by Mary Balogh
Powell had not understood, he realized, or been willing to try to understand. Powell had hurt her. He had expected her to read his lips but had been unwilling to read her painting. Perhaps he had thought there was no meaning there. Perhaps he thought Emmy would be an empty receptacle, a comfortable but unchallenging life’s companion.
“You see life spiraling through everything,” Ashley said. “It comes through the soil and bursts upward, through everything and on out into the whole universe. Life is too powerful to be contained in one living thing but must be joined to all other living things. Life is a passionate celebration—a dance, perhaps. Is that what you saw this morning, Emmy? What you painted?”
Her eyes were bright with tears then and she closed her right hand into a loose fist and pulsed it against her heart. Ah yes. He remembered immediately. I feel it deeply. She bent to gather up her paints and brushes.
He felt somewhat awed, somewhat humbled. He had always known that there were depths to Emmy that all but a few of those who loved her had never even suspected. He had experienced her sympathy, her happiness, her peace. He had devised a very rudimentary language of signs with her so that they had some form of two-way communication. But for the first time he had glimpsed something of the complex depths of her vision. He felt . . . privileged.
“Emmy, my dear,” he said, sensing that he had entered one of those rare moments of insight in his life. “If you could but speak.” But she could not, and she would not be the person she was if she could, he realized. Besides, she was not even looking at him to know that he had spoken. Or to know that bitter despair had welled up suddenly inside him.
When she did look up, the rush of tears had gone and she raised her eyebrows and gestured toward the house. Was he ready to return with her?
“Go,” he told her. “Leave me here. I am not good company for you this morning. Or for anyone else, either. You must guard your innocence and your happiness and your inner peace from such as me, Emmy. I could only destroy them.”
She did not look startled or hurt, as he had half expected she might, though he knew she had seen his words. She looked calmly at him, but the sadness in her eyes almost had him grabbing for her. He had spoken the truth, though: If once he gave in to the lure of confiding completely in Emmy, unburdening himself to her, as he had used to do, he would destroy her. He would cling and pull her into his own darkness and never let her go free.
It terrified him that he was tempted.
“Go,” he told her again, and heard with surprise the harshness in his voice. He wondered if it showed in his face.
She went, taking her easel and her painting with her.
She was in communion with all that was light and joy and life-giving, he thought, or so it seemed to him. He had felt it in her painting, strange and wild as it was. He had seen it in her silent explanation.
And he was all darkness. The very antithesis of what she had found.
Emmy had grown up, he realized. And grown beyond him in the process. She had taken the limited opportunities that life had offered her as a woman, and a handicapped woman at that, and had used them to make herself into a mature and interesting person—he was sure she would be fascinating to know. He longed to know her as he had once longed for her to know him.
He was suddenly appalled by the selfishness of that former self of his. And by something else too: He had taken the limitless opportunities that life had offered him and used them to discover—hell.
He must stay away from Emmy, he knew. If there was something good he could still do in life, he must do that. He must stay away from her.
She was a woman now—beautiful, fascinating, alluring. Oh yes. He closed his eyes and smiled twistedly. Even that demon had found him out. There was no point in denying it. She was alluring.
• • •
Luke embraced his brother when Ashley entered the breakfast parlor, there being no one else present.
“Harry has decided to kick his heels and exercise his lungs,” Luke explained. “An unusual time of day for him. ’Tis the advent of teeth, Anna swears. She has stayed in the nursery to help Nurse soothe him. Zounds but ’tis good to see you, Ash.” He indicated a seat at the table.
Ashley smiled crookedly and sat. “I have been up these two hours or more,” he said, “riding and walking. English air is more conducive to exercise than to sleep.”
“Yes.” Luke had seated himself and picked up his coffee cup. But he returned it to its saucer. “Sultan was in something of a lather when you returned him to the stables, Ash. I was obliged to take him out again to calm him and to cool him gradually.”
Ashley laughed. “Deuce take it,” he said, “have you taken to trotting sedately about the park, Luke, at a pace to suit your children? ’Tis time, perhaps, that your mounts knew that there is a pace known as a gallop.”
Luke pursed his lips. “There is such a thing as respect for one’s horse,” he said. “Sultan is particularly difficult. ’Tis my theory that he was abused by his previous owner. I had advised my grooms that until further notice no one was to ride him but me. One of my grooms received a tongue-lashing from me this morning—probably unfairly.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ashley said somewhat frostily, turning to indicate to the footman at the sideboard that he was ready to be served. “I had forgotten that I am a mere stranger here now.”
Luke sat back in his chair, one hand playing absently with his cup and saucer until Ashley’s plate was heaped with food and the footman had been informed with a mere lift of the ducal eyebrows that he might withdraw.
“We have quarreled,” Luke said with a sigh when they were quite alone together. “On your first morning back. ’Twill not do, Ash. I refuse to quarrel further. What brought you back to England?”
Ashley laughed again. “An inhuman climate,” he said. “Inhuman for Englishmen, anyway. Wealth—I must almost rival even you in riches, Luke. The desire to move on to the next chapter of my life. Homesickness.”
“And the desire to settle your family in their homeland?” Luke said.
“Ah.” Ashley laughed once more. “And that too.” He pushed away his heaped plate, the food scarcely touched, and got restlessly to his feet. “And your family has expanded since I was last here, Luke. I must see your sons today. And Joy. And Doris’s two are in the nursery here as well? Egad, but we have been a prolific family. Mother must be ecstatic.”
“’Tis never the way of our mother to show any emotion to excess,” Luke said. “But she is fond of each one of us. And her grandchildren too. She will be pleased to see young Thomas at last. We all will. Speaking of which—”
But the door opened at that moment and Anna came inside. She smiled warmly at her husband, who got to his feet and smiled back, and hugged Ashley and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Ashley,” she said, “I feared I had dreamed you up during the night. But you are really here. Dreadfully thin though. I fear the voyage was too much for you. Is that your plate? Do sit and eat.”
“Every mouthful, Ash,” Luke said, his lips quirking with amusement. “Anna’s wrath is dreadful to behold when one of her children refuses to be coddled. I have the notion that you are to be one of her children during the coming days and weeks. Until she has fattened you up.”
“What nonsense you speak,” Anna said, smiling sunnily at her husband. “But Ashley, if you are this worn and thin, what must Al—”
“I have been drawing good English air into my lungs this morning at least, Anna,” Ashley said. “I have been riding—galloping Sultan, actually, and incurring Luke’s wrath in the process. And walking. I found Emmy and Powell at the falls, quarreling.”
Anna bit her lip and looked at Luke.
He raised his eyebrows. “Emily and Powell?” he said. “Quarreling?”
“I saw her just now before I came downstairs,” Anna said. “She went early to the falls,
Luke. To paint.”
“Ah.” Luke sighed and looked pained. “She was able to remain inside her cage, singing, for five days, was she, but had to break loose on the sixth? I suppose, Ash, she was not dressed demurely for the eyes of a lover and executing a picturesque water sketch?”
Ashley grinned.
“No,” Luke said. “I thought not. Well, my dear.” He leaned forward sufficiently to pat Anna’s hand. “I suppose he had to find out sooner or later that there are two quite distinct sides to our dear Emily. Better sooner than later. And they were quarreling. How can Emily quarrel, pray? Ash?”
“She can lift her chin in the air and refuse to look at the one who has the advantage of a voice,” Ashley said. “She can refuse to acknowledge his very existence.”
“Dear me.” Luke drummed his fingers on the table.
“Emmy does not have to marry anyone,” Anna said fiercely. “She can remain here for the rest of her life if she wishes, dressed in her favorite rags and painting her strange paintings. I will love her no matter what.”
“No one, my dear,” Luke said with raised eyebrows, “is arguing with you. Ah.”
He got to his feet again as the door opened to admit a seeming flood of late breakfasters. He bowed over his mother’s hand, kissed Doris’s cheek, bowed to Lady Sterne, and acknowledged Lord Quinn and the Earl of Weims with a nod. There was a great deal of noise and bustle as the ladies hugged and kissed Ashley and the gentlemen shook his hand.
“I expected,” the dowager Duchess of Harndon said when they were all settled at the table, “that you would be on your way to town by now, Lucas. Lady Ashley and her son must be anxiously awaiting their removal here.”
“You are quite right to scold me, madam,” Luke said. “Blame a late night and a teething infant, if you will. Or blame Ashley, who has been elusive this morning and who did not tell me last night at which hotel in London I might find my sister-in-law and my nephew. But I shall be on my way within the hour.”
“I would go too,” Anna said with a warm smile for Ashley, “if ’twere not for Harry. There are a maid and a nurse, are there not, Ashley? Even so, will Alice and Thomas be well enough to travel as early as tomorrow? You certainly would not be well enough. I hope you have no notion of accompanying Luke.”
“No,” Ashley said, smiling about the table. “And there is no need for Luke to go either.”
There was a chorus of protest, but he held up both hands. He chuckled.
“There is something I neglected to mention last evening,” he said. “It seemed somehow unbecoming to the occasion.”
“Oh,” Anna said, her hands clasped to her bosom. “Alice is ill. Or Thomas. Oh, Ashley, are they having the proper care? How could you bear to leave them?”
“Hush, my love.” Luke covered her hand with his and kept it there.
“I traveled to England alone,” Ashley said. He was laughing. “I did not bring my wife or my son with me.”
“Egad,” Lord Quinn said, “then you will be going back soon after all, lad.”
“No, Uncle.” Ashley smiled at him. “There is nothing to go back to, you see. I have resigned my post with the East India Company.”
“You have abandoned Alice and Thomas?” Doris’s words were spoken in a near whisper, but they sounded loud in the breakfast parlor.
Ashley looked at her with a crooked smile. “It has to be spelled out, by my life,” he said. “No one understands. Or no one wants to understand. They are dead. They died together when my house burned to the ground a little more than a year ago. I was fortunate enough to be from home at the time.”
The only discernible movements were Luke’s hand gripping Anna’s more tightly and the Earl of Weims’s hand going to his wife’s shoulder.
“It seemed an appropriate moment to tell it,” Ashley said, “with the whole family gathered for breakfast. Pardon me for blurting such shocking news without sufficient preamble. As for myself, I have had a year in which to grow accustomed to the facts. A year in which to shrug off grief. I am free and I am wealthy. And I am home.”
He got to his feet and made them all a bow that seemed almost mocking in its elegance. He left the room as Luke, the first to react, got to his feet. But Luke did not follow him. He had a wife and a mother with whom to concern himself.
7
EMILY did not go down to breakfast. She did not often do so. She preferred to eat alone. But since the arrival of Lord Powell six days before, she had been behaving as any normal young lady would. She had taken all her meals in the breakfast parlor or the dining room, watching the conversation about her, dazed by it, but smiling pleasantly to indicate that she was a participant, not merely a dumb spectator.
This morning, however, she could not face Lord Powell at the breakfast table. Or Luke. He would know by now. He would look at her with pursed lips and narrowed eyes and she would feel more dreadful than if he scolded her roundly for five whole minutes. That was the trouble with Luke. He had learned early in their relationship that a few well-chosen looks were far more effective with her than a thousand words.
And she could not face Ashley either.
She dressed herself carefully in her dressing room, without the assistance of a maid. She had no personal maid. What was the point, Anna had said some time ago with affectionate exasperation, when Emmy never made use of one? She wore one of her pretty open gowns, with its accompanying petticoat draped over small hoops. She dressed her hair smoothly in front and knotted at the back. She covered the knot with a lace-trimmed cap, and made sure that its long lappets flowed freely down her back to her waist.
There, she thought, she looked civilized again, if not particularly grand.
When she got to the nursery, she returned Anna’s smile and saw that Harry was lying quietly in her arms, his eyes fluttering closed. Beyond them Joy was lifting James off the rocking horse while Amy, Doris’s daughter, waited to be lifted on. George was doing something at the table with two of Charlotte’s children. James and the other children rushed toward Emily, demanding to be entertained. She laughed and obliged them. Soon Amy was scrambling down from the horse and joining them.
Children readily accepted abnormalities, Emily had realized long ago. Even the youngest of her nephews and nieces knew that they had to thrust their faces almost against hers and talk with slow clarity if she was to respond to their unceasing demands. They knew too that she always did respond. Soon she was crawling on all fours, hoops notwithstanding, with two small infants drumming their heels against her sides.
Luke had once told her that she was more foolishly indulgent of infant tyranny than even he and Anna. It always pleased Luke to pretend to be under the thumb of his children. In reality Emily knew that a mere look from his cool gray eyes could quell inappropriately high spirits, and that a mere lifting of his eyebrows could put an instant end to incipient rebellion. Love there was in abundance in Luke’s family, but there was also total obedience.
Anna had just set a sleeping Harry down on his cot in an inner room and left the nursery when the door opened to admit Lord Powell. Emily felt hot and disheveled, but he smiled at her as she got to her feet and checked that her hair was still confined by its pins and her cap was still where it should be.
“Lady Emily,” he said, “will you do me the honor of stepping out into the garden with me?”
He had recovered from his frowns, she saw. She wondered if he had any inkling of exactly what he had witnessed that morning—a deaf woman in her own world, a world very different from his own. A world of sensation and feeling and thought, though not quite as people with hearing thought, perhaps. Did they think in words? She wondered if Lord Powell understood that she did not. Probably not. Probably he never would. But she would not feel hurt or angry. She had decided to marry, to move into that other world. The burden of adjustment was hers alone.
The children looked disconsolate. But ever r
esilient, they went in search of Joy, the eldest, the substitute playmate now that Aunt Emily was being taken away from them.
The sun was still shining. The air was considerably warmer than it had been when Emily had left the house earlier with her easel. Lord Powell led her down the steps onto the first terrace of the formal gardens, and they strolled together along the graveled walk there, her arm looped through his.
“I would make my apologies to you,” he said, drawing her to a halt at last and turning toward her. “You are in your own home. ’Twas unpardonable of me to be critical here of your appearance and your behavior. Forgive me?”
Critical here? Would he feel justified in being critical elsewhere, then? In his own home, perhaps? But it was a point too complex to be considered now. And it was a handsome apology. She nodded.
“You look remarkably lovely this morning,” he said. “It pleased me to see you playing with your nephews and nieces even at the risk of the perfection of your appearance. It pleases me to imagine you playing thus with your own children.”
Your own children. Yes, the effort, the sacrifice would be worthwhile. She ached with longing somewhere in the region of her stomach. Your own children.
He had taken her hand in his. He raised it now to his lips.
“I would ask only,” he said, “that when we are wed, Lady Emily, you will appear as you did earlier this morning to no one but me. I would not have my mother or sisters or—worse!—my brothers see you thus and think you wanton. Or even mad.” He smiled.
Mad. He had thought her mad. Merely because her dress had been too short and her hair had been down her back. She felt a flaring of anger again for a moment. But it was merely a word—mad. It meant essentially the same thing as improper. And she would admit that her appearance had definitely been that. She would not quarrel again over a word.
“For myself,” he said, “I could find your appearance thus almost appealing. If the gown were but richer . . . But ’tis improper to indulge such imaginings yet when we are merely betrothed.”