They climbed a wooded hillside, and emerged into a cliff-top meadow. Rugged gray cliffs stretched north and south. To the east, the sea glittered blue and silver. Is it my turn to say something? Barnaby groped for a comment. “Beautiful.”
A track ran near the edge of the cliff. “The riding officer’s path,” Marcus said. “You can look down into all the coves.”
“Are there smugglers here?”
“Not here. Further north.”
The stilted, awkward conversation dwindled into silence. They walked without talking. Butterflies fluttered among the wildflowers. A brisk breeze brought the scent of the ocean. Birds soared on the thermals, making sounds like cats mewing, and beneath those sounds, a voice echoed in his ears. Marcus’s voice. You fucked my wife.
“I never thought you’d move so far from London,” Barnaby said, when he couldn’t bear the voice in his head any longer. “I always thought you’d stay within a day’s ride of Parliament—and Jackson’s.”
“I’m stepping back from politics.”
He glanced at Marcus in surprise. “You?” His gaze met Marcus’s for a moment, before skidding sideways.
“The slave trade’s abolished. And I have a son, now. I want to spend as much time with my family as I can. I don’t intend to model myself on my father; my children are going to know me. And as for Jackson . . . I’ve hired one of his men as a groom, chap called Sawyer. He can’t fight in the ring anymore—but he’s good with horses. We spar several times a week. Sawyer usually wins. Charlotte says it’s good for my vanity.” Marcus grunted a laugh.
Barnaby’s answering smile felt like a grimace. He looked away. This is futile. We can’t go back to what we once had. It was impossible to mend something this broken.
“I had this seat built for Charlotte,” Marcus said. “Towards the end of her pregnancy, she couldn’t walk far, but she liked to come up here.”
Barnaby glanced around.
The seat in question was wooden, solid and sturdy and big enough for two people. It faced the sea.
Marcus crossed to it and sat. After a moment’s hesitation, Barnaby followed. His joints didn’t want to bend; he sat as stiffly as an old man.
“I spent a lot of time here with Charlotte, that last month of her pregnancy,” Marcus said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “It was cold. December.”
Barnaby managed another smile-grimace. He looked down at his gloved hands. I can’t stomach two weeks of this, both of us pretending.
“Marcus, this isn’t going to work,” he said quietly. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Marcus said, equally quietly, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
Barnaby closed his eyes. “Marcus—”
“You never told me what happened with Lavinia.”
His brain rejected the words—No, Marcus didn’t just say that—but his ears told him otherwise. Marcus had said it.
Barnaby’s chest seemed to grow hollow with horror. Finally, he turned his head and looked at Marcus. “You want to know?”
Marcus nodded.
I owe him that.
Barnaby looked down at his clenched hands. “She came to me one afternoon, asked to speak with me. We went for a walk in the gardens. When we got to the folly, she started crying, and she said that you’d taken to hitting her and that she was scared and . . . and I tried to comfort her, and . . . we had sex.”
His mouth filled with excuses: I never meant to. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t plan to cuckold you. Barnaby gripped his hands more tightly. “The next day, she came to see me again, and I told her we couldn’t—and she cried, and when I wouldn’t touch her, she flew into a rage. She . . .” He paused. How to put that alarming fury into words?
“I am familiar with Lavinia’s tantrums,” Marcus said dryly. “She broke things, threw things, screamed like a banshee.”
Barnaby nodded, still looking at his hands. “And then she went back to Hazelbrook and told you what had happened between us.”
Marcus stretched out his legs. “Actually, what Lavinia told me was that the two of you had been having an affair for several months.”
Barnaby jerked his head around to stare at him, aghast. “What? No! It was only once!”
“And she also said that you seduced her.”
Barnaby shook his head, open-mouthed, mute with disbelief.
“Lavinia was an excellent liar. I didn’t realize how excellent until after her death.” Marcus rubbed his brow. “So, she didn’t start crying until you were at the folly?”
Barnaby closed his mouth, and shook his head again.
“A good choice of location. Secluded. Private. That handy chaise longue.”
Barnaby felt himself flush. “I didn’t choose to walk in that direction!”
“No, Lavinia chose. And she kissed you first, didn’t she?”
Barnaby hesitated, and nodded.
“And initiated the sex?”
He nodded again.
“Tears and kisses, and then sex . . .” Marcus grimaced. “I fell for that ploy quite a number of times. I’d be astonished if any man could have resisted that one. She was exceptionally good at it.”
Barnaby blinked. “What?”
“When it came to sex, Lavinia was a manipulator par excellence. She led me by my cock that first year of our marriage—and I was too blindly in love to notice. Even when I began to have my doubts, it took me months to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to admit that she’d married me for my money and my title—because she was so damned beautiful.”
Barnaby looked back down at his hands. Beautiful was too mild a word for the late countess. She had been luminous, slender and golden, as lovely as an angel.
“Lavinia used me. And when I stopped letting her walk all over me, she turned around and used you, too. You were a pawn, Bee. She seduced you in order to hurt me.”
Barnaby pinched his thumbs together. You think I haven’t realized that?
“My first memories are of you, you know?” Marcus said. “In fact, every good memory I have from my childhood has you in it.”
Barnaby closed his eyes. He wished he could close his ears, too.
“Thirty years, Bee. We can’t just let that go.”
Barnaby opened his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s over, Marcus. We can’t go back.”
“No. But we can go forward.”
Can we? Can we bury a betrayal of that magnitude and carry on as if it never happened? He’d hoped so, once, but he knew better now. Barnaby shook his head.
There was a moment’s silence, and then Marcus said, “Do you still believe I hit her?”
“No.”
“And I know you didn’t seduce her.”
Barnaby unclenched his hands. “Doesn’t matter who seduced whom, does it? I still had sex with your wife. I’m not someone who should be your friend.”
“Bollocks.”
Barnaby glanced at him and then away. “You don’t trust me. You said so yourself, the last time—”
“That was a year and a half ago, Bee. I’ve changed my mind.”
Barnaby stared down at the ground, at the grass, the wildflowers. An orange and brown butterfly settled on a nodding white comfrey head. “It’s not the sort of thing you change your mind about.”
“I won’t say it came easily,” Marcus said. “Because it didn’t—I must have talked it over with Charlotte a hundred times—but the thing is, Bee, when I compared what you said that day at Mead Hall to what Lavinia had told me, I realized that she’d been lying and you’d been telling the truth, and that it had only been one afternoon—and if it was only the once . . . That changed things.”
Barnaby stared down at the orange and brown butterfly.
“When Charles was born, when I saw him the first time—” Marcus paused. When he spoke again, his voice was lower: “If I were to die, and if for any reason Charlotte needed help . . . I hope she’d come to you. Because I know you’d look after her, and I know you’d look after my son. I’ve told Charlotte that. She knows it.”
Barnaby’s throat tightened. He watched the butterfly explore the flower head.
Half a minute slowly passed, and then Marcus asked, “Am I wrong to trust you?”
Barnaby shook his head. I would die rather than betray you again. “No.”
Another half minute passed.
“What, then?” Marcus asked, an edge of frustration in his voice.
Barnaby blew out a breath, and turned his head to look at him. “For Christ’s sake, Marcus. I had sex with your wife.”
“So?”
“So, we can’t be friends after that!”
“The last time I saw you, you asked if we could—”
“Well, I was wrong,” Barnaby said flatly. “Some things are unpardonable, and what I did was one of them.”
Marcus looked at him for a long moment, his gaze penetrating. “You can’t forgive yourself.”
Barnaby grimaced, and turned his head away. He’d cuckolded his best friend. How could any man who’d done that forgive himself?
The silence between them stretched. Barnaby stared down at the butterfly and listened to the waves crashing and the birds crying and the grass rustling in the breeze.
“I don’t think there’s a man in England who could have withstood Lavinia once she set her sights on him,” Marcus said.
Barnaby had a flash of memory: Lavinia, her eyes starry with tears, her mouth tragic, begging him to kiss her. “A true friend would have—”
“Only if he was a eunuch.”
Barnaby shook his head.
“You turned her away the second time, Bee. That counts for a lot. Believe me, I know exactly how much willpower it took to resist Lavinia.”
Not willpower; shame. I was so sick with shame I couldn’t even look at her.
Marcus sighed again. “If you wish to leave tomorrow, then of course you may. But I hope you’ll stay.” He paused, and then said, “We can’t go back, Bee, but we can start again.”
Barnaby closed his eyes. Start again? God, if only he could start again. Not be the man who had betrayed his best friend.
Too late. He would always be that man.
Marcus cleared his throat. His voice became diffident: “Charles is being christened next week. Charlotte and I were hoping that you’d stand as his godfather.”
Barnaby’s head jerked around. “Godfather?” he said, appalled. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“But . . .” But I cuckolded you. I can’t stand as godfather to your heir. Barnaby’s throat was too tight for speech. He shook his head.
“Please think about it.” Marcus pushed to his feet and stood for a long moment, looking down at Barnaby, his face unsmiling, his gray eyes serious. “He’s called Charles after Charlotte’s father, but his second name is Barnaby.”