Married: The Virgin Widow (16 page)

He couldn’t have, of course. Yet Ford wished with all his heart he’d been there to try. But he had been abroad, pursuing an unexpected business opportunity that had promised to turn his fortunes around. It had come up so suddenly he hadn’t even had time to tell her he was going.

Laura carried on with her account in a flat, distant tone, as if she were reliving the whole ordeal. “When I arrived home, Cyrus was there. He’d got wind of Papa’s difficulties and had come to offer his assistance. I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life. I gave Mama some sort of excuse for accompanying Cyrus to Papa’s office, hoping I could persuade him to take me to you. When he told me where you’d gone, I broke down completely. The only reason I could imagine for you going to Spa was to gamble. I felt you had forsaken me.”

She began to weep again and Ford stroked her cheek,
whispering soothing words in spite of his own agitation. How had Cyrus found out he’d gone to Spa?

After a few moments, Laura mastered her emotions enough to go on. “When I burst into tears, Cyrus asked what the trouble was and promised to do everything in his power to assist me. I had no one else I could turn to for help. So I told him everything. He was shocked, of course, but full of sympathy. He agreed that if Papa’s suicide became known, it would kill my mother and ruin the family. But he had an idea how that might be prevented, if I would trust him.”

Understanding dawned on Ford. “Cyrus set fire to your father’s office?”

“He never told me so and I could not bring myself to ask, but I believe he must have. When my family were woken in the night with news of the fire, I was finally able to vent my horror and grief over what had happened. No one else was hurt in the fire, thank God. And no one suspected my father’s death was anything but an unfortunate accident. But after that, I began to be afraid what Cyrus might be capable of.

“My mother was quite shattered by my papa’s death and losing our home to his cousin. I had to protect her and the girls. If I’d been the son my parents needed, we would have been in no danger from the entail after Papa died. There would have been no need for him to enter the treacherous world of business, which destroyed him.”

“None of that was your fault!” Ford protested, though he knew too well how such feelings of guilt defied reason. He had long blamed himself for urging his widowed father to wed that grasping baggage, Helena.

“I know it must sound foolish.” Laura sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hand. “But now that I am free to tell you all this, I need you to understand why I acted as I did. I was grateful to Cyrus for protecting my family, yet I feared he might reveal the truth if I crossed him. My family had nowhere to go and Papa’s debts to repay. Cyrus said the only means he could devise to assist us was to wed me. He would provide my mother and sisters with a home and make me a settlement sufficient to repay Papa’s debts.”

So that was what had become of the money Ford had been so certain she’d frittered away. A barbed shaft of shame pierced deep into his conscience.

“I tried to think of some other way.” An echo of her desperation tightened Laura’s voice. “I begged Cyrus to make
you
a settlement instead, so we could marry and take care of my family. He told me you had changed your mind and hoped I might tire of our long engagement, releasing you from your obligation to me.”

“Damned lies, all of them!” The intense emotions building inside Ford ignited. “I was never inconstant in my feelings for you. How could Cyrus say such things about me? How could you believe them?”

“Do you think I wanted to?” Laura shrank from his outburst. “It was not your behaviour that persuaded me it must be true, but
my circumstances
. The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed that a man with your prospects and personal attractions could not possibly be content with a penniless girl from a family of no distinction.”

For so long Ford had been convinced she’d cast him aside with contempt. Despised him as unworthy of her
love. Even used him to further her ambitions for a more advantageous marriage. Everything he’d done in the past seven years, all his business accomplishments, the fortune he’d amassed, had been a way of proving to himself and the world—and especially to Laura—that he
did
deserve her.

What bitter irony that one of her motives for marrying his cousin had been the mistaken belief that she was unworthy of him. Understanding fell like gentle, quenching rain on the blaze of Ford’s anger.

“A penniless girl from a family of no great distinction?” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I never once thought of you that way. I swear it.”

How bitterly he regretted many far worse things he
had
thought of her since then.

“I wanted to believe that.” Laura clung to his hand as if she feared he might change his mind and disappear at any moment. “But after I received no answer to my letter breaking our engagement what was I to think? When I heard you’d sailed off to the Indies, I thought it proved the truth of everything Cyrus had said.”

What had made her doubt him? Perhaps the shock of her father escaping
his
responsibilities at the end of a rope, foisting those burdens on to her shoulder?

“We both made mistakes.” Somehow the concealment of darkness made it easier to admit. “Both erred in our judgement of each other. Then we had seven long years for bitterness to fester and resentment to harden. Even with all that, we were not entirely able to forget what we once meant to one another. Were we?”

“I tried to forget.” She sounded weary of the effort it had cost her. “When you returned, the last thing I
wanted to be reminded of was the man you’d once been and the feelings I’d had for you. Yet I resented that you had changed. Perverse of me, I know.”

Forgetting she could not see him, Ford shook his head. A barely audible chuckle rustled in his throat. “I love perverse women.”

“Including this one?” Laura sounded hesitant, perhaps afraid, to ask.

What could he say? His feelings for her were so intense and volatile, so raw and baffling. Could he reliably give them as simple a name as love?

But he sensed it was what she needed to hear, so he pulled her close and whispered, “
Only
this one.”

Ford still loved her. Or he had learned to love her again. Perhaps a little of both.

During the difficult days after her mother’s death, Laura held his reassurance in her heart. It comforted her to believe Mama had known the truth all along. Perhaps, content in the certainty that her elder daughters had found security and happiness at last, she had been able to let go of her feeble hold on life and slip away.

But she did not slip away unnoticed. Ford made certain of that.

“What a magnificent funeral cortège.” Susannah peered out of the dark-curtained window of the mourning coach she shared with her sisters, as the procession set off to St Botolph’s. “There must be thirty carriages. I didn’t think Mama knew that many people.”

Wearing black crape gowns and bonnets swathed with veils, the Penrose sisters rode immediately behind the hearse. Four horses, draped in black velvet with silver-trimmed harness, drew their carriage. Ford and
Sidney rode in the next coach with the other pallbearers. Those included the Marquis of Bramber, the local magistrate and Hawkesbourne’s butler, Mr Pryce. Some people might consider it an odd assortment, but to Laura it seemed fitting. Her mother had never cared about titles or fortunes, treating everyone from countess to chambermaid with the same gentle courtesy.

Dear Mr Pryce had looked after them all as best he could after Cyrus died, when money was so very scarce and conditions at Hawkesbourne far below their former standards. He could have got a better position elsewhere without any difficulty. Laura suspected his devotion to her mother had prevented the butler from deserting them. Yet she might never have considered asking him to be a pallbearer if Ford had not suggested it.

That was only one of the many things, great and small, Ford had seen to since her mother’s death. Laura could not imagine what she would have done without him.

“It is all very splendid.” Belinda raised her handkerchief to her brimming eyes. Perhaps because she was most like their mother in temperament, she had taken it hardest. “Sidney told me Ford hired a great many mutes and that the church will be ablaze with candles. It comforts me, somehow, to see a fuss made over Mama at last.”

Laura agreed completely.

“Poor Papa’s funeral was such a small, hasty affair,” added Belinda. “I always regretted that, though it could not be helped at the time.”

Any sort of Christian rites was more than her father had been entitled to, Laura reflected with a pang of conscience over her part in concealing the manner of his death.

“There could be twice this many mourners,” said
Susannah, “and we still would not have to worry about running out of food for them. Ford bade Cook spare no expense and she took him at his word, bless her. She said she would make the refreshments worthy of a duchess, though she would far rather cook for a wedding than a funeral.”

“Ford has been as kind to Mama in death as in life.” Laura murmured, more to herself than to her sisters.

“Not only to Mama.” Belinda reached for Laura’s hand. “I cannot thank you enough for sending him to bring me word in Brighton, when you most needed him to console you. No one could have been more sympathetic or considerate. I don’t know how I would have borne it otherwise.”

Laura squeezed her sister’s fingers. Beneath the pall of her grief, a sense of sweet, long-denied fulfilment uplifted her. Hard as she found it to believe, Ford’s actions convinced her of the love he had professed. Now with that assurance, she could take the frightening but wondrous step of allowing herself to return his feelings without reserve.

The time had come to destroy the weapon she’d kept for her defence. A weapon that now threatened her newfound happiness.

As Ford stared at the portrait of his cousin on the dining-room wall, he wished Cyrus was standing there alive and he had a weapon in his hand. All the anger he’d once felt for Laura now found its rightful target. Unfortunately, Cyrus was beyond the power of human judgement.

Pryce had just filled Ford’s cup with coffee. Now he asked, “Is there anything else you require, my lord.”

“There is.” Ford pointed toward his cousin’s portrait.
“I want that taken down at once and burned. Find something else to put up in its place. Where is the portrait of my grandmother that used to hang there?”

“In the west attic, I believe, sir.” Pryce did not appear surprised at Ford’s order or reluctant to carry it out. “I will have it brought out at once and restored to its rightful place…with pleasure.”

The almost bloodthirsty relish in the butler’s voice prompted Ford to ask, “Did you have any idea how my cousin was treating her ladyship?”

“
Mistreating
, I believe you mean, my lord?” Pryce stared up at the portrait of his former master. “I swear I never saw him raise his hand or voice to her, but then he always kept very private. And her ladyship was good at concealing any sign of trouble. I suppose she didn’t want to worry her family. All the same, I felt there was something not right.”

Somehow, the butler’s subtle intimation of trouble made the truth even more real to Ford.

“I’ve often regretted not saying something to him…or to her ladyship.” Abruptly Pryce met Ford’s gaze. “I did not keep silent because I was afraid of losing my place—at least not on my own account. I feared it would only make things worse for the mistress and for Mrs Penrose, God rest her soul.”

“Do not reproach yourself.” Ford drained his coffee. It was not half as bitter as his regrets. “You acted with the best of motives in an intolerable situation. Her ladyship told me what sterling service you rendered her family after my cousin’s death.”

Pryce did not seem convinced. “If that will be all, my lord, I shall see about removing that painting.”

After the butler had gone, Ford found his eyes drawn back to his cousin’s portrait, almost against his will. Those stony features and guarded eyes seemed to ask if he was so much better a husband to Laura. Perhaps he’d never struck her, but that did not mean he hadn’t hurt her.

In spite of the love he’d once professed for her, he’d been despicably quick to brand her a heartless fortune hunter and spend seven years blaming her for every ill that had befallen him. When his opportunity had finally come to learn the truth and seek some reconciliation, what had he done? Stormed into her life with veiled accusations, predatory advances and threats to evict her family.

An empty threat! Ford sprang from his chair and strode to the window, turning his back on the painting. he’d never had any intention of removing the Penrose family from Hawkesbourne. It had been leverage to induce Laura to accept his proposal. That kind of thing was common practice in business.

Though he could no longer see his cousin’s face, Ford could hear Cyrus’s voice in his thoughts. This had not been business, it reminded him. And it did not matter that Ford knew his threat was hollow. Laura had believed her family was in as much danger as they’d been seven years ago. She had felt forced into marriage once again by another domineering, suspicious and potentially dangerous man.

So many incidents from the past months rose to reproach Ford as he interpreted his words and actions from Laura’s point of view. She must have thought him no better than his cousin. Now he began to suspect she was right.

Laura seemed to have found it in her wounded heart
to forgive him. But Ford feared the day might come when he would have to answer for his actions.

The soft tap on her bedroom door sent a jolt of alarm through Laura. She knew it must be Ford, of whom she no longer had the slightest fear. What she feared was the brittle, yellowed slip of paper in her hands—the one she’d attempted to destroy several times since her mother’s funeral. There was a small tear on one side, where she had tried to rip it to pieces. The opposite corner was charred where she had held it over a candle flame. Each time, her conscience had intervened at the last instant.

“Is that you, Ford?” she called, not because she had any doubt, but to give her time to return the paper to its hiding place.

Lifting her Bible from the bed beside her, Laura let its pages fall open. Her gaze fell on a familiar verse of scripture.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

That had certainly been true for her and Ford, she reflected as she slipped the marriage certificate back between the pages. Only by sharing painful truths about the past had their hearts been set free from prisons of secrecy and mistrust to rediscover love.

But this secret was different. Laura slammed the Bible shut and stuffed it into the drawer of her bedside table. It would shame Ford and rob him for ever of the title and estate that mattered so much to him. If all that was not bad enough, it would poison the few happy memories he had of his early life and perhaps destroy his newfound willingness to trust any woman.

“Why?” Ford called back in a bantering tone. “Were you expecting someone else? May I come in?”

Destroying that paper would not change what had happened, Laura reminded herself as she flew to her dressing table and picked up her hairbrush. Nor would it remove
all
evidence. For the rest of her life, she would be dogged by the fear that someone else might discover and expose the truth.

And what about the rightful heirs to Hawkesbourne? A distant relative, perhaps, living in need while Ford had a comfortable fortune of his own? It had been so much easier to justify keeping this secret when her family’s welfare depended upon it and when she was only
concealing
evidence, not destroying it.

“Of course.” She strove to keep her voice from betraying the tension quivering inside her. “I am almost ready. You can help me choose which dress to wear.”

They had been invited for a quiet family dinner with the Crawfords at Lyndhurst, one of the few social events condoned during mourning.

“How much difference can there be between one black gown and another?” Ford stole up behind her, lifting her hair off her shoulders to bestow a warm kiss upon each. “I am certain your mother would not wish you and your sisters to go about in black for months on end on her account.”

“Neither do I.” Laura nuzzled her cheek against his hair. “But we would not want the neighbours to think we have ceased to grieve for her so soon.”

“Indeed.” Ford tilted his head to cast a doting gaze at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. “Still I vow that once you are out of mourning I will buy you
a new gown in every color of the rainbow and half a dozen in as many shades of pink as can be found.”

“Half a dozen pink gowns? You will spoil me.” Catching hold of his hand, Laura pressed it to her cheek. “As long as I have you, I would be content with one old black dress and a single gold ring.”

Ford gently pressed his finger to the tip of her nose. “That would be a crime against beauty. And what is wrong with a man spoiling his wife a little, pray? You are long overdue, by my reckoning. But, come, put on your black gown and pin up your hair before I lose all self-control and whisk you off to bed instead of to Lyndhurst.”

With a chuckle, Laura bounced up from her chair, trying as hard as she could to forget about the ominous slip of paper concealed between the pages of her Bible.

After she had dressed and done her hair, they drove over to Lyndhurst. There they enjoyed a pleasant dinner with Belinda, Sidney and Susannah, who had been visiting with the Crawfords since their mother’s funeral.

“Have you had word from your mother and sister?” Laura asked Sidney. “Do they find Bath to their liking?”

He had been clever to suggest the trip so that Mrs Crawford and her daughter would not have their social lives curtailed while Lyndhurst was in mourning.

“Very much.” Sidney looked vastly pleased with himself. “We’ve had several letters from Mama. She writes that they have made a number of new acquaintances, including one or two gentlemen she thinks might do very well for Arabella.”

“Reading between the lines,” added Belinda, “I believe Mrs Crawford may have an admirer, too.”

“Excellent news all around!” Laura raised her glass. “Romance seems to be contagious lately.”

“I wish I could catch a fevered case of it.” Susannah sighed. “If I could find a beau half as agreeable as my new brothers, I should be very well satisfied.”

Ford struck a pose like some handsome actors did to let audiences admire their looks. “I suppose there might be a few fellows around who are
half
as agreeable as Sidney and me. But to find any of those who are half as handsome would be a rare stroke of luck indeed.”

Susannah made a face at him. “If I thought for a moment you were serious, I would say marriage has made you abominably vain. Does Laura spend all her time telling you how wonderful you are?”

“Not
all
my time!” Laura entered into the spirit of their banter. “Never more than six or seven hours a day.”

“Is that all?” Sidney winked at Belinda. “My darling wife spends at least ten singing my praises.”

Belinda smiled back at him. “I could very easily and not stretch the truth a jot.”

Ford set down his wine glass after taking a deep draught. “I am pleased to hear it. That must mean none of your wedding day worries amounted to anything.”

“What worries might those be?” asked Sidney. “Is there anything I should know?”

Laura shook her head. “Before the ceremony, we had a little chat about the joys of marriage. Belinda was worried she might not be able to make you happy. I assured her there was no danger of that unless she called off the wedding.”

“Quite right. She has made me as happy as a man can be and more so every day.” Sidney managed to tear his
eyes off his wife long enough to shift a glance at Ford and Laura. “Speaking of which, part of the reason we invited you here this evening is to share some news that has redoubled our happiness.”

“Oh, Binny!” Laura glanced from the dinner her sister had scarcely touched to Belinda’s radiant face. “You have a baby on the way? This is happy news indeed!”

Decorum brushed aside, she and Susannah scrambled from their seats to envelop their sister in joyful embraces. Meanwhile, Ford offered Sidney hearty congratulations and the two men drank a toast to the happy news.