Mary Balogh (50 page)

“Tragic accidents need scapegoats,” Lady Eleanor said. “At first, of course, it must have seemed that Edmond was entirely to blame. He was the one who had been drunk and reckless. He was the one who had not listened to Richard’s pleadings. Of course they turned on him. It was cruel, naturally, and unjust and despicable. But people are never quite rational at such times. And they did not heap more blame on him than he heaped on himself.”

“Did they not realize?” Mary swallowed, surprised to find that her voice was not quite steady. “Did they not realize that they were destroying him? Have they never realized that they lost both brothers on that terrible day?”

“Oh, if you are talking in the present tense,” Lady Eleanor said, “then I think the answer must be at least partly yes. At the time, they were too consumed by their grief for Richard and by their concern at the complete collapse and rapid decline of my sister-in-law. And Edmond’s running away and his expulsion from Oxford and his failure to put in an appearance at either funeral did not help his cause. Those absences angered even me at the time. It is hard to understand and make allowances for human nature when one’s own emotions are raw.”

“But now?” Mary said. “They will have nothing to do with him?”

“Overtures were made years ago, I believe,” Lady Eleanor said. “But we are talking about human nature
here, Mary. I did not read any of the letters that passed, but I know my brother and I know Edmond quite well. My guess is that there was too much pride on both sides, and too much willingness to assume guilt on the one side and not enough on the other. And then, as invariably happens with family quarrels, too much time had passed.”

“They have never met one another since?” Mary asked.

“Both sides are at great pains not to do so,” Lady Eleanor said. “London is understood to be Edmond’s domain, the north of England my brother’s and Wallace’s. Whenever I issue invitations, I have to be careful to issue them separately. For years my brother would always ask if I had invited Edmond, too, and Edmond always asked if I had invited his father or Wallace. Fortunately they gave up asking some time ago, confident in the belief that I would never distress them by bringing them together unexpectedly.”

“There must be so much need of healing,” Mary said. “On both sides. Perhaps too much need. Perhaps it is too late.”

Lady Eleanor opened the door of the greenhouse and motioned for Mary to precede her out onto the dark lawn. “It is a pity to miss the fresh air,” she said. “We do not know when we are to lose this glorious weather, do we?”

“It is surely the best summer I can remember,” Mary said.

“I have been saved from lying this time,” Lady Eleanor said.

Mary looked her inquiry.

“Had either side asked this time if the other was to be here for my birthday,” Lady Eleanor said, “I would have been forced to lie, Mary. I am sixty years old, or will be in just a few days’ time. My brother is four years my
senior. We are getting old. We cannot delay much longer.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “He is coming here?” she asked. “Lord Edmond’s father?”

“And Wallace and his family,” Lady Eleanor said. “They should arrive sometime tomorrow. Perhaps I am doing entirely the wrong thing, Mary, especially with other guests at the house. Sparks may fly at the very least. But it is time, I believe. Much past the time, in fact.”

Mary said nothing.

“Now, tell me I am right,” Lady Eleanor said. “Please tell me I am right, my dear. I respect your opinion.”

“Yes.” Mary drew a deep breath. “You are right, ma’am. Whatever the outcome, you are right. I do not know the Duke of Brookfield or his eldest son—I am afraid I do not know his title.”

“Welwyn,” Lady Eleanor said. “The Earl of, my dear.”

“I do not know them,” Mary said. “But as far as Lord Edmond is concerned, I do not believe more harm can be done. On the other hand, good may come of it.”

Lady Eleanor squeezed her arm. “How wonderful you are, my dear,” she said. “I waited with bated breath for your verdict. I was very much afraid I had done the wrong thing. And it is still possible, of course. Perhaps they will not even alight from their carriages tomorrow if they discover that Edmond is here. And perhaps he will leap onto the back of the nearest horse and gallop for London when he sets eyes on them. Who knows? One can only try.”

“Yes,” Mary said. She hesitated. “Was your invitation to me all part of your master plan?”

Lady Eleanor laughed a little ruefully. “It is a gamble, I must admit,” she said. “I merely wanted you to see your two men together for a whole week, Mary. I wanted to set your reason at war with your heart. And I have
succeeded, have I not? But again, I do not know if I have done the right thing. What if your heart wins and you end up living unhappily ever after? It is entirely possible. I am not altogether sure that Edmond is capable of having a loving relationship with anyone.”

Mary turned her head and smiled at her hostess. “I will not have you feel guilty,” she said. “I must tell you that since my arrival here I have accepted Lord Goodrich’s offer of marriage. It is what will be best for me, I am sure. And Lord Edmond has never offered me more than
carte blanche
, you know. Does that shock you? I would not accept either that or a marriage offer from him. I could not possibly be happy with him—or he with me, either. But at least I do not despise him as I used to do, and I am glad of that. You are partly responsible, ma’am, and I am grateful to you. And for this lovely week in the country. Sometimes I pine for the countryside.”

“You are very gracious, my dear,” Lady Eleanor said. “Very.
Carte blanche
, indeed. Does the man have no sense left whatsoever? Does he think to satisfy those needs with you and waste everything else you have to offer him? Men! Sometimes I could shake the lot of them.”

Mary smiled.

H
E WAS NOT
enjoying himself. And that was an understatement of the first order. He wished himself back at Willow Court, if the truth were known. He had never had much use for his country estate, finding life there far too dull for his tastes, but he had found a measure of peace there during the past few weeks, and he longed to be back. Alone. Away from people. Away from her.

For all his worst suspicions had been confirmed during the past couple of days. He was not only in love with
her. He loved her. And that changed everything—everything by which he had lived for fifteen years. All his adult life.

Ever since he had rammed the barrel of a dueling pistol into his mouth late on the date of his mother’s funeral and had sweated and shaken and finally thrust the weapon from him and cried and cried until there were no tears left and no feeling, either—ever since then he had decided that love, family, commitment to other people could bring nothing but pain and disaster. And so he had lived for himself, for pleasure. Pleasure had become the yardstick by which he measured all the successes of his life. If he wanted something, he reached for it. And if it brought him enjoyment, then he clung to it until the pleasure had cloyed.

Perhaps the nearest he had come to being selfless in all the years since had been his comforting of Mary at Vauxhall. Even when he had mounted her there, he had done so not from any selfish desire for personal gratification but from the desperate need to shelter her from her fear. He had drawn her as close as one human being can draw another.

He cursed the chance that had brought him that invitation to Vauxhall and the whim that had made him accept. For it had changed his life as surely, if not as dramatically, as Dick’s death had done. And he did not want his life changed yet again. He had grown comfortable with it. Almost happy with it.

He loved her. And so he could no longer even try to take advantage of her. He could easily do so. She had actually told him that she was attracted to him, and her body had told him as much every time he had touched her. Her eyes told him the same story every time he met them, even though she masked their expression with coldness or disdain or hostility.

He could have her if he wanted her. It would take very
little effort on his part. And he did not think he was being merely conceited to think so. He could have her.

Devil take it, he could have her.

And yet she did not want him. Every part of her except the basely physical recoiled from him. And justly so. She should not want him or like him. Or love him. And if she did, or thought she did, he would have to disabuse her. For he could not take her in any way at all. He loved her, and he was the last man on earth he would wish on her.

And yet there were four days of the country party left, and he felt obliged to stay at Rundle Park despite the longing to get away. Four days in which Mary would see him and perhaps continue to be troubled by her unwilling attraction to him. And four days during which he must fight the temptation to dally with her or to try to ingratiate himself with her.

And yet, he thought, riding out alone during the morning while several of the ladies, Mary included, were touring the greenhouses, perhaps his very best course was to pursue the first of those temptations. Perhaps he should dally with her, as he had done to a certain extent the afternoon before. Perhaps he should make himself quite as obnoxious as he possibly could. It should not be at all difficult. He was an expert at being obnoxious.

He had told her too much the day before. He had felt her sympathies begin to sway his way. It was strange, perhaps, when he had never felt the compulsion to tell anyone else about that worst of all days in his life. He had never felt the need to justify himself or to try to give anyone a glimpse into his personal hell. Only Mary. But of course he loved Mary, and against all the odds and all the urgings of his better nature—if there were such a thing left—he wanted her to love him.

But he did not want her sympathy or her affection. It
would be too unbearable to know that her feelings had softened toward him at all. It would be better by far if she continued to despise and even hate him as she had always done. And there was only one way to ensure that that happened.

Lord Edmond laughed rather bitterly to himself. He would probably end up fighting a duel with Goodrich before the four days were at an end.

But it would be worth it. Once he had made her hate him in true earnest, then she would be safe from him. And he from her.

He smiled to himself and spurred his horse into a gallop across a fallow field, heedless of the possibility of rabbit holes or other irregularities in the ground. If there were a high gate to be jumped, he thought with grim humor, he would jump it without a second thought, since there was no one coming along behind him to imitate his foolhardiness and break his neck.

And this time he was not even foxed!

“W
E ARE GOING
to get storms out of this weather before it changes, you mark my words,” Doris Shelbourne assured the people within earshot of her later that evening. “And then summer will be over. We will have an early autumn. We cannot expect to enjoy weather like this and not suffer for it.”

“Storms,” Mrs. Leila Orsmby said, looking up at her husband, who was standing beside her chair. “I do hope not. The children are terrified of them.”

“Children usually are,” Viscount Goodrich said, one hand on Mary’s shoulder as he stood behind her chair. “The best medicine is to ignore both the storm and their wailing. They quickly learn that there is nothing to fear.”

“That is easily said,” Leila said, “but it is more difficult
to do. When children are crying and they are one’s own children, one feels constrained to comfort them.”

“Then one is merely making a rod for one’s own back, if you will forgive my criticism, ma’am,” Lord Goodrich said. “Children must be taught fortitude.”

“I am not sure that fortitude can be taught in that way,” Mary said quietly. “The fear of storms is a dreadful thing and one must remember that there is something very real to the fear.”

“Nonsense!” Lord Goodrich said. “Pardon me, Mary, but I must disagree most strongly. A little healthy thunder and lightning never did anyone any harm.”

“It killed four soldiers in the tent next to my husband’s and mine in Spain,” she said. “Since then, I have not taken storms so lightly.”

“In fact she is driven into a blind terror by them.”

Mary looked up at Lord Edmond, who was lounging against the wall in Lady Eleanor’s drawing room, his arms crossed over his chest. He was half smiling down at her in a manner that suggested that they shared some very personal secret. It did not soothe her indignation to remember that they did indeed. But only the day before he had declared quite seriously that she must absolve him of ever having shared any personal knowledge of her with anyone else.

“I have seen it happen,” he said.

Mrs. Bigsby-Gore was playing determinedly on the pianoforte for several dancing couples, Lady Eleanor having been persuaded by the young people to have the carpet rolled up so that they might have an evening of informal dancing.

“Yes,” Mary said, lifting her chin. “I am afraid of storms. I can sympathize with your children, Mrs. Ormsby.”

“Mary.” Lord Goodrich squeezed her shoulder. His tone was teasing. “You should be ashamed of yourself.
You cannot spend the rest of your life quivering at the approach of a storm just because you once had the misfortune to be close to men foolhardy enough to get themselves killed by one. What were you and they doing in tents during a thunderstorm anyway?”

“Trying to keep dry,” she said more tartly than she had intended. “We were bivouacking, Simon. Camping. We were part of an army on the march.”

“And the army could do no better for you?” he said. “That is quite shameful. Surely there must have been buildings available. Your husband was, after all, an officer. You ought not to have been subjected to the unpleasantness of being so close to those deaths.”

“I do agree that the four poor devils who did not survive the storm should have had the good taste to die elsewhere,” Lord Edmond said. His voice, Mary noticed, was heavy with boredom. “As for Mary’s fears, Goodrich, you should perhaps thank providence for them. She likes to be held tightly. Ah, very tightly.”