Web of Love (20 page)

“Good-bye, Ellen,” he said. He was almost whispering, though his mother had begun to talk in a quite loud voice to his brother. “I am sorry. I am truly sorry. For the timing. The timing was all wrong. We protected ourselves so carefully from the painful truth that we ignored it entirely. But what happened was not sordid, for all that. And I do not love you any the less for all the guilt I feel and all the suffering I know I have caused you. May I see you in England? After several months perhaps, or even a year?”

“No,” she said. “I do not want to see you ever again, my lord. It is not that I blame you or hate you. I blame myself, and I hate myself. But I will not see you again. Good-bye.”

He stood silently before her for several moments before bowing as well as he could with the fresh bandages that Edmund had secured tightly about his ribs, and turning away.

Lady Amberley took Ellen's hands in hers again. “I will call on you tomorrow again, my dear,” she said. “Perhaps just seeing another person will help you somewhat. Though that is a foolish thing to say, I know. I lost my husband very suddenly, and I know that it is the world's loneliest and most wretched feeling. The only consolation I can offer will seem like no consolation at all at the moment. It will pass, my dear child. The pain will go away eventually. I promise you it will.” She leaned forward and kissed Ellen's pale cheek.

Lord Eden and his brother had already left the room, Ellen was relieved to see. She sank to the sofa when their mother too had left, and sat there for a long time, too deeply miserable even to cry.

 

L
ORD
E
DEN WAS
stretched out on his bed at the hotel, one arm flung across his eyes.

“I don't want anything, Mama,” he said. “I am not hungry.”

“You have not eaten all day,” she said. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“Just tired,” he said. “The move here was more exhausting than I would have thought.”

She touched his hair and looked down at him, troubled.

“Nothing,” she said a few minutes later when she had rejoined her elder son in the sitting room. “He will not even look at a tray.”

Lord Amberley got to his feet. “Teatime,” he said, “and my arms feel dreadfully empty. No tiger to undo my waistcoat buttons and remember too late that his bread and jam have not been wiped from his fingers. And no princess to stare me down and then smile like an angel when I am vanquished.”

“And no Alexandra,” his mother added with a smile.

The earl groaned. “And no Alex,” he said. “Devil take it, but I miss her, Mama. Is it normal?”

“Perfectly, I am afraid,” she said. “Are you going in to him, Edmund?”

“Yes,” he said, “as soon as I have flexed my elder-brother muscles. We seem to have arrived at quite a time of crisis, do we not?”

“A good time, I think,” she said. “He is going to need us. But that poor child. She is so very alone.”

The Earl of Amberley stood looking down at his brother a couple of minutes later. Lord Eden's arm was still over his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” the earl asked, pulling up a chair to the bed and seating himself.

“About the battle?” Lord Eden did not change his position. “Not really. It is hard to have clear memories of such a thing. It is all noise and confusion at the time. All I can ever see clearly afterward is the dead eyes.”

“I didn't mean the battle,” the earl said.

Lord Eden took his arm from his eyes and stared upward. “I suppose Mad has been talking,” he said. “I made a mistake, that is all, Edmund. She has a husband's death to grieve for. I fancied her because she has been my only nurse for a month and I saw no one else. It's over now and really does not signify at all.”

“If you could have seen your face and Mrs. Simpson's face this morning,” the earl said, “you would not have said that it does not signify, Dominic. You care for her deeply?”

Lord Eden stared upward. His jaw had tightened. “Yes,” he said.

“Do you have any reason to believe that she returns your feelings?” his brother asked.

“I cannot speak for Ellen,” Lord Eden said. “She loved Charlie. There can be no doubt about that.”

“No,” Lord Amberley said. “There cannot. You have been in love before, Dominic. Dozens of times before you reached your majority, even. Is there any chance that this one will go the way of the rest? Sometimes a lost love is painful at the time, but quickly recovered from.”

“I love her,” Lord Eden said. “I am not just in love with her.”

“Ah, yes,” his brother said sadly. “I am sorry, then, Dominic. I don't know what happened exactly between the time when Madeline called upon you yesterday afternoon and the time when we arrived this morning. And I won't pry. But I am sorry. Is life very hard to face at the moment?”

“There does not seem much point to it,” Lord Eden said. “And I am not being self-pitying, Edmund. I don't plan to pine away. But today I can't force myself to live. I don't want to. Those damned French never could shoot straight. It was pure chance they got Charlie. They bungled badly with me.”

Lord Amberley rose to his feet and placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Do I have your word that tomorrow you will force yourself?” he asked. “So that I won't have to hold you down while Mama shovels food inside you?”

Lord Eden laughed unexpectedly. “Yes,” he said, “you have my word. You would do it too, wouldn't you, the pair of you? And have Mad stand at the foot of the bed, as like as not, chattering her head off to distract my mind. What would I ever do without a family to torment me? God, Edmund”—his voice shook suddenly—“I'm glad you came. I don't know what I would have done if you had not. Sent for Mad and thrown myself on the mercy of her horsey friend, I suppose.”

Lord Amberley patted his shoulder and left the room.

Lord Eden swung his legs over the side of the bed and eased himself first into a sitting position and then to his feet. He began to pace the room diagonally. He had to regain his health. It would be stupidity in the extreme to allow himself to fall into a decline.

He had thought he could draw her out of her terrible sense of guilt. He had thought that perhaps he could comfort her to a certain extent for her loss of Charlie. He had thought that perhaps he could make her realize that what had happened between them had occurred because they loved each other. He had thought that he might suggest that they wait for a year, see each other during that time only under controlled circumstances, and then get together again and marry and have children together and share their love for a lifetime.

His own sense of guilt was a terrible thing. He had loved Charlie with a deep affection. Charlie had been friend, father, and brother all in one. And yet for a month, two weeks of that time free from fever, he had not given him one conscious thought, or shed one tear of grief. And he had allowed himself to fall in love with Charlie's widow and to become her lover. He had dreamed of an immediate marriage with her.

All as if Charlie had never lived and loved her. And as if she had never loved him.

And yet, he had thought after she had left him the previous afternoon and after he had heard the outer door close and knew she had gone out, even the fact that they had not mentioned or thought about Charlie in a month proved their love for him in a strange way. They had both known in a part of themselves deeper than thought that coping with the knowledge of his death would be difficult. He had had his physical weakness to contend with. She had had patients to tend. And so they had kept their knowledge and their grief at bay. But just a little too long. Six days too long. They had been lovers for six days.

He had thought he might explain those things to her when she came back. She would have calmed down by that time. He had calmed down. Yet when he had heard her come home and gone out into the parlor, he had found himself looking at a woman wearing deep mourning and a face of marble.

“Can we talk?” he had asked, knowing that it was hopeless, that there was no way to get past the defenses she had built in the space of a few hours.

“There is nothing to say,” she had said. “I am sorry I am late with your dinner. I will have it ready soon.”

“I am not hungry,” he had said. “Ellen, let me grieve with you. Let me comfort you if I can.”

“There is no grieving to be done,” she had said, “and no comfort to be offered. I am not worthy to grieve for Charlie. And you are not worthy to offer comfort to anyone for his death. I shall show the outer respect of wearing these clothes for him for the next year because he deserves that respect. I would prefer it if you stayed in your room, Lord Eden. We can have nothing more to say to each other, you and I.”

They were ridiculous words, of course. She must have realized it herself before the evening was out. Of course she would grieve for Charlie. She had loved him. Her grief was only just beginning. But he knew that there was no getting past that barrier she had set up between herself and him. Certainly not that evening. Perhaps not ever.

He had had no choice but to return to his room and remain there, careful to have his back turned or his eyes closed every time she came in after that on some necessary errand. He had been desperate over his own helplessness by that morning. Edmund had seemed like an angel sent from heaven.

And so he had lost her. There was a vast and painful emptiness inside him that threatened to turn to panic. She did not wish to see him ever again, she had said that morning. And she had meant it.

He would never see her again. Never talk with her and laugh with her. Never sit in comfortable silence with her. Never explore her lovely face and figure with his eyes. Never sit quietly holding her hand. Never kiss her or touch her. Never make love with her.

The emptiness yawned.

But Lord Eden paced on. He had promised Edmund that he would be ready for life again by the next day. And by God, he would be ready. He was not going to pine his life away for any woman. Not even for Ellen. And if he must continue living, there was no point at all in putting it off until the next day. He opened the door of his room.

“I hope you have chosen a hotel with a decent chef,” he said when his brother looked up from a book in some surprise. “I could eat a horse.”

“Ah,” Lord Amberley said. “Was that to be boiled, stewed, or roasted, Dominic?”

 

E
LLEN WAS STANDING
at the rail of the packet from Ostend, feeling the strong wind of the channel catch at her breath and whip her cloak against her. Her new maid, Prudence, an English girl excited to be returning to her own country, stood at her side. The Earl of Amberley had hired the girl, bought her passage, and paid her first year's salary in advance. It was a comfort to have a companion, not to be entirely alone.

She would not look back to the coast of Belgium. She set her face for England, invisible still beyond the haze of the horizon. But she would not look back.

She had left them there, both of them. Forever. Charlie in an unknown grave on a battlefield she had roamed over for several hours three days before, Lord Eden recuperating from his wounds in Brussels with his brother and mother. She would not see either again, the one because he was forever beyond her sight, the other because she chose not to do so.

Charlie was dead. She recited the fact to herself almost constantly and was continually amazed that she lived on. That she could live on. She had not thought that she would be capable of doing so without him. But she was living. She was dreadfully lonely despite the friendly sweetness of Prudence, despite the visits in Brussels in the week before she had left, daily by the dowager Lady Amberley and twice by Lady Madeline. There was no longer that sheltering, all-encompassing, totally unconditional love that had been Charlie. But she was living.

And she would live. She still had someone to live for. Jennifer was in London, doubtless distraught over the death of the father she had only just begun to really know. Jennifer would need her, even if Ellen was not nearly old enough to be a real mother to the girl. She could be a friend instead, the closest living link with the girl's father.

And there was Lady Habersham, Charlie's sister, who had been kind to him through the years, who had always kept Jennifer when her brother was not in England, who must have agreed to give a home to Ellen in the event of Charlie's death in battle. She would be grieving. She too would be a friend.

And then there was her final and reluctant promise to Charlie. The promise she had not wanted to make. The one she did not want to keep. But she would keep it for all that, for she had truly loved Charlie, and she had wronged him terribly after his death, and she would do this last thing for him with all the determination that it might take. She would see to it that Jennifer met her grandfather, that he acknowledged her and took charge of her future.

She would do that much for Charlie. And for Jennifer. And then, if there was enough money, she would buy a cottage in the country. And she would live there for the rest of her life. She would even be happy there eventually, once the terrible pain of her grief had passed off. It did not feel now as if it ever would, as if she would ever wake up again in the morning glad to be alive, looking forward to what the day might bring.

But the older Lady Amberley had said that it would pass. And common sense told her that it would. Charlie was gone. And she lived on. So be it.

So be it. She would live on.

And as for that other, she would put it from her mind, and that too would fade with time. The guilt would fade. The memory of him and what she had known with him for six days would fade. A more heightened sensuality than she had ever dreamed of with Charlie, contented as she had been with every facet of their life together.

She would not think of it any longer. Or of him. It had not been love, or anything approximating love. It had been all purely physical, and therefore not anything of any lasting value.