Forced Offer (12 page)

She now felt completely certain that Lord Berrington wanted nothing more to do with her and an icy winter began to creep slowly into her heart.

The summer would in time give way to autumn and it in turn would surrender to the gray days of winter, but Belinda knew that winter had already arrived in her heart, and it would stay there for the rest of her life.

The weeks went by. Flora often entertained her friends over dinner. Belinda attended these gatherings only for appearance sake but as soon as dinner was over she would excuse herself, leaving Flora and Irene to their guests, for she would not force herself to attend gatherings where she was pointedly ignored. What did it matter anyway, if no one cared whether she was there or not?

Lord Wilbur had been away in Scotland all this time and Cathy still kept to her house and to her newborn baby. Penny had gone to a friend's house for several months.

She knew that Flora had gone to visit Lord Wilbur's sister-in-law several times and had not asked her to accompany her.

Belinda's life settled into a quiet routine in which the only mortal soul she spoke to was Bessie. She spent her time in the woods or in the library and when not at these two other places she kept to her rooms.

Irene, once Lord Berrington had left, ignored Belinda as if she didn't exist, or when by chance coming in contact with her glared resentfully at her in such a way that Belinda was forced to turn her eyes away from her.

And Flora, other than the usual requirements, hardly spoke to Belinda at all. When she had guests she acted the part of the hostess and as they were all her friends, particularly Lady Lawrence, they followed her lead, and ignored the new mistress of Winterhill as though she were not in the room at all.

Belinda much preferred them to ignore her, for on a few occasions when they had not, they had made remarks of double meaning intended to offend. She longed to be able to tell the lot of them to leave the house, but of course that was something she could not do, at least for now.

They felt they had more right to be there than she, and she all but agreed with them, for it must be common knowledge that Lord Berrington couldn't bear to live under the same roof as his wife.

Irene's smoldering resentment had eased, but though Belinda on several occasions had tried to reach out to her Irene had rebuffed her.

One afternoon, Belinda, strolling in the grounds, looked up at the sound of horses, and the first smile that had come to her lips in weeks leaped to her face as she saw Lord Wilbur riding toward her.

At his side was a young lady riding in a bay mare. They halted before her and Lord Wilbur introduced his sister Penny. He had come, he said pleasantly, to give Belinda the riding lesson he had promised.

Penelope was a pretty young lady with dark auburn hair of a shade lighter than her brother's and had similar gray eyes.

Penelope and Belinda became friends. But it was Wilbur Belinda looked forward to seeing two or three times a week. He helped Belinda overcome her fear of horses. And if not turning her into an accomplished rider, at least had helped Belinda to sit at ease on the saddle and opened a whole new area of enjoyment for her.

Not only did Belinda ride with Lord Wilbur and Penny now, but also by herself in the mornings, for added to her enjoyable walks in the wood, riding had now become another of her solitary occupations and one for which she was extremely grateful to Lord Wilbur.

It was toward the end of autumn, when the weather was turning colder each day that Belinda received a letter from her mother. Belinda had asked her to visit, for at least she would have someone to talk to for a while. Someone who at least did not hate her. But Mrs. Presleigh, much as she had wanted all summer and autumn to visit Winterhill, had not been able to due to Belinda's father having fallen ill in London.

Chapter 12

One cold afternoon nearing the end of November, after riding for an hour, Penny had excused herself because of a headache and for the first time Lord Wilbur and Belinda rode alone for two hours in friendly silence. They finally returned Belinda's mount to the stable and Lord Wilbur walked with Belinda across the wide garden, and conversing easily they sat on a bench in full view of the house.

Belinda had lost her shyness in Lord Wilbur's presence. They conversed easily now.

"It's been quite an enjoyable ride, has it not, Lady Berrington?"

"Yes, my lord, it has. Thank you so much for teaching me. You have been very patient with me. No one before took the trouble to ease my fears, and because of this I made the horses nervous, scared of my movements.

"As you said, they are finicky, but they have learned to trust me. I am glad I now have something else besides walking for exercise. I had not known how enjoyable it would be."

"When Richard comes back from London you will be able to ride abreast of him, without fear."

"I don't believe he will ever come back," she said, looking away from Wilbur.

"I think you are wrong," Lord Wilbur said quickly. "I know for a fact that Berrington eventually tires of London, for I have been there with him when this happens. You'll see, he'll come back soon."

"You don't have to pretend with me, Lord Wilbur." Belinda said, immediately sorry that she had said this. Lord Wilbur's kindly treatment of her, a different one from almost everyone else's, was making her vulnerable, she thought, and eager to dump her sorrows on him. She could not burden him with her problems, not when he was the only one who spoke kindly to her. He and his sister Penny.

"Please forget I said that," she said quickly, averting her eyes.

"I hope that you will let me help you in any way that I can, Lady Berrington," said Wilbur, "I have your best interests at heart."

"Thank you. That is why precisely," she added, "because you and Penny are my only friends, I should not jeopardize your kind friendship."

"It would not be jeopardized in the least," Lord Wilbur hurried to assure her, "and if I can be of help merely by listening, well, I would be most happy. Please believe that."

"Well, I do feel as if I could burst, sometimes, from want of a friendly ear."

"Please believe I am your friend. I would be honored if you would consider me so."

"I remember you in those endless balls—" Belinda heard herself say "—you and my—you and Lord Berrington."

"Many of those balls were very tedious," laughed Wilbur, "a pity one looks merely at the superficial, without bothering to look more at the person within."

"If you are saying that because of me, my lord, you needn't," said Belinda with a nervous laugh. "I am well aware that I was considered a wallflower. I have overheard it often enough to come to believe it. My marriage made people more aware of my faults, when before I at least passed unnoticed.

"It was Mama who dragged me to those balls, for had it been up to me I would not have submitted myself to such torture. I would rather have stayed in my room with my books or gone for a walk. But then, no woman is mistress of her life."

"I almost asked you to dance, once," Lord Wilbur said, "and was distracted from it by someone who intercepted me on the way to you."

Belinda looked up at him, disbelieving, then went on,

"No one asked to dance with me of their own volition. Mama often dragged young men into it—I mean, forced them to dance with me. They resented it of course, and poured their resentment on me."

"It must have been a difficult time for you," said Lord Wilbur, and asked tentatively, "Was that how it was with Richard?"

Startled, Belinda turned to him and blushed furiously.

The circumstances of why her marriage had come about were general knowledge, and Belinda was aware that all the versions that had circulated in London at the time were all distorted, so she was certain that even Lord Wilbur had the wrong idea of it. Suddenly, she couldn't bear the thought that someone as kind as Lord Wilbur was toward her should have a misconception of her part in the scandal.

Breathing deeply she made a decision. She determined that at least Lord Wilbur would have the right version. She was certain he would be a sympathetic listener to the truth. Lord Berrington had never asked for an explanation, and she doubted she would have been able to explain it to him. But Lord Wilbur was quite another thing.

"I believe, my lord," she began tentatively, "that even a kind person such as yourself must have had few facts to go by to form an opinion as to my part in it. I do not wish to excuse myself, for as you will realize when you hear my story, my actions were selfish and appalling.

"But let me begin at the beginning. My mother may have developed the initial scheme but she would not have realized her goal had she not had me to complete her plan 
of my own volition
.

"As you know, my father's land adjoins Winterhill land. But though we were neighbors, we had no contact with the Berringtons other than the annual ball at Winterhill, or occasionally running into them at social events.

"Mama wanted Lord Berrington for my sister Roselle," Belinda continued, with a quick glance at Lord Wilbur, "and she had obsessively set her cap on him for her. But when Roselle died, so did her dreams.

"I believe that it was then that my mother became increasingly obsessed about regaining her social status, and having lost Roselle, turned to me as the only one left to help her attain her goal, however unrealistic this belief was."

Lord Wilbur made no comment, but listened quietly, nodding when she hesitated.

"I had been in love with Lord Berrington in secret from the age of thirteen—oh, yes," she emphasized, as Lord Wilbur looked up at her in surprise.

"I had seen him for the first time in the Winterhill woods the day after he came back from the war.

"He didn't see me, for I was hidden by some bushes. Try to imagine, it my lord, if you will.

"Mine was a raw, hopeless, pathetic love, which had no chance, nor even a desire to attain its object. The sight of him terrified me, in fact, because of how I felt, and what I most dearly wished was that he should never find out, for the embarrassment of that would have been too great to bear.

"My love for him existed as something that was similar to a prison for me, and from which I saw no escape. I had resigned myself to it and made certain that at those balls where I coincided with him I was as far away from him as possible, preferably with the length of the ballroom between us.

“
But through carelessness on my part my mother found out about it. I suppose that was what gave her the idea. You see, she was quite desperate."

Belinda glanced at Lord Wilbur and saw him silently listening, as he stared at a piece of straw he held between his fingers.

"I suppose even in the most desperate cases of love the tiniest hope is buried deep inside, however unacknowledged it may be," continued Belinda. "My mother is a clever lady, and she most assuredly knew this.

"We had been at the Lennington's house party three days when she approached me in the garden with Lord Berrington's letter, with my name written on the envelope. It would not have occurred to me in a hundred years that she had written my name on an envelope she had taken from Lord Berrington's bedroom.

"True, I was often uneasy at the way Mama went about finding information by bribing maids or footmen. But though I did not approve of her conduct, I had no way of stopping her, and she often assured me she was merely trying to find out what was going on. In this way, she had exclaimed, she had found out about the party at the Lenningtons'. That party would have been closed to her had not she been clever enough to find out about it, as she told me triumphantly.

"It took a long time for her to convince me that Lord Berrington had written the note to me even though my name was in perfect imitation of his writing.

"She even went as far as to fabricate conversations she said she had had with Lord Berrington, where he had expressed an interest in me.

"I had not dreamed of harboring any hope, nor strove for it, but when she planted the idea in my mind, it began to grow like a weed. Yet even then I resisted, for the circumstances were odd—a meeting in that wine cellar that was more a dungeon? I was certain there was some mistake, yet my mother pressed all sorts of arguments on me to attend this meeting, appealing to my love for her and father. Anyone but a bad daughter would have to comply, for as she put it, if Lord Berrington had expressed an interest in me, was I not duty-bound to attend this meeting?

"I was at first convinced Lord Berrington had written my name by mistake. But my mother had planted in me the idea that Lord Berrington had an interest in me. An interest I had never hoped to attain. And now it seemed, miraculously within my reach.

"When the door slammed I called out to her, for I still foolishly believed she was still in the cellar. Berrington made me see that it was my mother who had locked us inside.

"I was silent at his accusations, for however much my mother was to blame, the accusations would not come from me. Lord Berrington saw this silence as complicity."

"Could you not have explained later?" asked Lord Wilbur.

"Lord Wilbur," said Belinda, turning to look him in the eyes, "as I said, I was not guilty of the plot. My guilt came later, when being forced to offer me marriage and knowing he had been tricked into the situation, I—well, the temptation to be linked to the man I loved so desperately proved too strong for me and I succumbed to the temptation.

"I am now horrified at how I tossed my principles, my integrity, and chose the selfish course. A course, which has proven that nothing that is gained by deceit, can ever bring any joy. I was considered an antidote by society. But at least I was one with a clear conscience. Now, I don't even possess that."

"You are not an antidote, Lady Berrington," said Lord Wilbur, and turning away from her added, "it is amazing how we are slaves to the whims of fate, for if I had asked you for a dance that night, rather than allow myself to be distracted from it, my life would have taken a different course. I am sadly sorry I didn't."

"It is very gallant of you to try to make me feel better, my lord," said Belinda, "But you needn't be concerned. I have quite resigned myself to the fact that I will never be even passably pretty. It has been pounded into my head almost from birth, even if later on my mirror hadn't confirmed it."

"You have beautiful eyes, my lady," said Wilbur, "and I have seldom seen anyone with a more beautiful soul than yours."

Aghast at his words, Belinda stared silently at him.

"I hope you will not take this statement as anything but the respectful admiration it is, my lady," said Lord Wilbur hurriedly, and coloring slightly he added, "I would be devastated if you were to think I have tried to make any advances toward you."

"Of course not, my lord," Belinda hurried to assure him, noticing his embarrassment. "I take it as it is—the first real compliment anyone ever gave me in my life, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart."

"Your words bring me immeasurable relief," he said, the smile stealing back to his face.

"Can you understand, my lord, that every day of my life—every hour—indeed, every minute, I am aware of the fact that I sacrificed Richard Berrington for my own selfish needs?"

"I don’t see it as any sacrifice," said Lord Wilbur, "It was about time he married. His marriage would have been an arranged one, in any case, so there would not have been a great difference. Your lineage is impeccable."

"But it was against his will,” insisted Belinda. That is how Irene saw it, too. She accused both my mother and me. She did not accuse my mother only as many people do. Children are never fooled, you see.

"Oh, I would shout my guilt from the rooftops, Lord Wilbur, if I thought it would release this terrible pain locked in my soul. I don't need Irene's accusing eyes to tell me that what I did to Lord Berrington was terrible. And I find no comfort in the fact that I did it because I so desperately loved him. I had no right whatsoever to do what I did."

"What you did was not done out of ambition, or a need for social status, Lady Berrington, you did it because you love Richard. I cannot be convinced, even by you, that that was an entirely selfish act. I hope time will rid you of these guilt-ridden feelings, my lady," added Lord Wilbur kindly. "It would not be healthy for you to live with them for too long."

He hesitated, then asked, "Is Irene still not inclined to friendship with you?"

"She has thawed a little since her outburst, of which I am certain you heard. She is young, and as such not very capable of sustaining feelings of hatred. A few days ago she asked me if I had had a good walk. It was the first time she addressed herself to me on her own and I began to see a glimmer of hope that little by little she will not see me as the monster she saw me in the beginning…"

"Her upbringing has been appalling," said Lord Wilbur. Flora Liston is not the kind of person I approve of for guiding Irene's young mind. However, since I have no authority in the matter, I cannot interfere.