Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,74
he said. “They were happy for a while. They were well matched, and Ioan had made a fortune with his private shares in the store. Anything Peggy wanted, he provided.” Rhys paused before admitting ruefully, “Except his time. Ioan worked the same hours he always had, staying late at the store each night. He left her alone for too long. I should have put a stop to that. I should have told him to go home and pay attention to his wife.”
“Surely that wasn’t your place.”
“As his friend, I could have said it.” He felt Helen’s head settle on his chest. “It won’t be an issue in our marriage,” he muttered. “I won’t keep bachelor’s hours.”
“Our house is next to the store. If you work too late, I’ll simply come and fetch you.”
Helen’s pragmatic reply nearly made him smile.
“You’ll have no trouble tempting me from my work,” he said, playing with her hair as it streamed over his chest in pale ribbons.
Gently Helen prompted, “Peggy became discontent?”
“Aye, she needed more companionship than Ioan provided. She went to social events without him, and eventually fell prey to the attentions of a man who charmed and seduced her.” Rhys hesitated, conscious of the same choking tightness that had invaded his throat the other spare handful of times he’d related the story. He forced himself to go on, laying out the events as if setting up a game of solitaire. “She came to Ioan, shamed and weeping, and told him that she was with child, and it wasn’t his. He forgave her, and said he’d stand by her. The fault was his, he said, because he’d made her lonely. He promised to claim the babe as his own, and love it as a true father.”
“How honorable of him,” Helen said softly.
“Ioan was a better man than I could ever be. He devoted himself to Peggy. He was with her every possible moment during her confinement, from the quickening until the labor began. But it went wrong. The labor lasted two days, and the pains became so bad that they gave Peggy chloroform. She reacted badly—they’d given it to her too fast—she was dead in five minutes. When he was told, Ioan collapsed from shock and grief. I had to carry him to his room.”
Rhys shook his head, hating the memory of his own helplessness, his overwhelming need to fix everything and make it all right, the way he’d slammed repeatedly into the fact that he couldn’t. “He went mad with despair,” he continued. “For the next few days he saw visions, talked to people who weren’t there. He asked when Peggy’s labor would be finished, as if the clock had stopped in that moment and couldn’t be started again.” His lips curved with a humorless smile. “Ioan was the friend I always talked to when there was a problem I couldn’t solve, when I needed to mull something over. I began to wonder if I’d gone a bit mad myself: More than once I caught myself thinking, ‘By God, I need to talk to Ioan about this, so we can figure out what to do.’ Except that he was the problem. He was a broken man. I brought doctors to him. A priest. Friends and relations, anyone who might reach through to him.” He paused and swallowed. “A week after Peggy’s death, Ioan hanged himself.”
“Oh my dear . . .” he heard Helen whisper.
They were both silent for a long time.
“Ioan was like a brother,” Rhys eventually said. “I’ve waited for the memory to fade. For time to make it better. But so far it hasn’t. All I can do is shut it away, and not think of it.”
“I understand,” Helen said, as if she truly did. Her palm moved in a gentle circle on his chest. “Did the baby die?”
“No, it survived. A girl. Peggy’s family didn’t want it, in light of its origins, so they sent it to the natural father.”
“You don’t know what became of her?”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said bitterly. “She’s Albion Vance’s daughter.”
A STRANGE, NUMB feeling invaded Helen, as if her soul had just been jarred loose from her body. She lay still against him, her thoughts whirling like moths in the darkness. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before that her mother probably wasn’t the only woman that Vance had seduced and abandoned?
Poor unwanted infant—she was four now—what had Vance done with her? Had he taken her in?