The Secret Pearl (46 page)

“You are not coming into the house, your grace?” Miriam asked.

Fleur turned, her friends just a couple of steps behind her. She lifted her hands and he took them. He looked deeply into her eyes as he raised one to his lips.

“Good-bye,” he said.

Adam
. Her lips formed his name, though no sound emerged.

And he was gone—into the carriage to sit on the far side while Ned closed the door, turned to smile and incline his head to her, and vaulted up onto the box with the coachman.

And he was gone, along the driveway, through the gates, and around the first bend.

He was gone.

“Well, he was in a hurry to leave,” Miriam said cheerfully. “Isabella, you foolish, independent woman. Why did you not call on me to go with you? You know I would have closed the school for a few days. But by the time Daniel had told me that he had refused to accompany you, you were gone already. And imagine our dismay to discover that you had gone with the Duke of Ridgeway.”

“It is done, Miriam,” the Reverend Booth said. “There is no point in scolding further. We will come inside with you, if we may, Isabella. It will relieve your mind, no doubt, to tell us all that happened.”

“You must be exhausted,” Miriam said, stepping forward to take her arm. She smiled up into her face and then turned back sharply to her brother. “Take Isabella’s bag inside, will you, Daniel? I want to have a brief word with her before we join you.”

She waited until he had disappeared into the house.

“Oh, Isabella,” she said quietly, touching her friend’s arm, patting it. “Oh, my poor, poor dear.”

Fleur stood staring down the driveway as if turned to stone.

A
T LEAST THERE WAS PLENTY
with which to keep herself busy. Fleur was thankful for that fact more than for any other in the coming days and weeks. At least there was plenty to do.

She removed all her possessions to the cottage that had been Miss Galen’s and arranged and rearranged them to her satisfaction. At first she did everything for herself, including the cooking, since she could not afford to hire a servant. She spent many hours in the small garden, restoring the overgrown hedges and rosebushes to their original neatness and splendor.

And she taught the twenty-two pupils at Miriam’s school alongside her friend and discovered the challenge of instructing more than one child at a time.

She kept an eye on an elderly couple who lived next door to her, taking them some cakes when she baked, sitting and listening to their endless stories of the past, including many of her mother and father.

And she had friends to visit and be visited by. There was always Miriam, of course, who spent a great deal of her free time with her and who was cheerfully friendly without ever prying. For undoubtedly she knew. There had been that tact of hers in sending Daniel inside the house after Adam had left, and her simple words of sympathy and understanding. But if she was curious, she never showed it. She never asked questions. She was a true friend.

And there was Daniel too. He did not cast her off despite her confession to him and her improper behavior afterward in going to Wroxford with Adam. And there were several other inhabitants of the village and a few of the neighboring gentry who had held off as long as she was living at Heron House with her relatives but who were only too pleased now to make a friend of her.

Matthew did not come home. Neither did Cousin Caroline and Amelia, even when the London Season came to an end.

Word came to the village that the ladies had traveled north with friends. Rumor had it that Matthew had removed himself to the Continent to avoid some unknown embarrassment. Fleur did not know the truth of any of the stories. And she did not care where any of them were, provided they stayed away. She hated the thought of Cousin Caroline’s coming back, and she dreaded that Matthew would come.

She spoke with the steward at Heron House, and he promised to communicate with Lord Brocklehurst’s man of business in London concerning her affairs.

She had her answer in an unexpected way. She was sitting in her small parlor one afternoon, sipping on a cup of tea after a tiring day at school and wondering if she had the energy to go outside later to clip a hedge that had grown untidy again. She got to her feet with a sigh when there was a knock at the door. And she stood gaping at Peter Houghton a few moments later, her stomach feeling as if it were performing a complete somersault.

“Miss Bradshaw,” he said, making her a polite bow.

“Mr. Houghton?” She stood aside, inviting him to enter.

“I was sent to London to carry out some business for you, ma’am,” he said. “It seemed as well to call here on my way back to Willoughby Hall instead of writing you a letter.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She would not at all have enjoyed receiving a letter from Willoughby, only to find that it was from the secretary. “Won’t you have some tea?”

She sat on the edge of her chair listening to him, drinking in the sight and sound of him, this fragile link with Willoughby and Adam. And remembering the first time she had seen him at Miss Fleming’s agency.

Matthew had indeed fled the country. Someone must have tipped him off to the fact that his deception had been uncovered and that awkward, incriminating questions were about to be asked. Mr. Houghton, it seemed, had spoken with Matthew’s man of business, had pulled a few strings in high
places, and had arranged it that her guardian was now a distant cousin, Matthew’s heir, whom she had met only once. And that man, whom Mr. Houghton had also called upon, had been quite uninterested in guarding either the person or the fortune of a twenty-three-year-old female relative he did not even know.

She was to be given a very generous allowance for the following year and a half, after which her dowry and her fortune would be released to her whether she was married or single.

Mr. Houghton coughed. “I believe his exact words were that you could marry the sweep’s climbing boy tomorrow for all he cared, ma’am,” he said. There was a gleam in his eye for a moment.

She had never known that Mr. Houghton had a sense of humor, Fleur thought, smiling.

He would not stay for dinner or even for a second cup of tea. He wished to cover several more miles before darkness, he said.

Fleur got to her feet and clasped her hands in front of her. He would be gone in a few minutes. Until then she would hold firm. She would not ask a single question about
him
. Not one.

Peter Houghton coughed again, pausing by the outer door before opening it. “His grace could not go himself to London, of course,” he said. “He sent me in his stead.”

“Yes,” Fleur said. “I am grateful to you, sir. And to him.”

“He is making plans to take the duchess and Lady Pamela into Italy for the winter,” he said.

“Is he?” Wounds that had scarcely begun to film over and knit together were being ripped apart again.

“For her grace’s health,” Houghton said. “And I believe for his own too. He has not been quite himself.”

A sharp-bladed knife was scraping at the wound.

“The climate of Italy should help them both,” she said.

He reached for the knob of the door and turned it.

“I was instructed to make a purchase in London, ma’am,”
he said, “and to make sure that it was sent on to you here. It should arrive within the week. I was to inform you that it is more in the way of a contribution to the school than a personal gift.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“It should arrive within the week,” he repeated.

And he bowed to her again, bade her a good day, and was gone.

She was left with the painful ache of knowing that the one small link with Adam was even then rolling out of the village. And with the knowledge that he loved her enough to have sent his secretary to London on her behalf. And that he was sending her a gift, supposedly for the school.

But really for her.

And with the knowledge that soon—within a few months—he would be gone from England. Not that it mattered. She would never see him again anyway. But Italy! Italy was so very far away.

Sometimes pain could be almost past bearing.

There was plenty to do to keep her busy, but she wished it were possible to keep her mind as effectively occupied as her hands and body.

She could not keep the thoughts of him at bay. And they were painful beyond belief. She would never see him again, never hear from him again. And yet she was to know and to believe for the rest of her life that he loved her. Twenty years later, if she was alive then and knew him to be alive, she was to believe that he loved her. And yet she would never be able to verify the truth of it. She would wonder—she was already wondering—
do you love me still? Do you remember me?

In some ways, she felt, it would be almost easier to know that he did not love her, that he was happy somewhere else with someone else. At least then she would be able to set about the task of living her own life with a little more determination.

Perhaps. And yet, as she lay in bed at nights reliving those
days of travel with him, when they had talked easily to each other and grown to be friends and sometimes sat quietly together in perfect peace and harmony, their hands clasped, she was not sure she would be able to live with the knowledge that he was happy somewhere else, that he had forgotten her. And as she relived that night, when they had told their love over and over again with their bodies, she did not think she would be able to bear knowing that there could ever be another woman for him.

And yet it hurt to know that he was unhappy, trapped in a marriage that was really no marriage at all, undertaken for the sake of a little girl who was not even his.

It hurt to know that the barrier that kept them apart, and would do so for the rest of their lives, was as flimsy and as strong as gossamer.

The culmination of her pain came with two events that happened on the same day, one month after she had moved to her cottage.

She was called from the school early in the afternoon to take delivery of a pianoforte, which had been brought all the way from London. There was a number of curious people in the street, and somehow all the children were out there too, swarming about the large wagon that held the instrument.

“A pianoforte!” Miriam gasped, and clasped her hands to her bosom. “For you, Isabella? Did you order it?”

“It is for the school,” Fleur said. “It is a gift.”

“A gift? For the school?” Miriam turned wide eyes on her. “But from whom?”

“We must have it carried in,” Fleur said.

She did not know where Daniel had come from, but he was there.

“It is too valuable an item for the schoolroom,” he said. “We must put it in your cottage, Isabella.”

“But it is for the children,” she said. “So that I can teach them music.”

“Then you must take them one or two at a time to your cottage for their lessons,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” Miriam agreed. “That will be the best possible idea, Isabella. What a wonderful, wonderful gift.” She squeezed her friend’s arm but did not repeat her question about the giver.

And so Fleur found herself with a pianoforte in her parlor and a whole box of music. When she was finally alone, having been assured by Miriam that she was no longer needed so close to dismissal time at school, she sat on the stool and touched the keys with shaking fingers.

But she did not play. She lowered the gleaming lid over the keys, pillowed her head on her arms, and cried and cried until she was sore from the crying. They were the first tears she had shed since his leaving.

She could see him in the early mornings opening the connecting door between the library and the music room, standing there deliberately until she saw him so that she would not think that he intended to eavesdrop without her knowledge. She could hear herself playing, lost in the music, but feeling him there in the next room, silently listening.

For so long she had thought that she hated him, that she feared him and was repulsed by him. And she had been afraid—oh, mortally afraid—of the strange, unexpected attraction she had felt to him.

He had sent her this one precious gift, knowing how much music meant to her. But he would never hear her play it. She would never be able to play it for him.

All her tears were spent by the time, later the same evening, she discovered a flow of blood, which told her that she would not bear his child either. She was more than a week late.

It had been foolish, foolish, of course, to have hoped that it was true. She should have been panicking for that week. It would have been disastrous if it had been true.

But the heart cannot always be directed by the head, she was discovering. She felt as bleak and as empty, lying on her
bed after she had cleansed herself and put the padding in place, as she had the day he left.

She would not have cared, she told herself. She would not have cared about all the awkwardness and scandal. A great deal of hope could build in eight days. She had begun to believe in her hope.

“Adam,” she whispered into the darkness. “Adam, there is too much silence. I can’t bear the silence. I can’t hear you.”