by Mary Balogh
Perhaps it was just that she needed to believe there was. For her own sake. Perhaps she needed to believe that he was not without all heart, as she had always thought. She had flung aside everything she had believed of herself in order to come here with him for a few intense weeks of . . . love.
Nothing to do but love.
“There are always things to do,” she said. “Reading, painting, sketching, making music, conversing, writing, taking the air, sewing, embroidering.”
“And making love,” he said.
“And making love.” She smiled. Ah, how was she going to do without when this was over? How had she done without for most of her adult life?
“Taking the air?” He shuddered. “Is it not enough that you insist upon sleeping with an open window? Or is that what you meant by taking the air?”
“No,” she said. “I meant walking or riding or driving out. Yes, even in winter. Perhaps visiting neighbors and friends.”
“And yet,” he said, “you say the thought of winter’s approach makes you sad.”
It would be many times worse this year. She would be without him. Was she just needy? Or was she in love with him? Well, of course she was in love with him. But did she love him? There was a world of difference. How could she, though? He had given her precious little reason to love him. She really did not know him, and he was making good and sure that she never would.
She wondered if he was lonely.
“It is raining again,” he said, and she turned her head to look out through the window. “Even you cannot wish to go out in this.”
No. She had no boots. Besides, it was cold and windy and wet. Miserable. Yet cozy to look out upon.
“Your silence is ominous,” he said. “Please do not tell me the ferns are calling to you again, Viola. My instinct for gallantry would be put severely to the test. I suspect I would feel compelled to follow you out there.” He removed his hand from hers in order to finish his breakfast.
“I do not wish to go out,” she said.
They spent two full days indoors, enjoying the warmth of log and coal fires. They read—his great-aunt had been a reader and had left behind a whole wall of bookshelves in the writing room, all of them filled with books. They played cards with a faded deck they discovered in the writing desk. They even tried playing charades and kept it going for all of an hour before she collapsed in laughter and he told her she had lost the famed dignity he had always so admired and she threw a cushion at him. They talked. She told him about her childhood in Bath, incidents she had not thought of in years. He told her about various hair-raising exploits in which he had been a key player while at Oxford. She suspected the stories were much embellished, though perhaps not. And they were certainly amusing. They kissed, warmly and languidly, but never went beyond kisses, as either Mr. or Mrs. Prewitt was forever popping into the room after the most perfunctory of knocks, he to bring fresh coals for the fire, she to bring a constant supply of tea or coffee with biscuits or cakes or scones. She inevitably stayed to chat—or, rather, to deliver one of her monologues—while pouring their beverages and pressing food upon them.
Sometimes Viola dozed, his arm about her shoulders as they sat side by side on the sofa. He had told her he could never sleep unless he was horizontal on a bed, but once when she awoke his breathing was suspiciously deep, almost on the verge of a snore. She kept still and smiled into the fire while she indulged herself with one of those moments of total happiness.
They looked out at the valley and the weather. Or she did, at least, nestled on the window seat, her knees drawn up before her, her arms clasped about them—the sort of casual pose she had never before allowed herself. The valley was endlessly beautiful, even when clouds hung over it and wind and rain lashed it.
What if she . . . What if they lived here all the time, though? Would she continue to be enthralled by it all? Or would it become tedious and confining? But never that, surely. She could be happy here forever. But—cut off from all she knew? From everyone she knew?
And she was assailed by a stabbing of fear bordering upon terror for Harry. And by a dull ache of love for her daughters. Was Camille still going outdoors barefoot? Was Abigail still enjoying being in Bath? And her grandchildren. Was Jacob sleeping for longer stretches at night yet? Had Winifred finished reading A Pilgrim’s Progress? And did she still feel the need to summarize each chapter for anyone willing to listen? Oh, Viola was always, always willing to listen. Did Sarah still like to be cuddled? Was there a letter from Harry?
A hand closed warmly about her shoulder, and she covered it with one of her own and turned her head to smile up at him.
“What a marvelous invention glass is,” he said. “One can observe the inclemency of the outdoors while enjoying all the comforts of the indoors.”
He affected a dislike of fresh air and the outdoors for her amusement, she suspected. She did not for a moment believe that he was the hothouse plant he pretended to be—and she had once accused him of being.
“Mmm.” She turned her head to kiss the back of his hand.
“What do you want of life, Viola?” he asked her. “What do you most want?”
It was unlike him to ask such questions. He must be in a mellow mood. She turned her head to look through the window again. It was not easy to answer. The simplest questions very rarely were. What did she want? Happiness? But that was far too vague. Love? Still too vague. Meaning? But no one was ever going to spell out the meaning of life for her. What, then? She could not seem to focus upon anything specific. Except—
“Someone to care,” she said. “Are we all identified by labels, Marcel? I have always been daughter or sister, wife, mother, sister-in-law, grandmother, countess, mother-in-law. Perhaps it is why I was so disoriented when the truth came out after Humphrey’s death and some of those labels were stripped away from me, even my name. Oh, I know there are people who care for me. I am not self-pitying enough to imagine myself unloved and unappreciated. I am very well blessed with family and friends. But— Well, I am going to sound self-pitying anyway. It seems to me there has never been anyone who cares about me, the person who dwells within the daughter and mother and all the rest. No one even knows me. Everyone thinks they do, but no one really does. Sometimes it feels as though I do not even know myself. I am so sorry. I do not know quite what I am talking about. But you did ask.”
“I did, indeed.” His hand was gripping her shoulder more tightly.
The rain had stopped. For a few moments there was a glimpse of blue sky through a break in the clouds. A few multicolored leaves, blown far too soon from their branches, were strewn over the ferns, which were tossing wildly in the wind.
“And you,” she said. “What do you want most of life, Marcel?”
“Pleasure,” he said after a few moments of silence. “It is the only sensible thing to wish for.” And yet it seemed to her there was a sort of bleakness in his voice.
“Like this?” she asked, resting her cheek against his hand. “This escape?”
“Yes,” he said. “Precisely like this. Come to bed, Viola.”
It was the only time they went to bed during those two days, though they retired early both nights. He made love to her in silence and more swiftly than usual, without the lengthy foreplay at which he was so skilled. Yet she came to a shattering climax a few moments before he did—he always waited for her. He rolled off her almost immediately but kept his arms about her as he drew the bedcovers warmly up about them. He settled her head on his shoulder and laid his cheek against the top of her head before they both pretended to sleep. She was sure it was pretense on both sides.
There was so much pleasure, so much . . . vividness in these days of physical passion she was living through. She was nowhere near having had enough of him. She never would be. She knew that now beyond any doubt. And he was not done with her yet either. She would know if he were. She would sense wi
thdrawal, loss of intensity and interest. He was not done with her. But there was something . . .
An edge of melancholy had crept into their affair with the autumn.
She suspected—no, she knew—that they had arrived at the beginning of the end.
Eleven
The Earl of Riverdale’s carriage made excellent progress after it left Bath and arrived without incident at the town where Viola had last been seen. They did not have the name of the inn at which the hired coachman had set down his passengers, it was true, but it did not take them long to find it. They were there by the middle of the evening.
The innkeeper remembered the two passengers concerned, a lady and a gentleman. He did not remember their name, however, if he had ever heard it. They had not taken a room and therefore had not signed the register. The reason he remembered was that the gentleman had made inquiries about the hire of a carriage, and there had been one here, a perfectly decent one. Far more decent than the one in which they had arrived, that was for sure. But the gentleman had gone off into the town anyway to look for something better and had come back with a spanking new carriage and horses—and even a coachman to drive it. The gentleman’s wife had remained at the inn, drinking coffee in the private parlor. The innkeeper had no idea where they had gone once they left. Perhaps one of the ostlers who had been on duty then would remember, or perhaps the maid who had served the lady had heard something. But she was off duty now.
The group from Bath took rooms for the night, and after an early breakfast the following morning Joel and Alexander went into the town while Abigail and Elizabeth had another cup of coffee in the private parlor and questioned the serving girl, who had been sent in by the innkeeper. She was looking pale and saucer eyed as she curtsied.
“Yes, I do remember her, my lady,” she said, addressing herself to Elizabeth. “She was waiting for the gentleman to return. But I do not remember their name. I don’t think she said.”
“She left no message?” Elizabeth asked hopefully.
If the girl hesitated for a moment, neither of her two listeners noticed or made anything of it. “No, my lady,” she said while her hands twisted the sides of her apron—the new one that had cost her so dearly out of her wages. “But she wouldn’t have left one with me anyway. I only brought the coffee. You could ask at the desk.”
“She did not arrive home that day or any day since,” Abigail explained, “and we are worried about her.”
“If you are worried about her, miss,” the maid asked, frowning, “how is it you do not know her name?”
“I do know it,” Abigail said. “She is my mother. It is the gentleman whose name we do not know.”
“Ohhh,” the girl said as understanding dawned—and with it gossip for the kitchen when she returned there.
“I daresay he was either her brother or her cousin,” Elizabeth said with a swift glance at Abigail, who had flushed and was biting her lip. “Both live not far from here. And it would be so typical of either one of them not to think of letting us know.”
“Yes, it would,” Abigail added. “Especially Uncle Ernest. I am sure you are right, Cousin Elizabeth.”
The girl withdrew to the kitchen, but she did not after all share the juicy piece of gossip she had just acquired. She was feeling even more sick than she had felt when she discovered that the letters with which the lady had entrusted her had turned to pulp in the laundry tub. Obviously they had been important letters. That terribly haughty, frightening-looking gentleman who had been with the lady was not her husband, as she and everyone else had assumed, and the maid did not for a moment believe the brother-or-cousin story. Why would he have wanted a new carriage and horses if he lived close by, after all? No, the lady had been running away with him, whoever he was. Though she had written to someone—to two persons actually—probably so they would not worry about her.
It did not take Joel and Alexander long to discover where the mysterious gentleman had bought his carriage and horses. He had offered employment to his new coachman at the same place. But even the seller of the carriage did not know the gentleman’s name or where he had been intending to go with the carriage. No one at the inn knew the answer to either question either, though none of the ostlers thought to mention the one who was absent because it was his day off. No one could recall even the direction the carriage had taken when it left the inn.
“North, south, east, or west,” Alexander said when he and Joel had returned to the parlor. “We can take our pick.”
“And all points in between,” Elizabeth added while her brother grimaced.
“Who was he?” Abigail set her elbows on the table and cupped her hands over her face. “Who is he? And why was she with him? Where were they going? Why did she not write? Why has she not written since?”
They were rhetorical questions. She did not expect an answer. None of them would have had any to offer even if she had. Joel patted her shoulder while he exchanged grim glances with Alexander.
“London seems the most likely destination,” Alexander suggested.
“Oh, do you think so, Alex?” Elizabeth was frowning in thought. “It would seem to me the most unlikely place Viola would agree to go. She has shunned it for two years, except for that brief visit earlier this year for your wedding. And she could not leave fast enough afterward even though we all tried to persuade her to stay longer.”
“Where, then?” he asked.
But she had no better suggestion to offer.
“She was the same in Bath after Jacob’s christening,” Joel said. “She could not leave fast enough. She has been smothered in love ever since . . . since Anna was summoned to London and everything changed for so many of us.”
“Smothered?” Abigail lowered her hands and turned a pale, frowning face on her brother-in-law.
“Yes, I think it is the right word,” he said. “All anyone has been able to think to do is reach out to her, and to you and Camille too, Abby, with assurances that you are all still loved and still an integral part of the Westcott family. Perhaps I can see a bit more clearly than any of you because I came from the outside quite recently. You did not all react the same way. Camille steeled her nerve and marched off to the orphanage to teach where Anna had taught, determined to remake herself and her world. Anna steeled her nerve and stepped into the world of the ton, so alien to a girl who grew up in an orphanage. She even had the courage to fall in love with Avery and marry him. I am not sure about you, Abby. But unlike Camille and Anna, your mother has not charged forward to best these changes. She has kept herself to herself. She has been stifled. I have seen it. The whole family has been concerned about her, but everyone’s answer has been simply to love her more.”
“Which has stifled her instead,” Abigail said quietly.
“Love is not enough?” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “Oh, how wretchedly complex life is. It ought to be simple. Love ought to solve all problems. But of course it does not. The trouble is . . . what else is there except love?”
“There is giving her some space,” Joel said.
“Space,” Alexander repeated, pouring himself lukewarm coffee from the pot, which was still on the table. “You mean anywhere in the world that is not Hinsford or Bath, Joel?”
Abigail moaned and set a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, we certainly need to find her, for our own peace of mind,” Joel said. “But once we do and can assure ourselves beyond any doubt that she is safe and where she wishes to be, then we ought to allow her to remain there untroubled. Don’t you all agree?”
“With a man she met only the day before she fled with him,” Alexander said, his voice unusually harsh.
Abigail moaned again.
“Perhaps she knew him, Alex,” Elizabeth said.
“Does that make the situation any more acceptable?” he asked.
“Alex.” Abigail was gripping the edge of the table and gazi
ng steadily at him from a face that was even paler than it had been before but was set in stubborn lines now. “I will not allow anyone to stand in judgment upon my mother, not even you. You may be the head of the Westcott family, but strictly speaking, Mama is not and never has been a Westcott. And even if she were . . . Oh, even if she were, I agree with Joel.”
Joel gripped her shoulder again and Elizabeth patted her hand.
“I am sorry, Abigail,” Alexander said, running the fingers of one hand through his hair. “You are perfectly right. So is Joel. I am sorry. Wren would say I am reverting to my natural self. I always want to manage and protect those close to me, especially the women. Wren has been good for me, though I often need reminding. But let us go and find your mother.”
“Where?” she asked.
They decided upon the road to London and wasted a day and a half traveling east, stopping at every likely inn and tavern and even a few unlikely ones to ask if anyone had seen a shiny new black carriage with yellow trim and a fair-haired lady of middle years and a tall, dark gentleman. But though several people had seen carriages of a different color or design or trim conveying a gentleman and a lady—or, in one instance, two ladies and a child—none of them were helpful.
“Someone must have seen them,” Joel said when they stopped for a change of horses and a late luncheon. “It is impossible that they could have traveled so far in total invisibility.”
“I have been reaching the same conclusion,” Elizabeth said. “They did not come this way.”
There was always the chance, of course, that someone at the very next village or town would remember, but they had been playing that game all morning.
“It was my suggestion that we come this way,” Alexander said. “Now it is my suggestion that we go back and take a different road. Does anyone disagree?”
No one did.
It took them less time to return to the town where Viola had last been seen, but even so it seemed an endless journey. This time when they arrived there, though, they had better luck. The ostler whose day off had coincided with their last stop there was on duty again, and he recalled the coachman of the new rig saying that they were headed for the west country. The coachman had made a particular point of it because he had hoped they were not going to London, a noisy, filthy, smelly place he had been to only once and hoped never to go to again.