A Certain Magic (19 page)

***

Two weeks later, Alice was wondering if such a feeling were not perhaps too unrealistic. It was hard to cope with pain, she was finding, by telling oneself that the joy preceding it had made it worthwhile.

Pain, simply stated, she was discovering anew, was painful.

At least she was happy that she had been able to get away from London. And happy that she had had a home in Bath to return to and a whole circle of friends glad to see her and eager to inquire after the health of her brother’s family and to hear the news she brought from town.

She resumed her frequent visits to the Pump Room to talk with friends and to stroll indoors when the weather was bad. She visited the library and the shops on Milsom Street and the Abbey and the Upper Rooms and Sidney Park, usually with Andrea Potter, and entered once more into the lives of her friends, seeking to find forgetfulness of her own life.

Andrea teased her about Sir Clayton Lansing. “He was like a fish lifted out of his tank once you had gone to London, Alice,” she said. “It was most pitiful to behold, I do assure you. No one was surprised when he took himself off after you, claiming to be interested in the Season as a change from Bath for this spring. We were none of us deceived.”

They both laughed.

“But did he make you an offer, Alice?” Andrea asked. “Do tell. All your friends have had a lively bet on it, I do assure you, though all of us wished to bet that he would. Did he?”

“Twice, I am afraid.” Alice said. “Oh, Andrea, I do so hate to be disagreeable.”

“It is my guess that you were not,” Andrea said. “If you had been disagreeable the first time, he would not have asked the second, would he? You are just going to have to be a little more brutal, Alice, as I have told you before. A good kick in the shins ought to do it. The very idea that he is good enough for you!”

Alice laughed despite herself. “Perhaps I will not have to,” she said. “He has not returned yet. Perhaps he has found someone in London who will receive his addresses more favorably.”

“Oh. Who?” Andrea said scornfully.

Yes, it was good to be back, Alice decided. Good to have a home and friends, as she had not had when circumstances had forced her to leave Chandlos. She was well blessed.

Sometimes she almost had herself convinced. But if it had been true, perhaps her stomach would not have lurched quite so painfully when her housekeeper interrupted an afternoon visit that Andrea Potter was paying her with the announcement that a Mr. Piers Westhaven was waiting downstairs, asking if he could be admitted.

“Mr. Piers Westhaven?” Andrea said in some curiosity when the housekeeper had disappeared again to bring up the guest. “Alice, whoever have you been keeping secret from me, you wretch? You have turned as white as a ghost.”

Chapter 12

PIERS feared that he was losing his sense of humor. It was vastly diverting, he told himself numerous times during the two weeks following his betrothal, to watch the metamorphosis of a female from a young lady on the catch for a husband to a young lady successfully betrothed. Vastly diverting. Except that he could not force himself into feeling diverted, vastly or otherwise.

Cassandra—he had been given permission to call her that—was suddenly far too busy to grant him more than a very small portion of her time. Her days were given to endless shopping expeditions for her bride clothes and endless visiting with “friends,” who had appeared largely nonexistent until the announcement of her engagement had appeared in the
Morning Post
.

When he was permitted to accompany her to some entertainment, she gave much of her attention to other admirers, the army of the disappointed. At a ball she could find a place for him on her dancing card only once each evening, and at the theater she could grant him only her divided attention during the performance; there were visitors to entertain in his box during the intervals. Other gentlemen, it seemed, were to be granted the exclusive right of driving her in the park during the fashionable hour of the afternoons.

“Mama has explained to me that it will not do to be seen to hang on your sleeve merely because you are my betrothed,” she explained to him, all wide eyes, on one occasion. “It is not done.”

Vastly amusing. Mr. Westhaven—his request to be called by his given name had been ignored—could see that he was going to have to drag the girl, kicking and screaming and in chains, to Westhaven Park when the time came. All of which he would do—with the possible exception of the chains—he thought with unaccustomed grimness.

The marriage contract was not ready at the end of the one week. “We need to be doubly careful when there is a fortune at stake on each side, my dear sir, do we not?” Mr. Bosley had said by way of explanation. Not that Mr. Westhaven saw the necessity of a written contract anyway. He was obligated to marry the girl, his word had been given, and the announcement had been made. There was nothing more to be careful about as far as he was concerned.

Perhaps after all he might have been able to see the humor of the situation if circumstances had just been different. After all, there was no way on earth that he was going to allow a mere chit of a girl to tyrannize him once she was his wife. She would learn—and learn fast—that he would expect obedience once she had sworn to obey and that she must, for her own peace of mind, adjust herself to his way of life.

Perhaps he might have seen the humor. Perhaps not. Put that way, the vision of his future marriage made him look horribly the tyrant himself. Was that what he was going to do? Enforce obedience? Bend the girl to his will so that his own way of life would be undisturbed while her world would be turned upside down and inside out?

Devil take it, he was going to have to adjust to her, too, giving as much rein as he could allow while still remaining master of his own house.

She was not, after all, another Harriet. Harriet had catered to his selfishness. She had done all the bending, all the adjusting. And in return he had been fond of her.
Fond
of her! How magnanimous of him. How vastly generous. And he had gifted her with his child and killed her.

Damnation. There was no humor—none—in the situation, or in life, either. It was all a vast joke that someone or something was playing on the human race. Except that it was not at all funny.

And there was that other thing, too—that thing that dominated his every waking moment and kept him from sleep at night and haunted his dreams when he did nod off.

There was Allie.

A grand, endless debate had been set up between two halves of his brain, and no inner judge had the sense to point out that the arguments had proceeded in circle upon circle upon endless circle and it was time to bring the debate to an end.

Given the great selfish sin he had committed against her, knowing that nothing could now recall that or put it right, had he done the right thing to let her go without a word or a letter? Was he right to leave it so, to disappear from her life? To leave her free to regain some peace of mind? Of did he owe it to her to see her, to make some explanation, some apology?

Was it selfishness only that made him want to see her one more time? After two weeks the need had become an obsession. And finally he closed his mind to the half of his brain that told him seeing her was the worst thing he could do. He sent word to Russell Square that he must leave town for a few days, and took himself off to Bath and the York House hotel.

But suddenly, he discovered, the decision and the journey made, seeing her no longer seemed like a selfish obsession. Indeed, he would have given anything in the world, he thought as he got ready to call on her in Sidney Place—it had not been difficult to discover where she lived—to call out his carriage again and make for the London road.

How would he face her? How would he look her in the eye? How would he greet her? What would he say?

But having come this far, he must call on her. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do, but he must do it now or live in torment for the rest of his life. Perhaps he could put it all behind him once he had spoken to her and made some sort of atonement.

And perhaps the moon would fell from the sky, too.

***

There was no time to prepare herself, no time to answer Andrea’s question. He was striding through the doorway almost as soon as her housekeeper had gone out through it. He was coming across the room to her, both hands outstretched, looking so very familiar, so very much Piers—had she expected him to have changed in two weeks? Her own hands, she was surprised to see, were stretched out, too.

“Allie,” he said, and took her hands in a strong, almost bruising clasp.

“Piers.” She returned pressure for pressure.

She thought he was going to come all the way to her and kiss her, but he checked himself, glanced at Andrea, and smiled—Piers in every way.

“Andrea,” she said, “may I present Mr. Piers Westhaven, my husband’s dearest friend? Mrs. Andrea Potter, Piers.”

He bowed, she inclined her head. Both looked amused for some reason.

“You were Mr. Penhallow’s friend?” Andrea said. “You have not seen Alice, then, since his passing? She is doing very well, is she not, and is quite indispensable to us here in Bath, sir.”

“We met in London recently,” he said, “and played uncle and aunt to Allie’s younger niece on a few occasions. I happen to be in Bath for a few days, Allie, and decided that I must call on you.”

“Splendid!” Andrea said. Her expression was still one of amusement, Alice saw. “My husband and I are entertaining a few friends this evening for cards and conversation and supper. You must accompany Alice, if you will, sir.”

He bowed. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “But I am not certain of my plans, or of Allie’s.”

“I read the announcement of your betrothal in the 
Post
, Piers,” Alice said. “Please accept my congratulations.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

Andrea’s look of disappointment was almost comical, Alice thought.

Andrea got to her feet decisively. “Well,” she said, “I must proceed on my way to the library, Alice. I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Westhaven. I shall see both of you tonight?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Westhaven said. 

“Yes,” Alice said at the same moment.

And suddenly they were stranded in the room together, she turned toward the door, having watched her friend on her way, he somewhere behind her. She composed her face, clasped her hands loosely in front of her, and turned. 

“Piers—” she said.

“Allie—”

They had spoken simultaneously.

“Sit down,” she said, indicating a chair and taking one across from it, “and tell me what you are doing here just two weeks after your betrothal.”

He sat down. “I came to see what is so wonderful about Bath that you would wish to make it your permanent home,” he said. “I have not been here for years. It is quite splendid in the sunshine, is it not? I thought I might take the waters for a few days to see if they will improve my good sense. Do they do that, Allie, or do they work only on physical ailments?”

“I think they are all a big hoax,” she said.

“Oh, don’t say that above a whisper,” he said. “You might drive all the visitors away, Allie, and be doomed to spend the rest of your life in company with the remaining five inhabitants.”

“Why did you come?” she asked.

He grinned. “It is obviously a long time since you prepared for your own wedding, Allie,” he said. “You must have forgotten just how many hours and days you had to spend in conference with your dressmaker and milliner and fan maker and everyone else. And how much time you must spend with your disappointed suitors. As the mere husband-to-be, my presence in London at the moment is supremely redundant. I will not be needed again until the wedding day. ”

“Will it be soon?” she asked.

“The date has not been set,” he said. “It is a very ticklish matter, as I am sure you will appreciate. A fine balance has to be struck between not holding it too soon and thus wasting a few moments of the Season and not holding it too late and finding that the crème de la crème has withdrawn already and will not return for the celebrations. It would be a great shame to waste a grand wedding on only half the
ton
, now, would it not?”

“Piers,” she said.

“I am to be congratulated, you know, Allie,” he said. “It turns out that I am not marrying a mindless little bundle of sweet innocence after all, but a young lady with very much a mind of her own. Did you suspect it? It should be an interesting marriage, should it not?”

“Piers,” she said. “Don’t.”

“One great injustice has been done me, though,” he said. “My mother disapproves. Can you imagine, Allie? I agreed to take on a leg-shackle and fill the nursery at Westhaven all so that she might become a doting grandmama, and she disapproves.”

“Has she said so?” Alice asked.

“Oh, she doesn’t need to.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I took her to tea at Russell Square, and she addressed one remark to Cassandra. She conversed for the rest of the time with Bosley and Lady Margam. I believe Cassandra has made up her mind that Mama will not set foot over the threshold of Westhaven once we are married. She did not say so in quite those words, but I foresee an interesting conflict developing in the future. Can you see my mother being kept from her grandchildren?”

“Piers,” she said.

“If there are grandchildren,” he said. “I daresay Cassandra is made of far sterner stuff than Harriet was, but I might succeed in killing her just the same, don’t you think, Allie?”

“Piers!” She was on her feet and crossing the room to the window. “Don’t!” 

“But it is all vastly diverting, don’t you see?” He was on his feet, too, some distance behind her. “And very much my just desserts, Allie. I set myself to choosing a bride much as I did the first time, with very little thought to the young lady concerned and her wishes. I mean, what young girl in her right mind would wish to ally herself freely to a man of six-and- thirty? I was the only one who mattered. I would choose someone who would interfere with my life in almost no way. Some little mouse like Harriet. Someone whose sole function would be to breed my heirs and live through the experience. I have been justly served. I deserve Cassandra. And perhaps she deserves me, too.”