by Mary Balogh
She looked back at him with smiling eyes and he caught his breath again at the expression in them, far deeper than the smile itself. It was the expression she had worn as he had loved her, deeper than the physical passion she had obviously felt. It was Emmy’s usual look of serenity and peace. It was her usual look of deep affection. It was the look of a woman who had just received the seed of a man who loved her body. It was—ah, it was far more than any one of those, or even of the sum total of them. He would not verbalize even in his mind what her expression told him.
“Emmy.” He touched his lips very lightly and briefly to hers. “I am not going to say the obvious—not yet. We have been lovers, last night and today. We both know what that might mean and what it should mean. You may well be with child, and even apart from that possibility we should both now do what is right and proper. But I have learned from you since last time. I have learned that there is something far more important than what society tells us is proper.”
She touched her fingertips to his lips. He was not sure there was not a tinge of sadness in her smile.
“I want to tell you some things,” he said. “I want to burden you with knowledge that should be mine alone. I want you to know the man to whom you have opened your greatest treasure as a woman. The man who will offer himself to you for life some time soon—unless you indicate that under no circumstances can you accept me. You knew me once better than anyone has ever known me, I believe, little fawn. You no longer know me. You care for me. Perhaps you believe you care enough to marry me. But you do not know me, Emmy. And so I must tell you.”
“I know you,” she said, indicating with her hand that it was heart knowledge of which she spoke. But she said the words aloud.
It was still a shock to hear her speak, her words slowly and distinctly spoken, her voice low and toneless and yet strangely sweet.
“There are so many things about me you do not know,” he said. “There were seven years when you did not see me, Emmy. So many things.”
“No, no, no,” she said. She set one hand flat over his heart. “I know you, Ahshley.”
Why was it, he wondered, that he so often found himself fighting tears when he was with Emmy, even though she could also bring him closer to happiness than he had thought ever again possible? He had shed no tears after the death of his wife and her son.
Tell me, then. She spoke now with her hands and her eyes.
“Not here.” He got to his feet and took her hand in his. He had to make this more real to her. She had to understand that he was not the man she had loved more compassionately than his own sister had ever loved him. It seemed that she must marry him now. But he needed her to understand how unlovable he was, how despicable. He could not even offer himself to her again with all the darkness shut up within. She had a right to know.
He did not talk to her as they descended the hill and approached the house from the side. They did not see anyone on the way, for which fact he was thankful, and the servants’ stairs were deserted too. He paused for a moment outside the door of Alice’s suite and took Emily’s hand firmly in his own.
“These were her rooms,” he said when they had stepped into the dressing room and he had shut the door firmly behind them. “As she left them. No one cleared them out when she died because no order to do so was ever given. I have not given that order since my own arrival here, though I have wanted to and have been on the verge of doing so numerous times. These were her clothes.” He had released her hand in order to open the double doors of a large wardrobe. “You can breathe in her perfume if you take a deep breath.”
She did so, then stood very still. He opened the door into the bedchamber and she followed him inside.
“She was a very feminine woman,” he said. “As you can see, she loved pinks and lavenders—and frills and flounces and fussiness. She was very beautiful—small and dainty and seemingly fragile. She aroused all of a man’s protective instincts. Men routinely fell in love with her.”
She touched the frilled satin bed hangings, a look of deep sadness in her eyes.
“Come,” he said, beckoning her toward the door leading into the small sitting room. “This is where she sat and wrote letters and sewed. It has all the daintiness one would expect of Alice’s personal domain.”
He watched her run a hand over the inlaid wood pattern on top of the small escritoire. She slid open a desk drawer, something he had never been able to bring himself to do. She reached in after a few moments and drew out two oval picture frames, hinged together in the middle, then turned them over and stood looking down at the two pictures. He took a step toward her and drew in a slow breath as he looked over her shoulder.
“Alice,” he said, though she did not look up to see him speak. Alice, looking as lovely and as vital as she had looked before they married, when she had nursed him, when he had been weak and in need.
Emily looked up at him. She was pointing to the other portrait. She pointed at him and then back at the picture. Like you, she was telling him.
He was a young man, dark like Alice, blue-eyed. He must be her brother, Gregory Kersey, Ashley reasoned. And yes, he thought, there was perhaps a slight likeness.
“Gregory Kersey,” he said. “Alice’s brother.”
She set the portraits back inside the drawer as she had found them and closed it carefully. She looked up at him.
“I hated her, Emmy,” he said.
She gazed at him, her face without expression.
“We fell in love in great haste,” he said. “She was my nurse when I was very sick. I was her patient when she was grieving and adjusting to life in a new country. We married before we really knew each other. I repulsed her. She would—make no attempt to like me. She was repeatedly unfaithful to me. I suppose I was much to blame. Rarely is the fault all on one side in a failed marriage. I grew to hate her. A hundred times I must have wished her dead.”
“No,” she said aloud.
“My mind shied away from the wish,” he said. “But ’twas there. I longed to be free of her, to be free of the endless nightmare of being bound to her for life.”
Her eyes were wide with shock.
“Thomas was not mine,” he said. “I would tell no one else this, Emmy. I would defend the honor of his memory with my life if anyone were to challenge his legitimacy. I acknowledged him as mine. He had my name. He was an innocent child whom I loved.”
She frowned.
“Emmy,” he said, “the ‘business meeting’ that kept me from home the night of the fire was no such thing. I spent the night in the bed of a married woman.” He wondered suddenly if she had understood his torrent of words. He had not even tried to sign any of the meaning to her. But it appeared she had understood.
She closed her eyes and tipped back her head. He waited for her to look at him again. When she did so, her eyes were filled with pain. Pain for herself? Pain for him? Knowing Emmy as he did, he did not doubt there was plenty of the latter.
“There was nothing between Alice and me after our wedding night,” he said. “The night of the fire was my first adultery, though I do not suppose it would have been my last. ’Tis no excuse anyway: Adultery is adultery. My wife and the child I loved died while I was committing it.”
Her face had lost all vestiges of color. He wondered if she would faint. But he would not step forward to support her. He kept himself rigidly apart from her.
“Now tell me,” he said quietly, “that you know me, Emmy.”
She closed her eyes again and swayed on her feet. But after several moments she took a few hurried steps toward him, wrapped her arms tightly about his waist, and pressed her forehead to his cravat.
“I know you,” she said in words.
Why did her words feel like absolution? Like forgiveness? She did not have the power to forgive him. No one had that power. Perhaps not even God, whom he had never asked. There was no
forgiveness.
He set his arms like iron bars about her, buried his face against her hair, and wept. Wept with deep, painful, racking sobs. For a long time he could do nothing to bring them under control. For a long time he touched the very bottom of despair. But he held on tightly to Emily, who leaned warmly and softly into him. And he knew that he was clinging to the only hope he might ever have of pardon and peace.
• • •
It was a damp and misty morning. The grass was wet and chilly beneath her bare feet. But she walked up onto the hill anyway, not even trying to see down into the valley or ahead of herself into the trees. She walked to draw tranquillity from the morning.
He was far more troubled than she had ever realized. The burden of his guilt was far heavier than he had indicated. And yet she could not feel totally dejected this morning. He had not loved Alice. It was a selfish thought to delight in, but she could not help repeating the thought over and over in her mind. He had not loved Alice. His terrible suffering had not been caused by grief over a lost love.
She remembered the look in his eyes as he had made love to her the afternoon before. And his determination that she know all before he offered her marriage again. He had not tried to excuse his own guilt. He had tried to show himself to her as he saw himself—evil and unforgivable. She remembered how he had cried in her arms as if his heart would break, perhaps because she had tried to tell him that he was still Ashley, that he was no different now than he had been seven years before. Only more wounded. Deeply wounded.
There was hope this morning. Hope for him. Hope for herself. She knew that when he asked again, she would say yes. Happiness was by no means assured them. But unhappiness was certain if they parted—for both of them, she believed. He needed her as she needed him. It was the dependency of love. Neither needed the other as any sort of crutch. They needed each other because they cared for each other, because the world was a more meaningful place when the other was close.
He had seemed quite genuinely cheerful last evening when they had all attended a soiree at a neighbor’s house. It was true that he had avoided being in close company with Sir Henry Verney, though the two of them had been civil to each other. But he had treated Miss Verney and everyone else with his old amiability. Perhaps in time this new home and this new neighborhood, despite the fact that Alice had lived here, would bring stability and peace to his life. Perhaps she would be able to help. She breathed in the clean, damp smell of the air. This morning she was beginning to believe that this would be her home for the rest of her life. And the thought was deeply pleasing to her. She was no longer haunted by Alice’s ghost.
She had even lost her fear of Major Cunningham. Not her dislike, it was true; she doubted she would ever grow to like him. But perhaps that was unfair. He had contrived to speak privately with her last evening. He had sat beside her a little apart from most of the other guests, who were grouped about the pianoforte listening to the musical offerings of several of their number.
“Lady Emily,” he had said, a look of frank apology on his face, “will you ever be able to forgive me?”
She had not known quite how to react. A swift glance had shown that both Ashley and Luke were not far away.
“My behavior was unpardonable,” he had said. “Even if you had been what I mistook you for, ’twould have been unpardonable. I will not even try to justify what I said and what I suggested. I can only ask humbly for your pardon, without any expectation that it is my right to receive it. Will you forgive me?”
It had been a handsome apology and she had been able to see nothing but shame and sincerity in his eyes. She had nodded her head quickly.
“My sincerest thanks,” he had said. “And my sincerest good wishes. Ashley is my dearest friend, but it does not take the intuition of friendship to see that he has conceived a deep affection for you. May I hope for his sake that you return it?”
She would not answer that. It was none of his concern.
“I ask only,” he had said, “because ’tis my dearest wish to see him happy again, and I believe you are the lady to make him happy. But not here—at Penshurst, I mean. Always here the memory of his late wife would come between you, Lady Emily. Pardon me for speaking so frankly about what seems not to concern me. But friends must always wish the best for each other. I have offered to purchase Penshurst. I like it. So I am somewhat partial, you see.” He had smiled. “Persuade Ashley to accept my offer. ’Twill be for your happiness and his.” He had looked apologetic again. “And mine.”
It had not been easy to understand every word; he was undoubtedly unaccustomed to talking to a deaf person. But she had understood the main message, she believed.
She still felt surprise. He wished to buy Penshurst. Was he not an army officer? She hoped Ashley would not sell. She had felt a strange attachment to Penshurst almost from her first sight of it.
But at least this morning she could feel a certain respect for the major. She would work on growing to like him. After all, people constantly did unforgivable things. Why would forgiveness be of any value if it were reserved only for forgivable offenses? And didn’t Ashley wrongly believe that he had done something unforgivable?
The mist was lifting in places. She stood still to gaze downward at a short stretch of the river that had for the moment come into view. The mist had made her hair damp. She lifted a hand to push it back behind one shoulder.
And then she felt such a piercing dread that she became momentarily paralyzed. There was the quite irrational terror that her heart had stopped and would not start beating again. She seemed to have forgotten how to draw breath into her lungs.
She did not know where the terror came from. And for those few moments she was unable even to turn her head to find its source. There were only mist and trees and hillside—and a wide bloody swath across the back of her lifted hand.
She stared at it as if it were someone else’s hand, someone else’s wound. Several moments passed before she recognized that the main focus of her feelings was pain. Her eyes turned to the tree trunk directly behind her and gazed at it. Her mind must be working very sluggishly, she suddenly thought with great lucidity. She had been staring at the bullet embedded in the trunk for several seconds before she really saw it. Now she stared for several more seconds. And then again down at her hand, from which the blood was dripping onto her skirt.
Panic took her then and she hurtled blindly downward through the mist, wailing loudly without realizing that she was doing so. The silence was a ravening terror at her back.
A footman in the hall of the house gaped at her, but he did not have to react further. Luke was on his way downstairs. He paused for a moment before hurrying toward her. She collided with his chest and clawed at him.
“Hush, hush, hush,” he was saying, but she did not look at his mouth. He lifted her chin and held her head steady. “What have you done to your hand? It appears to be bleeding rather copiously. Hush now. Hush, Emily. I shall take you to your room and we will have it seen to.”
But she clawed at him again without seeing his words. And then other hands gripped her shoulders tightly from behind. She did not hear herself scream.
“She has cut herself rather nastily,” Luke was saying. “She is also in shock.”
One of the hands on her shoulders moved down her back to behind her knees. The other circled her shoulders. Ashley lifted her into his arms.
“Try not to struggle, love,” he said, “or I may drop you. Luke, will you bring Anna to her room? We will have to see if a physician is needed. Hush, love. Shh.”
She was still wailing. She buried her face against Ashley’s neck as the concerned face of Major Cunningham came into view.
• • •
Ashley had been in his study, writing some letters before breakfast. His pen had made an ugly squiggle across the page and spattered it with ink blots when he had heard her. The sounds had been
chillingly inhuman, more like those of an animal in pain than of a woman. Yet he had known even before flinging back the door and striding out into the hall that it was Emmy.
“Shh, love. Shh,” he said to her as he carried her up the stairs, though he knew she could not hear him. The horrible wailing continued. Luke hurried ahead of them, presumably to fetch Anna. But it was not necessary. She was running down from the floor above, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Merciful heaven!” she exclaimed. “What has happened? Emmy! What has she done?”
“She has cut her hand,” Luke said, “and is deep in shock.” He hurried on ahead to open the door to Emily’s room.
Ashley set her down on the bed, but she clutched at him with renewed panic. The sounds had not abated at all.
“Hush, love,” he said, and heedless of his brother and sister-in-law, who were both in the room, he followed her down onto the bed and gathered her against him, rocking her, crooning to her.
“Emmy.” Anna’s voice was shaking. “Emmy, what happened?”
Luke was talking to a maid, for whom he must have rung or who had been sent up. He was directing her to bring warm water and cloths, soothing ointment and bandages. His voice, as one might have expected of Luke, sounded reassuringly firm and calm.
It was a raw and nasty cut, Ashley saw when he looked down at the hand that clutched his frock coat. And still bleeding. It must hurt like the devil, he thought. But she was too distraught even to feel the pain at the moment. He forced her head back from his chest and held her chin firmly.
“Emmy,” he said. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut. He kissed each in turn and then her mouth. “Emmy.”
Her eyes, when she opened them, were blank with terror. Oh God, and he had looked out of his window this morning, seen the weather, and assumed that she would not think of going out. He had not been there to watch over her.