Pamela Sherwood

by A Song at Twilight

  Silvery blue eyes, almost opalescent in hue, widened with an assumption of childlike innocence. “You ’ave been trying to find me, ’ave you not?”

  “I tried to stop her, sir!” Praed, breathless and shaken out of his usual composure, burst into the ballroom. “I told you, madam,” he emphasized the last word with chill formality, “that Mr. Pendarvis and his guests were not to be disturbed. I told her to wait in the reception room while I sent a footman to inform you of this, sir,” he explained to Robin, who held up a hand, his gaze still intent on his wife. The butler subsided but continued to eye “madam” with suspicion and distrust.

  “Nathalie, the children,” Robin began hoarsely. “Whose—?”

  “Mon Dieu,” she broke in on a breathy little laugh. “Do you not recognize your own daughter? Sara, ma petite, this is your bon papa.”

  Sophie stifled a gasp. For the little girl clinging to the woman’s skirts now lifted her head… and the eyes that gazed mistrustfully at the room of strangers were the exact same color and shape as Robin’s. And her hair, cut in a short straight cap, would almost certainly be the same shade of dark brown in the sunlight.

  “Papa.” The word was scarcely more than a breath, but it seemed to echo through the now silent ballroom. And the look in Robin’s eyes as he stared at his daughter—shock, followed by a dawning recognition… and a hunger that Sophie had never seen, not even when he looked at her, she realized with a flash of pain.

  “And this is Cyril,” Nathalie continued, folding back a corner of the blanket. The child in her arms stirred languidly. His skin was porcelain pale, his half-open eyes the same misty blue-grey as his mother’s. His hair was perhaps a shade darker, but in all else he was her very image. Hard to guess his age—six months, perhaps, or very little older.

  This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. The ballroom swam and flickered before Sophie’s eyes. She clenched her fists, feeling the points of her nails dig into her palms through her silk evening gloves, and forced herself to remain upright. Never in her life had she swooned like some milk-and-water miss, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  Robin’s face was still pale under its summer tan, but his posture was erect and unbending, his voice completely level when he spoke. “Praed, will you escort—Mrs. Pendarvis to my study? And ask Mrs. Dowling if she would be so good as to take the children upstairs to my wing? The bedroom at the end of the passage will do, and a hot drink should be brought for them as well.”

  Praed recollected himself. “Very good, sir.” He turned to—to Mrs. Pendarvis, his face once more unreadable. “Madam?” His voice was as cool and colorless as Robin’s own.

  For a moment, Nathalie eyed the butler, clearly taking his measure, then she gave a little shrug—so French, that gesture—and exited the ballroom with the children, Praed following her purposefully.

  Robin looked at his guests—the friends and neighbors whose trust and friendship he’d striven to earn this past year—all staring back at him. His face was as closed and shuttered as Sophie had ever seen it, as if he hadn’t been laughing and dancing with her mere minutes ago. “Pray excuse me. I have some important business to attend to.” He paused, then resumed with that same excruciating courtesy. “Perhaps it might be best if you were to take Miss Tresilian home now.”

  ***

  She sat in the chair by the fire, hatless now, her platinum ringlets loose about her shoulders, her feet and legs curled up beneath her like a cat’s. Her silver-blue eyes were kitten-wide and innocent.

  Deceptively innocent, as Robin had cause to know. He schooled his own features into impassivity as he walked toward her, feeling as if he were approaching a coiled adder.

  “Well, mon cher, I ’ave come home to you.” Despite her ever-present French accent, she spoke impeccable English, the native tongue of her long-dead father. She tilted an exquisite cheek toward him, as though expecting a kiss. Robin made no attempt to bestow such a salute upon her.

  He raised a skeptical brow instead. “Cornwall was never home to you.”

  Her eyes widened. “But Robin, where else would home be but beside my ’usband?”

  He’d used to love the way she spoke his name, with that tiny lisp that made it sound almost like “Wobin.” Now it grated on him. And so did those too-wide eyes, that butter-wouldn’t-melt expression. A naughty little girl trying to cozen her parents into forgiveness. At nineteen, those mannerisms had been charming; at twenty-four, they were much less so. Almost grotesque, given their history. How pitiful to grow older, without ever growing up.

  So different from Sophie, always candid and honest in all her dealings. But the thought of Sophie felt like a knife in his heart, so he pushed it away. “Your husband in name only,” he reminded her. “We have not lived as a married couple in nearly four years.”

  “So long? I ’ave forgot how fast the time does fly.”

  “No doubt,” Robin said dryly. “But for those of us with less—convenient memories, the time had passed more slowly. Though I have attempted to put that time to good use.”

  She regarded him more narrowly, with less kittenish innocence and greater shrewdness. An assessing look that took in his immaculate evening clothes, of a cut and a quality he could not have afforded in Rouen. “I can see that,” she acknowledged at last. “You look prosperous, Robin. But I am glad you ’ave not become fat.”

  He said wearily, “What do you want, Nathalie?”

  “Why, chèri, I only want what is my proper due. The rights and station of a wife.”

  He heard himself laugh, short, sharp, and humorless. “You tired of those within a year of our marriage. Why do you claim them now?”

  She made a little moue. “May not a woman change her mind, Robin? Especially when—circumstances change as well.”

  The shoe dropped with predictable force. “You mean now that I am a successful hotelier, instead of a penniless architect, you find me a far more appealing prospect.”

  A little to his surprise, she actually blushed. “You make it sound so… mercenary, chèri.”

  He crossed his arms. “I believe in calling a spade a spade.”

  She tossed her head, her ringlets dancing about her shoulders. “You say ‘mercenary’—a horrid word. I say ‘practical.’ There is no woman on earth who would not prefer a man of means to a mere dreamer.” Her gaze roved around his study, decorated in subtle coffee and cream tones, taking in the padded leather armchairs, the glass-fronted bookcases, and the mahogany writing desk, glossy with polish. “Alors, I am so glad that you ’ave chosen a more—lucrative career. We did not live so, in France.”

  “We did not live in squalor either,” Robin reminded her. “I saw to that. You might have as well, instead of sulking over what we could not afford then.”

  Her lower lip, soft and full as a child’s, quivered piteously. “I was young, and perhaps foolish! I ’ave learned better since, I swear!”

  “So have I. And what I have learned is not to take a word you say at face value.” Leaning against his desk, he regarded her with cool appraisal. “I suppose you thought Raoul—a better prospect? And after him, Philippe? And God only knows how many others after him.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That wretched little man you sent to find me knows too, I am sure.”

  “And the rest of the world may soon know as well, since I intend to bring a divorce suit against you,” Robin informed her bluntly.

  Nathalie gasped, one hand fluttering to her throat in a dramatic gesture worthy of Drury Lane. “Divorce! But you cannot!”

  “On the contrary, it would be all too easy to divorce you on the grounds of infidelity.”

  “You would not! You would brand yourself a cuckold.” She made a gesture of horns upon her head. “You would be a laughingstock among the English!”

  “Perhaps. But I would also be free, and that matters a good deal more.”

  “Free!” She almost spat the word at him. “Free to marry that little ingénue? That simpering Engl
ish miss you were dancing with?”

  “You will not speak of her.” Robin scarcely raised his voice, but the tone was enough to silence Nathalie, at least for a moment.

  Then she rallied, her eyes filling with tears. So had she twisted him round her little finger before, in the early days of their marriage. Now he watched the performance, unmoved. “But what am I to do then?”

  “That is your own concern,” Robin replied evenly. “But I daresay we can come to some sort of arrangement that will benefit us both. I do not believe you are any more desirous of living with me as my wife than you were four years ago.”

  “That is not true! I would be all that you required of me!”

  “Including faithful? Loyal? A companion and partner, not a spoiled child who must forever be indulged?” He shook his head. “I do not believe you have that in you, Nathalie.”

  Silvery tears tracked down her cheeks. “You are so cruel, Robin.”

  “I did not say those things to wound you.” How tired he was. “I am done with being angry with you, Nathalie. You are—as you are. But we were ill-suited then, and we are worse-suited now. Let’s make a civilized end to our marriage and move on with our lives apart.”

  “Apart? But I ’ave children to think of!” she protested. “Your children.”

  “My child,” he corrected her. “Singular. The girl may be mine, but you know as well as I that the boy cannot be.”

  She grew still. “And so you would throw him out in the street, and his mother with him?”

  Her eyes challenged him to reply in the affirmative. Robin strove not to rise to the bait, knowing that if Nathalie suspected he cared for or felt any interest in either child, she would exploit that mercilessly.

  “I will see that both children are provided for,” he said at last. “And you as well. In exchange for the divorce, I am prepared to offer fair terms and a generous settlement.” His solicitor would probably have an apoplexy when he heard the amount Robin had in mind, but it seemed a small price to pay for his freedom—and the children’s security.

  Because that mattered just as much. There had been nothing in Norris’s reports about either child, Robin recalled; Nathalie had somehow concealed their existence all too well, even from him—especially from him. He had never once suspected that their brief, ill-starred marriage had borne fruit, but he’d seen the proof tonight: that tiny scrap with her dark hair and startling blue eyes, so huge in her tiny, almost elfin face… his daughter. Again he felt that fierce surge of protectiveness that had gripped him in the ballroom when he’d heard her call him “Papa.”

  Nathalie must have been with child when she fled with her lover. The age would be about right—he supposed it was possible that his estranged wife might be lying about her daughter’s paternity, but there was such a look of his own mother about the little girl’s eyes and mouth. Not to mention her name—what had prompted Nathalie to call her after the mother-in-law she had never met?

  More importantly, what sort of life could Sara and her brother have known, dragged hither and yon at Nathalie’s whim? Had there been nurses to look after them while their mother was—otherwise occupied? Or had Nathalie convinced her various lovers to provide care for the children, as a condition of their liaison? Well, whichever it was, that was about to end, Robin thought. Both children were little more than infants; they needed and deserved a more settled existence than their flighty mother had given them.

  “Generous!” Nathalie echoed with a tinkling laugh that set Robin’s teeth on edge. Once that laugh had sounded like fairy bells to his besotted ears, but there was a harsher note to it now, a discordancy that reflected the years and experiences between. “So I am to forfeit my reputation, my rightful place as Madame Pendarvis, and slink away like a thief in the night for a pittance that will barely keep body and soul alive?”

  She was speaking in French now, the better to express her outrage and indignation. Robin replied in the same language, “You willingly forfeited your reputation and your position as my wife years ago when you first left. As to the settlement, it should suffice to keep you if you exercise some prudence and restraint.” Neither of which Nathalie could be said to possess even on a good day, he reflected wearily. “And I will be providing whatever both children require. The boy may not be mine by blood, but he should not be made to suffer for your conduct.”

  Nathalie sprang up from her chair, eyes wide with what appeared to be genuine dismay. “So, you mean to take them from me? My children?”

  Robin cursed inwardly. For all her flightiness, Nathalie could be quick enough when she sensed her own interests might be at stake. Stupid of him to forget that, even temporarily. “I have said nothing of the kind.” He paused, choosing his next words with care, doing his best to sound reasonable. “You are their mother, and so I would not deny your claim to them. But they need more… stability in their lives. Surely you must see that yourself, or you would not have come here tonight.” And if concern for her children’s welfare had motivated Nathalie’s appearance here in any way, he could—almost—forgive her for the shambles she had made of this evening.

  Sophie’s stricken face flashed into his mind with agonizing clarity. He suppressed the memory as best he could and continued, “I am in a better position to provide certain necessities for them: a home, a nursemaid, and schooling, in due course. Whatever happens between us, my primary concern is their security and well-being. I would hope that you feel the same, and that we could arrive at terms agreeable to us both.” He grimaced inwardly, hoping the words sounded less stiff to Nathalie than they did to him.

  No such luck to judge by the mulish set of her pretty mouth. “And if I do not like your terms, chèri? If I was to leave with my children, rather than comply with your so-generous offer, what would you do?” She took a step toward him, all pretense of innocence gone now, her eyes sharp with mingled challenge and calculation. “Will you risk losing both children, husband, simply to get rid of me?”

  The threat chilled him to the bone, but he stared unflinchingly into her eyes until she flushed and looked down. “As I recall, madam,” he bit off each word with icy precision, “English law favors fathers when it comes to matters of custody. You would do well to remember that before you try to disappear with Sara and Cyril.” He pushed away from the desk, strode over to tug the bell rope in the corner of the study. “A chamber has been prepared for you in the west wing. One of the maids will escort you there. We will speak again in the morning.”

  ***

  The room was mostly dark, but for the light of a single lamp and a fire burning in the grate. Summer nights could be cool in Cornwall, with the wind coming off the sea.

  A housemaid sat by the fire, poking the flames into greater life, but she rose when Robin entered and bobbed a quick curtsy. The children were in bed, she informed him in a low voice, and the boy had gone right to sleep. But the girl—Miss Sara—was still awake and inclined to be a little tearful. Missing her mum, the maid opined, then blushed at her own forwardness.

  Unoffended, Robin thanked the girl—her name was Rachel, he remembered—and motioned her to resume her seat, then went over to sit in the chair beside the bed. Two small forms lay beneath the covers; the larger one stirred at his approach, and he found himself gazing into a pale face dominated by huge blue eyes, fringed in thick dark lashes. Those lashes were damp at the moment, and the child’s rosebud mouth quivered with bewilderment and genuine misery. She looked utterly lost in that bed: tiny, helpless, and fragile.

  Robin’s heart constricted at the sight. He had to swallow several times before speech was even possible.

  “Good evening, Sara,” he managed at last, keeping his voice low and gentle. “I am your papa. Can you not sleep?”

  She shook her head and breathed out a tremulous little sigh, her gaze now fixed on him.

  Robin glanced about a little wildly and saw a small china pot and cup—both painted with roses—sitting on the bedside table: the hot drink he’d recommended.
Relieved, he picked up the pot and poured a stream of gently steaming liquid (it smelled like some sort of milk posset) into the cup. “This may help, sweeting,” he said, holding out the cup for her to drink from. “Will you try some? It is not too hot now, I think.”

  She stared at it uncertainly, then took a cautious sip, followed by another. After three sips, she pulled back, no longer tearful but still clearly anxious. Robin replaced the cup on the night table for the moment. “There, my dear. Let me know if you want any more.”

  Sara moistened her lips. “Où est Maman?” Her voice was barely a thread of sound.

  Where is Mama? French—he should have anticipated that; he switched to that language at once. “Maman is resting, ma petite, in a chamber down the passage. You will see her in the morning, but for now, you must sleep, yes?”

  She regarded him with those great eyes, then looked over at the cup on the table.

  Robin smiled. “More milk first?”

  At her nod, he picked up the cup again and held it as she drank more of the posset. Some splashed onto the coverlet, but Robin took out his handkerchief and quickly mopped up the spill. His fingers brushed against something hard when he slipped the damp, crumpled linen back into his breast pocket, and he froze in horrified recognition. Sophie’s pearls—the necklace he had meant to give her tonight, in token and pledge…

  “Papa.” It was more of a sigh than a spoken word, but it recalled him to the present at once, to the little girl sitting up in bed, her eyes solemn and intent on his.

  Robin mustered a reassuring smile. “Yes, petite, Papa is here. Are you ready to go to sleep now?”

  After a moment, she nodded again, then yawned, surprising them both. Robin coaxed her to lie back against the pillows, then drew the blankets up to her chin and stroked her hair, soft as down beneath his fingers. A ghost of a smile curved her lips, and within minutes, her eyes drifted shut and her breathing slowed, becoming soft and even.

  Robin sat quietly for a while, until he was sure she was deep in slumber, then rose and made his way to the other side of the bed, looking down upon the second child.