The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [78]
“Oh, dear,” Flock said suddenly, stepping forward, “you didn’t bring that poaching Nettle, did you, Lord Beecham? I don’t have my gun.”
“Now, Flock, can’t you see that his lordship is quite alone? That he suffers? From what, we will doubtless learn in good time. Were I to venture a guess at this very moment, I would say that he is hungry. Sit down, my lord. Flock, serve his lordship a bit of baked pheasant covered with jellied apricots.”
“Yes, sir, I am very hungry,” Lord Beecham said. But he didn’t want food, not really. He wanted to weep. It was all over for him. He had fought it, fought it with all his might, fought a good fight. He had thought of his father, and continued to fight it. But even the darkness of his memories had not diminished in the slightest what had happened to him, what he was helpless now to fight against.
He jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking it over. He began to pace. “Sir,” he said, striding up and down the dining room, the oak planking creaking beneath his boots. Thank God, he had not taken the time to pull his boots off. He just might have forgotten them altogether. He might have ridden Luther here in his bare feet. The humiliation would have been rather staggering.
No, thank God, his boots had been on his feet the whole while he had made frantic love to a woman. He had never made love to a woman before with his boots on, except Helen. Had he ever taken his bloody boots off? It wasn’t to be borne. He sucked in air and looked like a wild man.
“I just left your daughter at the inn.”
“Oh? My little Nell is accounted an excellent hostess. What displeased you?”
“Myself, this damnable situation. Sir, there is no hope for it. I am undone. I suppose I simply must marry your daughter. I had not planned to marry until I was almost dead because my own parents gave me a powerful distaste for marriage. Actually, my father’s example with each of his three wives made me determined to avoid taking a wife of my own. But now I see that it doesn’t have anything to do with me or with Helen. It is other people, not us. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
“I must have Helen. I cannot continue without her. Well, it is not exactly without her, but this other, it’s madness, and it has to stop or I will hurl myself over a cliff, and than where would I be?”
“I believe you would be dead, my boy.”
“Not at all a good finish. Please, sir. Have I your permission to court and wed your daughter?”
Lord Prith stared at him. “I have heard of your sire. His name was Gilbert Heatherington, was it not?”
“Yes.”
“My dearest Mathilda was a friend of his second wife. Poor Marianne died within five years of her marriage to him.”
“Yes, sir, I was there. My father was obsessed with building a dynasty. But I am the only child of his loins who survived. He had no caring at all for women, none really for the children except that they live, which they didn’t.” Lord Beecham stopped. There was no reason to continue this. His father was dead, all three of his wives, including his own mother, dead as well, and the innumerable offspring.
“I am not like my father.”
“But you speak of marriage as if it would be your downfall. Why would you consider marriage a bad thing just because your father mucked it up?”
“He humiliated my mother. He kept her pregnant every year until I could hear her begging him not to take her, not to force himself upon her, that she would die with the next pregnancy, but he just laughed and forced her, and that last time she did die, cursing him, but he didn’t care. I believe he was with a mistress at the time. But I was there, sir, and I heard what she said. I heard her death. I despised him. I swore never to impregnate a woman, but then I realized that I had to have an heir, so I decided to wait, wait until it was almost the end of my time, and then I would take a wife and beget an heir.”
“How old were you when your mother died?”
“Ten.” He stared at Lord Prith. He couldn’t believe at all that