The Ideal Wife

by Mary Balogh

  But there were the girls and Rachel’s ominous suggestion that she would like to see them again and perhaps even have them to live with her.

  She must go, she thought with a sigh. In the park? In such a very public setting? But of course, she did not care what anyone thought of her any longer. She would go.

  An hour later Abigail had written and sent off the invitations, changed into a new carriage dress, which had been delivered the day before, and was on her way to Oxford Street. There were a few hairdressers to choose among. She knew none of them but picked one at random. And she emerged one hour after that with short curly hair beneath her bonnet, and knees that felt turned to jelly and a stomach that felt as if it wished to relieve itself of her breakfast.

  She went home and spent the short remainder of the morning giving Victor his first reading lesson. It was not going to be easy, she discovered. It was not as simple as opening a book on his lap and pointing out to him what each word was. How did one teach a child to read? Victor knew all about A and B and C by the time she sent him back to the kitchen for his luncheon, but she was not at all sure that he realized the significance of those letters or the depressing fact that there were twenty-three others to grow familiar with.

  RACHEL HAD CHOSEN the time with care, Abigail discovered later. The morning walkers and riders had left long before, while most of the afternoon strollers had not yet arrived. The park was almost deserted.

  “Abigail,” Mrs. Harper said, “I knew you would come.” She linked her arm through Abigail’s. “Have you cut your hair? I thought you never would. Severn wishes you to be fashionable, does he? I can understand that a woman would wish to please Severn. You did well for yourself. How did you do it?” She laughed in that low, seductive way that Abigail found unfamiliar and thoroughly unpleasant.

  “Rachel,” she said, “why did you leave home? I could never quite understand.”

  “Why?” The other laughed. “He probably would have ended up killing me if I stayed. He had given me bruises enough. I chose life, Abigail. Is that so incomprehensible?”

  “But you left the children behind,” Abigail said. “They were little more than babies. How could you have left them to Papa?”

  “It was not easy.” The other woman shrugged. “But I knew you would look after them, Abigail. You were fond of them, and you always had a way with your father. He never laid a violent hand on you, did he? And Boris was growing up. I thought he would protect them.”

  “You were their mother,” Abigail said. “And you did not leave alone, Rachel.”

  “John Marchmont?” Rachel laughed. “He was just my means of getting away. You cannot know how helpless I felt, a woman alone, and how good it was to have someone who appreciated me. I was still only twenty-four—your age now. Don’t judge me. Life became intolerable and I had only two alternatives—to take my own life or to run away. I ran.”

  “Bea and Clara did not have those alternatives,” Abigail said. She noticed that even in the daylight her stepmother wore cosmetics. She turned her head to look away. Rachel had been a beautiful girl when she married Papa.

  “Well.” The other woman’s manner became brisker. “The past can be amended yet. I have been thinking of writing to Aunt Edwina and taking the stage down to Bath. Though I daresay I could persuade Sorenson to take me down in his carriage. Do you think it would be a good idea to go, Abby? Would they like to see their mother again?”

  Abigail swallowed. “What do you do in London, Rachel?” she asked. “Is it true that you run a gambling hell? Are you Lord Sorenson’s mistress?”

  Mrs. Harper laughed. “I have a respectable home in a respectable district,” she said. “I like to entertain. And you know what gentlemen are. They like to play cards, and they cannot enjoy a game unless they are playing deep. And I am no one’s mistress except my own. Do you think I would allow any other man to have power over me as your father did? I learned my lesson many years ago, Abigail. One should use gentlemen for one’s pleasure and convenience and discard them without hesitation when they become possessive, as they always do. You would do well to remember that, though of course you were never one to allow yourself to be bullied. I always admired that in you.”

  “I’ll take the girls,” Abigail said quietly. “I have Severn Park to offer them, Rachel, and all my time and devotion. I can offer them proper schooling and respectable marriages when they grow up. I am sure Miles will give them suitable dowries. They can be happy. They were attached to me emotionally, you know, before I was forced to send them away to your aunt’s. And I was happy with them. We will recapture that happiness.”

  “And what about my happiness?” Mrs. Harper asked. “Don’t you think I deserve some, Abigail? I bore them, after all. I suffered all the discomfort for nine months with each one of them and all the pain at the end of it. For what? For nothing? I have a hankering to see them again.”

  “Rachel.” Abigail stopped walking and disengaged her arm from her stepmother’s. “You do not need my permission to go down to Bath. As you say, they are your children, and I have no legal custody of them. Why have you arranged this meeting? What do you want of me?”

  Mrs. Harper laughed. “That is something else I always admired about you, Abigail,” she said. “You always liked everything out in the open. Very well, then. My life is at a crossroads. I am thirty years old—a restless age. A little frightening. What do I do? Do I recover my children and settle down to a cozy domestic life with them? Or do I travel to other lands and taste all the delights that the world has to offer before I really am too old?”

  Abigail said nothing. She continued to look steadily but warily at the other.

  “But I fool myself to believe that there is a choice,” her stepmother said with a shrug. “There is none. How could a woman like me afford a year or so on the Continent? One does not earn enough from . . . the means I have of earning a living.”

  “Is that it, then?” Abigail asked. “If I can provide you with the means to go, you will do so and leave the children to me?”

  Mrs. Harper shrugged. “I did not suggest it,” she said. “Could my daughters mean that much to you, Abigail?”

  “Exactly how much are we talking about?” Abigail asked.

  “I suppose five thousand would be just sufficient,” Mrs. Harper said. She laughed. “It is always so delightful to dream, is it not? Shall we walk on?”

  “I shall get it for you,” Abigail said recklessly. “By next week? One week from today? Will that be soon enough?”

  “Abigail!” Mrs. Harper laughed again. “You cannot be serious.”

  “You know I am,” Abigail said. “Give me your address, Rachel. I shall bring the money there within the week. You will promise to go as soon as you have it?”

  “How could I resist?” the other said. “But how naughty of you to have me dreaming like this. Where would you come by five thousand pounds? You surely cannot have Severn so firmly wrapped about your finger, can you? But you always had a way with you. I always marveled that your father would do what you told him even when he was in one of his worst rages.”

  “Give me your direction,” Abigail said.

  “I don’t think Severn would be delighted to have you seen entering my house,” Mrs. Harper said.

  “No one will see me,” Abigail said. “Your direction, Rachel.”

  Mrs. Harper shrugged. “You really mean it, don’t you?” she said. “Very well, then, Abigail. But remember that this was all your idea.”

  “Yes,” Abigail said. “I think it is a good bargain, Rachel.”

  THE EARL OF SEVERN ARRIVED home early, though a group of his acquaintances had tried to persuade him to attend the races with them. He wanted to see Abigail and make his peace with her.

  The night before had been something of a disaster, and she had still been cross with him that morning. She had said scarcely a word at breakfast.

  Being married was not easy, he was discovering. Abigail was impetuous—endearingly so, but she co
uld embarrass other people as she had the evening before, when she had decided so obviously on the spur of the moment to invite everyone for dinner.

  He had tried to handle the matter tactfully. He thought he had done so, but his mild reproof had left her tight-lipped and snappy. Of course, he might have known that it would be best to allow that occasion to pass by and have his talk with her the next time. He had known perfectly well that she had had a rough afternoon.

  He had not known, of course, what she had overheard about Jenny. Damnation to Philby and his crew in the next box. Could they not have kept their infernal mouths shut until they were well away from the theater? What had they said about him and Jenny, anyway, apart from the fact that she was his mistress and lovely and expensive?

  He had a great deal to learn about women and marriage, it seemed. He had thought the matter at an end as soon as his explanation had been made, and had proceeded with what he had been looking forward to all evening, though he had eliminated the preliminaries, knowing that she was tired. But she had lain as still as a board beneath him and had turned away from him as soon as it was over.

  Hell and damnation, he thought as he handed his hat and cane to his butler and took the stairs two at a time. Hadn’t he married Abigail deliberately so that he would not have to worry about tiptoeing about her feelings? So that he would not feel that he had lost control of his own life?

  Of course, he thought, he had woken in the night to find her curled up against him in her usual kittenlike position.

  “Abby,” he said after tapping on the door of her sitting room and letting himself in. “I have come home to have tea with you. I’m glad you are not out. Abby!”

  She set her book aside and rose to her feet, her cheeks flaming.

  “Oh, Lord,” he said with a groan. “What have you done?”

  “I have had it cut,” she said in that curt little voice she had used the night before and at the breakfast table, “because I wanted to.”

  He crossed the room and took her hands in his. They were quite cold.

  “To punish me for Jenny?” he said. “Is that why?”

  “What nonsense,” she said.

  He held her hands and looked closely at the cropped curls and the flushed, wide-eyed face beneath.

  “It was to punish me for Jenny,” he said, smiling at her slowly. “Because I have given you only one command since our wedding and you had no choice over which one to disobey. Abby! You look like a pixie. And you have failed miserably, dear. It looks, very, very pretty.”

  And she looked startlingly pretty too.

  “What a bouncer,” she said, pulling her hands from his. “You need not feel obligated to pay me compliments, Miles. I am glad you came home. I wished to talk with you.”

  “That sounds serious,” he said. “Will you ring for tea? Connie and Pru will come tonight, by the way, though Pru is very apprehensive about being seen puffed out with her triplets. Mother had another engagement. Have you heard from the Chartleighs and the Beauchamps? Are they coming?”

  “Yes,” she said, crossing the room to pull the bell rope.

  The earl watched her with some appreciation. She looked altogether daintier and prettier with the new haircut. He felt an unexpected stab of desire for her.

  “Come and sit down,” he said, gesturing to a settee, “and tell me what is so important.”

  She seated herself straight-backed on a chair and folded her hands in her lap. The earl sat down alone on the settee.

  “It is about money,” she said abruptly, and flushed again.

  “I have been meaning to talk to you about it myself,” he said. “I am sorry you have had the embarrassment of having to broach the matter to me, Abby. I cannot expect you to have to refer all bills to me, no matter how small and petty, can I? I shall settle a quarterly allowance on you so that you may feel more independent. All your larger bills, of course, you may have sent directly to me. I want you to have pretty clothes and bonnets and such. You must not feel constrained.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “How much quarterly?” he said, his eyebrows raised. “I do not have experience with such matters. How does a thousand pounds a quarter sound?”

  She thought for a moment. “Fifteen hundred would sound better,” she said. “And could you pay it yearly, in advance?”

  He looked at her closely. Her clasped hands, which looked relaxed enough, were white-knuckled.

  “You want me to give you six thousand pounds now?” he said.

  “And then you would not have to worry about me for a whole year,” she said. “You can afford that much, can’t you?”

  “Abby,” he said, “do you have a special need of the moment that I can help you with? A debt?”

  “No,” she said, and licked her lips. “Yes. Something to do with the girls. Something I wish to . . . to buy for them before they come from Bath. They have never had a great deal, and in the past two years life has been dreary for them. I want them to have a happy life from now on. I want to take care of them. I . . .”

  “What is it that you wish to buy them?” he asked. “Can it be a gift from both of us? I am their new brother-in-law, after all. You do not need to spend all of your own money.”

  “No,” she said. “It is nothing. Nothing that they . . .

  Nothing that you . . . Ah, here is the tea. I hope there are some scones again. I am starved. Did I tell you that I was going to teach Victor to read, Miles? The little servant boy, that is. I spent a whole hour with him this morning, only to discover that I do not know at all how to teach someone to read. It is not easy. I shall have to ask Laura how it is done. I think Victor must have thought that I was a little crazy. And perhaps he is right. I have been meaning to ask you—may we take him into the country with us when we go? He is rather pale and puny. I am sure the country air and a little more of the outdoors would help him greatly. He can even—”

  “Abby,” he said. “Yes. I think it a very good idea. And it is typical of you to have thought of it. But we will need a whole cavalcade of carriages to take everyone when it comes time for us to leave. How have you spent your day apart from having your hair shorn? Tell me about it.”

  She launched into a tale of having her hair cut and wandering up and down Oxford Street afterward and running into an old acquaintance of hers—companion to a friend of Mrs. Gill’s—and making arrangements to go walking to St. James’s Park with her in the afternoon. With the companion, that was, not with the friend of Mrs. Gill. There followed an account of that stroll and every strange and eccentric character they had passed on the paths.

  What was it? the earl wondered, listening to her rapid speech, watching her pretty, mobile face, and sipping on his tea. What was it that had set her at a distance from him? Was it just Jenny? Was he going to have to have patience and give her time to realize that Jenny was no longer a part of his life? Or was there something else?

  Why did she have a sudden need of six thousand pounds? It was an enormous sum for a woman who a few days before had been a former lady’s companion facing destitution. What sort of a gift for her half-sisters did she have in mind? And why could she not share the idea with him?

  “Oh, Miles,” she said suddenly, looking up from pouring him a second cup of tea. “I don’t suppose there is a vacant steward’s position or bailiff’s position on one of your estates, is there? Or I don’t suppose you have felt the need of a secretary?”

  “No to all three,” he said, looking into large and anxious gray eyes as she crossed the room with his cup and saucer. “Did you meet a beggar in St. James’s Park, Abby? Or a destitute duke on Oxford Street? Or was it the person who cut your hair?”

  “You are laughing at me,” she said.

  “Forgive me.” He smiled at her. “I was teasing you. Who needs a job?”

  “Boris,” she said. She sat down on the edge of her chair again and leaned toward him. “Did you notice how thin he is, Miles? He used not to be so thin. We paid off as many of Pap
a’s debts as we could after we had sold the house and all the furnishings. But there are still some, and Boris swears he is going to pay them all. I thought it would be easier for him if he had regular employment.”

  “Abby,” the earl said gently, “from my brief meeting with him last evening, I had the impression that your brother is a proud young man.”

  “But if the idea came from you,” she said. “If you could plead with him to help you out of a nasty situation. If it seemed that I had not spoken to you at all about him. If it could seem that he was doing you a favor instead of the other way around.” She sat back suddenly and lifted her cup so jerkily to her lips that she spilled some tea into the saucer. “I am asking too much, am I not? I am too demanding. I have not been married to you for a week yet. I am sorry.”

  “It is not that.” He set his cup and saucer down on a side table and got to his feet. “I just think your brother would not accept charity, Abby. And he would see through any of those schemes you suggest in a moment. I don’t imagine he is defective in understanding, is he?”

  “No,” she said. “It was rather stupid of me, was it not?”

  He took the saucer from her hand and set it on the tray. He held out a hand for one of hers and drew her to her feet.

  “Concerned and loving of you,” he said. “Why did your father have so many debts?”

  She stared at him. “He was sick,” she said. “For several years. There were medicines and other things.”

  “It’s none of my business,” he said, seeing her discomposure. “Leave the matter of your brother with me, will you, Abby? I shall see if there is some way I can help him without his knowing it. It will have to be a devious scheme, I’m afraid. He will not accept your six thousand, by the way.”