A Chance Encounter (18 page)

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Elizabeth was indeed thankful to shut the door of her old bedroom behind her, to slip off her dress, and to lie down on top of the bedcovers. After luncheon, which had been a strained occasion, Hetherington had disappeared and John had taken her up to the nursery where Jeremy lay, a flushed and pathetic little bundle lying in his cradle. He had been..like this for three days, John explained in a whisper, hot, dry, and delirious. His face had lost some of its baby chubbiness. His blond hair had been clipped very short.

Seeing her sister-in-law, Louise tiptoed out of the room, leaving the nurse to watch her baby.

“Elizabeth, how good of you to come,” she said. “You must have come on wings.”

“Not quite,” Elizabeth replied, “but I left immediately after I read John's letter. I shall help you watch, Louise. You must force yourself to rest. And John, too, looks as if he is sleeping on his feet.”

“He has been up for four nights,” Louise said, “and will hardly sleep in the daytime.”

“Then it is settled that I shall sit with Jeremy tonight,” Elizabeth said firmly.

Soon she let Louise go back into the nursery and persuaded John to retire to his room for a rest. Only then did she go to her own room.

But she could not sleep. She kept seeing the baby clinging restlessly and feverishly to life. And she kept seeing the strain and exhaustion on the faces of her brother and sister-in-law. It was bad enough for her to contemplate the death of a nephew whom she had seen only once before today. How must it feel for them, who had given him life and cuddled and watched him daily grow into an energetic toddler? It would be like losing part of one's own life. There had been a span of a few weeks once when she had hoped and hoped that she was with child. She had been so full of pain and emptiness in the loss of her husband. She had wished painfully for his child so that something of their two days together would survive. When she knew for certain that it was not so, she had felt almost as if she had lost a child. But that had been trivial—nonsense, in fact—when compared to the very real experience that John and Louise were going through.

She tried to block out thought and will herself to sleep. She could help John and his family best, not by worrying about them, but by maintaining her own strength so that she could relieve them of some of the burden of watching. But thoughts of the night before intruded, and she could not shake them off. She tried desperately to remember that dream. Usually she woke up in the middle of it and could recall vividly what had happened. But on this occasion she had not woken up. What had she said? She hoped nothing that would be humiliating. But no. He had said this morning that she had been dreaming about Jeremy. Whatever she had said had been ambiguous enough for him to misunderstand.

What had he said to her? She wished that she could remember. He said she thought he was John. What usually happened when John was part of the dream? He always talked to her, held her, soothed her. That was what must have happened. Hetherington had taken her into his arms and she had thought he was John. She must have felt very comforted to have let go of the dream without waking up. She recalled how very comfortable she had been when she woke up that morning. It had felt so good, so right, to be lying relaxed in Hetherington's arms.

She could not recapture her fury of the morning. The experience was one pleasant little memory to cling to. She turned over onto her side, eyes closed, and tried to recapture the feeling she had had that morning. She inhaled, trying to imagine the distinctive scent of his cologne. A tear escaped from her closed eyelids.

His father could not have found a more effective way of breaking up his son's unwelcome romance. After that second night of love, they had had one glorious morning left. Not knowing how soon fate was to separate them, they had eaten a leisurely breakfast, strolled along the beach, and wandered back to the house for luncheon. They had reached their room afterward. Robert was going to make love to her again before they went riding along the cliffs. He had already helped her undo the long row of tiny buttons down the back of her dress. He had removed his neckcloth and was unbuttoning his shirt cuffs, gazing through the window as he did so.

“There is someone riding toward the house,” he had said. “In a hurry, too.”

She had rushed to his side. They had been expecting someone. Both had written to their fathers after the wedding ceremony to inform them of the fact and to tell where they were. They had guessed that today or tomorrow would bring some message.

Robert had smiled ruefully across at her as he rebuttoned the cuff that he had just undone. “I could have wished him to have better timing, whoever he is,” he had said. “Turn around, love, and let me tackle those buttons again.”

He had trailed kisses up her spine as he closed the opening of her dress. Then he had turned her to him again and drawn her close. “If it is someone from your father,” he had said, “do not be afraid. I am your husband now. He has no power over you.”

She had smiled rather tensely and they had descended the staircase together, hand in hand. The messenger had been directed to a downstairs salon. Robert had recognized him immediately as his uncle's head groom. The man, still disheveled and covered with dust, had handed Robert a letter and regarded him uneasily.

After sending the man to the kitchen for refreshments, Robert had opened the letter and read, while Elizabeth watched him anxiously. He had stopped reading and folded the letter very deliberately.

“What is it?” Elizabeth had asked anxiously.

It took him a while to answer. “My father and my brother have been killed,” he had said.

“Oh! How?”

“In some absurd and freak boating accident at a regatta,” he had replied.

She had grabbed his arm as his face turned pale.

“I shall have to leave for London immediately,” he had said.

“Yes, yes,” she had agreed. “I shall pack and order out the traveling carriage.”

“No!” he had said sharply. “I must go alone, Elizabeth. It is imperative that I get there as quickly as possible. I must ride.”

“I can come with you,” she had protested.

“No, love. You know you do not ride well. If you are with me, I shall feel obliged to stop for meals and for sleep. Please believe me, darling, it will break my heart in two to leave you here. But I cannot take you. I must go quickly. Please understand.”

Agonized blue eyes searched hers. She felt cold, almost faint. “Yes, you are right,” she had whispered.

“I shall write to Gram before I leave,” he had said. “She will be back here with you by tonight or tomorrow at the latest. In the meantime, you will be quite safe with Mrs. Cummings. It will be a comfort to me to know that.”

He had left the room then, spoken briefly with the butler, and taken the stairs three at a time. She had trailed him numbly and packed a small bag for him while he changed his clothes and wrote to his grandmother. His horse was waiting for him, ready saddled, when they came downstairs together.

He had taken Elizabeth into his arms and held her very close to him. “I love you,” he had said against her hair, “and I shall come for you just as soon as I may. Within the week. You must stay here, do you understand me, Elizabeth? Do not try to follow me.”

She had nodded and hidden her face against his neck. She had not trusted her voice. She did not want to shame herself by crying.

He had placed a hand beneath her chin, raised her face, and kissed her deeply there in front of the butler and the groom who was holding his horse. Both pretended not to notice.

“Have a safe journey,” she had whispered. “I love you.”

He had vaulted into the saddle and ridden down the driveway away from the sea and the cliffs, and away from her, without a backward glance. She had watched him, an ache in her heart, until a line of trees finally hid him from view. And that was the last she had seen of Robert Denning, Marquess of Hetherington, until he had walked into Mrs. Rowe's drawing room a few weeks before.

The old marquess had certainly had his revenge. Had he not chosen that moment in which to die, and had he not taken his older son along with him, Robert might never have changed, might never have considered that she was not a worthy wife for him. Or would his underlying snobbery have surfaced at some time anyway, under different circumstances?

Elizabeth gave up trying to sleep and consequently drifted into unconsciousness almost immediately.

T
he family dined together that evening. Both John and Louise had been persuaded to leave Jeremy for an hour with his nurse and to eat in the dining room. Hetherington and Elizabeth were also there. Three at least of the gathering found the mealtime a strain. Hetherington was at his charming best, Elizabeth noted with annoyance. He had obviously set himself to win over Louise, who had been horribly embarrassed to learn of his presence in the house. Good manners dictated that she treat him with courtesy, but loyalty to her sister-in-law made her want to snub him.

His charm had obviously had an effect, though. Louise went with Elizabeth to the drawing room after dinner, though she did not stay long.

“The marquess seems such a pleasant man, Elizabeth,” she said hesitantly. “It is hard to believe that he could have treated you so cruelly.”

“That was a long time ago,” Elizabeth replied. “Since we seem to be stuck with him here for a few days at least, perhaps it would be as well if you forgot about the past and treated him as a new acquaintance.”

“But how can I?” Louise protested. “John has told me how he abandoned you so callously after your marriage. It is difficult to like or trust a man when one knows that of him.”

Both ladies had retired to the nursery before the men left the dining room. The strain returned to Louise's face as she watched her son toss feverishly in his crib. Elizabeth soon persuaded her to go to bed and try to have a night's sleep. She and John sat up all night watching for the crisis that did not come. Neither could persuade the other to give up the watch.

The doctor came the next day, but beyond shaking his head and advising Louise to force as much liquid inside the child as she could, he was unable to tell them whether to continue hoping or to despair.

Elizabeth slept for much of the day. She had tried to persuade John to do likewise, but feared that he was using his time away from the nursery to accomplish estate business. She looked idly through her window when she awoke in the afternoon and saw that Louise and Hetherington were strolling arm in arm in the flower garden. She had meant it the night before when she had told Louise to forget about the past. But it still annoyed her to see that Hetherington could so easily charm a stranger, even one who knew of his past.

She could not understand why he had decided to stay. He had made no attempt to see her since dinner the evening before, and it must be plain to him that neither she nor John wanted his presence. It merely added to the strain of an already difficult situation. She decided that she would ask for a tray in her room that evening. She wanted to reserve all her energy for the night ahead. John and Louise were almost at breaking point, she felt, and it seemed to her that it was impossible for the baby to continue as he was for much longer. Surely the crisis must be close. She dared not think of what might happen when it did come.

Later that night Elizabeth had accomplished her aim. Louise had gone off to bed at John's bidding. He was a little more difficult to persuade, but Elizabeth, looking at his bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks, had known that he could not sit up another night without collapsing.

“What good will you be to anyone if you become ill?” she had reasoned with him. “I came here in order to help, John. Please allow me to do so. I know what to do to care for Jeremy, and you must believe that I will send for you at the least sign of change.”

Finally he had given in and retired to his own room. An hour or more had passed since. Elizabeth had just finished sponging the child's burning flesh with a cool, damp cloth and forcing some drops of water between his lips. She sat now quietly watching him and thinking of the man she had seen only briefly today through the window.

Perhaps it had all been partly her fault. At least she might have made it more difficult for him to abandon her if she had obeyed his final request and stayed in Devon.

The hours following his departure had been torture, the night a torment. Lady Bothwell had not returned that day. And during the following morning Elizabeth's father himself had arrived. He had been very angry, threatening to tear Denning apart limb by limb. When his daughter had told him that she was alone, he had turned the full force of his fury against her. His anger was caused not so much by the fact of the elopement, it seemed, as by the poverty of her husband. Had she no sense? Had she no love for the father who had spent years of his life raising her? What did she hope to gain for herself or her family by marrying a penniless pup?

Elizabeth had let his fury blow itself out around her head before telling him about the deaths of Robert's father and brother.

“So you are a marchioness?” he had sneered, and strangely enough, it was the first time Elizabeth had realized the fact. “A fat lot of good such a grand title will do you, my girl, when the father had not a feather to fly with, either.”