by Mary Balogh
“I was very, very pleased that you came to the church,” he told her as they stepped outside. “And Mother. And even Lord Ede. And thank you for coming to the breakfast too. I suppose it was not an easy thing for you to do.”
For this, after all, was Wren’s home, and the two sisters had been estranged since Wren left Roxingley at the age of ten. Almost twenty years ago.
“No,” she said after a small hesitation, “it was not. Would it have been better, Colin, if I had not come to warn you of that announcement and you had married Miss Dunmore? Did I drive you into contracting this marriage to spite Mother?”
“There are two things I cannot quite imagine,” he said. “One is my wanting to spite our mother. I would like to have a relationship with her even if it can never be a close one. The other thing is that I would hardly marry just to spite a third party. Marriage is for life, and I hope for a happy one. No, Blanche. You did something for which I will always owe you a debt of gratitude. And I married Elizabeth because I wanted to. Because I hope and expect to be happy with her.”
“She is my age, or very close,” she protested.
“Yes,” he said. “And I value and esteem her more than I do any other woman I have met. I thought she was beyond me, but she has assured me that she wants this marriage too. And I trust her word.” Colin paused then for a minute. “But that is not what I wanted to speak with you about. I have something I need to ask you. Blanche, why have you remained with our mother all these years? Why has Nelson?”
“Someone had to,” she said. “Rowena was gone and Ruby eloped and fled to Ireland when she was only seventeen. Justin killed himself and you completely cut yourself off from Mother. She needed us. All of us. But suddenly I was the only one left. And I was the one with a sense of responsibility. I was the eldest, after all.”
“She needed us?” he asked, drawing her down to sit beside him on a rustic seat beneath a willow tree, which would shade them from the sun.
“Of course,” she said. “She always needs other people, Colin, most notably her family. Her dream was that we would all surround her with our love—and our beauty—for the rest of her life.”
He stared at her, feeling a bit aghast.
“Nelson . . . loves me,” she added.
“I am glad you have him at least,” he said.
“You think I am blind to the truth,” she said, looking fully at him for the first time, two spots of color in her cheeks. “I am the eldest, yet there was always someone more favored than I. You most of all. No one else quite existed for her after you were born. But first Father treated her cruelly and sent you away to school, and then you left of your own volition after he was dead and Mother had planned a grand house party to welcome you as the new Baron Hodges. I stayed. I was the only one of us who stayed. I have given up my own life for her. But you are still the favorite.”
Her voice was rather cold and expressionless, but he read a world of hurt in it. Had she never felt loved? And was she still hoping? How differently she had seen their world. Had he missed it all because he was young, and at school so much of the time? Had he run instead of trying to stay and understand? Was it too late to try now? It was what he had been telling himself since Christmas he must try to do. And Elizabeth did not seem to think it was too late.
“Blanche.” He covered her hand with his own. “Will you be my sister?”
“Well, I already am,” she said, and would have snatched away her hand if he had not curled his fingers about it.
“I do not know what your plans are for the summer,” he said. “I suppose you usually live with our mother at Roxingley when she is there. Perhaps you fear you will not be welcome this year when Elizabeth and I take up residence. But we both want you to come. Ruby and Sean and the children are coming from Ireland, and we are going to invite all the Westcotts and Radleys. It is as important to Elizabeth as it is to me that my family be there as well as hers. Not just be there but . . . I want us to be a family, Blanche. I honor your devotion to our mother and I beg your pardon for forcing you to do it all yourself. That will change. Forgive me. Let me be your brother. Let Elizabeth be your sister-in-law.”
She was silent for a while. “I am here, am I not?” she said coldly.
He squeezed her hand and released it. “I am realizing now there is so much I have not understood,” he said. “I hope you will help me. Why do you say Father was cruel? I asked him to send me to school and he sent me. Did he do it because he loved me? Or because he hated me? And why did he send for Aunt Megan to come and take Wren away? I did not even know that fact until Mother mentioned it yesterday. Did he do it because he loved Wren? Or because he hated her?”
She looked at him warily. “I do not know,” she said. “How would I?”
He felt a bit foolish for asking aloud. He had not meant to.
“Why would he hate you?” she asked. “Just because Mother loved you?”
“I do not know. I am only realizing there is much about us that I do not understand.” He shook his head. “It is time I joined Elizabeth and our wedding guests in the drawing room,” he said. “Will you stay for a while?”
“No,” she said. “We must leave. Mother will be expecting us.”
“And will you come to Roxingley during the summer?” he asked.
“I will talk to Nelson about it,” she said. “But I expect we will. Mother will surely be there and she will have need of me.”
Her answer would have to do. He wanted her to tell him she would come because of him and Elizabeth and because Ruby and Sean were coming—and Wren too, he hoped. But . . . What was it the Dowager Countess of Riverdale had said at Christmas time about the renovations to Brambledean? Rome was not built in a day. Yes, that was it.
He was going to have to be patient. Blanche clearly saw herself as a woman with a grievance. And perhaps in a sense she was right. She was the one who had stayed.
Perhaps he had more to learn about his own family than he had realized.
* * *
• • •
It was early evening before the last of the guests left the house. By that time they were mostly family members and took their leave with a great deal of noise and much hugging and kissing and hand shaking and back slapping and laughter. The house seemed very silent when the door closed upon them and Colin felt quite exhausted. Elizabeth, standing in the hall beside him, looked at him with twinkling eyes.
“Welcome to our family,” she said.
He laughed. “And what a welcome it was,” he said. “Are you ready to leave?”
There had been a spirited argument a few days ago about where they would spend their wedding night. They would, of course, spend it at this house, both Alexander and Wren had insisted, just as they had last year, when everyone else had stayed elsewhere so that the newlyweds could be left to themselves. Elizabeth’s various relatives on both sides had added their voices to assure Colin that they actually looked forward to entertaining Mrs. Westcott and Alexander and Wren and the baby for the night. Indeed, they were vying over who would have the pleasure.
Colin had remained firm, and all arguments had ceased when Elizabeth had assured everyone that it was what she wished too. They would go to Mivart’s Hotel, where Colin had reserved a suite of rooms. He had done it so they could be alone together on their wedding night. Completely alone in a place that was unfamiliar to both of them, waited upon by servants neither of them knew.
Fifteen minutes after everyone else had left, Colin’s carriage—the closed one this time—drew up outside the door, and five minutes after that it was in motion, being waved on its way by a tearful Wren and Mrs. Westcott and a more stoic Alexander.
And they were alone together at last.
He took Elizabeth’s hand in his and leaned back against the cushions while he allowed the reality of what had happened today to wash over him. He would no longer live in the bac
helor rooms that had been home to him—with the exception of last summer and winter—since he came down from Oxford at the age of twenty-one. He would never live alone again. He was now part of a couple. It was a sobering thought.
He was a married man.
Elizabeth was his wife.
“It is a strange feeling, is it not?” she said as though she had read his thoughts, and he turned his head to smile at her.
“Yes,” he said, and squeezed her hand. Very strange. He had always valued the privacy his rooms allowed him. He had loved it too at Withington. There would be no more of that. Elizabeth would always be with him from this day on.
He kissed her briefly and they traveled the rest of the way in silence.
Their suite at the hotel consisted of two large, square bedchambers, both luxuriously furnished, each with a spacious dressing room, and a sitting room between. A fire crackled in the hearth there to combat the chill of the evening after a warm day, and candles had been lit in the wall sconces.
“What a cozy, welcoming place,” she said after looking into each room and picking up a cushion from the couch to plump it unnecessarily. “I am glad we came here, Colin.”
He had asked that his valet and her maid be sent up and that wine and sweet biscuits be brought to the sitting room.
“Shall we make ourselves comfortable before we sit down?” he suggested. They were still wearing their wedding finery.
“Yes.” She smiled at him before entering the bedchamber to the left and closing the door. She was the poised, serene Elizabeth, he had noticed, and had somehow taken any awkwardness there might have been out of the situation.
It felt strange being married.
He retired to the dressing room of the other bedchamber and undressed before sitting for his valet to shave him. He donned a brocaded silk dressing gown over his nightshirt before dismissing his man for the night and stepping back into the sitting room.
Elizabeth was already there, pouring the wine into two glasses. She was wearing a long dressing gown of blue velvet that had a lived-in look about it, as though it had been a favorite for a long time. Her fair hair was loose over her shoulders and down her back.
She looked lovely.
He picked up the two glasses and handed her one after she had seated herself on the sofa. He offered her the biscuits too but she shook her head. He sat down beside her and extended his glass toward hers.
“There have been so many toasts today,” he said. “But let us have a private one, shall we? Just for us. To a long and happy future together. And a mutual trust.”
“To mutual trust and happiness,” she said, clinking her glass against his before raising it to her lips.
And it struck him that the words were easy to say but would take a lifetime to honor. A lifetime of constant effort and awareness. It was hard enough to live up to one’s ideals and dreams for oneself. But when one had to consider another person too? Was it even possible?
It would take a lifetime to find out. Well, the rest of a lifetime was exactly what he had.
“What a perfect day it has been,” he said.
“It has,” she agreed. “And one of the best parts of it was that your mother came to the wedding. You must have been terribly pleased.”
“Yes,” he said. “Even though she left the church before we did, I was pleased.”
“Blanche and Sir Nelson came to the breakfast too,” she said. “You talked with her for a while.”
“I did,” he said, and told her some of what they had talked about. “I believe she will come to Roxingley for the big family house party we are planning. She will come because she believes Mother intends to be there and she sees it as her duty to go where Mother goes. Whether she will allow any sort of relationship with Ruby or Wren or me remains to be seen. Or you. We can but try. I believe she is bitter because the rest of us escaped in one way or another and she, as the eldest, was left with the responsibility of giving our mother the support and audience she needs. She told me Nelson stays because he loves her.”
“I hope she is right,” she said. “I hope I can get to know them both better over the summer. I have much to thank them for. They came to warn you about that announcement. They came to the Ormsbridge ball but did not make any great effort to do what they had been sent there to do. They came to our wedding today but did not leave immediately after.”
They smiled at each other.
“Tell me about your father,” she said.
He stared at her.
“You never talk of him,” she said.
He swallowed. “There is not much to tell.”
She sipped from her glass and tipped her head to one side. She was waiting for him to say more, he realized. But she spoke again before he did. “If you would rather not,” she said, “that is all right. We are not entitled to tear each other’s souls apart just because we are married.”
It was a strange thing to say. Was it true? He frowned.
“He provided for us,” he said, “but he took no real interest in us. He rarely came upstairs to see us. I suppose he regretted his marriage. My mother was, by all accounts, extraordinarily beautiful as a girl, and she was much sought after. I daresay he fell headlong in love with her and married her without knowing her at all. By the time he did, it was too late. He spent a lot of time outdoors. When he was at home, he more or less lived in the library.”
She set her glass down on the table before sitting back and picking up the cushion she had plumped earlier and holding it against her bosom, both arms clasped about it.
“He seemed to have held the worst of her excesses in check,” he said. “Beyond that, he allowed her to do as she wished. I do not suppose he could do much else. I have sometimes thought of him as a weak man. Perhaps he was—as I have been weak since his death. He avoided confrontation, as I have. But I do believe my mother to be unique in the sense that she is almost impossible to control.”
“Did you love him?” she asked after he had been quiet for a while.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “Sometimes, especially after Wren went away and apparently died, I used to escape from the nursery and go down to the library and sit either under the desk or on the window seat with the curtain pulled far enough across to hide me. Occasionally I would read, but at other times I would just sit and breathe in the scent of leather-bound books and of his presence. He must have known I was there, but he never either acknowledged my presence or sent me away. Sometimes I would follow him about outdoors. I remember watching the sheep shearing with him once. I never asked his permission, and he almost never spoke to me, but again he did not send me away. I imagined he loved me in his own way.”
“Imagined?” She reached out a hand to rub along his upper arm.
“I thought he had proved it when he agreed to let me go away to school,” he said. “He had not allowed any of the others to go, though I know Justin had begged him. I suppose it is possible that he let me go because he believed he had made a mistake in keeping Justin at home and beginning a train of unhappiness that eventually led my brother to take his own life—though my father did not know of that outcome at the time, of course. However it was, he let me go even though my mother was vehemently opposed. It was the one time I know of when he held his ground against her. I thought he did it because he loved me.”
“You thought?” she said.
“I think he did it to punish her,” he said. “And to remove me from his sight. Just as he had summoned our aunt to take Wren away.”
She patted his arm, and he frowned into her eyes.
“When Justin died,” he told her, “I was brought home from school for the funeral. I went into the library afterward and curled up on the window seat even though I was fifteen. It was my first close encounter with death—and a suicide at that, though it was passed off as an accident. I had never been particularly fond of Justin
, partly, I suppose, because he was ten years older than I was, but he was my brother. And he had been unhappy enough to end his own life. I did not understand why. I was young, and had been away at school But still, I was in a fragile state, though I held it all inside. My father came into the room while I was there. He brought the vicar with him. Apparently he wanted to show the vicar a miniature of Justin he kept in his desk. For once he almost certainly did not know I was there. While the vicar was looking at the painting, my father said words that haunted me long after. I suppose they still do.”
He paused while she looked expectantly at him.
“No,” he said. “I cannot say them. I am sorry.”
She set the cushion aside and took the glass from his hand to set on the table beside her own. She moved closer to him and snuggled against his shoulder while she spread one hand over his chest.
“And I am sorry that quite inadvertently I raised a subject that is painful to you,” she said. “You do not owe me the information. Let us not allow it to ruin our perfect day. It felt lovely at the church, did it not, to be surrounded by family and friends?”
His emotions felt raw. Memories that had been pushed deep for a long time after being explained away in any number of ways had been dredged up in the last few days to leave him aware of the fact that the wound had always been there, made worse by the fact that he had never let himself acknowledge there was a wound. And he could not share it with Elizabeth—even though not so long ago she had shared with him the deep hurt of the story behind the loss of her two unborn children.
Perhaps after all he was lacking in trust.
But at the moment he owed her her perfect day. And he owed it to himself too. They could never relive this day. Whatever happened today would forever remain a part of it, a memory they would both keep for the rest of their lives.
“I am so terribly unworthy of you,” he said, raising one hand and setting the backs of his fingers against her cheek.
“You must take me off that pedestal you have constructed for me,” she said. “I am not some superior being worthy only of your admiration and worship. I am a person. A woman. I want you to care for me, not worship me.”