Page 28

She sighed. If she’d been standing instead of lying, she’d be pacing now, despite her nakedness. This was the hard part she had come to. ‘It made me realise how reckless our behaviour was. I had escaped the consequences of our actions, that month, but it would not be sensible to imagine that I would be able to do so again. And there really were so very few choices, when I came to look at my situation with my eyes fully open.’

‘You could have shared it with me. We could have entirely abstained from⁠—’

‘We could, of course. But I was not confident we would, and if you are honest, you cannot be either. Do not pretend that you don’t recall how things were between us, because I know you do as well as I. And that was another thing. The passion I experienced with you scared me.’

‘How so?’

This was a disingenuous question, or seemed so to Miss Constantine, and it lit a little flame of anger in her, giving heat to her next words. ‘Did it not scare you? If you claim that now, you are lying to yourself as well as to me. You must have told me a dozen times that you had never experienced such strength of feeling before, such a sense that your body’s demands and not your reason controlled your actions, not in your marriage nor anywhere else. You had found something you had not been looking for, and understood things about your own deep nature that were unwelcome to you. And now you know my true history, you can be very sure that it was the same for me, or worse. You had a son at home you should have been with; very well, you were always going to return to him sooner or later and rebuild your relationship. But I went to Venice to study and to paint, to live an independent life on my own terms, as so few women can. While I was with you, I was not doing that.’

These were hard and possibly dangerous things to say to him, but she had come this far and would say them with utter honesty. ‘All I could think about was you, night and day, waking and sleeping. All I wanted to draw and paint was you, not Venice and its sights and people. All I wanted to do with my time was spend it with you. Of course I ran away, as if running for my life. I’m sorry I was not honest with you, Xan – I know now that was wrong and selfish, and possibly cruel. But I was beginning to think I did not know who I was any more. I had to go before I lost myself completely. I must believe that you understand this, because you have told me of how your brother lived his life as a slave to his every whim, however base and destructive, and described to me your strong desire to be different from him, and fear that in the end you might not be. And therefore, if you are honest with me, you will admit that some part of you might easily have wanted to do what I did – to put safe miles between us, to escape the madness of it. The difference is, the realisation came to me first, because I am a woman, and have some vulnerabilities that you do not share.’

When she stopped speaking, a silence fell between them. Bianca had not the least idea what Xan was thinking, nor what he would do next. But she had got it all out, and was glad of it, whatever happened now.

He said sombrely, ‘I suspect it cost you something to tell me this. To explain. And if you had said it all in Venice, before leaving me, I do not know in truth how I might have reacted. I hope I would have let you go as you wanted, as was your right, but… I do not know. You’re right, it is a madness that possesses us. To be told in plain words that it is entirely mutual helps in one way, and not in another.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a bleak little smile. ‘I have reason to know it.’ They made animals of each other, and the harsh truth was that neither of them wanted it, or needed to be reminded of it.

‘So when I asked you to marry me, here in London…’ He didn’t seem to have any way to finish the sentence, or question, or whatever it was.

‘I know you don’t really think that I am a thing you have ruined. But it comes back to whatever lies between us. If you married me, you could tell yourself that you did it for reasons of honour, even if in your heart you knew better. You would not be like your brother, but better than him still, as you have always needed to think yourself. And yet there I would be, in your house, in your bed. Nobody would stop us from indulging our passion, day after day, for as long as it lasted.’ She laughed a little wildly. ‘I was thinking the other day in quite another connection about having your cake and eating it. I would be your cake, and you mine. We could do both.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Lord Fairmount said. She knew she’d woken the slumbering beast in him again with her careless words. She knew the sort of feasting he was thinking of now. And so was she.

Her breasts were heavy and she longed for his hands on them once more. A fire was kindling in her belly and between her thighs, as it always did when they were together. But still she managed to say, ‘The passion would go, even if it took years. I must believe it would. And then I would be tied to you for life, and you to me. And quite apart from that, from what little might be left when the fire burns out, I don’t want, or I don’t know if I want, to be a wife and mother – a countess, with everything that must imply – and all the rest of it. I don’t think in sober truth I can have everything, because nobody can, least of all women of any rank or none; I think I must choose.’

‘I see,’ he said soberly. ‘Yes, I do see.’

47

Xan’s evening had not turned out entirely the way he had imagined it. He had anticipated only pleasure, in Bianca’s arms, and he had had it in full measure. But now, in the aftermath of what she had told him, he felt hot shame when he thought of some of the things that he had said to her over the last few weeks, and some of the things that he had thought and not spoken aloud.

Because he realised now that he had never truly considered her position when they were lovers in Venice. He had been selfish, and a fool, too, not to divine that she had had concerns that he was unaware of, and worries she might not feel able – and whose fault was that? – to share with him, a relative stranger. He was not entirely inexperienced – he had been married, he knew that women had cycles that they must pay close attention to, whether they sought pregnancy or desperately needed to avoid it. But he’d never once thought to enquire about hers.

‘You make me ashamed of myself,’ he told her now. ‘I was oblivious to so much, and I suspect that you, or any other woman, could easily retort that men so often are.’

‘It was not my intention to make you feel uncomfortable,’ she told him steadily, ‘I should have been braver and told you all this long ago. If not in Venice, because I dared not, then when we met so unexpectedly in London.’

He shook his head. ‘I think that that would have been very difficult, given the idiotic way I was behaving and the highly awkward situation we found ourselves in. Bianca, if I may say how I feel, hearing all this from you…?’ She nodded. ‘Ashamed, yes, but glad to be able to let go of my anger and confusion. Grateful, then, to you. Sad, of course. But still, despite everything, and despite the fact that I know one of the things you are telling me is that we can have no future…’

‘Still, you desire me.’ Her dark eyes were bright and her lips parted; he knew that expression of old, and knew too that his expression must mirror it.

‘If it is a fire that must burn out, and I cannot say that you are wrong in thinking that, because I have no other experience of such a thing to guide me, God knows it has not yet.’

‘But it must, Xan. You know that. We have our lives to lead, and one of us will have to leave this place soon enough,’ she said, and he thought there was a deep, aching sadness in her voice at the stark reality of it. ‘We can’t afford to fall asleep here together and wake at God knows what hour of the morning. I know you won’t want me to walk back in the dark alone, and now that I think of it, I can’t in any case, because Sabrina has told everyone that I am with Viola, and I would hardly be leaving her house and walking home by myself before breakfast. It all seemed so simple in the planning, and yet feels so difficult now.’

He felt a ridiculous, unworthy urge to keep her talking, to extend by a ruse the time they had together. ‘Mrs Da Costa and the Duchess do not mind you being here?’ Xan had not realised that this was part of the scheme; that she was practising no deception at all on at least two of her sisters. He could not say the same; he was supposed to be visiting a friend out in Richmond and spending the night there, as far as his aunt and household were concerned.

She laughed without genuine amusement. ‘Does that shock you? Viola was the one who first suggested this. But I am reasonably confident that none of my other sisters would disapprove, as long as I am safe. Some of them have had their adventures too, though I shall not share them with you. We support each other – I am only just now realising how much. It is a great gift.’

‘It must be,’ he said with feeling. He could not imagine having such a good relationship with his only brother, and now, of course, it was far too late for that. And then he thought to ask, ‘She suggested it for what purpose?’

He felt her stiffen a little. ‘Honestly?’ she murmured.

‘We are at that point now, are we not? Past shirking truths, even if they are uncomfortable?’

‘Well then, in order to get you out of my system. To indulge this passion, just for a little while, so that it might pass, and let me get on with my life.’

The words should not sting, because he had felt the same in the past, he must admit. He had certainly felt exactly this, in a far more violent and disturbing manner, when he first laid eyes on her again so unexpectedly. He had not wanted her to leave his house, had put his hand on hers and very nearly tried to stop her, with possible consequences he did not care to think of now. If his soul, which he was beginning to suspect was sadly conventional, was shocked at hearing a woman – Bianca of all women – saying such a thing so openly, he must deal with that. They were equals in passion; he could not welcome that and then complain if she could also speak of it – and of its inevitable ending – more readily and truthfully than he.