by Mary Balogh
“Yes, indeed,” Miss Verney said.
If he could have throttled the man and remained civilized, Ashley thought, he would have done so. There was not a flicker of shame or guilt on his face. “Thank you,” he said. But he was curious. He addressed himself to the sister. “You knew my wife well?”
“We grew up together,” she said, “Alice, Gregory—her brother, you know—Henry, and I.”
“And Katherine Binchley,” Sir Henry added. “Daughter of Kersey’s steward. You may have met her, though she is Katherine Smith now.”
“Yes, and Katherine too,” Miss Verney said. “We were all close as children. But we grew up and grew apart. ’Twas inevitable, I suppose. Though Henry and Gregory remained close friends. But Gregory died and Alice went to India and Katherine went away to marry Mr. Smith—all within a few months. Everything was changed.”
“But you wanted to hear about your wife as she was before you met her,” Sir Henry said. “She was always beautiful, was she not, Barbara, even as a child? Small and dainty and exquisite. By the time she was sixteen she had the whole of the county on its knees to her. The fact never went to her head. She favored no man. She was very discriminating.” He smiled.
Very discriminating. Because she had ignored the attentions of all the young men in the county except those of Verney himself?
Barbara Verney was pouring the tea. She smiled as she handed Ashley a cup. “I do believe Mama had hopes at one time that Alice and Henry would make a match of it,” she said. “Happily for you, it did not happen.”
“But then,” Sir Henry said with a laugh, “neither did you make a match with Gregory, Barbara. Sometimes, Kendrick, as you may know from personal experience, mothers have tidy visions of their children’s lives that in no way match what their children want for themselves. I was pleased when I heard that Alice had married you, a man with impressive connections and a respected colleague of her father’s. She was a very unhappy young lady when she left Penshurst.”
He had no feelings of regret or guilt at all, Ashley decided. He had been glad to hear of her marriage to someone else. Would he feel glad to hear of Emmy’s marriage to another man? Would he be able to look the other man in the eye some years in the future and tell him he had been pleased to hear of her marriage? When he himself had had carnal knowledge of her? And did Verney wonder if he knew? Did his smile hide a certain contempt for the man who had taken his leavings? But he did not wish to think of Alice like that. He had not loved her; indeed, he had in many ways hated her. But she had been a person, and a desperately unhappy person.
“Yes,” Ashley said. “She had recently lost her only brother. I gather they were close, though she rarely talked about him. I understood it was too painful for her to do so.”
Brother and sister exchanged glances. “Yes,” Sir Henry said. “They were close. His death was a dreadful shock to her, as it was to all of us.”
Gregory Kersey had been shot in a hunting accident. That much Ashley had learned from Sir Alexander Kersey, long before he met Alice. She herself had almost never mentioned her brother.
“How did it happen?” Ashley asked.
For the first time Verney looked uncomfortable. He scratched his head and looked at his sister.
“’Twas early in the morning,” she said. “He was out shooting with several other gentlemen from the neighborhood.”
“Myself among them,” Sir Henry added.
“Yes,” she said. “They had decided to finish for the day, and were all beginning to make their separate ways home when there was a shot.”
“None of us paid it any heed,” Sir Henry offered. “Someone had seen a bird and had been unable to resist one more shot, we all thought. ’Twould not have been unusual. Binchley found the body at noon. Alice had sent him to discover why Gregory had not come home from hunting.”
“No one remembered having fired that late shot,” Barbara Verney said.
“Or no one would admit it,” her brother added. “Doubtless it was an accidental shooting. Greg had no enemies. But ’twould be difficult to face the fact—and to admit publicly to it—that one had shot and killed a fellow human.”
“Where?” Ashley asked. “Where was he shot?”
“In the hills north of Penshurst,” Sir Henry said. “Inside the park.”
“Through the head,” Miss Verney added quietly. “’Twas what his lordship meant, Henry. ’Twas dreadful. Suspicion attached to almost every man in the neighborhood. Henry included. Henry was his closest friend.”
Had Gregory Kersey found out about his closest friend and his sister? Ashley wondered unwillingly. He pushed the thought aside. He had not intended to wade into waters as deep as this.
“Hearing about Alice and her son—your son—was like a nightmare,” Sir Henry said. “It seemed almost as if that family had been doomed. But we become morbid. I am sure you have done enough grieving in the past year and more to last you a lifetime. You have come to town to take in part of the Season?” He smiled.
“For that reason,” Ashley said, “and to attend the marriage of my uncle.”
The conversation proceeded into comfortable, impersonal topics. They talked about weddings and fashions and entertainments and even the weather.
Sir Henry Verney was a man who had taken pleasure but felt no guilt, Ashley thought as he left South Audley Street a half hour after arriving there. An essentially shallow man. It was difficult to understand why Alice had been so fanatically attached to him. But then love was difficult to understand. It was not always a rational thing.
It seemed almost as if that family had been doomed.
The remembered words were chilling. And yet, Ashley thought, there could not possibly have been any connection between the tragic accident that had taken Gregory Kersey’s life and the one that had taken Alice’s four years later. It was merely a disturbing coincidence. But he could not shake those words from his mind.
It seemed almost as if that family had been doomed.
• • •
She was wearing her new blue and white striped silk open gown. Beneath it, in the newest fashion, she wore not hoops but a white silk quilted petticoat. Her hair was braided and coiled at the back of her head. The coils were covered with a lace cap. Over all she wore her new straw hat, tipped forward to shade her eyes, secured with a ribbon bow at the back of her neck.
She wondered if he would like her appearance. It did not matter except that she wanted him to see how she had changed, how very happy she was. If he had come with any sense of guilt still remaining, with any lingering conviction that he owed her marriage, she wished to reassure him. He had done her a favor, she thought. If he had not come home, she would have married Lord Powell and spent the rest of her life in the country fighting to assert herself over his mother—probably an impossibility. She would not have discovered, at the very elderly age of two-and-twenty, how much life had to offer even a deaf woman.
Emily leaned forward and looked closely at herself in the glass of her dressing room. She would smile at him and he would know that she did not need him at all. Yet when she caught her eye in the glass, she looked away quickly, concentrating on every part of her appearance except her eyes.
He was waiting in the hallway with Aunt Marjorie when she went downstairs. He was early. He wore a dark green skirted coat, fashionably pleated at the back with a matching waistcoat beneath, and buff breeches. His hair, as usual, was unpowdered. He held his three-cornered hat beneath one arm. His blue eyes smiled at her. She was becoming accustomed to his thin face. It made him look quite impossibly handsome.
“Emmy.” He made her a formal bow. “You look quite lovely.”
She gave him the full force of her dazzling smile.
“Lud,” Aunt Marjorie said, “you will quite turn her head, Lord Ashley. I have heard nothing but compliments for Emily since I brought her to town. You will be
fortunate indeed if you find time for any private conversation in the park with her.”
He smiled at Emily while Aunt Marjorie spoke, but she had looked to see what was being said about her. She blushed. Not that her head had been turned, she thought. All those silly compliments—those that she bothered to watch being spoken—meant nothing to her. Except that they amused her and kept her mind firmly off—no, on. They kept her mind on her newfound happiness.
She looked about her during the drive to the park, watching the people they passed, the elegant pedestrians, the hawkers, who were clearly yelling out news of their wares, the darting children, two dogs on leashes. It struck her suddenly that it could be very frightening indeed to be alone in such a setting—very different from the countryside, where she was rarely if ever afraid. But she had never been alone here. She was not alone now. She smiled and felt Ashley’s eyes on her. She would not look to see if he had anything to say.
Ashley. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she fought it with every ounce of her being.
He offered his arm when they had descended from the open carriage and begun to walk. She loved the straight, tree-lined Mall, with its crowds of strollers and groups of people in conversation together. Sometimes she liked to look up to see the branches and the leaves against the sky. But more often she preferred to watch the people and to feel at one with them. Today she could seem to feel only the muscles in Ashley’s arm and the warmth of him. Finally she looked up at him from beneath the brim of her hat. He was looking at her, that smile in his eyes. A smile that did not touch his lips.
“You are happy, Emmy?” he asked her.
She told him with sparkling eyes how happy she was. She gestured about her. How could she not be happy?
“Penshurst is rather lovely,” he told her. “’Tis in a valley with a broad park stretching from the house to the road. Between the house and the village to one side of it there is a broad river with a river walk inside the park, which was constructed for maximum beauty and seclusion. And behind the house are wooded hills, mostly quiet and shady but with the occasional and unexpected prospect over miles of quiet countryside. There is a summerhouse up there. ’Tis even furnished, though it has not been touched in years, I believe.”
Penshurst. It was where he lived. Where he belonged. Where Alice had lived. Where he would have lived with her and their son if they had not died.
“You would like it, Emmy.” He had bent his head closer to her and touched his hand to hers. “I wish you could see it.”
For a moment she felt dizzy with yearning. But for only a moment. No, she told him. She laughed and indicated with one arm again the formal elegance of the walk ahead of them and the fashionable splendor of their fellow strollers. This was where she wanted to be. This was where she belonged.
He brought her eyes back to his face. “Do you speak the truth?” he asked her. They were both signing, she realized, with one hand each. “It makes me sad to see—”
But she did not catch the rest of his sentence. She did not learn what it was that made him sad. Two gentlemen had stopped before them and were smiling and making their bows to her. Two gentlemen who were part of her usual group. They complimented her on her appearance, asked her if they would see her at this evening’s ball, bowed to a silent Ashley, and proceeded on their way. She smiled brightly at Ashley.
“I do not wonder at your success,” he said. “But is it what you want, Emmy?”
Of course it was. Could he not see it? She told him so with her free hand and her smiles. Then she thought of something else. “Yess,” she said, her eyes sparkling into his. Her one and only word. Her full repertoire.
“I could have taught you the rest of the dictionary, Emmy,” he said. “I still could. And you could have taught me—”
But Mr. Maddox, a young lady on his arm, was making his bow to her and asking her how she had enjoyed the ballet last evening.
She would not look at Ashley after they moved on. She could not. She could feel her defenses, like a very thin veneer, in danger of crumbling. She had not even admitted to herself until now that they were just defenses, that she was not really enjoying herself at all. That her heart was all broken up inside her. And she knew too that Ashley had found no peace since she had last seen him, and probably never would. He did not need to use words or sign language to tell her that.
He touched her hand again and squeezed it, and she had no choice but to look up at him. “I felt sorry for Powell,” he said, “that morning out at the falls when you would not look at him, Emmy. Now you are doing it to me.”
She gazed at him and realized with some surprise that her mask had not deserted her. She was smiling.
“Emmy.” He bent his head very close. She guessed that though he was moving his lips he was making no sound at all. “Is there still a chance that you are with child? Are you with child?”
She was not. She had been late, and then she had found her hands shaking out of control with relief when she had discovered she was not. And later, after she had tended to herself, she had thrown herself across her bed and cried. But not necessarily with relief.
Her smile had gone. No, she told him. There would be no child. Any obligation he still felt toward her was over. He was free to think of her merely as a sister again. But she could not tell how relieved he was. His eyes merely gazed back into hers until she lowered her own to his cravat. Yes, there had been the possibility. For two days she had thought . . . But it had not been so.
And she had been sorry. How foolish and irrational emotions could be. If she had been with child, she would have had to marry him. To marry the man who was dearer to her than her own heart while she was merely a dear sister in his eyes. It would have been intolerable. Far more intolerable than this was.
She raised her eyes and smiled at him.
And then she was distracted by another couple who had stopped before them. She turned to look, but she did not know them. They were both smiling at Ashley.
“We meet again so soon,” the man said while the woman laughed.
Emily looked at Ashley. He was nodding in acknowledgment of them. She saw his hesitation, but then he looked down at her.
“Emmy,” he said, “may I present my neighbors at Penshurst, Sir Henry Verney and Miss Verney?” He looked at them. “Lady Emily Marlowe, sister of the Earl of Royce and of the Duchess of Harndon.”
She smiled brightly at them. His new friends, part of his new life. And she liked them. It was foolish, perhaps, to make such snap judgments, but they both looked thoroughly amiable. Miss Verney merely smiled back. Sir Henry made her a bow.
“Of Bowden Abbey,” he said. “I saw it once during my travels. A beautiful place.”
Yes, she told him with a nod. Home. It was more home than Elm Court had ever been, she mused.
“Ah, is that so?” Sir Henry said to Ashley, to whom his eyes had moved for a moment. “Yes, I can tell that you read lips, Lady Emily. I could see that you heard my comment about Bowden Abbey and agreed with it.”
“It must be a strain upon your powers of observation,” Miss Verney said. “But ’tis said that any affliction can be used to strengthen character if one is willing to accept it as a challenge. Would you agree, Lady Emily?”
She was not sure that her deafness had strengthened her character. She was not even sure she had met a challenge. A silent world was as natural to her as a noisy one must be to them, she reflected. But people tended to assume that deaf persons could function as people only if they learned to conform to a world of sound. What about the challenge of silence? Very few people of hearing ever accepted it or even knew that there was a challenge there. People of hearing feared silence, she suspected. But she could not explain all that. Miss Verney was being kind, friendly. Emily smiled, then turned in time to see what Ashley said.
“Emmy is very modest about her accomplishments,”
he said. “She is going to dance with me at tonight’s ball.”
Emily laughed.
Am I? she asked him with raised eyebrows when they moved on a minute or so later.
“Now, on what matter am I being interrogated?” he asked her. “My presumption in presenting you to strangers? Or my presumption in telling you rather than asking that you will dance with me?”
Yes, that, she told him with a signing hand. Am I going to dance?
“But you will, Emmy,” he said, laughing. All the austerity went from his face when he laughed. It would not be good for her to see him thus too often, she warned herself. “Because you love to dance, remember? Because you have always wanted to dance. And because only I am reckless enough to accept the challenge.”
She laughed again.
“Will you?” he asked her with his hand and his eyes as well as with his lips. “Dance with me? Will you, Emmy?”
Yes, she would. Even in front of all the fashionable world. Of course she would.
It was only as he handed her back into his carriage and she arranged her skirts while he came around to the other side and climbed in that she realized something had changed. She was smiling, laughing, bubbling with happiness—as she had been for a month. But there was a difference. The mask had slipped and had been replaced, for the moment at least, by the real thing.
It was a frightening thought.
16
“YOU were quite right,” Sir Henry Verney said to his sister as they continued their stroll along the Mall. “There is quite a marked resemblance. I am surprised I did not notice when he called earlier.”
“He is a little taller and more slender,” Barbara Verney said. “Perhaps not quite as dark. And considerably more handsome, I believe. But undeniably like. We were both surprised to hear that Alice had married, and wondered what manner of man had persuaded her into it. Now we have our answer.”