by Mary Balogh
“I have been privileged to know them,” he said as he led her to the room in which Imogen had stayed for three years. It overlooked the kitchen gardens at the back of the house.
“I believe you have,” she said. “And they have been enormously privileged to know you.”
She was perhaps a little biased.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Open my home as a hospital?” he said as she gazed down upon the regimented beds of multicolored blooms in the back garden with which the urns and vases in the house were kept filled. “I really do not know where the idea originated. I have heard it said that some artists and writers do not know where their ideas come from. I do not put myself on a par with them, but I do understand what they mean. The house felt empty and oppressive. I felt empty and oppressed. My life was empty and meaningless, my future empty and unappealing. There was nothing but emptiness all about me and within, in fact. Why did it suddenly occur to me to fill my home and my life with horribly wounded soldiers? It might well have been seen as exactly the wrong solution for what ailed me. But sometimes, I believe, when one asks a question from one’s deepest need and waits for an answer without straining too desperately to invent it, the answer comes, seemingly from nowhere. It is not so, of course. Everything comes from somewhere, even if that somewhere is beyond our conscious awareness. But I am getting tangled up in thought. I ought to have stopped after ‘I really do not know’ as an answer to your question.”
“Perhaps,” she said softly without turning from the window, “the idea came to you at least partly because your son was an officer and died. And because your wife could not bear her grief and shattered your already broken heart.”
He felt as though she had planted a very heavy fist low to his abdomen. He felt robbed of breath and raw with sudden pain.
“Who knows?” he said abruptly after a silence it seemed neither of them would break. “Let me show you the room where Ben learned to walk again and Flavian learned to deal with his rages.”
“I am sorry,” she said, frowning as she turned from the window and took his offered arm.
“Don’t be,” he told her. He heard the curtness of his tone and made an effort to correct it. “You need not apologize for anything you choose to say to me, Dora. You are my wife.” Now his voice sounded merely chilly. Not to mention stilted.
The room to which he took her next had been converted back into a salon that was rarely used since he never entertained on a large scale. At one time, though, there had been sturdy bars along the full length of it, one set fixed to the wall, the other a short distance from it and parallel to it, both at just the right height for Ben to hold on to on either side of his body as he forced weight onto his crushed legs and feet and learned to move them in a semblance of a walk. It had been a painful sight to behold. And very inspiring.
“I have never seen anyone more determined to do something that was apparently impossible,” he told Dora after describing the contraption. “His face would pour sweat, the air was often blue with his language, and it is a wonder he did not grind his teeth to powder when he was not using his mouth for cursing. He was going to walk even if he had to traverse the coals of hell to do it.”
“And indeed he does walk now with his two canes,” she said.
“Out of sheer hellish stubbornness,” he said with a smile. “We were all very happy when he finally convinced himself that using a wheeled chair was not an admission of defeat but actually just the opposite. That did not happen, though, until after he had met Samantha and gone to Wales. He also rides and swims.”
“And Flavian?” she asked him.
“We had a stuffed leather bag suspended from the ceiling for the use of your brother-in-law,” he said, “and leather gloves for him to wear while he pounded the stuffing out of it. He learned to come here when his thoughts were so hopelessly jumbled that he could not get any words out, even allowing for his stammer. His frustration had a way of releasing itself in violence and scared a number of people half to death. It was why I brought him here. His family did not know how to cope with him.”
“Whose idea was the pounding bag?” she asked.
“The physician’s?” he said. “Mine? I cannot remember.”
“I think it was probably yours,” she said.
“You are turning me into a hero, are you?” he asked her.
“Oh, no,” she told him. “You are a hero. You do not need me to proclaim what already is so.”
He laughed and bore her off to the family portrait gallery, which ran the whole width of the house on the west side of the upper floor, where the sun was less of a problem than it would have been on the east.
He might have taken her back to the drawing room instead, he thought later, when it was too late. They had already spent a good portion of the afternoon in the hospital rooms, and it was not too early for tea, especially when he had a surprise awaiting her afterward. But he was enjoying showing her their home and watching her genuine interest. He was loving her company and the knowledge that she belonged here now, that she was not a mere visitor who would leave sooner or later.
So he took her to the gallery.
The Crabbe family could be traced back in an unbroken line to the early thirteenth century, when the first of their recorded ancestors had been awarded a barony for some military exploit that had brought him to the attention of the king. The title had mutated to viscount and earl and eventually to duke. George was the fourth Duke of Stanbrook. There were portraits reaching back to the beginning, with very few omissions.
“I failed a history test on the Civil War when I was eight or thereabouts,” George told Dora. “I could not muster up any enthusiasm for Cavaliers and Roundheads and would not have got a single answer right if I had not been gruesomely fascinated by the fact that King Charles I had had his head chopped off. My father punished me by sending me up here to learn the history of my own family. It was the dead of winter and my poor tutor was sent with me, perhaps as punishment for not having ignited my interest. On a test the very next day, set by my father, I got every answer correct and even exasperated my tutor by writing an essay for each when a single sentence would have sufficed. I have loved the gallery ever since when I suppose I might have come to see it as a sort of torture chamber.”
She laughed. “Am I to be given the test tomorrow?” she asked him.
“I doubt you would have incentive enough to do well,” he said. “It is not winter, and I do not keep a cane at the ready in my library as my father did, though to be fair he never actually used it on me—or my brother.”
They moved slowly along the gallery while he identified the people in each portrait. He kept his commentary brief so as not to bore her, but she asked numerous questions and saw likenesses to him in several of the family members dating back to the last century or so despite elaborate powdered wigs and black facial patches and vast quantities of velvet and lace.
“Ah,” she said with evident pleasure as they came to the large family portrait that had been painted not long before his mother’s death when he was fourteen. He had thought himself very grown-up while it was being painted, he recalled, because neither the painter nor his father had had to tell him even once to sit still—unlike his brother, who had squirmed and yawned and scratched and complained through almost the whole tedious process. “You look very like your father, George. Your brother looks more like your mother—and Julian looks like him. Do you miss your brother dreadfully? And he was younger than you.”
“Yes, I miss him,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, he got himself into the clutches of alcohol and gambling when he was a very young man and never could seem to pull himself free even when most of his contemporaries had finished sowing their wild oats and were settling down to sober adulthood. If he had not died when he did, there would have been virtually nothing left of his property for my nephew to inherit. It seemed for a
while that Julian would follow in his footsteps, but he was fortunate enough to meet Philippa, a mere schoolroom miss at the time. He waited for her to grow up, though her father very rightly sent him packing and he did not set eyes on her for a number of years. He used the time to make himself worthy of her and acceptable to her father. I was and am very proud of him—as well as very fond.”
Dora had turned to look at him. “I could see when I met him in London that you love him dearly,” she said, “and that he returns your regard. He will be a worthy successor to the title.”
“But not too soon, I hope,” he said.
“Oh.” She laughed. “I hope not either. I rather like you right here with me.”
“Do you?” He lowered his head and kissed her briefly on the lips.
She turned back to the wall, and for the first time it struck him that he ought not to have brought her. For she was looking at the blank wall beyond that family portrait and then glancing over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows raised.
“But that is the last one?” she asked him. “There are no more?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
He had been fourteen when that picture was painted, three years before his father’s death. He was forty-eight now. That made for a gap of thirty-four years. He had never had a family portrait done with Miriam and Brendan. And no official one of either of them alone.
He had not thought soon enough of how that blank wall would look to Dora.
“Perhaps,” he said, his voice a little overhearty, “we will make it a project for next winter, Dora. It is a long and tedious business, I recall, sitting for a portrait, but it ought to be done. I would like to have it done. I will find a reputable portrait painter and bring him out here to stay. He can paint us on days when it is too cold and dreary to venture outdoors.”
But she had turned to face him fully now, and her eyes were on his, a puzzled frown between her brows.
“There is no painting of you with your wife and your son?” she asked him. “You did not have it removed out of deference to my feelings, by any chance, did you? You really did not need to do that, George. You must have it put back. I do not resent the marriage you had for almost twenty years long before I even knew of your existence. I am not jealous. Did you think I would be? Besides, they are a part of all this family history you have displayed here.”
Instead of answering, he turned on his heel and took several long strides along the gallery, his boots ringing on the polished wood floor. He stopped as abruptly as he had started, but he did not turn back to her.
“There is no portrait, Dora,” he said. “There ought to have been, perhaps, but I never got around to arranging it. Nothing has been hidden away from your sight. They were a part of my life for many years, Miriam and Brendan, and then they died. Much has happened since—at Penderris, in my life. Now you are here, the wife of my present and of as much of the future as we will be granted. I prefer not to look back, not to talk about the past, not even to think about it. I want what I have with you. I want our friendship, our . . . marriage. I have been happy with it, and I have felt that you are happy too.”
He had not heard her come up behind him. His arm jerked and then stiffened when she set a hand on it.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He swung about. “Don’t keep saying you are sorry.”
Her hand went straight up, as though she had scalded it, and remained suspended above the level of her shoulder, palm out, fingers spread. For a moment there was a look of alarm on her face.
“I am sorry,” she said again.
His shoulders sagged. He could not even remember the last time he had lost his temper. And now he had lost it with Dora.
“No,” he said, “I am the one who needs to be sorry, Dora. I do indeed beg your pardon. Please forgive me. When I married you, I very much wanted life to be new and good for both of us, unencumbered by memories of the past. The past has no real existence, after all. It is gone. The present is the reality we have, and for that fact I am grateful. I like the present. Do you? Do you have any regrets?”
It bothered him that a moment passed before she shook her head and lowered her arm to her side.
“I have always dreamed of being married to a man I could like,” she said, “even though I did not waste my life waiting for him to put in an appearance.”
“And can you like me?” he asked. He found that he was holding his breath
“I can,” she said gravely. And then she smiled, an expression that began in her eyes and spread to her mouth. “And I do.”
“I think,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back, “we ought to go down for tea.”
* * *
Despite a certain amount of nervousness, Dora had quite enjoyed the morning. She had established a working relationship with both Mrs. Lerner and Mr. Humble, the chef, though she believed the latter must be grossly misnamed. She felt she had won their cautious approval. She had met several of the kitchen staff after Mr. Humble had lined them up for her inspection and scolded one bootboy for slouching and one maid for having a stain on her apron even though it was still only morning. Dora was confident that she would remember each servant and even be able to attach the correct name to the correct person.
She had fully enjoyed the afternoon despite the fact that the rain had prevented the walk down on the beach to which she had been looking forward. But there was so much to discover in the house itself that she was not greatly disappointed. And it was lovely indeed to be shown about by George himself, who so clearly loved the house and loved talking about it. She had thoroughly enjoyed his reminiscences about his fellow Survivors and the years when they had all stayed here. And she had loved the visit to the gallery and listening to him identify his ancestors in their portraits and describe a little of their histories. He was not normally a talkative man, she knew. He preferred to listen, and he was very skilled at drawing others, including her, into talking about themselves. He had become absorbed in his family history there in the gallery, though, and he had looked relaxed and contented.
But now she wished they had not gone there at all.
There was something horribly wrong.
Any stranger who knew nothing about the family would assume after being in the gallery that George had been a bachelor until now, though even then the stranger might expect that he would have had a portrait of himself painted at some time during the past thirty years. But in reality he had married a mere three years after that family painting. His son had been born the year after that. And though both the wife and the son were now gone, they had lived as a family for many years. Almost twenty. Right here. At Penderris Hall.
The truly puzzling part was that George loved his family history. That had been obvious this afternoon, as well as the fact that he was proud of those portraits, reaching back in an unbroken line for several centuries. Why, then, had he broken the chain by neglecting to commission a portrait of his own family?
They walked in silence to the drawing room, her hands clasped at her waist, his behind his back. Dora shivered inwardly when she thought of his reaction to her question about the absent portrait. He had turned on his heel and hurried away. Even though he had stopped almost immediately, he had not turned back toward her. And then his temper had snapped and he had blazed at her. For a moment he had seemed like a rather frightening stranger. Oh, he had recovered very quickly and apologized to her. But she had been left with the feeling that she had been told in no uncertain terms that his past was off limits to her. And to everyone else too. There did not seem to be any record of it, any sign, any trace of it.
He had, in so many words, told her that everything that had happened in his life between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five or thirty-six was none of her business. A huge, dark gap of years. And he was right, of course. His former marriage was none of her business. Except that he was her husband and th
ere was supposed to be openness between marriage partners, was there not?
And except that he had somehow induced her to spill out her own life history with all its skeletons and demons before they even left London.
Dora walked beside her husband and realized that she knew him scarcely at all and perhaps never would. For how could one know a man if one experienced only the present with him and knew nothing of the past that had shaped him into the person he was? He had done almost forty-eight years of living before she married him.
Her mind touched unwillingly upon that episode in the church, when the first duchess’s half brother had accused George of murdering his wife. Dora did not believe it, not even for a single moment. And yet . . . And yet something had provoked the Earl of Eastham into coming to their wedding to make such a public scene.
What had happened? What had really happened?
A fire awaited them in the drawing room despite the fact that it was well into June, and the tea tray was being carried in even as they arrived there. George thanked the two footmen and Dora smiled. She liked that about him. She liked that servants were not invisible to him as they seemed to be to so many people who had always been waited upon hand and foot.
“The weather has not been kind to you so far, Dora, has it?” he said as she poured their tea.
“But it will be,” she said. “Imagine my wonder when I wake up one morning to find the sun sparkling from a blue sky onto a blue sea.”
“I hope to be there to witness it,” he said.
They settled on either side of the fireplace and chatted comfortably. His manner was relaxed, pleasant, even affectionate. He smiled often at her, and even when he did not, his eyes were kindly. His irritability, his fury in the gallery seemed almost like a dream. But Dora did find herself wondering about his almost perpetual kindliness, his smiling eyes. Were they a sort of shield? To stop other people from seeing in? To see the world and other people as he wanted to see them despite whatever it was that was shut up deep within him?