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Merrick's grip on her arm relaxed. "I had thought to show you some kindness," he said. "Perhaps the best kindness I can show you is to send you back to Redlands?"
"Yes," she said, and her shoulders sagged suddenly. She could feel the fight draining out of her. "Let me go back home, Alexander. It is too late for kindness. Let us only not hate each other. If you force me to live with you, I shall truly grow to hate you, I fear."
He stared at her for so long that she was afraid she would lose control and hurl herself at him. But finally he nodded. "I see," he said. "I am sorry, A
Silence stretched between them again, a silence during which they continued to stare at each other. And all the unexpressed feelings and the unspoken words were locked inside him and he had no way, no right to speak them. He had forfeited the right more than a year before when he had bedded her and so callously insulted her and left her the morning after. He had forfeited the right every day since, every day during which he had done nothing to show a husband's care for his wife. He had hoped that tonight he would be able to start making amends, but he had not had the chance to say any of the things he had pla
A
"Good-bye, A
She looked steadily back at him. "Good-bye, Alexander," she said, and she inhaled with deliberate slowness as she placed her hand in his. Probably the last time she would ever touch him. She held the inhaled breath and let it out with steady control as he raised her hand to his lips. A moment later, it seemed, he was gone, without another word and without a backward glance.
The whole of the star-studded sky above A
A
She was the first of the family to leave. The duke's best traveling carriage drew up outside the house just before noon, and everyone gathered either in the hall or on the cobbles outside to kiss her and wish her a safe journey. Even some of the guests who had stayed overnight after the ball were there. But Merrick was not.
A
She hardly realized, as she stood on the steps of the carriage, that she looked back at the people gathered in the courtyard and at the empty doorway and at all the windows along the front of the house. She did not look out again once she was inside. She did not wave to anyone.
PART 3
December 1816-February 1817
Viscount Merrick huddled inside his many-caped greatcoat, trying to keep his neck warm. His beaver hat was drawn over his brow. The snow, fortunately, was not as bad as it had been in that storm a little more than two years before when he had first met A
As on the previous occasion, he had had ample warning that the snow was on the way. Heavy snow clouds had lain over the city all of the previous day and had been even heavier and more gray that morning. He should not be on the road at all, he knew. He was fortunate that conditions were not a great deal worse than they were. But the truth was that it was the weather that was directly responsible for his being where he was at the moment. For a month he had been making up his mind to travel to Redlands. Christmas would perhaps be a good-enough excuse. But he had let Christmas pass. How could he burden her with his company for such a festival? Then he had thought that perhaps the begi
So he had decided to come. She probably would not welcome his arrival. It might agitate her to know that he was in the house when she delivered the child. He certainly had little right to be there with her. He had treated her abominably during both of their encounters and had forced her into a pregnancy that was doubtless unwanted. But he could stay away no longer. He had ached to be with her from the moment he had opened the letter in which she had informed him that she was with child. He had worried constantly about the state of her health, had written to her several times to ask her how she did. But she had always answered briefly and courteously, had always told him that she was well.
Finally he had resorted to writing to the village doctor who attended her-she had refused his offer to bring her to London so that she might be attended by a London physician. But the doctor, too, had merely assured him that his wife was in good health and was like to deliver a healthy infant at the end of her time.