My Sweet Folly (63 page)

“Oh,” Folie said. “Yes. I—yes.” She blushed. “I see.”

“How love will make a fool of a man,” Robert remarked.

“I do not think he made that ‘mistake’ out of love!” Folie said indignantly.

“No,” Robert said. “But perhaps if he’d been less in love with his wife, he’d not have been so beef-witted as to knuckle to the likes of Inman just to keep her from finding out.”

“I suppose she’ll forgive him,” Folie said, with a small frown. “Even now.”

“Well, of course,” Robert said dryly. “Anyone but Dingley could see that. Which is why he’s a beef-wit.”

“And I suppose you would shout it to the whole town rather than submit to blackmail, if you made the same mistake.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “I do not intend to make that particular blunder, my dear.”

“Good,” Folie said. She swept a regal glance about the carriage. “Perhaps you have all learned a salutary lesson from Sir Howard’s distress.”

“Distress!” the conjurer said. “I should call it torture, myself.”

“Purest agony,” Robert said.

“I cannot even imagine the pain, ma’am,” Lander added humbly.

“Yes, and I happen to know that you are all three incorrigible, irredeemable frauds,” she replied with a snort. “You need not suppose you can bamboozle
me!”

Cambourne House seemed silent, almost unfamiliar, as if everything that had happened since she had left for Lady Melbourne’s party had changed the house—and herself—in some irrevocable way. No one answered the door when they walked up the front steps. All of Lander’s hefty footmen were gone. Entering in the marbled hall, with its white pilasters and elegant chandelier, Folie felt like a child in a bedraggled party dress, wandering in off the street.

She was not even certain, suddenly, if she was quite welcome here. Lander had not left the carriage with them, but gone on to make his report in Bow Street. Folie paused as Robert pulled the front door closed behind them.

“Gracious,” she said, with a little laugh. And then felt exceedingly foolish.

They both stood awkwardly, as if someone ought to tell them what to do next.

He looked down at her from beneath his dark eyelashes. “You must be tired,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Though I vow if I laid my head down I could not close my eyes. I must write a letter to Melinda. Or—or perhaps I should—I suppose—’’ She could not seem to reach the tail of the sentence. “Is it safe for me to return to her now?’’

“You wish to?” he asked.

“I wish to see her as soon as I may.”

“I’ll take you there,” he said. “If that is what you would like.”

Folie looked about at the staircase and the hall as the echo of his voice died away. She ought to be exhausted— she was—and yet the sun was coming up.

“We are free, Robert,” she said wonderingly. “How strange it seems!”

He had a fleeting way of smiling at her—she had always felt it, but just now recognized it as a particular smile, a strange tender amusement on his satanic features. The way a demon would look, she thought, if one ever caught it smiling with affection. “Yes,” he said. “We’re free.”

“I don’t know what we will do with ourselves.”

“Take you to Melinda. Go and get your things.”

“Now?” Folie felt consternation. “But—you are not too fatigued?”

“I’m no more ready to sleep than you. There’s nothing to stop us. Besides, after ruining her season, the least I can do is present her with an excellent
parti
as a suitor.”

“A suitor! Who might that be?”

“What do you think of Lander?”

“Lander?” Folie squeaked. “I beg your pardon! He will not do!”

“But I owe him a favor,” he said.

“A favor! That is nothing to the point. I’m very sorry, but it is quite out of the question. I’ve never wished for her to marry an earl, or a marquess, or any such thing as that, but I cannot countenance her marriage to a man so far beneath her.”

“He seems perfectly gentlemanly.”

“Perhaps so, but what are his prospects? His connections? Why—where would he take her to live? In Bow Street? Has he spoken to you about it, or is this some absurd scheme of yours?”

“I am her guardian, you know. I think Lander might do very well.”

“She will not have him!” Folie said.

“You don’t think she ought to be the one to decide?”

“That is precisely what I mean. Melinda is far more of a stickler for her position than I am, I warn you! Why, she would not even consider him! It is very kind of you to think so much of Lander, and I’m sure he’s done more than we can ever repay, but—’’

“Would it help any if he were the youngest son of the Marquess of Hursley?”

She pursed her lips at him. “Robert Cambourne, you are a very odd man.”

“Not half so peculiar as you, my dear.”

“I am not at all peculiar. I am perfectly ordinary.”

“Yes, you and your man-eating ferret. And since you see fit to pucker your lips in that provocative fashion, madam, I rescind my offer to convey you to Melinda. You may convey yourself upstairs directly into bed.”

“Oh?” Folie looked at him warily.

He smiled again, in that diabolical way.

“Robert,” she said, taking a step backwards.

The hint of laughter in him vanished at her move. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat as the moody demon seemed to rise in a black scowl.
 
“No. Never mind. Get your things,” he said in a flat tone. “We’ll go to Melinda.”

Folie hesitated, bewildered by him. It was as if he went away, retreated into some far place inside himself where she could never go. And suddenly she wished to do the same herself. He made her angry, this way in which he enticed and teased her and drew her to him with the promise of warmth, and then as suddenly, for no reason she could ever seem to fathom, pulled back into his bleak solitude.

She turned away. She meant to walk up the stairs, her back stiff—she could lock herself up, too; she could lock her bedroom door, if he supposed he had any access to it. She went as far as the foot of the stairs.

Then she turned, her hand resting on the newel post. “Robert,” she said, staring at a corner of the hall, “we are married, but we need not live as man and wife. I find it very difficult to bear, this—this way you have. Of making me feel wanted—and then leaving me.”

“Then don’t go away from me,” he said angrily, turning aside. “Don’t step back away from me.”

Folie watched him standing with his eyes fixed on the floor like a sullen schoolboy. “I only did because—” She made a sound of despair. “I do not really understand it. Robert, I have not the nature to resist when I do not wish to do so. When you do that—when you go away just as...” She took a deep breath. “It is—humiliating.”

“I know,” he muttered. “Believe me.”

She sank down upon the step, resting her forehead in her hand. “I suppose we will never understand one another. I suppose we will be like the Dingleys. You will find some consuming interest—keeping prize red hens, or translating Hindu texts into Greek tragedies—and I’ll play the pianoforte very badly and stare out of windows.” She swallowed. “Only...only there won’t be any Robert far away for me to write to, and dream about—’’ Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard again. “Because you are the only man I’ve ever loved. Or ever will. Even if you are as beef-witted as Sir Howard. Perhaps even stupider.” She sniffed. “In my opinion.”

“Never worth a dog’s damn,” he said mockingly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, fumbling for a handkerchief she could not find. “That made my blood boil, when he said that! But what verily makes me want to scream is that you listen to it.” She snatched the linen that he held out to her and blew her nose.

With an effort, she recovered her composure. He said nothing, only stood there with that constrained, persecuted air of a gentleman with an unhappy female—as if she were impossible to comprehend and her presence was barely tolerable. It was maddening, Folie thought fiercely, when
he
was the one who had upset their friendly accord for the most inconsequential reason. She had stepped back away from him. Whatever did he make of that, the silly man? That she could not suffer him to touch her?

The thought struck her. What had they said about Phillippa? That his wife had not treated him kindly. That she was a devil’s daughter. Or an angel. Never once, in his letters, had he mentioned her name with affection—never mentioned her at all—or even hinted at her existence.

“I am not Phillippa, you know,” Folie said, crumpling the handkerchief tightly in her fingers. “Whatever she was—whatever happened—”

He looked around at her sharply. “I know that you aren’t,” he said. As he looked at her, his tone softened a little. “I know that.” He turned away again, but she could see his face reflected in the big gilded mirror on the wall. “Your letters—knowing you were there, just knowing you were there—” His mouth twisted wryly. “In Toot-above-the-Batch, with the geese and river and the white-faced cattle—” He shrugged.

“It was a difficult marriage,” she said, a faint question.

“It was hell.” He took a deep breath. “But perhaps I understand her a little better now.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. Folie waited.

He shook his head. “You don’t realize, do you? About her.”

“Realize what?”

He shook his head again. His jaw was tight, as if he were imprisoning the words. He looked about at the walls and ceiling like a man searching for a way out of a locked room. “I don’t want you to understand,” he said at last, his voice breaking.

Folie rose. She went to him, reaching up to touch his cheek. She ran her fingers along the dark stubbled line of his jaw, felt the muscles set hard. “Then do not tell me,” she said quietly. “Perhaps it’s better so. Only remember—when you get lost in her dark places...remember that you have a way home.”

He closed his eyes. She could feel a tremor in his jaw. “Folly,” he said roughly. “You love me, Folly?”

She took a step back. “Oh,” she said, nodding to herself, “he really is a stupid man!” She looked up at him over the handkerchief pressed to her nose. “What I should like to know is whether you love
me!”
she said flippantly, to prevent herself from breaking down into nonsensical tears. “But do not put yourself out by saying so, Robert Cambourne. You warned me once that you could never fall in love by letter!” She turned her back on him. As well as possible in a wrinkled and tattered ivory gown, with all the bows untied and most of the seed pearls missing, she flounced up the stairs.

She did not know what time it was when she woke, but it was certainly afternoon, for the sun shone in the windows she had forgotten to cover. Her eyes felt gritty. And she was cradled in a warm embrace.

It seemed to take a moment to sort that out. She was not accustomed to waking in a man’s arms. In fact, she could not recall that it had ever happened before. For a time she lay there, hardly breathing, just feeling the long contour of heat pressed to her back. His bare arm lay over her shoulder. In his hand was a note, turned so that she could just read the words aslant.

Folie squinted as she scanned it. A slow smile grew on her lips. Carefully, so as not to wake him, she slipped out of bed and took a sheet of paper from the desk. She wrote her reply.