Irresistible (36 page)

Sophia remembered her sleepless night. Remembered Nathaniel’s sitting on this very chair yesterday, asking her to marry him. With quiet, kind courtesy. Because he felt sorry for her and responsible for her. Because he had lain with her. Because he was genuinely fond of her. Because he was an honorable man. She remembered the temptation, worse than any physical pain. She remembered the stark knowledge the night had brought. Never again. Two of the bleakest words in the English language when put together.

Never
again.

“Yes,” she said softly, “there is such a love.”

“Have you known it, Sophie?” Lavinia asked, eagerly.

“Oh, yes,” Sophia said. “Oh, yes.” She got to her feet abruptly and crossed to the bellpull. “I feel like tea, if you do not.”

“Sometimes,” Lavinia said with a sigh, “I wish life were simpler. I wish it could be lived with the reason alone. Why do we have to be plagued with emotions?”

“Life would be very dull,” Sophia said, “without love and friendship and joy and hope and all the other positive emotions.”

“Yes.” Lavinia chuckled and sat down at last. “It is all the negative ones I object to. I want to be sane and sensible and free and independent.”

But you have fallen in love,
Sophia thought, and wondered who the gentleman was. She could not imagine any man not reciprocating feelings Lavinia had for him.

However, Lavinia was clearly not ready to confide in her and she would not pry.

The tea tray arrived.

And then there was all the distress of parting. Sophia was going to Gloucestershire the next day. Lavinia and Nathaniel were going to Bowood in Yorkshire soon after.

They would write to each other, the two women agreed. But they both seemed aware that it was unlikely they would meet again.

SOMETIMES SOPHIA LOOKED back with nostalgia on the settled, tranquil life she had lived on Sloan Terrace in London. In the three months since she had left there life had been anything but settled. The sale of her house had taken a little longer than she had expected, with the result that though she now had the money with which to buy a home in Gloucestershire, she still had not done so. She was still nominally living with Thomas and Anne and their children.

Now she was no longer sure she wished to buy a home just there. Perhaps, she thought, she would go elsewhere, farther away, where no one knew her, where she could really begin all over again. But the prospect was dreary and a little frightening. Sometimes she was tempted to take a more obvious path.

She had delayed making the decision. First there had been Sarah’s wedding to Viscount Perry to attend in July. Sophia had gone with the idea of spending just two weeks with Edwin and Beatrice, but they had wanted her to stay on so that she might travel with them to Yorkshire late in August for Lewis’s wedding to Georgina Gascoigne—Sophia had, naturally enough, received an invitation. No one had been able to understand her hesitation about going.

How could she go? It had been bad enough seeing Rex and Catherine at Sarah’s wedding. Wounds that had barely filmed over had been ripped raw again, especially when Catherine, heavy with child, had strolled with Sophia one afternoon and told her that they had been convinced during the spring, she and Rex, that there had been something between Sophie and Nathaniel.

“It was wishful thinking, of course,” she had said, laughing. “We like to have our friends all closely linked together. And the fact that it was Nathaniel who fought for you seemed wonderfully romantic. You will shake your head at us for trying to manage your life again, Sophie. You are happy in Gloucestershire?”

But how could she not go to Lewis’s wedding? She would be able to offer no reasonable explanation for not going. Everyone would be hurt and offended if she did not.

Except Nathaniel. Although he had sent her an invitation, he must surely be hoping that she would refuse.

But her dilemma had been solved for her—or partly so. Lavinia had written to her each week since they had parted. She was now living alone—except for a few servants—in a cottage in the village of Bowood and claimed to be idyl lically happy. She had invited Sophia to stay there with her when she came for the wedding. It would be so much more cozy, she had written, than staying at the house, which would be crammed with other guests.

And so Sophia was traveling into Yorkshire with her brother- and sister-in-law and wishing she was going anywhere else on earth—though that was not exactly true, either, she admitted to herself as they drew close to their destination. Edwin and Beatrice were both asleep.

She was looking forward to seeing Lavinia again. She was looking forward to seeing the village and the house and park. Forever afterward when she thought of him—perhaps there would come a time when that would not be almost every single hour of every single day—she would be able to picture him in the right setting. And of course she wanted to see
him
again—dreaded it and longed for it.

She was missing Lass, she thought suddenly—that warm, constantly loving presence of another living being. She had left the collie in Gloucestershire, where Thomas’s children were spoiling her dreadfully.

The carriage rounded a curve in the road and she could see a church spire in the distance ahead. Could that be it? It must be. Bowood was the next village along their route, was it not? There was a strange lurching in her stomach and she spread a hand over it to keep the feeling from escalating into panic.

“Is that the village ahead?” Beatrice asked, waking Edwin with the sound of her voice. “I do hope so. My bones are as weary as bones can be. Are yours, Sophie? Oh, it will be wonderful to see Lewis again. Is he nervous, do you suppose, Edwin?”

“He will be soon, m‘dear,” he said with a chuckle, “once he has you to fuss over him and remind him that he is about to be a
bridegroom.”

“I wonder,” she said, not taking up the bait, “if Sarah and Harry will have arrived ahead of us. I am longing to hear about their wedding trip to Scotland and the Lakes. Dear Sarah—it is still difficult, I declare, to realize that she is a married lady. Viscountess Perry. She has done well for herself, has she not, Sophie?”

Sophia smiled and nodded. They had arranged to set her down at Lavinia’s cottage before proceeding on to Bowood Manor. Perhaps, she thought, life at the house with all the wedding guests would be so busy that she would scarcely see Nathaniel except at the church and wedding breakfast. He could be no more anxious to see her than she was to see him, after all.

But then she
was
very anxious.

The hand she held over her stomach was doing nothing to quell the turmoil and growing queasiness the proximity of their destination had brought on.

 

“One shudders,” Eden said, “to discover what changes can overtake a man’s life when he does not watch himself. When I
think,
Nat, of the way we envisioned our lives when we sold out of the cavalry.”

“We were boys, Ede,” Nathaniel said, “even if we were closer to thirty than twenty, all of us. We had been living in an artificial environment that made us grow up in a hurry in one way and kept us back from maturity in other ways.”

“And that is the worst of it,” Eden said. “You never used to be a philosopher, Nat.” He shuddered theatrically.

With only two days to go to Georgina’s wedding Bowood was teeming with guests and with all the extra servants hired for the occasion. The stables and coach house were full to overflowing. And a mood of only-just-controlled hysteria had settled over the female members of the family as the day approached—except Lavinia, who wisely stayed at her cottage.

Eden had arrived the day before. He and Nathaniel had escaped from the house for an afternoon stroll in the park.

“There are Ken and Rex, married men this long time,” Eden continued, “and Rex in the letter that arrived this morning writing about nothing but
babies.
I ask you, Nat. Could you picture Rex a few years ago writing a lengthy missive about his anxiety over his wife’s going into labor one month early, about his insistence on remaining with her through the whole lengthy ordeal—Rex!—about his idiotic wonder at having fathered a small but perfectly healthy daughter, about his terror over Catherine until the physician informed him that she was out of all dariger? Is this what we have come to?”

Nathaniel chuckled and turned when they were halfway down the long lawn before the house to look back up at it. He never tired of the joy he felt in knowing it was home—a joy that had somewhat tempered the unwelcome depression and lethargy that had threatened him since his return from London.

“It would appear so, Ede,” he said.

“And you, Nat.” Eden gestured toward the house. “We would have had a collective shuddering attack if we could have pictured
this
—all this wedding business, all this domesticity. And you the host of it all.”

“I took Georgina to London in the hope of finding her a husband,” Nathaniel said. “I succeeded—or rather she did—and I am happy for her.”

“And so you are going to be alone,” Eden said.

“Yes.” Nathaniel waited to feel the satisfaction he had expected to feel on such an occasion. It just would not come.

“And the worst of everything,” Eden said with what seemed to be a gloom that matched Nathaniel’s own, “the very worst, Nat, is that I might just be caving in too.”

Nathaniel looked at him.

“I went home for a couple of weeks last month,” Eden said, “or rather to the house and estate I have owned since my father’s death. I have never lived there. Neither did he. I went out of curiosity. The house was mostly shut up, of course, with everything draped in holland covers. But the housekeeper, who has been there forever and obviously loves the place, has it all clean and gleaming. And the steward, who has been there just as long, has everything ship-shape—he even has the park looking like a damned showpiece. I knew I was wealthy, Nat, but when I looked over the books, I discovered that I am something of a nabob. And all the neighbors started organizing balls and assemblies and dinners and treating me as if were someone’s long-lost brother. It was deuced embarrassing.”

“And deuced tempting?” Nathaniel suggested.

“And deuced tempting,” Eden agreed. “What is happening to me, Nat? Am I growing senile?”

“Growing up, I suppose, like the rest of us,” Nathaniel said. “Shall we keep walking?” They had been standing gazing at the house.

“Sophie is at your cousin’s?” Eden said. “Should we walk over there and pay our respects to her, Nat? I suppose I should pay mine to Miss Bergland too, though doubtless she will bite my head off and accuse me of treating her like a charity case or calling there only so that I might condescend to inform her how quaint her cottage is—or something like that. I wonder you did not find her somewhere altogether farther away than the village to live. For your peace of mind, old chap.”

The Houghtons had arrived the day before, having set Sophie down at Lavinia’s cottage. He should have walked over there last evening, Nathaniel thought now. Or this morning at the very latest. He had made the excuse to himself that he had houseguests to attend to. He had convinced himself that she would not wish to see him any more than he wished to see her. But that fact was immaterial. She was to all intents and purposes his guest, since she had come for Georgina’s wedding to her nephew. He owed her the courtesy of a visit.

He dreaded seeing her. He had scarcely begun to get over her. Now he would have to start all over again.

“Lavinia and I have been remarkably in accord with each other since we returned from town,” he said as they resumed their walk and directed their footsteps toward the village. “Yes, we really should pay our respects to Sophie.”

They walked in silence—and in gloom. Nathaniel was sure that Eden shared his mood. It was unusual to find him either silent or in low spirits. Perhaps they would both cheer up when Ken and Moira arrived—they were expected later in the day.

Lavinia’s cottage was larger than its name suggested, and though it was part of the village, it was situated somewhat apart from the general cluster of buildings around the village green. It was set in a large garden that was almost a little park of its own. It had been the home of a retired rector and his wife until the two of them had conveniently decided to move away early in the spring in order to be closer to the rest of their family.

Nathaniel found an excuse to call there most days. He had called yesterday morning. He might not have come today unless Eden had prompted him. He would do anything, he thought as the two of them went through the gate and up the gravel path toward the front door, to find an excuse not to call today after all. Perhaps they were out. Perhaps Lavinia had taken Sophie on a walk or on a visit to some of the village’s inhabitants.

But he was not to be so fortunate. They were in the rose arbor behind the house—Lavinia’s manservant directed them there. They were sitting on a stone bench inside, talking and laughing together, their backs to the house so that they did not know of the arrival of guests until those guests were upon them. They both looked up, startled.