Clare was silent for a minute, trying to absorb what Sabrina had told her. “Then you
do
care for him. I have long thought so.”
“I love him very much,” whispered Sabrina. “And much good it does me.”
“And Andrew? Does he return your affection?”
“I believe so. But he is too much a gentleman to want to ruin my life by proposing to me.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“He is convinced that a younger son who has no chance at the title and no great fortune is not an equal match for the daughter of an earl who has a generous portion. It is that damned sense of honor that men have. Pardon my language, Clare, but I don’t know how they can put honor before everything, even love.”
“Does Giles know about this?”
“I am sure he has guessed that something has happened. I doubt that Andrew would have spoken to him directly. And I haven’t.”
“Perhaps I could speak to Andrew when we return to London, Sabrina,” said Clare thoughtfully. “We are good friends now. Maybe I could bring him to his senses. I think the two of you would be very happy together.”
“As you and Giles are,” Sabrina asked, not very innocently, wondering whether Clare would admit to any of the tension Sabrina could feel between her brother and his wife.
Clare merely nodded and agreed. “Yes, as Giles and I are.” The horses were becoming restless, and the clouds were rolling closer. “Come, we had better go,” said Clare, “or we will be caught this time.”
They reached Whitton in plenty of time before the storm, but Giles was out front, pacing up and down in front of the house as they rode in.
“Sabrina, I cannot believe you would risk the weather again,” he said, not bothering to check his anger.
“Giles, this is nothing like last time,” his sister replied. “It is merely a heavy rainstorm, with only a little thunder. And besides, we outrode it.”
“Barely. And this time, you put Clare at risk.”
Perhaps it was the injustice. Clare had always hated injustice. The ride had been
her
idea, not Sabrina’s, although, to be fair, Giles was not to know that. But still, to attack his sister without any explanation was just unfair.
Perhaps it was the heat and the tension in the atmosphere that builds before such a storm. Perhaps it was the accumulated tension between her and her husband. Clare didn’t know. But when Giles casually summoned a footman to help his sister dismount and turned toward Clare, grabbing the reins of her horse as though she were incapable of keeping the restless animal under control, she felt a wave of anger wash over her. She was
not
a neck or nothing rider like Sabrina, it was true, but she could handle a restive horse.
As Giles reached up to lift her down, she realized she wanted nothing more than to smack the protective, solicitous look off his face, and was immediately horrified by the violence of her thoughts. She let him help her down, but turned to face him, saying in a shaking voice: “The ride was
my
idea, Giles. And both Sabrina and I are grown women who can read the weather very well. We turned around in time. It will be a good ten minutes before the storm reaches here. Nor did we have to run the horses to get back ahead of it. I know that you and Sabrina have a free and easy relationship, but that does not warrant blaming her for everything. Nor assuming that I never have an idea of my own.”
Bravo, Clare, thought Sabrina, surprised and touched by her friend’s defense. She watched Clare pull away from Giles and walk into the house without looking back.
Giles stood there, completely dumbfounded. When he regained his composure, he turned to his sister and tendered her an apology. “I am sorry for accusing you without reason, Brina. If you will excuse me, I will go and make my apologies to my wife.”
* * * *
Clare was still shaking when she reached her bedroom. She dismissed Martha and sank into the chair by the window, lacing and unlacing her fingers as she tried to calm herself down. What had Giles done, after all, but treat Sabrina like a well-loved sister. The two had always spoken freely to one another and never shied away from a quarrel. It was just that Clare was very conscious about Sabrina’s vulnerability around the aftermath of the thunderstorm. And Giles hadn’t been fair. He had assumed, as always, that little Clare Dysart couldn’t do anything on her own.
The breeze that had been blowing had turned into a wind, and the branches of the holly tree on the side of the house were scraping and rustling against Clare’s window. The room was becoming darker as the clouds covered the sun, and Clare knew the rain could not be far behind. Her window was half-open, she realized, and she stood to close it. But the wood had swollen in the humidity of the last weeks, and although she leaned all her weight down against it, she could not get it shut.
“Here, Clare, let me help you,” said Giles from behind her, and he reached around her shoulders to help her push it down.
She felt smothered by him and pulled herself away, going to stand by the fireplace. Giles turned and gave her an apologetic smile. “I am sorry if I startled you. And I am sorry for jumping on Sabrina. But it was only natural that I thought your ride her idea. And you did only make it back by a very few minutes,” he added, looking at the windowpane where the first few drops were hitting. He moved over to her and lifted her hair back from her face. “I love the way your hair curls in this weather,” he whispered.
He had touched her gently and with consideration, as usual. That was the problem. He was always so
careful
with her, as though she were a porcelain woman like the shepherdess on the mantel.
“Don’t, Giles,” she responded.
“I am sorry, Clare,” he replied, immediately lowering his hand. “You are still upset with me?”
“Don’t be sorry, Giles. What have you got to be sorry about?”
“Why, losing my temper at the two of you.”
“No, Giles. You did not lose your temper at me. You
never
lose your temper at me. You are always the perfect, gentle knight.” Clare was as surprised as Giles by her reaction. She
was
furious with him for being what for years she had wanted him to be: her Galahad. Oh, but Galahad would have been so difficult to live with, she thought suddenly.
Giles blanched at her tone. “I don’t know what you mean, Clare. Of course I am rarely angry at you. I am hardly perfect, but I think all I need to confess to this time is wanting to keep you safe. After all, I love you.”
“Do you, Giles? Do you love
me
or do you love some memory that you hold from your childhood.”
Giles was stung. “How can you doubt my love, Clare? I have always loved you. I asked you to marry me as soon as it was possible. And surely, if nothing else, my behavior in our bed should convince you.”
“Sometimes I think you only see Clare Dysart, Giles. The Clare Dysart you knew before she fell in love with Justin Rainsborough. Not the Clare Dysart who jilted you.”
“We were never formally engaged,” Giles interjected.
“Not Lady Rainsborough, Giles,” Clare continued as though he had not spoken. “Lady Rainsborough gave her husband all of herself in the marriage bed, Giles. She gave him all that she cannot seem to give you. And when he beat her ...”
“Don’t talk to me of this, Clare. I don’t want to hear it. And there is no need for you to torture yourself again.”
“And even when he beat her and kicked her and killed their baby, she returned to his bed,” Clare continued inexorably. “You cannot tell me, Giles, that you never wondered at that even a little? For surely
I
have,” she added with a bitter laugh that became a sob.
Giles looked over at the window, as though by focusing on the storm outside he could escape the inside tempest that was drawing him in. He turned back and said carefully: “I confess that there were times, particularly during the inquest when I wondered that, Clare. But I understand, truly I do.” He reached out to assure her, putting his hand protectively on her shoulder.
She shook him off. “Do you, Giles? Do you? I am glad one of us does, for I most certainly do not. Do you not wonder in bed, as I do, why a woman could give herself completely to the man who treated her so horribly and cannot to the man who has loved her more than half his life?”
Tears were running down Clare’s cheeks almost as fast as the rain running down the windowpane. “Doesn’t it ever make you
angry,
that Clare Dysart was such a foolish young woman. She could have been happy with you, Giles, and instead she chose a brute. A charming brute, I admit. And a handsome one. But a cruel man, all the same.”
“I ... if I felt any anger, Clare ... I don’t know, I loved you. I love you now. I tried to understand. He was deceptively charming. No one could have guessed what he would be like, let alone you.”
“But didn’t you nevertheless get angry, Giles?” Clare would not let him off.
“I suppose so,” he admitted reluctantly.
“And do you now? Doesn’t it infuriate you when I am unable to respond to you past a certain point? When I keep myself from you?”
“But I know you can’t help it, Clare. If we are patient ...”
“You are too damned patient, Giles. That is the problem.”
“Would you rather I raped you?" Giles responded, finally moved to anger. “Would you prefer I slap you? Black your eye? Is that what arouses you, Clare?”
“No, Giles,” she answered, her voice steady, but her tears still flowing. “Justin’s cruelty was never what aroused me. It was his tenderness. I want so much to respond fully to you, to give you what you deserve for your faithfulness.”
“I don’t want your gratitude, Clare.”
“I know. And I don’t want your everlasting understanding, Giles. I don’t want cruelty, but you have every reason in the world to be angry, to be disappointed in this marriage, and yet you have never expressed any of that.”
“I have not wanted to hurt you, Clare. You have been hurt enough. We have a lifetime together to work this out.”
“Life is never certain, Giles. Perhaps we have years. Perhaps not. But we will never work out our difficulties if you cannot see me as I am, not as I was. I am a grown woman now, Giles. Once I married a man who loved me in a very destructive way. Who stopped loving me and only sought to destroy me. I felt helpless with him, Giles. I had no one to protect me, no one to turn to then. I did the best I could to keep myself from being hurt. And when that wasn’t enough, I killed him.”
“No, Clare.”
“Yes, Giles. Even though you heard it at the inquest, you don’t want to believe it, do you? Sabrina saw Justin. Ask her.”
“I know you killed Rainsborough, Clare, but you didn’t really know what you were doing. And it was self-defense.”
“I know all that, Giles. Who better. Nevertheless, I killed my husband. They found me with my dress soaked with his blood.” The tears had stopped, and Clare’s voice was calm. “At first, I couldn’t remember it. Then, when I did, I tortured myself as much as Justin ever tortured me. Did I need to do it? How could I have done it? But do you know something, Giles? I have remembered it all, and one moment stands out for me. Just as I thought I was dying, just as my whole body was giving in to him, saying ‘yes, yes, this is it, the ending I should have foreseen,’ something in me, some part of me, very deep, that I hadn’t even known existed, screamed
‘
no,
’
and that
‘
no
’
saved my life. And yours. The woman who said
‘
no
’
is who I am, Giles. Not the timid Clare Dysart, who let Lucy Kirkman dump those worms on her years ago. Nor the innocent Clare who fell in love with a madman. For that is what Justin was, I think. Oh, I am still quiet and rather shy, Giles. But for the first time in my life, I know myself and like myself despite all my mistakes. And until you hear that woman, until you see her, Giles, our marriage will never become what we both wish it to be.”
* * * *
Giles stood there in silence as the room had become darker and the branches and rain beat against Clare’s window. He could hardly believe it was Clare who had spoken to him so. But there she stood, the same small woman he had known for so long. Or thought he had known.
“I don’t know what to say, Clare. It seems you want some sort of angry response from me that I can’t give you. Perhaps I have been guilty of loving a memory rather than a real woman. I apologize for that.” He hesitated. “I think, for a while at least, it is best if I do not share your bed. It is obviously becoming a burden for both of us. And if things need to change, the change will not come from there,” he added.
“I agree with you, Giles,” said Clare wearily.
“All I can promise is to think about what you have said. To see if I can come to understand it.”
“That is all anyone can ask,” said Clare with a sad smile.
“I will see you at supper, then?”
“Yes, Giles.”
After he left, Clare sat by the window again watching the storm play itself out. It was over within an hour and when the clouds had broken, the late afternoon sunlight revealed the whole world as clean and sparkling. The leaves of the holly tree, which had seemed to fade in the heat and humidity had lifted, and Clare felt a faint stirring of hope. Perhaps her outburst would serve to disperse the tension between her husband and herself and allow them the same sort of new beginning.
* * * *
Over the next few weeks, however, the relationship between husband and wife remained static. Giles was as kind and considerate as ever, but now the reserve was on his side as much as on Clare’s. He never touched her unless it would have looked strange not to: dancing at a local assembly or handing her over a stile on one of their rambles with Sabrina. He would give her a polite kiss on the cheek at the door in the evening when they retired at the same time, but the door between their rooms remained closed.
It took all his self-control to restrain himself. When they were dancing, the smell of her perfume would only remind him of their physical intimacy. Many nights after his cool good-night kiss, he would lie awake remembering how it felt to lose himself in her body. Aroused and frustrated, he wondered if his wife was wanting him, if any of the passion between them had been real.