The Secret Pearl (32 page)

It would be good to spend a whole afternoon away from Willoughby, she thought. Away from
him
. Not that she had seen much of him since the morning of his apology. He had not sat in the schoolroom at all. He had appeared only briefly at the library door in the mornings when she was practicing in the music room. She had been required to accompany him when he gave Lady Pamela another riding lesson on a morning when it was not raining, but there was no ride afterward. Apart from that, she had not seen him.

But there was always the chance that she would. Despite herself, and although she always hoped he would not come, she listened for his footsteps outside the schoolroom.

And she dreamed of him. But the dreams were no longer the old nightmare. They were new, for in these dreams he kissed her deeply, as he had done in reality, and she kissed him back,
as she had done then, and she ran her palms over the strong muscles of his shoulders and undid the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt in order to touch the dark hair that she knew to be beyond them. In her dream she wanted him as she had had him once upon a time, but with tenderness, with his body on hers as well as in, and his mouth on hers.

She always woke in a sweat and burrowed farther beneath the bedcovers. And she always squirmed with shame.

She looked forward to an afternoon away, in the company of children and in that of the safe and amusing Mr. Chamberlain. And she hoped and hoped that the Duke of Ridgeway would not be there, and felt guilt at the thought because his presence would mean the world to Lady Pamela. It would mean that he cared enough to want to share her pleasures.

And she looked forward to the afternoon because it would mean several hours free of Matthew. He had meant what he said when he had told her that he expected a great deal of her spare time. If she walked outside in the mornings or the early evenings, he was there with her. Once when she took Lady Pamela to the bridge to paint, he appeared there and made himself agreeable to both of them for a whole hour. And on the afternoon before the birthday, on the day when Mr. Houghton came home from his holiday and his grace was from home with his daughter, he invited her—with the duchess’s approval—on a walk to the lake that several of the guests were to make.

“Matthew,” she said in an agony when she had been summoned to the hall and found him waiting there, “I cannot go walking with her grace and some of her guests. I am a servant here.”

“But everyone knows that you are also a gentlewoman,” he said, “and an acquaintance of mine. And I am a guest here, Isabella, and therefore to be humored. Look, it is a glorious day for a change, and you have a free afternoon. What better way to spend it than in a walk to the lake?”

She had no choice, of course. She returned to her room for a bonnet. And she wondered, as they walked a little behind the other couples, where it would all end, when Matthew would put an end to this whole charade.

“For how much longer are you planning to be here?” she asked him.

“For how long are
we
going to be here?” he asked. “I don’t know, Isabella. I am in no hurry, and I thought you might prefer to get to know me again here where there are other people than at home, where there would be just you and I. You seemed to think a few months ago that there was something improper about that, though we are second cousins.”

He had a point there, she thought.

“I would like to announce our betrothal here before we leave,” he said.

“No!” she said sharply. “Not that, Matthew.”

Most of the couples showed no inclination to remain together once they arrived at the lake. Lord Thomas Kent and the duchess got into one of the boats to row across to the island; Sir Philip Shaw and Lady Underwood walked off along the path that followed the north shore; Miss Dobbin and Mr. Penny climbed the bank and disappeared among the trees.

Lord Brocklehurst drew Fleur to the south side of the lake and among the denser trees there to one of the follies she had once ridden past with his grace. It was in the shape of a temple with a semicircular seat inside, looking down on the lake.

“Let’s sit,” he said.

Fleur sat.

But she turned her head aside sharply when he would have kissed her.

“Give me a chance, Isabella,” he said. “You are so beautiful.” He touched the hair at her neck with light fingers. “And I mean nothing dishonorable. Heron House was your father’s. Your mother was the baroness. You could have it all back for yourself.
I would send my mother and Amelia to live elsewhere if you do not wish to live with them. Give me a chance.”

“Matthew,” she said, turning her head to look at him, “can you not understand? I do not love you. I do not feel the sort of regard for you that would make me a suitable wife for you. Can we not just go back and tell the truth of what happened and remain second cousins at some distance from each other? Can you not let me learn to respect you even if I cannot love you?”

“Love can grow,” he said. “Give me a chance.”

She shook her head.

He placed his hands loosely about her neck, as he had done once before, tightened them a little beneath her chin, and jerked upward. And he lowered his mouth to hers.

She waited for him to finish before getting to her feet and stepping outside the temple to look down at the lake. And for the first time there was an anger in her to equal the terror, a total weariness with being a puppet on a string, with being quite out of control of her own life.

“I won’t marry you, Matthew,” she said, “or be your mistress. And I will not spend any more time with you here at Willoughby Hall. You must do what you will, but that is my decision.”

And she closed her eyes and remembered his hands at her throat, the tightening, the upward jerk. Her breath came faster.

If it ever comes to that
, he had said to her once—his grace, that was—
if there is ever no one else to whom you can turn, then come to me. Will you?

There was a yearning in her to do just that—to tell him all, to feel those strong arms about her once more, to hear that steadily beating heart beneath her ear again, to unload all her burdens onto someone else.

And then she would watch his look of disdain, revulsion, condemnation. And she would be alone again, as she had always been alone ever since the death of her parents. The idea that there was someone who might care and help was an illusion.
She had known that she could not go to Daniel; she knew now that she could not go to the Duke of Ridgeway. She was old enough, she had lived long enough to know that.

Matthew’s hands closed on her shoulders from behind. “You will change your mind,” he said. “We will give it a few more days, Isabella.”

She bit her lip instead of replying as she had been about to do. Would she? Change her mind? The alternative was so very appalling.

“We should return to the house,” he said. “You need to do some thinking, don’t you?”

When they entered the great hall from the horseshoe steps sometime later, his grace happened to be crossing it. He looked at her and at Matthew tight-lipped.

“Miss Hamilton?” he said. “I thought you were upstairs with my daughter.”

“I have been walking with Lord Brocklehurst, your grace,” she said.

He nodded curtly. “She was eager to talk to you,” he said. “You had better go up without delay.”

“Yes, your grace,” she said, curtsying. She fled from the hall and up to the nursery, her cheeks burning from the look of cold disapproval on his face. And she wondered if Matthew would explain to him that the invitation had come from him with her grace’s permission.

She looked forward so much to the following day and a whole afternoon away from Willoughby.

M
ASTER
T
IMOTHY
C
HAMBERLAIN WAS
celebrating his seventh birthday with his brother and sister, Lady Pamela Kent from Willoughby Hall, and five other children from the neighborhood, including the vicar’s two.

It was entirely a blessing for their sanity, Mr. Chamberlain told Fleur when she arrived with her charge, that the weather
had decided to cooperate. They would move outside once Timmy had shown the children the nursery, which they had all seen before, and the large bag of colored wooden building bricks that was his birthday present.

Miss Chamberlain greeted Fleur with a smile. “You would not guess from listening to him, would you, Miss Hamilton,” she said, “that the idea for a party was all Duncan’s? He revels in such occasions.”

Mr. Chamberlain grimaced as Fleur laughed. It had not taken her longer than her first day of acquaintance with him to realize that he quite doted on his children.

She was feeling wonderfully happy. She and Lady Pamela had left almost immediately after luncheon and would not return until almost dinnertime. And his grace had not come.

“Timothy had bricks. I am going to get Papa to buy me some,” Lady Pamela announced to Fleur in a shriek when the children came hurtling downstairs with demands to be taken outside.

They played hide-and-seek and chasing and ball in the large grounds behind the house, and Mr. Chamberlain organized races of various kinds until several of the children were stretched out on the grass, panting, while the others shrieked more loudly than ever.

Miss Chamberlain formed them all into a large circle to play some singing games—“to quieten them down,” she explained to Fleur, who had helped with the races. “Duncan always fails to realize that tiring children does not necessarily quieten them, but frequently has just the opposite effect.”

“Well,” Mr. Chamberlain said, ignoring the outstretched hand of a small girl with a hair bow almost as large as her head and pinching her cheek instead, “dancing and chanting in a circle is quite beneath my dignity, I am afraid. Miss Hamilton and I are going to leave you to it, Emily. We will all have tea after this. Ma’am?” He held out an arm for Fleur’s.

“There are limits to the depths to which I will sink,” he said,
strolling with her toward the rose arbor at the side of the house. “ ‘Ring around the rosy’ is definitely below that limit.”

“I do believe your son is having a wonderful time,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “One is seven only once, I suppose. Tomorrow he will be his normal boisterous self again. The hysteria will have passed.”

Fleur chuckled.

They were inside the arbor, surrounded by the heady smell of roses. He released her arm, cupped her face with his hands, and kissed her briefly and warmly on the lips.

“I have missed you,” he said.

She smiled.

“If you were not a governess,” he said, “and did not have daily duties to perform, I would probably have haunted Willoughby Hall in the days since our theater visit.” He touched her lips with his thumbs.

She looked into his eyes and knew with regret that there were limits for her too beyond which she dare not go.

“Don’t,” she said as he drew breath to speak again. She lowered her eyes to his chin. “Please, don’t.”

“What I am about to say is not welcome to you?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I cannot,” she said.

“Because of inclination?” he said. “It is something about me? Or my children?”

She shook her head and bit her lip.

“There is some obstacle?” he asked.

Her eyes dropped to his neckcloth. Yes. There were the charges of theft and murder hanging over her head. There was the loss of her virginity. There was the profession she had sampled briefly before becoming a governess.

She nodded.

“Insurmountable?” he asked.

“Yes.” She looked up into his eyes again and knew a great sadness of regret. “Quite insurmountable, sir.”

“Well, then.” He smiled, lowered his hands to her arms, and
leaned forward to kiss her firmly once more. He patted her arms. “Enough of that. This arbor was my wife’s pride and joy. Did Emily tell you that? I love to sit here to read—when the children are safely indoors at their lessons or games, that is. Shall we wander indoors for tea?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Fleur said.

All her delight in the afternoon was gone. She had not realized that he was quite so close to a declaration, but she had sensed it coming there in the rose arbor. And she felt that she had hurt him and feared that despite what she had said, he would think that it was some lack in himself that had made her draw back from him.

It was almost no surprise when they came from the arbor onto the back lawn again to see the Duke of Ridgeway, his daughter sitting up on one of his shoulders, talking with Miss Chamberlain.

“Ah,” he said, turning and smiling and looking at them both with keen eyes. “Duncan? Miss Hamilton?”

“I might have known you would be wise enough to avoid the games and clever enough to arrive just in time for tea,” Mr. Chamberlain said. He extended his right hand. “Welcome to Timmy’s birthday party, Adam.”

“I won second in the girls’ race, Papa,” Lady Pamela was shrieking, “and we would have won the three-legged race if William had not fallen down.”

Fleur turned away with Miss Chamberlain to shepherd the children back to the house for tea.

T
HE
D
UKE OF
R
IDGEWAY
rode back to Willoughby Hall sometime later, one arm about his daughter, who rode before him, and listened with half an ear to her excited chatter. He wished that Fleur were riding beside them, but pushed the thought from his mind. It was as well that she was returning home in his carriage.

She really was good for Pamela. He always had been capable of arousing these moods of childhood excitement in her and he had always tried, when he was at home, to take her to visit other children as often as possible. But of course he was away from home for long stretches and always felt guilty about abandoning her. He could not possibly love her more if she really were his, he thought.

Fleur was giving Pamela extended opportunities to be a child. Sybil and Mrs. Clement between them overprotected her. And on the rare occasion when Sybil did take her out, it was to visit adults so that she might sit quietly and Sybil might be complimented on her well-behaved daughter.