No doubt she wanted to question him thoroughly, and a little like Philip, nursed a secret hope that the two fated lovers would one day be married and happy. “Tell me, do you play bridge?”
“I struggle my way through.” He laughed. “I am better as an opponent because I am easily beaten. As a partner, I believe I am a little infuriating.”
“It is true; his attention wanders, Mrs Topwell.” Lady Morton suddenly appeared and settled herself down on the couch next to Celia. “But if you like to play, perhaps you and I could be partnered? I am sure that we shall manage to gossip and win every hand. I can tell by instinct that you are a good player, my dear.”
“That sounds perfect,” Celia said brightly.
At that moment, Daisy returned with a tea tray set for two and laid it down on a low table between the couch and the armchair.
“I shall fetch another tray, My Lady,” Daisy said brightly.
“No matter, my dear,” Lady Morton replied and looked as if she had just thought of something. “Perhaps we could leave this tea tray here for Lady Catherine and Lord Thomas. Mrs Topwell and I are about to play cards, so perhaps you might bring us a little tray to one of the tables?”
“Certainly, My Lady.” Daisy smiled, curtsied, and disappeared once more.
“We can drink tea, gossip, and play bridge, my dear Mrs Topwell. What do you say?”
Catherine studied the two women and saw a little look of conspiracy between them. They were already in perfect harmony, and Catherine did not know whether to laugh or be frustrated by it.
“Lead the way, Lady Morton,” Celia said and sounded fully content as she rose to her feet.
Thomas, who had risen to his feet whilst the ladies left, sat down again and grinned at Catherine.
“I must say, they are like two peas in a pod.” He laughed.
“Indeed they are.” Catherine shook her head a little. “I knew they would get along instantly.”
“I am only sorry that I did not have a few more moments with your aunt before Lady Morton took her away.”
“Yes, she is very good company. I am sure that you would get along with her very well.”
“Still, perhaps she might return to us. Perhaps our paths might cross again if I am lucky.” He smiled, and Catherine knew that he was hoping to cross paths with her more than her aunt.
It was a wonderful and terrible feeling at once, for she knew that nothing could change. He was set to be married, and his father’s feelings towards anyone from the Barford estate had undoubtedly remained as they were year upon year.
Catherine was sure that Thomas had deep feelings for her still, for he had made every attempt to be in her company from the moment she had returned from Derbyshire. And it was so hard to look into his beautiful pale blue eyes and deny him those few moments of happiness wherever he could get them, especially since his feelings, she knew from experience, were always so clear and pure.
But that would only make it harder in the end, not only for Catherine, but for Thomas also. It seemed that they were no better placed now than they had been all those years ago to be together. Whilst her own father had gone, the Duke of Shawcross was hale and hearty and showed no signs of departing this mortal coil.
It was not that she wished another human being dead, of course, just that she was sure that that would be the only circumstance under which she and Thomas could ever be together again. And so it was, in the end, truly impossible.
“Thomas, I must speak to you,” Catherine said suddenly and felt her mouth go dry.
She really did not want to say it; she did not want to put him off his perpetual seeking out of her and that little hope in his eyes, the same hope she felt in her own heart. But one of them had to do it, and she could tell, she just knew, it would have to be her.
Chapter 23
“Oh, my dear Thomas, I had thought the two of you looked so very comfortable the other afternoon. I kept my eye on you as I played bridge, and you looked for all the world as you did all those years ago.” Lady Morton seemed almost as disappointed in the turn of events as Thomas.
“I thought the same, and if I am honest, I did not detect any malice in her words. She simply told me that we must be careful with our hearts and that she is not in any mood to have hers broken again. She was kind, but she was most decidedly firm,” Thomas said sadly and reached for his tea.
His conversation with Catherine at Lady Morton’s bridge afternoon had taken a decided turn very early on. After he had met with her in the woods on the edge of the Barford estate, Thomas had convinced himself that a certain coherence had been achieved between them, that they were not so greatly distant from the two young people they had once been.
When she had comforted him, held his hand, and walked arm in arm with him through the trees, it was as if nothing else in the world had existed for Thomas, not his life or his responsibilities, and certainly not his upcoming nuptials with Lady Eleanor Barchester.
But when she had told him that they had something they must discuss in that very drawing room where he now sat, Thomas had known that it would be something he did not want to hear.
“Thomas, I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been for me to see you again,” she began, and he knew that it was the calm before the storm. “But I can already sense a little closeness developing between us which I know I must avoid. I cannot tell you how it hurt to be separated from you all those years ago, but I suppose you already know it very well yourself.”
“It broke my heart, Catherine,” he said and felt a deep sense of disappointment welling in the pit of his stomach.
“And it broke mine also. And as much as I would not want to feel that again, I would also not want you to feel it either. There is no path which leads to each other anymore, Thomas. There is no way for us to be together. I am a different woman now, and I have been through too much, so much that I would not under any circumstances put myself in harm’s way again. I do not have the same spirit of adventure that I had as a young woman. Life has taught me much and taught me the hard way.”
“But we can be friends, can we not?” he said and saw a brief flash of annoyance on her face.
It was so brief, so transient, that he could hardly believe now that he had seen it at all.
“We are nothing more than friends now, Thomas, and already I can see it leading to disaster for us both.”
“But …”
“No, Thomas.” She cut him off. “You are under the impression that it is as simple as picking up where we left off, and it quite clearly is not. Things are not the same, are they? For one thing, you are soon to be a married man, and I am sure that Lady Eleanor Barchester would not be at all pleased by the attention that you are paying me.”
“But Catherine, please …”
“Thomas, I really do not know what it is you expect from me.”
“I just want to be near you, Catherine. I never want to lose you again.”
“When you walk down the aisle in a few weeks’ time, Thomas, you will lose me forever, and it will be your choice. I have no part to play in this anymore. I have no father to placate and no husband-to-be waiting in the wings for me.”
“You are angry with me,” he said sullenly.
“I am angry that I find myself in this position again. I am angry that I have so easily walked back along the path to pain. That does not mean that I do not care for you Thomas because I do. But this is an impossible situation, and there is not a single thing that I can do about it.”
When Thomas had finished recounting the entire conversation to Lady Morton, he looked at her with his eyebrows raised and his heart full of expectation. However, Lady Morton did not speak for several minutes but simply stared at him a little incredulously.
“Lady Morton, for heaven’s sake say something,” Thomas said with an uneasy grin.
“Thomas, I cannot believe that you were first party to the conversation, then you have undoubtedly thought it through several times, and now you are recounting it
to me, and yet you do not seem to have drawn any conclusion at all.” Lady Morton seemed to be a curious mixture of amused and annoyed.
“And now you are angry with me,” Thomas said and then laughed when he realized he sounded a little self-pitying.
“Thomas, I am going to ask you a question which Catherine already asked you. What is it you expect of her?” Lady Morton put her empty teacup down on the table and leaned back heavily in her armchair.
“I love her; I love her the same as ever I did.”
“You did not answer my question, but never mind for a moment.” Lady Morton laced her fingers together across her lap and stared thoughtfully into the distance. “So, you love Catherine the same as ever you did?”
“I have never stopped loving her, and seeing her again has made me love her even more,” Thomas said miserably.
“And do you love Lady Eleanor Barchester?”
“No, I do not.”
“And do you love any other young lady?”
“No, of course I do not. There has never been anybody in my heart but Catherine,” Thomas said and realized he spoke as if Lady Morton ought to have known that by instinct. “Forgive me; this business rather has me upside down at the moment.”
“And I have no doubt it has Catherine upside down also,” Lady Morton said gently. “But please believe me that I do not mean to antagonize you or say anything to cause you hurt, Thomas, because you are as important to me as Catherine herself is.”
“You must speak freely, Lady Morton.”
“You surely do not expect that you can marry Lady Eleanor Barchester and that Catherine will move back from Derbyshire for the simple pleasure of meeting you once a week by Stromlyn Lake, do you?”
“No, no I do not. Well, I did not really think about it.”
“And have you told Lady Eleanor Barchester that you will not be marrying her?”
“No, I had not thought of that. I do not see how I can escape it.”
“You escape it by saying no, my dear boy. Not only to Lady Eleanor, but to your father.”
“I am afraid it is my father who is the problem. He will be angry enough if I upend this little union between myself and Lady Eleanor and angrier still if he thinks the reason I have done so is for the sake of Catherine Ambrose. He will never agree to my marrying her.”
“You do not know until you ask.”
“I do know, Lady Morton. He would disown me in a heartbeat, and then I would have nothing with which to keep Catherine. She would be marrying a pauper.”
“And when you went to find her all those years ago in Derbyshire … when you spent all those miserable hours in Glossop asking strangers if they had ever heard of her, what had you intended?”
“I wanted to elope with her, to have her marry me.”
“And you would have had nothing, and been disowned, and been a pauper. That is my entire point, Thomas, and it is trying my patience a little that you cannot see it.”
“I cannot expect Catherine to live like that.”
“And you cannot expect her to suffer the pain of seeing you married to another and still manage to maintain some sort of meaningful friendship with you. Imagine how you would feel if it were the other way around. Think back to your own fevered imaginings when you were peering out from the foliage at the graveyard hoping not to set eyes upon Catherine’s husband. You really must try to see it from her side. If you cannot make the right decision, Thomas, you can only expect to have to let her go. It is not fair on her, you see.”
“Then there is nothing to be done,” he said and felt utterly defeated.
“There is something to be done, Thomas. You have a decision to make, and it must be made one way or the other. Whatever happens next is in your hands, Thomas, nobody else’s.
Any move to be made is your move, not Catherine’s, not your father’s, not Lady Eleanor’s. It is your choice, Thomas. Now, one way or the other, you must make it.”
“You are right; I must make a choice.”
Chapter 24
Catherine had felt a little steadier in the days since she had told Thomas precisely of her fears and feelings on the subject of their continued friendship. She did not want to cut him out of her life altogether, but she feared that if she did not, the pain would never cease.
At first, she had wanted to return immediately to Derbyshire, that would solve everything for her. That great distance would be put between her and Thomas again, and she could pretend that she had no choice in the matter just as things had been for so long.
But Celia had managed to talk her out of it, calmly telling her that she must concentrate on her returning relationship with her brother Philip for a while, that she must find some way to have the strength and the stomach to visit him without fearing the sight of Thomas, or even news of him.
Catherine knew that she must do just as Celia said, or she would never forgive herself. She had already lost Thomas a long time ago. This was nothing new, nothing that could ever be solved.
But she had been given a second chance to have a wonderful brother, and she knew she must not waste it. Philip was so precious to her and was now one of only four other people who knew that Henry was her child. And not only did he know it, but he was pleased to have a secret nephew, even if that nephew did not know it himself.
Catherine had already seen him playing with the child, taking him fishing and standing at the foot of the taller trees, urging him to climb higher and higher despite Catherine’s protestations.
She had seen the light of love in her brother’s eyes, and not only that, but absolute unconditional acceptance of Henry’s place in the world. And Henry had taken to Philip as a duck takes to water; how could she possibly separate them for great lengths of time in the future?
And so she concentrated on that for a few days, enjoying being at Barford Hall for once in her life, and trying not to think too hard about the future. It had given her a certain calm and so, some days later when her brother handed her a sealed letter in handwriting she recognized as if it were her own, she was surprised to find how instantly affected she was by it.
“You have a letter, Catherine,” Philip said after breakfast, handing it to her in private. “From Thomas, I think.” He whispered the last and smiled, and Catherine could not help laughing at his curiously hopeless romanticism.
“Thank you,” she said and quickly opened it. “No, Philip, you need not leave. I have no secrets to keep anymore.” She smiled at him before turning her attention to the letter in her hand.
“My darling Catherine,
Ever since our conversation in Lady Morton’s drawing room, I have been unable to think of anything but you. I understand entirely why you said what you said, and I certainly cannot blame you for one moment for saying it.
I needed to understand what I was not seeing, and now I think I do. But I must speak to you, Catherine. I have something that I must say to you, and I would beg that you would hear it. I know you did not want particularly to see me again for a while, but I must ask you to reconsider that on this occasion.
If you are agreeable, I will be waiting at the old place this afternoon at midday. I am in hopes of seeing you there.
All my love,
Thomas.”
When Catherine finished reading it, she folded it and sighed deeply. Philip shuffled a little awkwardly as if he ought not to have been there at all, not even to witness her reading the thing.
Love Stories of Enchanting Ladies: A Historical Regency Romance Collection Page 47