by Mary Balogh
“She does not usually take to strangers,” Anna said, moving to her sister’s other side as he led her into the house. “I believe she likes you, Luke.”
He felt curiously pleased. He had felt very little liking from his own family since his return home. Not that he had done much to court it. He was content that there had been no open unpleasantness.
His mother was gracious to the new arrival but made no attempt during tea to pay her any attention. Lady Emily was, of course, a child and should have been in the nursery according to his mother’s strict notions of what was correct. The girl sat on a sofa between her sisters, gazing occasionally at Agnes, sometimes at him, but most of the time at Anna. Always it was a gaze, never a glance. But then he supposed that to someone who could not hear, the sense of sight was more precious than to those who could.
Ashley arrived late for tea. He was often late for meals or did not appear at them at all. Luke did not know where or how he spent his days. There had been almost no communication between them since their return from London and almost never any eye contact. But Ashley was not made for general sullenness. He was always polite with the rest of the family, often cheerful. He was cheerful now.
“Anna,” he said as soon as he had nodded to everyone else in the room, “’tis said that your sister has arrived, and sure enough, I see a stranger sitting beside you. Present me, if you please.”
Anna did so and Ashley stood directly in front of them. “As I live,” he said, grinning and making his bow, “a beauty in the making. Your servant, madam.” He took the girl’s hand and raised it to his lips.
He spoke with his usual careless charm, Luke noticed. He knew, of course, that Anna’s youngest sister was a deaf-mute. Perhaps he had spoken, like Luke, because silence would have seemed unnatural. But Luke watched the girl’s reaction to the introduction. She did not smile, as she had smiled at him, but she watched his brother’s lips as she had watched his, and her eyes followed Ashley across the room to where he took a seat and accepted a cup of tea from Doris. She continued to gaze at him even after he had caught her eye and winked at her.
Ashley, Luke thought in some amusement, had made a conquest.
• • •
In the weeks after his return to Bowden, Luke spent a great deal of time about estate business, talking with Laurence Colby and going over the books with him, riding about his farms and visiting those who worked them, calling on his tenant farmers.
Adjustments would have to be made. Colby was a humorless, efficient, closefisted man, Luke found, far more eager to bring money into the estate—and it was extremely prosperous—than to spend. And perhaps there was some foundation to the charge that he had acted for the past few years more as if he was the owner than the steward. But there were no signs of dishonesty in the man, and he had undoubtedly guarded Luke’s inheritance from the extravagance of those who might have spent it for him. On the other hand, he had kept money from those who needed it badly with the result that there was some small suffering and certainly some discontent on his farms.
Reluctantly, Luke was going to have to set about asserting himself, getting involved in the lives of those dependent upon him. The very idea made him shudder. He began to realize how very much for ten years, at first deliberately and then unconsciously, he had cut himself off from involvement with others. He had involved himself only for pleasure.
He was pondering both the changes in his life and the changes he must begin to institute in the running of his estate as he rode home from one of his farms one afternoon. Anna, he had discovered there, had already been visiting the cottages and sampling homemade cider and promising to share her own recipe and suggesting that perhaps she could look into the organizing of a school for the younger children. He was going to have to prove himself worthy of his duchess, he realized ruefully.
And then his attention was caught by a splash of pink among the greenery surrounding him and he looked up to find Henrietta sitting on a stile that separated a hay field from the path along which he rode. She looked quite achingly pretty perched there, an open book in one hand. Something inside him lurched uncomfortably.
He had managed to avoid being alone with her. He had even convinced himself that there was nothing to avoid. His initial meeting with her had been easier than could have been expected and she had been friendly toward him and more than friendly to Anna. Everything that had been between him and her was obviously dead, ancient history. Except that there had been those letters she had sent him in London and his own dread of coming home. And so he had avoided being alone with her and would continue to avoid it if he could.
He drew his horse to a halt for a moment, but she had seen him, of course. He moved reluctantly forward.
She closed the book and looked at him unsmilingly. “Luke,” she said uncertainly. “I thought you were spending the afternoon in your study with Mr. Colby.”
“No,” he said, drawing his horse to a halt close to the stile. He had a vivid memory of lifting her down from that very stile one day long ago and deliberately sliding her body down his before stealing a quick kiss as her feet touched the ground. She had scolded him and then swayed against him and raised her mouth for another kiss. Having grown up together, they had found it easier than it should have been to wander away unchaperoned, sometimes for a whole hour. He had never done more than kiss her, with closed lips. He had known nothing in those days about even the most basic skills of making love—unless kissing with closed lips was considered the most basic. He had known nothing else. It had been a time of incredible innocence.
“Oh,” she said now, and flushed. There was an awkward little silence before she rushed on. “Luke, forgive me for the letter I wrote you in London. I swore to myself that I would never either speak or write those words to you, that I would go to my grave guarding the secrets of my heart. But I wrote them and sent the letter on its way with William. I thought he was leaving a day later than he did. I rode over to Wycherly to get it back from him, but he had left already. I was frantic. I wished I could die.”
He could think of no answer to give. He gave none. There was nothing to be said and nothing to be done. Besides, it was the second letter, not the one Will had brought, that had been more personal. But it was dangerous to be alone with her and talking of such things. And dangerous to be gazing into blue eyes huge with misery. “You wish to continue reading?” he asked her after another short silence. “Or are you ready to go home?”
“’Tis time to go home,” she said. “But you ride on ahead, Luke. I will come at my own pace. If you will but help me down?”
He wished he had taken a different route home. But a different route would have added miles to his journey. He wished she had not asked him to help her down from the stile. He did not want to touch her. And of course, once descended from his horse’s back, he could not possibly mount up again and ride away from her while she walked home.
She looked delicately, innocently lovely sitting there with her book. God, how he had loved her, that innocent, long-dead young man of his memory. She was dressed, he realized suddenly, very fashionably in a formfitting sack dress with dazzling white petticoat and stomacher. Her straw hat was trimmed with real flowers. She wore hoops. All for wandering out to sit reading on a stile?
He dismounted and walked closer to the stile. She made no move to hold out a hand so that he could assist her to descend the two steps to the ground. She looked sorry that she had asked for assistance. And yet he wondered how chance a meeting this was. He reached out both hands, set them at her waist, and lifted her down while she set her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. A waist as small as it had been when she was seventeen. A body light as a feather. A special fragrance that assaulted his nostrils and his memory.
He had loved her with all a young man’s romantic idealism, with all a young man’s ardent passion. For a moment, before he released her, he held the memories and the pa
st between his two hands again. For a moment the years rolled away. He heard her inhale and exhale rather unsteadily. He did not look at her.
“Would you like to ride while I walk?” he asked her. He could hear the strain in his voice. But how could she ride in hoops?
“No.” She spoke very quietly. “I will walk with you, Luke.”
He wanted Anna with him suddenly and foolishly. Anna with her bright smiles and her amusing, witty chatter. Anna, his wife, his present, with their child, his future, in her womb. He did not care to admit to himself that he was afraid. Or tempted.
“Luke,” Henrietta said, her voice as strained as his, “you made a wonderful marriage. I love Anna. She is just right for you—pretty and charming and devoted to duty. I hope she will be able to do for you what I was unable to do for George.” She drew breath and let it out rather raggedly. “I hope she will be able to give you sons.”
He had an irrational longing for a daughter. For a little girl to pamper and be proud of. He would not mind at all if it were a daughter Anna was carrying. The realization surprised him. He had married her for heirs. All that really mattered in their marriage was that she give him sons, at least one, preferably two or more. But he wanted a little girl.
“All I was able to give George was one stillborn son,” Henrietta said, her voice very low. “If only I had known . . .”
“I am sorry about that, Henrietta,” he said. “It must have been a painful experience for you.” Doubtless an incredible understatement.
“If only I had known,” she said again. “I could not have married you, Luke, though you urged me to do so even after you knew. If it had lived, it would have been his son. Everyone would have known that. And yet I would have been married to you. It would have been impossible. You must have realized that. Have you hated me all these years?” Her voice was thin and shaking.
He could remember having contrived to be alone with her up at the falls. He could remember trying to kiss her and her turning her head sharply away. He could remember it all coming spilling out, how she had been out walking alone, how George had met her and walked with her, how he had waited until they were in a secluded place before taking her into his arms and trying to persuade her to let him further embrace her, how he had grown more ardent and insistent at her refusal until he had forced himself on her and got her with child, how she had discovered the terrible truth and confronted George with it so that he had been obliged to offer for her, how she had felt she had no choice but to accept, how she had decided to break the news to Luke before anyone else knew.
And he could remember her collapsing into his arms and sobbing her heart out while he cried with her. He could remember pleading with her, begging her to marry him anyway. He had not had a chance to think through the implications of what she had told him. All he had been able to think of was losing her, losing the love of his heart, losing his reason for living. At that moment he had not even started to think of George . . .
The pain was something he would never want to live through again. And he had spent years hardening his heart so that he never would.
“I have not hated you, Henrietta,” he said. “I made a new life for myself in France. And now I have come back a different person. And I have come back with a wife. All that seems like something that happened in another lifetime to another person. I am sorry if you suffered longer than I, my dear.”
“I suffered every day while he lived and I have suffered every day since,” she said so quietly that he scarcely heard the words.
He heard her swallow twice but kept his eyes resolutely on the path ahead. He did not look to see if she was crying. If he saw her crying, he knew what he would do, what any gentleman would do. But he did not trust himself to hold her in his arms. He did not trust the invulnerability of his heart. He wished they were closer to home. They were still a mile away.
“I am glad you married before coming home,” she said at last, her voice more normal. “And I am glad you married someone like Anna, someone worthy of you. You chose well, even though you married her because of me. You did, did you not?”
Had he? Had that been his primary motive? He knew it had been part of it. He hoped it had not been the whole of it. “I married,” he said, “because it was time and because I had met someone I wished to marry.” Yes. He remembered Anna at Lady Diddering’s ball and the way she had flirted with him and enchanted him. Yes, that was at least partly true. He suddenly, desperately wanted to feel that he had married Anna for herself. And he had, he remembered with some bitterness. He had allowed himself to fall in love with her—briefly.
“Forgive me,” Henrietta said. “Forgive me for even suggesting otherwise. Who could wonder at any man’s falling in love with Anna and marrying her all within a week? I am glad you love her. If you did not, it would be dangerous for you and me to be together. We should not be together now. I wish I had known that you were from home this afternoon. I would not have strolled away to be alone and to read. You ought not to have stopped when you saw me, Luke. You should have ridden on by.”
But she had known. It had been a planned meeting. Could not even Henrietta be trusted to speak the truth?
“You are my sister-in-law, Henrietta,” he said firmly. “All that happened between us happened a long time ago to two children who no longer exist.” And yet they did exist. Somewhere deep inside himself, despite the effort of years, was the boy he had been. Somewhere deep within there was still Henrietta. And George.
“Yes,” she said. “That is the truth. It must be the truth.”
The path along which they walked disappeared as they emerged from the trees to the east of the house onto the top of the long lawn that sloped for more than a mile from the formal gardens before the house. They were quite close to the gardens in which Anna was strolling with Emily and Doris.
“Oh, dear,” Henrietta said quietly and then she raised a hand to wave gaily at the three in the garden. “I will never walk with your husband again, Anna, I vow,” she sang out cheerfully as they came within earshot. “He has done nothing but sing your praises and declare his love for you since I met him as I was climbing over the stile back yonder. He has not even complimented me on my new straw hat.”
Anna looked briefly at Luke, her eyes startled, before smiling at Henrietta and moving close to the low hedge that separated the bottom terrace from the lawn. “And it is such a becoming hat,” she said. “I will compliment you on it, Henrietta.” She laughed gaily.
Luke acted from impulse. He leaned over the hedge, took his wife by the waist, and lifted her over despite her startled shriek of protest. She laughed again as he set her down.
“You will not find that so easy to do in a few months’ time, your grace,” she said and then flushed and caught her lower lip between her teeth.
“Oh, Anna,” Henrietta said, clasping her hands tightly at her bosom, “does that mean what I think it means?”
Emily was stooping down to smell the flowers, Luke noticed, but Doris was an interested listener.
“Anna is with child,” he said, offering her his arm, drinking in the sight of her, as he always did, as he always had. Now it was a relief to see her, to touch her, to speak aloud his deep, irrevocable involvement with her. His mind clung to the present, firmly relinquished the past—yet again. His horse snorted with impatience to be moving again.
But Henrietta had to hug her and kiss her first and Doris had to do likewise across the width of the hedge. All three of them were laughing and talking together. Luke grimaced and caught Emily’s eye. She was observing the excitement, obviously not understanding it. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows and she smiled at him.
“’Twill be a son,” Henrietta said. “I know it will, Anna. It must be a son. How happy I am for you—and for Luke, of course, even though he would not compliment me on my hat. Perhaps I will even forgive him.” She laughed and moved toward the gap in the midd
le of the hedge so that she could enter the formal garden. “I shall return to the house with Doris and Emily. I know when three is a crowd.”
He watched her go, feeling curiously depressed. For a few minutes he had wanted her again. Oh, not really physically but nostalgically. He had wanted to be that boy again and he had wanted her to be that girl again. He had wanted to change the world. He had been right to dread coming home.
Anna took Luke’s arm and walked with him in the direction of the stables. “I am so sorry,” she said. “The announcement was yours to make. You would have liked to make it in a more formal manner, I am sure.”
“Mine to make?” he said. “It seems to me, madam, that my part in the making of our child was a singularly small one in comparison with yours. So I will be unable to lift you in a few months’ time? Is that a challenge to my strength?”
She laughed. Anna’s laugh was all sunshine and happiness.
He wished suddenly that there was not the necessity to go to the drawing room for tea with the family. He wished he could take it privately with his wife in her sitting room. Not necessarily to make love to her there, though the idea had its definite appeal, but just to be alone with her so that he could gaze exclusively at her without being ill-mannered and so that he could talk only to her and listen only to her.
He was shaken for a moment when he realized how much he had come to depend on Anna’s sunny nature and uncomplicated placidity. Especially here at Bowden. He was not sure that even now he would not bolt back to Paris if it were not for Anna.
And why not come to depend on her? he thought. She was his wife. And despite her past and the secret she had refused to reveal—did not he have a past and unrevealed secrets too?—she had given him no reason since their wedding night not to trust her.
“And how many months will it be, madam, before my strength is to be put to the test?” he asked.
She laughed again. “Before I am fat and ugly?” she said. “At least two more, I hope. ’Tis not even two months yet.”