Only Beloved (14 page)

“Hearing you vow to love and cherish me.”

“Watching you sign the register, using your maiden name for the last time and knowing that the deed was officially done and you were my wife forever.”

“Walking back along the nave and seeing so many smiling faces, some familiar, many not. Oh, and the music, George. That must be a magnificent organ.”

“I shall take you to see it the next time we are in London,” he promised her. “And to play it.”

“Would it be allowed?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“All things are allowed a duchess,” he said, and they smiled at each other—no, they grinned.

“The flower petals Flavian and your friends hurled at us when we left the church,” she said.

“The metallic decorations attached to the carriage.”

“The receiving line in the doorway of Chloe and
Ralph's ballroom,” she said, “and all that goodwill directed just upon us.”

“Hugging our family and friends,” he said. “Seeing them happy for us.”

“The food and the wedding cake.”

“The wine and the toasts.”

“My shiny wedding ring,” she said. “I kept deliberately raising my hand just so that I could see it.” She did it now.

“Our wedding night,” he said softly, “though that happened on what was officially the day after our wedding. I am sorry that—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “We are not to regret anything. Nothing is perfect, George, and our wedding day was no exception. But it was as nearly perfect as any day could be. Let us remember it happily. Let us stop trying to forget it merely because there was that merest flaw in it.”

A
merest flaw
.
Ah, Dora
.

“A mere speck of dust,” he said. “A mere grain of sand. It was the loveliest day of my life too.”

“The . . . first time was not that?” she asked.

He drew a slow breath and released it. “No,” he said. “Not the first time. Look, we are home.”

The carriage had turned onto Penderris land, and the house was coming into sight on Dora's side. It could be seen as a forbidding sort of place, he supposed, especially in this weather. It was a massive mansion of gray stone set in cultivated gardens that at least displayed some color at this time of year even if the sun was not shining. Below the gardens at the front was wild coastland
scenery of coarse grass and gorse and heather and rugged rocks and, of course, the high cliffs, which fell away to more rocks and golden sand and the sea below.

“Oh.” She sounded awed. “It is so vast. How on earth am I going to learn to be mistress here? Even my father's house would look insignificant if it were set beside it. My cottage would look like a gardener's shed.”

He set an arm about her shoulders. “I have a perfectly competent housekeeper, who has been with me forever,” he told her. “I married you because I wanted a wife and a friend, not because I needed a mistress for Penderris.”

She turned her face away from the window and regarded him with what he thought of as her practical, sensible look. It was laced now with a touch of exasperation.

“What an utterly foolish thing to say,” she said. “As though one can marry a duke and expect to get away with being simply his wife and his friend. How all your servants would despise me! And they would speak to other servants and merchants, and they would speak with their employers and customers, and very soon everyone for miles around would look upon me with scorn and contempt. I am not just your wife, George. I am also, heaven help me, your duchess. And don't you dare grin at me like that, as though I were a mere amusement to you. I am going to have to learn to be mistress of this . . . this mansion, and don't try telling me anything to the contrary.”

So much for her famous inner serenity. Poor Dora. While he had been looking forward to coming home with her, she had clearly been approaching it with
growing agitation. Even though he had not imposed any expectations upon her, she had imposed them upon herself. He squeezed her shoulder and kissed her.

“Just keep in mind,” he said, “that there are hearts fluttering with fright within that mansion. It is not because I am coming home. I am a known quantity. It is because you are coming, the new Duchess of Stanbrook. They would be quite mystified if they knew that you are frightened of them.”

She sighed. “I told you about Miranda Corley a couple of days ago,” she said. “She is tone deaf, to put it kindly, and there are ten thumbs attached to her hands instead of just two with eight fingers. She is also of an age at which she is experiencing all the sullen rebelliousness of oppressed youth. Yet her parents believe her to be a musical prodigy and employed me to nurture her genius. I tell you this so that you will understand what I mean when I say that I would rather at this moment be facing a triple lesson with Miranda than facing my arrival at Penderris.”

He chuckled as the carriage rocked to a halt at the foot of the front steps, and withdrew his arm from about her shoulders.

“We are home.”

*   *   *

Just keep in mind that there are hearts fluttering with fright within that mansion . . . because you are coming, the new Duchess of Stanbrook.

Dora kept those words firmly in mind for the rest of the day. She had adjusted to new circumstances before in her life, and she would do it again. Besides, she was
not without experience at being mistress of a home. It was just that Penderris was on such a grand scale.
So much
grander than any other place she had lived.

At least she was spared here the formal welcome she had received at Stanbrook House on her wedding evening, perhaps because it had been impossible to predict exactly when they would arrive. However, by the time she sat down to a late luncheon with George, she had met the butler, who had greeted them at the front doors upon their arrival, and the housekeeper, a plump, matronly lady who had looked appraisingly at Dora but without any open disapproval. Dora had informed her that she looked forward to a lengthier meeting tomorrow and perhaps a tour of the kitchens.

She met Maisie, the maid who had been appointed her in London, in her dressing room, which was as large as her whole bedchamber in her cottage. She spent an hour or so alone in the duchess's bedchamber, presumably resting. Instead she sat on the window seat, her knees hugged to her bosom, gazing across the park to the cliffs and the sea in the distance beyond. The stark beauty of it all was going to take some getting used to. George took her for a short walk in the inner park afterward, and then it was time to dress for dinner, which was taken according to country hours, earlier than it had been in London. Dinner was served in a large dining room at a table that seemed to stretch almost its whole length. Fortunately her place had been set beside her husband's at the head of the table, and they were able to converse without having to yell at each other over a vast distance.

It was a bewildering but not an unhappy homecoming. Within a few days, she was sure, she would become familiar with her surroundings and her new duties and would be able to relax and feel at home.

Something had bothered her from the moment of her arrival, however. Or perhaps it was the absence of something. She had expected signs of the first duchess, however slight. She had not seen very much of the house yet, of course, for George had taken her outside for some air, at her request, when she might have asked for a quick tour of the house instead. But from what she had seen there was nothing to suggest that Penderris had ever been anything but the home of a bachelor until now.

Dora ought to have felt relieved, for she had felt some unease during the days in the carriage over the knowledge that she was the second duchess, that her predecessor had lived here and ruled here for almost twenty years. She had stepped inside the duchess's bedchamber, feeling a bit like an interloper, fearing that it would somehow bear the stamp of the other woman. What she found instead was a beautiful room decorated in varying shades of mossy green and gold, but one that was also quite impersonal, like a guest chamber or like a room waiting to take on the personality of its occupant.

There were no signs of a woman's touch anywhere else either—not in the drawing room, not in the dining room, not even in the gardens. There were also no signs that there had been a child here once, a boy, a young man, the son of the house. It all made Dora feel a little uneasy. Of course, both the first duchess and the son had been gone for more than ten years, and since then Penderris had
been used as a hospital and convalescent home. Perhaps orders had been given recently that any remaining signs be stripped away out of deference to her. If that was so, then it had been a tactful move upon someone's part but quite unnecessary. No two people's lives should be so obliterated from the place that had been their home.

It was almost as though they had never been.

But Dora was tired after the long journey. Perhaps tomorrow when she toured the whole house she would see all sorts of evidence of George's first family—perhaps a nursery still filled with books and toys, perhaps a young man's room still kept as it had been, perhaps a portrait of the duchess. Dora had no idea what she had looked like.

After dinner George drew her hand through his arm and led her from the dining room. But instead of taking her to the drawing room, he took her upstairs to what he described as the duchess's sitting room. It was between their dressing rooms and the bedchambers beyond each. Dora had not looked into it earlier. It was a cozy room, she thought immediately, furnished with comfortable-looking upholstered furniture. A fire crackled in the hearth and the candles in the two candelabra gave a warm, cheerful light.

Dora's general impression of the room was a fleeting thing, though, for her attention focused almost immediately upon one familiar object—her pianoforte, looking old and battered, looking like home.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and she withdrew her arm from George's and took a few hurried steps into the room before stopping again and swinging around to face him, her hands held prayer fashion against her lips.

He was smiling. “I hope,” he said, “you were not congratulating yourself upon being rid of it at last.”

She shook her head and bit her upper lip—and lost sight of him.

“Don't cry.” He laughed softly, and she felt his hands clasp her shoulders. “Are you that unhappy to see it?”

“It is such an ugly old thing,” she said, swiping at her tears with both hands. “I did not like to say anything about it. I said goodbye to it at the cottage and hoped whoever bought the place would have some use for it. What made you think of having it brought here?”

“Maybe a desire to please you,” he said. “Or perhaps a memory of listening to you play it for a very short while the day after I asked you to marry me. Mainly a desire to please you—and myself. Are you pleased?”

“You know I am,” she said. “Thank you, thank you, George. How very kind you are and how good to me.”

“It is my pleasure to please you,” he told her, his hands squeezing her shoulders. “Will you play it for me, Dora? After we have drunk our tea?”

“Of course I will,” she said. “But before. I cannot wait.”

She played for an hour. Neither of them spoke a word during that time, even between pieces. He did not applaud either or show any other sign of appreciation—or boredom. Dora played without looking at him even once, but she was aware of him at every moment. She played for him, because he had asked her to play, but even more because he had thought to have her pianoforte fetched from Inglebrook, because he had looked so pleased at her surprise, because he was
there,
listening. She felt more fully married during that hour than she had at any time
before. She was consciously happy. Words, even looks, were unnecessary, and that was perhaps the happiest thought of all.

As they drank tea afterward and conversed comfortably on a variety of topics, Dora thought of how very, very sweet marriage was and how fortunate she was to be married at last.

“Time for bed?” he suggested after the tray had been removed.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I am tired.”

“Too tired?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “Not too tired.”

How could she ever be too tired for his lovemaking? Or for him? She was, of course, hopelessly, irrevocably in love with him. She had admitted that to herself long before now. It made no real difference to anything, however. They were just words—being in love, romantic love.

She did not need words when the reality was so very lovely.

G
eorge spent most of the next morning at home, first with his secretary, then with his steward. He had some catching up to do since he had been gone for a while, first for Imogen's wedding and then for his own. Dora, looking neat and trim in one of her new dresses and with her hair simply styled, had informed him at breakfast that she would spend the morning with Mrs. Lerner, the housekeeper, and that she intended to visit the kitchens too and make the acquaintance of the chef and some of the indoor servants. She intended to have all their names memorized within a few days and hoped they would make allowances for her until she did. She would be careful not to tread upon any toes, however, for she understood that some chefs guarded their domain quite jealously and resented interference even from the mistress of the house.

George had listened fondly and wondered what the servants would make of her. She had made no attempt to look like a duchess—she actually looked more like a provincial music teacher—or to behave like one.
Nevertheless, she intended to be the duchess and mistress of her new home. She would do it her way.

“Even Mrs. Henry, my housekeeper in Inglebrook, could get cross if she felt I was encroaching upon her duties,” she had added.

George would wager that his servants would soon respect his wife and even come to love her. He doubted his first wife, Miriam, had known any but a very few of the servants by name. But he did not intend to be making comparisons.

He had planned to suggest a walk down on the beach during the afternoon, but the weather continued inclement. A cloudy, blustery morning gave way to a drizzly, windy afternoon, and he was forced to think of some indoor amusement instead. It was not difficult, for of course she had not yet seen a great deal of the house. He had learned during luncheon that her morning activities had taken her no farther than the morning room and the kitchens.

He took her on a tour of the rest.

First she wanted to see where everyone had stayed during the years when Penderris was a hospital. He showed her the rooms each of the Survivors had occupied, and time passed quickly as he reminisced with some stories about each of them—at her instigation.

“It may seem strange to you that I think back fondly on those years,” he said as they stood at the window of what had been Vincent's room. It faced the sea, though he had been unable to appreciate the view. He had liked to listen to the sea, though, after his hearing returned, and he had kept his window open even on the most
inclement of days so that he could smell the salty air. “There was a great deal of suffering, and sometimes it was almost unbearable to watch when there was so little I could do to ease it. But in many ways those were the happiest years of my life.”

“I daresay you saw human suffering at its worst and human endurance and resilience at its best,” she said. “I do not know all the wounded who spent time here, of course, only the six who became your friends. But they are extraordinary human beings, and I believe they must be such strong, vital, loving people at least partly because of all their suffering rather than despite it.”

“I have been privileged to know them,” he said as he led her to the room in which Imogen had stayed for three years. It overlooked the kitchen gardens at the back of the house.

“I believe you have,” she said. “And they have been enormously privileged to know you.”

She was perhaps a little biased.

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“Open my home as a hospital?” he said as she gazed down upon the regimented beds of multicolored blooms in the back garden with which the urns and vases in the house were kept filled. “I really do not know where the idea originated. I have heard it said that some artists and writers do not know where their ideas come from. I do not put myself on a par with them, but I do understand what they mean. The house felt empty and oppressive. I felt empty and oppressed. My life was empty and meaningless, my future empty and unappealing. There was nothing but emptiness all about me and within, in
fact. Why did it suddenly occur to me to fill my home and my life with horribly wounded soldiers? It might well have been seen as exactly the wrong solution for what ailed me. But sometimes, I believe, when one asks a question from one's deepest need and waits for an answer without straining too desperately to invent it, the answer comes, seemingly from nowhere. It is not so, of course. Everything comes from somewhere, even if that somewhere is beyond our conscious awareness. But I am getting tangled up in thought. I ought to have stopped after ‘I really do not know' as an answer to your question.”

“Perhaps,” she said softly without turning from the window, “the idea came to you at least partly because your son was an officer and died. And because your wife could not bear her grief and shattered your already broken heart.”

He felt as though she had planted a very heavy fist low to his abdomen. He felt robbed of breath and raw with sudden pain.

“Who knows?” he said abruptly after a silence it seemed neither of them would break. “Let me show you the room where Ben learned to walk again and Flavian learned to deal with his rages.”

“I am sorry,” she said, frowning as she turned from the window and took his offered arm.

“Don't be,” he told her. He heard the curtness of his tone and made an effort to correct it. “You need not apologize for anything you choose to say to me, Dora. You are my wife.” Now his voice sounded merely chilly. Not to mention stilted.

The room to which he took her next had been converted back into a salon that was rarely used since he never entertained on a large scale. At one time, though, there had been sturdy bars along the full length of it, one set fixed to the wall, the other a short distance from it and parallel to it, both at just the right height for Ben to hold on to on either side of his body as he forced weight onto his crushed legs and feet and learned to move them in a semblance of a walk. It had been a painful sight to behold. And very inspiring.

“I have never seen anyone more determined to do something that was apparently impossible,” he told Dora after describing the contraption. “His face would pour sweat, the air was often blue with his language, and it is a wonder he did not grind his teeth to powder when he was not using his mouth for cursing. He was going to walk even if he had to traverse the coals of hell to do it.”

“And indeed he does walk now with his two canes,” she said.

“Out of sheer hellish stubbornness,” he said with a smile. “We were all very happy when he finally convinced himself that using a wheeled chair was not an admission of defeat but actually just the opposite. That did not happen, though, until after he had met Samantha and gone to Wales. He also rides and swims.”

“And Flavian?” she asked him.

“We had a stuffed leather bag suspended from the ceiling for the use of your brother-in-law,” he said, “and leather gloves for him to wear while he pounded the stuffing out of it. He learned to come here when his thoughts were so hopelessly jumbled that he could not
get any words out, even allowing for his stammer. His frustration had a way of releasing itself in violence and scared a number of people half to death. It was why I brought him here. His family did not know how to cope with him.”

“Whose idea was the pounding bag?” she asked.

“The physician's?” he said. “Mine? I cannot remember.”

“I think it was probably yours,” she said.

“You are turning me into a hero, are you?” he asked her.

“Oh, no,” she told him. “You are a hero. You do not need me to proclaim what already is so.”

He laughed and bore her off to the family portrait gallery, which ran the whole width of the house on the west side of the upper floor, where the sun was less of a problem than it would have been on the east.

He might have taken her back to the drawing room instead, he thought later, when it was too late. They had already spent a good portion of the afternoon in the hospital rooms, and it was not too early for tea, especially when he had a surprise awaiting her afterward. But he was enjoying showing her their home and watching her genuine interest. He was loving her company and the knowledge that she belonged here now, that she was not a mere visitor who would leave sooner or later.

So he took her to the gallery.

The Crabbe family could be traced back in an unbroken line to the early thirteenth century, when the first of their recorded ancestors had been awarded a barony for some military exploit that had brought him to the attention of the king. The title had mutated to viscount
and earl and eventually to duke. George was the fourth Duke of Stanbrook. There were portraits reaching back to the beginning, with very few omissions.

“I failed a history test on the Civil War when I was eight or thereabouts,” George told Dora. “I could not muster up any enthusiasm for Cavaliers and Roundheads and would not have got a single answer right if I had not been gruesomely fascinated by the fact that King Charles I had had his head chopped off. My father punished me by sending me up here to learn the history of my own family. It was the dead of winter and my poor tutor was sent with me, perhaps as punishment for not having ignited my interest. On a test the very next day, set by my father, I got every answer correct and even exasperated my tutor by writing an essay for each when a single sentence would have sufficed. I have loved the gallery ever since when I suppose I might have come to see it as a sort of torture chamber.”

She laughed. “Am I to be given the test tomorrow?” she asked him.

“I doubt you would have incentive enough to do well,” he said. “It is not winter, and I do not keep a cane at the ready in my library as my father did, though to be fair he never actually used it on me—or my brother.”

They moved slowly along the gallery while he identified the people in each portrait. He kept his commentary brief so as not to bore her, but she asked numerous questions and saw likenesses to him in several of the family members dating back to the last century or so despite elaborate powdered wigs and black facial patches and vast quantities of velvet and lace.

“Ah,” she said with evident pleasure as they came to the large family portrait that had been painted not long before his mother's death when he was fourteen. He had thought himself very grown-up while it was being painted, he recalled, because neither the painter nor his father had had to tell him even once to sit still—unlike his brother, who had squirmed and yawned and scratched and complained through almost the whole tedious process. “You look very like your father, George. Your brother looks more like your mother—and Julian looks like him. Do you miss your brother dreadfully? And he was younger than you.”

“Yes, I miss him,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, he got himself into the clutches of alcohol and gambling when he was a very young man and never could seem to pull himself free even when most of his contemporaries had finished sowing their wild oats and were settling down to sober adulthood. If he had not died when he did, there would have been virtually nothing left of his property for my nephew to inherit. It seemed for a while that Julian would follow in his footsteps, but he was fortunate enough to meet Philippa, a mere schoolroom miss at the time. He waited for her to grow up, though her father very rightly sent him packing and he did not set eyes on her for a number of years. He used the time to make himself worthy of her and acceptable to her father. I was and am very proud of him—as well as very fond.”

Dora had turned to look at him. “I could see when I met him in London that you love him dearly,” she said, “and that he returns your regard. He will be a worthy successor to the title.”

“But not too soon, I hope,” he said.

“Oh.” She laughed. “I hope not either. I rather like you right here with me.”

“Do you?” He lowered his head and kissed her briefly on the lips.

She turned back to the wall, and for the first time it struck him that he ought not to have brought her. For she was looking at the blank wall beyond that family portrait and then glancing over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows raised.

“But that is the last one?” she asked him. “There are no more?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

He had been fourteen when that picture was painted, three years before his father's death. He was forty-eight now. That made for a gap of thirty-four years. He had never had a family portrait done with Miriam and Brendan. And no official one of either of them alone.

He had not thought soon enough of how that blank wall would look to Dora.

“Perhaps,” he said, his voice a little overhearty, “we will make it a project for next winter, Dora. It is a long and tedious business, I recall, sitting for a portrait, but it ought to be done. I would like to have it done. I will find a reputable portrait painter and bring him out here to stay. He can paint us on days when it is too cold and dreary to venture outdoors.”

But she had turned to face him fully now, and her eyes were on his, a puzzled frown between her brows.

“There is no painting of you with your wife and your son?” she asked him. “You did not have it removed out
of deference to my feelings, by any chance, did you? You really did not need to do that, George. You must have it put back. I do not resent the marriage you had for almost twenty years long before I even knew of your existence. I am not jealous. Did you think I would be? Besides, they are a part of all this family history you have displayed here.”

Instead of answering, he turned on his heel and took several long strides along the gallery, his boots ringing on the polished wood floor. He stopped as abruptly as he had started, but he did not turn back to her.

“There is no portrait, Dora,” he said. “There ought to have been, perhaps, but I never got around to arranging it. Nothing has been hidden away from your sight. They were a part of my life for many years, Miriam and Brendan, and then they died. Much has happened since—at Penderris, in my life. Now you are here, the wife of my present and of as much of the future as we will be granted. I prefer not to look back, not to talk about the past, not even to think about it. I want what I have with you. I want our friendship, our . . . marriage. I have been happy with it, and I have felt that you are happy too.”