Elisabeth Fairchild (28 page)

Felicity delighted in the wonderful echo that bounced back to them from the cave walls. When Val and Elaine stepped out of the archway, and stood looking out upon the inlet on a little apron of an embankment, she remained within, skipping about shouting her name that she might hear its repeat.

Elaine’s gaze turned toward the water.

Valentine went to stand beside her, to look at her profile. He said nothing, just stood looking, awaiting her answer, or some indication what her decision would be. He was sure she must say yes. Anything else seemed senseless.

Words came at last, spilling from her mouth as though important to her, not the words he expected.

“I find myself in despair.”

The word caught at his heart, toppling his confidence. “Despair?”

She nodded. “Considering my life, and what I thought to do with it, the dreams of a future like a castle I built, brick by brick in my imagining, stone upon stone, a huge castle, fair to look upon and live in, defensible against any foe, and yet, in the end I find it is made of sand.”

Despair did not sound like a yes, and he expected nothing less than yes. Surely a penniless governess could not refuse his offer when he offered her half of his future, brick upon brick. Not sand to sift through her fingers. He would not sweep security out from under her feet. Like her father had. Like Palmer had.

“You might be describing my life, in a way,” he said at last. “Anyone’s for that matter.”

Her hands moved about in a most agitated fashion, not the calm hands he had come to expect of Miss Elaine Deering. “The waves of life come to wash my dreams away, to undermine their imagined stoutness, to wash the path of my life smooth, so that not so much of a trace of that imaginary castle remains. It is heartbreaking, enough that I would wail, as a child wails when their creation is destroyed by the inevitability of the waves.”

He did not know how to respond to this. Did she think he sought to undermine the walls of her castle? Had he swept away the imagined stoutness of her future?

“Will you rebuild?” he asked.

She tried to smile, and failed. “Pick up bucket and shovel, and begin again? Children do, I know, time and time again, caught up in the fascination of building, with the feel of the wet sand, the sound of the shovel digging, the warm, wet heat of the sun baking the water from the castle walls. And yet, with time, children mature, and recognize the impermanence of dreams and sand castles.”

“The question is then, do you choose something stouter? Or do you stand back, and watch other children playing, and shake you head at their folly?”

“I do not know. I do not know. I think there is something of despair so dark and incapacitating that on occasion it hides answers from me. Even simple ones.”

“But together we shall make all right again.”

She looked at him a long moment before she nodded, and said with resigned determination, “Yes, of course. All shall be made right again.”

T
he Howard children broke Elaine’s cherished dragon teapot and cups on a gray and rainy afternoon that reminded her most vividly of the day she had first met Valentine Wharton.

Tossing brightness out of the single window of her tiny, tip-tilted garret room, the boys--four of them--and the girls--six high voices shrieking--danced and stomped upon the floor above with undisguised glee as the gilded, fire breathing dragon at last took wing, soaring high before it fell, smashing into a thousand glittering pieces on the cobbles of the courtyard below.

They argued over who got to have a go next as the cloud-filled cups followed, one after another, not enough for each of them to participate, and thus a source of squabbling discontent as all of the magic that was left in Elaine Deering’s mean existence sailed into oblivion in fine porcelain arcs onto the drive, just as a carriage arrived. A passenger disembarked amid the glittering shards, horses uneasy, tossing their heads, the coachman shouting up at the children who leaned from her window, “Stop that nonsense! At once!”

Elaine watched helplessly from Mrs. Compton’s room. She gave the old lady her bath, a task she could not for a moment abandon, least the forgetful old woman slide down under the water and drown, or stray from her room without a stitch of clothing on--she had been known to conduct herself in the oddest fashion since her eighty-fifth birthday.

Elaine recognized the teapot as it flew past the window, the only precious thing she owned left to destroy. She had hidden it away very carefully when her mirror was shattered, her perfume vial emptied onto her lumpy mattress, the shells she had brought from the seashore flung into the fire, her dresses spattered with ink. Mrs. Howard’s children wished to scare the new governess away, just as they had scared away half a dozen before her, and Elaine wished with all of her heart that she might oblige them. But where would she go if they had their way? Without use of her references? She dared not use her precious references from Lord Wharton. He might come after her. And she would not say no to him a second time. She could not. She had not the strength left in her.

This position, obtained in a moment’s notice, on her sister’s recommendation, had seemed, at first, a godsend. Ten children seemed a large family, and yet she knew she could handle the task. She came from a family of six, after all, and had handled classes far greater at the girl’s school. However, ten children grown wild and unruly by way of their father’s ignoring them, their mother cosseting them, and the eldest boy’s mean-spirited control over those younger than he, had proven daunting indeed. Especially when she had been informed on more than one occasion that it was not her place to in any way discipline Mrs. Howard’s brood.

“You must not expect too much of them,” she told Elaine. “They are only children.”

Elaine, herself, had underestimated their tenacity in finding ways to make her unhappy, to encourage her leave-taking. She had not hidden the dragon carefully enough it would seem. In watching it shatter, in knowing she could do nothing to save it, something inside of her seemed to shatter as well.

Dazed, she helped the old lady from the tub, and gently dried her arms and legs. Numbly she watched a well-dressed young woman climb down from the coach, and bend to regard the broken china, the shattered dream cups. It was only as she looked up that Elaine recognized her.

Penny Shelbourne!

So beleaguered was Elaine’s frame of mind, her soul so filled with despair that she immediately assumed only the worst of possibilities could have driven Penny to find her.

She hastened to dress Mrs. Compton, and rang for a maid to take her, and was down the stairs and striding into the sitting room before her mistress could reach for the bellpull, before the raindrops had dried on Penny Foster’s hair.

“What is wrong?” she demanded, before Mrs. Howard had finished saying she might spare her a quarter of an hour for this most unexpected visitation.

“Is Felicity ill? Injured? Has he . . . ?”

“Calm yourself, Miss Deering,” Mrs. Shelbourne took her hands in her own, and as they stood within earshot of Mrs. Howard, who made no effort to vacate the room, asked, “Might we go somewhere private to talk? Your room, perhaps?”

Her room? Her room was three flights up and very small, with cast off bed, a trunk for her clothes and a leaky, sloping roof that did not allow one to stand. There was nothing to sit on but the lumpy mattress, and that would be damp today. “Perhaps the schoolroom would be better,” she suggested.

And so Penny Foster followed her up the narrow back stairs to the gloomy, ill-lit, ill-furnished room that was designated the schoolroom. She paused in the doorway to look about the dark buff walls, traced a finger across one of the outdated maps Penny had drawn new boundaries on in a tissue overlay. She picked up and thumbed through one of the dog-eared books left splayed on one of ten mismatched, saggy-bottomed chairs, and went to the window, to lean against the sill and examine the rain-dappled view of the garden wall, almost tripping over the basket of unmended linen kept where the light was best.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Mending.”

Penny Shelbourne frowned. “And the object that almost hit my horse in the head?”

“A teacup.” Elaine’s voice shook, ever so slightly. She squared her shoulders, and set her chin resolutely. “I trust you suffered no injury?”

Penny shook her head, expression thoughtful.

“You must come,” she said simply.

“Come?” Elaine looked at her stupidly. “Where?”

“Back to St. David.”

“But. . .” Elaine hated to admit it. “I cannot afford to lose my position.”

Penny sighed. She looked down at the mending basket. “Not even for the saving of a soul?”

Elaine’s heart sank.
The saving of a soul?
When she could not seem to save her own?

“Felicity?” She sank into one of the dreadful chairs, hand to mouth, fearing the worst.

“Val.”

Elaine shivered. The room was cold without a fire.

Val? She came about Val? She stared in disbelief at her visitor, who looked back at her with evidence of strain, and profound concern.

“Why should you believe his soul is in danger? Has he taken to drink?”

Penny squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, looked her in the eyes, and then regarded the sodden garden wall again, her profile rigid. “No. Because he has sent Felicity to me.”

“What?” Elaine felt she swallowed the word as much as said it. It made no sense to her. “To visit?”

“To stay.”

“But why? They were getting along so well.”

Penny nodded, stricken. “He tells my husband he means to buy colors.”

Elaine was struck dumb. She half-rose from the chair with a harsh exhalation, and then sat back down, as though someone had punched her in the stomach. “Sharpshooting? No!”

Penny nodded.

“But what of his property? His father’s estate?”

She shook her head, made a sound of frustration. “He leaves it in his mother’s care. Says it means nothing to him and everything to her. He will not listen to reason, entreaty, pleading or threat.”

“But fight again?” Elaine stared bleakly at the mending pile, a pair of boy’s breeches on top. The knees needed patching. She shook her head in disbelief. “Why? He once said he hated to leave everything behind.”

Penny nodded, understanding in her eyes. They were the most unusual shade of blue, these eyes he had once held dear.

“Felicity is heartbroken. She asks for you,” she said, as gentle as the rain.

Elaine rose suddenly and paced the length of the room she had grown to consider a sort of torture chamber, as confining as a posture perfector. This room was a blissful haven compared to a battlefield. “It will drive him to drink again,” she said with bleak certainty.

“I fear the same.”

“He will drink to still the voices of the dead.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Dear God! And I am to blame.”

“You? How? Because you did not love him?”

“No.” Penny tried to smile, her mouth crumpling in the attempt. “Because I helped chase away the one he loves.”

Elaine knew not what to say to that. She rubbed at the pucker between her brows, and then clasped hands about her shoulders, cold, suddenly so very cold. “But you were right. He wished to marry me out of pity. Not love. It would have meant the loss of the love of his mother, friends, his place in society. I could not take so much from him with nothing to offer in return.”

Penny pushed away from the windowsill, to stand in the way of her pacing. “No, Elaine. I was wrong. He is more than willing to sacrifice all, as unimportant to him. You see, he does love you.”

“You cannot be sure of that.”

“I can.” She presented a folded page from her pocket, the broken seal, the dash of his hand familiar. Elaine took the letter, and stood by the window to read, rain running in rivulets down the pane. She could see him in her mind’s eye, astride a horse, a centaur, a mythical beast.

She skimmed the letter, not meant for her eyes, fixed on the lines she was meant to read, tears springing hotly to her eyes. She could hear his voice uttering the inked words.

“I cannot seem to hold onto the women I love. A heart mending--is torn asunder again. Felicity is best left to your care in such circumstances.”

Women I love.
Could it be true? Women. Not just Penny. Did he really love her? Had she broken his heart as much as her own in abandoning him?

“It was entirely wrong of me to interfere,” Penny said when she handed back the letter. “To suggest . . . well, I was presumptuous in the extreme. To encourage you to leave, unconscionable. It is probably very wrong of me to go on interfering in Val’s love life, but you see . . .” She tapped the letter against her open palm, wedding ring catching the light. “Once upon a time he brought my true love to me. It seems only appropriate that I should return to him, his. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me, Miss Deering? To go back and try to mend Val’s broken heart?”

“You were not the only one to discourage me.”

“His mother? Will it please you to know she encouraged me to find you? She loaned me her carriage to come and fetch you.”

Elaine stared at her in amazement. Hope rose in her throat like a bird on the wing. Too sudden, too wonderful this news. She burst into tears.

With a murmured soothing noise Penny took her into her arms, offering up her shoulder for comfort, gave her back a gentle patting, as if she were a child.

From the schoolroom door came the sound of stifled snickering, the snide voice of Alfred, the eldest of the Howard children. “She weeps,” he crowed. “I told you we could bring her to tears--drive her away.”

Penny handed over her handkerchief, brows raised, a mischievous glitter in her eyes. “Shall we not grant the little darlings their dearest wish?”

Elaine laughed though her tears.

Penny’s smile faded. “
My
dearest wish.”

Elaine smiled, and gave a great sniff, and wiped her tears away. “Just like in a fairy story,” she agreed.