Page 60 of Redemption

Chapter 13

“Is there nothing I can say that will make you change your mind, my darling?”

“No.” It was a short, abrupt response that made Beatrice flinch.

Beatrice eyed Arianna with concern. Her niece had arrived on her doorstep only hours after Blake had left Sherrington House. When he’d sent word he intended to stay at his club overnight, Arianna had come to Beatrice. Her niece shook her head in reply to Beatrice’s question as she rocked Lucy in her arms. The child was sound asleep, and Beatrice understood Arianna’s need to keep Lucy close, particularly when the viscount seemed to have rejected her.

“Arianna, I should not—”

“You are not to blame, Aunt Beatrice. Rhea warned me to tell Blake everything before the wedding.” Arianna shook her head in despair. “I made the wrong choice, and I have no one to blame except myself.”

“Blake loves you, Arianna. I’m certain of it.” Beatrice hesitated, reluctant to suggest the obvious. “He will come around.”

If there was one thing Beatrice was certain of, it was the viscount’s love for Arianna. Only a man deeply in love was capable of marrying a woman with her niece’s background. An image of Alfred’s kind features filled her head. She understood better than most how love could make someone do things others couldn’t. Her late husband had married her despite the fact that she wasn’t in love with him and had borne another man’s child out of wedlock. Although she’d tried to make Alfred understand she could never love another man, her dead husband had persisted in his marriage proposals. He’d made it clear that his happiness was based on caring for her and making her happy. Over the years he’d become very dear to her, and when he’d died, she’d mourned him as she would have a beloved friend.

“Even if Blake loved me enough to marry me, he might not have loved me enough to accept Lucy. I should have trusted him—had more faith in his love for me,” Arianna replied softly. “Especially now when I realize I can never let Lucy go again. If Blake cannot accept her then I will have no choice but to leave him.”

Arianna’s words made Beatrice draw in a sharp breath. If her niece’s marriage ended because of her insistence that Blake be told the truth about her great-niece, she would never forgive herself. The despondency in Arianna’s voice made her shake her head.

“I cannot leave you like this. I’ll send word to Melton House that we’re both unwell.”

“No. You will go,” Arianna said with a firmness reminiscent of Rhea. “It will be insulting enough to Lord and Lady Melton that I’ve declined their invitation at the last minute. I’ll not have that compounded by you feeling obligated to remain here with me.”

“You cannot possibly expect—”

“Yes, I can. I’d prefer to remain alone here with Lucy. Now go or you’ll be late.”

“I don’t—”

“Go.”

It was a sharp command that emphasize Arianna’s desire to be alone with her daughter. Beatrice nodded and reluctantly left the nursery with the door closing softly behind her. For a long moment, she stood motionless in the narrow second floor hallway. Like Arianna, she’d made far too many wrong choices in her own life. One of the worst was not trying hard enough to discover why Olivia had stopped answering her letters.

When she’d finally realized something was terribly wrong, it was too late. Her sister had been dead for several months. The memory of Thomas Bennett’s coldly worded letter informing her of her sister’s death made Beatrice’s heart ache with grief. There had been a distinct note of smug satisfaction in her brother-in-law’s communication. Beatrice had no doubt Thomas had taken pleasure in writing the letter. A cruel man, she’d never understood why Olivia had married him. Beatrice could only assume her sister had loved her husband.

Almost as terrible as the cruelty in the wording of his letter, Thomas had refused to let her see her nieces. He’d even gone so far as to inform Arianna and Rhea she was dead. Even if she’d tried to see the girls, Thomas would never have let her set one foot in his house. She had no doubt that a large part of his behavior was retaliatory in nature. The man had loathed her for refusing his advances.

When her brother-in-law had propositioned her not long after he’d married Olivia, she’d been horrified and sickened by his revolting attempt to seduce her. She’d found his desire to enter into a liaison when he was already married despicable. But that he would attempt to enter into a liaison with his wife’s sister was beyond contemptible. Even if she’d been inclined to take another lover after Lionel, she would never have betrayed her sister. The memory of Thomas’s insulting proposal still had the power to make her shudder. It was one of the reasons she’d not fought harder to see her sister or the girls.

As much as she hated admitting it, she’d been afraid of Thomas. The man had been capable of great cruelty, and she’d instinctively known he would have found a way to divide her and Olivia in the cruelest way possible. But her failure to stand up to the man had prevented her from seeing her sister one last time. Worse, her inaction had done nothing to save her nieces from a terrible fate.

The fact that she’d failed to pursue her attempts to see the girls still haunted her. He’d already sold Rhea and Arianna into bondage by the time he’d replied to her insistent queries. By then he’d become a profligate drunkard. It had taken more than a year after his death for his solicitor to locate her about his estate, which had delayed her efforts in finding Arianna and Rhea.

The quiet sound of a man’s voice echoed up the stairs and into the hallway to break through her thoughts. One hand pressing into the base of her throat, a flame of hope flared to life inside her. Had Blake come for his wife? Optimism flooding through her, Beatrice hurried downstairs. Biggs was just emerging from the salon as she reached the foot of the steps.

“You’ve a guest, madame. A Lord Foxworth,” the butler said quietly. Panic held her rigid for a moment as she took in Biggs’s announcement, before she turned to retreat upstairs.

“Tell his lordship that I’ve a dinner–”

“I’m well aware of your plans for the evening, Beatrice. Melton told me you were dining with his family this evening, and I offered to escort you to dinner,” Lionel’s voice echoed quietly in her ears as he appeared in the salon doorway.

Beatrice swallowed hard as she slowly turned to face him. Framed in the doorway, he seemed even more powerful and dangerous than he had the other night. His bearing one of purposeful nonchalance, he eyed her as if she were a morsel he was contemplating eating.

Something old and familiar stirred inside her. Despite her efforts to control her reaction to him, she failed. She’d thought her response to him at the Melton affair had simply been a remembrance of the past. But she knew differently now.

Lionel had always been able to set her heart racing, and nothing had changed. Dismayed at the way her heart was pounding, she forced herself to assume an expression of indifference. With a polite gesture, she directed him to return to the salon.

“May I offer you some refreshment?” she asked as she moved toward the doorway.