Fiercombe Manor (24 page)

“Edward! I very much doubt anyone is going to imagine such a thing when I am almost half the size of Stanton House.”

As she spoke, she realised that he was running his hand gently down her spine. When he got to the base of it, he massaged the tender muscles at either side. Without her normal corsets on, she could feel his fingers quite distinctly. She moaned involuntarily and he leant closer, kissing her along her collarbone, his fingers kneading her flesh all the while.

“Edward, people will see,” she whispered, but in fact the deepening twilight had become night, sending people closer to the music and the marquee, where torches had been lit. They were quite alone.

She knew he had had other women. Not Adelaide March, not yet, probably not ever—she was too vapid for Edward's tastes. But others, surely. He spent whole weeks at a time in London, staying at his club. A card game held greater allure for him than a woman, she also knew that, but she couldn't believe he hadn't gone elsewhere. When he did come to her, she let him, but it was not like it
had been before Isabel was born. He seemed afraid that he would break her, and the part of her that could not forgive him made her as unresponsive as a doll. She thought he knew why she only tolerated him, but they never discussed it. To discuss it would be to admit it, and his pride wouldn't allow him to do that.

“Beth,” he muttered in her ear, his voice thick with lust. His smell of hair oil and smoke mixed cloyingly with the rich scents of the garden. Part of her wanted to push him off, but there was a vestige of desire in her too, a remnant of feeling from the first months of their courtship that the sounds of the party, Hugh's simple admiration, and the champagne had taken her hurtling back to. In those days their mutual infatuation had been enough to ward off everything else.

“Darling, we will be a proper family again when our son is born. It will be a new beginning for us all,” Edward said softly.

The tiny flame of desire inside her went out.

“Are we not a proper family now, then?”

The words were out before she could bite them back, as she usually did. That was also the work of the champagne.

Edward leant back and looked into her eyes. He was flushed, his expression anguished.

“Of course we are; I didn't mean that we weren't.”

She was torn between encouraging him to talk as he almost never did—about the darkest times in their marriage—and allowing some devilment in her to anger him into walking away. Though she knew it helped no one, least of all herself, she had harboured feelings of resentment and betrayal towards Edward for almost half a decade, and sometimes it was all she could do not to unlock the box and let those feelings out.

She forced herself to reach up and stroke his hair, and after a moment he rested his head heavily against her breast. Through the
dark she saw a lean figure spot them and stop, hesitate, and turn on his heel. Her new friend, Hugh. For a moment she wished with all her heart that she was Adelaide's age again—that she could return to a time when men had expected nothing from her but a smile or a dance, a time when, at the end of an evening like this one, she could return to the sanctuary of her father's home.

“The man who gets our girl will be fortunate indeed,” her father had often said to her mother, who would smile at the daughter who had inherited her luminous eyes and thick hair. It would never have occurred to Elizabeth, by then growing impatient with the safe, predictable cadences of her life in Bristol, that her future husband would one day think differently.

But it did no good to dwell on that—she couldn't go back to her charmed girlhood. She was married, and she was a mother. She turned to her husband, who she suddenly sensed was close to tears. She had only seen Edward cry once before, when she had lost their son—the only lost baby he knew of.

“Edward, what is wrong? I thought you were happy. I'm sorry I spoke sharply.”

He was silent for a minute, and she realised that he was gathering himself, swallowing down the emotion that had also taken him by surprise.

“I am happy,” he finally forced out. “So very happy. I cannot think what has come over me.”

“Perhaps tonight has reminded you, as it has reminded me, of the last time we hosted such a large occasion,” she said softly, though what she had really been reminded of, after her initial giddiness, were those little deaths inside her. Those and the elusive memories that she could not unlock, but that explained, she suspected, whatever it was that had finally driven Edward from her.

“We have held lots of dinners and gatherings,” he said.

“Yes, but not like this. Not like we did before Isabel was born.”

He sighed. “No, well, perhaps not on this scale.”

“We—or you alone—have gone to many more balls and dinner parties than we have hosted.”

“Very well, Elizabeth, you are right. What more would you have me say on it?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I only mean to say that I can't help but be reminded of that last occasion. It is so much the same, and yet so very different. We have a daughter now”—she took a deep breath—“and we have the years in between, and the times that were so very hard for us both.”

“Please let us not dwell on those now,” he said. “Not when we are so happy, and when the evening has so far been such a success. If we must talk of it, and I do not think that it will do us any good, let us do so tomorrow.”

“I'm sorry, Edward, but I think we must talk of it tonight. I do not usually feel brave enough to. I must speak now.”

He sighed heavily. She could feel the tension in his body, and how much he wanted to rejoin the throng on the lawn.

“What it is, then?” He looked at her closely. “You are well, are you not? There is nothing wrong with the child?” Anxiety laced the last words.

“No, all is well with the child. You can see from the size of me how healthy the child is.”

“Are you sure? Because I don't think I could—” He stopped.

“You don't think what, Edward?”

He looked down. “Oh, must I say it? You surely know what I mean. I don't think I could bear for it to happen again.”

“
You
could not bear for it to happen.” Her voice was cold, but she couldn't help it.

“Elizabeth, you twist my words. I could not bear for it to happen to you again. I could not bear it for you, and I could not bear it for me. Is that not understandable? It is not only you who have suffered.”

She breathed in and out before she spoke. Her heart was racing again, anger and fear simmering just below the surface. She knew she mustn't let them out if she wanted him to listen.

“No, that is true,” she said carefully. “We have both suffered. Isabel too.”

Edward took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

“After Isabel, I watched you descend into some darkness of your own making, and I thought nothing could ever be so terrible,” he said. “But then, when our son—” He stopped, and she could sense his effort not to weep. “When our son was lost, it was even worse. I couldn't possibly risk losing you as well as him, do you see that?”

“But you hadn't lost me, Edward. It broke my heart that he died. I mourned for our son, just as you did. But I was myself—I told you that repeatedly. I was not . . . ill.” She dropped her voice on the last word.

“How was I to know whether I could believe that?” said Edward, looking now not at her but across the lawn towards the house, where light glowed in almost every downstairs window. “I could not take the risk. It's not as though I sent you away again. You were allowed to stay here, with Dr. Logan treating you in your own home, and a nurse paid to watch you as well. You begged not to go back to the private hospital, and I let you have your way. You were cared for here instead.”

“Cared for?” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “I was locked away in my rooms, unable to see my daughter for weeks. I was not allowed any food that I might have to chew. I was not allowed to walk in the garden or to read a book, in case it overstimulated me.”

She thought of him—Dr. Logan, the man Isabel had mentioned by another name only that afternoon—and of what else he had prescribed for her when the nurse was sent out and the door locked. She turned to her husband.

“Edward, there was nothing wrong with me but the natural grief I felt for my son. I was not insane. But in a sense, that was the very worst of it: the thought that the cure prescribed for a madness I didn't have would eventually send me insane anyway.”

She battled to lower her voice, but he still flinched at the words.

“I ask you again,” he said after a pause, “why do you feel we must talk of this now, here, with all the people of the county just feet from us? It is perverse, and I won't indulge you in it any longer.”

He stood to go, but she caught his hand.

“Please, Edward. There is one thing I must ask you. Then I will say good-bye nicely to our guests, and tell them I am exhausted and must retire for my health.”

Reluctantly he sat back down, though he would not look at her.

“What I need to ask you is what you might do if—”

“If what?” He spat the words out.

“If the baby is lost, or if—”

“Why would the baby be lost? You have only a few weeks to go, and you are in perfect health—you just said so yourself. Even before the miscarriage you were sick, violently sick and unable to eat. You grew so thin and pale that it was probably inevitable that the child would not survive. There was something wrong from the start. It is entirely different this time round.”

“Yes, it is. But Edward, I was not ill before I gave birth to Isabel. I was in excellent health then too—and so was she, when she was born.”

“Ah, so we have got to the nub of it. You are afraid not of this child dying but of suffering from puerperal insanity once again.”

The words were so ugly. She hadn't heard them spoken aloud in a long time, though they often echoed in her head when she couldn't sleep.

“That is very unfair,” she half whispered. “I am afraid of both. But, like you, I believe that this child must be healthy. It is so far along now. But that, and all this”—she gestured at the gathering of people in front of them, the lit torches and the band and the laughter—“so reminds me of when I was carrying Isabel. So yes, I will admit it, I am afraid of losing myself again. And there is something else this time, too. I am also afraid of how you will feel about me if I bear us another daughter.”

He shook his head. “Have I ever said I was disappointed that Isabel was not a boy? I love our daughter.”

“I know you do. But you have always talked of your wish for a son. You said as much to Adelaide March this evening. I know how important it is.”

“Well, of course. It is only natural for a man to want a son, who will take his name and inherit his title.”

“Edward, I don't seem able to say what I must say to you.” She wanted to sob with frustration. She was so unused to speaking to her husband honestly that she didn't know how to finally admit to the fears that never strayed far from her thoughts.

“I think it is time that we returned to our guests,” he said with forced indifference. “We have been here, alone, long enough.”

“Just answer me this, then. If something should happen this time, do you promise that you will not send for Dr. Logan? Do you promise that you will neither send me away nor banish me to my rooms and install that man, who will watch over me every second of the day and night? Who will force me to eat when I am not hungry? Who will insist that I am stripped naked and bathed by one of his odious nurses, who will treat me as though I were a child
or an imbecile? I don't think I can bear that again. Don't you see? It only makes it worse.”

He finally looked at her, and when she saw how his jaw was set with determination, she felt cold all over.

“I cannot promise you anything of the sort,” he said quietly. “I will do what I think right, just as I have in the past, and always in your best interests, rather than my own. Do you think I wanted to send away my wife, and have half the county whisper about it? Do you think I wanted to have them discover, thanks to servant gossip, that the same doctor had to be sent for again, less than two years on? Do I want their pity? Of course not. I—”

“There was another miscarriage,” she broke in, her voice leaden. She couldn't quite believe the conversation they were having, the years of repressing the truth undone in mere minutes. It wasn't just the fault of the drink, or the liberating dark—it was also a remnant of her old spirit rising to the surface. That, and a sudden intuition that this was her last chance to appeal to him.

He froze at her words. “What do you mean?”

“A little more than a year ago. I didn't tell you.”

“You didn't . . . but I don't understand.” Two spots of high colour appeared on his cheeks.

“It was lost almost as soon as I realised I was with child again. Two months, no more.”

“And you told no one of this?”

“No one but Edith.”

“Your lady's maid knew, and I, your husband and the father of this child, did not?”

“She saw the blood on the sheet.”

He paled at the words; she could see it even in the gloom.

“Why do you think I did not tell you?” she continued sadly. “Is it not clear to you now?”

He looked at her, and she couldn't read his expression. It might have been horror, it might have been fear, it might even have been distaste—she couldn't tell.

Just then an elderly voice, slightly querulous, rang out into the night.

“Has anyone seen Sir Edward or Lady Stanton? We must leave shortly, but we cannot go without thanking them.”

“It's the Fitzmorrises,” said Edward quietly. “You will stay here. Perhaps it's as well if you went to bed. You have clearly overexerted yourself.”