my mistress, remember, Sophie. What could be more shocking than that?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You are a man, and so eventually you will be forgiven. I will not. It’s not even the world I fear, not really. It’s you. You will change your mind, and blame me – it might take twenty years, but you will. I’ve been here before, remember. Bart would have hated me for giving myself to him, I saw signs of it already creeping upon him after only a year, and one day so will you, who wasn’t even my first lover.’
He took her hands in his and said, ‘I won’t, you know. I understand why you think I will, but you are mistaken. Will you let me explain? You said you would hear me out. I promise if I cannot convince you I will not try to prevent you from leaving, even if it tears me in two.’
She knew she should pull her hands away, but did not quite have the strength to do so. ‘Go on,’ she said very low. ‘Please say your piece, then I can go.’ Her heart was breaking at the thought of leaving him, and she felt she could endure only a little more before she must flee.
‘Sophie, my dearest love, my heart, I know that you fear I want you to be respectable – Grand-mère told me as much, and I had realised that for myself in any case. But it’s not true. If that were all I wanted – to restore the tarnished good name of the Wyvernes, so that not a breath of scandal touchesit forevermore, or some such nonsense – I am sure I could go to London, to the Season now in full swing, and, despite my undeserved bad reputation, despite my father’s deserved one, find any number of good, dull girls willing to marry me forthwith. I could choose one of them in a perfectly cold-blooded way and set about making my life completely miserable. And her life, Sophie. I think that’s important too.
‘I don’t want to be boring and respectable. Perhaps you think I do, because I have not explained myself properly to you yet. It’s true that I’ve lived a staid life compared to that of my ancestors, but that’s only partly because I was reacting against my father and trying to keep everyone safe. It’s more complicated than that. I’m not like him in many important ways – I have no taste for libertinage, nor for burning down buildings or destroying innocent people’s lives. He was a wrecker and I am not. I’d certainly rather not be proverbial throughout the land for wickedness and cruelty. But I don’t look forward to leading family prayers and growing big, bushy whiskers either.’ She could not help but laugh through her tears at the picture he presented her with, and when she did so he gripped her hand more tightly. ‘I want to be wild and wicked, Sophie, but with just one woman – the woman I love. You, my dearest.
‘So I’m not asking you to change. I promise I won’t ever reproach you for being who you are, or for who you have been, because I love you for it all. It’s you I want, not some other woman I don’t care two pins for, and not the woman you might have been if your life had turned out differently. I’m not asking you to be Clemence again, even if that is what your public identity must be if you marry me. You’re Sophie. Or you can choose to be some other person, some other name, if you wish, if being Sophie has bad memories for you.’
‘It has bad memories, and good ones,’ she said. It was true. How badly she wanted to believe him.
He kissed her hand, and held it to his cheek. ‘If some of those good memories had me in them, I would be very honoured, and glad. I’m sorry I announced our engagement in front of Rosanna and Charlie, my love. Please believe that I wasn’t trying to force your hand. I would never do that. I want you to choose me freely more than anything in the world. It was just that in that moment I couldn’t see another way of saving the situation.’
‘I know. I don’t blame you for it. And that’s the point, I think, Rafe. If I marry you, there may be other such moments when you can’t rescue matters half so easily. You do know that? I fear you are deluding yourself about the path that lies ahead if I accept you. I want you to be clear exactly how terrible a risk you would be taking.’
‘My eyes are open. I’m not expecting miracles. I plan to be very grand and face the world down, if that proves necessary. And if you choose you can be the same, when people whisper behind their hands aboutmysupposed past, as they surely will. My grandmother can give you lessons in magnificent unconcern. Or you can just shrug and smile. What a wicked pair they must be, people will say, each as bad as the other. Would you make me the happiest man alive and consent to marry me, Sophie?’
‘I had a nightmare the other night. A nightmare about our future together, I suppose, if I married you. I was being presented to Queen Charlotte, and the knife in my garter sheath slipped out, and clattered across the floor to her feet. There was a huge uproar.’
‘I can see that there might have been,’ he said, smiling. ‘I am sorry you have been troubled by bad dreams, but after all there’s a simple solution.’
‘What might that be?’
