Candice Hern (50 page)

Mary looked back at the marchioness and saw such pain and shock in the woman's eyes that she felt her own control slipping. "I am sorry," she said in a shaky whisper. "I should not..." And suddenly she could no longer speak. No more words would come. Then, without warning, she was overcome by sobs that wracked her entire body. She was vaguely aware that Lady Pemerton's arms came around her and held her tightly. But she could not seem to stop sobbing as a riot of emotions overwhelmed her: sadness, regret, anger, shame.

Mary hated herself for displaying such weakness, most especially in front of her future mother-in-law. She had worked so hard to overcome her particular vulnerabilities, to keep all those old demons at bay, but once her composure had cracked, she found it difficult to rein them back in. And the shame of her outburst only caused her to sob harder. She concentrated on her breathing, taking deep gulps of air between sobs, hoping she could at least regain physical, if not emotional, control of herself.

The marchioness continued to hold her, rocking her gently against her thin breast.

"There, there," she said, as if speaking to a child. "There, there."

Finally, Mary's sobs subsided to quiet tears. She seemed to have no control over the tears, which streamed unchecked down her face. She gently pulled away from the marchioness and dug into her pocket for a handkerchief. She gave a frustrated cry when she found she had none, but the marchioness thrust one in her hand before she could become more agitated. She took it gratefully, dabbed at her eyes, and then blew her nose noisily. She turned toward Lady Pemerton, though she was unable to meet her eye, and attempted to speak. "I am sorry," she said again, and then hiccuped several times. "I should not have said such things to you. I have been so ... so happy these last... few weeks. There is no cause to ... drag up ancient history." She paused, trying to calm her breathing, ashamed of her lack of control.

The marchioness took her hand and held it gently. "Please do not apologize, my dear," she said in a soft, soothing voice. "And you have every right to speak of such things.
We
are to be your family, now. We want to know all about you—the good things and the bad." She paused, and Mary blew her nose again.

"I would like you to tell me what happened, Mary, if you can. Tell me about your father."

"Oh!" The word was stretched out into a mournful cry. "Please, no. I don't think ... no, no ... it does not matter. None of it matters anymore."

"It does matter, my dear," the marchioness said. "It is a part of you. It is important because you survived it. You rose above it somehow to become the sweet, delightful young woman you are today. Besides, it helps to talk about one's troubles. They become less burdensome when you share them."

Mary took a deep breath and looked hard at Lady Pemerton. Finally, she gave a ragged sigh and fell back against the sofa. She had already disgraced herself thoroughly. The full truth could do little additional harm at this point. It might even do some good, though she could not imagine how. But if the marchioness was willing to share this shameful burden, then it was certainly worth a try. She took another deep breath. "What do you want to know?" she asked.

"Tell me about your father."

"He was George Haviland, the fifth Earl of Assheton," Mary began in a singsong voice. "Both his father and mother, who died when he was a schoolboy, were Havilands, having been first cousins. He fell madly in love with Lady Honoria Beckwith and made her his countess." She paused and shook her head. When she continued, her tone was more even. "Besides being beautiful—I have seen her portraits, so I know it to be true—she had a sizable fortune left to her by her parents—she was an orphan, too, you see, and so I never had grandparents, either. Papa loved her to distraction. When she died ... well, I have told you what happened." She paused and gazed through the huge gallery windows looking out onto the rear courtyard.

"You say he hated you," the marchioness said, "that he told you so."

"Yes."

"Did he ... abuse you?"

"Did he beat me, you mean?" Mary, still gazing out the window, watched as young Lizzy, followed by her nanny and Charlotte, came skipping into view with a black-and-white spaniel at her side. Lizzy threw a ball that the hound chased after energetically while the little girl bounced and clapped her hands. "Yes," Mary said finally. "He beat me with some regularity." She rubbed a finger absently along the length of her nose as she watched Charlotte pick up Lizzy and swing the giggling child through the air.

"Why?"

"Why did he beat me?" She shrugged her shoulders and waved a hand in an indifferent gesture. "Usually, just for looking at him," she said. "He despised my ugliness. He said such an ugly, undersized runt of a child had no right to live while his beautiful wife lay dead in the ground. It was always the same litany, with minor variations."

"And what did you do?" the marchioness asked.

Mary was surprised by the question and turned to look at Lady Pemerton. "What did I
do
? Well... when I was very small," she said, turning back toward the window to watch Lizzy tossing the ball back and forth between her nanny and her mama, "I shouted and screamed and kicked back. I soon learned, though, that such behavior only encouraged him. I discovered early on that it was to my advantage to submit quietly. He would soon become bored and leave me alone."

"How long did this go on?"

"Until I was seventeen," Mary said. "Papa had never allowed me out much, but he did take me to church every Sunday. The vicar had a large family, and some of the girls used to be allowed to play with me. Papa always disapproved, but was apparently reluctant to offend a man of the cloth, and so the vicar's daughters became my only friends." Mary paused, distracted by the simple game of ball taking place on the courtyard lawn.

"What happened when you were seventeen?" the marchioness prompted.

"A nephew of the vicar's wife came to visit," Mary said, wondering momentarily at the prudence of discussing this particular episode with her future mother-in-law. She brushed aside that concern—in for a penny, in for a pound—and continued. "Peter Morrison, his name was. He was three and twenty, a mature man of the world to a naive, sheltered girl of seventeen. He flirted with me shamelessly, although I understood nothing of flirtation. I had been told I was ugly for so long that I was overwhelmed by his flattery and attention. You can imagine how my head was turned."

"What happened?"

"I ran away with him." Despite her shame, Mary found it almost impossible to stop the flow of words, now that she had begun. "He had often teased me, saying we should run away together to some exotic place and be lovers. I took his words quite literally and saw an opportunity to escape my father. I confess to pleading with Peter to elope with me. He demurred at first, claiming he could not yet afford a wife. I assured him that I could expect a sizable inheritance as my father's only child. The castle was entailed, but I knew his fortune would come to me. And so Peter agreed."

As she spoke, it all sounded suddenly so obvious. How could she have ever believed that Peter loved her? His own words confirmed her father's subsequent taunts. "We fled early one dawn," she went on, "planning to go to Gretna Green. We never made it. My father caught up with us in Cheltenham the next day."

"What did he do?" the marchioness asked, when it seemed, after a few moments, that Mary would not continue.

"I have never known what he said to Peter," Mary said. "When he discovered us at an inn, he dragged me into a room and locked me inside. When he returned, almost two hours later, Peter had apparently disappeared, and I was to return to Somerset with my father. But not before he had vented his rage on me in the usual way. You see, Peter and I had ... had spent one night together. Now, I was not only ugly, but ruined as well. For my father, I was completely useless."

The marchioness squeezed the hand Mary suddenly realized she had been holding the whole time. Mary turned toward her and met a look of such sympathy that she almost lost control again. She bit her lip and looked quickly away. Through the gallery windows she watched the tiny figure of Lizzy disappearing in the distance as she chased after the spaniel.

"What happened when you returned home?" the marchioness asked. "Did things change, or was it as unhappy as ever?"

"Oh, things changed all right," Mary said as her gaze followed the bouncing, running little girl. "I had to be punished for my insolence. Since I had no physical virtues with which to attract a man, only the prospect of Papa's fortune would ever entice a man to be my husband. That, he was to point out to me with vicious amusement almost daily for the rest of his life, was the only way I had managed to interest Peter. It was the only way I could possible interest any man. To punish me, he eliminated me entirely from his will."

The marchioness gasped.

"I was to get nothing," Mary continued. "After my father's death, I would be required to live on the sufferance of the distant cousin who would inherit, a man I had never met. But that was not my only punishment." Mary took a deep breath and considered how much to say about the next nine years. But then, there was really very little to say. "I was to be my father's prisoner," she said at last.

"My God!"

"I was never to leave the castle. I was never to go out of doors. I was never to speak to anyone save my maid—my jailer, I used to call her. I was never to see my friends again."

"Oh, Mary," the marchioness said, her voice tremulous and troubled. "How horrible. How ... how long did—"

"Nine years," Mary said. "I was kept inside the castle for nine years, until he died. I never saw the sun or the moon except through a window. I never felt the wind or the rain on my face, except in my dreams."

"Good Lord. Good Lord, Mary. How did you bear it?"

"I created my own separate world in the castle," Mary said. "I escaped into books. Some of my father's predecessors had amassed an extensive library. I read everything. I also escaped into music. He did not deny me that, at least."

"Were there no relatives to turn to?" the marchioness asked, her voice rising in a plaintive, almost querulous tone. "No sympathetic servants? What about the vicar? Was there no one to help you?"

Mary sighed and threw her head back against the sofa. "That is the pitiful part, is it not, that I did not fight to get out? I was so tired ..." She paused, mortified with shame. The worst part of telling this story was not how badly it painted her father, but how badly it reflected on her. She had not fought back. She had submitted. She had allowed. She had accepted.

"But no," she continued, determined to finish what she had begun. "I have no close relatives and the servants were my father's agents. Any who showed signs of softness toward his insolent daughter were let go. I have no idea what was said to the vicar and his family. I have assumed they were told I was dead. I never saw them again."

"Tell me what happened when your father died," the marchioness said. "Did the new earl, in fact, treat you well? You are obviously not impoverished."

Mary laughed mirthlessly. "'Tis an ironic tale, at the very least. Papa, who was generally in robust health, became ill very suddenly. An inflammation of the lungs caused him to decline rapidly and within days he was near death. The household was in somewhat of a turmoil over his impending demise and failed to watch me as closely as they ought. When Papa's solicitor came to meet with his dying client, I happened to be in the hallway and he asked to speak with me." Mary paused and shook her head, still amazed at what had transpired that day.

"The solicitor," she went on, "Mr. Fleming, was apparently surprised to find me unguarded. But he wanted to reassure me that, regardless of the lack of provisions in my father's will, that my own funds would be more than sufficient to my continued comfort."

"Your own funds?"

Mary chuckled. "That was my question, precisely. Mr. Fleming, disgusted with the whole sorry business, told me what he thought I should have known. It seems my mother, who had quite a bit of money of her own, had set up a trust fund for her unborn child. It had been administered all these years by Mr. Fleming. Papa had known about it at the time, of course, but had apparently forgotten about it—first, through grief and later through his increasing mental instability. Mr. Fleming had taken good care of it, nevertheless. He even hinted that he had deliberately failed to remind Papa of its existence, especially after he cut me out of his will. Anyway, it seems I had something of a fortune."

"Good heavens!"

"Imagine my astonishment," Mary said. "All that time I had had the means to live independently from my father and had not known it." She shook her head and smiled weakly. "But I was determined to waste no time in taking advantage of it. I requested Mr. Fleming's help in removing temporarily to Bath. He was extraordinarily sympathetic. He agreed to send his own carriage for me the next day. Papa died that night." She turned to look at the marchioness. "You will think me heartless, but the next morning I put on my brightest yellow dress, packed a few things, and left in Mr. Fleming's carriage. I left Assheton Castle for good. I have never returned. I did not mourn my father. It seemed ... hypocritical. I hated him, you see."

The marchioness squeezed her hand again. "I understand, Mary," she said in a soft voice. "And I believe I would have done the same if I had suffered as you had. You have nothing to be ashamed of. All the shame lies at your father's door. He was the heartless one, Mary, not you. To have abused you all those years, to have lied to you about your looks and your prospects—"

"Oh, but that is just it, you see," Mary interrupted. "He never actually lied. He was brutally honest about my shortcomings. It is just that he took such cruel delight in pointing them out."

"No, Mary," the marchioness said in a stern voice, "he was not honest. You are not plain, as I am sure—as I hope—Jack has told you. And have never required a fortune to attract a husband. You are one of the most delightful, most personable young women I have ever met, my dear. That alone would pique any man's interest. Only look at Jack. He is besotted with you, my dear. And that has nothing to do with your fortune."