Three Little Secrets by Liz Carlyle

marriage?”
    Merrick stared at her. “How in God’s name could I?” he asked. “Madeleine, we spoke our vows. We sealed them with our bodies. Faith, woman, you weren’t even a virgin before the wedding! We certainly had no grounds for annulment after. One of us would have to be insane—or worse.”
    “I begin to wonder if you aren’t.” Desperately, she shook her head. “I do not believe you.”
    “And I do not believe you !” he snapped. “What kind of crackbrained gudgeon would believe such a thing possible? An annulment, after all we had done together? Do you think me ten times a fool?”
    Dear Lord, he was almost convincing. Madeleine felt the blood drain from her face. There was a leather settee by the hearth. She grasped the back with one hand, and made her way gingerly around it. She felt his hand, steady and strong, come out to grasp her arm as she slid onto the seat.
    What kind of crackbrained gudgeon indeed?
    God. Oh, holy God. This could not be happening. The room was going dark around the edges. Merrick knelt before her, and began to chafe one of her hands in his with a touch that was not unkind. She could sense something inside him had shifted, dispelling the anger, and turning it to an altogether different emotion.
    “Madeleine, what did he tell you?” He seemed to choke out the words. “Jessup—what did he say against me?”
    She stared blindly at the wall. “No, I saw them,” she said hollowly. “I—I saw the papers. Your signature.”
    “What papers?” He clasped her face between his long, elegant fingers and forced her to look at him. “What papers, Madeleine?”
    “The—the annulment,” she said. “Two or three pages, with a seal. Rolled up and tied with ribbon. And you had signed it, Merrick. Papa showed me.”
    He narrowed his eyes, and shook his head. “Madeleine, what does my signature look like?”
    “I—I cannot remember.”
    “You cannot remember, because you saw it but once,” he answered. “You saw me sign the marriage register at Gretna Green. Did you watch me? Did you remember it?”
    She swallowed hard. “I—I was so nervous,” she admitted. “No, I don’t remember. Did we sign something? I daresay we must have done. But Papa had it undone. He said it was what you wanted.”
    He still held both her hands, and gave them a hard squeeze. “Madeleine, was it what you wanted?”
    Mutely, she nodded, tears pooling in her eyes. “I made a mistake, Merrick,” she whispered. “I was so young, barely seventeen. I did not understand quite how the world worked.”
    Merrick felt the fight go out of him. He felt eviscerated again. Empty. Oh, he was not surprised by Jessup’s perfidy. That, he knew intimately. No, what had always surprised him was Madeleine’s utter lack of resolve. He had never believed life—or Madeleine’s father—would go easy on them. Had she believed it? Apparently, she had. Apparently she had been ill prepared to stand with him and fight the good fight.
    “We are still married, Madeleine.” He spoke the words with resignation in his heart. “We will be so until the day we die. There is no undoing it. Not then, and not now.”
    Madeleine jerked her hands from his, a look of horror twisting her beautiful face. “Don’t say that!” she cried. “No, I can’t bear it! I gave up… everything , Merrick. My life…all those years…and for what?”
    He tried to take her hands again, but she shoved at him. “No!” she said. “I—I have a child, Merrick. He is all that I have lived for. He is everything to me. I cannot believe—no, I won’t believe—that I am a—a what? An adulteress ? Is that what you are claiming?”
    “Madeleine, calm down.”
    “No. I shan’t. This is an outrage. You are saying that my father—that he lied to me. About everything. I do not believe you. I am not your wife. I should sooner die.”
    “It does not matter, Madeleine, whether you believe me or not,” he said sadly. “It changes