A Marriage of Inconvenience (29 page)

“Lucy. I wouldn’t have listened.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what,” Anna said firmly. “I would have convinced myself that your view of him as a cousin had no relevance for me as his wife, or that you’d exaggerated childhood slights that had no bearing on who he was as a man. Or I might have even thought you were jealous—though not after you became engaged to James. Anyone could see you were taken with each other.”

Lucy bit her lip. She couldn’t be sure that Anna would have gone so far as to disbelieve her engagement, though she could readily picture Sebastian passing it off as some kind of misunderstanding or youthful delusion. James would have believed her, though, and armed with the truth would have persuaded his uncle to forbid the marriage.

Anna took Lucy’s hand again. “Please, Lucy, don’t feel guilty over this. James tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen to him, not the least bit. I simply wasn’t of a mind to heed anyone’s advice. I was a fool—I know that now. But it was my mistake and no one else’s, and I—I won’t have you burdened with it. It isn’t your fault. No matter what you knew. Believe me, I’m unhappy enough on my own account. I’d feel that much worse if
you
insisted upon claiming a share.”

Lucy couldn’t quite follow Anna’s logic, but she felt as if her burden of guilt had lightened, at least a trifle. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said. “I wish you were happy.”

“So do I!” Anna exclaimed with a rueful noise that was half laugh and half sob. “And perhaps I shall be, in due course. I haven’t surrendered all hope yet. As for you—please do find a way to make up your quarrel with James and make him happy. I want to think of the two of you filling this house with laughter—and babies, soon. I should dearly love a nursery full of nieces and nephews to visit when I come back.”

“There’s nothing I’d like more,” Lucy said. “Only, I don’t know that he’ll let me.”

And suddenly they were both crying on each other’s shoulders. Dimly Lucy heard the door open with a barely perceptible creak. She turned her head to find James regarding them, troubled and amazed.

James hadn’t forbidden Lucy to have visitors—he hoped he wasn’t such an ogre—but he had never imagined that she would receive Anna, of all people. So he had been shocked when Thirkettle had told him that Mrs. Arrington was upstairs with Lady Selsley, and now he stood aghast to discover those two women, who in their separate ways had brought him to a level of heartbreak and misery he had never suspected was possible, seated together in an embrace of shared unhappiness and consolation.

He stared at them, and for a long silent moment they stared back out of red, wet eyes. He ached with love for both of them, beloved sister trapped in wedlock to a heartless, faithless cad, and dear wife, who had only done what she in her inexperience and ignorance thought best. Sebastian Arrington’s victims, both of them. And James understood then that he did still love his wife, despite everything, and he admitted to himself that
of course
Lucy had acted with the best of intentions for all concerned. Lucy didn’t have a cruel or selfish bone in her body.

She deserved forgiveness, certainly. But when he looked at Anna, his sister, blood of his blood, and saw
her
mute misery, he didn’t know if he had the strength to give Lucy what she deserved. How could he live at her side, day and night, and not be tormented by thoughts of Anna’s unhappiness, and of Lucy’s kinship to and innocent complicity with the man who had brought it about?

He didn’t think he could. Yet somehow without his really planning it his feet carried him into the room. He sank to his knees between Anna and Lucy and held out his arms. They swayed against him—Anna first, Lucy more hesitantly—and soon all three of them were locked together in a knot of silent grief and affection. The women wept freely, and James’s own eyes stung.

After a few minutes, Anna drew back, and James and Lucy followed suit. “James,” Anna said. “I should like to speak with you in private, if I may.”

“Of course. We’ll go to the Little Parlor.”

Lucy shook her head. “You needn’t do that. I’ll go to my room.”

She got to her feet, not quite meeting his eyes, but he caught her hand and pressed it for a moment. He was still racked with uncertainty, but he hoped to convey at least something of the restored warmth and forgiveness he was beginning to feel. She smiled tremulously and returned the pressure.

“Thank you, Lucy,” Anna said.

“You’re welcome. Please come and see me before you leave.”

“I will.”

Lucy slipped out into the corridor, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. James took the chair she had vacated, and he and Anna regarded each other awkwardly for a moment.

“I’ve been considering—” he began.

“James, you really must—” she said at the same moment.

It broke the tension, and they laughed ruefully. “You first,” she said.

“Very well.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been considering your situation. If you wish for a separation—and I think it the wisest course—you may stay with us here until we can make arrangements.”

“James. I don’t wish for a separation.”

“But…you’re unhappy. I can tell. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t been wed a fortnight. I’m not abandoning my marriage that quickly.”

“It needn’t be a formal arrangement,” he pleaded. “Just don’t sail for Lisbon with him. Nine brides in ten wouldn’t follow the drum even if their marriages were happy. Stay here with us. You can write each other, and if you want to try again when he returns, I’ll support you. But let your family take care of you.”

“No, James,” she said. “I must do this if I’m to have any chance at all at a normal marriage. If I’m to prove—” She shook her head, cutting the sentence off unfinished. “If I go with him, I have a chance. If I don’t go…well, then I might as well go back to Dunmalcolm for good now.”

“
You,
prove something to
him?
” James said. “He’s the one who’s not worthy of you. If you had any notion what sort of man he is—”

“I think I do,” she said quietly. “I’m beginning to have a very good understanding of his character.”

“Then why stay with him? Why
not
go straight home to Dunmalcolm?”

“Because I don’t care for a life of nunlike seclusion.”

“It needn’t be nunlike if you’re discreet,” James pointed out.

Anna’s eyes flashed. “I don’t care for that, either! I don’t want a—a tawdry life of sneaking about to meet with my lovers and hiding any children I happen to bear, any more than I want to live at Dunmalcolm as a perpetual not-quite-maiden aunt to Robin’s children. I want to be a proper wife, with my own household to manage and my own children to bring up. You were right about Sebastian, and I was a fool to marry anyone in such haste. But he’s the only husband I have, and the only way I can have the life I want is to find a way to make the best of it.”

“But, Anna—I can’t bear to see you so unhappy. I want to help you escape.”

“I know. But it’s my life, and you can’t live it for me. You can’t manage all of us, James—you cannot truly manage anyone but yourself.”

Was he so interfering? He was afraid he might be, but he must be sure she understood the consequences of staying with her husband. “You do realize that it might be harder for you to separate from Arrington in a few years than it is now, even if you’re still unhappy. If you were to have a child—”

“James. I realize that. I think you’d find me as clear-thinking as you could wish, now. But it’s a chance I must take.”

He studied her for a moment. Despite her obvious unhappiness, she looked calm and full of resolve, and James realized that his sister had become more woman than girl. If only she hadn’t had to pay so high a price for maturity! But he also saw a certain stubbornness, a spark in her eyes that told him he’d been wrong to think her husband had broken her spirit. Anna’s inner fires had only been banked, not extinguished. For that reason he forbore to plead with her any longer. Besides, he had pushed her too hard before her marriage, which had only brought out the Gordon stubbornness, making her more determined to have her own way. He should have known better. But, as ever, he’d lacked subtlety.

She was right. He had to let her go, let her fight her own battle to overcome her mistake and build a worthwhile life for herself. But if she ever wanted his help…

“If you change your mind,” he said, “if you want to leave him, or if you ever need my help for anything, you must write to me that instant.”

She smiled. “I will.”

“I’ll move heaven and earth for you. I’ll come to the Peninsula myself to bring you home if I have to cross a dozen battlefields to do it.”

Anna laughed, though her eyes had grown suspiciously bright. “I doubt it will come to that. But, James, if I may ask you to do one thing for me?”

“Anything.”

“Make up your quarrel with Lucy. Let me have the satisfaction of knowing that
one
of us is happy.”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Nothing ever is, is it? But do it anyway.”

“You don’t know what happened.”

“No, unless it’s something to do with Lucy feeling so guilty that she didn’t try to stop Sebastian and me from marrying.”

Surely Lucy hadn’t revealed the broken engagement. What good could it do now? “She—what did she tell you?” he sputtered.

“Simply that she had knowledge of his character that would’ve proved him an unsuitable husband, and that she wished she’d spoken. Of course I assured her I wouldn’t have believed her.”

Anna didn’t know the whole of it—and James wondered if she would be quite so calmly forgiving if she had. But it still pricked him with guilt to realize Anna had been more willing to offer forgiveness to her sister-in-law than he had been to his wife. “I wish she’d spoken, nonetheless,” he said.

“James, don’t. She couldn’t have known. None of us could, though I was a fool to be so hasty. For God’s sake, don’t make yourself miserable on my account. I know you’re fond of Lucy, and I think you’re well suited. You balance each other.”

“I love her,” he said quietly.

Anna shook her head with a rueful laugh. “Then why are you still here talking to me? Go and tell her so.”

Of course that was what he should be doing. But—“And leave you alone?”

“I didn’t come solely to say my farewells,” she said. “I need to sort through the things I left here—determine what to take with me and what to leave with you. I’ll ask Mrs. Ellis and some of the maids to help me, so I won’t even truly be alone.”

He was on his feet almost before he’d planned it. “I’ll—we’ll join you as soon as—” wait, that was too certain, what if Lucy didn’t forgive him? “—that is to say, if…”

Anna grinned, looking for a moment like her old self. “I understand. Run along, now.”

He obeyed.

Lucy paced her room in an agony of hope. He had held her while they wept, he had looked upon her with kindness in his eyes, he had pressed her hand. Had he forgiven her? If James forgave her, she believed she could forgive herself.

After perhaps the longest quarter-hour of her life, a knock sounded on her door—a firm, almost peremptory rap rather than the diffident scratch of a servant. “Come in,” she said.

James stepped inside, shut the door and crossed the room in a few quick strides. He sank to his knees before her.

“James, what are you doing? There’s no need to—to abase yourself.”

“There’s every need,” he said fervently. “I’ve been a fool—and an idiot—and I must beg your forgiveness.”

“But…why? I should be begging you to forgive me.”

“No, you shouldn’t.” He seized her hands in both of his, holding them in a firm clasp. “I was an ogre, and completely unreasonable. I understand now that you were, well, caught between my family and yours. How were you to know how everything would turn out? I can’t shut you out of my life for not having a prophet’s gift to see the future. I love you far too much.”

She stared down into his imploring eyes, freed one of her hands to smooth his hair. “But are you sure you can truly forgive me?”

He kissed her hand, hard, then looked up to meet her eyes. “Of course. And—how can I keep blaming you when I see now it was my fault, at least as much as yours, perhaps more?”

Lucy blinked and shook her head. “Your fault? Whatever do you mean?”

“All I did from the day they met was tell Anna everything I saw wrong with Sebastian and how mad I thought her infatuation with him was. Of course that made her more determined to have him. What kind of sister is going to stand by meekly and let her brother dictate to her in matters of the heart?”

“None, I suppose, but—James, this
isn’t your fault.
”

He smiled, tender and sad. “Then neither is it yours.”

“You’re sure? You won’t always think of me as the woman who made your sister unhappy?”

He stroked her hand. “That’s not how I see you now, or I wouldn’t be here. I don’t blame you. I blame your cousin. What he’s done to Anna is bad enough. I don’t want to increase his triumph by letting him ruin our happiness too.”

She nodded slowly. “But…it almost feels wrong to be happy with you, knowing that Sebastian and Anna…aren’t.”

“Anna herself said she’ll be happier knowing that we are happy.”

Put that way, it made sense. Lucy would have felt the same, had she been in Anna’s position. “I do love you, James,” she said. “I want to stay with you, but…” She took a deep breath. It would have been so easy to forgive him then and there, but she couldn’t live in fear that the next time they quarreled over matters great or small, he would again try to shut her out of his life.

“But what?” he asked, eyes bright with anxiety.

“Don’t do this to me again.” She was amazed at her own temerity, but she went on. “The next time you threaten to send me away, I’ll
go
away and make you come and find me.”