Her Heart's Captain (23 page)

In numbing bewilderment, she got up and followed him. Placing a light hand on his arm, she asked quietly, “Can't you explain all this to me, Tris? If you love me as you say, why is it you don't want to … to offer for me?”

He wheeled about and grasped her by the shoulders. “Do you
want
me to offer for you, Jenny? Deep down in the secret recesses of your soul? No, don't look away from me! I want the truth at last.”

She could feel her face pale. It was as if he could peer inside her and read all her secret fears and doubts. She wanted to be honest with him. But how could she answer when she wasn't sure of the truth herself? “I … I
think
it's what I want.”

“Is that the truth? Or is it your
mother's
wish coming from your mouth?”

“My mother wishes it, yes … but I would not bend to her desires if they were not also my own.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you really expect me to believe that you are willing to accept me because you love me?”

To Jenny, the answer was so obvious that she couldn't believe it needed saying. “No, you cawker,” she said with a tremulous little laugh, “it's because I want Robbie to be an admiral.”

He seemed to freeze on the spot. Without releasing her, without moving a muscle, his whole visage hardened. “So
that's
it,” he said in a flat, dull voice.

She felt her chest constrict in fear. Putting out a hand toward him as far as she could (for his grasp on her shoulders was like iron), she cried out, “Tris! I was
joking
!”

“Joking?” His face was disfigured with an icy sneer. “But they say, don't they, that many a truth is spoken in jest? And it is like you, I think, to be willing to sacrifice yourself for your brother.”

“You
can't
believe that!”

“I can believe it more readily than I can believe you've fallen in love with a man you consider a petty tyrant.”

“A p-petty tyrant?”

“Don't look up at me so innocently, ma'am! You
do
believe that I'm a tyrant, don't you? That I abuse the men under me, isn't that so?”

She seemed to wilt in his hold. How had he guessed her secret agony? “Well, I—”

He shook her furiously. “Let's have it out! It's
true
, is it not?”

She stared up at him miserably, her cheeks like chalk. “Yes,” she said in a whisper.

“That I'm incapable of kindness or forgiveness?”

“Y-Yes …”

“And that I'm vindictive and ‘exact cruel retribution' even for minor offenses?”

Two tears welled up in her eyes. “Yes.”

He thrust her from him. “And that is the ‘monstrous brute' whom you' wish me to believe is the man you want for a husband? You'll pardon me, ma'am, if I say that I find the premise incredible.”

“Tris, you d-don't understand,” she said, the tears spilling over.

“I think I finally do understand. From the first you've shown signs of revulsion … an antipathy to what you still believe is my true character. But your mother has convinced you, for your brother's sake, to overcome your antipathy and accept an offer from me. I can't make that offer, Jenny. I love you—I can't seem to change that. I probably will love you all my life. But I don't want a wife who believes, for whatever reason, that I'm so flawed a man. I want a wife who'll come to me with love—not fear or loathing.”

He turned and walked swiftly to the chair on which he'd deposited his hat. He picked it up, paused, and, turning the brim in his hand absently, he said, “Goodbye, Jenny. I'm sorry if my attentions set up expectations in your mind—or in your mother's—which cannot be fulfilled. If the failure of those expectations causes any pain, I hope it will be of some comfort to you to know that it cannot be any greater than my own.”

He closed the door quietly behind him. She stared at it numbly, only a small corner of her mind aware that her one hope of happiness was disappearing down the hall. In the front of her mind, a little voice was saying,
He can't believe I loathe him … He can't
! She loved him. Whatever came of it, it was only right that he know it! Before he left the house forever, she had to catch him and tell him.

She dashed the tears from her cheeks and ran to the door and down the hall. “
Tris—
!”

His hand was already on the knob of the outer door. He turned round, his mouth stiff and his eyes guarded. But at least he paused. She took a deep breath and, with eyes fixed on his face, tried to calm herself before speaking. But a voice from the stairway broke upon them like a thunderclap. “Captain Allenby,” Lady Garvin cried, “you're not
going?
”

He looked to the stairway, made a quick bow and threw open the door without a word. Before Jenny's mind could recover from the effect of the untimely interruption, he was gone. She stared at the door in a kind of dazed trance. She felt as though everything inside her had drained away, leaving only a quivering emptiness—like the feeling when the mind knows one has received a terrible wound but the body is too shocked to send out the expected waves of pain.

Lady Garvin gaped at her daughter. “Jenny, what
happened
?” she asked, a look of consternation coming into her face. “You didn't
refuse
him, did you? You
promised
—!”

The outer door swung open, and they both whirled round, their faces lighting with hope. But it was Robbie, returning from his ride. The boy looked chagrined, and he threw his riding crop and hat on a side table with unmistakable annoyance. “I just met Captain Allenby,” he said, perturbed, “and he looked as cross as nine highways. He didn't even answer my greeting.”

Receiving no response, he looked from his mother's dismayed face to Jenny's benumbed one, and his eyebrows rose in sudden anger. “What did you
say
to him, Jenny,” he asked furiously, “to get him into such a state?”

“What?” Jenny asked, trying to force her mind to function on the small realities around her.

“I asked what you
said
to him to make him ignore me!”

“What did
I
—?” she sputtered, beginning to tremble. A completely unfamiliar feeling of rage surged up in her chest. “
I
?”

“Yes, you! If you've angered him, Jenny Garvin, I'll … I'll never
speak
to you again!”

She stared at her brother as if she'd never seen him before. Her heart lay cracked within her breast—and at least partly because his interests had been placed before hers—and yet he had the temerity to speak to her in that way! For the first time in her life she realized how little her brother—and her mother, too—concerned themselves with what happened to her. How indifferent they were to her feelings! And how minuscule was their interest in the tribulations of her life. Robbie, the little brother she'd always adored, cared only for himself … for how his captain's displeasure might reflect on his own career. He cared not a whit for what might have happened to his sister. The boy was a self-centered
brat
.

“Well,” he demanded again, “what you
say
to him?”

Shaking with pain and rage, Jenny did something she'd never done to any human being in her life—she slapped him, hard, right on the face.

Her mother screamed. Robbie's hand flew to his reddened cheek. “
Jenny
—!” he gasped, stunned.

With a choking sound, she clapped her hands to her mouth and ran to the stairs.

“Jenny, have you lost your senses?” her mother cried, reaching for her arm as the girl sped by. “What on earth's come
over
you?”

But Jenny shook off her hand and, sobbing, ran up the stairs and down the corridor to her room.

They saw no more of her that day. She refused to answer when they knocked on her door, and she didn't come down for meals. The next day she appeared at breakfast, dry-eyed, self-contained, tight-lipped and pale. There was something so withdrawn, so frighteningly cold about her demeanor that neither brother nor mother dared ask her any questions. Nor did they make any attempt to bridge the rift that they dimly perceived had damaged their relationship but couldn't quite understand.

At the end of the day, Lady Garvin sat down at her writing table and, with many agitated sighs, penned a letter to the one person she surmised could help her—her brother-in-law.
Dear Alistair
, she wrote,
we have fallen into the most Dire Straits, and all because of You. Your insistence on a Naval Career for Robert has brought Disaster upon the Entire family. You Must find a way to remove my Robbie from his Commitment to the Navy, or his life will be Utterly Destroyed. Jenny's is, I fear, already Ruined Beyond Repair. I am in the Greatest Affliction and fear for my Health and Sanity. Come at Once! Your unhappy sister, Margaret Garvin
.

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, Toby came to Clement Hall to make amends. Aware that he'd displeased Andrea by sketching Jenny, he planned to make a drawing of Andrea in the same penumbral style. Although she seemed remote and withdrawn, Andrea nevertheless agreed to pose for him, and he placed her in a chair along the west wall of the sitting room where the sun, shining in from the south-facing windows, could make a golden glory of her hair. Behind her, on the wall, hung a still life featuring a bowl of apples. Toby cleverly placed a similar bowl of fruit into Andrea's lap. “I'll call it
Girl With Apples
,” he said and set to work.

He had barely begun when the sitting-room door opened and Lady Rowcliffe poked her head in. “Am I interrupting, Andrea?” she asked. “I have a message to deliver to you.”

“Come in, Aunt Dulcie,” the girl said, jumping up. After her ugly display of the day before, she was pathetically eager to win back a place in the family's good graces. “A message, you say?”

“Yes. From your cousin Tris. He had to leave very early this morning and asked—”

“Leave? You don't mean for
good
, do you?” She felt a sinking sensation in her chest.

“Yes, I'm afraid so. He has to oversee the work on his ship, you see, and so he's returned to our London house to be closer to the shipyard. I shall follow him this afternoon.”

“Oh,
no
!”

“I'm disappointed, too, my dear, but it can't be helped. I feared from the first that a month in the country would be too long a stay for him. And as for me, I don't like to leave him alone in the London house. You can understand, I'm sure, that I treasure the days when he's not at sea and can't bear to be far from him when he's on leave.”

“Yes,” her niece muttered disconsolately. “Yes, of course.” She would never win back a place in their affections now.

“In any case, Tris has ordered me to say his goodbyes for him. He is sorry that he had to leave before you rose this morning. He thanks you for your many kind offices during his stay and asks you to accept this small token of his regard.” And she handed a carved wooden box to her niece.

Andrea opened the box with unsteady fingers. Inside, on a lining of green velvet, lay a beautiful ivory fan. “It's … lovely …” she said, her teeth chewing on her lower lip in agitation. “Lovely.”

“Yes. He brought it back from the Indies, you know. I'm so glad you like it.”

But Andrea didn't like it. It was a correct and tasteful gift, but it was clearly impersonal. There was no note, no card, no sign of any wish to express affection for her. Although there hadn't been anything in his attitude toward her throughout his stay to indicate the particular interest she desired, she had continued to expect (and even after yesterday's scene, the hope remained) a change in his attentions. But this polite gift was a tangible sign of his indifference, and now that he was gone, her hopes evaporated. “Thank you, Aunt Dulcie. And … thank Cousin Tris for me, too. If you'll excuse me, I'll take this up to my room.”

“But can't that wait, Andrea?” Toby objected. “I want to finish my sketch before the light changes.”

“No, I don't want to pose any more.” She walked swiftly from the room without giving Toby a second glance.

He glared after her, shaking his head. Then he shrugged and began to wrap up his charcoals. Lady Rowcliffe, however, crossed the room to look at what he'd done. “This is very promising, Mr. Boyce,” she remarked. “Are you an artist?”

“No, not really. I like to sketch, but I've had only the most rudimentary instruction. There aren't any teachers here from whom I could learn proper technique.”

“You must go to London, then.”

He threw a smoldering glance at the door. “If I had a grain of sense, that's just what I'd do.”

She studied the drawing more closely. “What were you going to do in this shaded part, here?”

“Well, you see, if I highlight only this small part of the face and leave the rest in shadows, one becomes more aware of the play of the light. It's rather hard to explain. But if you look at this
other
sketch of mine—” He ruffled through his sketch pad and showed her the drawing. “Here, you see? The light only touches the lip and cheek line, but your imagination fills in the rest—”

“Why … it's Jenny!”

“Yes. I did it the other morning. Do you like it?”

She peered at it with intense interest. In her anger at the chit for what she'd done to her son, she'd forgotten what a sweet-natured girl Jenny was. But the charcoal portrait reminded her … and showed something more. Jenny was suffering, too. “This is
marvelous
,” she said to the young artist. “I think you've caught … something more than a mere likeness.”

He beamed at her. “Thank you, Lady Rowcliffe. It's very kind of you to say so.”

“Is this …” She hesitated for a long moment. Then, cocking her head, birdlike, she peeped up at him. “Is it for sale?”