Learning to Waltz (38 page)

“What on earth…  Please let me in, Deb.”

Deb?
No one had ever called her that.

Against her better judgment, she opened the door but turned back to her packing without looking at Elizabeth.

“What are you doing, Deborah?”

“I’m packing.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Whately, I suppose.” She had nowhere else to go.

“Why? What’s happened? Did Evan say something stupid?”

“No.”

Elizabeth took her hand and turned her face-to-face. Deborah willed her mask into place, but it wouldn’t come. “Oh, Deborah. Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out. You’re overwrought. Why don’t you lie down and rest? Evan will be home soon, then we’ll see
—
”

“No!” She sounded childish, even to herself. She attempted a more reasonable tone. “Please leave me, Elizabeth. I have a great deal to do.”

Elizabeth looked at her for a moment. “All right. But it’s far too late to think about leaving today. And I assure you, you will not leave this house without some explanation.”

As soon as the door closed, Deborah slumped onto the bed. What sort of explanation could she possibly give?
Your mother was mean to me?
Or alternatively,
your mother’s out of her mind?

Neither of those was an option. And in the end, it made no difference, at least to Deborah.

Evan pulled the door shut with a snap. A maid passing in the hallway gave him a knowing smirk—not yet married and visiting his bride in the middle of the afternoon!

He ground his teeth. Let her think what she liked. If she’d listened at the door, she would know the truth of the matter. Deborah would not let him touch her at all, for pleasure or for comfort. It had been an exceedingly unsatisfactory interview.

He had declined Elizabeth’s presence, thinking he could talk Deborah around easily enough—that in fact, his sister might be very much in the way. After all, he had fully expected that his chosen bride would need reassurance all the way to the altar. But she was resolute. Elizabeth seemed sure that
something
had happened to overset her, but Deborah would not tell him what that something was or even concede that there
was
a something. She just reiterated that she “could not go through with it” and went on filling her trunk with Julian’s things. He growled and crossed the hall to her mother’s room.

“You’re packing, too, I see.” He’d expected it, yet it galled him.

“Of course.” Mrs. Carlington looked at him mournfully. “I feel as though I’ve done nothing but pack and unpack for the past six weeks.”

“She shouldn’t be putting you through this. And for what? She certainly won’t tell me!” He strode angrily about the room. “Is it just a case of nerves, ma’am?”

She shook her head decisively. “No, it was something very sudden and specific. But she won’t tell me, either.”

Evan stood at the window, watching love fall apart. By rights it should be raining, but the sun still shone, brash and selfish.

“You know, ma’am… if you refused to go, she would have to stay. At least a few days, to give us some time.”

“Evan. I am sorry about this. I suspect Deborah’s making a mistake. But I don’t know her reasons, and…  She’s all I have, she and Julian. Can you understand?”

He could, he supposed. “How is Julian doing?”

“I’ve not seen him. But—I think she hasn’t told him yet. It will be hard on him.”

Yes indeed. What a pleasure it had been to watch the boy open up, run and laugh and play with Elizabeth’s children. And his other cousins would be arriving any minute, come for a wedding that seemed more and more like a rainbow. Approach it too closely, and it disappears.

“There has to be a way through this muddle,” he muttered and left the room without ceremony.

Elizabeth was waiting for him in the hall, trying to look nonchalant for the benefit of passing servants. Every room in the house was being readied for the influx of wedding guests, which entailed much coming and going with sheets and brass polish and the like. But she was biting her nails, a habit that her governess had broken, with great difficulty, when she was twelve.

“Oh, Evan! Do come with me. Betsy—you know, our nursery maid?—heard something.”

Nothing pleasant, evidently. Elizabeth led him to the bedchamber she shared with Philip in the other wing of the house. Here Betsy sat at the very edge of the most uncomfortable chair in the room.

Elizabeth sat down across from her. “I’m sorry to make you go through this again, but I want Mr. Haverfield to hear it. All of it, please.”

The girl glanced up at him nervously. He sat down.

“Well—Mrs. Moore came up to the schoolroom earlier. The children was all gone out with Miss Halley, but she sat down like she sometimes does. We talked a bit—she wanted to help me with the mending, God love her—and then Mrs. Haverfield come in and things got right peculiar, sir. She was as friendly as could be, but… said she was looking for Master Julian, but she couldn’t remember ’is name.”

Evan leaned forward. The narrative had not proceeded very far before he was back on his feet, pacing around the Aubusson carpet. It was hard to believe. He didn’t
want
to believe it. But either it was true, or the girl had a phenomenal imagination—as well as some nefarious motivation he could not even guess at. Parts of the conversation she related word for word, she said, and she seemed as upset by the whole scene as Elizabeth was—as he was. By the time the story ended with Richards escorting his mother downstairs and Deborah turning to Betsy—“Oh, white as a ghost she was, sir, and her eyes so big, and hurt, like she’d been hit…”—he was quivering with rage. He threw the door open, knocking a Sèvres vase off the spindly little table that stood behind it, and stormed out.

“Evan? Evan! Do you think she’s sick or something?” Elizabeth ran after him.

He failed to break any precious
objets
when he burst into his mother’s sitting room, only because there were none so poorly placed. Richards was helping her mistress into a chair, a shawl ready to spread across her lap. Both looked up in considerable surprise. Even with the grandchildren visiting, such displays of emotion were rare in this part of the house.

“Why, Evan!”

He stood over her, hands clenched into fists. “Pray explain yourself, Madam.”

She gaped up at him.

“Sir!” Richards plucked ineffectually at his sleeve. “Remember who you’re talking to!”

“Oh, I remember. If only
she
had remembered that she was talking to
my wife
. Upstairs? In the nursery? Do you remember that, Mama?” She quailed before his attack.

“Please, sir!” Richards tried again. “She’s had a very difficult day.”

Evan threw the woman’s hand off his arm. “
She’s
had a difficult day? So am I having a difficult day! Because
she
can’t keep her mean-spirited thoughts to herself,
my
life is blown to hell. You promised me, Mama. I would never have dreamed that you could be so rude to a guest in this house.
Particularly
when that guest is the woman I was to marry. Yes, Mama, you achieved your purpose. You’ve driven her away. But if you imagine you’ll ever see
my
face again, you’re dreaming.”

A gasp and a flurry of movement at the door, and Deborah was there. A shriek sounded somewhere farther away, and several pairs of feet could be heard in the hallway. But Deborah, for whom Evan was fighting this battle, was first into the fray and on the wrong side.

“Evan, don’t!” She ran to him and slipped between him and his mother, pressed back in her chair bewildered and frightened. Hands against his chest, she looked into his wrathful face and said more softly, “I’m convinced she didn’t know who I was.”

“That’s rubbish, Deborah. She remembers
my
name. She remembers
Elizabeth’s
name. She remembers
Melanie’s
name, for God’s sake. It was all an act, a ploy to—”

“No, Evan, I’m sure it wasn’t. She’s known you forever, of course she remembers you.” Finally he yielded to the pressure of her hands and backed off a step or two.

His father’s voice barked from the doorway, pushing through the crowd that had gathered. “How dare you talk to your mother that way!”

Deborah turned away from him and went down on her knees by his mother’s chair. She held her hand and stroked her arm. Her lips moved, but in the approaching confusion of voices, he couldn’t hear what she said.

Hands attached themselves to both his arms and guided him from the room.
Dear God, was I wrong?

The room was very quiet by the time Deborah stood up again and turned her attention from Evan’s mother. Between the smelling salts Richards waved under her nose and the brandy someone made her drink, Mrs. Haverfield had regained some composure and the color returned to her face.

The servants had been dispatched to their various duties, and Deborah was alone with Mrs. Haverfield, Richards, and Evan’s older sister, the countess. Lady Witney and her family had evidently arrived in the midst of the uproar—quite a welcome that must have been. Richards wanted to dose her mistress with laudanum and put her to bed, and Lady Witney endorsed the proposal.

“She certainly should not attempt dinner downstairs. I hope she will sleep through the night and feel more herself in the morning. Come, Mama, we’ll help you to your room…  Oh, Mrs. Moore, please stay. I’ll just be a moment.”

Trapped, Deborah stood and waited.

Pulling the bedroom door closed behind her several minutes later, the countess smiled at Deborah. It was a social smile, not warm, but kind enough, her eyes assessing, perhaps curious. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Moore. It was most… filial of you.”

Deborah flushed and curtsied. “It was nothing, my lady.”

“Oh, none of that formal stuff. We’re to be sisters, after all. I was most surprised to hear that you will be joining the family.”

And not pleased, Deborah was sure. “No,” was all she said.

“No?” Alberta’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Well, I confess I have no clue what all the commotion has been about. But we are to join the others in the drawing room now that we’re finished here, and no doubt it will come clear.” She put her hand on Deborah’s elbow and started toward the door.

Deborah hung back. “You’ve no need of me, Lady Witney. I have some packing—”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore, I was most strictly adjured to bring you along. I was given to understand you are a party to whatever is happening. In fact, I suspect you are the very crux of the matter.”

Deborah wanted to slide under the rug with the dust and the little bugs that always managed to live there no matter how hard one tried to keep a place clean. Though at places like Northridge, they probably did not dare. But she could not do that and found herself entering the drawing room in the countess’ wake.

She sought out Evan, who stood in the far corner chastised and unhappy, like a small boy enduring a well-deserved scold. Their eyes met briefly, and then he turned away to the window. Her attention was claimed by a stranger who approached her with a practiced smile very like his wife’s and introduced himself as Theo Packard. He was also, of course, Earl of Witney, though he did not say so. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Moore.”

She curtsied again. “My lord.” He gestured her to a seat beside Philip.

Elizabeth, one swollen ankle propped on a footstool, spared only a quick glance for her sister and Deborah. It did not seem the right time to ask what happened to her. She was staring intently at her father, who was seated across from her and looked, Deborah thought, a decade older than he had that morning at breakfast.

The earl seemed to have been appointed moderator of the proceedings. Evan had said he was politically inclined, so Deborah supposed he must be good at that sort of thing.

“We’ve been discussing the… rather extraordinary conversation that apparently took place this afternoon. Evan and Elizabeth heard the tale from—as I understand it—the nursery maid? But as neither of them was actually present, and you
were
, Mrs. Moore—”