“I understand that knave Hawthorne is letting you suffer the
consequences of his daughter’s mistakes. What I’d like to know is, where is he
when you really need him?”
Raw pain tore through her. She’d like to know, too. Wilting against
James’s chest misery settled upon her shoulders like a mantle.
James put his forefinger beneath Sarah’s chin and raised her head to
look at him. “Can’t you see what you’re doing?” he asked, more gently now. “To
yourself? To those who love you? Your father was beyond comfort when he thought
you dead. Now this! Sarah,” he pleaded, “go back to Lord Miles, now. I’ll escort
you. We’ll call the banns. Do what we’d all agreed was in everyone’s best
interests before your” — he exhaled on a disapproving grunt —
“escapade under Hawthorne’s roof.” He gave her a bracing shake. “You know
you’ll be much happier at home with people who care for you than here” —
he indicated the room with its common, ugly furniture — “accepting the
charity of fawning little Mrs Hargreaves, hoping your dissolute friends will
invite you back into the fold. They won’t, you know.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?” she asked slowly, pulling out of
his embrace to stand close to the fire. So it had come to this, after all.
“Well, no one else has offered, have they?” he asked, pointedly.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Instead, she gave him a
long, considering look. “Do you love me, James? Do you adore me? Does your
heart beat faster when I enter the same room?”
“What nonsense you talk sometimes,” he said, smiling down at her
with fond exasperation. “You know it doesn’t and nor would I want it to. It would
be like—” He struggled for an analogy.
Sarah returned to her
footstool where she waited with interest. James was not one to wax lyrical at
the best of times and he did not disappoint her, now.
“I suppose it would be like having to mince around in diamond-spangled
high-heeled slippers which pinched like the Devil.” He patted the top of her
head and Sarah was reminded of the fondness he had for his cocker spaniel,
Bessie. “Give me a pair of comfortable leather slippers any day. Though, Sarah,
you should do something about your hair. It’s not like you to look so untidy.”
She let out a hysteria-tinged laugh. “Well, how can I possibly say
no to what must be the most romantic marriage proposal I’ve ever received?”
“Glad you think it’s a good idea. I’m warming to it by the minute.”
Rubbing his hands vigorously before the fire he fixed her with one of his
bluff, pleased-with-himself grins she remembered from childhood days after he’d
winged a goose or shot a bulls-eye. “We’ll deal well together, Sarah. No inconvenient
passion and bruised hearts, eh?”
It was hard to hold back the tears. His generosity was so
undeserved. She rose and crossed the carpet. Taking his wrists she gazed at him
with affection. “That wasn’t an outright yes. There’s a caveat, James.” She paused.
“I cannot, in good conscience, agree to marry you when my heart is engaged
elsewhere.”
“Well, why didn’t you say?” He sounded more put out than
heartbroken.
Sarah hesitated. “Because I didn’t think you’d approve. Papa
doesn’t, that’s certain.”
“Good God! Hawthorne?”
he blustered. “After all that’s happened and all he’s done? Or rather not done
since he’s the one who should be fronting up with an offer, though Lord knows
what your father would say!” He shook his head, scowling as he repeated Roland’s
name with derision. “Hawthorne! First he says nothing to defend you when he
knows the truth, now he won’t marry you when you’re far and away more than the
ungrateful blackguard ever deserved.”
Sarah hedged. “James, perhaps he’s not even heard the news. He’s in
Switzerland, still, I think.”
“Well, you must tell him. Write to him. He deserves to know.”
She hesitated, unsure whether to elaborate, then added reluctantly,
“Before any of this drama at the Mettlings happened he wrote telling me he was
disinclined ever to marry again as he wished to direct all his energies towards
his political career.”
“I told you — Damned Whig!” spat James, staring over her
shoulder at the window as he digested her words. “Well, there’s nothing more to
be said, then. Regardless of your feelings for Hawthorne, the very man who
should be rescuing you from this debacle, though I daresay your father would
rather see a bullet through his heart than his ring on your finger, he’s not
here. And clearly, someone’s got to save you for I’ll not stand by and see you
ruined.”
Another surge of affection for her friend enveloped Sarah, but it
was not love and it was so different from what she felt for Roland. She gazed
at James, torn by shame and confusion. If she accepted him she’d be using him
ruthlessly and shamelessly to save herself from a public disgrace which barred
her from society forever. Yet without a timely marriage to save her, she’d
never see another familiar drawing room or sip tea with a respectable matron
again. The friends she’d once gossiped with would cross the road to avoid
speaking with her. But worse than all that would be her father’s hurt and
humiliation. She didn’t think she could do it to him.
“For Goodness sake, stop snivelling, Sarah.” There was little
sympathy in James’s tone. “It’s time to face the truth. Hawthorne doesn’t look
like he’s about to play the gentleman, in which case you really don’t have much
choice for I can tell you now, I’ll not see my dearest friend pay for a crime
for which she’s blameless.” Picking an imaginary piece of lint from his coat
sleeve he added, with a grin, “You’ll make an excellent housekeeper and hostess
at any rate and if you pay more attention to your hair than you obviously did
today, you’re a diamond of the first water.”
Half an hour after James’ momentous visit, Sarah stood at the window
of the shabby drawing room wracked with indecision as to whether she was doing
the right thing.
Though she wasn’t sure she endorsed James’s declaration that love
was nothing but a load of codswallop invented to sell books and tickets to the
theatre she had all but convinced herself that theirs would be a comfortable
union. She’d had to remind herself it was she who had pursued Roland so if he
held to his original stance that marriage was not on his agenda she had no one
to blame but herself.
Swallowing past the great lump in her throat she traced his name on
the fogged-up window pane.
Her father would be happy, James was pleased enough, so now there
was only her inconvenient passion for Roland to overcome. Surely, after the
dramas of the past few months, a comfortable arrangement such as marriage with
James promised, was to be commended.
She wrinkled her nose at the faux Gothic furniture and tasteless
artworks of Mrs. Hargreaves’ drawing room. Suddenly she longed for the tasteful
interiors of her childhood home. With a determined effort she banished the
reflection that Larchfield had been just as beautiful.
“Darling Roland,” she said to the stuffed hamster in its glass box
upon a table near her, “where are you?”
She had attempted something with her untidy hair after James’
criticism, but it still looked like a bird’s nest.
The overloud rap on the door startled her and Betty Hargreaves’s
useless parlour maid put her head round. “Gentleman to see you, M’lady?”
Sarah looked enquiringly at her.
“Can’t say as I remember his name, m’lady, but he didn’t have red
hair.”
Life surged back, filling the aching void, sweeping away her
lethargy and snapping Sarah’s backbone and lazy posture to attention.
It had to be Roland. No one else would call on her.
“Keep him waiting,” she ordered, flying to the door. “I’ll be down
in five minutes.”
Heart beating furiously she doused herself with orange flower water,
enlisted the maid’s help to button her into her best gold flecked muslin, and
swept her curls into the most stylish
à
la Meduse
coiffure she could manage in the seconds available.
Surely this meant he had finally heard, or come to his senses or
whatever the reason was for his silence? He’d only have to reflect on the
eternal alchemy between them to realise he had no alternative.
Nerves jangling, she ran to the parlour. Her mind whirled with
possibilities, but at the root of all was the knowledge that the only man she
would ever love had returned. At the door she stopped to bite her lips and
pinch colour into her cheeks, gathering her courage before signalling to the
parlour maid to announce her.
“My dear Mr Hawthorne.” She swept into the room with as much regal
dignity as she could manage, extending her hand, smiling. “Welcome back.”
He took her fingertips and bowed, but it did not escape her that his
lips kissed the air, and his expression as he straightened was one she
remembered well: wary, reluctant admiration, a throwback to the early days of
her tenure at Larchfield.
“Lady Sarah,” he had said, his smile strained, “I came the moment I
heard news of your predicament.”
Predicament? It sounded as if she’d contracted some nasty disease.
Then it struck her that perhaps he truly believed her fall from grace was in more
than name only. That it was something unconnected from the night at the
Hollingsworths.
She dismissed the thought as nonsense saying earnestly as she ran
her hands along the top of the Egyptian sofa, “I don’t know what you’ve heard
but I am guilty of nothing other than being a party to the crimes committed at
the Hollingsworths.”
When he didn’t immediately answer, merely stared at her with a look
she was unable to fathom, she grew afraid. She studied him, listening to the
wind rattling the windows and the clock ticking. As usual he was turned out
with his usual care and attention to detail. The cut of his russet coloured
coat emphasised his broad shoulders and he wore a new pair of hessians with
brown leather tassels. Though he did not exude quite his usual air of studied
calm — frowning instead at the amber knob of his cane which he twisted in
his hands — he’d managed to coax his cravat into an Oriental tie of utter
perfection. Cosmo would have been green with envy. Calling on such irrelevancies
was the only way she could stop herself from weeping, or throwing herself into
his arms and asking him why he’d not come back to her sooner.
He advanced several steps more steps and stopped, putting his head
on one side as he gazed at her. There was such sadness and sympathy in his
expression she felt her lip tremble but instead of a smile, the lines of his
face remained grim. He cleared his voice. “Sarah,” he said, softly, “you know I
don’t believe you guilty of impropriety. I’d only just returned home when I heard
you’d fallen victim to the gossips.”
She waited for him to draw her into his arms. Her body ached for the
closeness they’d once shared but she steeled herself against her old
impulsiveness. She had to know he felt the same way she did.
He cleared his throat again. “When Mrs Hawthorne told me I came
immediately.” Sarah saw the derision in his eye as he glanced at their
surroundings. “I’ve come to make you an offer.”
She stared back at him. Shock and disappointment churned in her
stomach. Where was the impassioned declaration of love, the hoarse avowals of
his enduring passion, his confession of surrender to the feelings he realised
he was unable to deny?
“An offer?” She cocked her head, devastation making her flippant.
“To return to Larchfield as your governess?”
“Good God, Sarah, are you mad?” He sounded suddenly so much like the
Roland she knew that she laughed, asking, “No, but I think you must be if you
imagine I could be tempted by such an appalling proposal. It’s even worse than
James’s offer only half an hour ago.”
It had not been the right response. The clenching of his jaw and
narrowing of his eyes told that. Realisation crashed through her brain. Lord,
his pride was as damaged as hers. She said, quickly to ameliorate the damage,
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for you, Roland?” How she wished she’d never
spoken those flippant, thoughtless,
stupid
words. It was no time to indulge in wounded dignity. Roland had
almost
just asked her to marry him and
she wanted Roland more than she’d wanted anything in her life.
But the damage had been done. Desperate, she tried another gambit,
pretending she didn’t notice his withdrawal, his clouded expression, the
clenching of his jaw. “You came back to me, Roland, as I longed that you would.
I did so hope you didn’t mean what you’d said in your letter.”
He managed a reluctant smile. “Of course I didn’t mean it, though
you surely understood what prompted me.”
She looked enquiringly at him. Oh Lord, was his prickly pride really
going to get in the way of all this? They’d come so far.
With a growl of exasperation he closed the distance between them
only in as much as he gripped her elbows before releasing them in order to
pace. “Good God, Sarah, of course you do. I lost any credible right to claim
you as my wife the moment I opened my mouth and sacrificed you to Sir Richard.”
“Roland!” She followed
him to where he had taken refuge with an Egyptian armchair between them.
Desperate to bridge the final distance, she whispered unsteadily, “If you
believe that, you’re only playing into Sir Richard’s hands. Surely it’s what
I
think that matters?” She reached out
to touch him. Though he looked warily at her hand as she rested the flat of her
palm against his chest he did not move away.