by Mary Balogh
The Duchess of Stanbrook really had committed suicide in just that way, and George really had seen her do it, though he had not in reality been quite as close. She had seen him running toward her, heard him calling to her, and disappeared over the edge without a sound. It had happened a mere few months after their only son—their only child—was killed in Spain during the wars.
“Has the dream been recurring more frequently since the wedding of your nephew?” Ben asked.
George frowned and thought about it.
“Yes, I suppose it has,” he said. “There is a connection, do you suppose? But I am genuinely happy for Julian, and Philippa is a delightful girl. They will be a worthy duke and duchess after my time, and it seems there will be issue of the marriage within the next few months. I am content.”
“And that very fact makes you feel guilty, does it, George?” Ben asked.
“Guilty? Does it?”
“We should call it the Survivors’ guilt,” Ralph said with a sigh. “You suffer from it, George. So do Hugo and Imogen. So do I. You feel guilty because the future of your title and property and fortune have been settled to your satisfaction, yet you feel your very contentment with that somehow betrays your wife and your son.”
“Do I?” The duke settled an elbow on the arm of his chair and cupped his hand over his face. “And have I?”
“Sometimes,” Hugo said, “you feel wretched when you realize that a whole day has passed, or maybe even longer, without your thinking even once about those who did not live while you did. And it almost always happens just when you are at your happiest.”
“I do not believe a whole day has passed yet,” George said.
“A day is a long time,” Imogen agreed. “Twenty-four hours. How can one turn off memory for that long? And would one wish to? One thinks one does until it happens for a few hours.”
“This is precisely what I mean,” Ralph said. “It is guilt pure and simple. Guilt over being alive and able to forget—and smile and laugh and feel moments of happiness.”
“If I had died, though,” Vincent said, “I would have wanted my mother and my sisters to live on and have happy lives and to remember me with smiles and laughter. Not every day, however. I would not have wanted them to be obsessed with remembering me.”
“One good way to forget,” Flavian said, “is to fall off your h-horse and land on your h-head after someone has shot you through it and then have someone ride over you. Behold the blessing of my poor memory: no g-guilt whatsoever.”
Which they all knew to be a lie.
But if he had died, he would have been quite happy at the notion of Velma’s marrying Len—his betrothed and his best friend, respectively. At least he thought he would have been happy. Except that no one could be happy when he was dead. Or unhappy either, for that matter.
Anyway, he had not died—but it had happened anyway. Velma had come and told him. Len had not. Perhaps he had decided against it when he heard what happened after Velma came. Perhaps he had judged it best to keep his distance.
Now Len was dead, and they had not spoken in more than six years while he still lived. And Flavian felt guilty about it—oh, yes, he did, unfair as it seemed. Why should he feel guilt? He was not the one who had done the betraying.
Usually these late-night sessions made them all feel somewhat better, even if they solved nothing. Flavian did not feel better the next morning, however. He had gone to bed feeling as if he had leaden weights in his shoes and in his stomach and in his soul, and he woke up with one of his headaches and deep in one of his depressions.
He hated them more than the headaches—that feeling of dragging self-pity and the fear that nothing was worth anything. It was the one shared mood the Survivors’ Club had all fought against most fiercely during those years they had spent together at Penderris. Bodies could be mended and made to work again, at least well enough to enable the person inside them to live on. Minds could be mended to the degree that they worked efficiently again for the one who inhabited them. And souls could be soothed and fed from an inner well of inspiration and from an outer sharing of experience and friendship and love.
But one never quite reached the point at which one could relax and know that one had made it through to the other side of suffering and could now be simply content, even happy, inside a balanced mix of body, mind, and spirit.
Well, of course one did not. He had never been quite naïve enough to expect it, had he? Surely, even when he had been head over ears in love with Velma, and she with him, and they had become betrothed at the end of those brief weeks of his leave and had expected a life of happily-ever-after, surely even then he had not believed it to be literally possible. After all, he had been a military officer, and there had been a war to fight. And his brother, David, had been dying.
Why the devil had they got betrothed and even celebrated the event at a grand ball in London the night before he set off back to the Peninsula, while David was at Candlebury dying, and Flavian had come home for the express purpose of being with him? And why had Flavian gone back to war when the end for his brother had obviously been near and he was about to be landed with the responsibilities of the title and property? He frowned in thought, trying to remember, trying to work it out, but the trying merely made his head thump more painfully.
The sun was shining from a clear blue sky again, he could see, and the daffodils beckoned. Or, rather, the enchantress among the daffodils beckoned. Would she be there? Would he be disappointed if he went and she was not? Would she be disappointed if she went there and he did not? And what did he intend if he did go? Conversation? Dalliance? Seduction? On Vince’s property? With the viscountess’s friend? He had better stay away.
Ben, Ralph, George, and Imogen were going riding. They expected to be gone all morning, since they were going beyond the confines of the park.
“Will you come with us, Flavian?” Imogen asked at the breakfast table.
He hesitated for the merest moment.
“I will,” he said. “Vince is taking Hugo and the l-ladies over the wilderness walk, and it sounds alarmingly s-strenuous. I will come with you and l-let my horse do all the exercising.”
“What I am going to do,” Vincent said, “is show everyone what they cannot see because they have eyes.”
“The boy has taken to talking in riddles,” George said, looking at him fondly. “Yet, strangely, we know just what you mean, Vincent. At least I do.”
“I am even going to sacrifice my morning’s practice in the music room,” Vincent said.
“He p-put me to sleep there yesterday morning,” Flavian said.
“With a lullaby, Flave,” Vincent protested, “for which you asked. I would say I was singularly successful.”
Flavian chuckled.
“Oh,” Lady Darleigh said, her hands clasped together at her bosom, “I am so looking forward to this evening, and I am quite certain you will all be vastly impressed, even though some of you spend time in London and must attend all sorts of concerts with the very best performers.”
This evening?
“I do believe,” Lady Trentham said, “that Miss Debbins was pleased to be asked, Sophia. What a delightful lady she is. And her sister too.”
Miss Debbins? She was the music teacher, was she not? And her sister was . . .
“I am probably as far from being a connoisseur of music as it is possible to be,” Lady Darleigh said. “But I do believe that talent in any artistic field is unmistakable when one encounters it. And I believe Miss Debbins is talented. You will all be able to judge for yourselves this evening.”
“Miss Debbins is to play here?” Flavian asked.
“I did not tell you?” the viscountess asked him. “I am so sorry.”
“He was not listening,” Hugo said.
“Perhaps he was not present when I announced it.” Lady Darleigh beamed at Flavian. “Miss Debbins is going to play for us this evening, as well as anyone else of our number who can be persuaded to entertain th
e rest of us. She will be coming for dinner too. For once we will have an even number of ladies and gentlemen at the table.”
Even numbers. Flavian did the calculations in his head, but they did not add up. Unless . . .
“Her sister will be coming too,” Vincent said. “Mrs. Keeping. We are fond of her, are we not, Sophie, not least because she is the one who made it possible for us to become world-famous authors.”
He chuckled, as did everyone else—Flavian included.
The devil, he was thinking. He had just resisted the temptation to stride off in the direction of the meadow and the daffodils. Yet he was to meet her again after all today. Here. She was coming to dinner.
Well, at least tonight she would not be surrounded by little trumpets of sunshine fallen from the sky.
And if he was not very careful, he was going to find himself penning sonnets after all. Shudderingly awful ones.
Little trumpets of sunshine, for the love of God.
But his headache suddenly seemed to have eased.
5
Agnes did not go back to the park, despite the facts that it was a lovely day and the daffodils would not bloom forever or even for much longer. She stayed home instead to wash her hair and dream up excuses for not going out to dinner. She could not do more than dream, however, for Dora looked as though she would snatch at the flimsiest excuse to stay at home with her.
Agnes wondered if he had gone back this morning and, if so, how he had felt to discover she was not there. He would probably have shrugged and forgotten her within moments. It must not be difficult for a man like him to find women to kiss whenever he pleased.
A man like him.
She knew nothing about him, apart from the fact that he had once been a military officer and must have been wounded severely enough to have to spend a few years in Cornwall at the home of the Duke of Stanbrook, recuperating. The only sign of any wound now was his slight stammer, and that might have nothing to do with the wars. Perhaps he had always had a speech impediment.
But—a man like him. He was extraordinarily handsome. More than that, though, he radiated a magnetic, almost overpowering masculinity. His hooded eyes and mobile eyebrow suggested that he was a rake. And his looks, his physique, his air of assured command would all make him a very successful one and probably a ruthless one.
Not that she could be sure of anything. She did not know him.
She donned her pale green silk when it was time to get ready, and remembered that it was what she had worn to the harvest ball. It could not be helped. It was her best evening gown, and nothing less would do for tonight. No one would remember anyway. He would not. And apart from Sophia and Dora, no one else among tonight’s guests had seen her that night. She dressed her hair a little more severely than she would have liked. She ought not to have washed it today. It was always at its silkiest and least manageable on the first day.
Who would care what she looked like?
Dora looked positively pasty, and her dark hair was even more severe than her sister’s.
“Sit down and let me do your hair again,” Agnes said. Dealing with her sister’s appearance and soothing her jitters helped calm her own discomfort and embarrassment until the carriage arrived from Middlebury, and it was time to go.
There were only ten people gathered in the drawing room when she and Dora were announced, and two of them were Sophia and Viscount Darleigh, with whom they were long familiar. Three of the others had come with them to the cottage yesterday. It really ought not to be an ordeal, then, to meet the others. Yet there seemed to be far more than just ten persons in the room, and it was hard to convince oneself that they were just people like anyone, despite the grandeur of their titles.
Really, of course, Agnes was forced to admit to herself, there was only one of the company she dreaded meeting, and he was no stranger.
The Duke of Stanbrook was a tall, elegant, austere-looking older gentleman with dark hair graying attractively at the temples. Sir Benedict Harper was lean and handsome—and seated in a wheeled chair. His wife, Lady Harper, was tall and shapely, very dark, and stunningly beautiful in a faintly foreign sort of way. The Earl of Berwick was a dark-haired young man who somehow remained good-looking despite the nasty scar that slashed across his face and slightly distorted one eye and one side of his mouth.
Agnes concentrated upon each introduction as well as smiling and nodding to Lady Barclay and Lord and Lady Trentham. It was almost as if she believed that, by doing so, she could avoid looking at the tenth person.
“And you have met Viscount Ponsonby, I believe,” Sophia said as she finished the introductions. “Indeed I know that you have, Agnes. You danced with him at the harvest ball. Miss Debbins, were you introduced too at that time?”
“I was.” Dora curtsied. “Good evening, my lord.”
Agnes, beside her, inclined her head.
He smiled and held out his right hand for Dora’s. “I understand you are to b-be our savior tonight, Miss Debbins,” he said. “If you had not c-come to play for us, we would have been d-doomed to listen to Vincent scrape away at his v-violin all evening.”
Dora set her hand in his and smiled back.
“Ah, but you must not forget, my lord,” she said, “that his lordship has learned those scrapings from me. And I may wish to quarrel with your description of his playing.”
His smile deepened, and Agnes felt an inexplicable indignation. He had set out to charm Dora and was succeeding. She looked far more relaxed than she had when they arrived.
“Ho,” Lord Trentham said, “you had better be careful, Flave. There is none so fierce as a mother in defense of her chick or a music teacher in defense of her pupil.”
“You coined that one on the spot, Hugo, admit it,” the Earl of Berwick said. “It was a good one, though. Mrs. Keeping, you are a painter of some talent, or so Lady Darleigh informs us. In watercolors, is that, or in oils?”
Someone brought them drinks, and conversation flowed with surprising ease for the fifteen minutes or so before the butler came to the door to inform Sophia that dinner was served. But of course conversation flowed easily. These people were members of the haute ton. They were at ease in company and were adept at dispensing good manners and conversation. It would have taken them no time at all to sum up the visitors as they arrived, frightened and tongue-tied despite the fact that they were gentlewomen themselves, on the threshold of the drawing room.
Sophia had arranged the seating for dinner. Agnes found herself being led into the dining room on the very solid arm of Lord Trentham. She was seated halfway along the table, and he took his place beside her. Dora, she noticed, had been given the place of honor to the right of Viscount Darleigh at the head of the table. She had the Duke of Stanbrook on her other side. Poor Dora! She would appreciate the honor being paid her, yet it would surely terrify her too. Except that the duke had bent his head to say something to her, and she was smiling with genuine warmth.
Viscount Ponsonby took the place at Agnes’s other side.
What wretched bad luck, she thought. It would have been bad enough to have had him sitting across from her, but at least then she would not have been expected to converse with him. He had Lady Harper on his other side.
“We are not usually quite so formal,” Lord Trentham said, speaking low. “This is all in your honor and that of Miss Debbins.”
“Well,” she said, “it is good to feel important.”
He looked a formidable gentleman. His shoulders were massive, his hair close-cropped, his face severe. As an officer he would have wielded a sword, but he would surely look more at home swinging an ax. But—a smile lurked in his eyes.
“I used to shake with terror,” he told her, still speaking for her ears only. “I was born to a London merchant who just happened to have enough money to purchase a pair of colors for me when I insisted that I wanted to be a soldier.”
“Oh.” She looked at him with interest. “But your title?”
She would
swear he almost blushed.
“That was just daft,” he told her. “Three hundred dead men deserved it more than I did, but the Prince of Wales waxed sentimental over me. It sounds impressive, though, wouldn’t you say? Lord Trentham?”
“I do believe,” she said, “there is a story lurking behind that . . . daftness, my lord, but you look as if you would be embarrassed to tell it. Is Lady Trentham also of the merchant class?”
“Gwendoline?” he said. “Good God, no—pardon my language. She was Lady Muir, widow of a viscount, when I met her at Penderris last year. And she is the daughter and sister of Earls of Kilbourne. If you prick her finger, she bleeds blue. Yet she chose me. Silly of her, would you not say?”
Oh, goodness, Agnes liked him. And after a few more minutes she realized what he was up to. He did not, perhaps, have the sort of polished conversation the other gentlemen had to set ladies at their ease, but he had found another way. If she was a bit uncomfortable, despite the fact that she was a lady born, he was saying, in so many words, how did she think he felt in similar situations, when he was a man of the middle classes?
Wise Lady Gwendoline, to have chosen him, Agnes thought. The lady herself, seated opposite and to their left, was absorbed in something Sir Benedict was telling her.
And then Lady Barclay at his other side touched his sleeve, and he turned his attention to her.
“Agnes,” Lord Ponsonby said from her other side.
She turned toward him, startled, but he was not addressing her. He was making an observation.
“A f-formidable name,” he said. “I am almost g-glad I was unable to keep our appointment.”
She hardly knew where to start.
“Formidable? Agnes?” she said. “And did we have an appointment, my lord? If we did, I was unaware of it. I was not there anyway. I had more important things to do this morning.”