Was there any truth to her allegation? Why would anyone want to force someone to write about how happy they are? Richard shook his head. “Will there ever be such a thing as a quiet life with a woman around?” he asked himself.
He took in a deep breath and sighed, then made his way out of the library to look for Grace. As he passed the table in the hall, he saw she had indeed written a letter to her friend. He knew little of Manchester and, as he stared down at the address written in Grace’s elegant hand, he wondered what sort of a place it was and what kind of life Eliza had there.
He poked his head into the drawing room and saw his brother upon the settee surrounded by a myriad of paperwork. “Edward, sorry to disturb you. Have you seen Grace?”
Edward looked up, his train of thought unbroken, “Sorry?”
“Grace?” Richard merely replied.
“Haven’t seen her,” Edward mumbled as he went back to the papers before him.
Richard huffed. “Where can she be?” he asked as he headed towards the dining room where he knew his mother could be found.
He did not enter the room but stood in the doorway watching as the usually elegant formal room was transformed before his eyes into something resembling the floral masterpieces he once saw at Vauxhall Gardens in London.
“Ah, Richard! Are you here to lend a hand?” his mother hallooed from across the room.
He laughed such a notion and shook his head. “No, Mama. I’m looking for Grace.”
“I haven’t seen her for some time, my dear boy. Have you tried her room?”
“No, I haven’t. I assumed she wouldn’t be there at this time of the day.”
“Worth a try!” she called out as she turned back to her flower arrangement.
Hurriedly, Richard turned about and made his way upstairs to the guest wing. Quickly, he sought out Grace’s room and knocked politely upon the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and for a second time received no answer. He thought about opening the door, but realised that would cross a line that was to remain uncrossed until they were formally joined tomorrow. A terrifying thought occurred to him. What if she was hurt or injured? With that thought, he took a firm grip on the doorknob and resolutely entered her chamber. The room was empty.
Richard sucked at his teeth in frustration. “Where on earth are you, Grace?” He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room for any clues as to her whereabouts. “Her bonnet is gone.” He looked around more carefully. “Indeed her bonnet is gone. She is outdoors.”
Rapidly, he spun on his heel and dashed out of the room, slamming the door behind him in his haste. He almost ran down the stairs, two at a time. He worried she was distraught and perhaps had run away.
Richard swiftly sought for Grace in the Elizabethan garden. She was not there. He then searched the rose gardens, yet he still did not find her. He thought she might have tried to seek out the picnic spot by the fishing pond again, so retraced the route they took together that afternoon, but to no avail. Grace was nowhere to be seen. He was reluctant to admit it, but there was a tiny seed of panic germinating within him. His pulse began to race, and his breathing became shallow. “Goodness sake, Richard, calm yourself! It is utter foolishness to lose your head like this!” he chided himself. “Now think. If you were a young lady on the eve of your wedding day to a man who has not been a model groom, where would you go?” He snorted, laughing at himself. “I know full well I would run away. The only thing missing from her room is her bonnet. Therefore, she has not gone far.” He thanked heaven for small mercies. “Dear God, where is she?”
Instinctively, and finally, Richard realised that he would have gone to the bench, the place his mother always went when she needed to think and clear her head. Before he was even born, his father had a bench made and placed it, facing the stream, for her use. Every year it was lovingly sanded and repainted. That is where his mother went when she needed solitude; he felt certain that was where Grace was. He made his way to the solitary grove with all due haste.
* * * *
Grace began to feel suffocated. She watched as the flowers arrived and the servants busied themselves rushing here and there, polishing silver, bringing out the best bone china as Edwina barked orders, transforming the house into a beautiful setting for a wedding feast.
Grace could barely breathe. She had to get out of there. She had to breathe in the fresh air. She needed peace and quiet. And she knew precisely where she would find it. She hoped and prayed she remembered the way. She returned briefly to her room for her bonnet and then, quietly and unnoticed, slipped out of the house and through the grounds.
She found the little grove of trees and stream far more easily than she had expected. It was with a sigh of relief that she spotted the bench and made her way to it. She decided she would sit, think, and pray. Her life was about to change irrevocably, and there was nothing she could do about it even if she wanted to. And she so wanted to.
She sat down upon the bench, her heart heavy with emotion, and cried. She cried until she could cry no longer, her head hurt, and the pain in her heart eased. Then she began to pray in earnest, out loud, and in a way she had never prayed before. She begged God to step in and intervene on her behalf.
“I cannot bear it, God. I cannot bear the thought of being married to a man I do not know and who very plainly does not think much of me.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and hugged herself tightly. “You saw, I know You did, how he and his brother dismissed Eliza’s letter. You know as well as I do that there is something amiss. I explained it to them clearly, yet they ridiculed and mocked me. They laughed at me as though I was some foolish, childish schoolgirl. It is not to be borne!”
She withdrew her handkerchief from her pocket, blew her nose, and wiped her face. “What am I to do? Do You want me to marry Richard Emberton? Is this the path You have laid out before me? Please tell me. Please speak to me.”
Grace looked up into the clear blue sky and watched the tiny feathery clouds above her. She wondered if God spoke clearly to people anymore. “Do You still do that? Do You still speak clearly to people, or was that just in the Bible, for our example?” She felt wretched and desperate. She wanted, more than anything, to hear a loud, audible voice, like thunder, telling her what she should do. What she really wanted was to hear God give her permission to run away and go back to India with her father.
“But I do not love him. He does not love me. I do not believe we have anything in common. How can we be happy?” She stared up into the sky waiting impatiently for an answer.
She started to cry again. “You are not going to answer me, are You? This is my lot. This is my future. This is what You want for me. You want me to be unhappy. You want me to live my life married to a man I do not love. It is clear to me now.” She wept bitterly.
It was some time before she could regain her composure, though still hurting and more than a little angry with God. “Do you hate me? What have I done to offend You that I am to be unloved for the rest of my life?” She could feel her anger building.
“Very well. We will do it Your way. I will marry Richard Emberton. But I cannot love him. I do not love him. And,” she sobbed, “I will not bear him children. I will not allow him to know me. I do not love him, and I do not want him. I am so unhappy.” She wept until she felt contrite for the childish demands she made on God and asked for His forgiveness, while still hoping for an answer.
Had Grace turned and seen the hurt on Richard’s face as he watched and listened from the fringe of the grove, she would have realised that she had an answer from God. Here was a man wounded deeply by her words, a wound that couldn’t be suffered by anyone as unfeeling as Grace had described in her desperate prayer.
Chapter Fourteen
Quietly, and without alerting Grace to his presence, Richard slowly made his way back to the house. The things he heard her spouting at God cut him to the quick. She was evidently hurting more than he had realised.
Part of him was indign
ant at what she said, but, for the most part, her words stung as they reverberated around his head. He numbly allowed his thoughts to swirl and churn aimlessly. He did not know what to do. All he did know was that he was the cause of a grievous injury to a woman for whom he cared deeply.
He slipped into the house from the garden via the French doors that led into his mother’s salon and, checking that there was no one about to see him, slipped from the room and made his way to his father’s study. He had not been in that room since his father’s death. No one had except for the servants to clean. It remained a memorial. Richard knew he would not be disturbed there. He knew he could sit in peace and quiet with his thoughts, endeavour to rein them in, get them under control, and to think about his next course of action. Not to mention, he knew his father had always kept a particularly well-stocked liquor cabinet there.
He reached the study and, double-checking that no one saw him enter, he slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.
The room seemed so still that it was standing timeless and out of step with the rest of the world. Richard cherished the peace he felt, as if his father were present: the stale smell of his cigar tobacco, his writing pens upon the desk, and his favourite leather chair angled towards the fire.
Richard took a moment to breathe in the atmosphere, to allow it to calm his senses and his mind before he headed to the liquor cabinet, chose a brandy glass, and filled it to the rim with some of his father’s finest French cognac. He then sat down, tentatively, in his father’s chair beside the cold and empty fire.
Ever since Richard was old enough to understand his father’s instructions, he had been tutored in the ways of business. The exportation and importation of spice was all he knew. Until Grace Hayward arrived, there was nothing else in his life. He snorted bitterly, gulped down some of the brandy, and muttered to himself, “What a damnable waste of a life!”
When she arrived, everything changed. He suddenly found himself learning how to act towards a young lady—something he had never had cause to know anything about before. It was true that he found her emotions and reactions to situations to be tumultuous, even irritating at times. However, she had grown in his estimation, and he knew he now loved her. He drank down more of the brandy, feeling burn as it made its way towards his stomach.
Part of him wished he had never sought her out at the bench. He wished he had stayed away. For then he would not know the real thoughts that lay heavily upon her heart. He would not have the slightest idea of how hurt she was and how she raged against God Himself in her pain.
But he did know and could not erase that knowledge. Richard now had to decide what he would do and how he would proceed. He looked down into the glass in his hand and, in his confusion, believed the answers to lie at the bottom of the glass. He lifted the crystal to his lips taking a mouthful. Gulp after burning gulp, he drained the contents of the glass. He breathed out heavily, groaning as the liquid burnt his insides, before returning to the cabinet and pouring himself a second glass.
He hesitated as he poured. It would not do to become inebriated. Firstly, he needed to think clearly; and, secondly, his mother would chide him with a fury if he became intoxicated with liquor the night before his wedding day.
He returned to the chair and slumped into it. “Dear God, what am I to do?” He wondered, if he spoke aloud to God in the manner that Grace had, would it make a difference? Would it help him to organise his thoughts? Would God answer him?
Richard did not know, but he tried it anyway. “God, it’s me, Richard.” He shook his head. “Richard Emberton.” He felt foolish. “Of course You know who I am. You’re God, aren’t You?” He did not know whether to continue or not. He had never felt so daft.
After another mouthful of brandy, he decided to continue. “God, I need Your help. What am I to do about Grace? Does she hate me? I certainly would not blame her.”
The revelation hit him so hard it took his breath away. He would not blame her for hating him; after all, he was the reason she was in this predicament in the first place. He was taking her from all she knew and loved and expecting her to be happy in the home of strangers.
“You know my heart. You know how I feel. You know what she means to me. I have never felt more alive than I have since she came into my life. I want to be a good husband. I do not wish to hurt her.” To Richard’s astonishment he felt the backs of his eyes sting as tears began to form. “Please tell me what to do…”
* * * *
During dinner that evening, Richard watched Grace. She barely ate a thing. Her eyes were ringed with red, telltale signs that she had been crying. He wanted to reach out to her, to say something kind and comforting, but he knew not what to say, and he feared that any gesture he made would be rejected.
Her upset stole his appetite. He knew he had to eat something. His belly was filled with brandy and something had to soak up the alcohol.
He did not join in the conversation that evening between Mr Hayward, his mother, and the Colemans. Throughout the meal, he was painfully aware of the glances his brother shot him and of Grace’s downcast eyes.
When the ladies excused themselves, Richard wanted to follow. He wanted to speak with Grace. He wanted to reassure her that he would be a good husband. He wanted to tell her a thousand things that would make her happy. He realised that such a discourse would have to wait until she was his wife.
He was in anguish.
“Damn it, Richard. Pull yourself together,” Edward hissed as he made his way around the table pouring port for the three gentlemen.
Mr Hayward chuckled and pointed a finger at Richard across the table. “I believe I know what ails you, my lad.”
“Hmm?” Richard snapped out of his thoughts and tried to drag his attention back into the room.
“I believe you have what is commonly known as prewedding nerves,” Mr Hayward declared cheerily. “Yes, that is what it is. But fear not, son, and drink your port, for every man on the eve of his wedding feels as you do.”
I very much doubt it, and I most certainly hope not. Richard inclined his head and smiled weakly at his father-in-law-to-be. If only the man truly knew Richard’s train of thought. He felt no anxieties at being married to Grace; he welcomed it. He wanted to be her husband. What troubled him was that she did not want it. She did not want him.
“Yes,” the older man professed, “I remember feeling the exact same thing on the eve of my marriage to Grace’s mother.”
Richard’s ears pricked up and his attention was caught. He knew nothing whatsoever about Grace’s mother.
“She died, sadly, when Grace was but five years old, of a fever. Ah, she was a fine woman, such elegance, grace, and poise!” His eyes glazed as though he looked back in time, remembering his wife. “She was not made for the Indian climate. It did not suit her at all well.” His voice had a sorrowful edge, the pain of which Richard hoped to never know.
“Oh, how she would have been proud of our dear daughter!” He turned his watery eyes upon his son-in-law-to-be. “I so wish she could be here to celebrate with us tomorrow.”
His smile held such genuine affection that Richard felt himself unconsciously returning it.
“I suppose what I am trying to say is that you should not worry at all about tomorrow. You will find, as I did, that a wife is the missing part of you, the part you never actually knew was missing.” He picked up his port glass and raised it in tribute to Richard. “To Richard Emberton, the groom, may he know every happiness that marriage holds.”
“Hear! Hear!” Edward cried raising his glass to Richard, too.
Richard drank the port in one mouthful. I pray to God I will know every happiness that marriage holds too.
By the time the gentlemen joined the ladies, Grace had long since retired to bed. Richard felt a pang of disappointment. He found he enjoyed gazing upon her in the glow of the candles and firelight. He wanted to see her one more time before he stood in front of the altar the next morning. He wanted to re
ach out, take her hand, and reassure her it would all be well, despite his recent resolve. He felt her absence greatly. It left a gaping hole that he found nothing could fill. Conversation seemed pointless, tea tasteless, and nothing seemed to hold his attention for more than a few minutes at a time that evening.
Edward shot him loaded glances. Richard knew what those looks meant, and each time, with a barely noticeable shake of his head, he dismissed his brother. Edward was more suited to socialising. Let him do it.
Richard decided the best course of action was to retire early for the night as the card table was brought out and set up. There were plenty of people remaining to play cards. He would not be missed. He rose and bade good night to his mother, kissing her on the cheek.
“Sleep well, my son, for tomorrow a whole new chapter of your life begins. I wish you every blessing that heaven contains.” She reached out and held his face in her palm as she gazed into his eyes. “I will see you for breakfast.”
Richard turned, bade the rest of the room adieu, and exited to a chorus of best wishes for his health, happiness, future, and a good night’s rest.
On his way up to his room, Richard prayed that he would indeed have a good night’s sleep. He needed it.
Chapter Fifteen
The following morning dawned bright and fair. Grace smiled as the maid opened the curtains and the sunlight fell across her face, until she realised what day it was.
The smile slipped from her face, and languidly, almost reluctantly, she sat up and slipped her legs off the side of the bed. The maid mentioned something about hot water. Grace nodded without truly understanding what the girl said and watched as she departed the room. Heaviness settled in the pit of her stomach. Today was her wedding day.
Grace’s stomach churned and she thought she would divulge its contents, but she managed to gain control, fleeing to the window, throwing open the sash, and leaning out to taking great lungsful of air.
The Spice Bride (The Emberton Brothers Series Book 1) Page 12