by Mary Balogh
“She has a nurse,” Alice said. “And Jarvis is remarkably goodnatured. I am sure he will agree to take her into the park occasionally or somewhere else amusing if you ask him, Phoebe. ”
“Well, I don’t know, I am sure,” her sister-in-law said. “What happened last night, Alice? Shocking goings-on, according to Amanda.”
“The storm came on suddenly,” Alice said. “Piers and Miss Borden were caught in the gardens and had to wait for it to pass before they could make a dash for the carriage.”
“I daresay he had it all planned,” Bruce said. “He never was quite respectable. “
“I daresay he will be offering for her, then,” Phoebe said. “Though I suppose he would have anyway. He has been paying her marked attention.”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“The girl’s connection with trade is unfortunate,” Phoebe said, “but of course her father was a baron. Mr. Westhaven might have done better for sure, but I suppose there will be a good dowry.”
“I daresay you are right,” Alice said.
“It is a pity in a way,” Phoebe said. “I thought at one time that he fancied Amanda, but I daresay he thought her not good enough for him. He was always dreadfully high in the instep.”
“I would not have given him Amanda anyway,” Bruce said. “Ramshackle fellow. I never knew why Webster allowed him to be forever at Chandlos, Alice. Felt sorry for him, no doubt.”
“Piers and Web were like brothers,” Alice said quietly.
“Well, then,” he said, “he might have had more respect for your good name, Alice, Papa having been who he was. I have not liked your association with him since you have been in town. It is a good thing you are returning to Bath, I believe.”
“Yes.” she said, rising from her chair. “I am looking forward to being at home again.”
“Though what you find to do there I do not know,” Bruce said. “And why pay to keep a house going for one person, Alice, when you could be with us and keeping yourself busy? Well, never let it be said that I did not offer you a brother’s care.”
“No,” she said, crossing the room to him and kissing him on the cheek, “I will never let that be said, Bruce.”
“You really ought not to be traveling with just a maid, Alice,” Phoebe said. “What if you were attacked by highwaymen?”
“Then I suppose I would lose Web’s diamonds and the coins in my purse,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, Phoebe. You have enough to worry about with Amanda’s come-out.”
“Yes,” Phoebe said, turning her cheek for Alice’s kiss, “you do not know what it is to be a mother, Alice. You have been very fortunate.”
“Yes,” Alice said, patting her sister-in-law’s arm and turning to take her leave.
She could have been on her way to Bath a half hour or more before she was, she thought later, relaxing back in the seat of her carriage, a tearful Penelope at her side—there was a young groom in the house in London who would have to be found a position in Bath, Alice had begun to realize. She might have had at least a half hour longer of daylight for their travels that day. But she had sat longer than necessary over her luncheon, and then she had found it necessary to have her hair completely redone, though it was still tidy from the morning.
Well, she thought, dosing her eyes, it was over now. There would be no more expecting him and not expecting him now. She would be able to gain control of herself and her life once more. She would be able to impose peace on herself again.
Except that there would never again be Piers or any hope that their friendship would bring them together again, even if only for brief days. For there was no more friendship and never would be again. She had had to make an instant decision when he had asked her if he might make love to her—not that he had put the request into words, of course. She had had to decide between one glorious night of love and a lifetime of friendship.
She had chosen the night of love.
And had been granted it. Oh, far more wonderfully than she had ever expected. She had never suspected—through nine years of a close and affectionate marriage she had never once suspected—that there could be such passion, such intense and shattering joy.
She had chosen her night of love and had lived through it. And now she must live through the rest of a lifetime without the friendship that had meant more to her than anything else in her life, though she had rarely seen him after Web’s death.
Did she regret her decision? She had not yet given herself time to think fully, though she felt already a vast and frightening emptiness yawning ahead. Life was going to be dreadful indeed without Piers, especially after she had read the notice of his betrothal in the London papers. She would spend the rest of her life wondering about him, wondering if his marriage was bringing him any contentment, wondering if there were any children and how many and what genders.
She would wonder if he ever thought of her, ever blamed himself for coming to her for comfort and allowing her to give it. She would wonder if he ever suspected that it was her own need that had driven her to say yes to his question.
Oh, yes, she would regret her decision for a lifetime.
And yet for a lifetime she would have her night of love to remember. Piers kissing her as she had never been kissed, unclothing her in the candlelight, touching her with his mouth and his palms and his fingertips in places and in ways she had never been touched. Piers looking deeply into her eyes, unembarrassed by the intimacy they shared. Piers inside her, stroking her pain until it became an agony and then an ecstasy.
Piers holding her to him, rocking her against him, asking her to forgive him if she ever could.
Forgive him for giving her ecstasy?
She would never regret what had happened. She would never blame him. He had not come there to seduce her and had not done anything to her that was against her will. And she would never blame herself, either. She should do so, she knew. She had allowed a man into her house and into her bed the night before, and given him far more of herself than she had ever given her husband. What she had done would have been unthinkable to her just the day before. She should feel guilt and shame.
But she did not and she would not. She loved Piers, always had loved him and always would. He had needed her the night before—though doubtlessly today he felt both guilt and embarrassment—and she had given him all she had to give. She would not feel guilty for that.
Somehow she would live with the pain of the loss of his friendship. She had learned to live with losing Web, and in many ways that had been worse because he had been half of her daily life for nine years. She would learn to live with this loss, too. She could not say that she regretted having married Web just because the pain of his death was almost unbearable for a long time. In a similar way she would not say that she regretted sleeping with Piers just because there was pain to be dealt with again.
Life was worth the pain. The joys were worth the pain.
***
Two weeks later, Alice was wondering if such a feeling were not perhaps too unrealistic. It was hard to cope with pain, she was finding, by telling oneself that the joy preceding it had made it worthwhile.
Pain, simply stated, she was discovering anew, was painful.
At least she was happy that she had been able to get away from London. And happy that she had had a home in Bath to return to and a whole circle of friends glad to see her and eager to inquire after the health of her brother’s family and to hear the news she brought from town.
She resumed her frequent visits to the Pump Room to talk with friends and to stroll indoors when the weather was bad. She visited the library and the shops on Milsom Street and the Abbey and the Upper Rooms and Sidney Park, usually with Andrea Potter, and entered once more into the lives of her friends, seeking to find forgetfulness of her own life.
Andrea teased her about Sir Clayton Lansing. “He was like a fish lifted out of his tank once you had gone to London, Alice,” she said. “It was most pitiful to behold, I do assure you. No on
e was surprised when he took himself off after you, claiming to be interested in the Season as a change from Bath for this spring. We were none of us deceived.”
They both laughed.
“But did he make you an offer, Alice?” Andrea asked. “Do tell. All your friends have had a lively bet on it, I do assure you, though all of us wished to bet that he would. Did he?”
“Twice, I am afraid.” Alice said. “Oh, Andrea, I do so hate to be disagreeable.”
“It is my guess that you were not,” Andrea said. “If you had been disagreeable the first time, he would not have asked the second, would he? You are just going to have to be a little more brutal, Alice, as I have told you before. A good kick in the shins ought to do it. The very idea that he is good enough for you!”
Alice laughed despite herself. “Perhaps I will not have to,” she said. “He has not returned yet. Perhaps he has found someone in London who will receive his addresses more favorably.”
“Oh. Who?” Andrea said scornfully.
Yes, it was good to be back, Alice decided. Good to have a home and friends, as she had not had when circumstances had forced her to leave Chandlos. She was well blessed.
Sometimes she almost had herself convinced. But if it had been true, perhaps her stomach would not have lurched quite so painfully when her housekeeper interrupted an afternoon visit that Andrea Potter was paying her with the announcement that a Mr. Piers Westhaven was waiting downstairs, asking if he could be admitted.
“Mr. Piers Westhaven?” Andrea said in some curiosity when the housekeeper had disappeared again to bring up the guest. “Alice, whoever have you been keeping secret from me, you wretch? You have turned as white as a ghost.”
Chapter 12
PIERS feared that he was losing his sense of humor. It was vastly diverting, he told himself numerous times during the two weeks following his betrothal, to watch the metamorphosis of a female from a young lady on the catch for a husband to a young lady successfully betrothed. Vastly diverting. Except that he could not force himself into feeling diverted, vastly or otherwise.
Cassandra—he had been given permission to call her that—was suddenly far too busy to grant him more than a very small portion of her time. Her days were given to endless shopping expeditions for her bride clothes and endless visiting with “friends,” who had appeared largely nonexistent until the announcement of her engagement had appeared in the Morning Post.
When he was permitted to accompany her to some entertainment, she gave much of her attention to other admirers, the army of the disappointed. At a ball she could find a place for him on her dancing card only once each evening, and at the theater she could grant him only her divided attention during the performance; there were visitors to entertain in his box during the intervals. Other gentlemen, it seemed, were to be granted the exclusive right of driving her in the park during the fashionable hour of the afternoons.
“Mama has explained to me that it will not do to be seen to hang on your sleeve merely because you are my betrothed,” she explained to him, all wide eyes, on one occasion. “It is not done.”
Vastly amusing. Mr. Westhaven—his request to be called by his given name had been ignored—could see that he was going to have to drag the girl, kicking and screaming and in chains, to Westhaven Park when the time came. All of which he would do—with the possible exception of the chains—he thought with unaccustomed grimness.
The marriage contract was not ready at the end of the one week. “We need to be doubly careful when there is a fortune at stake on each side, my dear sir, do we not?” Mr. Bosley had said by way of explanation. Not that Mr. Westhaven saw the necessity of a written contract anyway. He was obligated to marry the girl, his word had been given, and the announcement had been made. There was nothing more to be careful about as far as he was concerned.
Perhaps after all he might have been able to see the humor of the situation if circumstances had just been different. After all, there was no way on earth that he was going to allow a mere chit of a girl to tyrannize him once she was his wife. She would learn—and learn fast—that he would expect obedience once she had sworn to obey and that she must, for her own peace of mind, adjust herself to his way of life.
Perhaps he might have seen the humor. Perhaps not. Put that way, the vision of his future marriage made him look horribly the tyrant himself. Was that what he was going to do? Enforce obedience? Bend the girl to his will so that his own way of life would be undisturbed while her world would be turned upside down and inside out?
Devil take it, he was going to have to adjust to her, too, giving as much rein as he could allow while still remaining master of his own house.
She was not, after all, another Harriet. Harriet had catered to his selfishness. She had done all the bending, all the adjusting. And in return he had been fond of her. Fond of her! How magnanimous of him. How vastly generous. And he had gifted her with his child and killed her.
Damnation. There was no humor—none—in the situation, or in life, either. It was all a vast joke that someone or something was playing on the human race. Except that it was not at all funny.
And there was that other thing, too—that thing that dominated his every waking moment and kept him from sleep at night and haunted his dreams when he did nod off.
There was Allie.
A grand, endless debate had been set up between two halves of his brain, and no inner judge had the sense to point out that the arguments had proceeded in circle upon circle upon endless circle and it was time to bring the debate to an end.
Given the great selfish sin he had committed against her, knowing that nothing could now recall that or put it right, had he done the right thing to let her go without a word or a letter? Was he right to leave it so, to disappear from her life? To leave her free to regain some peace of mind? Of did he owe it to her to see her, to make some explanation, some apology?
Was it selfishness only that made him want to see her one more time? After two weeks the need had become an obsession. And finally he closed his mind to the half of his brain that told him seeing her was the worst thing he could do. He sent word to Russell Square that he must leave town for a few days, and took himself off to Bath and the York House hotel.
But suddenly, he discovered, the decision and the journey made, seeing her no longer seemed like a selfish obsession. Indeed, he would have given anything in the world, he thought as he got ready to call on her in Sidney Place—it had not been difficult to discover where she lived—to call out his carriage again and make for the London road.
How would he face her? How would he look her in the eye? How would he greet her? What would he say?
But having come this far, he must call on her. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do, but he must do it now or live in torment for the rest of his life. Perhaps he could put it all behind him once he had spoken to her and made some sort of atonement.
And perhaps the moon would fell from the sky, too.
***
There was no time to prepare herself, no time to answer Andrea’s question. He was striding through the doorway almost as soon as her housekeeper had gone out through it. He was coming across the room to her, both hands outstretched, looking so very familiar, so very much Piers—had she expected him to have changed in two weeks? Her own hands, she was surprised to see, were stretched out, too.
“Allie,” he said, and took her hands in a strong, almost bruising clasp.
“Piers.” She returned pressure for pressure.
She thought he was going to come all the way to her and kiss her, but he checked himself, glanced at Andrea, and smiled—Piers in every way.
“Andrea,” she said, “may I present Mr. Piers Westhaven, my husband’s dearest friend? Mrs. Andrea Potter, Piers.”
He bowed, she inclined her head. Both looked amused for some reason.
“You were Mr. Penhallow’s friend?” Andrea said. “You have not seen Alice, then, since his passing? She is doing very well, is she not,
and is quite indispensable to us here in Bath, sir.”
“We met in London recently,” he said, “and played uncle and aunt to Allie’s younger niece on a few occasions. I happen to be in Bath for a few days, Allie, and decided that I must call on you.”
“Splendid!” Andrea said. Her expression was still one of amusement, Alice saw. “My husband and I are entertaining a few friends this evening for cards and conversation and supper. You must accompany Alice, if you will, sir.”
He bowed. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “But I am not certain of my plans, or of Allie’s.”
“I read the announcement of your betrothal in the Post, Piers,” Alice said. “Please accept my congratulations.”
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
Andrea’s look of disappointment was almost comical, Alice thought.
Andrea got to her feet decisively. “Well,” she said, “I must proceed on my way to the library, Alice. I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Westhaven. I shall see both of you tonight?”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Westhaven said.
“Yes,” Alice said at the same moment.
And suddenly they were stranded in the room together, she turned toward the door, having watched her friend on her way, he somewhere behind her. She composed her face, clasped her hands loosely in front of her, and turned.
“Piers—” she said.
“Allie—”