Bea tugged on Hastings’s sleeve and pointed at a bird.
“It’s a…it’s a…” He had to look again at the bird—he’d already forgotten what it was. “It’s a chaffinch. You’ve seen those before, Bea. See those white bars on its wings? Most definitely a chaffinch.”
Bea gazed at him solemnly, waiting.
He usually said much more on their walks, didn’t he? He’d tell Bea everything he knew about the chaffinch. And if he didn’t know enough to fill a teaspoon, which was sometimes the case, he’d veer the topic to something else. Another songbird—the canary, perhaps. Then he’d talk about how one would think the Canary Islands were named after canaries, when in fact the name derived from Insula Canaria, which meant “island of the dogs.”
Today it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
“This one is a gentleman,” he managed. “See its blue cap and reddish chest? A lady chaffinch isn’t quite as colorful.”
Bea looked behind them, where Helena usually followed. “Lady?”
“Lady Hastings isn’t feeling well—not well at all.”
Bea bit her lower lip. “Old?”
On a different day he would have laughed. “No, she isn’t old like Sir Hardshell. Sometimes people just need to…stay in their rooms.”
It wasn’t until he was standing in front of the pond that he realized that Bea had altered her route for the day so she could play at the miniature cottage again. Such a sign of greater flexibility on Bea’s part should have filled him with joy, but the sight of the cottage, the physical embodiment of how close to happiness he and Helena had come…
He did the only thing he could: He sat down and willed the return of Lake Sahara.
Helena had just dressed when a footman came to announce a visitor. “Ma’am, there is a Mrs. Andrew Martin to see you. Are you at home to her?”
Helena started. Mrs. Martin? Here? She put on her turban. “I will receive her.”
Mrs. Martin wore a gown of deep mourning. Helena’s heart seized. Only after a moment did she see that Mrs. Martin’s mourning gown was not one for a widow. “How do you do, Mrs. Martin?”
Her sister, Mrs. Monteth, looked like a ferret. Mrs. Martin, however, was a pretty woman of patrician mien. She and Helena spoke of the weather and her journey. But when tea had been brought in and poured, the small talk was put away.
“I can see you have your memories back, Lady Hastings—you look at me with a certain misgiving.”
“I am only puzzled by your visit, Mrs. Martin. But you are right: I have regained my full memory.”
Enough of it, in any case. She still could not remember the bum-pinching incident with Hastings—or any part of his first visit to Hampton House. Her heart constricted.
“Excellent, for I’d have come for nothing if you still had no recollection of Mr. Martin. I plan to seek a divorce, you see,” said Mrs. Martin, as breezily as if she’d planned to buy a new pair of evening slippers.
Helena stared at her. “A divorce?”
“I have a suitor, an American gentleman who is waiting to marry me—Americans are less fussy about divorces. And five years, wouldn’t you agree, is long enough in a marriage that should have never taken place. I married Mr. Martin to please my father, little realizing that if he wasn’t pleased with me by the time I turned eighteen, he never would be. Mr. Martin did the same for his mother and she thought no better of him. Well, my father died three years ago and the late Mrs. Martin passed away this week.
“Since my father’s passing, I’d made sure that Mr. Martin resided in town and I in the country—since I’d need to claim abandonment as well in order to bring a divorce petition on grounds of adultery.”
So that was why Helena hadn’t seen the Martins together in years. When Andrew was able to attend so many country parties solo, she had only counted her blessings and not once wondered why Mrs. Martin never accompanied him. “You have been planning this a long time.”
“You have no idea, Miss Fitzhugh. Until recently, however, I had a problem: Mr. Martin simply was not an adulterous man. His time and energy went into his manuscripts instead. Then I found a letter among his belongings from a woman who was obviously a paramour and I was overjoyed. It was the last piece that needed to fall into place. I went to my sister, who immediately assured me she would produce firm evidence of this adulterous affair. She had, of course, no idea that I meant to divorce him with that, or she’d never have participated.
“You either know the rest or you can imagine it, Lady Hastings. My sister came back stupefied by having burst in on you and Lord Hastings instead. But I remembered that there had been rumors that Mr. Martin had been in love with you before our marriage. So yesterday, after his mother’s passing, I sat him down and we had a frank conversation. He was at first flatly against my plan, but now I would say he is wavering.”
Before Helena could object, Mrs. Martin raised a hand. “Don’t worry, Lady Hastings: I will not dream of proposing that you be caught with him—I can easily pay someone to swear under oath that she and Mr. Martin engaged in an affair. If Mr. Martin is willing to go through with the divorce, that is. He is undecided, as he is unsure of what benefits await him.
“Upon further questioning, I discovered that he believes that you are unlikely to have truly married Lord Hastings by the time your accident took place. I thought this was of tremendous importance, but he said no, you’d lost all your memories concerning him and treated him as you would any stranger. He was unwilling to come and see you, as he thought he had no right to interfere in another man’s marriage. But I disagreed: He would not be meddling in anyone’s marriage if you are not at all married.”
The true significance of Mrs. Martin’s words was beginning to make itself felt. Helena felt as if she were suspended above a void.
“So this is what I’d like to ask on behalf of Mr. Martin and myself, Lady Hastings: Have you truly married Lord Hastings? For if you have not, Mr. Martin and I will both be thrilled: I for the inducement it will give him to let the divorce go through uncontested; he for the opportunity to finally marry you, once we are divorced.”
This was what Helena had wanted all these years, wasn’t it? That somehow, someday, Andrew would again be free to marry her?
She said nothing.
Mrs. Martin leaned forward in her seat. “I know what you are thinking—the scandal will dwarf anything we’ve seen in a while. It will be punishing for all of us, no doubt. But new scandals will come and old ones will be forgotten. After a while, no one will remember you were ever married to anyone other than Mr. Martin.”
But did this mean that someday Hastings would also marry someone else? The thought was a burn mark upon Helena’s heart.
“Think about it, will you, Lady Hastings? You have risked everything for the love of Mr. Martin. Now you can have him without any of the risks—love and respectability.” Mrs. Martin rose. “You needn’t give me an answer immediately. If you’d like to speak to Mr. Martin, you can reach him at the house in London. I will show myself out.”
Helena stopped before Hastings’s study. The door was ajar. He was at his desk, an unlit tobacco pipe by his elbow.
“Would you like to come in?” he said without looking up.
Her heart flipped. It was another few seconds before she could cross the threshold.
As she approached the desk, she saw that he was working on the revisions she’d requested in one of the Old Toad Pond tales, changing an instance of Mrs. Bunny to Mrs. Porcupine, to avoid having the same character being sunny in one story and sullen in another.
Now he did glance up and smiled faintly. “I am ashamed to admit this, but until you’d pointed it out, I’d had no idea I’d called two different characters by the same name.”
She didn’t know whether she wanted to throw him out of the window or yank him to her by his hair. She tilted her chin at the tobacco pipe. “Is that Tobias’s?”
“I suppose it is. The pipe belonged to my father. I don’t much ca
re for pipe smoking, but I like to pack it with fresh tobacco from time to time.”
So that was why his clothes sometimes smelled of pipe tobacco. She was suddenly possessed by the desire to roll in a pile of his country tweeds, perhaps naked.
He clasped his hands together on the desk. “I understand Mrs. Martin was here.”
The sensation of being suspended above a void returned with a vengeance. “She wants me to marry Mr. Martin.”
He came out of his chair. “What?”
He’d been so composed, so serene—it almost comforted her to see a stronger reaction. “She wants a divorce and he hesitates. She hopes the thought of marrying me will make him more cooperative.”
He said nothing for a long time; her heart began to beat to the rhythm of his agitated breaths. “You still want to marry him?”
“I only stopped wanting to marry him when I could no longer remember who he was.”
He shook his head and went on shaking it. “No. No. Stop this madness.”
A part of her nodded vigorously in agreement. She tried not to pay any attention. “You can’t ask me to change one of my most deeply held wishes simply because we’ve spent a few weeks together.”
He rounded the table and set his hands on her arms. “I can and I do. Don’t make this mistake, Helena. Don’t confuse what you once wanted with what you now need.”
The warmth of his hands through her sleeves—she stepped back. “I’m going to see Mr. Martin.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose you’ll need to do that. Would you like me to hold dinner until you return?”
No, what she wanted was…histrionics. She wanted him to throw his inkwell across the room, then overturn his entire desk. To not let her go so easily, so gallantly. “If I decide to marry him, then I will not return. The longer I live with you, the bigger the scandal will be.”
“You will return to at least say a proper good-bye to Bea. She asked about you just now. Do you know how seldom she asks about people?”
At least his beautiful voice rose a little. She supposed she’d have to satisfy herself with that. “I’d better go now.”
He yanked her to him and kissed her, a hard, brief kiss that left her short of breath and light of head.
“Go,” he said brusquely. “I’ll order your carriage.”
She lifted her hand and grazed her lips with her knuckles. He watched her. After a moment, his gaze softened. “Remember Lake Sahara, my dear.”
CHAPTER 17
Hastings’s day only went downhill. One of his grooms broke his arm while exercising a horse. The roof of the mushroom house fell in. And then the coup de grâce: Sir Hardshell gave up the ghost.
By the time Hastings learned the news, Bea was already in her trunk, so upset that when he tried to give her a biscuit and a cup of milk tea, she kept pushing the little tray back out the door at the bottom of the trunk.
After a while he gave up, ate the biscuit himself, and sat down with his back against Bea’s trunk, wishing he had a trunk of his own for sanctuary, where he could remain until the world changed.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the wall; he was startled out of his preoccupation only when he heard a small sob. Bea often became tense and distressed, but she rarely cried.
He turned around and tried to peer inside through one of the airholes, seeing nothing but darkness. “Bea, poppet, I know Sir Hardshell isn’t coming back, but we can invite his cousin to come and stay with you. I hear his cousin has been looking for a place to stay. Maybe he wouldn’t mind inheriting Sir Hardshell’s glass tank.”
She sniffed but did not answer.
“The cousin’s name is Mr. Stoutback. He has a very nice, even temperament. And he is much younger than Sir Hardshell, so he’ll be able to live with us for a long, long time.”
Bea sobbed again. Hastings wished for fairy godmothers—one for Bea and one for him. “Or we can invite a different one of Sir Hardshell’s cousins. What do you think of Miss Carapace? I’ll bet she wouldn’t mind if you tied a pretty bow around her shell.”
“Does lady have cousins?” Bea’s question came all of a sudden.
Hastings started. “Lady?”
“Our lady,” she said dejectedly.
He was astounded. “You mean Lady Hastings? She is the reason you are in there?”
“Does she have cousins?”
If only Helena were as easy to replace as tortoises. “She does have cousins, but none of them can come live with us.”
Bea hiccuped. “Is she coming back?”
The all-important question. Hastings sat back down again and resumed his staring at the wall. “I hope so, poppet. I hope so.”
As she rang the doorbell of Andrew’s town house, Helena came to a disconcerting realization: Since she left Easton Grange, she had not once thought of Andrew. Half the time she’d been rubbing her lips, as if she were still trying to feel Hastings’s kiss. The rest of the time she kept reliving her last glimpse of him, standing before the window of the study, shadowy except for his face and his bright, lovely hair.
He had not waved, but only watched as her carriage pulled away.
Andrew himself opened the door. “Come in, Helena, please come in. I’m so glad you are here.”
How different it was to see him when she was firmly in possession of all her memories. When he smiled shyly, she was instantly transported to the small library at Fitz’s estate where they’d first run into each other and immediately started discussing the Venerable Bede’s works—how his face had glowed with pleasure that afternoon.
She blinked. Was this what Hastings had meant when he said that she saw Andrew not as the man he was, but the one he had been?
Andrew showed her into a parlor and lit a spirit lamp for tea. “It’s the servants’ half day, so if you don’t mind, we will make do with my rusty tea-making skills.”
He bustled about, retrieving tea and sugar, then bringing her a plate of toast sandwiches. She was reminded of her first—and only—visit to his house on the beautiful Norfolk coast as part of a group of young people. At her arrival, he’d carried her luggage up the stairs himself. In the course of the high tea later that afternoon, he’d made innumerable trips to bring her everything from lobster salad to cream cake.
Helena frowned: again the throes of nostalgia.
“Is something the matter?” asked Andrew.
“No, everything is fine. Did Mrs. Martin inform you I might be coming?”
Andrew sat down and measured tea leaves into the pot. “Yes, she cabled. I didn’t believe her, but I am so glad to be proven wrong.”
The stickpin at the center of his necktie—she’d given him one quite like it, with a Roman eagle emblem on the head. It had been the first Christmas party Fitz and Millie had thrown at Henley Park. Mulled wine had flowed freely. She’d pulled him into an alcove to kiss him, and he’d tasted of nutmeg and cloves.
She was always thinking of Andrew as he’d been years ago. How, then, would she judge the man he was today? “I’ll admit I haven’t always been fond of Mrs. Martin,” she said. “But after our chat today I’ve come to quite admire her. I like that she has taken her happiness into her own hands.”
“So you will leave Lord Hastings?” Andrew gazed at her. “Assuming, that is, you two have not yet married.”
“If I do leave him—”
“Then we can be married,” he said breathlessly.
“But what do you plan to do if I can’t leave him?”
Andrew fidgeted, rubbing a corner of the tablecloth between his fingers. “I don’t know.”
“Will you still grant your wife the divorce?”
“I suppose not, then.”
This was not the kind of answer she would have liked to hear from him. She kept her face blank and her voice uninflected. “What do you know of her situation?”
“According to her, she has an American chap she fancies. He has promised to marry her if she can obtain a divorce.”
&n
bsp; “Why not let her go?”
Andrew took the kettle off the spirit lamp and poured hot water into the teapot. “Well, it’s a nuisance, isn’t it, a divorce?”
She watched him closely. “If you let her go now, she can marry the man of her choice and build a family with him.”
He shrugged. “She and I were all right as we were. I know I’m used to it. We’ll just carry on as we’ve always done.”
When Helena had awakened from her coma and found herself married to a stranger, she’d administered a test of character. Hastings had refused to put his own happiness above his daughter’s welfare and passed the test with flying colors.
Andrew did not. They’d already established that he had no particular objection to a divorce—if Helena would marry him afterward, he was more than willing to go through with it. But without the prospect of personal gain, he would keep his wife in their utterly unprofitable marriage, denying her everything for which she’d striven with such purpose and dedication, simply because he didn’t care for the “nuisance” of the process.
“Do one thing for me, Andrew.”
“Anything.”
“Grant your wife the divorce. Don’t keep her tethered to you just because it doesn’t matter to you. It matters intensely to her. She is no more at fault in this marriage than you are, and I’d like to see you treat her fairly, the way you yourself would have liked to be treated.”
He blinked, confused. “But what will I do then?”
“Anything you like. Your life will hardly change, since you and she haven’t been in the same house for years. You will go on writing your histories and I will go on publishing them.”
He bit his lower lip. “But you won’t marry me?”
“I can’t leave Lord Hastings—we are already married.”
“Oh,” said Andrew.
“Promise me you’ll let Mrs. Martin go?”
He nodded dejectedly. She kissed him on the forehead and left the table. “Be sure to send volume three of your history to me as soon as it is finished. And don’t dawdle, Andrew—I will not tolerate a manuscript of yours being six months late again.”
Tempting the Bride Page 21