Truly - Mary Balogh Page 0,148

say.

“I told the Earl of Wyvern that I followed Rebecca,” she said. She was yelling at him, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I told him that I loved Rebecca, that I was his lover. And I told Rebecca that I had offered myself to the Earl of Wyvern. I admitted that I had wanted him.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I abased myself,” she said. “I was honest. I felt that a relationship with Rebecca could not possibly work if I was not honest.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can you say nothing but yes?” She was almost screaming at him.

“You have been nothing but honest with me,” he said. “I have been nothing but deceitful with you. Except in one thing, Marged. I have always loved you. I love you now. I can only beg for your forgiveness.”

There were tears in her eyes suddenly and she was biting her lower lip. “It was you,” she said. All the passion had gone from her voice. “It was all you. You who kissed me that first night. You in chapel the next morning when I was still tingling with the memory. You in the wood. You inside the hut. You who tricked me into offering my body in exchange for Ceris’s freedom. You who tried to persuade me to inform against the followers of Rebecca. You who . . .” She threw up her hands in a gesture of frustration.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Marged. And I who started the child inside you.”

She moaned again as she had done earlier. “You are Rebecca,” she said, looking at him with incredulity once more. “And you are Geraint. You are both.”

“Yes,” he said. “And the Earl of Wyvern, Marged. I am all three. None of them is a mask. I am all three. I cannot offer you one without the other two. I cannot offer you Rebecca, whom you admire, without Geraint, to whom you feel an unwilling attachment, or without the Earl of Wyvern, whom you hate and despise. I am all three. I offer you myself as I am, unforgiven if it must be so.”

Somehow he possessed himself of her right hand. He drew a deep breath. It must be done. And something in him rather fancied doing it—he was the Earl of Wyvern, after all. He went down on one knee before her.

“Marry me,” he said. “Not because you must, Marged. Not because there is to be a little one we have created together. But because you love me, cariad. Because I love you. Because we have found paradise together. Because there is the rest of a lifetime ahead and neither of us would wish to live it without the other. Because you are mad enough to accept me with all my flaws. Because you are brave enough to be my countess. I love you, Marged Evans. Marry me.”

Her eyes had widened. But when she spoke, it was to utter an absurdity.

“I have Mam and Gran to look after,” she said.

He got back to his feet and took her other hand. He was sure of her suddenly. “They are as much my responsibility as yours,” he said. “We will have to see if they wish to stay on at the farm with Waldo Parry to work for them, or whether they would like to move into a cottage with a pension while I rent the farm to the Parrys.”

“It was you who sent Waldo to help me,” she said. “The coffers of Rebecca are really the coffers of the Earl of Wyvern.”

He said nothing.

“You were wonderful as Rebecca,” she said. “You were kind and compassionate.”

“I am also Wyvern,” he said.

“You helped the Parrys,” she said. “You destroyed the salmon weir.” She smiled fleetingly. “You helped me pick stones.”

“Marry me,” he said.

She sighed then and leaned forward to set her forehead against his chest. After a few moments she set her arms about his waist.

“Yes,” she said finally against his shirt. She sighed again. “Geraint, I thought I was promiscuous because I loved you both and wanted you both.”

His arms closed about her and he lowered his cheek to the top of her head. “You will marry us both,” he said, “and be doubly loved.”

“Geraint.” She raised her head and gazed into his eyes. “Do you know what I did once inside this house and felt ashamed of the whole time and afterward?”

“You made love to Rebecca,” he said.

“I was never ashamed of that,” she said. “But I could never put a face on Rebecca except the grotesque woolen one. I gave him your face in my imagination and your identity. I made love to Geraint Penderyn and then wondered how I could have done so when I loved Rebecca.”

Ah, Marged. Incurably honest to the last.

“You knew,” he said. “Beneath the level of conscious thought you knew. And talking about this house, this mansion . . .” He grinned at her.

“It is better than a mansion.” She set one hand gently against his cheek. “It is where your mam loved you and raised the little boy I adored. It is your home, your heritage, your roots. And it is where we loved, cariad.”

He realized that his eyes had filled with tears only when she wiped one away with her thumb.

“Mrs. Phillips will be sleeping in my bed tonight,” she whispered. “Take me into your home, Geraint. This home. Make love to me.”

He lowered his head and kissed her.

“And to Glynderi to call on your father tomorrow morning,” he said some time later, “to make a confession and to arrange a wedding, love.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him. “But tomorrow, Geraint. Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “Let us go home, then, cariad.”

Home. She set an arm about his waist and her head on his shoulder as he led her there. It would never again be his place of residence as it had been when he was a child. But it would always be home—the place in which he had known all the significant love of his life. First his mother, now Marged.

She kissed his cheek, sighed with contentment—and perhaps with anticipation, too—and preceded him through the doorway.