Joan Wolf (17 page)

“Mr. Davies joined us,” Mama said. “He is a learned man, I suppose, but his conversation is scarcely lively.”

I made a mental note to contribute a healthy donation to the rector’s favorite charity. I hadn’t realized that the poor man had been cooped up with Mama all afternoon.

Aunt Fanny tried heroically to suppress a yawn.

“Come along, my dear,” Adam said. “You are exhausted and need your bed.”

“I am rather weary,” Fanny confessed as she allowed Adam to assist her to her feet.

“I too am ready to retire,” Mama announced. “Do you come with me, Saye, or shall I order you some wine?”

The duke was looking tired. “I shall come upstairs with you, Regina,” he said. “It has been a long day.” His tone made it clear that we could substitute the word “dreadful” for “long.”

We all walked out into the corridor together. “Sleep well,” I said to the four of them as I left them at the bottom of the stairs. My mother compressed her lips and favored me with a terse nod.

I knew what was behind that nod. As much as Mama had wanted me to marry Gerald, it had almost killed her to relinquish the master suite. It still irked her every time she had to go up the stairs and leave me behind.

As I passed the library I heard male laughter coming from behind the closed door. I opened the door, peeked in, and saw Stephen, Jasper, and Jack clustered around the desk upon which reposed several bottles of what looked to be port. Jasper, sprawled comfortably in the big chair behind the desk, was the only one of them facing the door, and he stood up when he saw me.

“By Jove, if it isn’t Lady Bountiful herself.” He picked up his half-full glass, “A toast to Annabelle”—he pointed the glass in my direction—”the most beautiful lady in all of England.”

His voice was faintly slurred, and I realized that this was not his first glass of wine.

Jack and Stephen were half standing, half sitting, on either side of the desk. Jack’s blond head turned toward me, and he lifted his glass as well, seconding amiably, “To Annabelle.”

Stephen also lifted his glass, but he looked in the direction of the wing chair, “And a toast to Nell,” he said, “the kindest lady in all of England.”

For the first time I realized that someone was sitting in the wing chair in front of the desk.

I heard Nell say softly, “Thank you, Stephen.”

“To Nell,” her brother said, swinging his glass in her direction with a motion so lavishly sweeping that it almost caused the wine to slop over the rim.

“To Nell,” said Jack.

The three of them drained their wineglasses, and I tried vainly to suppress a surge of jealousy. I didn’t like it that Stephen had called Nell “kind.”

I walked slowly across the Turkish carpet to stand beside Jack on the opposite side of the desk from Stephen.

“Aren’t these wretches sharing their wine with you, Nell?” I asked. She was curled up in the wing chair, with her legs tucked under her.

“I didn’t want any,” she said. Her boneless posture, combined with the exotic tilt of her eyes, made her look like a sleepy kitten.

I shot a glance at Stephen and found him looking at me. His expression was not pleasant.

I thought perhaps I could do with some wine and asked Jasper to pour me a glass.

“I need one,” I said. “I have spent the last half hour drinking tea with Mama and the duke.” I let my gaze flick quickly from one cousin’s face to the next. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, deserting poor Aunt Fanny and Uncle Adam like that.”

Jasper placed the new glass of wine he had just poured on the desk in front of his chair, stood up, and gestured for me to take his seat, which I did. He stood beside me and filled up his own glass.

“Jack?” he said. “Stephen?”

Jack extended his glass for a refill.

“No, thank you, Jasper,” Stephen said.

He was sitting on the edge of the desk, close enough for me to reach out and touch him. I shot him a defiant look and drank down half of my port. The wine burned hot and strong in my throat and stomach.

“Whoa, Annabelle!” Jasper said, reaching out to curl his fingers around my wrist. “Na—
not
—good to drink it so fast.”

I looked up into his gray eyes, which were noticeably darkened by drink. He was close enough for me to smell the port on his breath. “Jasper,” I said affectionately, “I believe you’re foxed.”

I felt his fingers tighten around my wrist, and his head bent closer to mine.

Nell’s voice said practically, “Better let Annabelle go before you tip over and fall in her lap, Jasper.”

Jasper let go of my wrist and straightened up. “I am not foxed,” he said slowly and clearly.

“Just a trifle castaway, old fellow,” Jack said soothingly.

Jasper steadied himself on his feet. “Well,” he admitted thickly. “P’haps a trif-trifle.”

I looked around the room at the companions of my childhood and felt a sudden rush of love. I said, “It has been a long time since we were all together like this. It brings back so many happy memories.”

Everyone looked at me in surprise.

Nell said, “We aren’t children anymore, Annabelle. You can’t expect us to be as we were when we were younger.”

Her impatient voice annoyed me. I know that better than anyone, I thought. I didn’t understand why Nell seemed always to be in opposition to me these days.

Jack pushed away from the desk, stood up, drained his glass, and announced, “I’m for bed.”

“If I remain one minute longer in this chair, I will be here for the night,” Nell said as she uncurled herself. She stood up, then yawned, her hand coming up belatedly to cover her pink mouth. With her smallness and her ruffled curls she looked more like a kitten than ever.

Stephen was at her side. As I watched, he gently took her arm. “Come along, Nell, and I’ll see you to your room.”

She smiled up at him sleepily. “Thank you, Stephen.”

He smiled back.

I said to Jack, “I think Jasper may require some assistance.”

He turned to Jasper and carefully removed the half-full glass from between his fingers. “Come along, old fellow. Time you turned in.”

“I don’t want to,” Jasper said.

“It’s late,” Jack said. “Annabelle is tired.”

Jasper sighed and said mournfully, “I feel so good now, Jack, and I’ll feel so wretched in the morning.”

Jack chuckled. “Too true, my boy, too true.”

“You were all wonderful today,” I said from my seat behind the desk. “I cannot thank you enough for your assistance.”

“Anything for you, Annabelle darling,” Jack said lightly. He aimed Jasper in the direction of the door.

“Yes.” Jasper resisted Jack’s encouraging push for a moment, looked at me, and gave three distinct nods. “Anything for Annabelle.”

“Thank you both,” I said.

Nell gave me a stiff smile.

“Good night,” Stephen said. He didn’t look at me at all.

After they had all exited, I sat behind the desk and wondered whether I should remain in the library or seek the shelter of my own rooms. I had no doubt that Stephen would be back. The question was, did I want to face him tonight?

I steepled my fingers and regarded them with detached interest as I pondered this question. The fingers seemed a little out of focus, and I blinked to clear my vision. Then I blinked again. Finally I realized that I had indeed drunk the port too quickly.

I was going to have to face Stephen sooner or later, I thought. Perhaps I ought to get it over with tonight, while I was protected by this pleasant, wine-induced detachment. I propped my elbows on the desk, opened my fingers, and lowered my forehead into my hands. I shut my eyes.

Twenty minutes later I heard the library door click closed. Slowly I raised my head. Stephen was standing in front of the closed door, and across the room his gaze locked with mine. All the hazy fumes left by the wine burned instantly away with that blazing look. I had expected anger. I had not expected this.

“How could you have done this to me?”

The words were spoken with such intense, concentrated fury that they struck me like a blow. I sucked air into my lungs and tried to form a reply.

He began to walk toward me. “Giles is mine, isn’t he?”

I sat as still as a hunted animal trying to evade a predator. I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t.

He leaned his hands on the top of the desk, bending over them, bringing his face closer to mine.
“Isn’t he, Annabelle?”

I had imagined this scene between us so many times. How often had I pored over all the bitter, wounding words that I would say to him when finally we confronted each other about Giles.

Not a single one of those words came to my mind as I confronted the reality of Stephen’s burning blue gaze.

“Y-yes,” I managed to say in a low, shaking voice, “Giles is your son.”

He shut his eyes to hide them from me and straightened up, drawing away from me to the far side of the desk.

“Jesus.” He said the word as if it were a prayer for help. He thrust his hand through his hair in such a familiar gesture that it sent a shiver of pain through my heart.
“Jesus,
Annabelle!” There was a white line around his mouth, always a bad sign with Stephen.
“Why?”

His voice was anguished.

My stomach was in a knot. I had not thought our meeting would feel like this.

“I told you earlier that I did not know Gerald had misled you,” I said breathlessly. “I always assumed you knew the correct date of Giles’s birth, so when you didn’t write to me I assumed you didn’t care.”

“That is not what I meant,” Stephen said grimly. “What I want to know is”—his voice measured each word precisely—
”why ... did... you .. . marry ... Gerald?”

I gripped my hands together in my lap. “I was with child, Stephen! I had to marry
someone,
and Gerald was available.” I added, my own bitterness finally coming to the fore, “You were in Jamaica, if you recall.”

His eyes skewered me to my soul. “Did you know about the baby before I left?”

“No,” I said, “I did not.”

He turned abruptly away and went to the window. He stood there with his back to me, staring out into the dark. He had removed his coat and his neckcloth upstairs, and I could see the tension in his shoulders right through the fine white linen of his shirt. It was surprising how wide those shoulders had grown in the last five years.

He said without turning around, “And how did you account for Giles to Gerald?”

I replied in a steady voice, “Gerald thought that Giles was his.”

At that he swung around to face me. His hair had slipped forward over his temples, and his bare throat looked very brown against the opened collar of his shirt. Desire struck me, like an unexpected blow to the stomach, and hastily I lowered my eyes so that he shouldn’t see it.

“Gerald wasn’t stupid,” I heard him say forcefully. “He had to know you weren’t a virgin when you married him.”

“I told him it must be because I rode horses astride,” I said, my eyes focused on the jade paperweight that reposed on the corner of the desk blotter. “I told him I had never lain with a man.”

“Dear God,” he said.

We both knew very well that riding horses astride had not impaired my virginity.

He continued, “Did you tell him the baby was early?”

“Yes.”

“And he believed you?”

I said slowly, “I have always thought that he believed me.”

Stephen began to walk back toward the desk. I picked up the smooth round paperweight and sat back in my chair, holding the jade in my lap. My grip on it was so tight that my fingers felt cramped.

He sat in the wing chair that Nell had been sitting in earlier, and we regarded each other over the barrier of the desk. He repeated, emphasizing my use of the past tense,
“You have always thought.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back. “And what do you think now?”

“I was shaken when I learned that he hadn’t told you the truth about Giles’s birthdate,” I admitted.

The white line had faded from around his mouth. It was set now in pain, not in anger. “I went berserk when I learned you had married Gerald,” he said with difficulty. “I couldn’t understand it. I had no idea you were with child.”

“Surely it would have been a reasonable surmise,” I said.

“We had been safe for over a year,” he returned. “I just didn’t think ...”

“It was a shock to me, too,” I said grimly.

For some unfathomable reason, my monthly flow was more like a tri-monthly flow. My mother had told me she was the same, which was why I was her only child. I had worried sometimes that I would never have children, but there was no denying that my unusual biology had facilitated the sexual relationship between Stephen and me.

He said abruptly, “Gerald couldn’t have known. Good God, Annabelle, Giles was his heir! Gerald would never have accepted the child if he had had suspicions regarding his paternity.”

“If Gerald did indeed have suspicions, he also would have known at whose door to lay them,” I returned coolly. “He would have known that Giles was a Grandville.”

Stephen shut his eyes.

“After all, Stephen, what could he have done?” I continued remorselessly. “As it was, everyone simply thought that Gerald and I had slept together before our wedding day. Given Gerald’s reputation, that was not an unreasonable assumption for people to make. Gerald had far too much pride to hold himself up before his world as a duped husband. It was much easier for him to believe me when I said that the baby was early. He believed what he wanted to believe.” I shrugged again. “Gerald was so handsome and charming and amusing that most people didn’t realize how ruthlessly selfish he was at heart.”

“But you did.”

“Yes, I did. And I admit I took advantage of it. But Gerald got what he wanted, too, Stephen. He got my face.”

Silence. I stared at the green stone in my lap, smoothing my thumbs over its surface again and again.

When finally Stephen spoke it was in a quiet voice from which all anger had been expunged. “Annabelle, I am so sorry.”

I looked up. I said fiercely, “I will never forgive you for leaving me like that. Never.”

I stood up. I put the paperweight back on the desk. “I hate you,” I said, and walked out of the room.