Sarah twisted and turned between the high yew hedges, forcing herself not to break into a run. She could see no logic in the layout of the maze, and it was complete chance that she found herself stepping out into a little clearing with a miniature temple at the centre of it.
There was only one entrance to the clearing, she realised, so she faced the choice of waiting there or plunging back into the maze. Really, the most dignified thing to do was to sit on the stone bench behind the little row of columns and pretend this is what she intended all along.
It took only a few minutes for Marietta Terrell to stroll into the centre of the maze. She looked cool, calm and perfectly turned out. Sarah was convinced that her own cheeks were scarlet, her nose was shiny and there were bits of yew hedge in her hair.
Behave like a duchess, she reminded herself. Nicholas doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
‘Do you know the key to the maze?’ she asked brightly before the other woman could speak. ‘I confess I just wandered around until I found myself here. What a charming spot on a hot day.’
‘Oh, I have known it for ever,’ Marietta said. She sat on the edge of a bench facing Sarah. ‘My family are neighbours, you know.’ She paused, her smile sad now. ‘It might have been my home for ever.’
‘Of course. Such a tragedy, the loss of your husband so young.’
‘I mean that I so nearly married Nicholas. That accident was the tragedy.’
‘You—you almost married Nicholas?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Marietta gazed down at her clasped hands. ‘That is why he was coming here, you see. To tell the family about our love, our plans to marry.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ Sarah demanded and could have bitten her tongue for the urgency of the question.
‘We thought he was going to die, he was so ill. It was not important to tell the family of our plans, not then. Frederick was beside himself with grief and anxiety. I knew he had...admired me, but I had not understood the depth of his feelings. I allowed myself to comfort him, to hold him in my arms. It was a terrible mistake. In his confused state his ardour overcame him...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Are you saying that he raped you?’ Sarah demanded.
‘He... No, there was no force. The comfort we gave each other in our grief overwhelmed us. When we came to ourselves and realised what we had done, Frederick said that in honour he must wed me.’
‘Neither of you thought to discuss this with Nicholas, I suppose? You didn’t think to tell Frederick that you were in love with his brother?’
I feel sick, but I will not let her see what she is doing to me.
‘We thought he was dying. And when he was no longer in danger he told me that he would be lame, that he could not ask me to marry him. He loved me so much you see. And so I married Frederick. But Nicholas, alas, has never forgotten, never loved another. He loves me still.’
‘Until now,’ Sarah said crisply. Was it possible for a heart to break? She had always thought it a poetic fancy, now she felt real pain when she breathed, but she was going to fight.
‘Oh, my dear Miss Parrish. He compromised you, did he not? All those frightful adventures at sea. He is a gentleman, of course he offered for you. And he desires you, I am sure. You are pretty enough and, I have no doubt, willing too.’
‘You—’ Sarah closed her lips tight on the word. Oh, yes, she had been willing. ‘Why, exactly, are you telling me all this?’
‘So you understand him. So you will not hurt him further by speaking of me or by reproaching him if he does not show you the devotion you no doubt feel you deserve. He will always be the gentleman, my Nicholas. He will try and hide it from you. But it is me that he loves and always will.’
‘You do not think that your affianced husband might be somewhat disturbed by the revelation that you love Nicholas?’
‘Oh, but no longer. My goodness, of course not!’ Her trill of laughter was mocking. ‘As a brother, of course, but all that died a long time ago. Frederick was so very like him, after all. Only he was a man and not an idealistic youth.’
‘I expect I must thank you for your frankness,’ Sarah said. How she was keeping the smile on her stiff lips she had no idea.
The other woman got up. ‘I will leave you to regain your countenance. You are sadly flushed, my dear.’ She strolled out of the clearing. ‘I do hope you can find your way out,’ she called back. And laughed.
Sarah sat and concentrated on breathing until she could get her emotions under some kind of control.
The disloyal, miserable... He almost died. He thought he would be lame for life... An idealistic youth. Then, He loved me so much. He still does.
She found the tears were streaming down her face. Tears for herself, tears for that young man, idealistically in love, freeing Marietta from marriage to him because he thought he would be unfit for her. Tears for lost love.
And then the memory came of Nicholas in London, standing before the cold grate in Anna’s drawing room saying, I have never loved. Lying to her, because she had known from that strained breakfast at Lord Sutton’s house that there was something between Marietta and him.
She had betrayed her own feelings too clearly, she thought drearily. He had felt honour-bound to offer again and he knew that she would not accept anything but an apparently heartfelt proposal. A protestation of love.
So now what should she do? Freeing him would not give him Marietta because he could not marry her. She got up and re-entered the maze. It was an apt path to be treading when her thoughts were so confused. Perhaps she could stay in its green sanctuary for ever...
Voices. She stopped in her tracks because one of the speakers, unmistakable even though she could not hear the words, was Nicholas.
They were ahead of her, so she walked on quietly, listening. The other voice was Marietta’s. Sarah stopped. Whatever they were saying she did not want to hear it.
Silence fell and she moved again, taking each turning without thought, and found herself at the entrance. Marietta was running away, past the pond, towards the house. As Sarah watched Nicholas appeared from the side of the maze and she stepped back into the shadows.
His hat was in his hand and his hair looked disordered, as though someone had run their fingers into it. He put up the other hand and tugged his neck cloth straight and stared after Marietta. Sarah stared at his profile and saw an expression of raw emotion that she had never seen on his face before, and could not read now. Then he turned abruptly and strode off towards the park.
A little stream ran into the pool. Sarah heard its bubbling as she emerged from her hiding place and she knelt, dipped her handkerchief in it and cleaned the tear-tracks from her face, sat beside it until she felt calm enough to walk back to the house.
Somehow she managed to avoid Nicholas until the family gathered in the drawing room before dinner. She put on another of her new gowns and the diamonds that Millie produced and recited a mental lecture about self-respect and dignity, then she sailed downstairs, head up and battle in her heart.
Marietta, stunning in palest gold and amber, gave her a sweet, pitying smile, but—wisely—kept her distance.
Nicholas greeted her with outstretched hands and then lifted hers to his lips. ‘You look magnificent tonight,’ he murmured.
‘I love you,’ she whispered back, gazing deeply into his blue eyes.
‘And I you.’ There was no hesitation, no flicker or blink, just total focus on her.
‘Now, remind me who everyone is. I must make certain I offend none of your family by getting them muddled. There’s your uncle Lord Horace, and next to him your cousin Cynthia? Yes. Then next to her is Wilfred.’
She worked around the room, glancing up at him each time as though to check that she had each name correct.
‘And then Marietta, your sister-in-law.’
Yes, there it was, the tense jaw, the flicker of an eyelid. The small exhalation of breath.
She carried on around the room and he showed no other sign that anything was wrong, applauding her memory and correcting her few errors. But she knew him too well to have mistaken those signs: Marietta had a powerful effect on him.
The night before she had sat on Nicholas’s right hand at table, but tonight she was partnered by Lord Horace, who appeared to have taken a liking to her. As they were seated at the other end of the table she was able to look at Nicholas without him noticing.
Sarah ate and talked and laughed and all the time watched Nicholas and tried to examine her own feelings. These were more important than thoughts, she decided.
She loved Nicholas and nothing Marietta had said had changed that. And if she loved him, then she must trust him, or the love was not real. The idea made her stop, her soup spoon halfway to her lips, and she had to put it down again.
He tells me he loves me. If I trust him, then I trust him to tell me the truth.
She felt immeasurably lighter. Yes, she still had to get to the bottom of Marietta’s tale because she could not believe that Frederick had seduced the woman his brother intended to marry, not knowing about the betrothal—but the dark, nagging misery had gone, replaced by apprehension that she might not get this right.
If that was true. Has she lied about everything? Just who did the seducing?
One more day before our wedding day. Twenty-four hours to get this right for the rest of our lives.
Nick sat at his dressing table and pared his nails, taking great pains over it because that stopped him looking at the connecting door to Sarah’s bedchamber.
He tried telling himself that it was ridiculous, at his age, to feel like this. He was as happy and as besotted as he had been when he had fallen for Marietta, and yet he recognised the difference. This was bone-deep, soul-deep contentment. This was love and it was going to last their lifetime.
A soft sound had him looking up into the glass and the paring knife fell from his hand.
Sarah was standing in the doorway in a white robe, her hair loose about her shoulders. He got to his feet, every sense alert.
‘May I come in? I need to talk with you.’
She was not smiling and he could feel her tension across ten feet of space. There was a cold knot in his stomach and a chill down his spine.
‘Of course,’ he said evenly. ‘Come and sit here.’ He led the way to where a pair of deep leather chairs stood either side of the fireplace.
Sarah curled up in one, tucking the hem of her robe around her bare feet. He took the other and waited. It seemed she was having trouble framing the words and the cold knot became ice.
‘I would like to speak about Marietta,’ Sarah said suddenly.
Hell and a thousand damnations.
‘Yes?’
‘Were you going to marry her?’
‘Yes.’
‘But your family did not know?’
‘They did not.’
How does she know this?
‘You were injured riding here to tell them, but you never did because you were so ill.’ She saw he was about to speak and added, ‘Anna told me how your horse fell from the bridge and trapped you in the stream.’
‘Yes.’ That was all he could think of to say.
‘So why did you not marry her? Why did she marry your brother instead?’ Again Sarah hesitated. ‘I should tell you that I have heard her explanation.’
‘She told me that she could not marry me in my condition,’ he said before he had time to think of some way of glossing over the humiliation and the pain. ‘They thought my leg was going to be far more serious than it proved. They might have had to amputate it. One can appreciate her point of view.’
‘And so she married the heir to the dukedom.’ Those big sherry-coloured eyes regarded him seriously.
He had to ask, but the words were difficult to articulate. ‘What did she say?’
‘That you gave her up because you could not bear to inflict yourself on her. That your brother, seeking comfort for his distress about you, and not knowing of the betrothal, seduced her and insisted on marrying her. That she loved you and that you love her still.’
‘Where did she tell you all this? When?’
‘She found me in the maze this afternoon and greatly enjoyed spinning her poisonous little web. She left and I followed her out. I saw you, although you did not see me. She had kissed you, I think.’
Her face was fully lit by the branch of candles on his dressing table. He could see how white she was and that tears were standing in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. Then, ‘I see.’
‘May I have a handkerchief, please?’
‘Of course,’ Nick said, as though his world was not disintegrating about his ears. He went to the dresser, found one and handed it to her, careful not to touch her fingers as he did so.
Sarah wiped her eyes, then blew her nose prosaically. ‘I think that she kissed you, not that you kissed her. She is lying, I realise that. Twisting the truth about all of it.’
‘You do? Why? How?’
‘Because I trust you, of course. I love you. You told me you had never loved. You said it as part of a declaration to me, so I know it is the truth. I believe that you might have been infatuated with her when you were much younger, that you believed you loved her and that you came here to tell your family.’
‘Yes,’ Nick said, too shaken to do more than stare at her. ‘You trust me without question? You do not ask me if it is true, or to explain, you simply trust me because you love me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I owe you the truth. When she told me how she felt about my injuries, and that she could not marry me because I would be an invalid for the rest of my days, she wept very prettily. I think my infatuation lasted until I heard the news a few days later that she would marry Frederick. It was not a great success, that marriage. If he had lived I think there might well have been a scandal.’
‘She twisted and turned the truth because she wanted to be a duchess. And I think that, when she realised she never could, she also discovered that she had loved you, in her way. It is strange, how often someone who has done something despicable turns on the person they have wounded,’ Sarah mused. ‘Self-defence, I suppose.’
She stood up before he could move and came to curl up in his armchair with him, her head on his chest, her hair tickling his chin. ‘I almost didn’t tell you all this. I did not do so because I wanted explanations. But I wanted you to know how I feel about you and I do not want secrets between us.’
Nick closed his arms around her and held her tight, her heart beating against his, the scent of her, flowers and woman, filling his nostrils, and found he had no words, no sensual desire, nothing except joy so deep that he thought he was struck dumb by it.
Sarah did not seem to need words, nor even kisses. She settled against him and he felt her lips curl into a smile against the bare skin where his robe lay open just below his throat.
At last he stirred, rose to his feet with her in his arms and carried her through to her own bed.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and bent to kiss her goodnight.
‘Tomorrow, it begins,’ she murmured, already half asleep.