by Mary Balogh
But his heart ached a little bit. Well, a whole lot if he was going to be honest with himself.
On the whole it was easier not to be honest.
* * *
• • •
Despite all the turmoil of the past few months, Viola quickly settled down to her old life and became her old self again. The need to run, to escape at all costs had left her—and she was a bit depressed. For what had changed? Had all the upheaval accomplished anything at all? She had perhaps proved to herself that she could be bold and defiant and adventurous and passionate. And happy. But now she had been caught in the return swing of the pendulum, as had been inevitable. She remembered Marcel saying that what went up had to come down.
She tried not to think about Marcel.
She mingled with neighbors and friends. She worked with the vicar and a few other ladies to arrange a Christmas party for the children. She stitched and embroidered and tatted and wrote letters and read and walked, within the park about the house and along country lanes. She started playing the pianoforte again after neglecting it for a couple of years. She organized tea parties for Abigail and her young friends and several times played for them in the music room while they danced.
She slept poorly. She could discipline her mind during the daytime and scarcely think of him more than once or twice an hour—and then only fleetingly until she realized where her thoughts were wandering. At night, when her mind relaxed, it was harder to keep the memories from flooding in. And it was not just her mind the memories attacked then, but her body too and her emotions. She ached and yearned for what she had found during those weeks. But not just for what she had found. She yearned for whom she had found.
It had been hard to recover fourteen years ago, when she had been a young, unhappily married woman. But at least then she had only been in love with him. She had not loved him. She had not known him in any of the meanings of the word. It had taken her a long time to forget anyway. It would take longer now. She understood that and set out to be patient with herself.
Her clothes began to hang a bit more loosely about her, but that at least was a positive effect of heartache. She had been intending for some time to lose a bit of weight, to get back the figure she had always had until her courses stopped two years ago.
And she was going to Brambledean for Christmas. She felt obliged to go—for Abigail’s sake and for her mother’s and Michael’s and Mary’s. They would feel awkward being there if she was not. And of course everyone had written—as she had written to everyone—and all, without exception, had variously hoped, urged, or begged or wheedled her to come too. She wondered why they bothered. She really had not treated her family well since Humphrey’s death. And while it was understandable that they would make allowances for a while, there surely ought to be limits. It was closer to three years than two. Yet it must seem to them that she was still sulking and behaving erratically and even discourteously. And good heavens, she had dishonored them. She had been discovered in the midst of an affair with a man who was not her husband.
Did love really know no bounds when it was true love? Was it really unconditional? She felt ashamed of something she remembered telling Marcel one day when he had asked her what she wanted most in life. She had told him she wanted someone to care for her—for her, not just for the mother or daughter or sister or whatever else label could be put upon her. She was ashamed, for they had proved over and over, her family, that they cared indeed—for her and for one another. What Humphrey had done to wreck the structure of the family had not wrecked what lay beneath it—love, pure and simple.
She would go to Brambledean out of gratitude and a returning love. And because she missed the children—Winifred and Sarah and Jacob. And even Anna and Avery’s Josephine. And Mildred and Thomas were to bring their boys, whom she had not seen for several years. They had been mischievous little boys then. Now they were apparently boisterous big boys, forever getting into scrapes at school and causing their parents mingled anguish and wrath. She was missing Elizabeth with her unfailing calm common sense and twinkling eyes, and Wren, who had grown up as a recluse, her face always veiled to hide the birthmark that covered one side of it, but who had found the courage to face the world and fall in love with Alexander. She was missing her mother and Camille. And her former sisters-in-law. Oh, all of them.
She had fled the stifling affection of her family a few months ago. Now she was ready to embrace it. Perhaps something good had come from all the turmoil and heartache.
She would go because she was lonely. Because her heart was broken and she could not seem to find the pieces to fit it back together.
She would go to show them all that she was neither lonely nor heartsick.
They worried about her. She would show them that they did not need to, that she was fine.
* * *
• • •
Marcel was in the boathouse down by the lake, looking at the two overturned rowboats inside. It was not a happy sight.
“They look as if they have not been used this side of the turn of the century,” he said.
“I do not know,” Bertrand told him.
Marcel turned to look at him. “You have never wanted to use them yourself?” he asked.
“Aunt Jane thought it would be unwise, sir,” his son replied.
Jane had not allowed much that was joyful into his children’s lives, it seemed. Every day he discovered more examples. Not that the twins ever complained. They were amazingly docile young persons—with the exception of Estelle’s grand fury and rebellion and epic journey to Devonshire. He wondered at that now, at the feeling that had burst the bounds of a lifetime of training. She must have been very angry indeed with him. A promising sign? There were not many such signs from either of them, though they were the most dutiful children any father could ask for.
“Let me guess,” he said. “It was because Estelle was a delicate girl and you were the heir.”
“Well, I am the heir,” Bertrand said apologetically. “The only one, sir.”
“My fault, I suppose,” Marcel muttered. “Yes, my fault. Perhaps you were so perfect, Bertrand, that I did not believe you could be replicated.”
“I am not perfect,” his son said with a frown.
“To me you are,” Marcel said. “I will have these looked at in time for summer next year. I will test them myself before I allow you to row off to the far shores of the lake. If I sink and leave nothing but a bubble behind, at least I will have left an heir too.”
Bertrand looked slightly shocked. Estelle, who had come to stand in the doorway, giggled. Yes, really. She did not just laugh. She giggled. It was music to her father’s ears. And Bertrand, after a glance at her, laughed too.
“I daresay you can swim, sir,” he said.
“Yes, I daresay I can,” Marcel agreed.
They continued on their walk about the lake. He tried to spend time with them each day and had felt some easing of their very formal relationship. Bertrand had become almost enthusiastic when he learned that his father had not idled all his time away at Oxford but had actually earned a first- class degree. Estelle had looked at first dubious when he had suggested that they invite some young people to the house occasionally. Apparently Jane had believed the son and daughter of the Marquess of Dorchester must hold themselves aloof from inferior company. Perhaps now they were close to eighteen, Marcel had suggested, and their characters were fully formed, they might relax that rule somewhat. Estelle was ecstatic. Even Bertrand had looked pleased.
“My sister will be happy, sir,” he had said. “She enjoys company. So do I,” he had added after a short pause.
Marcel stopped on the bank below the dower house and stood looking at it—specifically at the large drawing room window, behind which he had stood with Viola. He determinedly avoided thinking of her—except when memories crept up on him unaware, which was far too often for his peac
e of mind. His son and daughter had stopped on either side of him.
“She is going to Brambledean Court for Christmas,” Estelle said, jolting his attention from the memories. He looked sharply at her. “In Wiltshire,” she added. “The Earl of Riverdale’s home. She is going there for Christmas.”
“Indeed?” he said. It would be foolish to ask who she was. His tone was deliberately frosty. He did not want to hear more.
“Yes,” she said. “Abigail told me so.”
He turned to walk onward, but she did not move. Neither did Bertrand.
“I write to her and she always replies,” Estelle said. “So does Jessica.”
Jessica. He had to think for a moment. Ah, yes, she was Abigail’s young cousin and friend—Lady Jessica Archer, Netherby’s half sister.
“She is unhappy,” Estelle said.
“Jessica?” he said. “Abigail?” He did not want this conversation.
“Miss Kingsley,” Estelle said. “She will not admit it, Abigail says. She is always determinedly cheerful. But she has lost weight, and she has dark circles under her eyes.”
He turned on her. “And of what possible interest can this be to me, young lady?” he asked. “What is her unhappiness to me? She did not want to marry me. She would have been happy enough to leave me back there in Devonshire before you discovered us. She was happy enough to leave here. She left before any of the rest of her family, if you will remember. She could not leave here soon enough. Her mood and her plans for Christmas are of no concern to me whatsoever. Is that clearly understood?”
Her face paled and her lower lip quivered, and he half expected her to collapse in an abject heap at his feet. She did not do so.
“And you are unhappy too,” his daughter said.
“What the devil?” He glared at her.
“It is true, sir,” Bertrand said from behind him. “You know it is. And we know it. And a proper gentleman does not blaspheme in a lady’s hearing.”
What the devil? Marcel wheeled on his son. “You are quite right,” he said curtly. “My apologies, Estelle. It will not happen again.”
“You are looking almost gaunt,” Bertrand said. “And you wander alone and go riding alone and stay up half the night and get up before anyone else.”
“What the devil?” Marcel frowned ferociously at his son. “Is a man not allowed to do as he wants in his own home without being spied upon by his children? I beg your pardon, Estelle. It will not happen again. Perhaps I have always walked and ridden and stayed up late and risen early. Have you thought of that? Perhaps it is the way I like to live.”
“Perhaps you want to go back to your own life,” Bertrand said, “and that is why you are so unhappy. But Stell and I do not think it is that, sir. We think it is because of Miss Kingsley. And we think she is unhappy because of you.”
“And . . .” He looked incredulously from one to the other of them. “And you think you ought to appoint yourselves matchmaker to your own father.”
They both stared back, identical stern looks on their faces. Bertrand spoke first.
“Someone has to, sir,” he said.
“Someone has to?” He felt as though he were in the middle of a bizarre dream.
“You are going to ruin your life, Papa,” Estelle said, “and she is going to ruin hers. All because you are both too stubborn for your own good. Have you told her that you love her, that you want to marry her?”
“I would wager you have not,” Bertrand said. “And you cannot expect her to say it first, sir. No well-bred lady would.”
It was either explode with wrath or . . .
Marcel threw back his head and laughed. Estelle’s lips twitched. Bertrand frowned.
“And why would my, ah, love life be of such concern to my children?” Marcel asked when he had sobered.
Bertrand was still frowning. “We are still children to you, are we not?” he said. “I am not concerned about you or even much interested. You may return to London for all I care, or wherever else it is you go when you are not here. You may waste the rest of your life as far as I am concerned. You seem to be very good at that. I wish you would go away. We have grown up very well without you, Estelle and I. We can do the rest of our living very well without you too. Why did we ever think you cared for Miss Kingsley or anyone else? You do not care about anyone except yourself. Sir.”
“Bert,” Estelle wailed, and tried to catch his arm. But he jerked it free of her grasp and turned to stride off back the way they had come. For a moment Marcel thought she would go running after him, but he set a hand on her arm.
“Let him go,” he said. “I will have a talk with him later.”
She gazed at him, her eyes troubled. “We have no memory at all of our first year,” she said, “though we have strained to put a face on Mama from Aunt Jane’s descriptions. We have tried remembering you too as you were then. It is hopeless, of course. We were just babies. But always, as far back as we can remember, we have waited for you to come back. To stay. We have waited to love you. And for you to love us. We have been puzzled too and angry, and we have told ourselves with each passing year that we no longer need you or want you to return to upset our lives. But it is what we have always wanted, Papa. Perhaps Bertrand more than me. He wanted—no, he needed a father to look up to, to admire, to emulate, a father to praise him and encourage him and do things with him and look at him with pride. He has always known he looks like you. He used to stand in front of a looking glass whenever you were here, trying to imitate your posture, your facial expressions, and your mannerisms. I just wanted a papa, a sort of rock of strength and dependability. Uncle Charles is a good man, but he was never you.”
Marcel was wishing she had gone after her brother. Truth was beginning to be spoken among them, but it was halting, difficult, necessary, hurtful, endearing . . . He could go on and on. Sometimes it came blurting out all in a flood, as now with Estelle. Sometimes it was denied with some bitterness, as a moment ago with Bertrand. But he would endure it all if there was a chance of getting his children back, totally unworthy though he was.
“We have loved you anyway,” Estelle said. “It was something we could never choose to do or not to do. It just . . . is. And call us foolish if you wish, but we want to see you happy.”
“I can never make amends for the lost years,” he said, “but I will try to give you . . . now. It is all I can offer—now on into as much of the future as we are granted. I am happy, Estelle, or was until fifteen or twenty minutes ago.”
“No, you were not,” she said. “Not really. We will never be quite enough for you, Papa, just as in time you will not be quite enough for either of us. I do not feel any burning wish for a Season yet, but I surely will in time. I will want a husband and a family and a home of my own. And Bertrand will want a wife. He and I will not even be enough for each other, though we always have been and still are. We wanted you to be fully happy, and it seems to us that you gave up the chance because for once in your life you wanted to do something noble.”
“For once in my life?” He raised his eyebrows and she flushed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I am sure you must have done other noble things. Even when you announced your betrothal in Devonshire, you were being noble.”
He gazed at her, this daughter of his who had so recently found her voice and revealed herself as a young woman of firm character and principle and considerable courage. She had blossomed before his eyes.
“I will tell you this, Estelle,” he said. “I am as proud of both you and Bertrand as any father could possibly be of his children. I will tell Bertrand that too. But . . . what exactly is it the two of you want me to do?”
She smiled at him, linked her arm through his, and turned them back in the direction of home.
“I assume,” she said, “that was a rhetorical question, Papa.”
Twenty-two
Viola and Abigail arrived at Brambledean Court four days before Christmas. They had come sooner than planned because heavy clouds had loomed overhead for a few days and the blacksmith, who had a reputation in the village for forecasting weather with some accuracy, had predicted snow for Christmas and lots of it.
Brambledean was the principal seat of the Earls of Riverdale, but Viola had never lived there as countess and so felt no awkwardness about going there now. Alexander and Wren had been busy since early summer repairing the damage that neglect of years had caused to both the park and the house, though they had concentrated most of their efforts upon restoring the farms to prosperity and making repairs to the laborers’ cottages. There was still much to be done. The park looked very barren even for December, though the lawns were neat and much deadwood appeared to have been cut away from trees and hedges. The driveway had been resurfaced and the wheel ruts of years smoothed out. The house was still shabby, but curtains and cushions had been renewed in the main rooms and walls had been painted or papered. Everything gleamed with cleanliness and liberal doses of polish.
“It is not yet a showpiece,” Wren said as she took them up to their rooms despite the increasing bulk of her pregnancy. “But it is cozy, or so we tell ourselves. It is home. And now it will have a sort of housewarming. Oh, I am so glad the two of you have come. My first Christmas with Alexander would not have been complete without the whole family here.”
But Harry would be absent, Viola thought without saying the words aloud. There had been one letter from him since she returned from Northamptonshire. In it he had wished her happy in her upcoming marriage, though he had expressed a wish that he had been able to interrogate the Marquess of Dorchester before the betrothal became official. He remembered him as Mr. Lamarr, but while he and his young friends had looked up to him with some awe as one devil—his exact word—of a fine fellow, he had not been the sort of man a son would want to see his mother marrying. There had been no letter from him since. Viola assumed her son would express some relief in his next one.