Mistress - Amanda Quick [98]
Iphiginia did not want to hear any more. “Please—”
“But I was just a simple country farmer. At the time the title was in the hands of a distant uncle. I never expected to inherit. Nora wanted more out of life than I could ever give her. And she was so very beautiful that she and her parents convinced themselves that she could look a good deal higher than a local country squire. The year Nora turned eighteen, her family took her to London for a Season.”
“What happened?” Iphiginia asked, dreading the answer.
“She came home in June of that year and everything had changed. She was no longer the flirtatious, charming, happy young woman she had been when she left. She virtually threw herself into my arms and told me that she had finally realized that it was me she loved.”
“I see.” Iphiginia looked down at her fan. The waves of Marcus’s old anger and pain beat at her steadily, unrelentingly.
“And I was so naive and inexperienced that I believed her.” Marcus kept his gaze fixed on the night outside the coach window. “She told me that she had discovered that she did not care for Town life. She wanted us to be wed as soon as possible. Her parents were in full agreement. Her father took me aside and suggested we go to Gretna Green.”
“No long engagement, I take it?”
“Somehow everyone came to the conclusion that there was no point in wasting the time or the money. And I was so eager for her that I did not raise any objection. Nora and I went to Gretna Green. We spent our wedding night at an inn. I couldn’t wait to take her in my arms.”
“I really do not think I want to hear this.”
“I wanted her so much. I was determined to be as gentle as possible with her. But she cried that night. For hours, it seemed. She told me that I had hurt her dreadfully. Told me that I had the rough, callused hands of a farmer.” Marcus looked down at his broad fists. “It was true. I did have the hands of a farmer. I was a farmer.”
Iphiginia shivered at the memory of his hands on her. Strong hands. Good hands. Hands that made a woman feel wanted, needed. And safe. Tears formed in her eyes.
“The next morning there was a fair amount of blood on the sheets. I learned later that her mother had provided her with a small bottle of the stuff from the kitchen the day we left for Gretna. She needn’t have bothered.”
“I don’t understand,” Iphiginia whispered.
“Even if there had been no blood, I would not have suspected that Nora had been with another man. I was the virgin in that wedding bed. I was far more ignorant than she about such matters.”
“How did you learn that she had had another lover?” Iphiginia asked quietly.
“She miscarried the babe a month after we were married. I nearly went mad. I had no notion of what was happening. I thought she was dying.”
“Dear heaven.”
“I summoned the doctor. When it was all over he told me what had occurred. He wanted to reassure me. He assumed I was the father, of course, and that the babe was the reason for our hasty trip to Gretna. He patted me on the shoulder and told me there would be another babe soon enough.”
“You did not tell him the truth?”
Marcus’s mouth twisted. “Of course not. What man would admit that he had been duped in such a fashion? And then there was Nora. She was my wife.”
“And you felt you had to protect her, too, didn’t you?” Iphiginia asked.
Marcus shrugged but said nothing.
“You had taken care of your brother for years. Protecting someone younger and weaker than yourself was second nature to you. What did Nora say?”
“When I confronted her with the truth, she cried again. Then she broke down and told me the whole sordid tale. She had been seduced by one of her admirers in London, a young rake who was after an heiress and who had no intention of marrying her. Nor did he hesitate to boast of his conquest.”
“Poor Nora.”
“The gossip ruined her. There was no hope of marriage. Her family did not have the social power it would have taken to force Nora’s seducer to marry her.”
“So they whisked her back home and contrived to marry her off