by Mary Balogh
“Where is home?” she asked him.
She had opted for the conversation between strangers, it seemed.
“Candlebury Abbey in Sussex,” he said. “The old part r-really was an abbey once, though you will not be expected to move from room to room along d-draughty cloisters or sleep in a b-bare stone cell. I do not spend much time in the country—or any at all, in fact. There is also Arnott House in L-London.”
“Why?” The inevitable question. “Why do you never go to Candlebury Abbey?”
He shrugged and opened his mouth to tell her it was too large a place for one man to rattle around in alone. But she was his wife. She probably ought to know a few simple facts about the man she had married.
“I still think of it as David’s,” he said. “My elder brother’s. He loved every inch of it, and he knew the history of it. He had r-read and reread everything about it he could get his hands on. He knew every b-brushstroke on every p-painting. He knew every stone and flagstone in the old abbey. He knew the p-peace of it all, the h-holiness. He always wished he could conjure spirits or ghosts, but the only spirit there is h-his. Or so I imagine. He died there at the age of twenty-five. There were four years between us. He was the viscount before I was, though it was becoming increasingly clear even before our father died when David was eighteen that he was not going to live a full lifespan. He had always been of delicate health—I was more than half a f-foot taller than he by the time I was thirteen, and a good deal heavier even though I was a g-gangly youth and all elbows and knees. We all understood he had c-consumption, though it was never spoken aloud in my hearing. I was, though, being f-firmly prepared to take over the position of v-viscount myself by the two of our six hundred uncles who had been named our guardians. No b-bones were made about it either. No attempt was made to be t-tactful or subtle. David was aware of it—how could he not have been? But he allowed it to h-happen without comment. I was his heir, after all. Even if he had been robust and healthy, I would have been his heir until he m-married and fathered a son. Finally I could s-stand no more of it. I r-refused to go to university when I was eighteen, as they had planned for me. I insisted on a m-military career instead, and David purchased my commission. He was of age by that time and my official guardian.”
There. That was a few simple facts, slightly distorted. He had not given the real reason he had wanted that commission and David’s real reason for obliging him.
But she had asked him why he never went to Candlebury. He had not really answered her.
“He lingered longer than anyone expected,” he continued. “But three years after I left, he was clearly dying, and I came home on leave from the Peninsula. Everyone assumed I was home to stay. I even assumed it myself. I was facing new responsibilities. But meanwhile he was d-dying, and nothing else mattered. He was my b-brother.”
He paused to swallow. She made no attempt to say anything.
“And then I left him,” he said. “I was d-due to return to the Peninsula, and I decided to go even though he was close to death. Indeed, I left home four days before I needed to and went to London to enjoy myself at a g-grand ball. He died the day after I sailed. I got the news two weeks later, but I did not go back home. What would have b-been the point? He was gone, and I had not been with him when it m-mattered, and I did not w-want the title that had been his or everything else that was now mine. I d-did not w-want Candlebury. So I stayed until a bullet through the head and a fall from my horse did what his death had not accomplished. I came home, or, rather, I was b-brought home—to London, though, not Candlebury, thank God.”
He waited for the recriminations. Why had he left his brother? Just to go to a ball? Why had he returned to the Peninsula? Why had he not sold out and come home after the news reached him? He would be able to reply, though the answers made little sense to him. Even allowing his mind to touch upon the questions brought the threat of a crashing headache and of blind panic. It brought the danger of clenched fists and a lashing-out at inanimate objects, as if reducing them to firewood would clear all the fog from his mind and make sense of his past and excuse every dastardly deed he had ever committed.
But she did not ask any of the questions. She did not even ask her usual why. Instead she was holding both his hands in hers.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Oh, poor Flavian. How wretched for you. I can only imagine having to face such a thing with Dora. No, I do not want to imagine. But I think I too might have run away and tried to forget it all by enjoying myself at a crowded and glittering party. I do not suppose it helped, but I can understand why you did it. And why you could not stay. But you have not been able to let him go, have you, because you were not there. And you have not forgiven yourself either.”
She drew her hands free of his and got to her feet.
“Let me pour you some tea or coffee while they are probably still hot. Or would you prefer something from the sideboard?”
“Tea,” he said. “Please.”
He watched her as she engaged in the quiet domestic task of pouring his tea and placing a couple of biscuits on the saucer. This was destined to become a familiar scene to him, he thought, just such a simple activity as this—taking tea with his wife. Perhaps there was peace to be had after all.
And absolution. She did not have the power to give it, but she had comforted him anyway. He had left out whole chunks of information, though. It was all much worse even than he had made it sound.
“Tell me about the rest of your family,” she said as she seated herself beside him, her own cup and saucer in hand. She smiled. “Six hundred uncles?”
“There is my mother,” he said, “and one sister, Marianne, Lady Shields. Oswald, Lord Shields, her husband. Two nephews and a niece. Six thousand aunts, uncles, and c-cousins at the last count—did I say six hundred? We will go to L-London first when we leave here, and you can meet some of them. There are other things to be done there too. Maybe we will go to C-Candlebury for Easter. My mother is there and my s-sister and her family. I will write to my mother and w-warn her to expect us.”
He ought to take Agnes straight to Candlebury, he supposed. She needed to do a mountain of shopping, but it could possibly be delayed until after Easter, when they moved to London for the Season with the rest of the fashionable world. And she ought to be there for the Season, perish the thought. As his viscountess she would need to be introduced to the ton, perhaps even presented at court. Sometimes one could wish that reality in the form of the proprieties did not have to intrude quite so soon or so often upon one’s life.
He had ignored reality when he had dashed off for the license and dashed back again to marry her.
She lifted her teacup to her lips. There was a very slight tremor in her hand, he thought.
“Your mother and sister will be upset with you,” she said. “And with me. I am not a very eligible bride for Viscount Ponsonby.”
They would be more upset than she realized. They would be predisposed to dislike her no matter who she was, simply because she was not Velma. He ought to have been more forthcoming with her, but it was too late now—too late for her to change her mind about marrying him, anyway. He must explain a few things before they went to Candlebury, though. It would not be fair to allow her to walk blind into that potentially explosive situation.
But he would do that later. Enough about him.
“Nonsense,” he said. “And what about your father? Will he be upset that I did not apply to him for your hand but rushed you into m-marriage even before he knew about me? I must write to him too.”
“He would appreciate it, I am sure,” she said. “Though I did write to him this morning, and to my brother. I am sure they will both be pleased as well as surprised. They will see that I have done very well for myself.”
“Even without s-setting eyes upon me?”
“When they do, they may change their minds.” Her eyes twinkled at her own joke.
“When did your mother die?” he asked.
“When
I was—” But she stopped to set her cup very carefully in the saucer, and she leaned forward to set them rattling down on the tray. “She did not. As far as I know, she is still alive.”
He stared at her as she came to sit beside him again and spread her fingers over her lap to examine the backs of them with careful attention.
Hang on a minute. Her father had remarried, had he not?
“She left when I was five,” she told him. “My father petitioned Parliament soon after and divorced her. It took a great deal of time and trouble and money, though I knew nothing about any of it as a child. All I did know was that she was gone and was not coming back and that I missed her and cried for her night after night and often in the daytime too. But Dora was still there, and was staying after all instead of going to London for her come-out Season and the husband she had dreamed of finding there. I was very happy about that. She had always been my favorite person in the world—apart from our mother, that is—and she assured me over and over again until I believed her that she would far rather stay with me than go anywhere else. How innocent children are. She stayed until our father remarried, and then the year after that I married William. It was only then that I understood that we had once had very decent dowries set aside for us, Dora and I, but that most of the money had gone on the divorce, and almost all of the little that remained had been used to set Dora up at Inglebrook before she started to earn her own way. Not many men would have taken me when I was virtually portionless. William always assured me that it was me he had wanted to marry, not money.”
Good God! Did everyone have a story to tell when one took the time to listen to it—or when the person concerned could be persuaded to tell it?
“And he was willing to take me despite the disgrace,” she added, still addressing the backs of her hands. “He knew about it, of course. He had always been our neighbor. I did not give you the choice, did I?”
“What happened to her?” he asked. “To your mother, I mean.”
She shrugged her shoulders and kept them up close to her ears for a few moments. “She was never spoken of,” she said, “especially around me, I suppose. I heard snatches of things anyway, of course, from servants, from the children of neighbors. I believe she married her lover. I do not know who he was. I believe, though I do not know for certain, that he had been her lover for some time before she left with him. I have a few memories of her. She was dark and beautiful and vibrant with life. She laughed and she danced and she lifted me high and tossed me upward until I shrieked with fright and begged for more. At least I think she was beautiful. Perhaps a mother always looks beautiful to her infant child. And she cannot have been really young. Oliver was fourteen when I was born.”
“Are you c-curious about her?” he asked.
She raised her eyes to his at last.
“No,” she said. “Not even to the smallest degree. I do not know who he was or is, and I do not want to know. I do not know who she is or even for sure whether she is. I would not recognize her name or her face, I daresay. I would not wish to recognize either. I do not want to know her. She abandoned Dora as well as me, and the consequences for Dora were far more dreadful than they were for me. No, I am not curious. But there is something else you ought to know—something you ought to have known before this morning.”
He had set down his own cup and saucer and taken one of her hands in his again. It was cold, as he had expected it to be. He sensed what was coming.
“I am not even sure,” she said, “that my father is my father.”
Her eyes were flat, her voice toneless, and he simply did not believe that she was not curious. Ah, his calm, quiet, disciplined, safe Agnes, who had carried inside a universe of pain since she was little more than a baby.
“Has anyone ever said he is not?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Has he ever treated you differently from your brother and sister?”
“No. But I do not look like him or Dora or Oliver. Or her.”
“Perhaps you resemble an aunt or uncle or grandparent,” he said. “Your father is your f-father regardless, Agnes. Birth and b-breeding do not always depend upon small matters like who provided the seed.”
She looked away from him.
“You may have married a bastard,” she said.
He might have laughed if she had not looked so serious.
“There will be those who will tell you that it is y-you who have married the b-bastard,” he told her, and then he did smile as he raised her hand to his lips. “I have something in common with your W-William after all, it seems, Agnes. I married you this morning because, even though I s-scarcely know you, I wanted you for my wife. I still w-want you, even if you are a bastard ten times over. Is it p-possible to be ten times a bastard? It s-sounds rather dire, does it not?”
He had moved his head closer to hers, despite the infernally giant size of the sofa cushions, until she was forced to gaze into his eyes. And she . . . laughed.
“You are so absurd,” she said.
And he kissed her while her hand clung to his and her lips trembled against his and then pushed back, and he wound one arm about her shoulders.
She was, he thought, as horribly damaged as he was.
* * *
They managed to keep a conversation going for the hour that remained before their supper was brought and during the meal itself—and one that was far lighter in tone. The two footmen who came with their food set up a table in the middle of the sitting room with a crisp white cloth and the finest china and silverware and crystal and wine Lord Darleigh had to offer. They lit two tapers set in silver holders. It was a gloriously romantic setting.
He told her more about his mother and his sister and the latter’s husband and children. He recounted a few anecdotes involving his brother and himself in their younger years, and it was clearer than ever that he had adored his smaller, less robust older sibling. He told her about his years in school at Eton—his brother had been educated at home—and a little about his years with his cavalry regiment, though nothing touching upon the battles in which he had fought. She told him about her brother and his wife and their children. She told him about her father’s wife, whom she had always liked and still did, though she would find it a severe trial to have to live with her in the same house. She recounted some incidents from her childhood that included Dora.
It was only toward the end of the meal, when Flavian was sitting back at his ease, wineglass in hand, that something shocking struck Agnes.
“Oh, goodness me,” she said, “I did not change for dinner.”
“Neither did I,” he said, his eyes roaming lazily over the part of her dress he could see above the table.
“Oh, but you are dressed splendidly,” she pointed out, “while I am wearing just a day dress.”
“This was not dinner, Agnes,” he said. “It was s-supper.”
“But I ought to have changed, nevertheless,” she said. “I do beg your pardon.”
Into the blue or the lavender or the green. No, not the green. It was a little too festive, though this was her wedding evening. Oh, he would grow mortally sick of seeing the green—and the blue and the lavender.
He regarded her thoughtfully for a few moments before setting down his glass and getting to his feet. He came around the table and held out a hand for hers. And she was conscious of the fact that it was after ten o’clock and that she was nervous, just as if she were still a virgin.
She might as well be. It had been so long. . . .
She set her napkin on the table, put her hand in his, and rose to her feet. He brought her hand to his lips.
“Go and change now, then,” he said, “into your nightgown. I will ring for the dishes to be removed and for my valet to come. You do not have a maid?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “It is quite unnecessary.”
“You nevertheless will h-have one,” he told her, “as soon as we reach London. As well as new clothes.”
“Oh, that will
be quite un—” she began.
“They will be of the first necessity when we arrive in L-London,” he told her. “The maid and the clothes. You are no l-longer Mrs. Keeping from the village of Inglebrook. You are Viscountess Ponsonby of Candlebury A-Abbey. I will see you clothed accordingly.”
It was strange that she had not thought of that—of the fact that she no longer had to support herself on the small legacy William had left her, of the fact that she was now the wife of a wealthy aristocrat who would be shamed by a shabby wife. Not that her clothes were shabby, only not very new or plentiful, and never fashionable.
“Are you very wealthy?” she asked him.
Oh, it was shocking indeed to have married him without knowing the full extent of his fortune.
“You ought to have r-remembered to ask me that last night instead of this,” he said, using his sighing voice and drooping his eyelids over his eyes. “For all you know, you may have m-married a pauper or a man with a p-pile of debts as high as Mount Olympus. But you can be comforted. My m-man of business in London has never yet resigned or had a f-fit of the vapors when he has met me, nor has he scolded me for extravagance or warned me that d-debtors’ prison looms large in my near future. And my s-steward’s accounts always show a healthy balance on the p-plus side. A few pretty frocks will not b-beggar me, though we may have to drink water for a month instead of tea if we add bonnets to the pile.” He smiled, then added, “I do not have expensive vices, you will be r-relieved to know. When I do gamble, which is not often, I break out in a c-cold sweat as soon as my losses creep up near one hundred pounds, and I arouse the derisive annoyance of all my fellow players by throwing in my h-hand. And horses are fickle creatures, except in battle. I never b-bet on them.”
“Was that a yes?” she asked.
“It was,” he said. “I will never be able to accuse you of m-marrying me for my money, will I? You have d-deprived me of one weapon to use when we quarrel.”
“I married you for your title,” she said.
He smiled lazily at her.