When the shock of Elizabeth's news wore off, Laura surprised herself by laughing at it. She had spent the past month assuming Elizabeth had come to Albroke for the purpose of dividing her from Richard, and had hated her for it. To hear now that there was no reason to hate, to realize that she had wronged Elizabeth in all her assumptions, amused her. Elizabeth was so pompous and self-assured that it could never seem a very great fault to wrong her. She thought very briefly about what Elizabeth had said and then cheerfully dismissed it: Richard deserved more fondness than she or anybody else gave him, and Elizabeth was a fool if she could not see it.

It was that night, lingering in bed, that she and Richard discussed it.

"Are you happy about her baby?" Laura asked, idly stroking his bad knee as she lay against his chest.

"Mmm." He nuzzled at her hair. "I love all my nephews and nieces really."

"Even Catherine."

"Even Catherine." He nibbled at her earlobe. "She's stopped screaming when she sees you."

"I found her crying in a cupboard a week ago with half a pot of jam all down her white dress," Laura said smugly. "I cleaned her up and told her no one ever has to find out."

"Bribery and blackmail in the one shot." He kissed her neck lightly. "You're a resourceful woman."

"She's only a child really," Laura said. "I wish Elizabeth would let them be."

"She does what she thinks is best."

Laura was silent a moment. "I think she's very often wrong."

"Perhaps." Richard pulled her closer against him. "I wish I had the chance to be wrong."

Laura closed her hand over his. Sorrow swelled at the back of her throat, for both Richard and herself. She swallowed it back down.

"I didn't use to want to," Richard continued, no longer playing with her body but simply holding her, his hands clasped over her waist. "When I was younger, all I thought about it was that Neil would have to be the one to sire an heir. It wasn't personal. And then I got older and Elizabeth had her children — she does love them, in her own way — and Neil had his and he loves them very much. And then it started to be personal. Then I started to want it."

"Because of your nieces and nephews?"

He nodded, his chin bumping the back of her head. "I think when Annie was born, that changed me. I was there that very day. She's still my favourite, and I think she knows."

Laura smiled faintly. "You're not supposed to have favourites."

"Well I do and she's it. Besides," he added, "I'm only the uncle. Uncles can have favourites."

The sadness grew. Laura turned over onto Richard's chest, burying her hands in the pillows behind him and pressing her face into the hollow of his sternum. Once, she had thought herself protected by his infertility. There would be no child to bind her to him. Now, she felt only a strange, impotent anger that there could not be. She raised her head to find him watching her with an inutterably sad expression in his eyes.

"You never speak of it," she said softly.

"There's nothing to speak of. It is what it is."

"So many things are as they should not be."

"Yes." He tried and failed to give her a smile. "There's three things I wish I never did in my life: I wish I'd never got on that horse the day I broke my leg. I wish I'd never told my father that Neil had remarried. I wish I'd never gone to my aunt's place the day I caught that fever from my cousin."

"The consequences could never have been foreseen." Laura settled back down on his chest. "Is that any consolation? Your worst mistakes were ones you could not have avoided through wisdom You've never been foolish."

"I certainly have." He rubbed the base of her spine. "You can never tell me what I did to my brother was not foolishness. I should have trusted him. Instead, I did everything as my father would have done. Sometimes I think I didn't begin to live until he was dead."

Perhaps that explained why Richard was so different now from what he used to be. Laura remembered his previous bitterness — but surely, surely that could not have been lost only through the death of his brutal father. It had to have been replaced with some kind of happiness. Or else would she not have been happier when Maidstone died? But she had not. She had been relieved, but she had not been happy. She could not even say she was happy now — though Richard sometimes made her feel happy, she always returned, when alone or when scared, to the sort of unhappy fretfulness that had come upon her when she married Maidstone.

"What's wrong, darling?" Richard asked.

"Nothing." She tried to smile. "It's not a very happy conversation, is it?"

"Then let's not speak," Richard said, wrapping his arms around her. "Just stay here with me."

She had still never fallen asleep in his bed, and did not think it possible tonight — not when the sadness inside her demanded solitude. But it was not yet eleven and she wanted to be with him a little longer, so she stayed, thinking about what he had said, and what Elizabeth had said. It was strange that Elizabeth had thought it was she who gave too much to Richard — he gave so much more to her. Since their argument in the breakfast room, Laura had been particularly conscious of how her words might wound or try him, particularly gentle in her manner towards him. But that was not quite giving and certainly not openness. Richard was the open one, in telling her of the sorrow inside him, and she hurt, both for not knowing what to say in return and for her own inability to speak of her own, to shut it up away inside herself, where it could never be seen. Like a coward.

Her throat tightened. She gripped Richard tighter and he stirred, waking up from the doze he'd fallen into.

"Laura?"

"I want to tell you," she said.

"Tell me what?"

"About the baby." She squirmed and sat up, a sudden surge of nervousness compelling her to move. "And what happened before it." And afterwards — afterwards was worse.

Beside her, Richard sat up too, running his hand calmingly up and down her bare back. "You can tell me."

But her mouth would not open and her throat was tight. The image of Maidstone's face, distorted with anger and jealousy, came back to her.

"But you don't have to," Richard added gently.

"No, I do." She trembled and slipped naked to the floor so she could pace the carpet, her arms around herself. Richard watched her from the bed. "Did you know Maidstone?"

"Only by repute as a savvy business man."

"He was." She swallowed. "He was a brute too. I didn't know it when I married him — I was too stupid to see it."

Surprise flashed over Richard's face, then his expression tightened with something of sorrow.

"I was so relieved — so happy when he died, Richard. I never grieved for him. Not once."

Behind her, Richard silently got up and put his dressing gown on, then reached for hers, lying on the floor where she'd dropped it. But she ignored him. Her heart was racing and she could only think that Richard, knowing this, would think her ungrateful and unloving. She could not stop, having said only this.

"I was pregnant within a month of marrying him," she said, trying to control herself. "So I had — I had three or four weeks, I think, after that, where I thought— I thought we were happy."

"And were you happy?" Richard asked, draping the dressing gown over her shoulders.

She shook her head and allowed him to tie the gown half-closed. "Never. But it... it only started going wrong after that. I started seeing— he started going wrong."

For a moment, Laura was bewildered by her own memories. They were so bizarre. So irrational. So unbelievable. She sat down on the edge of the bed and clutched the gown closer about herself. After a moment, Richard sat beside her and took her hand in his.

"What did he do?" he asked, drawing her gently back to the present.

She stared at Richard, all patient faith and open kindness, and the past seemed ever more unreal by comparison. The grand magnitude of it could not be comprehended, so she focused on one of the small moments, of which there were so many, blurred by the distance of time into a single monolithic shadow on her memory.

"There was one time, when I was a few months in, he threw a dinner party." She blinked and squinted at a patch of carpet on the floor, seeing instead the old dining room in the Manchester countryside, silverware glittering under the candlelight, plumes of steam rising from the dishes. "It was just his male friends and I. He started a joke — but it wasn't a joke — by saying that one of the men around the table had got me with child, and giving odds to which one. And maybe — maybe he did mean it as a joke at first. But by the end, Richard, it wasn't. He — I don't know why, I'd given him no reason — he believed it."

Laura buried her face in her hands and breathed through her fingers, feeling the humiliation and anger and sorrow tear dully within her. She thought again that she was telling this all wrong. It had started before then, it had started with even smaller things. Every joke of his, even the ones that had made her laugh, had carried barbs and splinters. His awful cynicism, his awful suspicions, quicker to light upon her than anyone else, had started as small cuts until they had become so many they covered her soul and bled it dry.

"I cannot explain," Laura said through her fingers. "I don't know how to explain him. He was the worst mistake of my life. I should have known what he was before I married him, but I was blind — blind until it was too late."

"Don't blame yourself." Richard touched her knee. "You could not have known."

"Oh my father warned me." She laughed bitterly and let her hands drop to her lap. "He sent me a letter, when we'd come back from Scotland. He told me everything I had done wrong in choosing Maidstone. He knew every fault of that man's character and I did not want to believe."

She sniffed back a tear and swallowed. There was shame in that too. Her father had been right and she had been wrong. And more impotent anger — her father must have suspected something of her situation. Why had he done nothing to protect her?

Too easily, the answer came to her: she had been useless to him then. Was useless to him now, too, probably. But she would never need saving from Richard.

She met his eyes and then slowly dropped her head to his shoulder, clutching at his dressing gown. His arms surrounded her and pulled her closer.

"And when the baby died," she heard herself say, in a flat, thin voice, "he was a boy — he was born dead—"

The dreadful silence of the birth room came back to her.

"What happened then?" Richard prompted.

"Maidstone said that was proof."

"Proof of what?" Richard was stroking her arm, lightly and continuously.

"Proof I'd been unfaithful."

"Oh god. Laura." For the first time, Richard's gentle, peaceful tone broke. His arms around her tightened and his face pressed against her hair. "Oh no, darling. No."

"Yes." She drearily kept talking, though his hands, tight around her, almost hurt now. "He kept asking me what I'd done. He said, very gently, he said, that if I'd just tell him he'd forgive me." The awful, treacherous gentleness in his voice — so like Richard's gentleness now that she had to force herself to keep speaking. "But I couldn't tell him because I hadn't done anything. And he kept — he kept asking." Until his gentleness had faded and the anger had come back. "So I just said — I said I'd— I lied. I told him there was a man — I lied." And for what purpose? So that when he'd beaten her until she could neither move nor beg for mercy, he could have the satisfaction of believing he was right. "I hated him before then. I'd hated him a long time. But he'd never hit me until then. And after that...He didn't care, after that, if he hurt me or not."

"I had no idea." Richard buried his face in her hair, and she had the sudden surprise of feeling warm, damp tears on her cheeks — his, not hers. "Oh god, Laura, if I'd known — I wish... no, no it's too late to wish. There was no one to help you, was there?"

"No." She wiped his tears from her face, surprised her own eyes were dry. "Oh, maybe there was. Maybe if I'd begged, you would have helped. Or my father. Or any of my friends. But I didn't beg. I was too proud."

"It's not your fault." Richard kissed her shoulder. "It's not."

It made her feel better. Just sitting there with Richard made her feel better. She felt her heart slow and breathed in Richard's familiar scent and warmth. It's all the past, she realized. Maidstone, his friends, his vile family, his expensive, gaudy house, they were all in the past and didn't matter anymore. She was never going back there. She was under Richard's roof and within his arms. She was safe, as she never had been before in her life.

She breathed out shakily and continued her tale.

"It was fourteen more months until he died. He had this — this thing in his head. He thought I had betrayed him. He believed I was betraying him. Every day. I could not speak with a footman or one of his friends, or leave his sight, without him making up in his head about how I'd betrayed him. He believed his own lies."

A flash of memory came to her, about the time she'd let his brother into the house and the accusation Maidstone had made thereafter. Her composure stalled and she tightened her grip on Richard's dressing gown.

"You don't need to keep talking about it," Richard said. "You don't need to tell me."

"No, I want to." It was somehow a relief to let it be known. She waited a moment to catch her breath, which had got away from her again. When she spoke next, she was able to speak of it properly, without repeating herself, though her voice was flat even to her ears.

"Sometimes when Maidstone was being very bad I would try to get him to bed because he — he wasn't bad to me there. When I'm scared I do that with you."

" I'll never hurt you."

"I know," she said. "But knowing doesn't always mean believing, Richard. And I'm sorry, for the way I sometimes behave, even knowing you."

"Don't apologise." He kissed her. "It's not your fault."

"But it is, in part. I shouldn't treat you like him. And he's dead." She raised her face to look him in the eyes and wiped away a tear from his cheek. "I'm trying to be better."

"I've noticed." He smiled faintly but it faltered. Something came into his eyes and then died. "You're so brave."

"I'm a coward, really." She shifted to a more comfortable position, bringing her legs up onto the bed beneath her. "Do you want to know the — the funniest bit?"

"Funny?" He tried to pull himself up likewise, but his right leg would not bend, so he held it straight out in front of him, by her side. She ran her hand over the down of his scarred thigh, feeling desire flicker in her belly again, despite the heavy mood.

"Almost funny." There was a dark humour in it. "I had a maid, to dress me. She got with child and I dismissed her. Richard — it was Maidstone's child."

"Not funny." Richard winced. "How did you feel?"

She shrugged. "I had no idea until after the baby was born — my maid came back to ask Maidstone for help and I found out then. All that time, he had been suspecting me of doing everything he was doing."

Richard was looking at her, pity and regret in his eyes.

"You're not surprised are you?" she asked.

"It seems the way it normally goes, doesn't it? Those who don't trust do so because they know they are not to be trusted."

He shifted further onto the bed, his calf pressing against her thigh. She met his eyes and wondered what would have happened if they'd encountered each other during the time she was married to Maidstone. Richard was more percipient, more wise to the ways of the world, than she had ever suspected. Would he have helped her? Would she have let him?

But it was idle speculation. Suddenly cold, suddenly tired, Laura threw herself back on the bed and half-pulled the coverlet over her. Richard lay down beside her and pulled her closer for warmth.

"That was a month or so before he died," Laura said wearily. "Me finding out about the maid, I mean. God knows what else I never found out about. But I — I was so angry. I decided I would make his — delusions come true."

Richard's arm tensed around her, and Laura raised her guard again.

"But then there was the hunt," she said. "And he fell. And died. And I didn't get my chance."

Richard was silent for a moment.

"I've never said this about any man before," he said, "but I'm glad he died, Laura. I'm glad you're free."