Page 10 of A Rogue's Downfall
“And you.” And yet, she thought, and was surprised by the thought, she was not so sure she would change the past if she could. There would be no Jamesif the past were changed. There would not have beenthat night, whose ugliness had been apparent onlyafter it was over. There would not be this day andthis moment. She shivered under the light stroking ofhis hand.
“Changed,” he said. “Not erased.”
“Changed how?” She closed her eyes tightly.
“Who was hosting a Valentine’s Ball that evening?” he asked. “Someone must have been. I wish it hadbeen that one we were both attending. I wish I hadasked you to dance at that. I wish we had been surrounded by the eagle eyes of a hundred chaperons. Iwish I had sent you flowers the next day and calledto take you driving.”
“No you don’t,” she said. “You never consorted with girls like me. You never even noticed us. Youwould have been bored. You would not have got fromme what you want from women if I had not beenunchaperoned and if I had not been drinking.”
“Did you know what was happening?” he asked. “I have often wondered.”
“Yes,” she said. “I knew.”
“Did you know who I was?” he asked. “Either before or after I removed my mask?”
“From the first moment,” she said. “Your identity was unmistakable.” She would not return the question. The answer was too humiliatingly obvious.
“You must have been very inebriated then,” he said, “even to have agreed to dance with me. Werenot all the little girls warned to have nothing to dowith me?”
“Perhaps,” she said bitterly, “you do not understand the attractions a rake has for girls who have been hedged about with dullness and propriety alltheir lives.”
“Ah,” he said. “And so you had your brief moment of adventure and defiance, Amy, and are now hedgedabout with dullness and propriety again.”
That was it in a nutshell. Perhaps that was life. She knew so little about it. Perhaps life was a dull thinginterspersed with brief moments of adventure, defiance, and joy. Had it been a moment of joy, theircoupling exactly one year ago? Yes, it had. God helpher, it had. On the spur of the moment, she couldthink of only two moments of pure joy in her life.That was one. The birth of their son was the other.
She was suddenly aware of a familiar tautness in her breasts. “James will be needing me,” she said,lifting her head. “I must go back.”
He got immediately to his feet and held out a hand to help her up. “I did not intend the day to developthis way,” he said. “But perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps now that we have begun talking to each other,we have to deal with the past before there can be anypresent. But it is Valentine’s Day, and you are myvalentine. Look at the primroses, Amy.”
She turned her head obediently and looked. She had not been to the lake since last autumn. Perhapsshe would not have come until summer if he had notsuggested it today. She would have missed the primroses. How fleeting a thing joy was.
“Now look at me,” he said.
She did so, raising her eyes slowly from his chin. It was not easy to look into his eyes.
“Smile for me,” he said. “Because there is spring, beauty, and hope. And because it is February the fourteenth, and you are my valentine.”
She knew that however foolish it was and however painful it would be, she would look back on this daywith longing. She knew she was still a naive girl andnot the mature woman she had thought she had become. She knew that she was still as much in lovewith him as she had ever been. She smiled, thoughher eyes dropped back to his chin as she did so. Shewatched him raise her hand to his lips and turn it overto kiss the palm.
If only, she thought. Ah, if only ... She drew her hand free and turned from him to scramble up thebank toward the tethered horses.
He set a pink rosebud across her plate on the luncheon table—pink to suggest the warmth of afternoon. But she was still busy in the nursery. He paced.
The day was not progressing at all as he had imagined it would. He was not at all sure that it was not quite disastrous, in fact. He had wanted to livethrough the day and to take her through it withouteither of them once thinking of the events that hadbrought them together and held them together. Hehad wanted to woo her as if they really had met forthe first time today. It was an impossibility, of course,a romantic dream. It was surprising, he supposed, since he had never thought of himself as being evena remotely romantic person.
Perhaps, he thought, the only hope for them was to delve back into the past and to come to terms withit—together. But he did not want that to happentoday. Tomorrow, perhaps, but not today. But perhapsthere could be no today if one denied yesterday. Hesighed and readjusted the flower so that the bud wason the plate instead of hanging over the edge.
He knew what he wanted to do at this very moment. He had resisted the urge to follow her to the nursery.She would not like it at all. But she was his wife, andher baby was his son. He felt excluded and lonely. Notself-pitying. He had deliberately excluded himself afterbeing unable to do so while she was in the process ofgiving birth. He had no right intruding on their liveswhen his own part in them had been such an ugly andguilty one. She had been forced to marry him. Hewould not force her to live with him forever after. Hehad given her the only gift that seemed of value—thegift of freedom from his presence. But he felt excludedand lonely now—as he had every day of the two anda half months since he had dragged himself away backto London.
He paced a few more times, glanced at the pink rosebud, which needed no further readjustment, hesitated, hurried from the room, and dashed up the stairstwo at a time to the nursery floor so that he wouldnot have time to think and give in to a feeling of guilt.
She was sitting in a rocking chair by the window, her dress lowered to her waist and her elbow on oneside, gazing down at their son, who was sucking contentedly. But she looked up, startled, flushed andglanced about her. There was no shawl or blanket tohand with which she could cover herself. She closedher eyes and leaned her head back against the frameof the chair while he shut the door quietly behind him.
He watched in silence for a while before strolling across the room toward them. She kept her eyesclosed and rocked the chair slowly. There was something almost tangibly intimate about the scene, hethought. His wife and his son bonded together—theson he had put inside her with such careless pleasure,the son she had borne in such agony while he watchedhelplessly as he watched now. Excluded. By his ownchoice. By the nature of what he had done to her.Could he ever atone?
He reached out and touched the backs of his fingers lightly to the inner side of her breast, touching hisson’s hand as he did so. The child was sleeping, hismouth slack about her nipple. She opened her eyesand looked up into his. It was a moment of unbearablesweetness. It was a moment, the merest moment oftime, when the three of them belonged together. Afamily.
“Amy.” He heard the whisper of his own voice.
