by Balogh, Mary
Twenty-three
The goodbyes had been said—inevitably a small crowd had gathered outside the hotel to see them on their way—and Gabriel’s carriage had left London and taken the road north.
They had not spoken since leaving the hotel behind. Gabriel had left Jessica to her thoughts, going only so far as to take her hand in his and hold it on his thigh. Her shoulder was leaning against his. It had been an emotional leave-taking, of course. Even he had been a bit choked over the hugs and backslappings and good wishes of people he had never even heard of a mere few weeks ago. And of those from Sir Trevor and Lady Vickers. It was understandable that Jessica needed a little time to compose herself. It must be some consolation to her, though, that her mother and brother and sister-in-law had promised to pay them a visit sometime during the summer.
He looked into her face at last. “I am sorry,” he said.
“Sorry?” She gazed back at him.
“For taking you away,” he said. “Life is sometimes cruel to women.”
“But you were taken away from your life in Boston,” she said. “It was a choice you made, Gabriel. Just as it was my choice to marry you.”
“I do not know quite what we are facing at Brierley,” he told her. “It is a long time since I was there. And I was never happy there, you know.”
“I do know,” she said. “Are you fearing that your memories and perhaps the collective memories of your neighbors will wear us down and make it impossible for us to be happy there?”
He had been fearing just that, but hearing it put into words made him sound very weak. He just could not think of Brierley with any sort of joyful anticipation, though.
“I want so much to make you happy,” he told her.
“Then do it.”
“Very well.” He smiled and glanced at the pink rosebud that lay on the seat opposite. “I may not be able to find you a rose tomorrow.”
“Then pluck a daisy for me,” she said. “It is not the roses that make me happy, Gabriel. It is the fact that you give them to me. That you care a little bit.”
He turned his head to look out the window.
“Gabriel,” she said. “We will make our own memories at Brierley. From the moment we arrive there. It is our home. The space is ours. The servants and neighbors and potential friends are ours. The future is ours. The past is gone. The future is bright if we want it to be. And the present is lovely. We are together.”
“Is it lovely?” he asked, looking at her. “I have just taken you away from your family.”
“You are my family,” she said.
And, ridiculously, he felt the heat of tears prick at his eyes. It seemed to him that he had spent most of his life without family. Since he was nine years old. And only briefly had he found it with Cyrus. He had spent most of his life lonely, though he had rarely called it that.
He was not normally a self-pitying man.
Now he had a family. Jessica. The Westcotts. Sir Trevor and his wife—and Bertie. Mary.
“My uncle had daughters,” he said. “They are my first cousins. They all married years ago. They probably have grown children.”
“I will write to them during my first week at home,” she said.
At home. She meant Brierley.
“I will invite them to come and visit us,” she said.
“Philip had a wife,” he said, “and two daughters. Mary mentioned in a letter some years ago that they had returned to her family and that she had remarried.”
“I will write to her,” she said. “We are almost never quite alone, you see. Not unless we choose to be.”
“You will be a good countess,” he told her. “It is why I married you.”
“I will not disappoint you.” Her tone sounded a little brisk even though she smiled.
“But I persuaded you to marry me under false pretenses,” he said.
“Oh?” Her eyebrows were up. She looked haughty. It was an expression of self-defense, he realized.
“I think,” he said, “I fell in love with you at Richmond Park when you scolded me for seeing nothing when I looked at you but Lady Jessica Archer. When you demanded that if I wanted a chance with you, I must romance you. I am still not sure that word is a verb. I had no idea how to go about doing it. I still do not. I am a dull fellow, Jessie. But I fell in love and have not fallen out since. Indeed, I have fallen so far in that I am quite certain I am a hopeless case.”
She snatched her hand away, turned sharply on the seat so that her knee was pressing against the side of his leg, and crossed her hands over her bosom.
“Gabriel!” she exclaimed. “You idiot!”
“Yes, I know,” he said, grimacing ruefully. “But it need not matter. We will still do a good job as earl and countess. We will still make a happy home, for ourselves and, if we are so blessed, for our children. We will—”
“Gabriel!” she said. “You are a double idiot.”
He stopped talking. He looked warily at her. Had he gone and ruined everything? He had hoped she might be cautiously pleased.
She pointed a finger at his chest and waggled it as she talked.
“If you do not tell me and show me every single day for the rest of our lives that you love me,” she said, “I will leave you and go home to my mother. Or else I will go about performing my duties with a permanent pout. And if I do not tell you and show you the same thing every day, then, then—Oh, stop!”
Because he was laughing, at first quietly and then helplessly.
“Stop it!” she said when he set one arm about her shoulders and the other under her knees and lifted her across him to set her on his lap. “Stop it this minute, Gabriel.”
But she was laughing too, and they were still laughing when he kissed her.
“Stop it,” she said against his mouth.
He kissed her more deeply, and laughter subsided as she wriggled one arm from beneath his and wrapped the other about his neck.
“No, never, Jessie,” he told her when he came up for air. “Never, ever. I plan to keep on kissing you for the rest of our lives.”
“Well, there go all our other plans,” she said. “There is to be only kissing all day, every day, for the rest of our lives?”
“Don’t forget the nights,” he said.
“You are absurd,” she told him.
“I know,” he said. “I love you. Kiss me.”
She laughed. “You are still absurd, Gabriel. I love you too. I do. I really do.”
And she kissed him.
Laughter and absurdity were both forgotten long before they stopped.
Only love remained.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT BOOK
IN MARY BALOGH’S WESTCOTT SERIES,
Someone to Cherish
COMING IN 2021
Lydia Tavernor was seated in one corner of Hannah and Tom Corning’s parlor, listening to the conversation of the people around her but not, at the moment, at least, participating in it. She was conscious of an inner welling of contentment as she looked about at the familiar faces of her fellow villagers and of a few people from somewhat farther afield. It was not exactly a party and was not a particularly large gathering, so Lydia was even more pleased, therefore, to have been included on the guest list for what Hannah had described as “an evening of cards and conversation with tea and cake.” The card games were over, and the guests were enjoying cake and pastries and tea while exchanging news and opinions and even a bit of good-natured gossip.
Sometimes Lydia felt a little guilty about her contentment, even when it did not well up quite as abundantly as it did this evening, for she had been widowed only fifteen months ago and perhaps ought to be still prostrate with grief. It was what some of her neighbors might expect.
Her husband, the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor, had been the vicar here for only three years before his sudden death, but he had made a lasting impression upon the community, both by his life and by the manner of his dying. He had been a young man—only thirty-three yea
rs old when he died—and handsome, vigorous, and charismatic. His eyes had burned with zeal in the service of his Lord and in his duty to the sheep of his flock. Apparently he had been a great contrast to the quiet, elderly vicar who had preceded him, though Lydia had never known Reverend Jenkins. Many people had considered Isaiah a welcome change. Some, it had seemed to Lydia, had even come close to worshiping him, almost as though they had put him in place of the very God he preached about. He had worked indefatigably for his church and his people. He had died by drowning while rescuing young Jeremy Piper from a river swollen and flowing fast and furious after several days of torrential rain.
The general opinion in the days of bitter shock and grief that had followed the tragedy was that Jeremy was a bad, useless boy who had defied strict orders to stay away from the water and would surely come to no good for the rest of his miserable life. Meanwhile, he had caused the death of a man who was goodness through and through but had now been cut off from doing the work the Lord had appointed him to do. No one had thought to suggest that perhaps the Lord had appointed him to save the child’s life, even at the sacrifice of his own.
Lydia’s own shock and grief had been absolute. She had not collapsed or taken to her bed, but she had turned totally . . . blank, for days afterward, moving about as though in a dream. Or nightmare, rather. For her whole life had revolved about Isaiah’s. He had always called her his helpmeet—almost never his wife—and that was exactly what she had been. His work had been her work. His beliefs and opinions had been hers. She had not known for days on end how she could continue without him.
Yet here she was now, continuing on. She was invited almost everywhere now that her official year of mourning was at an end. Most of the time, she supposed, she was invited for Isaiah’s sake rather than for her own, as she could not be described as the life and soul of any gathering, and never had been. She far preferred to listen than to talk. Every conversation needed listeners, did it not? And in her experience, far too many people preferred to talk, pausing only long enough during a conversation to be polite while someone else spoke before launching back into speech.
Not that Lydia was overcritical of talkers, especially those who just needed a sympathetic ear into which to pour their concerns, their aches and pains, or their loneliness. She was particularly kind toward, and patient with, those people others habitually avoided if they could do so without being too obvious about it—the long-winded bores and those, usually the elderly, who liked to tell the same stories they had been telling to the same audience for many years past. Lydia could always be relied upon to listen attentively and to respond as though she were hearing the story for the first time.
No one was talking specifically to her at present. She was at leisure to listen to everyone and to look about and conclude that contentment was actually more desirable than active happiness. For where there was happiness, there was almost invariably unhappiness awaiting its turn. Extremes tended to be like that. They had a way of attracting their opposites, as though some cosmic balance needed to be restored. It was better and safer to settle for some position in the middle. Not that one could always choose, of course. Life was never that neat, nor its ups and downs that much within one’s control. But . . . Well, tonight she felt as though her life had turned out well for her.
She had chosen to remain in this place after her husband’s death because she liked the village of Fairfield and had grown fond of the people who lived here. She could have gone back home to her father’s house. He and her brothers had certainly assumed that she would. When Papa and James, her eldest brother, had come for Isaiah’s funeral and then accompanied her to his brother’s home for his burial in the family plot, they had expected to take her directly home with them afterward. It was their very assertiveness, perhaps, that had pulled her out of her dreadful lethargy. It would have been so easy to allow them to take charge—of her situation, of her life, of her. They had been astonished—not to mention alarmed—when she had announced her intention of returning to the village and staying there.
“Alone?” Papa had said. “Lydie! It is out of the question. You are not thinking straight—as how could you be? I cannot think of anything worse that could have happened to my dearest girl. Go get the bag you brought with you and come immediately, while you have James and me to give you our company and support and to protect you on the journey. The rest of your things can be sent for. James will see to everything. You must not addle your mind over it. You know this is what Isaiah would want.”
Oh yes, she had known that. And perhaps for the first time it had really struck her that Isaiah was no longer with her and never would be again. She had dug in her heels and insisted upon coming home. Home being here.
She could have stayed where she was, with Isaiah’s brother, Bruce Tavernor, Earl of Tilden, and his wife. They had been civil enough after the burial to offer her a home with them, even to urge her to stay, since she was their last surviving link to Isaiah. She had not been ungrateful.
“Though you will no doubt be going home with your father, Lydia,” her brother-in-law had said. “If, however, you would prefer to remain here to live with Ellen and me, even if just for a while, you would be very welcome. For Isaiah’s sake. It is what he would expect of us, and not without reason. We must all be proud of him, you know, even though it is difficult to feel anything but raw grief at present. He died a hero.”
His own grief had been profound, and Lydia had hugged him tightly and clung while Ellen wept into her handkerchief.
Both Lydia’s father and Bruce lived in mansions set in large private parks and run by a host of servants, both indoor and out. Both had offered her a life of ease and security, a balm to the great bruise that was her life. She had chosen instead to come back to Fairfield, though she had moved out of the vicarage a week after her return, of course, to make room for the Reverend Bailey, the new vicar, and his wife, who had both been unfailingly kind to her ever since. She had been fortunate enough to have been left enough money to purchase a small cottage on the edge of the village, and have enough remaining with which to live modestly for the rest of her life.
Her father had declared himself lost for words, though he had somehow found plenty anyway in the letter that had arrived after she announced the purchase. How could she possibly prefer to live in a house that would surely fit into a mere corner of his own? How could she possibly choose to live alone? But to Lydia, her cottage soon became as precious as a palace. It was hers, and there, she was answerable to no one but herself. That fact, totally unexpected in her life, was a luxury surpassing all others.
Her neighbors had doubtless been as surprised as her relatives when she decided to stay and live all alone among them. She would not even consider hiring someone to be her companion, though her father—when he had understood that she was not to be budged, at least at present, when she was still clearly out of her mind with grief—had suggested an indigent female relative who would be only too happy to come and lend her some respectability. Lydia had said thank you but no, thank you. She did not invite Mrs. Elsinore, the cook and housekeeper Isaiah had hired to run the vicarage, to move in with her. While Isaiah had lived, Mrs. Elsinore had prefaced most of what she said in answer to Lydia’s directions with, “But the reverend says . . .” After his death, she had changed that habitual response to “But the reverend would say . . .”
Lydia hired no one to replace her. The house was not so large that she could not keep it clean and tidy herself. She did not possess so strong a personal vanity that she could not groom herself to look decent in company. She did not have a stomach so large that she could not feed herself, though she had never in her life had to do so up until that point. She discovered that she actually enjoyed cooking and baking, once she had gathered some recipes from her neighbors and done some experimenting and made a few adjustments until she was able to produce edible and eventually even appetizing meals. Even dusting and polishing could be satisfying when she looked upon the res
ults. For jobs like scything the grass and cleaning the outsides of the windows and running certain heavy errands, there was the blacksmith’s middle son, a lad who was happy enough to earn a little pocket money.
Lydia was living the life she had hardly dared to dream about before fifteen months ago. She had relatives and inlaws of whom she was dearly fond and with whom she corresponded regularly, but she was not answerable to any of them. She had neighbors who were amiable and fussed over her in quiet, sympathetic ways while she was still in mourning, forever bringing her flowers and baked goods and produce from their gardens. Mrs. Piper, Jeremy’s mother, was particularly attentive in these ways, almost to the point of being intrusive, since she always brought her offerings right inside the house without waiting to be invited and looked around with avid curiosity as she talked.
The neighbors now included Lydia in the social life of the community, both simple gatherings, such as this one tonight, and more elaborate events, like dinners at Sir Maynard Hill’s and the assemblies above the village inn, where there was music and dancing. But from her neighbors—most of them, anyway—as much as she valued their kindness, Lydia could withdraw to the privacy of her own home whenever she wished.
She had even acquired a few real friends over the last year or so, women such as Lady Hill and Hannah Corning and Denise Franks, with whom she could visit and sit and talk and laugh. Women she could welcome into her own cottage. She had never been able to enjoy that luxury at the vicarage, where people were invited only on formal church business, organized and conducted by Isaiah and catered to by Mrs. Elsinore. Lydia had never had women friends until recently, in fact. She liked it.
There was only one thing she needed now to make her life perfect. Oh, it was not a man. Well, not exactly, anyway. She had had a man. Indeed, she had had nothing but men all her life, it seemed, ever since she was eight, when her mother died a few weeks after giving birth to Anthony, the youngest of her three brothers. She had no sisters and no grandmothers. Her only aunt, her father’s sister, was estranged from him, since she had insisted upon marrying a man he had considered less than respectable. Then, at the age of twenty, Lydia had married Isaiah, who had one brother but no sisters and no living mother and not even a sister-in-law until three years ago, when Lydia was twenty-five. She had been married to Isaiah for a little over six years before his death.