The Secret Pearl (50 page)

But eleven months seemed like an eternity. He and Pamela had traveled for the whole of that time and had seen many places and met many people. It seemed like longer than a year since he had been in England.

He could remember the words she had said to him—how could he ever forget? And he could remember the passionate abandon with which she had given herself to him on that one night before he left her. He had relived that night many times
in his imagination. At the time he had believed that her love, like his own, would last for all eternity and even beyond. But now he was less sure.

Her love had not been of such long duration as his own. She had hated him and been repulsed by him—with good reason. It was only in those last days, when they had traveled together in search of Hobson’s grave, that she had grown comfortable with him, that they had developed a friendship and become lovers.

It was understandable under the circumstances that they had ended up in each other’s arms.

Perhaps for her there was no more to it than that. Genuine as her feelings had been at the time, perhaps they had faded in the days and weeks that had followed his departure. He must be prepared to find her cool and embarrassed by his visit.

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to be lulled by the motion of the carriage. He must not expect that she had thought of him every moment of every day—not consciously, perhaps, but deep down where feelings and meanings are. He must not expect that she had made him part of her dreams, both waking and sleeping. He must not expect that she was like him.

Fleur. He would see her the next day if she had not moved away.

At last. Ah, at last. The more than fifteen months since he had squeezed her hands and said good-bye and jumped into this very carriage to be taken away from her seemed longer than forever. Far longer.

F
LEUR WAS TEACHING READING
to a group of the youngest children while Miriam was conducting a geography lesson with the others.

But it was doubtful that anyone was learning a great deal, Fleur thought, smiling at one little boy to bring his attention
back to the lesson. There was an air of suppressed excitement in the room. It did not take a great deal to excite these children. They were to go on a nature ramble as soon as morning classes were over, taking their luncheon with them. It was the end of September, the last opportunity they would have for such an outing before the weather grew too cold.

She and Miriam were to accompany the children, as well as Daniel, who often came into the school to give a scripture lesson, and Dr. Wetherald, who had been showing a marked preference for Miriam in the past several months, though Miriam declared in her usual cheerful, forthright manner that they were just friends. Fleur had been interested to note, though, that her friend blushed when saying so.

There really was no need of so many adult chaperones, Fleur thought, but it was a treat for them, too, to get out into the fresh air and the countryside for the whole of an afternoon.

A knock on the door destroyed the last vestiges of the children’s attention. Fleur smiled and shook her head as the eyes of her group of children, and doubtless their minds too, followed Miriam to the door.

“Is Miss Hamilton here, please?” a polite young voice asked.

Fleur spun around on her chair.

“I am afraid there is no one of that name here, my dear,” Miriam said. “Are you …?”

“Pamela!” Fleur was up out of her chair and hurrying across the room, her arms outstretched. “Here I am. Oh, how tall you have grown, and how good it is to see you.” She bent down to hug the child and was instantly aware of a tall, dark figure standing some distance behind her, against the crested carriage.

“Papa says the air of the Continent has made me grow,” Lady Pamela said. “Tiny is in the carriage, Miss Hamilton. Wait until you see how she has grown. She is not tiny any longer.

And I was not sick coming across in the boat from France, though some of the ladies were.”

Fleur was stooped down in front of her. “I am very proud of you,” she said. “And are you on your way home?” If her life had depended upon it, she did not believe she could have shifted her gaze to the man standing a few feet away.

“Yes,” Lady Pamela said. “I can scarcely wait. But Papa wanted to come here first. I am not to tell why. I got to tell you about not being sick on the boat.”

Fleur laughed. And she was aware suddenly of the hum of voices behind her. She straightened up and turned.

“This is Lady Pamela Kent,” she said, taking the child by the hand and drawing her into the schoolroom. “She has just come from a year of traveling on the Continent. This is Miss Booth, Pamela, and all the children of the village.”

Lady Pamela smiled about her and moved closer to Fleur’s side. Miriam was curtsying—to Lady Pamela and beyond her.

“Good morning, your grace,” she said. “Children, make your bows and curtsies to his grace, the Duke of Ridgeway, if you please.”

And Fleur turned her head jerkily at last and met his eyes.

And she felt instant shock. He was taller than she remembered, his hair blacker, his eyes more piercingly dark, his nose more prominent, his scar more noticeable. All had been softened in memory. She felt an unexpected surging of the old fear.

She curtsied to him. “Your grace,” she murmured.

He inclined his head to her and to the room in general. “Good morning,” he said. “I hate to interrupt classes, but if I know young people and the way their minds work, I would guess that I am the most popular man in the village at the moment.”

Giggles from the girls, shouts of laughter from the boys.

Classes were at an end, it seemed. The girls were openly admiring Lady Pamela’s fashionable clothes and she was eyeing
them with shy interest. The boys were gazing at the duke in some awe. He was conversing politely with Miriam. And then Dr. Wetherald was there, and Daniel too, and Lady Pamela was gazing pleadingly up at her father.

“May I, Papa?” she was saying. “Oh, please, may I?”

“You are hardly dressed to go rambling,” he was saying with a smile.

“But I have other dresses,” she said. “I can change. Oh, please, Papa. Please. Miss Hamilton, may I go? Please?”

Miriam was looking very directly at her. It was Miriam, it seemed, who had suggested that Lady Pamela might enjoy joining the school ramble, though his grace must realize that they intended to be gone for several hours.

“Only Papa can say yes to that,” Fleur said, smiling at the eager, pretty face of her former pupil. “But I know you would have a great deal of fun.”

One minute later Lady Pamela was dashing for the carriage, having been granted the permission she had begged for.

“I am going to bring Tiny,” she shrieked. “May I, Miss Hamilton?”

Miriam was laughing. “I will take very good care of her, your grace,” she said. “And my brother and Dr. Wetherald will be with me to lend a hand. Three adults will be more than enough. We will not need your presence, Isabella. You had better stay to entertain his grace, since he will have a wait of several hours.”

Fleur opened her mouth to speak and closed it again.

It seemed that all the children found it impossible to speak in less than a shriek. The schoolroom sounded very quiet indeed when all of them and the three adults had set off on their way.

“Miss Booth is a kind lady,” the Duke of Ridgeway said from behind her shoulder. “Pamela will talk about this treat for weeks to come.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am glad for her, your grace.”

“Your grace?” he said quietly.

She glanced over her shoulder and fixed her eyes on his neckcloth.

“Can we go somewhere else?” he asked. “To your home, maybe?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is quite close by.”

She locked the school carefully and walked by his side along the street to her cottage. They did not touch or speak a single word.

S
HE LAID DOWN THE BOOKS SHE HAD BEEN CARRYING and watched him set his hat and gloves on a table. She turned and led the way into a square and cozy parlor, the pianoforte in one corner dwarfing the rest of the furniture in the room.

It was as he had thought, as he had led himself to expect. She was not really pleased to see him. She was awkward and embarrassed.

“Won’t you have a seat, your gr …?” Her hand was gesturing to a chair. She stopped and flushed.

So very beautiful. His breath had caught in his throat as soon as he had seen her stooping down to hug Pamela. More beautiful even than he had remembered. There was a poise about her, a sense of dignity that was more pronounced than it had been before.

He was very aware of his own ugliness, of his scar. And he had to consciously resist the impulse to turn sideways so that she would not see it.

“I shall ring for some tea,” she said, “and for something to eat. It is luncheontime. Doubtless you have been traveling since breakfast, have you? You must be hungry.”

“I am not,” he said quietly. “Are you happy, then? The
school seems to be a merry place. This is a cozy cottage, and larger than I expected.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him. “I am happy. I am doing what I like doing, and I am surrounded by my friends.”

“I am glad,” he said. “I had to come to make sure.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That was good of you. You must be very eager to be home, having been away so long.”

“Yes,” he said. “Very eager.”

And yet, he thought, he had not prepared himself well at all. He had thought he had. He had thought he was prepared for the worst. But his heart was a lead weight in his chest and he could not think of home or the winter ahead or of all the years after that.

Not without Fleur. Willoughby would not be home without her, or the future worth living. Not after a year of hope that he had tried to persuade himself was not hope at all.

She plumped a cushion on a chair quite unnecessarily and sat down, although he had not accepted her invitation to seat himself.

And she searched in her mind for something to say and kept her expression politely bright.

For a whole month—for eleven months—she had persuaded herself that he would not come, that he would forget about her, regret his hasty words of love to her. And yet for the past month she had expected him hourly and told herself and told herself that he would not come.

He was standing in her parlor, his hands behind his back, looking dark and morose, looking as if he wished to be anywhere else on earth but where he was.

He had come out of a sense of duty, because he had said he would come. Adam and his damnable sense of duty! She hated him again, wished him a million miles away.

“You have not been troubled by Brocklehurst or his family?” he asked her stiffly.

“No,” she said. “I have heard nothing of Matthew, though
rumor has placed him anywhere from South America to India. Cousin Caroline is here, but I believe she intends to visit her daughter for the winter.”

“And the Reverend Booth and his sister are still your friends,” he said. “I am glad.”

“Yes,” she said.

She wished with all her heart that Lady Pamela had not gone on the ramble. She wished that he could leave without further delay. She wished she could start living the rest of her life.

If only he had not allowed Pamela to go with the other children, he thought. If only there were some way he could leave immediately. He could take himself off to the village inn, he supposed, but if he suggested doing so, she would think that she had failed in hospitality.

“Thank you for the pianoforte,” she said. “I have not had a chance to thank you before. You intended it to be kept in the schoolroom, of course, but both Miriam and Daniel agreed that it would be safer here.”

“You know that it was a gift for you alone,” he said.

And he watched broodingly as she flushed and looked down at her clasped hands. Her knuckles were white with tension.

He remembered her hands touching him, moving lightly over the wounds on his side. He remembered her telling him he was beautiful. He remembered her telling him that she loved him. He felt an almost overwhelming sadness. He strolled toward the pianoforte and stood looking down at the keys. He depressed one of them.

“The tone is good?” he asked.

“It is a beautiful instrument,” she said. “It is my most prized possession.”

He smiled, and he glanced up at the vase standing on the pianoforte and the letter propped against it. He reached out and picked the letter up.

“This is my letter to you,” he said.

“Yes.” She got to her feet, flushing, and reached out a hand for it.

“Has it been there for almost a year?” he asked.

“Yes.” She laughed breathlessly. “It must have been. I am not a very tidy person.”

He glanced about him at the neat, uncluttered room. And he felt a quite unreasonable surging of hope.

“Why?” he asked her. “Why do you keep it there?”

She shrugged. “I … I don’t know,” she said foolishly. She could think of no reasonable explanation. How foolish he would think her. How humiliating if he should guess the truth. She smiled, her hand still outstretched for the letter. “I shall put it away.”