by Mary Balogh
“I will?” No one looked more haughty than Luke with raised eyebrows.
“You will send for me,” Ashley said, “if she is with child. I will come immediately, bringing a license with me.”
“You are going somewhere?” The eyebrows were still up.
“Where I should have gone as soon as I set foot in England,” Ashley said. “To Penshurst. To Alice’s home. My home. There will be work to do there. A steward has been running the estate single-handed for over four years, since the death of Alice’s brother. ’Tis time I took the reins into my own hands.”
“Yes,” Luke said. “You were always good at that.”
“I will leave at first light tomorrow,” Ashley said. “But ’tis not far. Only in Kent. I can come back here quickly.”
“Yes.” Luke nodded.
“I am fond of her,” Ashley said. “I want you to know that. ’Twas not—ugly. I am fond of her.”
“Yes.” Luke’s eyes coolly examined his face. “You always were, Ash. Fond of her. Sit and have a drink with me. When my eyes alighted on you in the ballroom two evenings ago, and when I had convinced myself that they did not deceive me, I was more delighted than I can possibly express in words. My brother—my only surviving brother had come home. I pictured myself having long conversations with you, taking long walks and rides with you, while our wives and children became acquainted. ’Tis a picture that has been dashed into a thousand pieces since then.”
He came around the desk, set a hand on Ashley’s shoulder, and indicated two chairs by the fireplace.
12
ASHLEY was leaving. He was going to Penshurst, the estate in Kent he had inherited through his wife. It was not as far away as India. Indeed, it was only a day’s drive away. Closer than Victor’s or Charlotte’s. But Emily knew as she sat on the window seat in her room, hugging her knees, the side of her head resting against the cold glass of the window, that it was as far away as India. Farther. When he had gone to India, there had been the hope, however faint, that he would come back someday. This time there was no such hope.
He would not come back to Bowden. Not while she was there.
It was altogether probable that she would never see him again.
She gazed out over lawns and trees. It was a day very similar to the one on which he had left before. Gray and blustery. She could not see the front of the house or the stables or carriage house. She did not know if he had left yet. She remembered the feeling of panic that had clawed at her stomach the last time. It had driven her finally to rush outside and down to the driveway so that she might hide among the trees and see his carriage pass. She felt the same panic now. But this time she could do nothing about it.
She lowered her forehead to her knees and closed her eyes. This time his leaving had been entirely of her own choosing. And if she had the choice to make again—if he came now to ask her one more time—she would not change it. He was going because she would not have him. Because she loved him.
She wondered if her suffering was sufficient to atone for what she had done to Lord Powell. She did not feel sorry for herself; she deserved this feeling of black despair. She hoped Lord Powell would find someone else. She hoped he would be happy. She hoped he would look back at some future date and be fervently glad that she had rejected him. She concentrated her mind on him, picturing the dark handsome face with its heavy eyebrows and rather large nose and slightly crooked teeth. She tried to analyze why it was that handsomeness did not always require perfection of features. She tried to distract her mind.
Ashley was leaving.
She would never see him again. And if she did, seeing him would make no difference to anything. It would only make her feel worse.
No, there was no worse way to feel.
She had not gone down to dinner last evening. Nor had she joined the family in the drawing room afterward. Anna had come to her later, after she had been to the nursery to feed Harry, and had told her that Ashley was leaving.
“Everyone will be returning home soon, Emmy,” she had said, taking her sister’s hands in hers and smiling her sunny smile. “Everything will be back to normal again. There will be just Luke and me and the children and you—the way I like it best. Even Mother is going, with Doris and Andrew. You can live your life as you wish again. You can paint again. You can be at peace again. You will be happy, Emmy, once the rawness of these few days has passed. Lord Powell was pleasant, but he would not have understood you as Luke and I do or loved you half as much. You did the right thing.”
Dear Anna. No mention of Ashley or of what had caused her to break off her betrothal.
And so today he was leaving. Had left. There had been more than an hour of daylight already. Anna had said he was to leave at first light. He was gone. He was an hour on his way. Emily’s arms tightened about her legs and she squeezed her eyes more tightly closed. Shutting herself in—totally.
The rest of her life had begun. So be it, then. And she would not cower in her room forever or escape outside merely for the sake of escape. She was going to dress respectably, just as she had almost every day since Lord Powell had first arrived, and she was going to go down to breakfast. There was the danger, of course, that everyone would be there. It did not matter. She would go anyway.
“Yass,” she said, getting determinedly to her feet and crossing to her dressing room.
She stood in front of her looking glass. “Yass,” she said. No, it was not quite right. Her lower jaw dropped too far. He should have told her yesterday, as he had told her about the s sound. This was the way the mouth and jaw should look. “E-e-e,” she said. “Yess.” That looked better. She would scold him for not scolding her. She smiled at her image.
And then her face crumpled before her eyes. She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed with unabashed self-pity.
• • •
“Emily will come home with Constance and me,” Victor said. His face was unsmiling, almost grim. “’Tis only fitting. I am her brother, head of her family. Elm Court is where she belongs. I will be able to keep an eye on her there.”
“And Charlotte and Jeremiah will be close by,” Constance said. “’Twill be a consolation to her to be close to the church.”
Jeremiah added, “I have always said—have I not, my love?—I have always said that an unmarried daughter’s place is in the home of her birth with whoever is head of that home. Emily can be taught to be useful at Elm Court. And Charlotte will help Constance to provide moral guidance.”
“La, it sounds almost,” Doris said, “as if Luke is not considered a responsible guardian.”
The Earl of Weims laid a hand over hers on the table and she subsided into silence.
“Emily would probably be happier away from here,” the Dowager Duchess of Harndon said. “With her own family and away from all members of mine.”
“Emmy will stay where she belongs,” Anna said, her cheeks flushed with color. “Where she has always been happy and loved. She will not go with you, Victor, to be made to feel that she is somehow a child who needs to be disciplined.”
Luke did to Anna what the earl had just done to Doris. He set a hand over hers. “You need not upset yourself, my dear,” he said.
“If truth were known,” Victor said, “Luke will be only too glad to be rid of Emily, Anna. It cannot be comfortable for him to know that his brother was the one to dishonor her or that our sister was the one who refused to allow Lord Ashley to retrieve his honor.”
“’Tis true, Anna,” Constance said, looking as if she was on the verge of tears.
Anna already was in tears.
“And you must consider your husband’s feelings before your own or Emily’s, Anna,” Jeremiah added. “He is your lord and master.”
“’Tis remarkable, by my life,” Luke said, his eyebrows raised haughtily, though the eyes beneath them looked more lazy than cold, “to find th
at so many people are privy to my inmost thoughts and feelings and choose to speak for me.”
He had not finished. But Emily, who had been sitting at the breakfast table, watching herself being spoken of in the third person, watching her future being decided for her, though she had kept her eyes determinedly on her plate for much of the time, did not wait for the rest. She got to her feet, folded her napkin and set it neatly beside her plate, and left the room. She resisted the urge to run.
There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to go. Whether she wished it or not, they would decide for her. She was now and forever the spinster member of the family, a burden on them all whether or not they ever admitted it, even in the privacy of their own minds. It was the desire to avoid that very situation that had made her decide upon marriage. Better an unexciting marriage in which there was no deep love, she had decided, than dependence upon her relatives for the rest of her life.
Now she had no alternative to dependence.
And worse now was the fact that she was not even a maiden relative dependent upon them. She was a fallen woman. Perhaps they would never describe her as such, but every word that had been spoken at the breakfast table this morning had presupposed that fact. And the fact that she was subnormal, incapable of managing her own life. How weary she was of the sight of sound—too weary even to be amused by the thought. Sound, it seemed—voices—ruled the world. It was the only sanity.
She went upstairs for a cloak and then walked outside. She walked all the way down through the terraces of the formal gardens and across the lawn below them. She crossed the bridge and walked down the driveway into the trees. Strangely, in seven years she had never come back to that particular tree. But she knew it unerringly. She stood against it as she had stood that morning. She set her head back against the trunk and closed her eyes. Shutting herself in again.
This morning she was several hours too late.
• • •
Luke waited for Emily to leave. He curled his fingers about Anna’s hand. Like Emily, she had remarkable control over her emotions. Rarely did she become openly and publicly upset.
“’Twould seem to me,” Luke said, “that two important facts have been ignored both yesterday and today. Perhaps three. First, Emily is a person, with intelligence and a will of her own. Second, she is an adult—two-and-twenty years of age. Thirdly, she has already taken responsibility for her own questionable actions of two nights ago and has already decided her course. Perhaps discussing her future among ourselves, especially in her presence, is not the right thing to do. Perhaps we should consult Emily’s wishes.”
“Bravo, my lad,” Lord Quinn said.
“Emmy will wish to stay here, Luke,” Anna said.
“Emily must learn that she gave up her right to choose yesterday,” Victor said.
“Emily needs to learn that she must be ruled by the men in her life,” Jeremiah said. “In this case, by Victor.”
“I shall offer Emily a choice that has not been mentioned yet,” Lady Sterne said, entering the discussion for the first time. “I shall offer it, not dictate it. And I would remind anyone who speaks of the men in a woman’s life”—she looked severely at the Reverend Hornsby—“that some women manage very nicely without such a disagreeable watchdog. Harndon has already reminded us that Emily is of age. If she chooses, she may return to London with me. ’Tis the Season, when all the fashionable world will be assembled for enjoyment. I shall take her about and have the happiest spring since I had Anna and Agnes to bring out. ’Tis time that Emily was no longer coddled. She is deaf, not a mindless infant.”
“Bravo, Marj, m’dear,” Lord Quinn said.
Luke pursed his lips and looked amused.
“Aunt Marjorie,” Anna said. “Oh, Aunt Marjorie, you are a dear.”
“Impossible, madam,” the Reverend Hornsby said. “I would remind you that Emily is a fall—”
“Complete that thought, lad,” Lord Quinn said in perfectly agreeable tones, “and you will be licking up the blood from your nose.”
“Theodore!” The dowager glared coldly at her brother.
“Might I suggest the weather as a topic of conversation?” Lady Sterne said, getting to her feet and gesturing with both hands to indicate that she did not expect the gentlemen to scramble to theirs. “’Tis dull but invariably safe. I shall go and search for Emily. Faith, but the coming spring begins to looks brighter to me already. If I can but persuade her.”
Luke patted his wife’s hand.
“The clouds are low and heavy, egad,” Lord Quinn said. “But they are white rather than black. Or perhaps gray, to be strictly accurate. Will it rain, d’ye think? Hornsby?”
• • •
Lady Sterne watched from the lowest terrace of the formal gardens as Emily trudged, head down, up the sloping lawn from the bridge. She was not wearing stays beneath her gown this morning, but even without she had a trim and pleasing figure. Her hoops were small, but then large hoops were falling out of fashion. She was not wearing a hat, and her lace cap had slipped so far to the back of her head that it was hardly visible from the front. There was, of course, all that glorious hair, which might have been described as either golden or blond without too much stretching of the truth.
And then, of course, there were her eyes, by far her best feature. Men would fall in love with her eyes alone, Lady Sterne mused, even if the surrounding package were but moderately pleasing. And Emily was more than moderately lovely.
She dressed up to look quite superb. The older lady recalled how she had looked for the ball just three nights ago.
Lud, but she would do very nicely indeed, Lady Sterne thought, feeling her spirits lifting by the minute. She had begun on occasion to catch herself feeling old. At the grand age of fifty. That was what had done it, of course. Fifty sounded a whole decade older than nine-and-forty. She needed something to keep her young. There was Theo, of course, but he felt more like a dear old habit than a force of rejuvenation.
If she could but take Emily to London with her. If she could but be given the challenge of bringing the girl into fashion despite her affliction. No, because of it. Much could be made of the novelty of a beauty who could neither hear nor speak—except with those eyes.
As for virgin brides . . . Pshaw! Lady Sterne thought. If truth were told, any man would be thankful to avoid blood and skittishness on his wedding night.
Emily had seen her, had realized that it was too late to take a different course and avoid the encounter, and came onward, smiling. Lady Sterne came face-to-face with her across the low hedge that separated the terrace from the lawn.
“’Tis like this, Emily, my love,” she said slowly and distinctly. “They would divide you up like a bone if they could and take you in a dozen different directions. Each for your own good, of course. Lud, men and their ideas of what is for a woman’s own good! ’Tis time more women stood up to them as you did yesterday to Lord Ashley and demanded to decide for themselves what was in their own best interest.” She forced herself to slow down again when she saw the slight frown on the girl’s face. “Become a bone if ’tis your wish, child. Or take your life in your own hands and bring it to London with me. We will enjoy the Season together. We will have every man in the kingdom groveling at your feet. What do you say?”
Emily looked gravely at her for such a long time that Lady Sterne felt her dream fading. The girl had not understood. And how could she possibly function in London, where all was noise and conversation and music and dancing? It was madness to have imagined . . . But then Emily smiled, first with her eyes and then with the rest of her face. She began to laugh in her strange, rather ungainly way, tipping back her head and looking more vividly lovely to Lady Sterne than she had ever appeared before. There were wildness and recklessness and animation and sheer beauty in her face. She was a true original. Yes, that would be the secret of her success. She was an original.
>
Every man in the kingdom? Lady Sterne thought. Nay, but it was no exaggeration.
She joined in Emily’s laughter. It was madness. But madness felt good. It felt . . . youthful.
• • •
Penshurst was situated in a pleasant valley, rounded and wooded hills behind, the park with its sloping lawns and copses in front. A wide river flowed to the east of the house. On the opposite bank was the village, clustered about a church with a tall spire. The house was squarely classical, set between a smaller matching stable block to one side and an office block to the other. It all looked still new and rather splendid.
Ashley drew his horse to a halt on the road, which afforded a wide view across the park to the house and the village and the hills—his carriage with his valet and his baggage were coming behind him. It was all very beautiful and very peaceful. He felt sad for Sir Alexander Kersey, who had purchased the land, pulled down the old house, and built this one. He had built it with the fortune he had made with the East India Company. He had intended to retire here, set up his dynasty here. But the dynasty had ended very soon after him. His son had died before him, Alice soon after, and Thomas with her. So already Penshurst had passed into new hands—his.
And he did not want it. Grand and lovely as it was, much as he had always wanted to settle on an estate of his own here in England, it had come to him in the wrong way and too late. Throughout his voyage home and in the days since, he had several times thought of selling it, going somewhere else, starting fresh. If Emmy had married him, perhaps he would have done so. He would not have wanted to bring her here.
Emmy. He felt a sinking of the heart whenever he thought of her—and she was constantly in the back of his thoughts, no matter how much he tried to concentrate his mind on the challenge ahead of him. He had ruined her life; he did not believe he was overdramatizing, especially since there was still the chance that he had got her with child.
But he could not think of that now. He nudged at his horse and continued on his way. Each time he had thought of it, he had realized that he could not sell Penshurst. Not yet, anyway. He had to go there, see the place where she had lived, where she had grown up. For her sake and her father’s he had to see that the estate was well run. He felt somehow tied to it, like a millstone about his neck.