Aidan was happy. She was happy. Lying in bed last night, she had tried to imagine what it would have been like if they had really made love. Try as she might to frighten herself with the idea, all she’d felt was intrigued and rather delightfully excited. Would it be so wrong after all? Was it possible that lovemaking, rather than a weapon of destruction, was a weapon of peace? Could a weapon be peaceful?
No matter. She launched into one of her favourite happy pieces of Mozart—‘Say Goodbye’, from The Marriage of Figaro. Last night had brought them closer together. This morning, in the aftermath of last night, they had been newly at ease with each other. More aware of each other too, but in a wholly new way that was intimate, exciting, to be savoured.
She came to the end of the song. Was it possible that she’d been wrong to assume their desire for each other would ultimately tear them apart? They were so very, very different from her parents. She liked and cared for Aidan, for a start. She didn’t like to see him upset and she most certainly didn’t like being the reason for his distress. So they were not in love. In like? She laughed softly to herself. They were not in love, but she really did want to make love to him. After last night, a platonic marriage had very little appeal. It was all very well to give up something one had never had, but now she knew what she was missing—goodness, and what she was depriving Aidan of too.
‘Sophistry,’ she sang, drawing the word out into a scale.
‘You’re full of the joys this morning,’ Clodagh said, popping her head around the door. ‘I’m so sorry not to have joined you for breakfast. May I come in?’
‘Of course, please do. Would you like me to have Cook make you something now? Some eggs or...’
Clodagh shuddered. ‘No, nothing, thank you. I must say, you’ve made this into a very comfortable room. It was the receiving room in my father’s day.’
‘It gets such excellent light in the morning. Do you mind?’
Clodagh laughed. ‘Goodness, no. I’ve never envied Aidan this place you know, it’s far too big for my liking. What a delightful harpsichord.’
‘It only arrived yesterday.’
‘Aidan’s doing?’ Clodagh ran her hand over the burr walnut. ‘I heard you were musical.’
‘Do you play?’
‘No, I’m tone-deaf, like our father. Do you mind if I sit down? Just between us, I’m expecting, which is why I can’t face breakfast. I didn’t like to mention it in front of Aidan. My brother probably thinks I’m past breeding age. To be honest, I thought I was myself. The news came as quite a surprise. I was thinking, when we were driving here, how marvellous it would be if he or she had a little cousin roughly the same age. I can tell from the way you’re blushing that you think I’ve been far too forward. I talk too much and think too little beforehand, as you’ll have gathered.’
‘You mustn’t apologise for that, for I do the same myself. It comes of having two sisters.’
‘I’ve always pined for a sister. And you are a twin, I believe. What is that like?’
‘Lovely and painful both.’
Clodagh clapped her hands together. ‘I just knew I’d like you the moment I set eyes on you. I can’t tell you how happy I am that Aidan has finally put the past behind him. I’ve been nagging him for ever to get married again.’
‘So he told me.’
Clodagh laughed. ‘I’m sure he did. I’m so glad he waited until he found you, you’re perfect for him. I hope you didn’t pay attention to any inappropriate muttering last night? I did my best to stamp it out. Last night was your night, no need for any spectres at the feast, so to speak.’
‘I was aware that there was some talk of his first wife, but only when our guests thought I was out of earshot.’
‘It was inevitable, I suppose. I mean, Aoife was so young, with her whole life ahead of her, and she and Aidan seemed so happy. It seemed inexplicable that she would choose to take her own life.’
Estelle’s hands fell on the keyboard, making a jangling chord. She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘She took her own life?’
‘You didn’t know.’ Clodagh looked stricken. ‘Oh, dear heavens, I’m so sorry. I assumed Aidan had told you.’
‘You were clearly wrong,’ Aidan said from the doorway.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Clodagh snapped. ‘I’m sorry, Estelle, I can see I’ve given you a shock, but I can’t believe you didn’t know. For goodness sake, Aidan, she could have heard it from any one of your guests last night. What would it have looked like...?’
‘Our guests had the decency not to discuss the painful subject. Unlike you, sister dear. I came to tell you that Noel has ordered the carriage.’
‘Already! That man, he’d have himself carried out from his own funeral before the service ended, just to avoid a crush at the church door.’ Clodagh got to her feet. ‘I am truly sorry to have sprung that on you. I do hope you won’t hold it against me. I’ve very much enjoyed my little stay at Cashel Duairc, it’s been far too long in the making. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go and get my cloak.’
Chapter Nine
Aidan and Estelle stood together on the carriageway to wave Clodagh and Noel off. As soon as the driver raised his whip to set the horses in motion, Aidan’s fixed smile faded. Giving her a curt nod, he made to turn on his heel, but Estelle grabbed his arm.
‘Where are you going? You must know we have to talk about this?’
‘I know nothing of the sort.’
‘Aidan!’
He rounded on her. ‘Why the hell can’t you stop raking up the past?’
She reeled at the vicious tone of his voice. ‘I do nothing of the sort.’
‘You leapt at the first opportunity to interrogate my sister. You couldn’t wait to get her to spill the beans.’
‘For someone who prides himself on having a logical brain you are behaving utterly illogically, Aidan. I haven’t interrogated anyone on the subject of your previous marriage, not even you. In fact I’ve done my level best to forget that you had another wife. You’re the one who’s obsessed by her, not me. If you had told me yourself that she had died at her own hands, I’d have thought it both shocking and tragic, but I’d have been more than happy to let the subject drop, believe me. The fact that you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me makes me wonder why on earth not?’
The colour drained from his face. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You can’t talk about her, you can’t say her name, you can’t even bear the sight of her dog. Do you feel guilty for marrying me?’
‘No!’
‘Are you still in love with her?’
He looked quite sick. ‘How can you ask that?’
‘Because I can’t think of any other reason for this obsession.’
‘It’s not an obsession.’
‘How else would you describe it?’ Estelle said, tears stinging her eyes. ‘This morning we were so happy, and now you’re almost unravelling in front of my eyes.’
‘You are overreacting. I was shocked to hear my sister speak so lightly of a tragedy.’
‘How did she die, Aidan?’
He took a visible breath. ‘She drowned.’
Estelle’s hand instinctively went to her heart. ‘Oh, Aidan—’
But he cut her short. ‘I don’t want your entirely misplaced sympathy. What I want is for us to focus on why we married in the first place.’
‘That is so unfair! I have not lost sight of why I’m here, you’re the one blinded by whatever emotion is eating away at you,’ Estelle exclaimed.
‘I don’t have time to bandy words with you. In case you’d forgotten, we have another party to host.’
Without another word, he turned his back and walked off. Belatedly realising where she was, and mortified lest any of the servants had overheard them, Estelle fled for her room, where she locked the door, threw
her hairbrush against it, threw herself on to the bed and gave way to a flood of tears.
* * *
Aidan threw his pencil down in disgust. Three times he’d tried to calculate the load bearing down on the span, and each time he’d come up with a different answer. He pushed aside the drawing board, gazing at his sketch of the new bridge with a jaundiced eye. His heart simply wasn’t in it.
Finn had left a set of accounts to be reckoned on his desk, but he’d probably have as much success making those tally as he’d had with calculating loads. There were any number of things to be done for tonight’s party, but right at this moment, he couldn’t face talking to anyone. All he could think about was Estelle’s shocked, pale face, her eyes bright with tears as he turned his back on her.
‘You’re the one blinded by whatever emotion is eating away at you.’
Obsessed, she’d called him, and she was horribly right, though not in the way she thought. He wasn’t driven by shame or by love or by pity or grief. He was driven by guilt.
He groaned, remembering the logical way he’d laid out his proposal back in Florence, his reasoned argument for their marriage, the rationale they’d agreed for managing the risk of failure. It was the perfect recipe for success, yet he was hellbent on sabotaging it, and if he couldn’t find a way to stop, history would repeat itself. He’d wreck this marriage too. He’d ruin Estelle’s life too.
His heart twisted, making him groan. He’d hurt her. She didn’t understand why he’d lashed out at her. She didn’t understand that he couldn’t bear it when she tried to make sense of the senseless, to understand what he barely comprehended himself. Estelle, bright, lovely, clever, transparent, impulsive Estelle. He was draining the life out of her. If he wasn’t careful, what they’d called their friendship, the foundation for their marriage which they’d taken for granted to be rock solid, would start to crumble, and it would be his doing. With Estelle as his wife, he could have all he ever wanted, yet he was wilfully set on a path that would ensure that he ended up with nothing. Not even his wife.
He didn’t want to lose her. He couldn’t bear to lose her. The reason he’d dreamt up this practical marriage of theirs in the first place was because he didn’t want to lose her, and what he felt for her now was a damned sight more significant after two months of marriage. They could be happy. This morning, they had been happy. Breakfast had given him a glimmer of a future that was rosy, with a lifetime of those breakfasts together, a lifetime of teasing and laughing, and planning their days and then recounting their days, safe in the knowledge that they would have another day and another and another. He wanted to grow old with her, for God’s sake, but he was lucky if he’d see another birthday with her, the way he was heading.
He wanted to be a husband to her. A real husband. He wanted to make love to her. Last night had given him hope on that front—but he knew it was false. They would have their family the way they’d discussed, but right now, thinking about children was putting the cart well before the horse. He had to find a way to salvage his marriage before he could even contemplate adding children to the mix.
He could tell her the unvarnished truth. The very idea of that made him feel as if he’d fallen off a cliff edge, but he closed his eyes and forced himself to imagine it all the same. That last debacle. The sick, familiar rhythm of it, what she had said, what he had said, locked in the torment of trying, knowing his efforts would be futile. At what point had he cracked? It didn’t matter, he had uttered the fateful words.
‘Just do it! Put us both out of our misery.’
Was it bluff-calling or an order? It made no difference. He dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders heaving, though he made no sound. The only certainty that would come from him telling Estelle the truth was that she would leave him, knowing the monster that he was. But the other thing he was certain of was that he didn’t want to live without her.
* * *
Estelle wore a scarlet gown to the party. Redheads, Mama used to say, should never wear red, which was why all three sisters were irresistibly drawn to the colour. The sleeves were puffed at the top, narrow at the wrist, held in place by a series of little buttons. The stiff cotton was formed into tiny pleats at the back, but the dress front fell straight from the high waist. A wide band of satin ribbon was tied in a bow at the back, and the same ribbon was stitched in three bands on the hem, but aside from the locket Phoebe had given her for her twenty-first birthday, and her wedding ring, she wore no other jewellery.
She had not seen Aidan since he stormed off this morning. She’d emerged from her bout of tears exhausted and depressed. She didn’t have the heart to confront him again. Even if there was the time, she needed to conserve her energy to put on a brave front. He too was subdued when they met up at the front door, smiling stiffly, treating her as if she were made of glass as they completed the short walk round to the stable yard where the feast was just coming to an end.
Fortunately, the atmosphere was already raucous, with a band playing traditional music, reels and jigs, a stark contrast to last night’s sedate offering. Aidan’s toast was received with loud cheers, the stream of congratulations they received seemed both warm and genuine. Under different circumstances Estelle would have been more than happy to join in the merriment. This was much more her sort of party.
‘We’ll not stay long,’ Aidan said in a tone that brooked no objection, pulling her clear of an over-zealous dancer. ‘I’ll check that there’s still plenty to drink to go round and that the leftover food has been divided up. Will you be all right on your own for a bit?’
‘I’ll be happy to be on my own for a bit,’ she said sharply, immediately regretting it when he flinched. She drew a breath. ‘I’ll listen to the music. Go on, go and smoke a pipe with the men, or something.’
‘I’ve never smoked a pipe in my life. Are you sure you’ll...?’
‘I’ll be fine, Aidan.’
She was still ridiculously close to tears. Waiting until he disappeared from view, Estelle made her way past the dancers to the furthest corner of the courtyard, where a group of people were gathered in a semi-circle round a lone fiddler. He was playing a lament she recognised, a plaintive song about an immigrant remembering the green mountains of home. A young girl got to her feet and began to sing, the rest of the little group taking up the chorus. Estelle sat down unobtrusively, joining in with the last chorus. The young girl resumed her seat, the fiddle player embarked on another lament, and the next person in the circle stood up to sing. This was followed by a more rousing rebel song, and then two love songs, neither of which had happy endings.
Lost in childhood memories of the days when they had been four siblings and not only three, joining in with every chorus, Estelle immersed herself in the music. Only when all eyes turned expectantly on her as the only one who had not performed a solo, did her inhibitions return. She would have given a great deal for the earth to swallow her up, but it was too late to back out, and she didn’t want to set herself apart or have them say that Master Aidan’s new wife was a snob. It was a small group, and if she picked something with a chorus, then she’d not be unaccompanied for long. Besides, shy as she was of performing, she knew she could hold a tune. And there was one particular tune that she wanted to sing.
Getting to her feet, she smiled nervously, clasping her hands together to steady herself. ‘“Mo Ghile Mear”?’ she suggested. ‘My Gallant Lad’ had been one of their governess Bridget’s favourites, a love song with two meanings, of a woman mourning her lost love, and a country mourning its lost prince, Bonnie Prince Charlie. It had been the dashing Young Pretender who had appealed to Diarmuid. He’d loved this song.
The fiddle player nodded and began to play the introduction. Estelle closed her eyes to block out her audience and began to sing. She sang in Irish, for the words in translation lost the haunting beauty of the language in which it was written. As the first chorus began, she forgot she ha
d an audience and sang as if she was alone with her little brother, barely aware that her audience had ceased singing along and were listening, rapt, until she finished the song and opened her eyes.
The little circle had become a crowd. There was a moment’s silence, before she was treated to rapturous applause. Blushing, shaking her head at any suggestion of an encore, she saw Aidan standing on the periphery, his eyes fixed on her, his expression inscrutable. Excusing herself, she was about to make her way over, when he turned on his heel and for the second time that day walked away from her.
Bewildered and hurt, wanting only to share her bittersweet memories with him, she made to follow him.
‘Let him go.’ Finn put his hand on her arm, steering her away from the gawping crowd.
‘Why did he disapprove so much of my singing? Does he consider it unseemly for his wife to carouse with tenants?’ she asked, stung.
‘It wasn’t your singing, it was the song. It was Aoife’s song. She sang it at their wedding ball, accompanying herself on the harp. It was her party piece. And a poor version too, compared to what you treated us to tonight. I’ve never heard it sung so beautifully.’
‘Your blarney is wasted on me tonight, Finn.’
‘Ach, sure, it can’t be blarney if it’s the truth.’
He walked her back, leaving her at the front door of the castle. ‘Don’t judge him too harshly, Estelle. He’s had to contend with more than any man should have to. I’ll bid you goodnight.’
Inside, she hesitated at the foot of the stairs. It wasn’t sleep she needed, but the solace of her music. Not the harpsichord, her parlour was too close to the rooms they used in the evenings and she didn’t want Aidan to hear her, but the ballroom was at the other end of the castle.
The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3) Page 15