Elizabeth Mansfield (18 page)

* * *

When Eunice came in the next morning, she found Greta sleeping comfortably, the ruddy color of her cheeks much less fiery and her forehead actually cool. The worn-out mother stood for a long moment at the foot of the bed, gazing lovingly at the child for whom, the past few nights, she’d prayed with fervent desperation. Then she turned her eyes to Cassie, whose very appearance had changed for her. The woman she’d considered a “mousy nobody” now seemed—after all the hours they’d spent in shared tension and fear—a wise, devoted, supportive friend. “Oh, Cassie,” she sighed, embracing her sister-in-law with tremulous gratitude, tears of relief running down her cheeks, “this is the happiest morning of my life.”

“I know,” Cassie said, fondly mopping her sister-in-law’s cheeks with a handkerchief. “Mine too.” That was not a lie, Cassie realized. She was truly overjoyed at Greta’s recovery. And since the possibility of happiness from another quarter was becoming more and more remote, this might very well be as much happiness as she was ever likely to find.

Chapter Twenty-One

It was not clear to Cassie, during the critical days of Greta’s illness, how much Robert’s gloomy mood was affected by his concern for his niece’s health and how much by some other cause. But when the child began a steady, even cheerful, convalescence, and the signs of strain still showed about his lordship’s mouth, Cassie knew beyond a doubt that his below-the-surface misery had another source. She tried to probe for the cause, asking him outright one morning, when they were alone at breakfast, if his letters had brought him bad news again. He again turned the subject, thus effectively cutting off any possibility of pursuing the matter.

It was a rainy morning, only a few days after Greta’s fever had broken. Cassie sat staring at her husband across the breakfast table, wondering in despair if there was anything she could do to break the stalemate that her relationship with Robert had become. It was only a week since the day, so special in her memory, when, by an act of breathtaking intimacy, he’d revealed a sincere desire to transform the peculiar bond that tied them to each other into a real marriage. What was it, she kept asking herself, that had happened to cause him to back away? She knew, this time, that it was no act of hers that had deterred him. The change in him was directly traceable to the letters. But if he didn’t wish to share his secret troubles with her, there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. No matter how many ways she turned the problem over in her mind, she could discover no way to coax him to open up to her. She was at an impasse.

She reached for the teapot. “Della will be devasted by the rain,” she remarked, hoping to reach him by some other route. “She was expecting to take a riding lesson this morning, but after what happened to Greta, Eunice is too frightened of the possibility of chills to permit her to go outdoors in the rain. Would you like to go up to the nursery with me, Robert? I’m sure that only a visit from her Uncle Robert will put a smile on Della’s face.”

Kittridge shook his head, not looking up from the paper he was studying. “I’m expecting Griswold in ten minutes. Tell Della I’ll see her at teatime.”

“That will be small consolation,” Cassie remonstrated mildly. “In the morning, teatime can seem a year away to a child her age.”

Kittridge gathered up his papers and got to his feet. “That may be, but even children must be made to realize that business must come before pleasure. First things first, Cassie,” he muttered defensively as he headed out the door, “first things first.”

“First things first, indeed,” she mocked sarcastically under her breath when he’d gone. “And will you use that excuse, my lord, when you have children of your own?” But of course it was a silly question. The way things were going, he was not likely to have children of his own at all.

She spent the morning in the nursery, helping Eunice to keep the children busy with rainy-day activities. Playing with the girls was so entertaining she almost forgot her troubles. But after luncheon, when not only the children but Eunice, too, took to their beds for a nap, her problems returned to her consciousness in full force. Sore at heart, she headed for the third-floor workshop, hoping that some
purposeful physical activity would distract her from this dreadful self-pity. Refinishing the old Henry Holland table had given her pleasure in the days before Eunice came. Perhaps it would again.

It was there in the workshop that Sandy found her an hour later. But she was not working. She’d evidently prepared for work by pushing up the sleeves of her gown and covering herself with an apron, but she was absolutely immobile. She’d seated herself on a stool at the worktable with a pot of varnish in front of her and a brush in her hand, but her eyes were fixed on the raindrops making rivulets on the windowpanes. “You won’t make much progress just sitting there, Cassie,” he greeted with genial raillery, but he stopped himself as soon as he saw the unhappy expression in her eyes. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he apologized at once. “I didn’t know—Have I barged in at the wrong time?”

She shook herself out of the doldrums with an effort of will and smiled up at him wanly. “Of course not, Sandy. I was only … thinking.”

“They were not very happy thoughts, I fear.” His voice was warm with sympathy.

“The rain depressed me,” she mumbled, putting down her brush and picking up a little stick with which to stir the varnish.

“Don’t lie to me, my girl. It wasn’t the rain.” He perched on a stool opposite her. “You needn’t tell me your thoughts, of course, if you don’t wish to, but I’m quite willing to give you a penny for them.”

She looked at the stirring stick as if she didn’t know what to do with it. “I was only thinking that … that I may g-go home to my father for a while.”

“What?” Sandy peered at her, troubled. “Do you mean it, Cassie? Soon?”

“I don’t know. In a day or two, I suppose.”

“But why? Have you had a message from him? Is he ill?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s only a … a whim.”

“Oh, don’t leave us just for a whim, Cassie. That would be cruel to your guests, you know. What would we do without you? What would
Robbie
do without you?”

Abruptly she started to stir the varnish with unwonted vigor. “Robbie would do very well without me. He probably wouldn’t even notice I’d gone.”

“
Cassie
!” Sandy exclaimed in surprise. “You don’t mean that!”

The hand stirring the thick liquid slowed. “No, of course I don’t,” she said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “You can say anything you like to me, Cassie,” he said seriously, “you know that. You needn’t guard your tongue with me. I hope you know that I am, and always will be, your friend.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

“Then tell me what’s wrong. Have you and Robbie quarreled?”

“We never quarrel,” she sighed. “I sometimes wish we would.”

“Why would you wish anything so silly? What good is quarreling?”

“It has its purpose in a marriage, I think. It brings things out in the open. It shows feeling. It clears the air.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. But you can’t run home to your father because you and Robbie
don’t
quarrel. That makes no sense.”

She looked up at him earnestly. “Does it make sense if my reason is that I’m tired of living with a stranger?”

“Robbie? A stranger?” He frowned at her disapprovingly. “How can you say such a thing?”

“Robert said it himself. And it’s quite true. He shares nothing of his deeper thoughts with me. He tells me nothing of his feelings, or his cares …”

Sandy was surprised. “Doesn’t he?”

“No. Never.”

“Then perhaps he doesn’t feel there’s anything significant to tell you.”

“But there is, Sandy. That’s just it. There is.”

“There is? What makes you think so?

“He seems so … troubled.”

“It’s the estate, I suppose,” Sandy speculated. “I know the responsibility of making the estate show a profit weighs heavily on him, but that’s not something he would care to burden his wife with. You can’t blame him for wishing to put those problems aside when he joins the family for amusement and relaxation at the end of the day.”

“No, it’s not the estate,” she insisted glumly. “It’s something else.”

“What makes you so certain?”

She hesitated before replying. Then, as if driven by a need to unburden her heart, she went on. “Did you notice, Sandy, the night the messenger brought the letters from London, that Robert left the table and never returned?”

“Yes, but that was only—” He stopped himself abruptly.

“Only what?”

Sandy didn’t answer. His eyes dropped from her face in sudden awkwardness.

Cassie’s heart began to pound. “
Sandy
! Do
you know
why he left the table that night?”

“Well, yes,” he said, studying her with a puzzled frown. “Don’t you?”

“Would I be asking if I knew? Please tell me, Sandy. Was it something in those envelopes? The square, buff-colored ones?”

Sandy shrugged. “I would have thought you’d have guessed. Those letters were from Elinor.”

“Elinor? Who’s Elinor?”

Sandy gasped. “Weren’t you ever told about her?”

“Evidently not. Who is she?”

“Damnation!” he cursed, getting up from the table in perturbation. “I’ve been too free with my tongue! I thought you
knew.
I thought everyone in
London
knew.”

“Well, I don’t, so I wish you’d stop talking in riddles and tell me.”

He blinked down at her, his moon face tensing with anxiety. “I don’t know if I should, under the circumstances. Perhaps Robbie doesn’t want you to know. I could bite out my blasted tongue!”

“Oh, my heavens!” Cassie exclaimed, her eyes widening in sudden, painful understanding. “This Elinor is someone special to him, is that it?”

“Cassie, I … Must I say?”

“Please, Sandy, yes! I feel as if I’ve been blundering about all this time in darkness.” Her large eyes looked up to his beseechingly. “Did he … does he …
love
her?”

His instinctive good nature could not resist the appeal in her eyes. “Dash it all, Cassie,” he swore, sitting down and reaching for her hand again, “
someone
should have told you! They were going to be married, you see. They’d intended to announce their betrothal as soon as he was out of uniform. He had no idea, at that time, that his father had impoverished him. But when her family learned of the state of his finances, they broke it off and whisked her away to the continent.”

“And that’s when my father, with his forty thousand pound offer, came on the scene?” Cassie asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“I see.” She put down the stirring stick, slipped from the stool and walked to the window. “And,
despite his … his marriage, they still correspond?”

“No. You misjudge him, Cassie. He does not answer her letters. Her family would not let her accept any communication from him in any case, I expect. But she writes to him on occasion. They broke it off quite amicably, I understand, so I suspect she only writes to assure him there’s no bitterness. But the letters probably don’t mean anything, Cassie. Robbie is no deceiver. You do believe me, don’t you?”

Cassie stared numbly out the window. Outside, beyond the rain-smeared glass, a wet, winter-grim lawn, as misty as the clouds, stretched away to the distant horizon, so colorlessly grey that the line separating earth from sky was almost invisible. “Yes, I believe you,” she answered in a voice as colorless as the view. “The letters probably don’t mean anything.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was utterly foolish, Cassie told herself as she lay awake that night and listened to the rain, to make too much of what Sandy had told her. Nothing really had changed. She’d known when she married Robert that he didn’t love her. So the new knowledge that he loved another made very little difference.

But there
was
a difference, and before the night was over she was able to admit it. Before she’d learned about Elinor, she’d been able to hope. She’d let herself believe that he would grow to love her … that in a month, or at most a year, he would see in her those qualities which make a man love a woman. But today she’d learned he’d already found those qualities in someone else. So now all hope was gone.

Throughout her life, Cassie’s hopes of happiness had never been very high. She had dreams, of course, but the circumstances of her life had not encouraged unrealistic expectations. From her earliest years she’d been deprived of a basic source of joy: intimacy. She had not had a mother to console her childhood tears, nor loving friends to share her thoughts and feelings when she was at school. Although her father had always been adoring and indulgent, he had had to spend his days doing men’s business, giving over the responsibility of her daily care to hired employees. Miss Penicuick had sincerely loved her, but the governess was too simple to fully understand how to draw out the complex thoughts of her inhibited charge. Thus, Cassie had never known true intimacy, the happiness that comes from sharing one’s secret heart with another. Her life had not been joyful, nor had anything occurred before her marriage to make her believe that the circumstances would change. She’d long ago accepted the limitations of her life. She’d long ago decided to make the best of things.

It was only when Lord Kittridge had materialized so miraculously on her horizon that she’d permitted herself to dream that life might offer her more. Not at first, of course, when he’d defended her at the linendraper’s. Nor when her father had first offered her the opportunity to wed him. It was only afterward, when she’d been made to understand that he was willing to marry
anyone
who could help him out of his difficulties, that she’d let herself go. She was, after all, better than just anyone. She loved him! She’d agreed to wed him in the belief (because of her feelings for him) that she could, in time, make him happy. That in time they would learn to share their deepest feelings. That in time they would become close.