Never Call It Love (22 page)

Then
another thought made her stiffen slightly. Perhaps he had not bought the gown
for her. Ruby-colored velvet would be the perfect foil for Moira Ashley's dark
loveliness.

Madame
Leclerc said, "Lady Stanford is
enceinte, non?"

"Yes,
madame."

"Is
it permitted to inquire when the child will be born?"

"In
late November."

"Then
it is best that I do not make the final fitting until after the child's birth.
Your gowns will not be completed until then, anyway. There are many of them,
and there are other orders that I must complete before I start on yours."
She stepped back. "I have finished now."

With
Madame Leclerc's aid, Elizabeth put on her gown. Her conversation with the
Frenchwoman had made her sharply aware that it was high time that Patrick
stayed in his own room every night.

When
she and Patrick emerged onto the sidewalk, he said, "I have business back
at the inn. Would you prefer to go to your room, or would you like Michael to
drive you around the city?"

"I
would like to drive."

For
several hours the carriage took her around Dublin, halting now and then
whenever Michael thought that some stately gray-stone church, some view of the
broad Liffey River, might appeal to her. She had no doubt that in other parts
of Dublin slatterns sat at windows of moldering tenements, and ragged children
dodged carts and wagons in the filthy streets, and men with no jobs and little
prospects of any sat at curbstones numbing their misery with gin at a penny a
cup. But what she saw was Anglo-Irish Dublin, with broad, tree-lined streets,
mansions almost as fine as any in London, and strolling men and women with rich
clothing on their bodies and proper Church of England sentiments in their
heads.

When
she returned to the inn, she found that Patrick was not among those seated in
the comfortable common room reading newspapers or writing at desks along one
wall. But as she passed the open doorway of the taproom, she saw that he was
one of three men seated at a table over pint mugs of ale or stout. One of the
men was about
forty, with a thin, dark face. His clothing, although of a cut that looked
vaguely foreign to Elizabeth, was excellent enough that he did not seem out of
place in Dublin's finest inn. But as she climbed the stairs, she wondered
briefly about the other man. Stocky and red-faced, he had been dressed in a
plain coat and breeches of brown broadcloth, the sort of clothing a moderately
prosperous farmer might save for important occasions. Perhaps he
was
some
farmer, trying to buy land from Patrick, or to sell some to him.

Upstairs
in their sitting room, Elizabeth stood by the window and watched the long day
fade into twilight. At eight someone knocked on the door. Elizabeth opened it,
to find one of the inn's menservants standing in the hall. Sir Patrick Stanford
sent his regards to Lady Stanford, and begged to inform her that he would take
supper downstairs. Would Lady Stanford care to have her own supper brought up
now?

Lady
Stanford would. By nine she had finished an excellent meal of mullet cooked in
wine sauce. Still Patrick had not returned. His business with both of those
men, whatever it was, must be complicated indeed. Wryly she reflected that if
he were buying more land, probably it was her money that enabled him to do so.
But he had never offered to discuss financial matters with her, and she had
felt too proud to ask questions.

At
ten she went to bed. Sometimes during the night she came awake for a few
moments, dimly aware that Patrick now lay beside her, and then went back to
sleep.

Thus
it was not until the next day, as their carriage moved south from Dublin, that
she told him what she had resolved upon in Madame Leclerc's fitting room.
"When we return to Stanford Hall, you must stop coming to my room. We must
think of the child's safety."

"Very
well."

He
had been expecting her to say that. But why did she
have to say it.
the little hypocrite, in that cold, offhand manner, as if their lovemaking had
been for her only a disagreeable duty? He knew that was far from the case. And
yet, probably in a way, she
was
pleased to have an excuse for shutting
him out of her room. She must have found it a constant source of chagrin that,
despite the enmity between them, she could not resist the pleasure she found in
his arms. Yes, making that little speech a moment ago must have brought her
considerable satisfaction.

Well,
why should he care? She was far from being the only desirable woman of his
acquaintance. He recalled a note from Moira that one of the Wetherly servants
had brought him the day before he and Elizabeth had set out for Dublin. It had
been a reminder, formal in tone, that soon he must call upon her to discuss the
"young entry"—the preseason fox hunt designed to acquaint the young
hounds with hunting procedures. Early in September, huntsmen, horses, and
foxhounds would all assemble at Wetherly.

She
had written a postscript:

As
I am sure you will perceive, all the above is mere subterfuge. Once I said to
you, "You will have to marry me first." Now I cannot impose such a
stricture. In short, my dear Patrick, I have decided that half a loaf is better
than none.

He
gazed at his wife's profile, cool against the side-swept brim of her black
velvet hat. As soon as possible, he would reply to Moira's note, in person.

During
the next few weeks Patrick not only stayed out of Elizabeth's room. He also
often stayed away from the supper table. She did not question him about his
absences, nor did he volunteer any explanation. At first she thought he might
be trying to annoy her by staying away. Soon,
though, she realized he must
have a more compelling reason than that. She thought of Moira Ashley on the
sidesaddle, looking down at Patrick with hurt and anger plain in her face. Yes,
surely it was Lady Moira who kept Patrick away from Stanford Hall, not only at
suppertime, but often at night.

Well,
Elizabeth asked herself, what else would one expect of a man like Patrick
Stanford? Even if the circumstances of their marriage had been different, even
if she had not stated in writing that she would not question his pursuit of
"other relationships," no doubt before long he would have been
unfaithful. If she felt jealousy at all, she assured herself, it was entirely
physical, induced only by memories of his lovemaking.

As
before, she busied herself with household matters. But often a strange
restlessness drove her out-of-doors. She no longer dared to ride. However,
Joseph had produced, from a cobwebby corner of the carriage house, a
two-wheeled cart. With a placid old dapple gray named Toby plodding between the
shafts, and Gypsy perched on the wooden seat beside her, she sometimes went for
drives. Most of the time, though, she preferred to walk through a countryside
washed by the full tide of summer. With Gypsy frisking beside or ahead of her,
wearing the collar Joseph had placed around his neck, she wandered through
meadows where bees settled hungrily on clover blossoms, and past orchards where
apple-tree boughs bent under the weight of ripening fruit.

As
she turned her reluctant steps homeward, she would wonder if Patrick would sit
at the other end of the long table tonight, and then feel angry with her own
thoughts. It was not, she assured herself, that she was lonely for the sight of
him sitting there. It was just that she felt awkward, seated alone at that long
table.

But
after a while she seldom took supper alone. From late July onward, Colin spent
more and more of his time
at Stanford Hall. For a while, he said, long-needed repairs at Edgewood had
required his attention, but now matters were so well advanced that there was
nothing his steward, Mr. Slattery, could not handle. Elizabeth accepted his
explanation but wondered privately if he had guessed that she found it
unpleasant to dine alone so often. Whatever the reason for his presence, she
was glad of it.

On
evenings when Patrick was not present, she and Colin played chess in the
library after supper. Often when she made a move and then looked up from the
board, she observed what appeared to be sympathy in Colin's dark eyes. Several
times she thought he was about to make some comment concerning his brother's
absence, but he never did. His silence on that point only strengthened her
belief that Wetherly was the place where Patrick spent most of those hours when
he was absent from Stanford Hall.

One
night, as they were putting the chess pieces away in a tooled-leather box, she
said, "Colin, haven't you ever been away from Ireland?"

"Once.
I was only nineteen then, and had not yet..."

He
checked himself. He had been about to say that in those days he had not yet
reconciled himself to certain things—his lameness, his illegitimacy.

He
said, "I had not yet realized that the life I was best suited for was
right here in Ireland. And so I took ship for the West Indies. For a while I
stayed with an English family who had a sugar plantation."

"Is
it a beautiful part of the world?"

"Beautiful,
and sinister."

He
spoke of shimmering blue water that became green or turquoise in the warm
shallows, and of pink sandy beaches fringed with coconut palms bending in the
trade wind. But he also spoke of slave ships, discharging their wretched cargo
of men and women and children to labor in the cane fields, or in the mines,
where the gentle Carib Indians,
the islands' original and now almost extinct
inhabitants, had sickened and died in the foul air and under the overseer's
lash. He spoke of voodoo drums in the hills throbbing through the hot darkness,
and of the white settlers' constant fear that some night those drums would
signal a murderous descent of the blacks upon the plantations, the pretty,
European-style little towns....

Elizabeth
was so fascinated that, until the tall clock in one corner struck the hour, she
did not realize it was midnight.

One
afternoon in early September when she returned from a long walk, she found
Patrick standing in the library doorway. He said, "May I speak to you for
a moment?"

Together
they moved into the room. Tomorrow, he told her, the neighborhood hunt would
assemble at Wetherly for the young entry. "Although of course you are
unable to join the hunt, Moira thought you might care to attend the ball she
will give tomorrow night."

Elizabeth
said coldly, "Please thank Lady Moira for her kind although extremely
belated invitation. Tell her that just as a woman in my condition cannot ride
to hounds, she also cannot dance."

Aware
that her movements must appear slow and clumsy, she turned and left him.

But
even though she could not join the hunt, she saw it the next day. She was
walking down a narrow lane with Gypsy, when she heard the sound of the horn,
and the hounds giving tongue. Hastily seizing Gypsy's collar, she stopped
beside a tree. Not more than a few yards in front of her, the fox streaked
across the lane and under the bottom rail of a fence into an uncultivated
field. The hounds were next, some not fully grown, scrambling through the rails
in clamorous pursuit. Then, as she tightened her grip on the wildly excited
Gypsy, the riders began to stream past, the men in pink coats, the women in
formal black
habits. Patrick was among those in the lead. As he approached the fence, he
turned his head for an instant and looked at her beside the tree, trying to
control the plunging, barking dog. He leaped the fence, rode on. The rest of
the riders streamed past, Moira among them.

Elizabeth
waited until the hunt had disappeared around a copse of oaks and maples. Then
she turned back toward the hall. How beautiful Moira Ashley had looked as she
guided her mount over the fence. And how awkward, even ridiculous, she herself
must have looked, swollen body bent, hand gripping the noisy mongrel's collar.

Loneliness
swept over her. But soon she would not be lonely, she told herself. Soon there
would be the child.

Clarence,
the taller of the two red-haired footmen, opened the door for her. "There
is a letter for you, milady. Mrs. Corcoran put it in your room."

As
she laboriously climbed the stairs, she wondered who the letter was from.
Perhaps from her mother. Perhaps from the Dublin midwife, recommended by Mrs.
Corcoran, to whom she had written last week, asking her to attend her lying-in.

Moments
later, she stared with surprised joy at the letter, addressed in a familiar
hand and postmarked Dublin, which lay on her desk. With trembling fingers she
unsealed it. Donald! A letter from Donald.

His
bishop, he had written, had sent him as an observer to a synod of Anglo-Irish
churchmen in Dublin. "I shall be here five more days. After that I would
like to call upon you, if that is agreeable to both you and Sir Patrick. I
would arrive on the tenth, and stay perhaps three days—but only, again, if that
is agreeable to both of you."

He
had signed himself formally as "Your obedient servant, Donald
Weymouth."

The
tenth, a week from now. In a week, she would see Donald. True, Patrick might
resent his coming. But surely
not even he could deny a woman in an advanced state
of pregnancy the comfort of a visit from someone she had known since childhood.
She cried for a few minutes, out of sheer joy. Then she sat down at the desk
and drew letter paper toward her.