Lynne Connolly by Maiden Lane Page B

gone that far.
    She studied me, no smile now. “You seem to be coping very well with this, Rose. Finding out what he did.”
    I gripped the back of the chair. “Not really.”
    She dropped the papers and leaned back in her chair. “I thought so. And you don’t have your sister to confide in.”
    I knew she’d say nothing, not even to Richard or Timothy. I had to tell someone, and she was right. My usual confidante was half a continent away.
    I gathered my thoughts. “Sometimes it’s so hard. I see John, the living embodiment of Richard’s life before he met me. Susan too. It hurts that he had these two before we had Helen, even though he didn’t know about them. How many more children did he sire in his rampage through society? He says none, but can he really know?” Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
    “Men don’t think about future consequences. Especially when they’re young, rich and good-looking.” Alicia had known Richard in those years. I met him just after that time. “He didn’t care for anyone. Anger drove him to revenge himself on the society that drove his brother away and yet still accepted him. You know now that being a twin saved him, made him care.”
    I nodded. Without Gervase, Richard would have had a completely soulless upbringing. He could have ended like others I’d seen, heirs to great estates and responsibilities, with no inner life, nothing of their own save that drive to keep the family fortunes intact, to retain the power they saw as theirs by right. Gervase had tempered that for Richard.
    Alicia continued. “Without Gervase, he lost his humanity for a time. I knew it was there, lurking deep, and so did Carier. Richard didn’t care for the women he used, but in his defence I’d say that most didn’t care for him, either. He didn’t use it with a view to hurting the woman he’d eventually love. He didn’t think that woman existed.”
    That didn’t hurt, because who could foresee the future? I’d imagined a fulfilling if uneventful life with the son of a neighbour, who I loved with a fondness that paled before the passion I felt for Richard. “That’s why I don’t want to talk to him about it. It’s irrational. I shouldn’t care what he did before we met, but I do. Some woman had him before me, he loved another woman first.”
    Alicia surprised me by shaking her head. “No, Rose. He loved no other woman before you. He gave himself to you, and now you bear the responsibility for keeping him safe and happy.”
    I knew that. I’d never forget it.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Seeing Steven Drury again didn’t fill me with joy. He and his wife appeared at an intimate gathering, a matter of around fifty people, at Lady Trussell’s Venetian breakfast, a few days after we visited Alicia. This kind of event, a little racier than a formal ball, where music and dancing were less structured and a great deal of gambling went on, suited the Drurys better. I generally enjoyed this kind of gathering, but sometimes they could degenerate into unseemly and consequently boring affairs, and if that happened, I left. So did Richard, although I had more than once teased him that he wouldn’t have done so in the old days, before he met me.
    “I might have led the revels,” he confessed, smiling, “but still grown bored by them.”
    An intelligent man knows when to move on.
    This gathering was enjoyable but within reasonable levels until I saw the Drurys. As usual, Julia wore a gown so deeply cut it was a wonder her nipples didn’t pop out over the top, and not for the first time I wondered if she used glue or painted over them so they didn’t show. It seemed a miracle that they stayed inside her gown, but maybe they didn’t always do that.
    Steven came over as soon as he saw me to bow over my hand. He fancied himself as one of my court, and although I didn’t encourage such a thing, I supposed I had one. Men attracted by women who were safely married or men