Marjorie Farrell

The rain fell all of April, washing away the gravel from the drive, plastering the daffodils on the grass and running down the windows of Moorview in rivers, making it almost impossible for Margaret to see anything, were she really looking. She had been staring out the library windows, watching the rain, for days now. Her father had been locked away in his bedroom, drinking brandy steadily, and staring at the pattern of his Aubusson carpet as blankly as his daughter stared out the window.

It had been over a month since her mother’s funeral, and Margaret thought that it must be raining so to make up for her inability to weep one tear for her mother. Instead of crying, she was eating. Her dresses got tighter and tighter, although at sixteen and a half she was well past the age of puppy fat. But her need, beyond appetite, was to fill herself out, to cover with flesh the emptiness that was always there, waiting.

After the funeral, when all the neighbors had come back to the house, Margaret could think of nothing but the food. She swallowed blancmange and cakes and said “Thank you for coming” automatically to each one who came up to console her.

“Now you will have to take care of your father,” almost every neighbor murmured to her. She had been imagining the same. She saw long evenings of father and daughter together, playing cards or reading after dinner, and her father coming to her for advice on estate business just as he had done with her mother.

Only he does not want my comfort, she thought as she watched the spring rain pour down. He sits and drinks and admits no one. But he will have to come out soon, she said to herself, as she reached for another comfit, and then he will realize he needs me.

The marquess did eventually emerge, although it took another month. He stopped drinking, at least during the day. But he did not seem to need Margaret. At the breakfast table he would ask her plans for the day, and warn her that she was growing a little plump and did she really want that second muffin? He would tell her his plans for the day, which usually included a long ride over the moors in the afternoon, ending at the squire’s house, where he would begin the drinking which ended at home late at night. He never asked her for advice, he never invited her to ride with him, and he seemed to have nothing to say to her. She had always felt loved by both her parents, but had never realized what a large part her mother had played in conveying to her the inarticulate caring of her father. Her mother had been the heart of the household, mediating disagreements and explaining her father to Margaret and Margaret to her father. Now there was no one to do this. The marquess was so lost in his own grief he could not see hers. So Margaret packed it down with an extra muffin or second serving of trifle, and tried to pretend no great loss had occurred.

The spring and summer went by and Margaret rode and walked and socialized within the prescribed limits. She began to consult with Mrs. Tabor, the housekeeper, and made some decisions of her own, since her father seemed willing to leave it all in her hands.

By late September Margaret could see that her father was beginning to come back to life. The summer had lulled both of them, but the autumn winds seemed to make him restless and she hoped he would at last turn to her for companionship. What he did, instead, was to leave abruptly for London. He had hardly looked at her when he told her of his plans. “Now that the harvesting is done, Meg, I have little to do and am a bit restless. I will stay with your great-aunt, and renew some old acquaintances. Of course, since I am in mourning,” he added almost as an afterthought, “I will not really take part in the Little Season, but a few days at Brooks’s will do me good.” And so he was gone the next morning, leaving her behind to face who knew how many weeks even more alone than she had been.

But when he returned, she wished for isolation again, for he came back with the news that he was engaged to be married. “And you will love her, Meg, just as I do,” he said, looking more alive than he had in months. “We will wait the full year, of course, and you will not be able to meet her until the spring. She is Lady Evelyn Lovell, and a widow, so she knows what it is to have lost someone.”

All Margaret could say to him was a stunned, “I wish you happy, Father.” And for the next month she went around saying to herself: But my mother’s wish was to have him happy. She would not want him to be alone. But he’s
not
alone, he has
me
. And she would pull down her battered copy of Shakespeare and turn to
Hamlet
and read his soliloquy, screaming inside her head: “Oh bloody, bawdy villain; remorseless treacherous lecherous
villain!
…oh, vengeance.” There was nowhere else to turn besides that young man who had also lost a parent, and to dramatic words which alone seemed to mirror her feelings. Squire Hawkes and his lady, indeed all their neighbors, seemed relieved, if not exactly pleased at the news. They knew the marquess would not have survived long at the rate he had been drinking, and hoped his new lady would serve as a mother for his daughter.

* * * *

The winter passed slowly. The marquess was drinking less, and gave more of his attention to the estate. He made one trip down to London, remaining longer than he had planned because of the weather. Margaret rode and walked whenever she could. A great restlessness seemed to have taken over from the lethargy of the summer. Her appetite diminished, and by the spring she had lost her excess weight, and her clothes were fitting her again.

The wedding was private, attended only by Margaret and Lady Lovell’s father and mother. Lady Evelyn was originally from Hampshire, so Margaret and her father traveled down in April.

Margaret had hoped her father’s bride would not be a “wicked” stepmother, and wished she would turn out to be a motherly woman who would treat Margaret as the daughter she had never had.

Lady Lovell was neither. She was almost too young to fit the category of stepmother, and not matronly in the least. She was only twelve years older than Margaret, and completely infatuated with the still-young-looking marquess, and he with her. If Margaret had imagined this marriage would help settle her father and enable him to turn some of his affection and attention on his daughter, she could not have been more wrong. He had eyes only for his fiancée
.

She stood dazed at the wedding, and watched her father passionately kiss his new wife after the ceremony. At the small wedding breakfast, the marquess, unwilling to let Lady Evelyn look at anyone but himself, did not talk to the rest of the guests. Margaret sat near them, embarrassed and lost, pulling rolls apart with her fingers and leaving rolled lumps of dough on her plate.

She was returned to Northumberland in her father’s coach, the newlyweds having decided to spend a part of the Season in town as their honeymoon. By the time the marquess and his new wife returned to Northumberland, Margaret had had several new dresses made up and attended the first assembly since her mother’s death. Her father was pleased that she seemed to have at last put her mourning aside. “She was quite close to her mother, you know,” he told Evelyn, “and one of the reasons I married again was to provide her with another woman for companionship and guidance.”

“And what were the other reasons?” teased his new wife.

The marquess bent down to kiss the nape of her neck. “To be able to do this…and this…and this. And to keep myself from going mad with grief,” he added, and the marchioness pulled his head down to her lips.

It was unfortunate that Margaret had not overheard their conversation as she passed by the morning room that day, but only saw another intimate scene, with her besotted father making a fool of himself with a woman as unlike her mother as he could have found. The marquess was not the strong man Margaret had fantasized him to be throughout her childhood. She had never seen how much her mother had encouraged and supported him. So her feelings of being abandoned were all the stronger, since it seemed to her that in the space of a year she had lost both parents and was herself becoming more and more peripheral to her old life.

* * * *

“You are coming to the Whitmarkes’ dinner dance?” queried Penelope, Margaret’s close friend.

“Yes, I think we are all attending,” replied Margaret, with little interest in her voice.

“I hear that Julia’s second cousin will be there. He is from the Irish side of the family, you know. I have heard he is quite charming, and mean to have him dance with me. Even his name is romantic. Dillon Breen.”

* * * *

Mr. Dillon Breen lived up to Penelope’s expectations. Although he was not much above medium height and rather slender, there was a certain way he had with women that made them feel small and protected. His blond hair and blue eyes were set off wonderfully by his impeccably tailored dark blue coat. Not one lady noticed that his cuffs were a bit shiny and his pumps worn when at the receiving end of his wit and charm. He had every woman in the room eager to dance with him except one.

“Who is that sitting in the corner?” he asked Mrs. Whitmarke, piqued that the young lady with the curly chestnut hair had not tried to get his eye or fluttered around him like the others.

“That is the Lady Margaret Ashton.”

“And is the Lady Margaret always so dull?”

“Margaret is usually great fun, but her mother died last year and her father recently remarried, so she has only started socializing again this spring. I daresay she is a bit dazed by the changes in her life.”

Breen felt a thrill of sympathy, for he had lost his own mother at an early age, and he guided his cousin so that when their dance ended they were next to Margaret and Mrs. Whitmarke had to introduce them.

“May I have a dance later this evening, Lady Margaret?” asked Breen. “Or is your card already filled?”

“No. I mean, no, my card is not filled,” replied Margaret, flustered that the most-sought-after gentleman at the dance was gazing at her quite intently.

“Then I may have a dance later?” Breen smiled.

“Why, yes, I suppose so.” And Margaret watched as he walked off without further conversation, seemingly intent on whatever confidence Mrs. Whitmarke was conveying. He did return, however, and Margaret blushed as he claimed her hand.

“You are from Ireland, I believe?”

“The family is, as you can tell by the name, but my grandfather left years ago. I was born in Scotland.”

“So you are a Scotsman?”

“Ah, just because a man is born in a stable, that doesn’t make him a horse,” replied Breen in an exaggerated brogue. Margaret laughed
.

“There, now I know why I wished to dance with you. When you laugh, you are quite the prettiest girl here.”

Margaret, having lifted her face up in amusement, lowered it immediately. She could not, for anything, face those blue eyes looking so hard into her own.

Breen moved his hand from her back and lightly caressed the back of her head so quickly that no one could have seen it, and Margaret wondered if she had imagined it. But she wasn’t imagining the feelings that flooded her. She could have melted away at his feet at that moment, so starved had she been for any affection.

They finished their dance in silence, and were stiffly polite to one another in saying their thank-yous. But Breen had felt that brief moment of surrender and decided that his visit to his English cousins might be more rewarding than he had anticipated.

* * * *

For the next few weeks Margaret was in a state she had never experienced before. It was as though she had been struck down with a palsy, for whenever she thought of Breen, she trembled. And whenever she saw him, at Penelope’s picnic, or on the varied excursions Julia arranged, she quite literally found herself shaking. The sight of the back of his golden head made her heart lift. All her energy, all her attention, was concentrated upon him: would he be at the squire’s for dinner; would she see him riding tomorrow?

She knew she loved him after that first night. How could she not? He was so bright, so warm, so utterly charming, and he had, with that one brush of his hand, touched something in her that no one else had.

Breen knew also. He was well aware of his ability to wreak havoc in a young woman’s breast, but his charm was not cultivated; it was a natural part of him. He could no more turn it off than stop breathing. And he was genuinely interested in Margaret. He had felt protective of her from the first, because of her situation. She was not precisely neglected by her father, but certainly left alone to her own devices. When Breen met the new marchioness, he could understand why. And he could sympathize with a man’s reaction to the loss of a beloved wife. When his mother had died, he had gone a bit crazy himself, and he found himself, at eighteen, involved with another man’s wife, without even knowing how it had come about.

The more he saw of Margaret, the more he was attracted to her. The fact that she was in love with him played no small part in his growing interest. Nor the fact that she was the daughter of a marquess. He was not sure he was ready to settle down yet, but if he ever was…why not with Margaret? And so there was never a time when they were together that he didn’t pay her some special attention: smiling intimately into her eyes, causing her to blush when he stood a bit closer than was allowed and their hands brushed, and holding her a little longer than was necessary when he helped her down from her horse.