by Mary Balogh
They laughed a great deal during the rest of the afternoon and talked mostly nonsense. They were comfortable and happy together. Oh, yes, and vastly uncomfortable, too, somewhere beneath the surface of their gaiety. It was always very difficult to live through the last event of a good interlude, he thought. One could not enjoy it. One was too aware of the need to enjoy it to the full because there would be no more.
The afternoon was an agony to him.
He could remember sitting at Dorothea’s bedside when she was nearing the end—it had come unbelievably quickly. She had been conscious and able to listen and even to talk a little. It had been so hard to talk to her. There had always been the awareness—these might be the very last words I will ever speak to her. And she had been good to him. He had wanted to say something memorable—not that she would have long in which to remember.
She was the one who had said it—and he had remembered ever since. I am so very fortunate, she had whispered to him over and over again during what had turned out to be their last hour together. He thought she had meant that she was fortunate to die while she was still his mistress, before he tired of her. He had been humbled by her devotion. And so he had told her the big lie, and had never been sorry. I love you, my sweet, he had whispered back.
Partings were such wrenchingly dreadful things. He knew by her manner that Samantha did not look forward to this one, but for her, of course, it was a mere friendship that was ending. She would feel sorrow rather than agony. And so he had the extra burden during the afternoon of hiding his own excruciating pain. For three days he had counted the hours. Now he was counting minutes, not knowing exactly how many he had left.
She loved the rapids, with their bare, jutting rocks and the canopy of trees overhead and the sense—created by the sound of rushing water—of utter seclusion. The laughter and the bantering stopped for several minutes while she wandered slowly up and down the rocky bank and he gazed at her.
“Not a huge waterfall,” she said to him at last. “It would be too much, too overpowering. It is wildness that is called for here rather than grandeur. But a series of smaller falls, yes. It would be an improvement—if this can be improved upon. Oh, it is lovely, Mr. Wade. How I envy the Marquess of Carew his home.”
That had been his thought exactly—a series of falls rather than one great one. Something to stand beside and stroll beside. Something to catch the light and shade at different angles.
“I am sorry,” she said, looking at him with contrite eyes. “You are the landscaper. I was merely to approve or disapprove your ideas. Now tell me that you planned a huge waterfall and I shall squirm with embarrassment.”
“Your mind must be attuned to mine,” he said. “You suggested exactly what I had planned.”
She set her head to one side in a characteristic gesture that he would always remember about her. It was something she did when she thought of something particularly important to her. “Yes, that is it,” she said. “The reason we are friends. We think alike.”
“But you do not like sopranos,” he said.
“Yes, I do.” She smiled. “But I prefer tenors.”
They were back to the lightness and the laughter. And the sadness.
He considered asking her back to the house for tea. But they had spent too long on their walk. Besides, he had the feeling that being indoors with her, sipping on their tea, would be awkward this afternoon. He considered taking her to the folly above the lake he had mentioned to her at the house. But it was too late. And again, sitting in such a quiet, secluded spot, there would be awkwardness. He did not believe that this afternoon they would be able to sit through one of their companionable silences.
“It is time for me to go home,” she said quietly, the lightness and laughter gone from her voice again.
“Yes,” he said. “They will wonder where you are.”
It was a long walk back to the stream. He had the impression that she wanted to stride along quickly. But she had to match her pace to his limp. He could have suggested that they part company before reaching it, as she had suggested on two previous occasions, but he did not do so. He could not let her go before he had to, agonizing as these final minutes were.
They walked in silence.
The sun was sparkling off the water of the stream. There were daffodil buds among the trees on the other side. He had not noticed before that they were almost ready to bloom.
She turned to him. “Thank you for these afternoons,” she said with formal politeness. “They have been very pleasant.”
“Thank you.” He made her a half-bow. “I hope you have a safe journey. And a pleasurable Season.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope the Marquess of Carew will approve all the renovations you have planned.”
She smiled at him.
He smiled at her.
“Well,” she said briskly. “Good-bye, Mr. Wade.”
“Good-bye, Miss Newman,” he said. He thought that she was going to offer him her hand, but she did not. Perhaps she found the thought of touching his right hand distasteful—though he did not really believe it was that.
She turned and tripped lightly across the stepping-stones, holding her skirt high enough that he had a glimpse of her trim ankles above the dainty shoes. He waited for the final moment, schooled his features for it. He had his smile ready and his left hand ready.
She did not turn back. Within moments she was lost among the trees.
He was left feeling that he had been robbed of something infinitely precious. Something quite, quite irreplaceable. He was left feeling emptiness and panic and a pain deeper than any he had felt before, even if he included the year following his “accident” when he was six. This was not a physical pain and he did not know how it was to be healed. Or whether it could be healed.
He swallowed three times against a gurgling in his throat before turning to make his weary way back to Highmoor Abbey.
SHE HAD HUGGED AND kissed the children and left them in the nursery with their nurse. She had hugged Rosalie, though Albert had warned her to be careful not to squash his new offspring and won for himself a look of gentle reproach from his blushing wife. She had shaken hands with him and with Gabriel and then turned both cheeks for the latter’s kiss. He had held onto her hand and told her that she must come back at any time her court could spare her and for as long as she wished.
“You are as close as any sister to Jennifer, my dear,” he said. “You must not neglect her out of any mistaken idea that you are imposing on our hospitality.”
“Thank you,” she whispered to him and squeezed his hand tightly.
She hated good-byes. Hated them.
And then, just outside the carriage, she watched as Jenny kissed Aunt Aggy and Gabriel handed the older lady inside. Then Samantha hugged Jenny herself.
“I have had a wonderful time here,” she said. “Thank you so much for having me. I do wish you were coming to town for the Season. It is going to seem an age.”
“I believe,” her cousin whispered to her, “I do believe, Sam, that I have good reason for staying away from the bustle of town life this spring. Keep your fingers crossed for me.”
“Are you whispering secrets, my love?” Gabriel asked, looking sternly at his wife. “Is she telling you how we seem about to increase the world’s population, Samantha?”
They both blushed while he chuckled.
“Allow me,” he said, offering Samantha his hand.
And then she was inside the carriage, sitting next to Aunt Aggy, who was dabbing a handkerchief to her eyes and trying her hardest not to snivel. Samantha patted her knee reassuringly.
They were on their way. They both leaned forward to wave. Jenny and Gabriel were standing together on the terrace, his arm about her waist. Albert and Rosalie were in the doorway, her arm linked through his. Sometimes, Samantha thought, it was hard to know why she distrusted love and marriage so much. But she saw far more marriages in which there was either mutual indifference or open hos
tility than unions like these two. And love, she knew from experience, was an extremely unpleasant emotion.
She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. She drew a slow and deep breath. She hated partings, even those that were only temporary.
“There, that is done,” her aunt said briskly, blowing her nose rather loudly and putting her handkerchief away inside her reticule. “I always feel fine once I have made my farewells and driven out of sight. I must say we had a very pleasant stay, dear. It is just a pity that there were so few eligible gentlemen for you to meet.”
Aunt Agatha was of the undying opinion that Prince Charming himself was about to make an appearance in her niece’s life to sweep her off her feet in true fairy-tale tradition.
“I enjoyed the week Francis was here,” Samantha said. “He is always good company.”
“And he adores you,” Aunt Agatha said. “But I cannot like the idea of your marrying a gentleman who favors lavender coats, Samantha.”
Samantha laughed.
“It is a great shame,” her aunt said, “that the Marquess of Carew was not in residence—yet again. He is a single gentleman and by no means in his dotage, or so I have heard. I have never met him, which seems strange, really, does it not? I believe he must be somewhat reclusive. Though if that were true, one would expect him to live at home most of the time. Yet he certainly does not do that.”
“Perhaps he is unbelievably handsome,” Samantha said, “and if I but met him, I would fall wildly in love with him and he with me and we would be wed within the month.” She always enjoyed teasing Aunt Aggy, who did not really have much of a sense of humor—mainly because she did not always recognize that she was being teased.
“Well, dear,” she said, “I must confess that has been my hope ever since Jennifer married Lord Thornhill and we first came here and discovered that Chalcote marches right alongside Highmoor land. Maybe next time. Though it is altogether possible that before that you will have found the gentleman you dream of. The Season always brings some new faces to town.”
They were passing the imposing stone gateposts leading to Highmoor land. Just beyond them, not quite in sight, was the gatehouse. And a mile or more beyond that, Highmoor Abbey. Behind it—a good way behind it—the trees and the stream and the rapids. And to the right of that, the hills and the lake and then the stream again, forming the border between Chalcote and Highmoor.
There was an ache in Samantha’s chest that had been there since the afternoon before. It puzzled her. It was not that she did not know its cause. She did. But the ache, the sense of grief, seemed far in excess of the circumstances.
They had been wonderful afternoons—all four of them. Unconventional, carefree afternoons with a companion whose mind was in tune with her own. Not a handsome or in any way attractive companion—not physically, at least. Nothing that would help explain the depression she was feeling at the knowledge that she would never see him again, that they would never again spend such an afternoon together.
She had not even been able to turn back yesterday after crossing the stream to wave to him, as she had done on the other three afternoons. Stupidly, she had been afraid that she was about to cry.
She wished now that she could go back and wave. Have one last look at him.
She leaned forward suddenly and peered through the window. A hedgerow hid it from sight almost immediately. But she had not been mistaken. For the merest moment she had been able to see the abbey in the distance.
She was surprised and utterly mortified a moment later to hear a great hiccup of an inelegant sob and to realize that it had come from her. She bit her upper lip hard enough to draw blood, but she could not stop the terrible ache in her throat or the tears that spilled over onto her cheeks.
She hoped that Aunt Aggy had fallen asleep. But it was much too soon for that.
“Oh, my poor dear,” her aunt said, patting her back as Samantha had patted her knee a few minutes earlier. “You and Jennifer are so close that it is a joy to see. Though I feel for you now when you are driving away from her. And all because I wanted to give dear Sophie some of my company. You will feel better once we have stopped for luncheon and put some distance between us and Chalcote.”
“Yes,” Samantha said. “I know I will, Aunt Agatha. I am just being foolish.”
She felt very guilty.
LIFE QUICKLY BECAME LESS solitary. He let word seep out that he was at home. There were callers—several of them. Thornhill was first, as he had expected, riding over from Chalcote with his friend, Sir Albert Boyle. They were pleasant company, the two of them. Thornhill and the marquess were in the way of being friends now, though there had been too many years between them when they were growing up for them to have been boyhood chums.
He was invited to Chalcote the following evening for dinner and enjoyed the company of his amiable, kind-hearted hosts and their friends. He was amused to see the terror die out of the eyes of the extremely shy Lady Boyle almost as soon as she had been presented to him and realized that he was not an imposing or a forbidding figure, despite the grandeur of his title. He set himself to putting her even more at her ease and found the subject that loosened her tongue and relaxed her tension. Before the evening was over, he felt that he knew her children as well as anyone, though he had not set eyes on them. He guessed that the third, which she was carrying quite visibly despite the discreetly loose folds of her gown, would be no burden to her.
“What a pity it is that you did not arrive home two days sooner, my lord,” Thornhill’s lady said. “My aunt and my cousin have just returned to London after a three-month stay. I would have so liked for you to have met them.”
“Miss Newman is in possession of both youth and beauty,” Thornhill said, amusement in his voice. “I believe my wife has matchmaking tendencies, Carew.”
“Oh, you wretch!” his lady said in dismay. “I have no such leanings, my lord. I merely thought it would have been pleasant for them to have met you and for you to have met them. Oh, do stop grinning at me, Gabriel. I do believe I am blushing.”
The marquess had always liked them as a couple. Courteous and well bred as they undoubtedly were, there were frequent glimpses of the informality and deep affection of their personal relationship.
“What Gabe means,” Sir Albert said, “is that Jennifer is very close to her cousin and would love nothing better than to have her established permanently on an adjoining estate.”
“Oh,” the countess said, outraged, “this is the outside of enough. This is infamous. Now I know I am blushing. What will you think of us, my lord?”
He laughed. “I am wishing,” he said, “that I might have had a look at this paragon. But, alas, it seems that I am too late. It is the story of my life. Lady Boyle, do you find that your children thrive on Yorkshire air? We Yorkshiremen have thought of bottling it and sending it south at a profit, you know.”
The conversation turned into different channels.
And there were other callers, other invitations. The Ogdens had a niece staying with them and clearly had hopes when he came to dinner and was presented to her. But there was such naked horror in her face when he moved into the room and when his gloved right hand became visible to her that he did not embarrass her by engaging her in conversation during the evening more than strict courtesy dictated, much to the disappointment of his hosts.
The solitariness largely disappeared. It might have vanished completely had he wished. There were invitations for all sorts of daytime activities with his peers, as well as to the more formal evening entertainments. But he had always liked to keep to himself much of the time.
He spent most of his days, when there was no rain and sometimes even when there was, tramping about his park. He wandered many times to the lake, trying to let the peace of the place seep into his mind. But he kept looking at the spot where the bridge would be erected and a pavilion built beyond it. And he kept hearing her voice calling it a rain house. He walked out to the rapids and tried to become a pa
rt of the utter seclusion of the scene. But he could see her wandering the bank and telling him that there should be a series of waterfalls there rather than one grand one. And he kept seeing her head tip to one side as she told him that that was why they were friends—because they thought alike.
He sat on the stone bench at the top of the hill and set his hand on the seat beside him. But it was so very empty. And so very cold. And solitariness there became naked loneliness.
He wandered down to the stream and the stepping-stones across to Thornhill’s land. He looked across at the blooming daffodils and imagined her disappearing among the trees in her pink dress and spencer and her straw bonnet. But she did not look back. He had smiles to give her and a hand with which to acknowledge her.
But she did not look back.
He sat beside the fire in his study, gazing at the empty chair at the other side. The very empty chair. And he could hear her asking what had happened—had it been an accident, or had he been born this way? But he could not bring her back to tell her the truth, instead of the lie he had always told. Not that he would tell the truth even if she were sitting there now….
He found he could no longer work in his study. He had to take his books upstairs with him. He found that it had not been such a good idea to bring her into the house after all. She haunted it.
He rarely drank, except for a social drink with guests or a host. He could not remember a time when he had been drunk. But he got thoroughly foxed one night, sitting in his study with a decanter of brandy, staring at the empty chair, becoming more bedeviled with self-pity with each mouthful.
Beauty and the beast. The only way he might stand even a remote chance with her was to reveal his identity and hope that it would lure her into an interest for him that went beyond friendship. But then he would despise her—and himself for setting out such lures and taking advantage of them.