Page 40 of Someone to Watch Over Me
Ten
The slope at the back of the manor had been cut in a succession of three terraces. A wide, gently angled flight of steps led to the velvety expanse of lower lawn, bordered by carefully clipped yews. It was an old-fashioned garden, perfectly manicured with geometrically shaped flower beds and box-edged paths. A wrought-iron gate admitted entrance to the lower lawns, its towering stone gate piers topped with bronze urns.
Seeing no trace of Lord Gerard, Vivien descended the stairs. Grant had warned her about not going to the lower lawns, but it appeared she had no choice. Suppressing a tense sigh, she turned full circle. The garden rustled, and a night owl hooted gustily.
“Vivien.” She heard Lord Gerard’s thick whisper. “This way.” A hand wormed between the wrought-iron scrolls of the gate, and his finger waggled at her.
The lower gardens it would be, then. Shivering in the cool darkness, Vivien slipped past the gate and confronted Gerard. In the blue wash of moonlight, his face was as pale and formless as blancmange. He was average in height and build, his hairline beginning an inevitable recession to the top of his head. Vivien studied him, thinking that if she had indeed been lovers with this man, she should remember something, anything about him. However, the sight of his face and the sound of his voice had not summoned any ghosts from the void of her memory.
He made a move to embrace her, and she drew back at once.
Gerard laughed low in his throat and shook his head admiringly. “Vivien, you tease,” he murmured. “You’re as splendid as ever. God knows my eyes have missed the sight of you.”
“I won’t stay long,” she replied, forcing herself to pout prettily. “I don’t want to miss a word of gossip at the ball, as I’ve been away from town much too long.”
“Where have you been the past month? Come, you can confide in your old friend.”
“Are you my friend?” she countered softly.
“If I am not, then you have none.”
Unfortunately that could very well be true. Tilting her head, Vivien affected a coquettish pose, twirling a stray tendril of hair around a slender finger. “Where I’ve been is none of your concern, my lord.”
He paced in a half circle around her. “I believe there are a few questions I’m entitled to ask, pet.”
“You have five minutes. Then I will return to the ball.”
“All right, then, let us begin with the subject of our dear friend Morgan. What is he to you? Surely you can’t have accepted him as your latest protector—or have your standards fallen so low since last we met? Oh, I suppose he has a primitive appeal for some women…but he’s a commoner. A thief-taker, for God’s sake. What sort of charade are you playing at?”
“No charade,” she replied with veiled contempt. How dare this soft-waisted, indolent creature insult Morgan’s lack of blue blood? Oh, Morgan had his faults, to be sure…but he was a hundred times more of a man than Gerard could ever hope to be. “He’s an attractive man.”
“An oversized ape,” Gerard scoffed.
“He amuses me. And he can afford my tastes. That is enough for now.”
“You’re much better suited to me,” Gerard remarked quietly. “And we both know it.” His obsidian gaze swept over her with ill-concealed greed. “Now that the problem that separated us is apparently resolved, I don’t see why we can’t resume our former relationship.”
Problem? What problem? Vivien stifled a leap of curiosity behind a delicate yawn. “You talked to Morgan about me,” she said idly.
Apology colored his tone. “I thought you were dead, otherwise I wouldn’t have said one word to the bastard.”
“Did you confide in him about our ‘problem’?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t tell a soul about it, and besides…in light of your disappearance, I feared it would cast me in a rather suspicious light.” He paused and asked almost sheepishly, “How did it end, by the by?”
“How did what end?”
“Don’t be obtuse, darling. The pregnancy, of course. Obviously you’ve miscarried, or perhaps deliberately…” He stopped uncomfortably. “After much reflection, I admit I was wrong to refuse to acknowledge the babe, but you know the relationship between my wife and me. Her health is delicate, and the knowledge of your pregnancy would have distressed her too greatly. And there is no proof that the child was mine.”
Vivien turned away, her mind on fire.Pregnancy. She had been carrying a child. Slowly her hand crept to her flat abdomen, and trembled as it pressed there. It couldn’t be true, she thought frantically. Oh, dear Lord, if she had been pregnant, what had become of the child? A series of hot and cold shivers rippled through her as she mulled the possibilities. It must have resulted in miscarriage, because the alternative was not something she cared to contemplate.
She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight in horror. She wouldn’t have aborted the babe…would she? The hows and whys of the question flew around her like attacking birds, pecking and shredding until she flinched.
“I see,” Gerard said, reading her obvious discomfort and deducing that she had indeed deliberately terminated the pregnancy. “Well, no need to blame yourself, darling. You’re hardly the mothering kind. Your talents lie elsewhere.”
Her lips parted, but she couldn’t produce a sound. In her guilt and pain, she could only focus on one overwhelming fact. Grant must not find out. If he knew what she had likely done, his contempt for her would know no bounds. He would despise her for eternity…but no more than she would despise herself.
“Vivien.” Gerard’s voice penetrated the desperate whirl of her thoughts. He approached her from behind and grasped her gloved arms, his hands sliding in a downward caress. “Vivien, leave Morgan and come back to me. Tonight. He’s only flash gentry. He can’t do for you what I can. You know that.”
