by Mary Balogh
But the Duke of Harndon was pleased too to hear that the betrothal had been agreed upon and that Powell was both ready and eager to have it made public. The duke insisted the gloom that had descended on the house must be lifted and that his brother certainly had no wish to wallow in it. The celebration of a betrothal in the family would be just the thing to lighten everyone’s spirits, he maintained.
And so the announcement was made during tea, when everyone was gathered in the drawing room, including the children. Even Lord Harry Kendrick was there, asleep with open mouth against his father’s shoulder. Agnes and William had come from Wycherly Park with their children. The mood of the gathering was subdued, or rather determinedly cheerful, until Victor rose to his feet, cleared his throat for silence, and informed them that Lord Powell had offered for his sister, that Emily had accepted, and that there was no more to be said on the matter except that making the announcement gave him the greatest pleasure and that the nuptials would be celebrated some time during the summer. And that really he was no great speech maker.
There was general laughter.
Emily, standing beside her betrothed, watched her brother’s face intently and felt a sense of finality. A calm contentment. It had been done now. The words had been spoken to all the people who mattered most in her life. There was no going back now. Not that she felt any wish to go back. She needed this marriage. She might be deaf, she might be different, but she was a woman.
Lord Powell had taken her hand and was bowing over it in a touchingly courtly manner and bringing it to his lips.
She could not hear the noise that the announcement aroused, but she could see its effect. Everyone looked at her, and everyone looked suddenly joyful. It had to be right, she thought, smiling. What she had done had to be right. Her family and Luke’s were happy for her; they believed Lord Powell would make an excellent husband. But there was no chance to think further. She was being engulfed in hugs. And her betrothed, she saw when she was able, was receiving his fair share as well. At the moment, Constance, Victor’s wife, was embracing him, tears in her eyes.
Yes, it had to be right. It felt right.
Ashley was sitting in a far corner of the room. He had sat there all through tea, smiling, laughing, James on one knee, Amy on the other, Joy beside him. But they had abandoned him now, Emily saw, though she did not look directly his way, in order to join the general bustle of excitement about herself and Lord Powell. He sat there alone, still smiling.
“How can he smile and laugh?” she had seen Agnes say earlier to Constance. “Has he no feelings?”
But Emily, even without looking directly at him, had been able to feel the unbearable tension behind his smile. His wife and his son had died. Between leaving for a meeting and returning, he had had his whole family wiped out.
Ashley. She wished desperately that he had confided in her out at the falls that morning. Though that was not quite true either. For if he had told her, she would not have come back to change into pretty clothes and listen to Lord Powell’s apology and agree to have their betrothal announced. She would have been caught up in a past that would have overshadowed her present and her future. Besides, she would have been unable to comfort him as she had used to do. Nothing could comfort him for what had happened to him. It would have hurt to know that she was powerless to ease his pain.
Ah, but she wished—with her heart she wished—that he had told her.
And then, while Jeremiah—the Reverend Jeremiah Hornsby, Charlotte’s husband—was congratulating her and Lord Powell and hoping that they might do him the honor of asking him to conduct their wedding service, Ashley touched Emily on the arm.
“Well, Emmy.” He took her hands in his and kissed her on both cheeks. “It seems I have returned home just in time to say good-bye to you. You were always like a dear sister to me. I hope you will continue to think of me as a kind of brother.”
Like a dear sister. That was all she really saw. Yes, she had been that to him. That was how he had seen her. Like a sister. It was good to have been seen thus. Closer than a friend. A sister. And she was to continue to think of him as a brother—yes, he had said that too. Oh, Ashley. She smiled at him, but she squeezed his hands very tightly as well and spoke to him with her eyes. He understood her. Of course he understood. But lest he did not, she closed her hand into a fist and pulsed it against her heart.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know it makes you sad, Emmy. But I have come home to give up sadness. Seeing you happy is good for me. ’Tis hard to believe you are no longer the child you were when I went away. You are all grown up. Be happy, little fawn. Promise me always to be happy.”
Yes. She smiled again. The child you were when I went away. Ah, Ashley. Yes, she would promise. She would promise to try.
And then Joy was smiling sunnily up at her—she was so like Anna, even in her smiles. “Aunt Emmy,” she said, “may I be your bridesmaid? I am seven and a half years old.”
Emily laughed and touched the child’s hair.
• • •
It had been a difficult evening. Agnes and William had stayed, toasts had been drunk at dinner, everyone had gathered in the drawing room afterward for conversation and cards and music—Constance and Charlotte and Doris played the pianoforte; William and Jeremiah sang. The tea tray was ordered later than usual and they all went to bed late.
But none of them had known quite if they should be sober and solemn out of respect for Ashley or bright and merry in celebration of the betrothal they had toasted at dinner. The only one of them who was unashamedly cheerful all through the evening—he had even suggested that the carpet be rolled back for dancing—was Ashley.
Luke had said quite firmly that the carpet would stay where it was. They had all had quite enough of dancing the evening before. And of course they were all rather tired after the evening before, and thus it was more difficult to keep up their spirits. At last, an hour after Agnes and William had left for home, the dowager duchess got to her feet and the rest of the party took her doing so as the signal to go to bed.
Emily changed into her nightgown without assistance and brushed out her hair and was thankful that the day was finally at an end. It had been an unbearably eventful day, and the evening had been almost intolerable. Everyone talking. Everyone focusing on her, expecting her to listen and understand. She had been unable to leave early, to relax into her own solitude as she had longed to do. Her eyes ached from such intent watching. And one foolishly insignificant fact had dominated her thinking all evening: She still did not know his name. She was to be his bride in two or three months’ time, yet she did not know his name. The thought struck her as funny, and she laughed softly. It did not matter anyway. She could never speak his name.
He knew hers. It was almost all he knew of her. Another foolish, insignificant thought.
She was tired. She remembered suddenly that she had not slept at all last night and had snatched only perhaps an hour’s rest this afternoon between tea and dinner. She was very tired, but she was not sleepy at all. There was a difference, she thought, wandering from her dressing room into her darkened bedchamber and standing before the window, still absently brushing her hair.
She did not believe she would sleep even if she lay down. She was betrothed, she thought, trying to feel different. She was going to be married. There were going to be form and purpose to her life. A totally new direction. Even her home and her companions would change. She would spend her days with his mother and his younger brothers and sisters. And with him.
He was going to have paper and pens and ink set in each room. Without them she could not hope to communicate in the simplest ways with all those strangers.
He was a stranger too, she thought. And she would never be able to communicate with him. He would never know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words—even if she could speak or write them—could never explain her world to him.
/>
She rested one bent knee on the window seat. It was a lovely night, bright with moonlight and starlight. It was a tempting night, one that beckoned her. How lovely it would be to throw on a dress and a cloak and to slip outside to wander. Down across the lawn, along by the river. But it could not be done. She had made the decision. She had promised herself this morning. He would never understand a wife who wandered outside alone at night. If she were to, he would soon be echoing Luke’s words, but in all seriousness. He would be calling her a witch.
Emily sighed. Her new life was not going to be easy. But it was one she had chosen deliberately.
She longed for it to begin. She looked back involuntarily at her bed. She wanted that too. It was strange how her body had come to crave it during the past couple of years or so, even while her head had been unable to fix upon any man—until now—and her heart had been faithful to an impossibility. Her body wanted to know . . .
She lifted her shoulders and turned her eyes back toward the window and the shadowed lawns and trees beyond it. How she yearned to go out there, to wander quietly, not doing anything in particular. Merely being. That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to be. Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from doing. They pitied her idleness, believing it denoted emptiness, boredom. But now she had chosen to enter the world of doing.
She wondered if it would disappear with time and perseverance, this yearning to be free, to be a part of everything that was natural and beautiful and timelessly turning with the days and the seasons.
And then her brush stilled against her head and she leaned forward, her lips parting.
He was not strolling. He was not out there with any thought of enjoying his surroundings or of merely taking the air before retiring to bed. He was hurrying with purposeful strides, his head down. He looked almost as if he thought himself pursued, though he did not look back either.
He looked haunted.
He was going to the falls. Of course he was going there. He was close to breaking. All last evening, all today, his smiles, his laughter, his gaiety had scandalized some of the family and aroused the pity of others.
“How very brave the poor boy is being, Theo,” she had seen Aunt Marjorie, Lady Sterne, say to Lord Quinn.
Emily had known that the gaiety had been no more than skin-deep. She had known that the company of his family had not helped him at all but had possibly had the opposite effect. She had known that he was close to breaking and that he might very well break.
She could not help him. She leaned forward until her forehead was against the glass of the window, and closed her eyes. Ashley. Ashley, I cannot help you.
But she would not believe it. Nothing had really changed. She was here and he was here. She could still listen to him. And he could still talk to her. Luke had come back to Anna’s sitting room that morning, pale and weary, and said that he had tried to talk to Ashley, had tried to assure him that there were love and healing to be had at Bowden for the taking, but that he was not sure he had accomplished anything. Ashley had built a wall about himself.
Luke had talked to Ashley. Perhaps what Ashley really needed, as he had more than seven years ago, was someone to listen. Someone who could not give him verbal consolation or advice. Someone like herself.
Perhaps he would talk to her if they could be together at the falls again, as they had so often used to be. As they had been this morning. Perhaps he would feel some of the old magic return. Perhaps some of the burden could be lifted from his soul. Perhaps he could be saved from breaking apart.
She had been like a dear sister to him, he had said just that afternoon. His words had hurt. They still hurt. He had been so much more to her than a brother. But her feelings did not matter. Besides, she no longer could be more to him than a sister. And perhaps a friend.
But was she fooling herself? She kept her eyes closed and looked honestly at the question. Could she go to him there, break the promise she had made to herself just that morning, and not be deeply hurt herself? Would she be going only for her own sake? Because she wanted to go to him?
But she did not matter, she thought. It was Ashley who was hurting. Even though she would allow her feelings for him to make no difference in her life from now on, she was never going to deny to her inmost self that he mattered to her more than anyone or anything else in her life—herself included. If she was hurt, it did not matter. She would heal, as she had healed before. And his pain was so much worse than her own.
She wanted to go to him, she decided, because he needed her. If she was mistaken, if he spurned her, then she would bear the humiliation. But she did not believe she was wrong. There had always been an extra sense where Ashley was concerned—almost as if it had been given her in place of the sense of hearing. She knew that he needed her.
And so promises and propriety and common sense and the very real possibility of being hurt mattered not one iota. Lord Powell, her betrothal, were forgotten.
Ashley needed her.
She was hurrying after him, in the direction he had gone, less than ten minutes later, having donned a dress and a warm cloak. She was wearing shoes against the chill of the night, and had tied her hair back with a ribbon at the nape of her neck.
• • •
He stood for a while on the flat rock, looking down into the almost black water beneath his feet as it spilled and bubbled over the stony basin of the steep descent. He was enclosed by trees and night and the rushing sound of water. He breathed deeply and remembered how he had always been able to come here and feel that he had left the world and its cares behind. But his cares had been insignificant things in those days.
Even so, it was good to be alone. He had been alone in his bedchamber, of course, but it was not the same. He had felt surrounded by people, by family, by those who cared for him. He had felt suffocated by them. It had been a mistake to imagine that people would be able to help him. Least of all his family.
He had felt the depth of Luke’s love this morning and it had weighed heavily on his heart and his conscience. He had felt the love and concern of all of them. He had been unable to reach out and wrap it about himself. It had felt more like a heavy burden pressing down on him, stifling him.
But how could he feel otherwise? How could he take comfort from his family when his wife and Thomas had died and he had not been there? And when he had wished a hundred times for their deaths? No. No, that was not true. He shook his head from side to side, denying the terrible thought. He had never wished for Thomas’s death. Never. He must never burden himself with that untruth. And never seriously for Alice’s either.
But he had not come here to be plagued by memories or by guilt, he thought, closing his eyes, listening to the soothing sound of the water, trying to let it seep into his soul. He had come here for an hour’s forgetfulness. He wanted to be able to go back to the house later to sleep.
If only he could sleep.
He had been wildly, passionately in love with Alice. As she had been with him. Two strangers, who had mistaken an initial attraction for love. He had loved her because she had nursed him through a lengthy illness. She had loved him because he had needed her nursing. It had been almost inevitable. Neither could be blamed, perhaps.
And she had married him for another reason too—one he had discovered twenty-four hours after their wedding. After a difficult and disappointing wedding night. The passion with which his bride had responded to his kisses had changed to panic as soon as his hands touched her body and—it still made him shudder to remember—to revulsion as he entered her. He had finished the consummation quickly, unsatisfactorily.
And she had not been a virgin bride.
Her lover, she had told him when confronted the next morning, had been left behind in England. She had even told Ashley his name—Sir Henry Verney, a neighbor, her brother’s closest friend. And yes,
she loved him still. She would always love him. Always. The fierce, almost fanatical, light in her eyes had left Ashley in no doubt of the truth of her words.
Ashley had been left wondering exactly why she had married him and exactly how he was to make anything of this marriage.
She had answered the first question, though he had not put it into words. He had reminded her of her lover, she had told him with bitter defiance. She had thought he looked a little like him. She had been mistaken—dreadfully mistaken. He had not felt like the lover, Ashley understood her to have meant.
Love had died an instant death on both sides.
It was the only time they had been together as man and wife, he and Alice. Though fidelity to Verney was certainly not her reason, or chastity its result. She had taken lovers and not even tried to hide her infidelities from him, though she had been otherwise discreet. He had tried to reason with her, to persuade her to give their marriage a chance, since they were bound to it for life. But she had hated him with a passion equal to the love she had shown him before their marriage, perhaps because she had realized too late that her lost lover could not be re-created in him. He asked why she had not married Verney. Perhaps he was married already? She had refused to answer his question.
He had thought she was with a lover on the night she died. She had given her usual lame excuse, which she never even expected him to believe—she and Thomas were to visit her friend, Mrs. Lucaster, overnight. And she had left the house before he did. But inexplicably both she and Thomas had been at home when . . .
And yes, numerous times he had wished her dead. He had imagined the enormous relief he would feel to be free of her.
Ashley laughed harshly.
And then he turned his head sharply, some instinct warning him that he was no longer alone. Devil take it, but he did not want company. He had come here to be alone.
Emily was standing at the foot of the rocks, looking up at him. She was wearing a long dark cloak. All he could really see of her was her face and her fair hair, falling in thick waves down her back from the ribbon that confined it at her neck.