The silence that settled in the carriage was ominously empty, devoid of kindness or warmth. Alex had an acid taste in his mouth and a cruel pain flickering behind his eyes; he felt as if some important part of himself had been discarded somewhere on the road, back in the dusty column that rose behind the galloping hooves of his horses. He kept thinking: Stop! Put it back the way it was … someone, please, put it back the way it was before I went to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, before I went to Italy, before I left Charlotte’s side.

But no one offered to do that small service for him, and so Alexander Foakes drew farther and farther ahead of that other Alex, back in the dust: the pre-Hastings Alex, the pre-Italy Alex, the Alex who loved and was loved.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

By the time that Alex’s horse was galloping down the straight row of oak trees that lined the road to Downes Manor, he had rebuilt, step by step, the icy wall which memories of Charlotte had toppled in Italy. The last two nights he lay awake, great slashing blows of humiliation shaking his body. Finally he had got to the point where his lips twisted in a wry smile. By God, Patrick always said I had terrible taste in women, he thought.

The whole scandal seemed horribly appropriate, looking back over his thirty-plus years. He had fallen in love for the first time with a prostitute-in-training, in a garden. And then he had tried to recreate that experience in marriage. Finding a trollop among gently bred women didn’t seem to be so difficult. The problem was that his garden girl had gone on to her chosen career, and the woman he married …

Well, Charlotte’s record spoke for itself. Alex’s chest felt very tight. He was determined not to lose his temper, as he had in the inn at Depford. What was the point of shouting at someone who was simply acting in the only way she knew?

Alex caught himself up. He had to keep Maria and Charlotte separate in his mind. After all, Patrick was the first man Charlotte loved. She gave him her virginity. That was not the same as Maria, sleeping with any man with two legs and equipment to match. If he walked into the room and found Charlotte on the point of giving birth he would know it was his child. If she wasn’t, well then the child was his brother’s and, a bitter voice in his head remarked, that baby will probably be your heir. He was done with wives and women, after this. He was giving up the idiotic dream of finding someone as wild and tender as the garden girl. He’d find a woman when he needed one, and leave the titles and land to Patrick’s heir—even if that heir was Charlotte’s child.