Under The Wishing Star

by Farr, Diane

  Natalie was certain that that was not what he had originally started to say.

  “I cannot force you to trust me,” she said softly. “But I wish you would.”

  He looked up, startled. Natalie met his gaze levelly. “There are reasons, I think, why you believe that all of Sarah’s dreams are nightmares.”

  She did not phrase it as a question, but it was. The atmosphere in the room changed subtly. Awareness pulsed between Malcolm and Natalie. The only sound in the room was Sarah’s drugged breathing: In. Out. In. Out.

  The silence spun out, and Natalie waited, holding her ground. There were secrets in this family. Something had happened, something no one talked about, that had helped to shape Sarah’s oddness and Malcolm’s reticence, his black moods, the despair he often seemed to feel. She wanted desperately to understand. Tell me.

  For a heartbeat or two, she thought he would. She saw the emotion welling up in him, emotion so strong she thought it must spill out at any moment. Electricity seemed to crackle in the air between them. He actually opened his mouth to speak, but they were interrupted by Sarah’s voice, weak but clear.

  “Mama,” she said.

  As one, Natalie and Malcolm turned to her, everything forgotten save for the little girl stretched on the cot between them. Sarah’s eyes were wide open and fixed on Natalie, but her eyes were unnaturally dark and strange. “Mama,” she said again, tonelessly.

  Natalie placed her hand, feather-light, on the hot little fingers plucking at the coverlet. “It’s Miss Whittaker, darling,” she said gently. “You’re dreaming.”

  Sarah’s odd, fixed expression did not change. “Mama. Don’t fall. Careful, Mama. Don’t fall.”

  In the confusion of a laudanum-laced dream, Sarah seemed to believe that her mother, not herself, had fallen. So Natalie thought. But even as the child’s eyes drifted shut again, Malcolm dropped her other hand and rose jerkily to his feet. Natalie looked up at him, surprised. When she saw the look on his face, genuine fear shot through her.

  “What is it?” she whispered. She had never seen such torment on a human face. He looked as if all the demons of hell had invaded his soul and were tearing him apart from the inside out.

  He turned and walked away from her, looking as if he did not know what he was doing, or why. The light did not follow him. He walked into the shadows, halting by the dressing table at the other end of the room. He stood there for a moment, staring down at the top of the table, his back rigid, his hands fisted at his sides. Then, with an obvious effort, he turned around to face her.

  “Sarah’s mother died in a fall,” he said. His voice rasped as if the words were being pulled, unwilling, from his throat. “Sarah was with her.”

  A frisson of shock rushed through Natalie. No wonder Malcolm had reacted with such fear when Daniel brought him the news of Sarah’s fall. Another memory danced in her brain: Sarah tripping in the grass and lying still, afraid to move. No wonder. No wonder.

  Natalie, struck dumb with pity and horror, strained her eyes to read Malcolm’s expression. Across the room, he was only a dark shape silhouetted against the wall. He said, still in that hollow, jerking voice: “Sarah must have seen the whole thing.” He scrubbed one hand over his face as if trying to wipe the memory away. “But she was too small to describe what happened. At least, not clearly.”

  She stared at him, still speechless, as a ghastly smile writhed across his features. “Thank God she couldn’t. The coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death.”

  Natalie’s hand traveled to her cheek in an instinctive gesture of dread. “Did your wife ...” Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat. “Do you think she fell deliberately?” She could not say jump. She could not say suicide. Those words were too stark, too terrible.

  But there were worse words, she learned. Malcolm was about to use one.

  He looked at her, and the tiny bedchamber seemed to stretch between them like an unbridgeable gulf. “I never meant to kill her,” he whispered.

  Chapter 14

  Every instinct Natalie possessed, every prompting of her intuition, rose up in protest. “No.” Her voice sounded high and breathless. She shook her head in vehement refusal. Denial gripped her like an ague; for a few moments she could not stop shaking her head. It seemed to wobble on her neck like a broken doll’s. “No,” she repeated, more strongly. “You are not capable of such a crime. You are good and decent and honorable.”

  Malcolm’s shoulders shook with silent, mirthless laughter. He walked back to the bed and sat across from her once more. “I will tell you the story,” he said tiredly. She had never seen him look so defeated. “I suppose it was useless to try to keep it from you.”

  Natalie went very still. “What story?”

  “The story of my marriage.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “My sham of a marriage.”

  She must have looked even more shocked, because some genuine humor crept into his twisted smile. “Oh, the marriage was real enough—according to church and state. But we had no…” He paused, searching for words. “No accord. No marriage of minds. Catherine and I were like a poorly-harnessed pair of mules, always pulling in opposite directions.”

  So that was what he had meant, that day on the lake when he had told her that love made people miserable. She took a deep breath, then let it go. “I see.”

  “No, you don’t.” His jaw tightened. “How could you? I’ve described it badly. It wasn’t that we fought—although we did. And it wasn’t that our opinions differed—although they did. It was…” He shook his head slowly, obviously remembering. The memories seemed painful.

  Natalie couldn’t bear it. She burst out with, “But you didn’t kill her.”

  “Not on purpose.” His eyes met Natalie’s, and she could feel the dark emotions roiling like a whirlpool in him, inescapable and dangerous. She shivered involuntarily. He acknowledged her reaction with a slight, wintry smile. “You do not understand me. I shall have to start at the beginning, if I hope to make you understand.”

  He glanced down at Sarah, frowning as if he hesitated to tell the tale in her presence. “She will not hear,” said Natalie softly.

  Malcolm gave a brief nod. “Right.” He lowered his voice, however. And he kept his eyes on Sarah’s face, ready to stop talking the instant she stirred.

  “I married Catherine in the spring of ‘94,” he said, speaking so quietly that Natalie had to lean in to hear him. “I thought she was, in every way that mattered, an excellent choice of bride. I had known her all my life—not well, but our parents had been friends. I had reached a suitable age, and so had she, and we both wanted to marry. She seemed attractive enough. Biddable enough. Our parents approved of the match. Everyone approved of the match. You know how these things go.”

  Natalie nodded, loath to interrupt him.

  “I was making a marriage of convenience—and, I thought, a good one. Everyone congratulated me on my sensible, well-chosen alliance.” He gave a snort of bleak laughter. “I congratulated myself, for that matter. I looked forward to a life of unruffled domestic harmony. Nothing exciting; no dramatic highs and lows. What I desired was a peaceful life with a trusted partner at my side.” His eyes lifted to Natalie’s, filled with irony. “Catherine, unfortunately, believed she was making a love match. And I did not discover this until after the ceremony.”

  Natalie was so surprised, she did not know what to say. She stared at him, open-mouthed. Her picture of Malcolm’s first marriage had been completely upside-down. “Oh, dear,” she said faintly.

  Malcolm gave her a wry smile. “Indeed. There was no end to the difficulties caused by this…misunderstanding. If that’s what it was.” His expression turned bitter. “I came to believe, over the years, that there was nothing personal in Catherine’s attachment to me. She would have drummed up the same imaginary emotions for any man who married her. Enacted him the same scenes. Whipped herself into the same froth of agitation. Bent upon him the same mournful, accusing eyes. Made his life
just as miserable as she made mine.”

  His anger seemed genuine, and appeared to run deep. Natalie was bewildered by it. “You seem to believe that it was all in her head. That she did not really love you.”

  “She didn’t.”

  Natalie blinked. “Oh, but surely—why shouldn’t she love you? She did. Of course she did.”

  He shifted impatiently on his chair. “At first, that is what I believed. I knew nothing of love—this romantic love that poets describe. I honestly believed that Catherine was sick with love for me, and I was, for at least a twelvemonth, riddled with guilt. She begged for my affection. She made herself ill. She would lock herself in her room and refuse to eat ... it was ghastly. I tried very hard to return her regard.” He shrugged helplessly. “I couldn’t. She wept and whined and made demand after demand upon me ... she used her adoration of me like blackmail, forcing me to dance attendance on her out of pity.” His mouth set in anguished lines. “The result was the opposite of what she wanted. I respected her less with every passing month.” A deep sigh shook him. “You will think me hard-hearted. Perhaps I am. Try as I might, I ... I could not love her.” His voice had sunk to a whisper. He buried his face in his hands, massaging his temples tiredly. “I could not, I did not, love my wife.”

  Natalie’s heart filled with compassion. She reached across Sarah’s small bed and touched Malcolm’s sleeve. He lifted bleak eyes to hers. “You are not hard-hearted.” Her voice was soft, but filled with conviction. “Only a kind heart would have tried so hard. Only a generous soul would have felt such empathy. But love cannot be forced.”

  A flash of humor briefly lightened his aspect. “You seem very sure of that—for a woman who has never been in love.”

  The irony of the situation suddenly struck her. She was sure of it ... love could not be forced. And yet she hoped to achieve exactly what Catherine had hoped to achieve: she hoped to win Malcolm’s heart. Was she as much a fool as Malcolm’s star-crossed bride?

  She withdrew her hand and tried to smile. “I have interrupted your tale.”

  His eyes darkened once more. He glanced down at his sleeping daughter. “There is not much left to tell. Except for Sarah.” Malcolm’s expression softened. “Sarah is the one bright spot, the shining, precious blessing that made our ill-fated marriage worthwhile. She arrived after several long years of trying. Those years were ... unpleasant. In addition to the emotional tug of war we endured, Catherine blamed her miscarriages on me. And when Sarah was born, she told me that if I had truly loved her, we would have had a son.”

  Natalie gave a tiny gasp, and Malcolm’s jaw tightened. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? But by that time, you must understand, Catherine was a woman possessed. She perceived my failure to worship the ground she walked on as the root cause of everything wrong in her life. She brooded on it day and night. She would have blamed the weather on it if she could.” He looked up at Natalie again. He seemed to be bracing himself for what he was about to tell her next. He took a deep breath. “And then, after Sarah was born ... I compounded the problem.”

  “How?” Natalie feared that he was about to confess the obvious: that he had taken a mistress. Her father had made both his wives miserable with his infidelities. Perhaps all men were like that. She hoped not—oh, she hoped not.

  But what Malcolm said defied her expectations. He said, simply, “I adored my baby girl from the first moment I saw her.”

  He looked ashamed! Natalie cocked her head, puzzled. How could loving your child possibly be wrong? And then she saw, in a flash, what the problem had been. A desperate, unhappy wife, morbidly obsessed with her husband’s indifference, had given birth to her own rival.

  She swallowed hard. “You don’t mean—is it possible that Lady Malcolm was jealous of her own daughter?”

  He dropped his head in his hands. “All my fault,” he said, his anguished voice so muffled it was almost inaudible. “I loved the child, but not the mother. I could not love my own wife. I failed Catherine utterly.”

  Natalie sank back in her chair, unnerved. For half a heartbeat, she felt intensely sorry for Catherine Chase. And then the reality of the situation sank in. Why, Lady Malcolm must have been a monster of selfishness! Malcolm was right; she hadn’t truly loved him at all. Natalie tried to picture giving birth to Malcolm’s child—a disturbingly easy image to conjure—and then tried to picture resenting his love for that child. Her imagination failed her. No. Impossible. Even if she married him, loved him, failed to earn his love in return, but bore his child—oh, she would be glad, glad, if he loved their baby. She shook her head, silently marveling that any woman in her right mind could feel differently.

  But perhaps Catherine hadn’t been in her right mind.

  “Lord Malcolm,” she said hesitantly.

  “Call me Malcolm, for pity’s sake.” He scrubbed at his eyes, then lifted his head, giving her a slightly twisted smile. “You are practically my confessor now.”

  She returned his smile, albeit tentatively. He was right; it was time. She had thought of him as Malcolm for many weeks now. “Malcolm, then. At least when we are alone. But, Malcolm—was your late wife entirely well? The behavior you have described to me seems ... well, a trifle unhinged. Perhaps she wasn’t rational.”

  “No,” he said tiredly. “I don’t think she was insane, if that’s what you’re inferring. But I think she had a ...” He paused for a moment, frowning. “A mania for control, if such a thing is possible. All this nonsense about love, her bouts of weeping, the times when she would starve herself ... it all seemed calculated to manipulate those around her. Me in particular. That’s why I began to believe that she did not, actually, love me as she claimed. It struck me that she used her supposed love for me, and my supposed withholding of love from her, as a means to gain—and keep—the upper hand.” His smile was cynical. “It made her forever the dutiful spouse, you see, and I the heartless villain.”

  “I do see,” said Natalie slowly. She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I imagine that you gave her a great many material things? To mend her broken heart?”

  His cynical smile widened. “As usual, Miss Whittaker, your perceptions are exactly on the mark. Since I was unable to give my wife what she most wanted—in theory—I gave her everything else her little heart desired. Catherine had her own way in everything. It seemed the least I could do.”

  “But it did not make her happy.”

  “No. Far from it.” His cynical expression faded. He sighed heavily. “I should not be telling you of her faults. It isn’t right. My own shortcomings eclipsed hers. Poor Catherine! Who am I to say she did not love me? Who am I to pass such a judgment on her?” Pain moved across his features. “I never understood her. Not then, and not now. Perhaps she did love me as she said she did. What do I know of love? Even the poets say it is a kind of madness.”

  “As is unending guilt,” said Natalie softly. “I think you have paid too high a price for whatever fault you bore in your marriage. Malcolm ... you did not kill your wife. What made you say such a dreadful thing to me?”

  He gripped his knees, his knuckles whitening, while a spasm of shame turned his face almost rigid. “I did not push her off the parapet,” he said, his voice strained. “I was standing on the lawn, far below. I wasn’t even looking at her. But I ... goaded her.” He rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling as if he could no longer bear to meet Natalie’s eyes. “I will never forgive myself. She called out, to draw my attention upward. It was the anniversary of our wedding day. She threatened to jump. As God is my witness, I never dreamed she’d do it. I thought it was just another ploy. I looked away, so that she would have no audience to play her scene to. And my last words to her were…God forgive me…I said…”

  His voice was wholly suspended; she saw the muscles jump and work in his throat, but no sound came out. Natalie, hardly knowing what she did, rose and flew to his side. She felt unable to watch his agony another instant. By the time she reached him he had stood, and she dove into hi
s arms as if she belonged there. He crushed her to him and she gasped.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told him, through sudden tears. “Don’t tell me any more. Don’t tell me what you said. It doesn’t matter now.”

  A shudder wracked his long frame. He clutched her mindlessly, as a drowning man clutches at his rescuer. He was speaking, but the words were so choked that Natalie could not make them out.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t need to hear them. Whatever terrible thing he had said to his wife, whatever he had said that he believed made her jump, she did not want to know. What mattered was that it had haunted him ever since, that he had gone over and over that moment in his mind until he had rubbed the memory raw, and over time the memory had festered and fevered.

  She had always sensed a constant throb of pain in Malcolm, a dark undercurrent to his every mood. There had been times when he seemed to forget for a while, but it had always returned, gnawing at him in every idle moment. She had seen it, and wondered at it. And now she knew the source. She longed to pull that memory out of his head like a splinter from a sore thumb, and leave him free to heal. Was such a thing possible?

  “Natalie.” His voice was rough, his mouth pressed into her hair. “Natalie, do you understand?” He pulled back and seized her head, cupping her jaw in his hands so he could stare into her eyes. The intensity of his expression was overwhelming. “It is no insult to you, dear girl, that I have turned my back on love. You are everything a man could want in a wife. But I—”

  “No, no, I understand.” She placed a light hand over his mouth, trying to keep him from saying the words she did not want to hear: I could never love you in the way you want to be loved. She swallowed her tears and forced a wavering smile to her lips. “I understand. The last thing in the world you want is a wife who fancies herself in love with you. I imagine the very mention of love is repulsive to you. After what you have been through, I cannot wonder at it. You needn’t apologize or explain.”