"But how am I to take this in anything but jest?" she demanded, feeling rather embarrassed by the whole thing. "Marriage, my lord! The very fact that you could speak the word together with my name suggests that you have lost your senses." She stared at him helplessly, but his smile did not return. She heard Maggie's voice in her head – Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He was dead serious, and determined. "What possible advantage would you gain by marrying me?"
He flinched slightly, but did not hesitate in his answer. "Unlike so many of my acquaintance, I do not always take an action for the advantage in it. There is such a thing as honor," he said gently, carefully, "though I know you have seen little of it in the men you have known. Including myself."
She shook her head vigorously. "You have always treated me honorably, even when I did not deserve it," she protested. How could he think otherwise?
"Not always," he corrected her.
And suddenly it was in the air between them, unavoidable. He had named it, the thing that created the air of reserve and restraint in the room. His kisses and her nakedness. Clutching him to herself. Him lying beside her all the night through. She stared down at her feet, feeling the blood rise to her cheeks, wishing it was as easy to speak about now as it had been yesterday with Marie-Anne.
"Oh. That."
"Yes," he confirmed. "That."
"But–" She hesitated before forcing the words out in a rush. "You did not act without my… permission." Her insistence, really, but she did not say it. "The blame is not yours."
He looked ashamed, angry with himself. "Indeed it is. I am perfectly capable of mastering myself, yet I did not." He cleared his throat. "There are consequences to such actions, and it is you who will be adversely affected. I seek to rectify that circumstance."
His business-like tone was worse than his smiling. It was hardly the kind of marriage proposal she would have expected from a secret romantic, or from someone who had held her as he had. Then again, it was in perfect keeping with his beloved propriety, wasn't it? Of course. He would want to make up for the terrible breach in etiquette, the ridiculous man. It was really too much.
"Lord Summerdale," she began in her most practical tone. She might at least try to match his tone. Perhaps it would help to overcome the inexplicable awkwardness she felt. "It is very admirable of you want to follow the social graces, but there is hardly a need. You'll have noticed you cannot save me from ruin. Any adverse effects you would hope to circumvent have already been visited upon me."
He looked at her strangely, a kind of eager pensiveness in his expression, like she spoke a foreign language that he knew only minimally. She rolled her eyes and lifted her hands in a helpless gesture, striving to ease her embarrassment with a touch of humor. Marie-Anne would laugh herself silly, if she could see.
"A marriage under these circumstances, solely for the sake of saving a woman's reputation, is pointless in my case." She watched a frown of concentration spread over his features. Ridiculous man, refusing to understand and offering to ruin himself. For her. "Why must you cling to this notion of doing the honorable thing?"
"Why do you not want to marry me?"
The question flustered her even further. She could tell him that she had lived so long without hope of a husband that the idea was alien to her. Or that she did not need him, having managed so long on her own. Because you will come to resent what this does to your impeccable reputation, and hate me, and I don't want you to hate me.
That was it. He believed her, she knew. But if one day that belief ran dry, he would turn on her as Alex had. All his attentiveness and concern would trickle away into indifference, and she would be left cold, after coming to depend on him.
Or it could be worse than that. What other terrible things could he be, that might be revealed to her too late?
But she could not say that to him, not all of it, no more than she could tell him how she felt infinitely better and yet a hundred times worse that he had come back to her. That he did not abandon her.
"I never said I didn't want to marry you," she countered feebly. It was so very difficult, when he looked at her like that, to marshal the myriad reasons why she resisted. All the disjointed objections raced through her mind like birds, dashing themselves uselessly against his insistence, falling stunned to the ground. It caused quite a ruckus in her head.
"It seems to me that is exactly what you're saying, and it makes no sense. All the advantage is yours, yet you do not take it. I offer my name to you, my home – everything I have, because you deserve it. And not just because of what has happened between us." He paused, looking down at the gloves he twisted in his hand. "You deserve whatever I can give you because of who you are. You have been wronged, Helen, and I can do everything in my power to set it right. Not that it will ever be right, what you have suffered."
All the thoughts whirring in her head stopped suddenly, leaving her silent. No, it could never be set to rights. She had always known that. He held so much of the secret now, in his two hands. She had given it to him, exposing more of herself than she had ever wanted, and it had not been erased with the telling of it. It would never be erased, not with his belief, or his kisses, or just because she wanted it gone from her.
But he, with his romantic notions, wanted to make it better. To be the agent of her salvation, rescuing her from a life of loneliness and obscurity. Did he think they would write an epic poem to celebrate his great sacrifice?
"I will never be acceptable to Society," she stated baldly, reduced to pointing out the obvious.
He shrugged, as if it were an insignificant detail. "That doesn't concern me in the least."
"It would ruin your good standing! And you would become as unacceptable as me. You know quite well how it goes," she insisted. "You could not take your wife with you to any gatherings, affairs and such–"
He suddenly closed the distance between them, cutting off her words by kissing her. It drove out all thought of what she had meant to say, replacing her argument with the coaxing of his lips. An excellent argument, she thought. Oh, really... rather... wonderful, this line of reasoning. He took the resistance out of her as easily as he stole her breath, reminding her quite forcefully that the night between them had been real. As real as this notion of marriage.
He dragged his lips away and stared hard into her eyes. "Say yes, Helen. And promise me that you will always be with me," he said. "I want you beside me, in all things. If we cannot be somewhere together, then we shall not go at all, and society can go hang."
His intensity took her aback as much as his kiss. It was so important to him, though she could not fathom why. Still, she couldn't promise him the kind of wife he wanted when she was still reeling from the fact that he wanted her to be his wife at all. It was too sweet a dream to indulge in, these kisses every day. It frightened her, to want something so much, and she pulled away to a safer distance.
"If you took me to wife, then it would seem we'd spend much time out of society altogether, under that condition."
The idea seemed to please him, adding to her complete bafflement.
"Yes, it would," he said with a faint and satisfied smile. "Although I would prefer not to call it a condition of marriage. Only a very strong preference." He looked at her, piercing through the remnants of her resolve with the depth of his sincerity. "I feel the need to be near you, you see. Constantly. And I abhor the notion of a typical society marriage."
"I hardly think a marriage between us could be that," she said tartly, but her resistance was flagging. She knew what he meant. One could barely know who was married to whom in high society much of the time. Keeping separate homes, separate social schedules, dallying with whomever they pleased.
"That is all I would ask of you, as my wife." The early morning light from the parlor room window sparked his eyes as he looked again at the side of her neck. Exactly as he had before he kissed her that first time, though her hair was severely pulled back now. No loose strands to distract him, but still he stared
at the spot with that faint half-smile until her skin grew warm. He wanted to be near her. Constantly. She could have said the words herself, so true were they to her own feelings.
She blinked, not knowing if she wanted him to kiss her again. She stared at his hair, remembering how it felt between her fingers. "I have not said I will be your wife. It's such a..." bad idea, she thought, but said: "a very strange idea."
His lashes lifted, a dreamer half-waking. "Is there any particular expectation you have of a husband? So long as we are stating our preferences." He said it hesitantly, as though worried he would not measure up.
"I want never to be spared the truth."
The words had come out of her instantly, without thought. It was something about the way he looked at her, so openly and honestly, hiding nothing. It made her think how desperately she wanted him to look at her like that, always. Hiding nothing.
"Even–" She took a breath. No matter what their relationship turned out to be, it was vital. "Even when it would hurt me, never hide the truth of what you are."
He must know why she said it, of course. The discovery of her last suitor's true nature had brought them to this moment, after all – had brought her to this life – and she saw him make the connection immediately, quick as ever to understand what lay behind her every word. She broke his look, letting her eyes slide to the window and feeling as though she stood on the edge of a precipice, staring down at the earth from a great height with her heart in her throat. She gave him no time to answer her.
"You think to spare me some kind of disgrace by offering marriage, but you have given me no satisfactory reason why you would do this," she continued stubbornly. "It is senseless to throw yourselves to the wolves for my sake." He didn't know what it was like when people whispered and stared and laughed. He could have no idea what it might be like.
"Do you have any idea how much you have changed me?" His voice came to her as she stared out at the bare trees, the mud. "I have come to know what integrity is, because of you. I have come to understand how wrong I have been, how empty..."
He trailed off, and she turned to him. It was true. He had changed. She could see it plainly. When he had first appeared at Marie-Anne's so many months ago he had not been the kind of man who would do this, offer to ruin himself to save a ruined woman, who could look at her as he did now with open admiration and respect shining in his eyes. She felt at a loss. What on earth had he found to admire in her?
The silence stretched between them. She looked hard at the floorboards, thinking how they needed scrubbing, how she would put on her apron and do that just as soon as he left. Because he would leave. Naturally, he would.
"You want to know why, yet you find fault with my reasoning." He did not sound like the Earl of Summerdale at all, not like the man who could change the world with a word. He sounded lost. "Because I want to marry you, Helen. Because I want you."
She felt something like a hairline fracture in the casing of her heart. Oh, he could not want her. No one wanted her, ever. No one but The Odious Henley had ever wanted her, and look what had come of that. Better to be undesirable.
She did not answer; she could not, and his mood changed back to the businessman when she went so long without speaking. He stepped back from her.
"Shall I give you a reason that you will understand, then? One that appeals to your practicality?" He slapped the gloves in his hand, a sharp snap that brought her instantly to attention. "I have certain responsibilities and duties that I've neglected. And I won't have the next Earl of Summerdale raised a bastard in this village, and his mother called a lewd and abandoned woman by the locals."
He cut right to the heart of the matter mercilessly, voicing the one problem that she had been unable to dismiss in all her tossing and turning of the last twenty-four hours. Of course it had come into her mind. Of course it had. But to think of his rights in the matter had not occurred to her, nor had she allowed herself to contemplate what it would really mean to her own life. The whole subject was so frightening that she preferred to think of anything else. And now he took away her ability to think past it. She needed time to think, and he would not let her.
But he was right. He was more right than he knew. She felt it like a great gaping hole growing inside her. The villagers whom she so loved would never treat her quite the same. She thought she might be able to live through it, herself, but to willfully put a child into that life was nothing but cruel. Now he offered the way out, a means to make it acceptable.
And would she refuse him and regret it later, regrets and misgivings piling up on one another like stones on a cairn until she finally suffocated?
"We could wait," she suggested. "We could wait and see."
He came closer to her again, close enough to touch, his nearness rescuing her from the panic that she fought down. "You've asked me not to spare you the truth, no matter how harsh," he said gently. "It will be difficult enough to squelch rumors even if a child is born within nine months. If we wait, it will be impossible."
The air was thin, the earth falling away from her feet to leave her suspended. He was right. As always. Thinking it through would not make it any less true. It was a sickening feeling, her vision going black at the edges, dizziness threatening to engulf her. But he was there, like he always was. As unmovable and real as the truth he spoke, everything inside of her clamoring toward him.
"Yes," she whispered, flinging herself to solid ground, his presence pulling her back from the abyss. She looked into his face, to convince herself he was real. A child of his – to have his child, to have him look at her every day of her life as he looked at her now. To have the protection of his name, to make a family of her own and so much more: to have some kind of a life again, one where she did not dread the empty days and nights.
"Yes."
He raised his hands to her face, a look of relief and certainty softening the line of his mouth, spreading into a smile. He did not disappoint, pulling her mouth to his and kissing her soundly, thoroughly, until stars swam behind her eyes. He caught her, saved her from the long fall, just like in her dreams.
She stood at the top of the stairs with Marie-Anne, wondering if she would wake up eventually. She had not thought it would happen so soon. She had barely finished agreeing to marry him when suddenly everything had been put into motion.
It would seem that her bridegroom, so soon to be her husband – a word that slithered around in her head, alive with implications – had planned everything in the day they had been apart, before ever proposing to her. The minister, it turned out, together with the license and a few Summerdale servants, had waited in carriages just outside her door. It drew half the village, fortunately including Marie-Anne.
Her friend had hastened inside, leaving Summerdale – Stephen, she thought, with a bit of a shock to realize that she might use his given name now – to sort out the arrangements while Helen was bustled upstairs with a maid. It had been only an hour since she'd given herself over to the preparations, and now they waited for her below. He waited. To be her husband. It was all quite overwhelming, to say the least.
"Yellow suits you wonderfully, in that shade," Marie-Anne announced.
Helen looked down at the dress. It was a soft white with yellow trim, and came from the depths of Marie-Anne's wardrobe. It was a summery thing and two inches too short on Helen, but with the donation of Mrs. Linney's new yellow Spencer jacket (which fit Helen perfectly) and matching wide ribbon (which was easily added to the hem), it was quite lovely. It was all done so efficiently that she suspected Marie-Anne might have been planning out a contingency wardrobe in case of a hasty wedding.
The maid had done wonderfully with her hair, as well, pulling it up and wrapping it in yellow and white ribbons, arranging thick strands to cascade from her crown to her nape. Marie-Anne looked inordinately pleased with it.
"You must be thrilled to see me out of my dregs, as you call them." Helen attempted a smile, but found her mood unequal to the task. Her
palms were beginning to sweat, and she felt just a little bit of hysteria coming on.
"No more rags for you, ma chère, or dregs, or anything else that is not suitable to someone of your station," she said with a twinkle in her eye.
"I'm ousted from the ranks of the Fallen, am I?"
"You'll always be an honorary member, of course," she grinned. "But come now! They are waiting for you."
Helen gripped the banister, suddenly certain she would tumble down the stairs in a heap. It was all happening too quickly, and too fantastical to believe.
"It's mad, isn't it?" she asked, disbelieving. "It's completely mad. However will it work? What on earth will happen?"
Marie-Anne gave her a shrewd look. "You will go downstairs and be married to a very good and honorable man. More than most women get in life, I don't have to tell you."
But then her expression softened, and she closed a hand comfortingly around Helen's arm. "I will tell you, Hélène, that I have always worried since I have known you, that you will never have a chance for happiness. After Ireland, and... all that, I thought you would never be close to any man. To be physically close, I mean."
Helen blushed, her widened eyes lowering at the idea that Marie-Anne had ever taken the time to consider such a thing. But her friend reached out to her, tipping her chin up so she could not hide her face.
"You don't have your mother, Hélène, and on your wedding day you should have someone to speak to you. Lucky that I am French," she continued with her most devilish grin, "and that we talk of these things more easily than you English. It's been difficult to find acceptable euphemisms, you know!"
Helen felt the smile on her own face, in spite of her attempts to remain impervious to Marie-Anne's humor. "Well," Helen took a breath, steeling herself. "What do you think I should know, then?"
Marie-Anne laughed. "There is not time now for all that you should know, but I don't doubt your husband shall be an excellent teacher." Then her smile faded and she continued, more sober. "All you should know is that he is a good man, and you need not be afraid of him. But I see you have learned that already. Really, if you want to be happy – and I mean truly happy, as I think you have a chance to be – then you must not be afraid of yourself. Or more precisely, of what you feel when you are with him. It is yours, this body, and it will never be another's, no matter how you may feel in certain moments."
A Fallen Lady Page 18