by Mary Balogh
“Have we not w-walked far enough this afternoon but m-must now take a long way home?” he complained.
George did not answer until the trees thinned out slightly and they could walk side by side.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Ah,” George said. “You must remember to whom you are speaking, Flavian.”
To George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, who had once traveled all the way from Cornwall to London in order to fetch a raving, violent lunatic who had bumped his head in Spain and knocked everything out of it except the compulsion to hurt and destroy. Who had somehow, over the next three years, given each of his six main patients the impression that he spent all his time and care upon that one. Who had assured Flavian soon after his arrival at Penderris that there was no hurry, that there was all the time in the world, that when he was ready to share what was in his mind, there would be a listener, but that in the meanwhile violence was unnecessary as well as pointless—he was loved anyway just as he was. Who found a doctor patient and skilled enough to coax words out of Flavian at last, to provide strategies for relaxing and stringing words together into whole sentences, to help him deal with his headaches and his memory blanks as an alternative to simply panicking and lashing out.
George was the one who knew the six of them perhaps better than they knew themselves. Sometimes it was a disconcerting realization. It was also endlessly consoling.
But who knew George? Who offered him comfort and consolation for an only son killed in battle and a wife dead by her own hand? Were his recurring nightmares all that he suffered?
“L-letters,” Flavian said abruptly as they came out of the trees close to the lake. “I w-wish they had not been invented.”
“From your family?” George asked.
“Another one from Marianne,” Flavian said. “It was not enough to write to t-tell me that she was going to Farthings to call on V-Velma. She then had to write again to inform me that she had called. And my m-mother had to write to give me her version of the s-same visit.”
“They were all pleased to see one another, were they?” George asked.
“They were always t-terribly f-fond of her, you know,” Flavian said. “She was always sweetness itself. And they thought I t-treated her badly, though they do concede I knew no better. I did treat her badly too. I threw the contents of a g-glass in her face once, just as I threw a whole glass at you. It was w-wine. And in her case I did not miss.”
“You were very ill,” George said.
“They s-supported her decision to b-break off with me and marry Len instead,” Flavian said. “They seemed to think it was a f-fine thing for the two of them to do because he had always been so close to me—a man doing something n-noble for his best friend and all that. They thought it was all some sort of romantic t-tragedy. It is a pity Shakespeare was not still alive to wr-write about it. They wept oceans apiece over her at the time, and then they s-sent for you by s-special messenger when I behaved badly and reduced the drawing room to k-kindling.”
“You were very ill,” George said again. “And they did not know what to do for you or with you, Flavian. They had not stopped loving you. They heard I took in the most desperate cases, and they sent for me. They prayed I could perform a miracle. They did not stop loving you. But we have spoken of this many times before.”
They had, and Flavian had come to believe it was true—to a certain degree.
“They want me to b-believe,” he said, “that V-Velma loved me—all the time, without ceasing, even while she was m-married to Len. And that Len knew it and encouraged it and l-loved me too. It is all a b-bit distasteful, is it not? N-Nauseating, even? And s-surely not true? I h-hope it is not true.”
“Is that what Lady Hazeltine told your mother and sister?” George asked. “Perhaps they thought it would comfort you to know that those two always remembered you with tenderness.”
They were walking past the boathouse. Flavian alarmed himself and even made George jump when he slammed the edge of his fist against a sidewall, making it boom like a great gun and causing splinters of wood to shower off it.
“God damn it,” he cried. “Does no one know anything?”
“Do you still love her?” George asked quietly into the silence that ensued. Always quietly. He never rose to passionate outbursts.
Flavian picked a splinter out of the side of his hand and pressed his handkerchief to the little bubble of blood that appeared there.
“I just asked Mrs. Keeping to marry me,” he said.
George did not exclaim in disbelief. It was virtually impossible to shock him.
“Because of your letters?” he asked.
“Because I w-want to marry her.”
“And did she accept?”
“She w-will,” Flavian said. “I f-forgot the roses and the bended knee this time. And I forgot to c-compose an affecting speech.”
They strolled along beside the lake.
“I danced with her at Vince’s h-harvest ball last autumn,” Flavian explained. “And I have met her a few times back there.” He jutted his chin in the direction of the trees on the other side of the lake. “There is a meadow, and it is full of d-daffodils at the moment. She was trying to paint them. I met her there.”
“And the attraction is that she is very different from Lady Hazeltine, is it?” George asked.
Flavian stopped walking and looked out over the lake before closing his eyes.
“I can find peace with her,” he said.
He had not planned the words. He did not know why he was drawn to Agnes Keeping. He had not thought beyond the obvious—that he wanted to bed her, though he could not really understand that either. She was very different from the females with whom he usually slaked his sexual appetites. Sexuality was not the first thing one noticed about her.
But why did he say he could find peace with her? He did not believe peace could be found in any woman. Or at all, in fact. Peace was not for this life, and he was not sure he believed in any other.
It had been stupid of him to ask her to marry him.
George stood beside him, a short distance away, silent. He always knew when to speak, when not to. What made him as he was? Had he always been thus? Or did it have something to do with his own sufferings?
Flavian laughed and listened to the harsh sound.
“P-Peace is the v-very last thing she would find with me,” he said. “You had better w-warn her to refuse me, George.”
“Has she not already done that?”
“When I ask again, I mean,” Flavian explained. “With the roses and the b-bended knee and the flowery speech. Tomorrow.”
“I like her,” George said, “and Miss Debbins. They are unaffected ladies, living blameless lives.”
“It is a terrible fate,” Flavian said, “being a woman.”
“It can be,” George agreed. “But women tend to settle to something and somewhere better than we do. They are more inclined to accept their lot and make the best of it. They are less inclined than we are to flounder around wondering where we should go and what we should do next.”
We, he had said. Not you. But George did not flounder, did he? And who would not be happy to accept the fate of being the Duke of Stanbrook? Or Viscount Ponsonby, for that matter.
“Do you love her?” George asked—the same question he had just asked about Velma.
“Love.” Flavian laughed shortly. “What is love, George? No, don’t answer. I am not so j-jaded that I don’t know what love is. But what is r-romantic love? This being-in-love b-business? I was head over heels in love once, but f-fortunately I grew out of the feeling. Does that mean I did not love at all? Love is not love which alters w-when it alteration finds. Where the d-devil did I hear that? Is it from a poem? Did I quote it right? Who wrote it? When all guesses fail, choose Shakespeare. Am I right?”
“One of his sonnets,” George said. “I did not ask if you were in love with Mrs. Keeping.”<
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“You asked if I l-love her.” Flavian turned his back on the lake and made for the path up to the house. The viscountess had had it constructed last year with a sturdy rail alongside it so that Vincent could walk to the lake alone whenever he chose. “I love Lady Darleigh.”
George chuckled softly. “It would be hard not to,” he said, “when one sees all she has done to make life easier for our beloved Vincent—and when one sees how very happy she has made him.”
Flavian stopped, his hand on the rail.
“Do I love Mrs. Keeping enough to m-make life easier for her? Enough to make her happy? If I do, I suppose I m-must show it by never p-proposing to her again.”
“Flavian.” George’s hand came to his shoulder and squeezed. “You do not destroy everything and everyone you love, you know. You love us—Ben and Hugo, Ralph and Vincent, Imogen and me. You have not destroyed any of us and never will. You have enriched our lives and caused us to love you.”
Flavian blinked rapidly while his head was still turned away.
“I don’t want to m-marry any of you, though,” he said.
George squeezed his shoulder again before removing his hand.
“I would say no even if you asked,” he said.
* * *
When people spoke of crying themselves to sleep, Agnes thought at some time around two o’ clock the next morning, they surely lied. Her nose was so blocked that she had to breathe through her mouth. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her lips were swollen and dry and chapped. She was a mess. The last thing she could do was sleep.
And she was sick of herself.
Either say yes to that horrid man, she thought as she gazed at her image in the dressing table mirror by the flickering light of a single candle—she looked like something hovering above a graveyard on All Hallows’ Eve. Either say yes—if, that was, he came tomorrow and asked again, which was far from certain—or say no.
It sounded like a simple choice.
What on earth was she doing, weeping her heart out for such a muddle-headed rake? But rakes did not blurt out marriage proposals to faded widows—well, fading, anyway. And rakes did not walk around in the afternoon with pale complexions and shadowed eyes from lack of sleep. Oh! Oh, yes, perhaps they did. But that was not the reason for his pallor today—yesterday. Neither was anxiety over a marriage proposal about to be made, its outcome uncertain.
He had no more intended to propose to her than she had thought to climb the nearest tree.
Why was she crying? And why could she not sleep? She sniffed without any satisfactory result. There was only one remedy—for both her sleeplessness and her blocked nose. A cup of tea would soothe her stomach and clear her nasal passages. It would comfort her. It would restore her to herself.
She would be very surprised if he was lying awake, shedding tears over her.
What had kept him awake last night, then, and perhaps the night before? Not her, certainly. She felt a twinge of jealousy for whatever or whoever it was, and then gazed at her image with self-loathing.
It was not easy to get the fire going again in the kitchen. It was even harder to do it and fill the kettle and get down a cup and saucer noiselessly. She had shut the door firmly behind her, but inevitably it opened just when she had accomplished all the tasks that would create the most sound.
Dora, a warm shawl wrapped about her shoulders over her nightgown, stepped inside and closed the door. Of course it was Dora. An earthquake would not wake Mrs. Henry once she was asleep.
“I could not sleep,” Agnes explained as she busied herself over the fire, as though the kettle needed skilled coaxing in order to boil. “I tried not to wake you.”
“It is not frustration over your painting that has put you out of sorts lately, is it?” Dora asked, reaching up into the cupboard for another cup and saucer and checking the teapot to see whether Agnes had put in the tea leaves yet.
Agnes sniffed and discovered that she could breathe again through one nostril—just.
“He asked me to marry him,” she said. “Or, rather, he informed me that I had better.”
Dora did not ask who.
“I have always thought,” she said instead, sounding almost wistful, “that if anyone ever asked me to marry him, I would weep tears of joy. But yours are not joyful, are they?”
“He did not mean it, Dora.”
“Then he is a very foolish young man,” Dora said, “for you might have said yes. I assume you did not?”
“How could I,” Agnes asked, “when I knew he did not mean it?”
The kettle was starting to boil. Dora made the tea and left it to steep in the pot.
“But you would have accepted if he had?” she asked. “Do you know him, Agnes, beyond dancing with him at the harvest ball and going off with him for twenty minutes or so on the evening of the concert and walking home with him today?”
Dora had noticed her absence, then, on that evening when she had played? Who else had? Everyone, she supposed.
“He came upon me one morning when I went into the park to paint the daffodils,” Agnes explained. “That was before the concert. And he found me there again one other day.”
She poured the tea. She did not add that he had kissed her. Dora would be shocked. Besides . . .
“A romantic setting,” Dora said. “Have you conceived a tendre for him, Agnes? But of course you have, or you would not be down here at this ungodly hour with your face looking the way it does.”
Agnes sniffed again and then blew her nose. She could almost breathe again.
“I miss William,” she said.
Dora reached over and patted her hand.
“William was a rock of stability,” she said. “But—forgive me—he was hardly a romantic figure, Agnes. I was a little troubled when you married him, for I always thought you could do better. Oh, that word was very poorly chosen. Better, indeed. No one could have been better than William, God rest his soul. But I always thought you were made for sunshine and laughter and . . . oh, and romance. You were my dear little sister, and I expected to live vicariously through you as I dwindled into old age. I am talking nonsense. Viscount Ponsonby is titled and handsome and . . . what is the word? Attractive. And mysterious. One wonders what lies behind that mobile eyebrow of his. And . . . dangerous. Or perhaps it is just my spinster’s sensibilities that cause me to see him that way.”
“No,” Agnes said, stirring sugar into her tea. “He is dangerous. To the peace of mind of anyone foolish enough to fall in love with him, anyway.”
“And you have fallen,” Dora said.
“Yes,” Agnes admitted. “But I will not marry him. I would be foolish.”
Dora sighed.
“I am hardly in a position to advise you, Agnes,” she said. “I have no experience. None whatsoever. I want you to be happy. I love you, you know, more than I love anyone else in the world.”
“Don’t set me off again,” Agnes said, lifting her cup to her lips and inhaling the steam. The fact that Dora had no experience, that she was a spinster at the age of thirty-eight, was at least partly Agnes’s fault. Or, if not exactly her fault, then at least it was on her account. But she could not dwell upon that now, or she would be a watering pot again. Besides, she never willingly thought about their mother and what she had done all those years ago, and Agnes and Dora never talked about it.
“Come.” Dora drank her tea, scalding as it still was, and set down her empty cup. She led the way into the sitting room and went immediately to the pianoforte. “Let me play for you.”
She had used to do it when the infant Agnes had refused to take her afternoon nap and had then been cross and droopy. Dora had always been able to put her to sleep with music.
Agnes sat and put her head back against the sofa cushion.
What was it that had given him sleepless nights?
Why had he suddenly thought the solution to whatever troubled him was to marry her?
She knew only the mask of bored, mocking ennui he present
ed to the world—with a few brief glimpses behind it. She suspected there were layers upon layers to be uncovered before one approached anywhere near his soul. Could anyone do it? Would he ever allow it, even with the woman he would eventually marry?
And would anyone rash enough to explore beyond the mask lose herself in the process?
She felt herself drifting toward sleep and opened her eyes to listen to the end of the piece Dora was playing. It was time they were both in bed. What on earth was she going to look like in the morning?
* * *
There was less than a week of their annual gathering left—a melancholy thought. Vincent was going to take everyone on a tour of his farms after breakfast. Lady Harper was going along to see the lambs and other newborns. Lady Darleigh was going to stay behind for a pianoforte lesson from Miss Debbins and to tend her baby. Lady Trentham was in bed, despite the fact that last night she had expressed enthusiasm for the farm visit. She was sleeping off a bout of nausea.
Hugo announced that last fact at the breakfast table with a look that was half-sheepish, half-triumphant.
“She is apt to be like this some mornings for a while,” he said, “though she has been able to fight it off until today. Not that she is ill or anything like that. Far from it. But . . . well.”
He rubbed his hands together, looked over the breakfast fare on the sideboard, and then proved that his appetite was not impaired, even if his wife’s was.
“Congratulations are in order, then, are they, Hugo?” George asked.
“You did not hear it from me,” Hugo said with some alarm. “Gwendoline does not want anyone to know. She does not want any fuss. Or embarrassment.”
“I have not heard a thing,” Ben said. “This silverware is clattery stuff, Vince. It drowns out conversation at table and leaves one horribly uninformed. What did you say, Hugo? Or what did you almost say?”
“I had noticed that about the cutlery too,” Imogen said. “But I daresay we did not miss anything of great importance.”
Flavian did not go out with everyone else. He had letters to write, he informed them before remembering that he had used that excuse once before. Good Lord, they would be thinking he was becoming the world’s champion correspondent.