Only Beloved

by Mary Balogh

  When Dora turned seventeen, they had begun actively to plan the come-out Season she would have the following spring. Her music teacher was engaged for extra hours to give Dora dancing lessons, but the three of them had danced with one another between classes, Dora with her mother while one of them or both hummed the music until they were breathless and Agnes shrieked with laughter and clapped her hands. Then Mama, with Agnes’s little feet balanced on her own, would sing and dance and Dora practiced the steps alone with an imaginary partner until they all collapsed in a heap of laughter and exhaustion.

  Had those days, those years, really been as happy and carefree as Dora remembered them? Probably not. Memory tended to be selective. She remembered her childhood and early girlhood as endlessly sunny days of love and laughter perhaps because of the great contrast with what had followed.

  Dora had been allowed to attend the infamous assembly because she had reached the magic age of seventeen. She had been not quite a young lady but no longer a girl. She had been over the moon with excitement, almost sick with it, in fact. Little Agnes had been excited too, she remembered, as she watched her sister get ready, her chin propped on her hands at one side of the dressing table. She had told Dora that she looked like a princess and wondered if a prince would ride in during the evening on a white steed. They had both giggled over that.

  By the middle of the evening, Dora had been flushed with the pleasure and triumph of her local debut. She had danced every set, even if one of them had been with the vicar, who was as unlike a prince as it was possible for a man to be, and she had known all the steps of the dances even without having to think about them. And then Papa had enacted his terrible scene, his voice growing louder as he accused Mama of cuckolding him with the handsome and much younger Sir Everard Havell, who was on one of his extended visits to relatives in the neighborhood. Before Papa had been coaxed outside by two of their neighbors to “get some fresh air,” he had informed the gathered assembly that he was going to turn Mama out and divorce her.

  Dora had been so terribly mortified that she had hidden in a corner of the assembly rooms for the rest of the evening, resisting all attempts to coax her either into conversation or onto the dance floor. She had even told her best friend to go away and leave her alone. She had twisted her handkerchief so out of shape that even a heavy iron could never afterward make it look perfectly square. She would have died if she could have done so just by willing it. Her mother meanwhile had brazened it out, smiling and laughing and talking and dancing—and keeping her distance from Sir Everard—until the very end of the evening.

  The whole ghastly situation might have blown over, hideously dreadful as it had been. Papa did not often drink to excess, but he was known for embarrassing himself and his family and neighbors when he did. Everyone would have pretended to forget, and life would have continued as usual.

  But perhaps Mama had reached a breaking point that night. Perhaps she had been embarrassed and humiliated one time too many. Dora did not know. She had not attended any adult entertainments until that evening. Or perhaps the accusation was justified even if the public nature of Papa’s accusation was not. However it was, Dora’s mother had fled during the night, presumably with Sir Everard, since he too had disappeared by the following morning without taking leave of his relatives.

  Mama had never come back, and she had never written to any of her children, even Oliver, who was at Oxford at the time. Papa had carried through with his threat even though the divorce had put a large dent in his own fortune and totally wiped out Mama’s dowry, which was to have been divided in two to augment what Dora and Agnes could expect from their father as dowries when they married. Soon after the divorce bill was passed in the House of Lords, word had come to them that Mama had married Sir Everard Havell. Mrs. Brough, a neighbor and longtime family friend—and now Papa’s wife—had brought the news. Mr. Brough had still been alive at the time, and he had received a letter from someone in London who had seen the notice in the morning papers.

  Dora’s life had changed as abruptly and as totally after the night of that assembly as it had changed a month ago in Inglebrook, though in a quite different way. There was no come-out Season for her in London when she turned eighteen. Even if it could have been arranged with someone else to sponsor her, there was the terrible scandal to deter her as well as Papa’s comparative poverty. Besides, she would not have gone even if she could, just as she did not go to Harrogate a few years later when her aunt Shaw had urged her to come and promised to introduce her to society and some eligible gentlemen. She did not go because there was Agnes. Poor bewildered, unhappy little Agnes, who cried for her mother and could have only Dora instead.

  Dora had stayed for Agnes.

  It was as though the very thought summoned her sister. There was a light tap on the door of her bedchamber, and it opened slowly to reveal the anxious face of Agnes and then her full form, wrapped in a dressing gown.

  “Oh, you are awake,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “I thought you would be. What are you thinking about?”

  Dora smiled and almost lied. They very rarely talked about the painful memories from the past. But she found herself telling the truth.

  “Mama,” she said, and she blinked as she realized her eyes had filled with hot tears.

  “Oh, Dora!” Agnes hurried toward her, hands outstretched. “Do you miss her terribly? Even after all this time? I have thought about her occasionally since Flavian went to call on her last year. But I can scarcely remember her, you know. I daresay I would pass her on the street without knowing her, even if she still looked as she did all those years ago. I have only a few flashes of memory of her. But it is different for you. You were seventeen. She had been with you all through your childhood and girlhood.”

  “Yes,” Dora said, squeezing Agnes’s hands and then fumbling for her handkerchief.

  “Does it make a difference to you, what she told Flavian last year?” Agnes asked.

  “That she was innocent?” Dora said. “That she had done no more than flirt a little with that man before Papa said what he did? I can believe it. It was Papa who was the guilty one on that occasion, and I think I can understand why Mama fled. How would one face one’s friends and neighbors again after such a humiliation? Perhaps I can even understand her leaving Papa. How could she forgive what he had done, even supposing that he asked for forgiveness? But she left us, Agnes. She left you. You were little more than a baby. She might have returned but did not. She might have written but did not. She used that horrible evening to do what she must have dreamed of doing for a long time. She ran away with that man. She married him. She put her own gratification before us—before you. No, what she told Flavian does not really make a difference.”

  “She would have been miserable if she had stayed,” Agnes said. “Poor Mama.”

  “People often are miserable,” Dora said. “They make the best of it. They make a meaningful life despite it. They make happiness despite it. Prolonged misery is often at least partially self-inflicted.”

  Agnes had pulled up a chair and sat beside her sister, one hand resting unconsciously over the slight swelling of her unborn child.

  “You made happiness out of misery, Dora,” she said softly. “You made me happy. Did you know that? And did you know that I adored you and still do? I am sorry . . . I am so sorry that you were obliged to give up your youth for me—or that you chose to give it up.”

  Dora turned her head and reached out one hand to grasp her sister’s.

  “There is no greater pleasure, Agnes,” she said, “than making a child feel secure and happy when it is in one’s power to do so. I know I was no substitute for Mama, but I loved you dearly. It was no sacrifice. Believe me it was not.”

  Agnes smiled, and there were tears in her eyes now too.

  “I think,” she said, “that after Flavian I love George more than any othe
r man I know. They all do, you know—the Survivors, that is. They all adore him. He saved all their lives in more ways than just offering his home as a hospital. And he did it all with a quiet, steadfast sort of kindness and love. Flavian says he had a gift for making each of them feel that he—or she in Imogen’s case—had all his attention. He gave so much of himself that it is amazing he has anything left. But that is the mystery of love, is it not? The more one gives, the more one has. I am so happy that he is to have you, Dora. He deserves you. Not many men would. And you most certainly deserve him. Are you happy? You have not just . . . settled? Do you love him?”

  “I am happy.” Dora smiled. “I might have been felled with a feather, you know, when he appeared without any warning in my sitting room a month ago. I was actually cross when I heard his knock on the door. I had had a busy day and I was weary. And then he stepped into the room and asked if I would be obliging enough to marry him.”

  They both laughed and squeezed each other’s hand.

  “I am happy,” Dora said again. “He is kindness itself.”

  “Just kindness?” Agnes asked. “Do you love him, Dora?”

  “We have agreed,” Dora said, “that we are too old for that nonsense.”

  Agnes shrieked and jumped to her feet.

  “Shall I fetch a Bath chair to convey you to the wedding?” she asked. “Shall I have one sent to Stanbrook House to convey George?”

  Dora swung her legs off the window seat, and they both dissolved into laughter again.

  “I am fond of him,” Dora conceded. “There. Are you satisfied? And I do believe he is fond of me.”

  “I am bowled over by the romance of it,” Agnes said, one hand over her heart. “But I do not believe you for a moment. At least, I do not believe it is just fondness you feel for each other. I was watching him while you played the pianoforte a couple of evenings ago, you know. He was positively beaming. And it was not just with pride. And I saw the way you looked at him after you had finished playing, before you were swamped with the attentions of the guests. Oh, Dora, this is your wedding day. I am so happy I could burst.”

  “Please don’t,” Dora said.

  A tap on the door at that moment heralded the arrival of a maid with a breakfast tray for Dora, and Agnes took her leave, promising to be back within the hour to help her dress for the wedding. Dora looked at the buttered toast and the cup of chocolate without appetite, but it would be very embarrassing if her empty stomach began to protest during the nuptial service. She set about clearing the plate.

  Yes, it was her wedding day. But Mama would not be there to witness it, though apparently she lived not far from here. Did she know? Was she aware that Dora was to marry the Duke of Stanbrook today? And would she care if she did? He had been willing to invite her, and for a moment Dora was quite illogically sorry she had said no.

  “Mama.” She murmured the name aloud and then shook her head to clear it. What an idiot she was being.

  Soon Dora’s wedding day began in earnest. Agnes returned as promised and was followed soon after by their sister-in-law, Louisa, and their father’s wife—Dora never had been able to bring herself to call the former Mrs. Brough her stepmother—and by Aunt Millicent. Agnes’s own maid, with much advice and assistance from the ladies, arrayed Dora in her wedding outfit. She had chosen a midblue dress some people might judge to be too plain for the occasion, though Agnes and all the friends who were with her at the time had assured her that the expert cut and style made it not only smart but perfectly suited to her. She wore with it a small-brimmed, high-crowned straw bonnet trimmed with cornflowers, and straw-colored shoes and gloves. Agnes’s maid styled her hair low at the neck to accommodate the bonnet, but prettily coiled and curled so that it did not look as prim as it usually did.

  Everyone—except the maid—proceeded to hug her tightly when it was time for them to leave for the church, and all spoke at once, it seemed. There was a flurry of laughter.

  And then, just when everything was quieting down with only Agnes left and Dora was composing herself for what lay ahead, there was a brisk knock on the door and Flavian poked his head about it, pronounced her decent—whatever would he have done if she had not been?—and opened the door wider to admit himself and Oliver and Uncle Harold. Flavian looked her over with lazy eyes and told her she looked as fine as fivepence—whatever that meant—and Oliver told her she looked as pretty as a picture and he was as proud as a peacock of her. Her brother had never been known for his originality with words. He then proceeded to fold her in his arms and attempt to crush every rib in her body while he assured her that if anyone deserved happiness at last, it was she. Uncle Harold merely looked sheepish and pecked her cheek after telling her she was looking fine.

  Their father, Oliver informed her, was waiting downstairs to escort her to church.

  Papa was neither an emotional man nor a demonstrative one—and that was a giant understatement—but he looked steadily up at Dora a few minutes later as she descended the stairs to the hallway.

  “You look very pretty, Dora,” he said. He hesitated before continuing. “I thank you for inviting Helen and me to your wedding and for asking me, moreover, to give you away. It was never our intention, you know, to make you feel obliged to leave home after our marriage.”

  Dora was not at all sure it had not been Mrs. Brough’s intention. She had had what she had called a frank talk with her stepdaughter not long after Agnes’s marriage to William Keeping and a year after her own marriage to Papa. She had explained that though Dora had had the running of the house since she was little more than a girl, she must not feel obliged to continue doing so now that it had a real mistress. Perhaps, she had suggested, Dora would care to visit her aunt in Harrogate for an indefinite period of time. Or perhaps she would like to make her home with Agnes and Mr. Keeping and allow her sister to look after her for a change. Dora had been hurt, since she had been trying very hard not to involve herself in the running of the home. At the same time, there had been a certain sense of relief in being set free to pursue her own future.

  “I am very glad you both came, Papa,” she assured him quite truthfully. Her father had never gone out of his way to earn her affection, but he had never been unkind either, and Dora loved him.

  He offered her his arm and led her out to the waiting carriage. The sun was still shining from a clear sky. The air was warm and welcoming. Numerous birds, hidden among the branches of the trees in the park, were singing their hearts out.

  Oh, let it all be a good omen, Dora thought.

  8

  At five minutes to eleven it was unlikely there was an empty space in any of the pews at St. George’s Church on Hanover Square. Indeed, a few of the male guests were standing at the back and were even beginning to encroach upon the side aisles. Society weddings during the Season invariably drew a crowd of invited guests, but when the groom was a duke and the bride a virtual unknown, then the crowd was sure to be larger than usual. Even King George IV had explained that he would have been delighted to attend if a long-standing obligation did not oblige him to be out of town on the day in question.

  The organist was playing quietly, muting the low hum of conversation.

  George, seated at the front with his nephew, ought to have been feeling nervous. It was almost obligatory, was it not, for grooms to feel their neckcloths tighten about their throats and their palms grow clammy at this stage of the proceedings? But it was Julian who was showing signs of nerves as he patted one of his pockets to make sure the ring had not escaped its confines during the past five minutes.

  George himself was feeling perfectly composed. No, actually he was feeling something more positive than that. He was aware of a boyish sort of eagerness as he awaited his bride. He was going to savor every word and every moment of the nuptial service with her at his side. The ceremony would usher them into the future they had chosen for themselves. It would be a perf
ect beginning to a marriage of perfect contentment—or so he firmly believed. He had hoped for it when he went into Gloucestershire to offer her marriage, but he had become convinced of it during the past month. She was the wife for whom he had unconsciously longed perhaps all his life, and he dared believe he was the husband she had dreamed of and been denied as a very young lady. Fate was a strange thing, though. He would not have been free for her at that time even if they had met.

  “Is she late?” he murmured when it seemed to him that it must be at least eleven o’ clock.

  Julian pounced upon this small sign of weakness. “Aha!” he said, turning his head and grinning. “You are feeling it. But I very much doubt she is. Miss Debbins does not seem the sort who would ever keep someone waiting. But if she is late, she is certainly not going to be any later. I believe she has arrived.”

  Even as he spoke the bishop appeared at the front of the church, formally and gorgeously vested and flanked by two lesser mortals, mere clergymen. He signaled George to rise. The organ fell silent for a moment—and so did the congregation—and then began to play a solemn anthem. There was a rustling of heads turning to look back and a murmur of voices as the bride came into view and began to make her way along the nave on the arm of her father.