The Phantom Lover (18 page)

He met her eye with a sigh of patient but dogged stubbornness. “I shan't go back to London, girl. It will avail you nothing to keep insisting upon it. Do you think the
ton
would enjoy the sight of a cripple marring the festivities of their balls and squeezes—?”

“A
cripple
?” She winced at the word.

“Yes, a cripple. You've grown accustomed, here in our isolation, to my crutch and my clumsiness—”

“Clumsiness? I've never seen a
sign
of clumsiness. I constantly marvel at your adept management of your movements!”

“Perhaps, here in my own home, where my activities are limited to what I can easily manage. But can you truly see me at Almack's? Or making my way through the crowds at Drury Lane? Or hobbling along the red carpet they roll out in front of Carlton House when a ball is in progress?”

“Yes, I can see you in
all
those places! Why not?”

“I'll tell you why not,” he said bitterly. “Because the
ton
of London are frivolous pleasure-seekers. They do not want their amusements sullied by reminders of war and mutilation. Just as the blemishes on their faces are covered over with cosmetic waxes and the distortions of their figures are masked by girdles and braces, the sick, the ugly, the deformed are at best pitied and tolerated, but are more often hidden away or covered over or ignored. I want no place in such a world.”

Nell was pale and shaken by his words. “You cannot believe what you are saying! How can you think so little of the people of your own class—your own
family
, even. It would not be
at all
the way you think. People would honor you, admire you, seek you out! You would be welcome anywhere!”

Harry smiled mockingly. “What a romantic, childish bit of nonsense that was, my dear. You really should try to grow up a bit.”

“You may ridicule me if you like, my lord,” Nell said furiously, beginning to tremble at the knees, “but I think it is
you
who should grow up. You are like a spoiled little boy, sulking because his perfection has been impaired. I think you're nothing but a
coward
!”

Harry laughed. “A
coward
, ma'am? You think to rouse me into changing my mind by infuriating me? It won't work, you know. I've too many battles behind me—”

“Bravery in battle is child's play compared with the bravery of facing one's peers when one feels at a disadvantage,” she said quietly. “To go to London, now, feeling as you do—
that
would be true courage.”

“Perhaps,” he said and turned away from her with a deep sigh, “but I have no wish to test my courage in that arena. Have done, girl. This conversation is too painful for both of us.”

“Yes, I've done,” she said, clenching her trembling hands behind her. She went slowly to the door. “But I cannot stay here and watch you hide from the world like this.” She turned to face him once more. “I shall return to London as soon as it can be arranged.”

“As you wish,” he said with a nod, his lips compressed tensely. “It will no doubt be best for us both.”

“B-best?” she asked, dismayed, blinking her eyes to keep back the tears. “It's the very
worst
that could happen to us, as you'll f-find out to your sorrow before very l-long. But I … I d-don't know what else to d-do.” She ran out, closing the door quickly behind her so that he would not see the tears which she could no longer keep from spilling over.

The next two days were the most painful Nell had yet lived through. Her abrupt decision to depart caused an almost hysterical flurry throughout the household. Gwinnys burst into tears at the news and would no sooner calm down when some reminder—seeing an open trunk in a bedroom, or overhearing a discussion of travel plans—would bring on a fresh outbreak of waterworks. Amelia took the news calmly enough but felt it was too precipitate, and she tried to urge Nell to postpone action for a while. Her suggestions were listened to politely—and ignored. Mrs. Penloe was beside herself with disappointment. Her beloved Master Harry had retreated to his apartment, and she was convinced that he was now in worse condition than before.

Harry kept to his rooms, insisting on the strictest privacy. Knowing that Mrs. Penloe couldn't face him without haranguing him to accompany his aunt to London, he requested firmly that she refrain from bringing him his meals until she could accept his decision with complaisance. In the meantime, the only persons permitted to enter his rooms were Will and Jemmy, neither of whom saw anything amiss in his lordship's desire to remain at Thorndene, and neither of whom would have dreamed of taking the liberty of discussing the matter with him.

Even his Aunt Amelia was denied permission to visit him. As a result, she spent the greater part of the few days left in trying to find a way to confront him. Finally she decided to write a letter to him. The day before they were to depart, she composed a lengthy letter which she slipped under his door. The letter, full of tear-spots and cross-hatched deletions, pleaded with him to Reconsider his Responsibilities, predicted that his continued Withdrawal would bring Dire Results for the Family, and begged him to do Something to prevent his Shockingly Cruel Aunt and Uncle, Lady Sybil and Lord Charles, from Forcing her Beloved Nell into an Unwanted Betrothal.

As a result of her emotional epistle, Lord Thorne emerged from his apartment on the morning of their departure. He found the members of the household gathered in the great hall. Before announcing his presence, he stood in the shadows watching them. Mrs. Penloe, red-eyed and overwrought, was embracing Lady Amelia fondly but despairingly. Jemmy, who had made Miss Nell a bouquet of evergreens, clutched the greens behind his back until he could work up the courage to present them to her. Will was assisting the coachman of a hired hack to carry out the trunks. The only cheerful countenance belonged to Gwinnys, who had managed to convince her mistress that she was indispensible and, to her unbounded delight, had been granted permission to accompany the ladies to London. The prospect not only of remaining in her mistress's employ but of seeing the Great City, was so thrilling that even her beloved Miss Nell's obvious unhappiness could not dampen her excitement.

Nell, enveloped in a numbing misery, stood near the open doorway, staring at nothing. Harry watched her from the shadows. She was dressed for travel in a hooded blue fur-trimmed cloak, her hands hidden in an enormous muff. The blue of the cloak and the dark fur circling her face suited her. It seemed to him he'd never seen her look so lovely. But he knew that it did him no good to stand there staring at her like a goggle-eyed schoolboy, and he roused himself abruptly. With an embarrassed cough, he came forward. The eager cries with which his appearance was greeted by his aunt and Mrs. Penloe made him brace himself with fist-clenching fortitude. “I've written a letter to Mr. Prickett,” he said to Nell, holding it out to her. “It authorizes him to pay Charles' and Sybil's debts and to increase their allowances. It also provides for an independence for yourself.”

Nell, her expression stony, shook her head and refused to take the letter. Harry shrugged and turned to Lady Amelia. “Here, my dear,
you
take it,” he said, smiling a little at her eager acceptance, “but I hope you'll warn the Thornes that this does
not
mean I will countenance any communication from them, or any visits either. If they
must
reach me in an emergency—and
please
, Amelia, make it clear that only the most dire of circumstances should make this necessary—they should do so through Mr. Prickett. Oh, and most important of all, Amelia—no one else is to be told of this. No one at all!”

He accepted his aunt's grateful embrace, wished them both a safe journey and stepped back. Will ushered Gwinnys out to the coach and helped her aboard, while the coachman performed the same service for Amelia. Jemmy, realizing that time had run out, thrust the bouquet into Nell's arms and ran out the door, his ears red. Mrs. Penloe hugged the girl and turned away, weeping. Then Nell lifted her eyes to Harry's. They stared at each other wordlessly, and she turned and walked swiftly out the door. Harry didn't move until he'd heard the coach begin to crunch down the drive. Then he turned on his heel, hobbled quickly down the hall and up the stairs to his rooms, shutting the door behind him with a loud, reverberating slam.

Chapter Twelve

L
ADY SYBIL STOOD
before the wall mirror in the small saloon trying on one of half a dozen new bonnets. The floor around her was littered with open handboxes, mounds of tissue-thin paper and hats of every description. Lady Amelia, who was sitting at a small table near the window with a tea tray before her and a cup of the hot brew in her hand, shook her head in disapproval. The small chip hat that lay near Sybil's left foot must have cost more than Lady Amelia would spend on an entire costume, and with its ridiculous covering of long feathers, it would no doubt fly away at the first wind.

Sybil, her head covered with a dress bonnet which looked like a tight bell decorated with colored stones, turned to face Amelia. “Well, what do you think of this one? Shall I keep it to wear with my new plum-colored ball gown or shall I send it back?”

Sybil was impaled on the horns of a very difficult dilemma. She had been ordered by her husband to return four of the bonnets without delay, and she found herself quite unable to decide. Why was Charles making her life so difficult?

The answer was obvious. Nell and Amelia had returned from Cornwall with the news that Henry Thorne was quite alive, and Charles had had to learn to accept the fact that he would never have control of a large sum of money. Although Henry had authorized the payment of their debts (which he might never have done if he had been aware of the extent of their indebtedness) and had thereby given them
carte blanche
to begin to compile new ones, Charles was nevertheless quite irritable. Sybil, on the other hand, had immediately gone on a shopping spree, the six bonnets being only a small portion of her purchases.

Unfortunately for Sybil, the six bandboxes had been delivered at just the moment when Charles had been departing for Brooks's. The resentment that he nurtured in his breast against the fates—for making him a second son, for giving him the damnedest luck at the gaming tables, and for endowing him with a wife whose proclivity for spending was nothing short of prodigious—seemed to break forth at the sight of the bandboxes. Ignoring the butler, the other servants, the liveried delivery men and anyone else who might have been within earshot, he had roared for her appearance and had delivered a scold in so stentorian a tone and with such abusive language that, for the first time in her life, she'd been left in a quake. Now there was nothing for it but to do as she'd promised and return four of the six bonnets without ado. “Well, Amelia,” Sybil asked impatiently, “what do you think?”

Amelia looked at the conglomeration of beribboned, bejeweled, flowered, feathered headpieces and shrugged. “You can return all of 'em, if you truly want my opinion,” she said bluntly.

Sybil glared at her. “I don't know what's come over you and Nell since you've returned. I barely know either of you. You, Amelia, have become as rude and outspoken as an old harridan. I've never known you to speak at all brazenly, and now you're bold as brass. And as for Nell …” Sybil paused and wrinkled her brow thoughtfully.

“What about Nell?” Amelia asked interestedly. Nell's behavior troubled her, too.

“I don't know,” Sybil faltered, “but she's different, somehow. Haven't you noticed it? She doesn't laugh and joke as she used to. She hardly speaks a word to me—”

“What can you expect, after the way you've treated the poor child?”

“No, that's not it,” Sybil said in perplexity. “She doesn't seem to bear a grudge about being sent to Cornwall. It's something else. I can't put my finger on it, but it's as if she were watching us all the time, measuring us with … with …”

“With new eyes?” the old lady put in shrewdly.

Sybil stared at her aunt with dawning respect. “Yes, that's exactly it! With new eyes.” Sybil tossed aside the dress bonnet carelessly and sat down with Amelia at the table. “What
happened
to you in Cornwall?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly and studying Amelia curiously.

Amelia calmly sipped her tea while Sybil waited impatiently for a reply. After a pause, Amelia looked up from her cup and smiled enigmatically. She was enjoying to the full a new sense of importance in the family. Since it was she who had carried Lord Thorne's letter to the family, and since Nell did not say one word about the Earl, all questions concerning him were put to Amelia. If Amelia was indeed in the Earl's good graces (and that was certainly the impression that Charles and Sybil had received), they could not afford to offend her. Amelia, so long neglected, insulted and shunted aside by her niece and nephew, played her new role to the hilt. “Nothing happened in Cornwall,” she said to Sybil, carefully permitting just a hint of mystery to creep into her voice. She looked at her niece with a touch too much of innocence in her eyes. “Nothing occurred that was at all out of the way,” she repeated, protesting just a bit too much.

Sybil jumped up in irritation. “Very well,
don't
tell me!” she muttered, going back to her looking glass. She pulled from its box a flowered bonnet with an enormous poke, pulled it on furiously and stared into the mirror. But all she could see was the reflection of her aunt behind her, calmly lifting her teacup, her lips curved in a very slight (really, it was barely discernable) but, in Sybil's eyes, a most self-satisfied, vexatious smile.

Nell had truly changed. Sybil and Amelia were not the only ones to notice. Even Beckwith, the butler, remarked on it. The young Miss, with whom he'd had such a comfortable relationship in the past, was quite withdrawn. She still greeted his pleasantries and quips with a smile, but it was wan and abstracted. Something had occurred to affect the girl. That much was obvious. Under normal circumstances, he would have attributed her melancholy preoccupation to love, but there was no young man hanging about, and she could hardly have met an eligible young man in Cornwall, for he'd learned from her new abigail, the lively Gwinnys, that they'd never had a caller in all the time she'd been in service at Thorndene.