by Vanessa Gray
Over the next week, Richard’s fears unwittingly paralleled his butler’s. He visited Chloe daily, and found Chloe civil but very quiet.
Trying to rouse her to a display of interest, he mentioned changes that she might wish to make at Davenant Hall. “For you must know,” he told her, “that you will have full rein over the house.”
Chloe, clearly evasive, said, “Your mother’s taste was impeccable, Richard. I do not think I should change anything.”
To one subject after another broached by Richard, Chloe turned a deaf ear or returned an evasive answer. Once, Richard said, seeing the puppy frolicking at their feet, “At least Nimrod will be happy, rejoining his litter-mates.” It was clear that Chloe was sunk in misery and when Chloe was miserable, Richard himself could not be happy.
The pearls had miraculously reappeared, and the other members of the household had regained their good humor. The wedding plans were going on apace, and Richard told Chloe that his cousin Nell was asking for them to come next week. Chloe apathetically agreed.
The Rothwells were planning the wedding. Lady Rothwell had given an order to Miss Sinclair, with Edward’s full approval, for Chloe’s wedding dress. There were guests to be invited, and plans for the reception to be made. Lady Rothwell found herself at sea without Chloe’s competent management. She spoke quietly to Edward. “Tell me about money — how much will I have to spend?”
Edward could hardly believe that his mother was so chastened. Clearly this summer had changed them all in one way or another. He said, “We’re out of debt, and I should say we couldn’t have done it without Chloe’s income to help us. We owe her a fine wedding.”
Lady Rothwell, revealing her innermost thoughts, said, “We must make her proud of us, so she’ll be glad to have Lydia to stay in town. In due course, naturally.”
Edward, flaring up unjustly, spoke harshly. “Haven’t you done enough to Chloe already?”
For Chloe herself, all the wedding plans went ahead as though on another continent. As it had taken a long time to build up to the explosion, so it took a long time wandering among the shards of her life, before she could begin to pick up a piece or two and try to fit them together again.
She was deprived of the moral support of her family, as though the foundations of her life had been swept away. She still resented their taking her for granted, yet being a kind person, she was shamed by her very resentment. But she had nothing to put in the place of the foundations which were gone.
She had Richard, of course. He had always been her Great Friend, but now he was that no longer. Even her relationship with him had changed, and she did not think it for the better. He had almost married, so she believed, someone else, and now he was betrothed to Chloe. Her own need had swerved Richard’s course. Though she herself had always loved Richard, she knew in her heart the truth — having all she ever wanted within her grasp, she was the most miserable of creatures!
28
Having gained his heart’s desire, Sir Richard Davenant should have been a happy man. He had routed Chloe’s suitors, as Odysseus home from his years of wandering had cleared his own hall of Penelope’s harassers.
He had found that he was, more than he believed he ever could be, deeply in love. It was a passion strengthened by long acquaintance, and a steady friendship, and such a love would last his lifetime.
But his unwilling bride did not share his happiness, and thus, inevitably, Richard sank into a blue-deviled mood so low that even his worst enemy could not have faulted it.
He had thought Chloe returned his regard. She turned to him at the slightest excuse, just as she had when they were playfellows in the sunlit days of their childhood. By no stretch of fancy could he believe that their regard at that time was love — or was that the beginning of his own love for her? Perhaps it was.
The question was — had that early regard deepened in Chloe as it had in him?
Her refusal to look at him, her sudden loss of speech when he was near, her retreat into inarticulateness as complete as that idiot Hensley’s, spoke volumes for her. She did not want to talk to her betrothed. If propriety had not ruled her, he was sure she would have bolted when he entered the room.
Once more he began the walk to the Manor. This time he would try to penetrate Chloe’s reserve, to make her confide in him. If she only would tell him what he had done to distress her, or what he could alter in himself to please her, he would try. Better that than a life bereft of all happiness and the comfort of a congenial marriage.
Deep in his own thoughts, he shied like a highly bred steed when an apparition bolted out of the shrubbery beside the road and stood in his path.
It took a moment, but he recognized her. “Sophy! It’s a good thing for me I wasn’t riding! If you shot out in front of my Thunder, he would have me in the nearest tree!”
“For heaven’s sake, Richard, I know better than to scare your horse. You’re not riding, are you? Then there’s no harm.”
He shook his head slightly, as though to clear the cobwebs out. “I had not thought a strain of eccentricity ran through Chloe’s family. I see I should have investigated her background.”
“Don’t talk fustian!” directed Sophy. “You know I want to talk to you, and there’s no way I can get you alone back there.” She jerked her head in the direction of Rothwell Manor.
“I should hope not,” murmured Richard. “You want to talk to me? Then here I am.”
“It’s Chloe,” said Sophy succinctly.
Intrigued, Richard encouraged her. “What about Chloe?”
“She’s not happy. She doesn’t want to marry you, Richard. It’s like all of us — she wants what she can’t have.” Her adult wisdom sat oddly on her plumpish adolescent figure. How much of what she said was truth, Richard could not know. But what she told him marched only too well with his own thoughts.
“What does she want?” said Richard, a queer feeling in his chest.
“Highmoor,” Sophy informed. “It’s all she talks about. When she talks. I myself think she is going mad.”
Richard wished to be alone with his thoughts, fearing that his face might reveal more of them than he wished, especially to this precocious child. “What’s that noise?” he said sharply. “Someone watching —”
Sophy sped up the drive toward the Manor like a startled doe, but without grace. Richard watched her pounding retreat until she reached the end of the plantings and emerged on the lawn in sight of the Manor. Then he turned toward home. He could not face Chloe today.
Once again, he was faced with decision. The measure of his regard for her was his wish that she be happy, even at the cost of his own happiness. She wanted to be free — she had said — and if that meant free both of the Rothwells and of Richard, then he was in a position to grant her wish.
Dall, opening the door for Sir Richard as he strode purposefully into the house, saw in his mind’s eye his gambling winnings winging their way into oblivion. Sir Richard had made the right decision, but Dall feared that they would never get as far as the altar.
She wants Highmoor, thought Richard, closing the door to his book room behind him and crossing to the big chair behind the mammoth desk. A place of her own, she had said — with someone bringing her tea. The beginning of a life that was all her own.
“I’ve meddled,” he told his desk, “to no purpose. She had no choice but to accept me.” A long time later, he added, “Well, I’ll meddle once more, to set things right.”
His thoughts moved on to the future. The rooms at Davenant Hall were no longer full of Chloe. His rigid self-discipline told him he must be forever separated from her quiet wit, her common sense, her kindly tolerance. He would never again contrive to amuse her in order to catch sight of the dimple on her left cheek. Her steadfast gaze, her clear integrity — all these he had lost because he had thought he knew best.
“I’m no better than Edward!” he muttered, slamming his fist into his open palm.
The invitation from Richard’s
cousin Nell came, almost as promptly as Richard could have wished, to Rothwell Manor. Chloe opened it at breakfast — one boon she had earned now was to open her own mail! — and read it through welling tears.
Nell Theale welcomed Chloe into the family with open arms. “I cannot wait — simply cannot — for your wedding to see you. Please come for a visit, now, and if you arrive tomorrow it will not be a moment too soon. Tell Richard to bring you ...”
Lady Rothwell asked, “What have you got there, Chloe? An answer to my wedding invitation? I wonder they sent it to you and not to me, but then, manners are sadly declining in this day.”
Chloe dutifully read the letter aloud, to her stepmother’s gratification. “I knew all along that Sir Richard was the one for you, Chloe. Lady Theale is a lady of impeccable breeding, and had the wit to marry Lord Theale, who has a prodigious fortune. I am sure you will be very comfortable in her house.”
“But I’m not going,” said Chloe remotely.
“I insist that you go,” said Lady Rothwell, oppressively. “I cannot endure your mopes much longer, Chloe. I tell you for your own good, and I should not be surprised if Davenant doesn’t have a second thought about his offer. You must go, Chloe. It is your duty, both to me and to him. Go and put as good a face on it as you can. Many a maid has made a worse marriage than yours, and I cannot help but wonder at the strong strain of ungratefulness in you ...”
In two days, Chloe set off with Richard for the day’s drive to Theale. “Be sure to bring her back in two weeks, for I do not permit Chloe to be wed from any place other than her home,” called Lady Rothwell.
Richard answered tightly, “I’ll bring her back, you may depend on it.”
The ride passed as though in a dream to Chloe. Even seeing Nell again failed to raise her spirits, although her hostess made much of her. But Nell looked past Chloe at her cousin, and was dismayed to see the grim lines bracketing his mouth — lines that had not been there a month before.
Richard lost no time in putting his plan into motion. The second day after their arrival, having given Chloe a chance to rest from the journey, he insisted that she go with him on a drive.
“Now that we’re betrothed,” he said, “we do not need my groom to accompany us.”
A picnic hamper was bound to the boot at the rear, and they set off down the drive, as Nell and Theale waved them on their way.
“Something badly wrong there,” pronounced Theale.
“Never mind, Richard will fix it. He always does,” said his optimistic cousin brightly. She wished she believed it.
The drive took turns Chloe did not notice. The land folded into small valleys, and the road they followed rose even higher. At last they turned onto a small road, hardly more than a wagon track. They drove along hedges that had not been pruned in this century, until finally they reached a pair of crumbling gates. The letters on the pillars had eroded until the name could not be made out. All she could see, before they turned between the gates was “H——OR.” It couldn’t be — but it was!
At last she was entering the grounds of Highmoor! Her heart thudded painfully. But it was too late. Highmoor was forever out of her reach.
She asked timidly, “Won’t the new owner object?”
He covered her hand with his. “No.”
She fell silent. Events had moved beyond her, she realized, and she was borne on the surface of a current she could not resist.
They drove up the graveled drive, overgrown with grass, until they reached the sweep before the door. She stared at the house that had been hers, for a little while.
It was not precisely a ruin, she decided, but before long it could be. There was a general aura of decay emanating from the house, manifest in small things like a shutter missing a fastening and hanging loose, a crack in the front step — items a careful owner would set right at once.
To her surprise, they stopped before the door and Richard helped her down. She stood on the porch while he tethered the horse, and waited for him to join her. He tried the latch, and the door opened at once.
“Richard” she protested, but he waved her in before him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I know the owner.”
Thus reassured, she moved, tentatively at first and then with more assurance, through the rooms of Highmoor. She had fancied them so long in her mind, but the reality bore no resemblance to her dreams. Here, in the small salon, she had thought of her afternoon tea. But the window was too small to permit a chair to be placed to admire the view.
The dining room seemed oddly bare, until she realized that the marks on the wall indicated an enormous sideboard for serving — a piece of furniture no longer in place.
“Probably sold,” said Richard, “for I have heard that Bradford was sorely pressed for funds toward the end.”
She moved from the dining room to another, and then another room. All were small, she found, and sadly ill-arranged. The wallpaper was stained, and in places torn. She moved to the doors to the terrace.
As Lady Rothwell had informed her family, the terrace commanded a fine prospect. She could not see the grape planting from here, but she had no doubt it did exist, probably reverted to a wilderness by now.
But she was caught up in a spell of what-might-have-been. “I could have been happy here, I thought, with dear Bess and a cook,” she said to Richard. “But it’s out of the question now.”
Richard, his features grim and tight, went out to the phaeton. She could see him through the riotous vine that covered the tiny window looking onto the drive, making the room dusky as twilight. He took the basket out of the boot. She had no appetite for lunch, but she began to realize how much Richard was trying to cheer her. She saw him crossing the drive, and saw — as Nell had seen — the lines in his face that spoke emphatically of misery. Full of compunction, Chloe moved toward a decision she must make. She knew she could not wed Richard, not when he was pining for the woman he wanted. She could not become his wife knowing he still held another in the core of his heart.
He came into the room with the basket, and she managed a smile. “Lunch?” she asked, with an attempt at brightness.
Richard opened the basket. But instead of boxes of sandwiches, ham, bottles of wine, clusters of grapes — he brought forth a paper, rolled into a tight shape like a waterpipe. Looking steadily at her, he said, “I had hoped to give this to you as your wedding present. But since it is most unlikely that there will be a wedding, I wish you to have it now. As a belated betrothal gift.”
Automatically she took the proffered document. But her heart sank into her slippers. He could not stomach the idea of marrying her. Perversely, while she had vowed to give him his freedom, the idea that he was repelled by her was distressing in the extreme.
The roll, as she glanced through it and then read it more carefully, was the deed to Highmoor. “Highmoor is yours,” said Richard harshly. “To do with as you wish.”
“You b-bought Highmoor?” she stammered, unbelieving. “You?”
“Your idiot brother,” pronounced Richard, “wanted to sell, so since I knew what Highmoor meant to you, I thought you should have it.”
She had her life in her hands, in this apparently insignificant roll of official paper. Highmoor was hers, to live in with her maid and her cook, to exist in peace away from people she had lately learned to mistrust. She could make the house over, she could spend her day refurbishing, restoring, mending linen — all by herself in perfect solitary peace.
The silence lengthened and she knew she must say something to him, for he had done so much for her. By ill chance, she burst out, “What a Great Friend you are!”
Her eyes misted over, and she did not see the dreadful, desperate expression that crossed his face.
I’ve bungled all the way, he thought. I misread the signs from the beginning. At first it was only what I wanted, he analyzed his motives — now I’ve turned to look at what she wants. A new Richard — but too late. She deserves better than me!
&n
bsp; She held the deed in her hand, her eyes full of unshed tears. Like an anchor, he thought. “How can I pay you for this?”
His voice rasped, on a note she had never heard. “Now you won’t have to marry anyone, not even me!”
Her emotions gave up the battle and joined forces in one mighty surge of anger. “Then Miss Venable, or is it Miss Morland or Miss Salton — whoever! — will be greatly relieved at your eligibility once more!”
He gazed at her speechlessly, before stalking out, stiff-legged with anger and hurt.
He moved out onto the terrace, but the fine prospect did not exist for him. His hopes lay in shards around his feet. He had been cast down before, but now he was as one shut out from the warmth of the hearth-fire, into the cold, cold night, to wander fitfully for the rest of his life.
The breeze came up the slope and, without his knowing it, beguiled the anger in him until it began to cool, and he remembered hearing once — Where there is no love, then there is no reason for anger. He was well aware of the cause of his own anger, but was it possible? In Chloe’s outburst, there was a tinge — the very slightest tinge, he thought — of jealous woman. Could she have been so blind as to think he wanted to marry someone else, and was forced by circumstance to offer for her?
If so, he thought confusedly — but on the other hand, she had clutched the deed to Highmoor as though she were clinging to a lifeline in heavy surf, her only hope ...
A wave of tenderness swept over him. His dear Chloe! Perhaps there was yet a chance. He turned to go in to her.
She stood in the doorway. Her face was pale and her eyes shone with her tears, but there was a different look about her, a sense of awakening hope. “Richard, why did you buy Highmoor?”
Very gently, he answered her. “Because I love you.”
Softly, she cried, “Oh Richard!” She dropped the deed as though she didn’t know she held it. She ran to him, and he opened his arms and folded them around her, holding her tightly against the world.