Web of Love

Chapter 12

SOMEWHAT LATER THE SAME EVENING Madeline was summoned downstairs in Colonel Potts’s home. She closed the book she had been reading aloud from, smiled cheerfully at Lieutenant Penworth, who was lying staring at the canopy over his bed with his one good eye, and promised that she would return in time to make him comfortable for the night. She ran lightly down the stairs.

And positively hurtled down the last ten, shrieking in a manner quite unbecoming a house in which there was sickness. Her arms wound themselves around the Earl of Amberley’s neck, and he lifted her from two stairs up and twirled her around twice before setting her on her feet.

“Edmund!” she cried. “I was never more happy to see you in my life. I thought you must have disappeared from the face of the earth. And Mama!” She shrieked again and threw herself into her mother’s arms, laughing and crying all at once.

“My darling girl,” her mother said, hugging her very tightly. “Looking creased and uncombed and quite hagged. And behaving like a hoyden. And more dear than you have ever looked in your life.”

“Have you just arrived?” Madeline asked eagerly. “Why did you not let me know you were coming? Why have you not answered any of my letters? Oh, do come into the salon.”

“Your first letter reached us the day before we left,” the earl said, taking his mother’s elbow and following his sister across the hallway to the salon, from which the wounded had long ago been moved. “We thought we could get here faster than the mail. Dominic?” His voice was tense.

“Oh!” Madeline said. “You have read only my first letter? How dreadful! Dom is well on the road to recovery, I do assure you, and has been for almost two weeks. He has totally defied the surgeon who was calling on him, and is eating like a horse and prowling around his room like a caged bear.”

The Earl of Amberley took his mother by the arm again. Her hands had gone up to cover her face. “Thank God!” he said, drawing her into his arms. His voice was shaking and his own eyes suspiciously bright. “Thank God.”

“What dreadful suspense you must have been living in!” Madeline said. “My first letter must have been dreadfully gloomy. And the second. He was gravely ill, you know. The surgeon told Mrs. Simpson that we must expect the worst.”

The dowager Lady Amberley pushed herself away from her son, searched in her reticule for a handkerchief, and blew her nose. “But Dominic would not give in,” she said. “He is positively the strongest and most stubborn boy I have known. I was not glad of it three years ago, but now I am. We were afraid to go to Mrs. Simpson’s first, Madeline. We did not know what we might find.”

Madeline smiled brightly. “I was there this afternoon,” she said, “and was taken quite by surprise. I am not at all sure that the scene would have been good for you, Mama. Dominic and Mrs. Simpson have fallen in love with each other and are to be married. Except that Dom has not asked her yet. But she is sure to say yes, he says. And I have never seen him so glowingly happy.”

Her mother looked inquiringly at the earl, who was frowning. “This is rather sudden, is it not?” he said. “I have the greatest liking and respect for Mrs. Simpson, but she lost her husband just a month ago. Can she be thinking of remarrying already?”

“It is just like Dominic to be so impulsive,” his mother said. “Will she suit, Edmund?”

“Oh, assuredly,” he said. “She is not at all Dominic’s usual type.”

“That sounds decidedly promising,” the dowager said with a smile.

“I shall fetch a shawl and bonnet,” Madeline said, “and walk there with you.”

Her brother held up a staying hand. “I think we must curb our impatience to see him,” he said, “especially since he is out of all danger. It is rather late in the day to be paying social calls. Besides, Mama and I have not even found a hotel yet. We shall take rooms at the Hotel d’Angleterre if there are any available and pay our call at the Rue de la Montagne in the morning.”

“Yes, I think it would be best,” his mother agreed. “As it is, we have disturbed Lady Andrea’s household.”

She kissed and hugged Madeline again, as did Lord Amberley, and they parted for the night. Madeline ran up the stairs again to share her good news with the lieutenant. She chattered brightly to him as she washed him with deft and gentle hands, straightened out his bedclothes, and turned and plumped his pillows.

She resisted the urge to kiss his forehead as she was leaving the room. She had not yet done so, and he might think it forward of her. He did not yet know that she was going to marry him and look after him for the rest of his life.

Neither did Mama and Edmund. She sobered somewhat as she reached her own room. It was going to be tricky. She hoped they would not voice some of the same silly notions that Dom had had. But she did not care anyway. She loved Lieutenant Penworth with a deep tenderness. And she would be able to pour out her love for him for the rest of their lives. He would always need her.

THE EARL OF AMBERLEY and his mother were surprised the following morning when they arrived at the Rue de la Montagne to find that Mrs. Simpson looked far from being a woman newly in love and planning a marriage. She was dressed in deepest mourning, her hair pulled severely back from her pale, drawn face. She looked as if she were close to collapse.

“Mrs. Simpson.” The earl held out both hands to her and took one of hers within their clasp.

“Good day, my lord,” she said. “You have come. Lord Eden will be glad.” Her voice was totally devoid of expression.

“My very deepest sympathies, ma’am,” he said. “Your husband was one of the kindest gentlemen of my acquaintance, and I know you were devoted to him.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

“May I present my mother, the dowager Countess of Amberley?” he said. “Mrs. Simpson, Mama.”

Ellen curtsied.

“You have been wonderfully kind to my boy,” Lady Amberley said, stretching out both hands to her new acquaintance. “And oh, my dear, how you have been suffering on your own account.” She gathered the other woman into her arms when Ellen’s face crumpled. “Oh, my poor dear. My poor dear child.”

Lord Amberley walked quietly past them and on to the closed doors that must lead to the bedchambers. The second one he opened showed him his brother, standing at the window, his back to the room, looking somewhat thinner than he had looked five weeks before.

Lord Eden’s shoulders tensed when the door opened, and he turned slowly. His brother looked at him in shock. He had expected to see him looking somewhat less than his usual fit, ebullient self. But he had not expected to see the pale, haggard face, the haunted eyes.

“Edmund,” Lord Eden said. “God, Edmund!”

He took two steps forward, but his brother was across the room before he could move any farther, and had him in a close embrace. Lord Amberley felt a nasty lurching of his stomach when his brother leaned his head on his shoulder and broke into racking sobs.

“Dominic!” he said, aghast. “My God, is this what war does to a man? Well, you are with me now, and I am going to take you home with me no matter what ideas anyone else may have. I have never interfered with what you want of life, and have no right to do so now. But I will use all my influence on you, and set Alex to using hers, to persuade you to sell out of this infernal life.”

Lord Eden straightened up. “I never thought to make such a prize idiot of myself,” he said. “If you only knew how I have longed and longed this morning to see just your very person. I am so helpless here on my own, Edmund. As weak as an infant. I doubt I could get down the stairs to the street without assistance.”

“You are on your feet and standing straight,” his brother said, “when two weeks ago, by all accounts, it was just as likely you would not even live. Don’t rush things, Dominic. Let us be thankful for great mercies. Your strength and freedom of movement will return.”

“Take me away from here,” Lord Eden said. “Will you? Today?”

Lord Amberley frowned and looked closely at him. “You are that restless?” he asked.

“I am imposing on her,” his brother said. “I have no right here. She has her own life, her own grief. She will be wanting to return to England.”

“Mama is with her now,” the earl said quietly. “She is very broken up, Dominic. But it is hardly surprising. They were a devoted couple.” He watched his brother.

“Mama?” Lord Eden frowned. “Mama is here? And I suppose I have eyes as red as a petulant schoolboy’s. I must get over to that washstand. Mama! Whatever possessed her to leave England?”

“Merely a son who was at death’s door,” Lord Amberley said. “I want to see that wound, Dominic, and more to the point, I want a physician to see it. I hear that you sent the army surgeon packing.”

“So would you have,” Lord Eden said, gasping as he dashed a handful of cold water onto his face. “Having blood pumped from you daily and toast and weak tea pumped back in again is not conducive to good health, I would have you know. I would still be flat on my back. Or else six feet under.”

“I am sure we can manage better than that,” his brother said. “Do you think you can travel in a hired carriage? We have one outside. What about Mrs. Simpson, Dominic? Is she fit to be left alone? Will she need help in returning to England?”

“You can ask her,” Lord Eden said. “Will you, Edmund? I can’t. I mean, I am in no shape to offer anyone help, am I?”

There were a dozen questions racing through the earl’s mind. He asked none of them. He watched his brother sit heavily on the bed and stretch out on it, wincing slightly, and turned to leave.

His mother was sitting on a sofa next to Mrs. Simpson, holding both her hands and talking to her.

Ellen looked up. “You will want to see your son,” she said. “I am sorry. I have been keeping you from him.”

“You must not apologize,” the dowager said, squeezing tightly the hands that she held. “Gracious heavens. When I think of how much I am in your debt, my dear, dear child!”

She rose to her feet and hurried to the open doorway of Lord Eden’s room.

Lord Amberley stood looking down at the fair head of Mrs. Simpson.

“I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for my brother,” he said. “I shall always consider myself in your debt.”

She looked up at him with reddened, miserable eyes. “You must not do so,” she said. “It is the role of army women to tend the wounded, my lord. There is nothing out of the ordinary in what I have done.”

“Ah, but to me there is,” he said. “For you have tended my only and very dear brother, ma’am. And at a time when the burden of your own grief has been very heavy on you. Is there anything I can do for you, my dear?”

“No,” she said. She rose to her feet. “I thank you, but no, there is nothing.”

“I shall be taking Dominic away with me,” he said, “as soon as I can return to the Hotel d’Angleterre and bring back some clothes for him. Apparently you had to cut away his uniform? So one burden at least I can remove from you, ma’am. We have imposed upon your hospitality long enough.” He watched her closely.

“It has been no imposition,” she said. Her eyes were directed at his waistcoat.

“What will you do?” he asked. “Will you return to England?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have my stepdaughter to look after. And I promised my husband that I would go to his sister in London if anything happened to him.” Her voice wavered slightly.

“May I arrange for your passage?” he asked. “I wish I might offer you the protection of our company on the way home, but I believe it might be several weeks before my brother is fit enough to travel.”

“Thank you,” she said, “but I will be able to manage quite well on my own.”

“Yes, I am sure you will,” he said, wishing there were some way to discover her financial circumstances and to offer her money. “One thing you must allow me to do, though, if you please. I will hire a maid to accompany you. Please?” He added the final plea hastily, noting that she was about to open her mouth in protest.

She looked up into his eyes and nodded briefly. “If you wish,” she said. “Thank you.”

She stayed in the parlor, sitting quite still, when he left to fetch clothes for Lord Eden. And she stayed there when the dowager countess joined her as Lord Eden dressed with his brother’s assistance. She got to her feet and moved to a shadowed alcove by the fireplace when the door opened again.

“Will you be able to descend the stairs, Dominic?” his mother asked anxiously.

“Quite easily,” he said, “with Edmund’s help.”

His face was very white and set. Mother and elder son exchanged glances.

Lord Eden looked about him until he saw Ellen in the shadows. He crossed the room to stand in front of her. She was staring down at her clasped hands.

“Good-bye, Ellen,” he said. He was almost whispering, though his mother had begun to talk in a quite loud voice to his brother. “I am sorry. I am truly sorry. For the timing. The timing was all wrong. We protected ourselves so carefully from the painful truth that we ignored it entirely. But what happened was not sordid, for all that. And I do not love you any the less for all the guilt I feel and all the suffering I know I have caused you. May I see you in England? After several months perhaps, or even a year?”

“No,” she said. “I do not want to see you ever again, my lord. It is not that I blame you or hate you. I blame myself, and I hate myself. But I will not see you again. Good-bye.”

He stood silently before her for several moments before bowing as well as he could with the fresh bandages that Edmund had secured tightly about his ribs, and turning away.

Lady Amberley took Ellen’s hands in hers again. “I will call on you tomorrow again, my dear,” she said. “Perhaps just seeing another person will help you somewhat. Though that is a foolish thing to say, I know. I lost my husband very suddenly, and I know that it is the world’s loneliest and most wretched feeling. The only consolation I can offer will seem like no consolation at all at the moment. It will pass, my dear child. The pain will go away eventually. I promise you it will.” She leaned forward and kissed Ellen’s pale cheek.

Lord Eden and his brother had already left the room, Ellen was relieved to see. She sank to the sofa when their mother too had left, and sat there for a long time, too deeply miserable even to cry.

LORD EDEN WAS stretched out on his bed at the hotel, one arm flung across his eyes.

“I don’t want anything, Mama,” he said. “I am not hungry.”

“You have not eaten all day,” she said. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“Just tired,” he said. “The move here was more exhausting than I would have thought.”

She touched his hair and looked down at him, troubled.

“Nothing,” she said a few minutes later when she had rejoined her elder son in the sitting room. “He will not even look at a tray.”

Lord Amberley got to his feet. “Teatime,” he said, “and my arms feel dreadfully empty. No tiger to undo my waistcoat buttons and remember too late that his bread and jam have not been wiped from his fingers. And no princess to stare me down and then smile like an angel when I am vanquished.”

“And no Alexandra,” his mother added with a smile.

The earl groaned. “And no Alex,” he said. “Devil take it, but I miss her, Mama. Is it normal?”

“Perfectly, I am afraid,” she said. “Are you going in to him, Edmund?”

“Yes,” he said, “as soon as I have flexed my elder-brother muscles. We seem to have arrived at quite a time of crisis, do we not?”

“A good time, I think,” she said. “He is going to need us. But that poor child. She is so very alone.”

The Earl of Amberley stood looking down at his brother a couple of minutes later. Lord Eden’s arm was still over his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” the earl asked, pulling up a chair to the bed and seating himself.

“About the battle?” Lord Eden did not change his position. “Not really. It is hard to have clear memories of such a thing. It is all noise and confusion at the time. All I can ever see clearly afterward is the dead eyes.”

“I didn’t mean the battle,” the earl said.

Lord Eden took his arm from his eyes and stared upward. “I suppose Mad has been talking,” he said. “I made a mistake, that is all, Edmund. She has a husband’s death to grieve for. I fancied her because she has been my only nurse for a month and I saw no one else. It’s over now and really does not signify at all.”

“If you could have seen your face and Mrs. Simpson’s face this morning,” the earl said, “you would not have said that it does not signify, Dominic. You care for her deeply?”

Lord Eden stared upward. His jaw had tightened. “Yes,” he said.

“Do you have any reason to believe that she returns your feelings?” his brother asked.

“I cannot speak for Ellen,” Lord Eden said. “She loved Charlie. There can be no doubt about that.”

“No,” Lord Amberley said. “There cannot. You have been in love before, Dominic. Dozens of times before you reached your majority, even. Is there any chance that this one will go the way of the rest? Sometimes a lost love is painful at the time, but quickly recovered from.”

“I love her,” Lord Eden said. “I am not just in love with her.”

“Ah, yes,” his brother said sadly. “I am sorry, then, Dominic. I don’t know what happened exactly between the time when Madeline called upon you yesterday afternoon and the time when we arrived this morning. And I won’t pry. But I am sorry. Is life very hard to face at the moment?”

“There does not seem much point to it,” Lord Eden said. “And I am not being self-pitying, Edmund. I don’t plan to pine away. But today I can’t force myself to live. I don’t want to. Those damned French never could shoot straight. It was pure chance they got Charlie. They bungled badly with me.”

Lord Amberley rose to his feet and placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Do I have your word that tomorrow you will force yourself?” he asked. “So that I won’t have to hold you down while Mama shovels food inside you?”

Lord Eden laughed unexpectedly. “Yes,” he said, “you have my word. You would do it too, wouldn’t you, the pair of you? And have Mad stand at the foot of the bed, as like as not, chattering her head off to distract my mind. What would I ever do without a family to torment me? God, Edmund”-his voice shook suddenly-“I’m glad you came. I don’t know what I would have done if you had not. Sent for Mad and thrown myself on the mercy of her horsey friend, I suppose.”

Lord Amberley patted his shoulder and left the room.

Lord Eden swung his legs over the side of the bed and eased himself first into a sitting position and then to his feet. He began to pace the room diagonally. He had to regain his health. It would be stupidity in the extreme to allow himself to fall into a decline.

He had thought he could draw her out of her terrible sense of guilt. He had thought that perhaps he could comfort her to a certain extent for her loss of Charlie. He had thought that perhaps he could make her realize that what had happened between them had occurred because they loved each other. He had thought that he might suggest that they wait for a year, see each other during that time only under controlled circumstances, and then get together again and marry and have children together and share their love for a lifetime.

His own sense of guilt was a terrible thing. He had loved Charlie with a deep affection. Charlie had been friend, father, and brother all in one. And yet for a month, two weeks of that time free from fever, he had not given him one conscious thought, or shed one tear of grief. And he had allowed himself to fall in love with Charlie’s widow and to become her lover. He had dreamed of an immediate marriage with her.

All as if Charlie had never lived and loved her. And as if she had never loved him.

And yet, he had thought after she had left him the previous afternoon and after he had heard the outer door close and knew she had gone out, even the fact that they had not mentioned or thought about Charlie in a month proved their love for him in a strange way. They had both known in a part of themselves deeper than thought that coping with the knowledge of his death would be difficult. He had had his physical weakness to contend with. She had had patients to tend. And so they had kept their knowledge and their grief at bay. But just a little too long. Six days too long. They had been lovers for six days.

He had thought he might explain those things to her when she came back. She would have calmed down by that time. He had calmed down. Yet when he had heard her come home and gone out into the parlor, he had found himself looking at a woman wearing deep mourning and a face of marble.

“Can we talk?” he had asked, knowing that it was hopeless, that there was no way to get past the defenses she had built in the space of a few hours.

“There is nothing to say,” she had said. “I am sorry I am late with your dinner. I will have it ready soon.”

“I am not hungry,” he had said. “Ellen, let me grieve with you. Let me comfort you if I can.”

“There is no grieving to be done,” she had said, “and no comfort to be offered. I am not worthy to grieve for Charlie. And you are not worthy to offer comfort to anyone for his death. I shall show the outer respect of wearing these clothes for him for the next year because he deserves that respect. I would prefer it if you stayed in your room, Lord Eden. We can have nothing more to say to each other, you and I.”

They were ridiculous words, of course. She must have realized it herself before the evening was out. Of course she would grieve for Charlie. She had loved him. Her grief was only just beginning. But he knew that there was no getting past that barrier she had set up between herself and him. Certainly not that evening. Perhaps not ever.

He had had no choice but to return to his room and remain there, careful to have his back turned or his eyes closed every time she came in after that on some necessary errand. He had been desperate over his own helplessness by that morning. Edmund had seemed like an angel sent from heaven.

And so he had lost her. There was a vast and painful emptiness inside him that threatened to turn to panic. She did not wish to see him ever again, she had said that morning. And she had meant it.

He would never see her again. Never talk with her and laugh with her. Never sit in comfortable silence with her. Never explore her lovely face and figure with his eyes. Never sit quietly holding her hand. Never kiss her or touch her. Never make love with her.

The emptiness yawned.

But Lord Eden paced on. He had promised Edmund that he would be ready for life again by the next day. And by God, he would be ready. He was not going to pine his life away for any woman. Not even for Ellen. And if he must continue living, there was no point at all in putting it off until the next day. He opened the door of his room.

“I hope you have chosen a hotel with a decent chef,” he said when his brother looked up from a book in some surprise. “I could eat a horse.”

“Ah,” Lord Amberley said. “Was that to be boiled, stewed, or roasted, Dominic?”

ELLEN WAS STANDING at the rail of the packet from Ostend, feeling the strong wind of the channel catch at her breath and whip her cloak against her. Her new maid, Prudence, an English girl excited to be returning to her own country, stood at her side. The Earl of Amberley had hired the girl, bought her passage, and paid her first year’s salary in advance. It was a comfort to have a companion, not to be entirely alone.

She would not look back to the coast of Belgium. She set her face for England, invisible still beyond the haze of the horizon. But she would not look back.

She had left them there, both of them. Forever. Charlie in an unknown grave on a battlefield she had roamed over for several hours three days before, Lord Eden recuperating from his wounds in Brussels with his brother and mother. She would not see either again, the one because he was forever beyond her sight, the other because she chose not to do so.

Charlie was dead. She recited the fact to herself almost constantly and was continually amazed that she lived on. That she could live on. She had not thought that she would be capable of doing so without him. But she was living. She was dreadfully lonely despite the friendly sweetness of Prudence, despite the visits in Brussels in the week before she had left, daily by the dowager Lady Amberley and twice by Lady Madeline. There was no longer that sheltering, all-encompassing, totally unconditional love that had been Charlie. But she was living.

And she would live. She still had someone to live for. Jennifer was in London, doubtless distraught over the death of the father she had only just begun to really know. Jennifer would need her, even if Ellen was not nearly old enough to be a real mother to the girl. She could be a friend instead, the closest living link with the girl’s father.

And there was Lady Habersham, Charlie’s sister, who had been kind to him through the years, who had always kept Jennifer when her brother was not in England, who must have agreed to give a home to Ellen in the event of Charlie’s death in battle. She would be grieving. She too would be a friend.

And then there was her final and reluctant promise to Charlie. The promise she had not wanted to make. The one she did not want to keep. But she would keep it for all that, for she had truly loved Charlie, and she had wronged him terribly after his death, and she would do this last thing for him with all the determination that it might take. She would see to it that Jennifer met her grandfather, that he acknowledged her and took charge of her future.

She would do that much for Charlie. And for Jennifer. And then, if there was enough money, she would buy a cottage in the country. And she would live there for the rest of her life. She would even be happy there eventually, once the terrible pain of her grief had passed off. It did not feel now as if it ever would, as if she would ever wake up again in the morning glad to be alive, looking forward to what the day might bring.

But the older Lady Amberley had said that it would pass. And common sense told her that it would. Charlie was gone. And she lived on. So be it.

So be it. She would live on.

And as for that other, she would put it from her mind, and that too would fade with time. The guilt would fade. The memory of him and what she had known with him for six days would fade. A more heightened sensuality than she had ever dreamed of with Charlie, contented as she had been with every facet of their life together.

She would not think of it any longer. Or of him. It had not been love, or anything approximating love. It had been all purely physical, and therefore not anything of any lasting value.

She was sorry to have lost a friend, to have bitter memories of him instead of sweet ones, connected with the times he had shared with her and Charlie. But that was all her fault. She had spoiled their relationship. And, of course, they could never be friends again.

She would not think of him any longer.

And she would not look back to a past that could never again be her present or her future. She would look ahead.

“When may we expect to see the coast of England?” she asked Prudence, raising her face resolutely to the wind. “Do you know?”

Sometimes the pain was a real and a physical thing. Sometimes it was almost past bearing.