Elizabeth waited until the hunt had disappeared around a copse of oaks and maples. Then she turned back toward the hall. How beautiful Moira Ashley had looked as she guided her mount over the fence. And how awkward, even ridiculous, she herself must have looked, swollen body bent, hand gripping the noisy mongrel's collar.
Loneliness swept over her. But soon she would not be lonely, she told herself. Soon there would be the child.
Clarence, the taller of the two red-haired footmen, opened the door for her. "There is a letter for you, milady. Mrs. Corcoran put it in your room."
As she laboriously climbed the stairs, she wondered who the letter was from. Perhaps from her mother. Perhaps from the Dublin midwife, recommended by Mrs. Corcoran, to whom she had written last week, asking her to attend her lying-in.
Moments later, she stared with surprised joy at the letter, addressed in a familiar hand and postmarked Dublin, which lay on her desk. With trembling fingers she unsealed it. Donald! A letter from Donald.
His bishop, he had written, had sent him as an observer to a synod of Anglo-Irish churchmen in Dublin. "I shall be here five more days. After that I would like to call upon you, if that is agreeable to both you and Sir Patrick. I would arrive on the tenth, and stay perhaps three days—but only, again, if that is agreeable to both of you."
He had signed himself formally as "Your obedient servant, Donald Weymouth."
The tenth, a week from now. In a week, she would see Donald. True, Patrick might resent his coming. But surely not even he could deny a woman in an advanced state of pregnancy the comfort of a visit from someone she had known since childhood. She cried for a few minutes, out of sheer joy. Then she sat down at the desk and drew letter paper toward her.
***
Late that night, after the last of Moira's other guests had left, Patrick lay in the ornately gilded bed in her room. She was astride him, her head, with its waist-length black hair, flung back, her lovely face distorted as she strove for her climax. She reached it and collapsed, still shuddering, upon his chest. After a while she rolled to one side and lay with her head on his shoulder.
Moments passed. Then she nuzzled his lean cheek. "A penny for them."
"I was thinking of how beautiful you are."
He had been thinking something like that. But also he had been thinking of Elizabeth. She had appeared considerably less than beautiful beside that tree, body awkwardly bent, face strained with her efforts to control that grotesque-looking cur. And yet there had been something about her at that moment, something lonely and vulnerable, that had stabbed him to the heart.
Moira asked, "As beautiful as your wife?"
She too had seen the awkward figure beside the tree, and had been freshly aware of her own graceful beauty. And yet she had felt painful anger, too. No matter that the Englishwoman was, and probably would remain, neglected by her husband. She was still the wife of Patrick Stanford, fourth baronet, and might soon be the mother of the fifth. In short, by some inexplicable mischance, she occupied the place that should have been Moira's.
Patrick said, "This is scarcely the time, or the place, for us to be discussing my wife."
"My, how proper we are." She raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him. "An honorable man does not discuss his wife while in bed with his mistress. Is that it?"
Gaze directed past her at the ceiling, he said nothing.
His silence stung her into recklessness. "But I scarcely see how she could be considered sacrosanct," she went on. "I have not mentioned it before, but if Lady Stanford is so virtuous, how is it that she, a bride of four months, appears to be at least six months pregnant? I imagine that the whole neighborhood is wondering about that."
"Then let them," he said furiously, "if they have nothing better to do. But you and I are not to discuss it Do you understand!"
Eyes narrowing, she smiled. Then she leaned down to him, full breasts flattening against his chest, and kissed him on the mouth. "Have a care, Patrick," she said. "I am not some servant girl, to be spoken to any way you please. Someday you will use that tone once too often."
CHAPTER 21
It was not until the next night that Elizabeth had a chance to tell her husband of Donald's impending visit Around ten o'clock she was seated at her dressing table, too keyed up with mingled anticipation and anxiety to even think of sleep, when she heard Patrick's footsteps approaching along the corridor. Quickly she laid down her brush, and with hair hanging loose around her shoulders, crossed the room and stepped out into the hall. Hand on the knob of his own door, Patrick turned to her with a surprised look.
She said, "I have something to tell you. Donald Weymouth is in Dublin. He wrote me, and I replied, inviting him here for a three-day visit. He will arrive on the tenth."
She spoke calmly, and with lifted chin. But Patrick could see in her gray eyes a fear that he would forbid Weymouth to enter his house. Again, as when he had seen her standing beside the tree with her hand on the collar of that lunging cur, he felt a stab of pity and vain regret. "What is Weymouth doing in Dublin?"
"His bishop sent him to a synod as an observer." She paused, and then added, careful to keep all reproach out of her voice, "I would have consulted you before I answered his letter if you had been at home, but you were not."
When he made no reply, she asked, "Well, do I have your consent to receive him?"
"You have." If she could derive any comfort from seeing her milksop parson, let her do so.
"Thank you," she said, and started to turn away.
"Did you say he will arrive on the tenth?"
She turned back. "Yes."
"Then I will make a point of being home for supper that night, so that I too can welcome him."
Her voice trembled. "I would appreciate that very much. Good night." She went into her room.
After a moment, Patrick entered his own room. How was it, he wondered, that he had gotten himself into this quagmire? Here he was, married to a woman who not only loathed him, but somehow had the power to keep him feeling guilty. Just now, even the gratitude in her eyes had made him feel ashamed. He started to take off his coat, and then, with an oath, put it on again. He would not try to sleep. As he passed the library, he had seen Colin replacing a book on a shelf. Best to go down, challenge his brother to a chess game, and try to pretend for an hour or so that he too was still a bachelor.
At her dressing table, Elizabeth resumed brushing her hair. So at least Patrick was prepared to behave decently to Donald. But still she must worry about Donald's first sight of her. In her letter she had told him that she expected a child, but had not said when. The moment he saw her, he would know that she must have become pregnant well before the date of her marriage.
She thought of the night after Christopher's trial ended, when she and Donald had driven alone back to that empty house north of London. He had been careful to come no farther than just inside the front door. What pain he would feel now, believing that soon after that night she had granted wantonly to another man what he had forbidden himself even to ask of her.
But better, far better, to have him believe that than to have him know the truth of how her child had been conceived.
She had a sudden chill sense that she should have told Donald not to come here. But no. She could no more have denied herself the chance to see him than a starving person could refuse a sip of broth. She laid down her hairbrush and moved toward her bed.
***
On the afternoon of the tenth, she was standing at the window of her room when Donald, on a bay horse, rode through the wrought-iron gate into the cobblestoned courtyard. All that day she had scarcely stirred from that window, lest he arrive without her knowing it at once. Heart beating fast, she left her room and went down the stairs.
Clarence, one of the red-haired footmen, had already opened the massive front doors. She went out onto the terrace, and then paused, looking down. Back turned, Donald was saying something to Padric, the elder of the stableboys. She moved dow
n the stone steps. "Donald."
He whirled around, joy in his face, and took her outstretched hands. In that first moment she knew with mingled elation and despair that her love for him had lessened not one whit. Nor had his own feelings changed. His love for her was plain in his thin face.
Then his gaze swept down her body. After a moment she saw the surprise in his hazel eyes turn to shocked realization.
She said again, "Donald." This time it was a plea.
Despite the sudden pallor of his face, he managed a smile. "How are you, Elizabeth?"
"I... I am well." she withdrew her hands and turned to Padric. "Please take care of Mr. Weymouth's horse. And then have someone bring his saddlebags up to his room."
As she and Donald climbed the front steps she said, "I am sorry that there is no one else to welcome you. My... my husband is out just now, and so is his brother. But probably they will both be here for supper." She paused. "Was your journey from Dublin pleasant?"
"Very pleasant."
"I'm glad." She was aware that even as they exchanged these formal courtesies, their eyes were carrying on an entirely different dialogue.
When they reached the vast entrance hall, she said, "Clarence, this is Mr. Weymouth." Then, to Donald: "Clarence will show you to your room. Will you be ready for tea in half an hour?" She gestured toward the library's open doorway. "We will take tea in there."
"Splendid." He was looking at the twin staircases and the shadowy gallery above them. "I trust they don't keep you awake every night."
"They?"
"The ghosts. Surely all the ghosts in the county must flock to such an ideal promenade."
She laughed. Darling Donald! Despite the shock and pain the sight of her swollen body had brought him, he was able to make a small jest. "No ghosts," she said.
When he entered the library half an hour later, she was already seated at the tea table. She poured his tea and added a teaspoonful of sugar. As she handed him the cup, she saw that he too realized what she had done. With no need to ask how he liked his tea, she had added sugar automatically, just as she had done so many times back at the Hedges.
Stirring his tea, he asked abruptly, "When will your child be born?"
She was glad that he had brought himself to ask that question right away, so that they could put it behind them. "Ten or eleven weeks from now."
"I see." Just as she had known he would, he forbore asking more questions or making any comment. Instead he said, "I often see your mother. You will be glad to know that she is well."
"And not too lonely?" She felt a pang as she thought of her mother, deprived of both son and daughter.
"Oh, she's lonely. But in the past few weeks I have managed to interest her in the church mission society, and that seems to help."
"What is it like to be the new vicar?"
He smiled. "Everything is much the same as it was under the old vicar. The sexton still gets drunk and goes to sleep in the graveyard. Old Mrs. Crawley still sings too loud and off-key, and then snores through most of the sermon. And Mrs. Canby is still as alert as a bird dog to see that no Low Church tendencies creep into the liturgy."
Elizabeth smiled. "And Sally Cobbin? Did she marry the butcher's son?"
"She did."
As they went on talking of people in that little English village, she had a sense that everything that had happened in the past ten months had been a bad dream. Once more her brother was a student at Oxford, her mother had nothing worse to worry about than lack of money, and she and Donald were talking over teacups in the side parlor at the Hedges, with their whole lives stretching serenely before them. Then the tall clock in the corner struck five. Reluctantly she rose and pulled the bell rope, so that someone would clear the tea things away.
***
Patrick not only appeared well before the supper hour to greet the guest. He was also courteous, even pleasant, throughout the meal. As Clarence moved around the table, pouring the sherry that was to accompany the soup, Patrick asked, "Did you buy your horse in Dublin, Mr. Weymouth?"
"Yes. I plan to resell him in Waterford before I sail."
"Take him to Hadley's stables. Hadley is always ready to buy a good saddle horse, and he pays a fair price." He paused. "Does your family keep horses?"
"Yes. Carriage horses, of course, and three hunters. Then, there are the farm horses. We use Clydesdales for heavy hauling."
Patrick nodded. "I too prefer them to Percherons."
With relief Elizabeth saw that the conversation was launched upon a safe topic. It was Colin who, much to her surprise, displayed hostility toward the guest. When a lull in the talk came about midway of the meal, Colin turned to Donald and said, "Tell me, Mr. Weymouth, what are your views on predestination?"
Patrick laughed. "Listen to my brother! Here is a man who doesn't go to church three times a year, and yet he wants to talk about predestination."
Colin's dark eyes shot Patrick an angry look. "But I read. A man doesn't have to go to church to form religious opinions."
Donald said lightly, "I hope you do not influence others to stay home with their books on Sunday. As it is, we poor parsons find ourselves preaching to rows of empty pews."
Colin said evenly, "Considering the confusion that Calvinist doctrines have brought to the Anglican church, I am not surprised."
Elizabeth looked at Colin with amazement. She recalled now that one night over a chess game he had mentioned Calvin, and she had said that "a friend back in England, the new vicar of our parish church," had for a time been interested in Calvinism. Colin had remembered that bit of information, and was now using it to attack Donald. Why? What had gotten into her usually quiet and even-tempered brother-in-law?
Patrick said, "Colin, you don't give a tinker's dam about Calvin, any more than I do. Now, to get back to horses." He turned to Donald. "If you want to ride one of my hunters tomorrow, please do so."
"Thank you. Perhaps I shall, sometime before I leave."
When the meal ended, Colin announced abruptly that he had work to do, and went back to his office. Elizabeth and the other two men—she with coffee, they with glasses of port—settled down before the library fire. At ten, pleading tiredness after a long day's ride, Donald went upstairs.
Alone with Patrick, Elizabeth said, "Thank you for being so... amiable this evening."
He shrugged. "Why shouldn't I be? The man's a guest. And he seems a good sort, for a parson." He looked at her sardonically. "What did you expect the barbaric Patrick Stanford to do? Slip poison into his soup?"
"No, of course not. Nevertheless, I wanted to thank you." She placed her coffeecup on the small table beside her chair, rose, and said good night.
Apparently Patrick felt he had fulfilled his duties as a host, because when Elizabeth awoke the next morning, she learned from Rose that he and his brother had ridden off right after an early breakfast. Elizabeth did not mind—far from it—and certainly Donald did not seem to. With rain beating against the windows, they browsed through the books in the library and talked endlessly of that village north of London and of people they had known all their lives. After their midday meal, which they ate seated companionably close at one corner of the long table, they returned to the library for more talk of home.
Around three o'clock the rain slackened, then ceased. Elizabeth said reluctantly, "Do you want one of the hunters saddled for you?"
"When you cannot ride with me? Of course not."
She hesitated. "In the past few weeks, I've been driving about in an old farm cart. It is not a stylish vehicle. But then, there would not be many people to see us in the lanes around here...."
"My dear Elizabeth, I wouldn't care if our route lay through Piccadilly Circus."
Half an hour later, with Donald driving the ancient dapple gray, the tall-wheeled cart lumbered down a narrow lane. Gypsy was with them. At first, deprived of his usual place beside Elizabeth on the seat, he made sounds of displeasure deep in his throat. Now, though, he had settled down
in the bed of the cart. With the sky clear of clouds, the sun shone as warmly as it had any day in midsummer. But everywhere there were signs of autumn's approach. Leaves of oaks and maples had turned a duller green. Fringed gentians blossomed at roadsides. In the orchards, apples lay thick upon the ground, with bumblebees, half-drunk on fermenting fruit, making languid circles above them.
The cart turned off onto a still narrower track that led across uncultivated, gently rolling land to a bluff above the sea. There they stopped and looked out across sparkling blue water. About half a mile away two square-rigged ships, sails spread to the breeze, moved southward. Elizabeth could see the dark round circles of their gun ports. She asked, "Ours?"
Donald nodded. "They are trying to keep French warships and privateers out of the Irish channel. Poor England!"
Elizabeth knew what he meant. When the American rebels had sent the English reeling back at the Battle of Saratoga, King Louis of France had seen his opportunity. Since then he had been waging sea warfare on the already weakened English wherever he could—off Gibraltar, along the coast of India, and among the Caribbean islands.
Elizabeth asked, "Will he lose the American colonies?"
"I fear so. Edmund Burke is right, you know. If King George and his ministers wanted to retain the colonies, they should have adopted milder policies years ago." After a moment he went on, "But right now I find it hard to be concerned with such matters. Elizabeth, are you happy?"
Afraid to look at him, but keenly aware of his hand loosely holding the reins, and of his thigh only inches from her own on the wooden seat, she said nothing.
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