by Mary Balogh
Perhaps she really had been devoured, he thought ten minutes later. How much longer would he wait before bursting in there without stopping to ply the door knocker first? But even as he asked himself the question, the door opened and she stepped out, looking cool and poised and perfectly in command of herself. Looking, in fact, like Elizabeth.
Until she noticed the change of carriage, that was, and him standing there waiting for her. Not that anything noticeably changed—nothing, at least that anyone else would have seen who did not know her. But he did. He knew her, and he cared. A great vulnerability gazed at him through her eyes, and he straightened up as she came down the steps, ready to open his arms and scoop her up and generally behave like the prince of fairy tales. But she recovered herself long before her leading foot touched the pavement, and she took his offered hand and got into the carriage without speaking.
Colin had a quiet word with his coachman, got into the carriage, and leaned past her to pull down the curtain over the window before doing the same on his side after the door had been closed. He took his place beside her and gathered her into his arms before saying a word to her. He pulled loose the ribbons of her bonnet and tossed the garment onto the opposite seat. He held her head against his shoulder and rested his cheek on top of it. He had no idea if she needed to be gathered in or not. But he needed to gather.
“Idiot,” he said. “You precious idiot, Elizabeth.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I would have come with you,” he told her.
“I know,” she said.
“I was coming anyway.”
“I am not surprised,” she said.
He sighed and rubbed his cheek against her hair. “You came alone.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose,” he said, “she talked over you and under you and all around you and through you and had your head spinning on your shoulders.”
“I told her not to interrupt me,” she said.
That silenced him for a moment before he snorted with laughter. “And did it work?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He wished he could have been an invisible spectator of that particular moment.
“I have invited her to our wedding,” she said.
“Oh, have you?” he said. “And will she come?”
“She did not say,” she told him.
“Because you would not let her get a word in edgewise, I suppose,” he said, snorting with laughter again, though he felt anything but amused.
“But if it were genteel for ladies to make wagers,” she said, “I would bet upon her coming.”
“Oh, would you?” he said.
“She will have to call what she doubtless sees as my bluff,” she told him. “She was planning a grand summer-long house party at Roxingley as a homecoming for you and a welcome for your bride. It was obvious that it was intended to be anything but, at least as far as I am concerned. Perhaps she believes—or believed—that even after our nuptials she could drive me away. In any case, I reminded her that after we are married I will be Lady Hodges and mistress of Roxingley, and that you and I will plan a house party if there is to be one, with a guest list we have prepared ourselves. I informed her she would be welcome to suggest a couple of guests of her own too. I made it clear to her that I will not dispute her right to consider Roxingley her home, but I added that there is room for only one mistress in any home and that after I marry you, I will be she. I actually used the word dowager to remind her of her coming role.”
He was still holding her tight with one arm while his other hand was pressing her head to his shoulder. As though, like a frail female, she needed the support of an all-powerful male.
“She did not retaliate?” he asked.
“She talked,” she told him. “I did not particularly listen. I went there to make a point and I made it. If I have offended you by talking thus to your mother, I am sorry. But if I have offended you, Colin, then I must decline to marry you. If I am to be your wife, I will not allow your mother to dominate either me or you.”
“You would break off two engagements in one week?” he asked her. “You would be notorious all down through the ages, Elizabeth. You would be one of the few women to make an appearance in the history books. Boudicca would have nothing on you.”
“Have I offended you?” she asked him, and her voice sounded a bit peculiar, as though she had spoken through clenched teeth. She was keeping them from chattering, he realized. She was not nearly as calm as she was trying to appear. Perhaps his sheltering arms were not so unnecessary after all.
He bent his head to hers, nudged her face away from his throat, and kissed her lips before moving his head back and gazing into her eyes. “I do not intend to allow her to live at Roxingley,” he told her. “Not after the way she treated Wren. Not after the way she has tried to destroy you. Not after hearing that she will continue to try even after we are married. Or perhaps her threat about the house party was intended to make you change your mind about marrying me. Indeed, I am sure that must be it. But she does not know you, does she? Or me. I will not have it, Elizabeth. I shall return later and uninvite her to the wedding. I shall inform her that she may have the house here in town. I will make it over to her and purchase another for us. It is what I decided last night and came to tell her today.”
She disengaged herself firmly from his arms and moved away from him to sit across the corner of the seat. She regarded him with a frown on her face.
“No,” she protested.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “she can only want to destroy us. It is what she does so that everything in her world is focused upon her. She cannot be changed. It is the way she is. You cannot draw her into our lives by simply expecting her to react like a normal human being. I have known her all my life, and she is now as she has been as far back as I can remember. She loves herself to the exclusion of all others, and such people cannot be redeemed. There is only one person in their lives who matters, and everyone else must be made to realize it and to pay homage to them. And she just happens to be my mother.”
A truly ghastly thing happened then. He had closed up the carriage and given his coachman the direction to drive indefinitely until he was told otherwise. He had expected that Elizabeth would be upset and had thought to hold her and comfort her for as long as was necessary. Yet the tables had been turned on him. He felt a tightness in his chest and a soreness in his throat. He felt tears prick at his eyes and tried desperately to blink them back. He might have succeeded too if a determined swallow had not got all caught up with a sob—and then another.
“The devil!” he said. “Oh good God.” He could cheerfully have died of mortification. And then she surged back across the seat toward him, and he held her to him again as her arms came about his waist, and he wept with his head pressed to her shoulder.
“She is my mother,” he said when he could, and then wished he had kept his mouth shut. His voice did not sound like his own.
“Yes,” she said.
It was all she said while he turned away from her, mopped at his eyes with his handkerchief, and blew his nose.
“The devil!” he said again. “I am so sorry.”
“I am too,” she said. “Sorry that there has to be such pain in your life. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to change any facts. You have correctly identified her, Colin. She is absorbed in self-love. It must be a sort of disease, I believe, just as Desmond’s drinking was. One cannot fight against it. One can only accept it or not. I abandoned Desmond because he was doing me physical harm and was largely the cause of my miscarriages. You do not need to abandon your mother, though. She can do us no real harm unless we allow it. I have no intention of allowing it. I will not give her power over us. But I do want her in our lives if it is at all possible. For your sake I want it.”
“But why?” he asked. “Especially knowing as you do
that she will never change?”
“But you can,” she said. “You can forgive yourself for any way you believe you have mishandled your life since your father died. You can even forgive her—though you know she will never change. Trust me on this.”
He looked at her, arrested for the moment. “Good God,” he said. “That is it, Elizabeth. That is what we were talking about at that infamous ball, when we did not notice the waltz had ended.”
“Oh.” She smiled at him. “So it was. Well, I meant it then, and I mean it now.”
He took her hand in his and laced their fingers. “But we could allow her a place in our lives only on our terms,” he said. “It is something she would never allow.”
“That choice,” she said, “must be hers. If a door is to be shut permanently between you and your mother, Colin, she must be the one to shut it. I am not sure she will. Everything she has done this spring has been designed to bring you back to her—with a bride who is to her liking, it is true, and certainly not with the bride you have actually chosen. Nevertheless . . .”
“Elizabeth,” he said, “she has put you through hell. For no reason at all except that you threatened her expectations of the future.”
“And if I seek some sort of revenge,” she said, “what do I make of myself?” He raised the back of her hand to his lips. “Besides, I care for you. And thank you for sending my carriage away and accompanying me home. Where is home, by the way? I had no idea it was so far.”
“I told my coachman to keep driving,” he said. “I thought you might need comforting.”
“I did,” she said. “And you have comforted me.”
“By soaking your shoulder with my tears?” he asked.
“An exaggeration,” she said, brushing her free hand over her shoulder. “It is scarcely damp. We will invite Sir Nelson and Lady Elwood to our wedding too.”
“And I suppose,” he said, “if it was genteel for a lady to place a wager, you would bet upon their coming.”
“I would,” she said.
He had little reason to feel any fondness for his eldest sister except that she had saved him from an unwanted marriage to Miss Dunmore. But . . . well, she was his sister, and his mother was his mother. And there was insufficient time to write to Ruby and Sean in Ireland and to have them come here in time for his wedding. In contrast, there were a number of Westcotts and Radleys currently in London, and the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester were on their way here, bringing Abigail Westcott with them. Abigail’s sister and her family had been invited to come from Bath.
He had only Wren.
“But do I want Blanche and Nelson there?” he asked. “And my mother?”
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
He laughed then, and because the curtains made them invisible from the outside, he wrapped his arms about her once more and kissed her. More slowly and thoroughly this time. And he wanted her. He wanted their wedding to be now, tomorrow, the day after. Soon. He wanted all that was Elizabeth in his life to stay.
Twenty
Replies—all acceptances—had come to the wedding invitations that had been sent out to a select few members of the ton, friends and friendly acquaintances. The church would be no more than half full, but they would know that everyone there wished them well, and what more could any couple ask of their wedding?
There had been no reply from Lady Hodges or from her eldest daughter and son-in-law. Colin might have accepted their silence as the shut door Elizabeth had referred to. If they did not answer their invitation or attend the wedding, then they had made their choice. He could not quite accept that sort of finality, however. He had set out to call upon his mother the day after the Ormsbridge ball but had been thwarted by finding that Elizabeth was there before him. Now he must go himself.
He did so on the afternoon before the wedding. His mother was, as he had half expected, entertaining. He bowed to her and his sister and brother-in-law when he was shown into the drawing room and nodded distantly to Lord Ede. He ignored the four young gentlemen visitors and the three young ladies as well as the usual attendants about his mother’s throne chair. She did not attempt any introductions but waved everyone away with the explanation that she wished to speak with her son. There were, of course, the expected protestations of surprise from two of the young men, who claimed that Colin could not possibly be Lady Hodges’s son but must surely be her younger brother. Within a minute or two, however, the room emptied out, leaving only Colin and his mother and Blanche and Nelson.
While he waited, Colin thought about the dream he had had at Christmas when he had started to make goals for this year—the dream of establishing a family of his own and drawing into it the members of the old. Some of the dream was materializing. He was about to marry. Ruby and Sean had sent a hasty response to the letter he had written them announcing his upcoming marriage and inviting them to come to Roxingley for at least a part of the summer. They were coming and bringing the four children with them. The rest of the dream probably never would be realized. His mother would never change.
“Mother,” he said, “will you be in attendance at my wedding tomorrow? It is my hope, and Elizabeth’s, that you will.”
She picked up a large fan from the table beside her and cooled her face with it. “You were quite right to reject Miss Dunmore, dearest,” she said. “She is a milk-and-water miss and I never did think her more than tolerably good-looking. She has the sort of prettiness that will not endure. Before ten years have passed, she will resemble her mother to a marked degree, and that will be unfortunate for her. End this foolishness with the plain-faced widow, though. It is not too late. Send her on her way. Pay her off if you must. Or I shall send Ede to do it if you wish. I shall help you choose the perfect bride. “
“I have already done that myself, Mother,” he said. “Lady Overfield will be Lady Hodges tomorrow, and I will be the happiest of men.” It was a horrible cliché. It also happened to be the truth.
She waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, do sit down,” she said. “You look like a coiled spring.”
Colin stood where he was.
“How droll it will be if you persist in marrying a dowdy older woman, dearest,” she continued. “Everyone would see us all together and think you, Blanche, and I were brother and sisters. We would dazzle them. They would think the widow was our mother. How lowering it would be for you to have to correct them.”
Colin clasped his hands at his back and gazed steadily at her. He would not dignify her taunts with a reply.
“Will you attend the wedding tomorrow?” he asked after a short silence, during which she fanned her face slowly and Blanche and Nelson did a fair imitation of statues. “You are my mother. I do not have a father to come.”
“I was very vexed with your father,” she said, resting her fan on her lap. “He deprived me of my youngest two children. First he implied I was incapable of looking after my own little Rowena when he sent for Megan to take her away and give her a home with that dreadfully dull older man who left Rowena a fortune she had done nothing to deserve when he ought to have divided it among all my children. I daresay you were chagrined. I know Blanche was, and I do not wonder at it.”
“You are mistaken in that, Mama,” Blanche said, speaking at last.
Her mother waved a dismissive hand at her. “And he sent you away to school, dearest, when I begged him not so to break my heart. He did it for that very reason. He could be very vindictive, your father, God rest his soul.”
“I asked him to send me to school, Mother,” Colin told her.
“Oh, you merely played into his hands by doing so,” she said. “He was determined to send you anyway.”
Was that right? Colin wondered. Perhaps giving him what he had asked for had not been such a gesture of love on his father’s part after all. Perhaps it had been done primarily to hurt his mother. And had Aunt Megan been sent for sp
ecifically to take Wren away? Permanently? It must have been intended as a permanent thing or Colin would not have been told soon after that she had died. But that could surely not have been done to hurt his mother. She had never been able to bear to look upon Wren. She had never allowed her down from the nursery floor.
“Your father was a difficult man,” his mother said. “But he adored me anyway. He would insist upon marrying me even though my dear papa could not offer anything for a dowry. He always told me that I was worth more than the greatest fortune in the world. Of course I could have done far better than a mere baron, but it would have broken his heart if I had said no, and I have ever been tenderhearted.”
Colin left soon after that since it was clear he was not going to get an answer to the question he had come to ask. He still did not know if his mother would be at his wedding tomorrow or if Blanche and Nelson would be. When he had asked them as he took his leave, he had got a shrug from Blanche and the explanation that she did not know what her plans were for tomorrow.
Who knew what the future held? Would his mother choose to live year-round in London at the Curzon Street House? Would he make it over to her and count his blessings? Would she decide to continue living at Roxingley during the summer and winter and even expect to continue organizing parties there? Would he feel compelled to build a dower house for her somewhere in the park? Would even that be workable? How would Elizabeth deal with her proximity? Meet the problem head-on? Insist that his mother be banished from Roxingley altogether? Somehow he could not see her doing that. Or losing the war against her future mother-in-law. He certainly would not wager against Elizabeth anyway. But this was his mother she would be dealing with, and no one had yet been able to stand against her.
Did all men feel a bit sick to the stomach on their wedding eve?
Ross Parmiter and John Croft were organizing a bachelor party for him tonight while Elizabeth was going to dine with some of her relatives. By this time tomorrow he would be married to her. He drew comfort from the thought.