Part 28 (1/2)

He'd been almost pretty with his blond curls and smooth, hairless chin. He was always more comfortable with women than with men. On their wedding night he'd admired her beautiful nightgown, yet shown no real enthusiasm for what lay beneath it. In truth they had been more like two girl-friends than husband and wife, lying in bed together giggling or chasing each other up and down the stairs. If she hadn't met Angus and found out what real men did with their women, and William hadn't found someone like himself in America, they might have stayed in that untroubled, pa.s.sionless friends.h.i.+p for ever.

'Poor William,' she said, hugging him to her breast. She could afford to be magnanimous now for she had discovered the beauty and ecstasy of normal pa.s.sion.

Encouraged by her sympathy, William bared his soul, telling her how he'd found there were many men like him, forced to search one another out in secret, always in fear that they would be discovered and denounced.

'You accused me once of going to a brothel,' he said brokenly. 'I wish that's where I had been for there is terrible danger in consorting with other men like me. Most are as sad and bewildered as I am; we wish more than anything we had not been cursed with such desires. But there are some who delight in their depravity and prey on the weak, bending us to their will. We cannot escape their clutches for they hold us fast by blackmail and intimidation.'

Anne sensed this was what had happened to him, for she'd often felt that when he verbally abused her when he'd been drinking, the words coming out of his mouth were not his.

That was what made her strong enough to tell him about Angus. It wasn't fair to let him pour out all his hurt and shame believing that he alone had destroyed the happiness they once had together. And, as always, she remained self-centred enough to think that once William knew, Albert would have nothing to hold over her.

She poured out her adultery in a torrent, telling him how she was attracted to Angus right from their first meeting, but that she held her feelings in check right up until William left for America.

'It wouldn't have happened if you'd been here,' she said brokenly. 'But you went away without me and I couldn't stop myself.'

She went on to tell him that she'd had Angus's baby, and how she'd been told by Bridie that the infant was stillborn.

William had remained surprisingly calm throughout her revelation. He looked stunned, bewildered, but not angry. He didn't interrupt her once with recriminations or even questions.

'But the baby didn't die. Nell took her home to her parents. The baby was Hope!' she sobbed out. 'I never knew. She came here and played with Rufus, but I never guessed she was mine. Nell didn't tell me until that awful day she said Albert had killed her.'

William's calm vanished then. He sat up straight on the bed and looked at her with steely eyes. 'Hope was your child?' he asked, his voice suddenly louder and harsh. 'You must have known the baby was alive. How could you let it go to someone so close? Was that so you could still see her?'

'No,' Anne insisted, a little bewildered that he was more upset by the child of her union with Angus than the love affair. 'I believed Bridie when she said she was dead. I was exhausted after the birth, and I didn't know anything about babies then. Bridie showed her to me and she wasn't moving or crying. Besides, you were due home from America any day and I was so scared. It just seemed to me to be G.o.d's way of dealing with my problem.'

William put his head in his hands and made a kind of wailing sound.

'I'm so sorry, William,' she sobbed. 'I have no idea what I would have done if I'd known she was alive. I suppose I would have asked Bridie to find a home for her, I couldn't have done anything else, could I? Imagine the disgrace!'

William remained with his head in his hands.

'How could I tell you about it?' she pleaded. 'It was such a terrible time, all alone here with Bridie, for all the other servants had gone to the London house by then. All I could think about was getting strong enough for the drive to London to join you. I did my best to forget it ever happened, and you made it easier because you were so kind and considerate.'

He looked up then, his face pale and haggard. 'Only because I was burdened with guilt too,' he said in a small voice. 'You seemed distant, preoccupied, but I thought you were angry because I hadn't taken you with me to America. Oh, Anne! If only you'd told me all this before.'

'How could I?' she asked. 'And what point would there have been in telling you when I thought the baby was dead?'

William nodded as if seeing her point. 'But did you tell Angus about it?'

Anne shook her head. 'His regiment left before I even knew I was with child,' she said. 'I didn't see him again until some time after Rufus was born. You were here when he called. Don't you remember he came upstairs to the nursery with us to see Rufus? He brought him a little wooden horse. You made us all laugh by galloping it along the edge of the crib.'

William half-smiled ruefully. 'Yes, I remember. I told Rufus he'd have a real one to ride on as soon as he could sit in a saddle.'

'We were so happy at that time,' Anne said wistfully. 'I could have put Angus out of my mind if you'd only stayed the way you were then. But you changed, getting drunk all the time, saying nasty things to me. Why did you change like that? Was it because you loved someone else?'

'Not then,' he said, shaking his head. 'But I could feel the need in you for something I couldn't give you. Every day I awoke knowing I was a fraud,' he said, reaching over and taking her hand. 'At first going riding each day took my mind off it, but soon I had to go looking for what I really wanted. I despised myself so much that I had to get drunk whenever I was at home.'

Anne remembered odd little scenes around that time, her in her nightgown urging him to come to bed with her, and William turning his back on her, protesting he was tired.

'If only you'd told me what was wrong,' she said, wiping a tear away from her cheek. 'I think I would have let you do whatever you wanted just as long as at home you were the William I married.'

'The real problems began at home, when I took Albert on,' he said.

Anne's eyes shot wide open. 'Albert! Did he find out? Was he blackmailing you?'

William pursed his lips, as though he'd just sucked a lemon. 'No, not that. He's like me.'

'You mean...?'

William nodded.

'G.o.d in heaven!' Anne exclaimed. She didn't think she could take any more shocks.

'Yes, he's a sodomist, or whatever people like to call us,' William spat out. 'And I, poor fool that I am, fell for him. If not for me he wouldn't have married Nell; that was my suggestion.'

'Oh no, William!' Anne gasped. 'Why did you do that?'

William shrugged. 'Without a wife people might have guessed about him. Nell struck me as a plain, no-nonsense girl who would make a calm, steady wife. I didn't know how cruel Albert could be then, or that he hated women. I thought he'd be able to give her a child, take care of her, and you'd keep the maid you relied on. I'd still have Albert in a place where we could be together.'

'The gatehouse,' Anne whispered. 'You used to go there?'

William nodded glumly. 'It was bad, I can see that now, but he bewitched me, Anne. I couldn't think of anything else, nothing mattered to me but him. Can you understand?'

She couldn't understand, not with a man as loathsome as Albert. The thought of them doing something so depraved and b.e.s.t.i.a.l right under her nose, so close to their son, made her want to shout at him, pummel him with her fists, say he was disgusting.

Yet at the same time she could remember only too well how be witched by Angus she had been, how she had let him take her in a field or woods, without any thought of her husband or child.

She took a deep breath. 'Do you still feel that way about him?' she asked.

'No, I fear him,' he admitted ruefully. 'It has been over between us for a long time, but he refuses to leave here, and threatens to tell you, Rufus and everyone else what I am if I force him out. I thought it was love he felt for me, but now I know he is incapable of such an emotion.'

'Oh, William,' she sighed, reaching out to hold him, for now they had a common enemy. 'He knows about me and Angus too. He has a letter to me from Angus. Nell asked Hope to hold on to any that came while I was away at my father's funeral, and he must have found her with it. Did he kill her?'

'No, at least not as far as I know,' William said quickly, then fell silent, chewing on his lip.

Anne waited. She knew her husband only ever did this when he was uncertain and very afraid. But she was certain he would eventually tell her what he knew; lying didn't come easily to him.

'She came into the gatehouse and caught us,' he finally blurted out, his face contorted with shame. 'Albert told me to get out through the front door and he'd deal with her. I went down there later in the evening and she was gone. Albert showed me the note he'd got her to write; he said he'd told her never to come back or he'd hurt Nell.'

Anne exploded with rage then, calling him all the terrible names she could think of. 'You coward!' she raged. 'You stood by, letting Nell think she was dead, and all the time you knew what had happened! How could you do that? It was inhuman!'

'What else could I do?' William whined. 'I was terrified that Albert and I would be discovered. Albert even convinced me Hope had wanted to leave Briargate. I didn't know how cruel he was then, and even now I can't see what else I could have done but go along with it.'

Anne felt sick then. She sank back on her pillows, stunned at Albert's capacity for evil. Rufus had told her the man used to hit both Hope and Nell, he said he made their lives a misery. In fact, Anne could remember that Nell often winced with pain, pa.s.sing it off as a fall on the drive or some such thing. The brute had clearly been terrorizing them both for a very long time, but she'd been too wrapped up in herself to notice.

Maybe Hope did leave as instructed to keep Nell safe, but some how Anne knew she also went to prevent her and Rufus from being shamed too. Hope was only fifteen then, and she'd seen something not even a grown woman could deal with, banished from her home, family and livelihood and told never to return.