Angel's Touch (31 page)

‘
Past,’
snapped
Lady Crossens. ‘Good God, girl, do you suppose a man will pine
forever over a dead woman?’

‘
Please, ma’am,’ whispered Verity, wincing.

‘
You
are a fool, Verity. And you know nothing of men. Mark my words. If
he is not beating a path to your door at this very moment, you may
call me a dunderhead.’

At that opportune
moment, there was a knock at the door and the maid came in.

‘
Well, Dawson?’

‘
Please, ma’am, there’s a gennelman called for Miss
Lambourn.’

‘
Aha,’ rasped her ladyship triumphantly. ‘Show him up,
Dawson.’

‘
He’s already up, ma’am,’ grinned the girl.

Verity, who had sat
like a stricken statue, now rose to her feet, pale but
determined.

‘
Come along,’ instructed Lady Crossens, and opened the door to
the parlour.

The
marquis was standing by the window looking out, his brown locks,
uncovered, neatly confined in a tie at the nape of his neck. He
turned as the door opened, his eyes going past her ladyship to
Verity’s downcast face behind her.

‘
You’re Salmesbury, I take it,’ said the old lady, sailing
across the room and grasping his hand. ‘I’m Emilia
Crossens.’

‘
How
do you do, ma’am?’ he said politely, bowing slightly over the hand
he held.

‘
Very well, I thank you. But you have come to see Miss
Lambourn, I apprehend, and so I shall leave you at once. Not that I
approve of these free and easy modern manners, but circumstances,
you know, alter cases.’

‘
You
are so right,’ agreed Salmesbury, with an irrepressible
twinkle.

‘
At
my age I ought to be,’ she rejoined, and, marching to the parlour
door, she hustled the open-mouthed Dawson before her.

Left
to confront Verity, Henry’s amusement faded as he searched her set
features. The white gown of figured muslin emphasised her deathly
pallor. Concern showed in his voice.

‘
You
are almost as pale as I.’

Verity’s eyes flew up to meet his, but she checked the
response that rose to her lips. Instead she spoke in a quiet,
polite manner quite unlike her usual tone.

‘
Won’t you sit down?’

She
took a chair herself, and he fidgeted a moment or two, looking at
her frowningly, then seated himself in a chair near the window. She
would not meet his gaze and he found it hard to know how to begin.
The silence lengthened and Verity at last looked up.

‘
I
have to apologise, sir, for my abrupt departure from your house
yesterday.’

‘
Verity,’ he said in a hurt tone, ‘you are addressing me as if
we are strangers.’

‘
I
must,’
she whispered.

‘
But
why?’

She was silent. Henry
pushed himself up. At once she rose, too, and moved a step back
from him. His face showed his feelings as he stood there, stiff,
the black eyes challenging. Verity felt his pain at her rejection,
and swallowed on the rising lump in her throat, forcing herself to
speak calmly.

‘
Henry, I know why you have come. But I can’t—you must
not—’

Her voice failed. Her
obvious distress touched him and his stiff pose relaxed, the green
frock-coat sitting more easily upon his less rigid frame.

‘
Why
have you turned against me? I want you to marry me, Verity. I
thought—was I mistaken?—that we were of the same mind.’

I
was,
she
wanted to cry. But she must not. She had decided. She must not
weaken. She had doubts, and if in doubt, said the Reverend Harry
Lambourn,
don’t
.
She drew a breath and as of
instinct moved a little closer to him.

‘
Henry, I think we allowed ourselves to be carried away. I
never looked for marriage.’

‘
No,
I know,’ he said quickly. ‘You told me so. It is not, surely, this
wish of yours to live by—what did you call it?—the writing of
Gothic novels?’

‘
No,
no, I—’

‘
Because, if so, there is nothing to stop
you doing so,’ he pursued anxiously. ‘At least, not
live
by them. But
write
them, certainly.
Indeed, I should take great pleasure in reading
them.’

‘
You can’t know that,’ Verity protested with
a faint smile. ‘You may think them quite dreadful. But, Henry, it
is not that. Upon my word, that would be
too
petty.’

‘
And you are certainly not that.
Tell
me!’

‘
Oh,
Henry, it is so hard to explain. I am not of your world, for one
thing.’

‘
What does that matter?’ he said impatiently. ‘I may be a
marquis, but I am also a man, Verity.’

‘
I know, and I have never really thought of
you in that light. To me you are, you will
always
be only Henry
Haverigg.’

He
smiled. ‘I would not have it otherwise. But if not my rank,
then—’

‘
I said
to
me,
Henry,’ she cut in quietly. ‘To the
world, you are the Marquis of Salmesbury. I think I am a poor
candidate for his marchioness. And—and
yesterday—’

‘
Ah,
yesterday. You saw my palatial residence, is that it? My God, I
never thought to be sorry for the circumstances of my
birth.’

‘
Don’t, Henry. It was not that. At least,
not
only
that.
You see, we had not—I had not—properly considered all the
implications. Now I have thought of them. Or rather,’ she amended,
with a twist in her face that cut him to the heart, ‘they have been
forced upon my notice.’

Henry looked struck. ‘Oh, God. It is not my rank, nor my
house, nor my estates, is it? That portrait of Meg—the accident—my
insane behaviour.’ He turned his face away. ‘You are thinking of my
outburst at the gypsy camp the other day.’

‘
That is a part of it,’ Verity confessed, for she could not
lie. ‘Oh, don’t think I blame you. Believe me, I don’t. You were
overwrought. I understood.’

‘
You
understood,’ he agreed low-voiced, ‘and I know you would never
blame me. But it frightened you.’

‘
No,
not that,’ she said quickly. ‘Not in the way you think.’

But
it was plain that he did not believe her. ‘I can be very like the
monster you once spoke of, can I not?’ His mouth had a bitter curl
to it. ‘And a cripple to boot.’

‘
No!’ Verity cried.

He
shrugged. ‘Why deny it? I will never walk with ease again. I will
be lucky if I am not confined to a wheeled chair in middle age.
Scarcely a satisfactory bargain.’

‘
Oh,
Henry, that is a monstrous way to speak,’ Verity scolded angrily,
sweeping away from him and back again, as if she could not be
still. ‘You know your injury has never caused me the least
discomfort. It is slighting to dare to suggest I could refuse you
for such a reason as that.’

‘
Then if not that,
why?’
he demanded, matching her
anger. ‘Please, Verity, let me understand. These items you have
mentioned—I don’t believe you really care about them. They are
excuses. Be truthful with me, I implore you, for I
know
you are not afraid
of me, of what I am.’

‘
Oh,
never that, Henry, never that,’ she uttered, unguardedly stepping
closer, her hands going out.

He
grasped them strongly. ‘Verity, this—this
thing
between us began that first
day. Why do you suppose I came to Tunbridge Wells? Again and again.
Oh, I didn’t know it then myself, I grant you. But it grew and
grew—and you know it—until there was no gainsaying it. Damnation,
Verity,
why?’

‘
Because it is not enough
!’ she threw at him wildly.

He
stared at her blankly, his anger arrested. ‘Not enough?’

‘
It
can never be enough.’ She said it quietly, thinking as she did so
that it explained all.

To
Henry, it was like a blow in the face. His hold on her hands
relaxed and he released them.
Not
enough?
What more could there possibly be?
He shook his head as if to clear it of a fog. He felt empty,
drained. Collecting his cane, he began to limp towards the
door.

Verity watched him,
her heart wrung. She had not meant to hurt him, though she had
known she must. Only she had not realised how much, in doing so,
she would hurt herself. She felt herself cruel and hated it, as if
she had shown him a glimpse of Paradise and then snatched it away.
She wanted very badly to run to him, tell him of her love, say she
did not mean it. But the portrait rose in her mind. That fatal
portrait of Lady Margaret Haverigg, whom Henry had loved and lost,
whom she knew she could never replace.

Henry turned at the door. Like an afterthought, he said, ‘I
had hoped to bring home a new mother for my children. They love
you, you know.’

Her
throat ached suddenly. Through it, she managed to say, ‘They will
forget.’

He
smiled, a wistful, tender smile. ‘Perhaps they may. But will I?’
After the briefest of pauses, in a quite ordinary voice, he added,
‘The militia have apprehended the kidnappers. I thought you would
wish to know.’

Then he passed from
the room.

***

‘
I
think you must have taken leave of your senses,’ uttered the old
lady fretfully. She had come back into the room on Salmesbury’s
departure, only to have all her eager expectations destroyed at a
stroke.

‘
It
must seem like it, I dare say,’ Verity agreed wanly.

‘
Look at you! I declare, I have never seen such misery. And
for what?’

‘
For
truth
,
ma’am. It would not be fair to either he or myself to marry
him.’

‘
Truth? Fair?’ snorted Lady Crossens, tacking back and forth
across the small parlour like a sail in a choppy wind. ‘The truth,
my girl, is that you don’t know when you’re well off. Here is the
answer to every young girl’s dream, handed to you on a golden
platter, and you spurn it for a scruple.’

‘
Oh,
ma’am, it is more than a scruple,’ Verity said desperately. ‘Much,
much more. Must I spend my life in a welter of pain merely because
the man who delivers it is a marquis?’

‘
Pish and tush,’ snapped her patroness crossly. ‘Welter of
pain? I never heard such theatrical rodomontade. What more could
you wish? Do you not love him? Does he not love you?’

Verity’s lip trembled. ‘He has not said so.’

The
old lady’s wrath was arrested in full flood. She stopped in
mid-stride and stared at the girl. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘
He
has not said that he loves me,’ Verity repeated clearly, though her
voice shook.

‘
But
the man is obviously head over ears,’ uttered Lady Crossens in a
stunned tone.

‘
Still he has not said so.’

‘
Pah!
Men.
What a set of brainless idiots! You’d think they
would realise that all a young girl wants to hear is a lot of
romantical whispering. I could wring the ninny’s
neck.’

‘
Oh, ma’am,’ protested Verity, half
laughing. ‘You are quite mistaken. I know that he
cares
for me, of course
I do. But you don’t understand. Perhaps if his wife had died in
some other way, some manner that might not have involved him, it
would be different. I might hope, in time, to supplant her in his
affections. But as things stand—oh, can you not see how impossible
it would be? Never to know, never to be sure of his affections.
Always to see him sad and grieving any time something happens to
remind him of her, of his first, his truest love. Then to see him,
at last recognising that he cannot, will
never
forget her in loving me,
trying not to show it, perhaps even living a
lie
.
Oh, I
could not endure it! Better by far we should never begin, than end
in such
coldness
.
’

Lady Crossens stood
transfixed for a moment, caught up in the tragic voice, the
pictures conjured up by the vivid words. Then she shook her head
fiercely.

‘
Pish, pish, pish! Your trouble, my child, is an overactive
imagination. Dear Lord in heaven, anyone would suppose you think to
find yourself living in the pages of a three-volume
novel.’

Verity coloured, but said in a low tone, ‘I know I am apt to
exaggerate life, ma’am, at least in my head. But you have not seen
him when he speaks of her. God knows I would give anything to be
his wife, could I only be first with him. But I cannot compete with
a
ghost
.
’