by Mary Balogh
Lydia sighed and went to stand behind the sofa so she could cling to the back of it and put some distance between them. That was one way of explaining what was happening, she supposed. Her own interpretation was another. It all amounted to the same thing.
“I thought that by remaining invisible to all but a few close acquaintances, I would be shielded until I found myself,” she said. “I made the conscious decision to become fully myself in time for the assembly. I wore a pink gown that I suppose some are now describing as garish, even vulgar. I danced and talked with almost everyone and smiled and laughed. I was proud of myself, and everyone seemed to be kind. And then the Wickends sent for the Reverend Bailey and you offered to take Mrs. Bailey and me home in your carriage. Jeremy Piper came after us with the plate I had left behind with cakes for Mrs. Piper to take home for her children. And finally—disaster. I invited you over the threshold out of the rain while I fetched your scarf, and you—” She stopped and sighed again. “As you just observed, it is all utterly absurd and bizarre and I intend simply to ignore it all. People will forget eventually. They always do. And I do not suppose everyone will treat me as a pariah.”
“I think you had better marry me, Lydia,” he said.
She laughed softly but entirely without humor as she turned her head to look into his face. He was still looking grim. Also very pale. He appeared as if he had slept as little as she had.
“That was not the best of proposals, was it?” he said, taking a step toward her. “And there is no excuse. I have been practicing a speech since last night. I cannot recall a single word of it. Though yes, I can. The word ardent was in there somewhere. Oh, and the phrase the happiest of men.”
Incredibly, they both laughed. And seemingly with genuine amusement. But only for a moment.
“Lydia,” he said. “It is the only thing that will silence the gossip. A man walks home with the woman he is courting. He chops wood for her. He can be excused for calling upon her in the evenings, even if it is not quite the thing if she lives all alone. He dances with her at a village assembly. He kisses her good night when he brings her home. The gossip will turn to understanding and congratulation from most people once our betrothal is announced.”
“No, Harry.” Lydia grabbed one of the cushions from the sofa and held it to her with both arms. “I will not be bullied—”
“I am very fond of you, Lydia,” he said. “I understand your fear of giving up your freedom to yet another possessive man just when you have begun to enjoy it. But I beg you to believe that it would never occur to me to try to exert dominance over you based upon the single fact that I am a man and you are a woman. Or upon any other fact, for that matter. As my wife you would be my equal. I believe we would be able to offer each other companionship and affection. I would certainly offer them to you, and I am in hope that you would give them in return. You would always be free to be yourself just as I would be free to be myself. But there could be an added sense of togetherness that perhaps we both crave even though both of us have been a bit afraid to risk giving up our single state. Dash it—all this is mere verbiage. I am massively bungling the whole thing, am I not? I am not bullying you, but I really think you should marry me. Will you?”
It was a strange marriage proposal and obviously not the one he had rehearsed. That very fact touched her. She felt tears well in her eyes and blinked them determinedly away.
“I did not mean you were bullying me,” she said. “I meant that if I were to agree to marry you, I would have been bullied into it by public opinion. Oh, Harry, you are very kind. Indeed you are. But, no. It would be wrong—for you, for me, for the situation in which we find ourselves. Why should we be forced into marriage simply because of a spying child, a hysterically pious mother, and a segment of the community, albeit a rather large and vocal one, that is all too ready to believe the worst of me? We should not give in to it. Does your mother know you are offering me marriage? But of course she must. Why else would she have decided that she wanted to see the back garden—alone?”
“She does know,” he said. “Lydia, was it so very bad that night?”
“It?” She felt her cheeks heating even as she asked the question.
“You dreamed of a lover,” he said. “Of me. You had both. Was it so very bad?”
“Oh, Harry.” The tears sprang again, and his face blurred before her eyes. “You know it was not.”
“Well, then?” he asked.
“I cannot marry you just for that,” she said. “I cannot marry. I will not.”
“But circumstances have changed,” he said, “as we knew they would if word got out that we were seeing each other privately. Damage has been done to your reputation and your ability to go on living in peace here. You must allow me to make amends. No, scrap that, please. There is no must about it, of course. But . . .” He paused and sighed deeply. “Dash it all, Lydia. Please marry me.”
Ah, did he not see that it was the very last thing she could do? Not because she did not like him. She did. Not because she did not love him. She did, God help her. Certainly not because she had not enjoyed making love with him. Not even entirely because of her coveted freedom and independence. She could not marry him just because a village was gossiping about her and making a loose woman out of her. She would not. It would be a terrible basis for a marriage.
“You do not trust me,” he said.
She blinked back her tears so she could see him clearly.
It would be easy to voice an instant denial. But really that was at the root of everything upon which she had based her life and her plans for the past year and a half, was it not? She could trust herself. But could she trust someone—a man—to have legal ownership of her again, to do with her as he chose? For that was what being married meant. She had loved and trusted Isaiah with her whole heart. Who could have been more apparently trustworthy than he?
“You cannot answer,” Harry said. “Because you do not want to lie, I suppose, and hurt me. Your life will be difficult from now on.”
“Only if I allow it to be,” she said.
He gazed at her in obvious exasperation before turning sharply away to look out through the window. “Do you regret that you remained here at Fairfield, knowing as you do now that the widow of the Reverend Tavernor would be held to a higher standard of behavior than anyone else?” he asked her.
She gazed at his back—tall, straight, military—and thought about it. “Regrets are pointless,” she said. “They do not change whatever that thing is that one may regret if one allows oneself to do so. That one thing for me would be asking you if you are ever lonely. I ought never to have asked. But there have been positive results as well as negative. I had a lot of wood chopped for me all at once.”
He looked at her over his shoulder and came very close to smiling before turning away again.
“I am still using the wood,” she said. “I will be forgetting how to wield the axe myself. Has all your family come, Harry? Hannah says it is probably because you have an important birthday very soon. Your thirtieth. You must be enjoying their company.”
“A pointed change of subject,” he said, turning from the window and drawing breath to say more. But before he could do so the back door opened with more noise than was necessary. Snowball trotted into the room, hesitated, and went to sniff Harry’s boots. The marchioness cleared her throat before coming to stand in the archway to the living room. She looked from one to the other of them.
“Well?” she asked, addressing Harry.
“She has said no,” he replied curtly.
“I would have been surprised,” she said, “if it had been otherwise. A bit of silly outrage over a kiss that was apparently hardly even worthy of the name is a poor reason for two people to marry if there is no other. You do not wish to marry my son, Mrs. Tavernor?”
“I do not,” Lydia said. “Though it was exceedingly kind of him to offer.�
��
“Then you must not be pressed further,” the marchioness said. “You do indeed have a pretty back garden. Even the woodpile is picturesque—and very neat. It smells good too. You must spend a lot of time out there and at the front.”
“Will you have a seat, ma’am?” Lydia asked, gesturing to one of the chairs. “May I make some tea?”
“Neither, thank you,” the marchioness said. “You told us you were on your way out. My apologies for having delayed you. We have a few more calls of our own to make before returning to Hinsford. We will be issuing a few verbal invitations to my son’s birthday party, though there will be more formal written ones to follow. Or rather I will be issuing invitations. I daresay Harry wishes us all in Jericho. You must come to the party yourself, Mrs. Tavernor. It is to be in the form of a ball.”
“Oh,” Lydia said, glancing rather aghast at Harry. He had turned to look out the window again. “I think it would be altogether best if I did not go, ma’am.”
“On the contrary,” the marchioness said. “Why would you be excluded? Your late husband was a brother of the Earl of Tilden, was he not? And we have already established that you are the daughter of Mr. Jason Winterbourne and the late Mrs. Julia Winterbourne, a friend from my younger years.”
“I—”
“You need not give an answer now,” the marchioness said as she moved toward the front door. “You will receive your written invitation within the next day or two and can decide then how you wish to reply. In the meantime, we will walk with you, if we may, until our ways diverge. You are going to the village shop?”
“Yes,” Lydia said. Harry had his hands clasped behind him. He was tapping them rhythmically against his back. “But—”
He turned. “Lydia,” he said. “Word will spread around the village and the surrounding countryside faster than wildfire that you were seen today walking along the main street with me. And with my mother, the Marchioness of Dorchester—who was, by the way, held in the deepest affection and esteem when she lived here as the Countess of Riverdale. Everyone will understand that there is nothing clandestine about your acquaintance with me, and that it has my mother’s approval. Allow us, please, to offer you this much countenance.”
She raised her chin.
“Sometimes,” he added, “when a person is fired upon, the best possible way to respond is to line up with one’s comrades and fire right back.”
She pursed her lips.
“Put your bonnet on,” he said.
“If you please, Mrs. Tavernor.” The marchioness smiled, revealing herself to be a very pretty woman despite the fact that she was no longer in her youth. “I must be allowed to do all in my power to repair my son’s reputation, you see.”
Lydia sighed and moved toward the hooks behind the door.
And so it was that a few inhabitants of the village of Fairfield were treated to the unexpected spectacle of the newly notorious Mrs. Tavernor walking along the main village street with the Marchioness of Dorchester’s arm drawn through hers, while Major Westcott, distinguished and elegant as always, walked on his mother’s other side, nodding pleasantly to everyone they passed.
Sixteen
Thank you,” Harry said to his mother as they walked back home an hour or so later. “It would not, as you pointed out to me last night, have been appropriate for me to go there alone this morning.”
“Tell me, Harry,” his mother said. “Were you disappointed?”
“That she refused me?” he said after thinking about it for a moment. “No. As she herself pointed out, we would have been marrying for the wrong reason—because of some vicious gossip.”
“Gossip can irreparably destroy reputations and lives, however,” she said.
“She was on her way out as we got there, Mama,” he said. “She was not cowering beneath her bedcovers or behind drawn curtains, or both, as I feared she might. She has backbone.”
“When the two of you put an end to your . . . acquaintance a few weeks ago,” his mother asked, “did you do so happily, Harry?”
“It was a relationship that was headed nowhere except possible disaster,” he said. “She had made it clear from the start that there could be no courtship. She had a restrictive girlhood and what I understand was an unhappy marriage, though I know no details, and is enjoying her freedom. She is quite determined that she will never marry again. It did not take long to discover that it was impossible for us to have any other sort of relationship, even friendship. Not here, anyway. Present events have proved just how right we were.”
“But were you happy that all ties were broken?” She was persisting with this line of questioning, it seemed.
“No, I was not,” he admitted. “Perhaps you were right at Christmastime, Mama. Perhaps I have been a bit lonely. I have a few close friends here and a host of friendly acquaintances. Perhaps they are no longer quite enough. But I am contented here. This is where I belong and where I want to be. Forgive me, please. I am feeling a bit confused at the moment. I wish this had not happened at this precise time. It was very good of everyone to make the effort to come here. Even the grandmothers. Even Camille and Joel. I really was not—”
“Do you love her, Harry?” she asked softly, interrupting him.
“Lydia?” he said. “Good God, no. Pardon my language.”
“That is what I thought,” she said just as softly, though strangely he was not sure quite what she meant.
He had no chance to ask her. And she had no chance to explain. Three people were approaching down the drive, arm in arm—Winifred Cunningham, Camille and Joel’s eldest; Ivan Wayne, Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas’s youngest; and Gordon Monteith, Great-aunt Edith’s great-nephew. Winifred was in the middle and laughing at something.
“I noticed at Christmas,” Harry said, “how Winifred has suddenly grown up. She is no longer a girl, is she? She makes me feel like an elderly uncle. She has grown really rather pretty.”
Winifred had been at the orphanage in Bath where both Anna and Joel Cunningham had grown up and where Camille had taught for a while after the Great Disaster. She had been very needy then. She had apparently tried to stand out by being almost ostentatiously well behaved and eager to draw attention to all the other children who were not. She had been more than a bit obnoxious, in fact—or so Harry had been told. Camille had seen something of herself in the girl, however, and when she and Joel married they had surprised everyone by adopting her.
“She is seventeen, Harry,” his mother said. “And a real gem. She is not pretty. She never will be. But she has an inner beauty that transcends looks. Some man who is worthy of her is going to notice one of these days, though not just yet, I hope. She is only seventeen.”
It was Winifred who had devised a sort of hand language to use with her deaf brother, who was not particularly good at reading lips.
“Well, Harry?” Ivan called, raising his voice when the two groups were within earshot of each other. “Will she have you?”
Harry winced inwardly. He had hoped yesterday to keep the situation with Lydia quiet, mainly in the hope that by today or tomorrow at the latest it would have died down, as gossip usually did. His mother had soon disabused him of that notion. Gossip that involved a respectable woman—“and a vicar’s widow, Harry!”—could not be expected to die down quickly, she had warned, especially when the woman’s name was being linked with Major Harry Westcott’s. The arrival of the whole of the Westcott family on the scene just when the scandal was breaking, far from dousing the flames, would probably fan them. Everyone would be agog to find out what the Westcotts would do to squash Mrs. Tavernor beneath their collective heel. It was only fair to warn the family.
His mother, Harry had noticed, used the word scandal rather than just gossip. And Harry had realized, perhaps for the first time, just how bad this whole ridiculous situation might become. After he had talked with his mother in the privacy o
f the library last night, he had gone back to the drawing room, late as it had been by then, and told the whole story, barring only those details that were absolutely no one’s business.
The family had, of course, stayed up very late in the hope of finding out why he had needed to take his mother away for some private consultation. He would be surprised if during his absence this morning the family had not been discussing how they were going to deal with the crisis.
Gossip. Scandal. Crisis?
Had the world gone mad? He had kissed Lydia’s forehead on that fateful night. If it had lasted ten seconds he would be very surprised.
“She will not,” he said curtly in answer to Ivan’s question.
“I am so glad, Uncle Harry,” Winifred said.
“What you don’t have in your whole body, my girl,” Ivan told her, “is a romantic bone.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “What woman would find it romantic to be forced into marriage by a little spiteful gossip? And stupid gossip too. You agree with me, Grandmama, do you not?”
It occurred to Harry suddenly that not so long ago his mother had almost been forced into marrying Marcel for just such a reason. She had run off with him one day for a romantic fling without a word to anyone but had been tracked down by separate search parties sent out by the Westcotts and Marcel’s family. She had resisted all pressure and married him later for her own reasons. Not that Harry had witnessed any of those sensational events except the actual wedding one Christmas Eve. He had been overseas with his regiment.