Web of Love

Chapter 17

JENNIFER AND ANNA, WALTER CARRINGTON, and Lord Eden spent more than an hour at the Tower of London, inspecting the armory and gazing at the crown jewels.

“It makes one wish there were some eligible princes floating around waiting to be married, doesn’t it?” Anna said to Jennifer. “Can you imagine wearing all that finery?”

“It would be splendid,” Jennifer agreed rather wistfully.

“But you would get very bored sitting on a throne all day,” Walter said, drawing a giggle from both girls, “drumming your jeweled fingers on the carved arm. Picture it. No freedom to walk in the park. Or to eat ices at Gunter’s.”

“Perhaps those princes would not be very handsome anyway,” Anna said, linking her arm through Lord Eden’s. “Now, what was that about ices?”

“You will freeze your insides,” he said. “But so be it. And you chose an open barouche too, Anna? At the end of September?”

“Anna is always gasping for air in a closed carriage,” her brother said, “and convinced that she is missing all sorts of spectacular sights, since she can look from only one window at a time.”

“I have a new bonnet,” that young lady said gaily, “and I want the world to see it. Do you like it, Dominic?”

“Very fetching,” he said. “But I don’t want you bending forward when you are within twenty feet of me, Anna, if you please. That feather would take my eye out.”

They decided to drive through Hyde Park before going to Gunter’s, since the leaves, according to Anna, were too lovely to be missed. There they met the closed carriage in which Madeline was riding with Lieutenant Penworth. Madeline let down the window in order to exchange greetings with the occupants of the barouche. The lieutenant stayed back in the shadows and said nothing.

Jennifer leaned forward and smiled. “How do you do, Lieutenant?” she called. “I am very pleased to see that you are out again. Do you remember me?”

“Of course he does,” Madeline said with a smile. “We decided to take advantage of a beautiful day and come out for a drive.”

Jennifer gazed in at the man who had raised a hand in acknowledgment of her greeting. She would not have known that it was he. This man looked thin and pale, and half his face was completely covered by a type of bandage. She remembered a lithe, good-looking, high-spirited young officer who liked always to be active.

“We are on our way to Gunter’s,” Lord Eden said. “Would you care to join us, Penworth? Madeline?”

“Perhaps some other time,” Madeline said quickly.

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Penworth said at the same moment. “That would be pleasant.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Are you sure you will not mind?” she asked.

“No,” he said abruptly. “Will you?”

“We will meet you there in a few minutes, then,” Lord Eden said as Madeline flushed and withdrew her head back inside the carriage.

“So I am finally to meet my future brother-in-law,” Lord Eden said as they drove on. “Madeline has been keeping him hidden.”

“I have been dying of curiosity,” Anna said.

“Poor man,” Jennifer said. “How can war be so cruel?”

“You did not wish to go,” the lieutenant was saying in the other carriage. “For my sake, Madeline? Or for yours?”

She looked at him in dismay. “For yours,” she said. “You have been unwilling for anyone to see you. And Gunter’s is a very public place. Allan, you don’t think I am ashamed of you, do you?”

“No.” He reached out a hand for hers. “But you have spent so long nursing me, that I think perhaps you are trying to protect me from all harm, physical and otherwise. It is exhausting for you when other people can see me, is it not? But I cannot keep you from all normal daily activities, Madeline. These are your family and your friends. You should spend time with them. If I am to be your husband, I must spend time with them too.”

She squeezed his hand.

A few customers at Gunter’s turned to watch the entrance of a rather grim-faced Lieutenant Penworth a few minutes later. He crossed without assistance to the table at which the other four were seated and took the only empty chair at one end of the table, the one next to Jennifer. Madeline, having made the introductions, was forced to sit at the opposite end of the table.

The conversation was bright and hearty for a few minutes. There was much laughter at the table. Then Anna launched into a description of the crown jewels and a lament over the fact that her papa had said they were to go home to the country within the next week or so.

“Well, Edmund and Alexandra and the children will be going as well,” Madeline said soothingly. “And I am trying to persuade Allan to come too for a while. He has not said no, so I hold out great hopes.” She smiled the length of the table at her betrothed, who was talking with Jennifer.

“Are you feeling better?” Jennifer was asking. “I was sorry to hear of your injuries, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said without looking at her. “I am fully recovered.” His face was pale and grim. He was not at all the same young man as the one she had danced with and walked with in the Forest of Soignes.

“Will you be returning to Devon soon?” she asked him. “I remember your telling me about your family and about how you loved your home.”

“I have no intention of taking myself back there in the foreseeable future,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, and took a mouthful of her ice. She had lost touch with the conversation that the others were engaged in. Lord Eden, she saw, was watching them from beside his sister.

“Your mother must be anxious about you,” she said. “And your papa and all your brothers and sisters.”

“Doubtless,” he said. “I would be the object of their pity for the rest of my life. They were proud of me.”

Jennifer played nervously with her spoon. She wished he had sat somewhere else. “Are they not proud of you now?” she said.

“Oh, yes.” His voice was cold. “I am their wounded hero.”

“Why do you wear such a large bandage?” she asked, and flushed at the rudeness of her question.

“My face is not a pretty sight,” he said.

“Have the wounds not healed?”

“As well as they ever will, I suppose,” he said. “Which is not to say a great deal at all.”

“Would it not be better to wear just a small eye patch?” she asked. “The sun and air would help the other scars to fade, would they not? And if you were to ask me, I would say that the bandage is far more noticeable than a few scars would be.”

“If I were to ask you,” he said so quietly that she was not quite sure that she had heard the words correctly. She felt acutely uncomfortable for the rest of their stay at the confectioner’s.

“Were you very badly snubbed by Penworth?” Lord Eden asked her with some sympathy in the barouche later.

“I deserved it, I’m afraid,” she said. “I should not have asked him any personal questions. He seems to have recovered from his outer wounds quite well. But there are other wounds, far deeper, that have not even begun to heal yet.”

“I must confess I was very embarrassed,” Anna said, “and annoyed with myself for being so. I was so afraid of saying something that I should not say.”

“How would one face life?” Walter said. “Only one leg. Only one eye. Ouch! I think I would rather be dead.”

“What nonsense!” Jennifer said, and flushed again at yet another rudeness. “There are a great many things one can do in life without a leg or an eye. I do feel sad for Lieutenant Penworth, for I knew him as he was before. But I also feel a little angry that his attitude has become bitter and cynical. No, not angry. It all happened to him only three months ago. But I would be angry and doubly sad if I were to meet him in a few years’ time and still found him bemoaning his loss and not getting on with his life.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Miss Simpson,” Walter said. “But, gad, how would one get on with one’s life without a leg? No riding. No sports. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

“Poor man,” Anna said.

Lord Eden was smiling at her, Jennifer saw.

ON THE SAME AFTERNOON, Ellen called upon the Earl of Harrowby. She took no one with her and even thought, as she raised the brass knocker outside the huge double doors of his house, that perhaps it was improper to visit him alone. But she smiled at the thought. This had been her home for fifteen years. He had been her father.

He had been drinking again, she could see as soon as he hurried down the stairs to meet her instead of waiting for his butler to show her up to the drawing room.

“I wouldn’t have touched a drop if I had known for certain that you would come, Ellie,” he said, flashing her a smile as he offered his arm. “I thought you wouldn’t, once you had thought about it.”

“But I did come,” she said, looking about the drawing room and finding it exactly as it had been the last time she saw it, except that perhaps the carpet was slightly more worn and the draperies at the windows more faded.

“I didn’t invite anyone else,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. It will be just you and me, Ellie. Besides”-he smiled apologetically-“there are not many ladies who would accept an invitation from the Earl of Harrowby these days. I am not considered quite respectable, y’know.”

“Are you not?” she said, looking at the marked signs of dissipation about his face and figure as he stood with his back to the fire. They did not speak as the housekeeper-like the butler, someone she did not know-brought in the tea tray. She felt awkward. She did not know what to call him. “Shall I pour?”

“If you had not left me,” he said, extending one hand to indicate that she should take a seat behind the tray, “I would not be the wreck you see. I loved you, girl. You should not have left.”

“You did not take up drinking just after I left,” she said, holding up a full cup and saucer to him. “Now, be honest with yourself. I do not need the blame for that heaped on my shoulders.”

His smile was almost boyish. “You are quite right,” he said. “But you were always good for me, Ellie. You never did put up with any nonsense. You always said what was what. You used to tell me to go away when I was in my cups. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

He laughed. “Sometimes, not often, I admit,” he said, “I used to stay sober just so that I could come to the nursery or the schoolroom and see you. And then I would drink afterward. But not so much in those days, girl. Not so much then. Have some cakes.”

They looked at each other.

“You were always my St. George,” she said, “who would slay all my dragons.”

“Was I, Ellie?” he said. “Was he good to you?”

She knew he was not referring to Charlie. “Yes,” she said, “he was good to me.”

“But he didn’t slay any dragons?” That boyish smile again.

“I was older,” she said. “I knew that no man is infallible. Not even fathers.”

“Tell me about your life,” he said. “It is as if you were dead, Ellie, and have come back to life again.”

She told him about Spain and about Belgium. She told him about Charlie and Jennifer and her other friends. She must have talked for half an hour, she realized with something of a jolt as she finished telling him about her meeting with Sir Jasper Simpson. But he was interested. He had scarcely moved or withdrawn his eyes from her face.

“It is me you should be turning to for support, Ellie,” he said, “not him. Do you feel that he is more your father than I am?”

How could she answer the question? “He is Jennifer’s grandfather,” she said. “That is why meeting him is so important, Papa.” And she bit down hard on her lip and closed her eyes.

“Perhaps I am too,” he said. “Perhaps I am your papa, Ellie. But the important thing is that I was for all those years. I was your papa. I loved you. I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t ever mistreat you, did I?”

She shook her head, her eyes on the silver milk jug on the tray.

He got to his feet and pulled on the bell rope for someone to come and remove the tray. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece and tapped one knuckle rhythmically against his teeth as he waited, saying nothing. But he turned back to her when the footman had disappeared, and came to sit down beside her.

“Don’t go yet,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “Stay and talk awhile longer, Ellie.”

She looked down at his hand, fatter now than it had been, but a hand she would have recognized anyway, with its blunt, dark-haired fingers, the nails broader than they were long. Hands that had held her as a child, hands that she could remember clinging to sometimes as she walked, though she could no longer remember where it was they had walked.

“What did you mean,” she asked, “that you might be?”

He looked at her with his heavy-lidded, rather bloodshot eyes. “Your mother and I,” he said. “We always said what would most hurt, even if it were not always the truth. You might be mine, Ellie.”

“She said not,” Ellen said. “And he did not argue.”

“When your mother was expecting you,” he said, “I never did so much as think of questioning whose you were. I would have if there had been any chance of your not being mine, wouldn’t I? I always knew when she had someone else. I knew she had lovers. But I wasn’t suspicious at that time. Besides, your mother was a careful woman. She would have made sure that you were mine. You were our first-and our only, as it turned out. You might have been a boy, Ellie. You might have been my heir. I think you are mine.”

“But why would she have said such a thing?” Ellen asked.

“To hurt me,” he said. “She must have been feeling particularly vicious. She knew you were the only person I ever really loved. She wanted to turn me against you. You weren’t supposed to know. But I came and told you, didn’t I? I suppose I was foxed at the time. And then your mother went off with Fenchurch and I haven’t seen her since. She was in Vienna for the Congress the last time I heard of her. With someone I have never heard of. We weren’t a pretty pair, girl. It wasn’t all her fault, what happened. But you are the one who suffered most.”

“Yes,” she said, “I did. But everything in life has a purpose, perhaps. I would not have met my husband if I had not gone to Spain. And I would hate to have gone through life without knowing him.”

He patted her hand. “Say it again,” he said, “what you let slip a little while ago. It sounded good, Ellie.”

She looked at him and swallowed. “Papa?” she said. “I didn’t ever call him that, you know.”

He patted her hand again.

She looked at him. And looked beyond the bloodshot eyes and the flushed cheeks, and the double chin. He had been her papa. She had curled up on his large lap and played with the chain of his watch. And had felt as if nothing on this earth could ever harm her.

“I am with child,” she surprised herself by saying suddenly. “And it is not my husband’s. I conceived it from a lover less than a month after his death. And now I have started to let people think it is Charlie’s, and I don’t know what to do.”

Take all your problems to Papa, Ellen. And climb into his lap and let him soothe them all away.

“Are you, Ellie?” he said, his free hand smoothing over the back of hers. “The important thing is, are you happy about it? Did you love him?”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Totally and passionately, Papa. Nobody else existed in the world for a week. Just for a week. Less, even. He was a friend of Charlie’s and of mine. And then, before either of us knew what was happening, we were lovers. But it was all wrong. I loved Charlie. Or thought I did. Now I am so consumed with guilt and confusion that I no longer know what love is.”

“Well,” he said, patting her hand, “you will have a child to love soon, Ellie. You will find out. Does he know?”

“No.” She gripped his hand. “I couldn’t possibly tell him. I don’t want him ever to know.”

“It is sad, Ellie,” he said, “to be deprived of your child. Does he love you?”

“No,” she said. “Oh, he did for that week, as much as I loved him. But love is the wrong word. It was not love. And he does not feel whatever it was for me any longer. He is leaving London soon.”

“And you will be staying,” he said, “with relatives of your husband’s and a child of your lover’s. Well, girl, you will sort out your own future. You always did. I have great faith in you. But you know, you can always come here, Ellie. This will always be your home. And I will always be your papa even if I didn’t beget you. But I think I did.”

“Oh,” she said, lifting their joined hands so that her lips rested against his knuckles, “if you knew what a burden has been lifted from my shoulders just by telling you all this! I think there is still a little of St. George in you, after all.”

He laughed with some amusement and she smiled up into his eyes.

“You’ll come back again?” he asked. “You won’t disappear altogether again, Ellie? You’ll come back to see me?”

She nodded and got to her feet. “I have been here much longer than I planned,” she said. “I’m glad I came, Papa. You are really the only person of my very own left.”

“Come and be hugged, girl,” he said, and waves of memory washed over her as his arms closed about her and rocked her against him. Memories of bedtime, when her mother had been too busy getting dressed for the evening’s entertainment to come to the nursery to kiss her good night. Even the same smell, some curious mixture of brandy and snuff and cologne.

“Oh, Papa,” she said, giving in finally and totally to self-pity and really not caring for the moment, “how am I going to bear it when he goes away forever?”

“You’ll have your child,” he said, “and your papa. You’ll do, girl. You’ll do.”

THE EARL OF AMBERLEY was sitting sprawled on a sofa in a room adjoining the nursery of his house, his arms stretched out along the back. He was half-smiling as he watched his wife nursing their daughter.

“She is sleeping,” he said.

“I know.” She sighed. “And I should put her down, shouldn’t I? She is going to have to be weaned fairly soon. She is seven months old already. It is not fair, Edmund. Children should remain tiny babies for far longer than they do.”

“Well,” he said, “when Caroline has finished at your breast, Alex, we will just have to see about putting another child there, won’t we?”

She flushed. “Will we?” she said. “Oh, Edmund, you have me tingling right down to my toes.”

He grinned. “It seems a shame to waste the moment, doesn’t it?” he said. “And Caroline is asleep. However, I have just recalled that the minute I step back out into the nursery, I will have to give Christopher that promised piggyback ride. And I am talking about giving you more children?”

“We are really going back to Amberley next week?” she said, smiling. “I won’t believe it until we are there. Home again. It will be bliss.”

“I was somewhat surprised that Lieutenant Penworth has agreed to come along with Madeline, weren’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “But I am glad. I want to get to know him better. And having him to tea does not accomplish that. Madeline is so very careful to protect him from any awkwardness.”

“And only succeeds in making the whole situation impossibly awkward,” he said. “Amberley will be good for him. I think he has what it takes to cope with his handicaps if he is left to himself, Alex.”

“You mean if Madeline will stop coddling him,” she said.

“I don’t want to be unkind to her,” he said. “She has done wonders for him, I believe, and she is wholly devoted to him. I have never seen Madeline so unfocused on herself.”

“Will they be happy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “If they want to be, I suppose,” he said. “Being at Amberley should help them to get to know each other better. I mean, in more than a nurse-patient sort of relationship. The Simpson ladies will be here later. You are sure you want to invite them to Amberley too, Alex? I did not talk you into it?”

“You know I would have argued if I had disagreed,” she said. “I don’t. But I am not sure they will come, for all that, Edmund.”

“Dominic has made a definite decision to go into Wiltshire,” he said.

“But Mrs. Simpson is bound to feel awkward with us,” she said. “We are his family, after all. It would be lovely if they would come, though, Edmund. It was an inspired idea on your part. Madeline is friendly with both of them, and Anna has become very close with Miss Simpson. And Walter too, it seems. And it would be good for them to have the greater freedom of a country estate during the time of their mourning. And I like them. I would enjoy their company.”

“I feel under a great obligation to Mrs. Simpson,” the earl said. “I am still of the opinion that Dominic might well not be alive today if it were not for her. I would like to show my gratitude in some way.”

“Then we shall ask them when they come to tea,” the countess said. “I hope they say yes. You speak to them, Edmund. You are much more persuasive than I am.”

“Am I?” he said, getting to his feet and taking the sleeping baby from her arms. “I don’t suppose I can persuade my son to forgo his piggyback ride and my wife to visit our bedchamber with me, can I?”

She laughed. “No, you certainly may not,” she said. “You will behave yourself until the decent hour of bedtime, my lord.”

“I didn’t think I would succeed,” he said with a sigh.

JENNIFER WAS BUBBLING with high spirits. She still had moods of guilty remorse and would shed tears when she remembered that she was in mourning for her father. But Ellen did not resent the fact that the girl was returning to her youthful enthusiasm for life. Those two intense months they had spent grieving were quite enough for one so young.

Everything seemed to be going well for Jennifer. She had made friends and was having numerous outings. She had a few admirers, though Ellen did not think she was attached to any one of them. Including Lord Eden, she was relieved to find. Jennifer did not talk of him any more than she talked of Walter Carrington or Anna’s friend Mr. Phelps. And she did not appear to be nursing a private tendre.

They had visited Sir Jasper Simpson more than once, and Mr. Phillip Simpson on one occasion. And Sir Jasper appeared to have accepted Jennifer as his granddaughter. Indeed, the girl confided to Ellen after one visit, he had told her that she had the look of her grandmother when she smiled.

And he was as good as his word. He was holding a dinner and quiet evening party in honor of his newfound relatives. He had asked both of them if there was anyone in particular that they wished him to invite. Ellen had said no, but Jennifer had had her grandfather smiling indulgently as she had eagerly listed almost all of her acquaintances: Lord Eden, Anna and Walter Carrington, Mrs. Jennings, Lady Madeline, the Emery sisters.

“Lady Madeline is betrothed to Lieutenant Penworth,” she had said. “I knew him in Brussels, Grandpapa, but he was badly wounded and he does not like to be seen in public now. I don’t believe he would come.”

“But I will send him an invitation anyway,” the old man had said with a chuckle.

Ellen would have been alarmed at the mention of Lord Eden had she not known that he was as eager to avoid meeting her again as she was to avoid him. And he was planning to go into the country soon. She need not fear. He would refuse his invitation.

She could not bear it if he came. It was not that she was afraid to meet him. She had recovered from that sort of dread after her humiliating fit of the vapors. But she had accustomed her mind to the idea that she would never see him again. The wound was beginning to film over. Very thinly, it was true. But she did not want it rubbed raw again.

She did not fear the visit to the Earl and Countess of Amberley’s. She liked them very much and remembered the kindness and the tact the earl had shown her during those dreadful days in Brussels. She did not think that they would embarrass her by inviting the earl’s brother to tea as well. And Jennifer was excited at the prospect of the visit. She was hoping to see the children again.

She was not to be disappointed. Christopher was tugging at her skirt, waiting for her attention, when she was still exchanging greetings with her host and hostess. She stooped down as soon as she was able and hugged him. And then he was off again, in pursuit of his game.

The countess looked at her husband a few minutes later and raised her eyebrows when Caroline hauled herself up on her knees beside Ellen, clung to her skirt, and gazed up solemnly into her face. Ellen did not withdraw her attention from the conversation, but lifted the child onto her lap and opened her reticule so that the baby could rummage through its contents.

Ellen was taken totally by surprise when the invitation to stay at Amberley Court was issued. She had already expressed envy when the countess had mentioned the fact that they were removing to the country. And she had told them that it was the dearest wish of her heart to live in the country herself.

“Oh,” she said when the earl asked her and Jennifer to join them for a few weeks at Amberley. And could think of nothing else to say.

Jennifer was not so tongue-tied. “Oh, may we go, Ellen?” she asked, sitting on the edge of her chair, her cheeks flushed. “Oh, please, may we? Amberley is by the sea, is it not? You told me about it, ma’am, on our journey back to England, and Anna has told me about it. It sounds so perfectly splendid.”

“You are very kind,” Ellen said, looking from the earl to the countess. “But you really do not owe me anything at all. I did no more than hundreds of other women in Brussels.”

“Indeed you did,” the earl said. “The hundreds of others did not nurse my brother back to health, ma’am. But our obligation aside, we would enjoy entertaining you. And so, apparently, would our daughter. You would not realize how very rare it is for her to associate with anyone except her parents and her nurse. I suppose she would befriend her brother too if she could only catch him occasionally.”

“Oh, do say yes, Ellen,” Jennifer begged.

Ellen looked at the earl and the countess, both of whom were smiling at her.

“Madeline will be there,” the countess said, “and her betrothed. Dominic will not, of course, as he is going to his own estate within the next few days.”

“The prospect of a few weeks in the country is an appealing one,” Ellen said with the utmost sincerity.

Jennifer beamed with pleasure and sat back in her chair again. The countess smiled more broadly. It seemed that her answer had been made, Ellen thought.

“Splendid!” the earl said. “Alex and I always enjoy showing off our home to guests. That is settled, then. And from the noise on the stairs it is my guess that we are about to be invaded.”

The doors to the drawing room opened to admit the butler, only one step ahead of Anna and Walter Carrington, Susan Jennings, and Lord Eden. Anna’s voice, as usual, preceded her into the room.

“It is beginning to rain, Alexandra,” she was saying, “and we were riding in an open barouche. The question was where to go. And your house was the closest of anyone we knew. So we decided to invite ourselves to tea. You do not mind, do you? And how could you possibly say so now, even if you do mind? Oh!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “You have visitors already.”

But when she saw who they were, the twinkle was back in her eyes, and she was across the room to sit beside Jennifer.

“Walter and I had an invitation this morning,” she said. “From your grandfather. Did you know? We answered it right away and said we would come.”

“That is a relief,” Jennifer said. “The Misses Emery, my friends, have another engagement for that evening.”

Everyone else exchanged greetings. Lord Eden took a seat across the room from Ellen. And the film had been rubbed away from the wound. She wished she had not said that to her father about not knowing what she would do if she never saw him again. She had not admitted anything to herself before that moment. And it was better so.

She must count the days patiently until his departure for the country.

Anna was squealing. “Walter,” she said, “Jennifer and Mrs. Simpson are coming to Amberley for a few weeks. Is that your doing, Edmund? You are my very, very favorite cousin, I do assure you. I shall not mind half as much having to go home now, and I shall tell Papa so. He threatened this morning to stuff his ears with cotton if I complain about it one more time.”

Ellen and Lord Eden were regarding each other across the room.

“Why don’t you come too, Dominic?” Anna said. “Then I would be totally happy. It is very unsporting of you to take yourself off to Wiltshire when you can quite easily postpone going there for a few months.”

“No,” he said, still looking at Ellen. “I will not be at Amberley before Christmas, Anna.”

“I have had an invitation to Sir Jasper Simpson’s for dinner and cards,” Susan Jennings said to Ellen. “It is very obliging of him, I am sure. And all because of my friendship with your dear stepdaughter, ma’am. It will be difficult to attend, of course, as I have no one to escort me, with my dear husband gone.”

“Are you coming, my lord?” Jennifer asked Lord Eden eagerly.

“I have not answered my invitation yet,” he said guardedly.

“It is the day before you plan to leave town,” Anna said. “I worked it out in my mind when I read my invitation. You must come, Dominic.”

“You will understand if I refuse my invitation,” Susan said gently to Ellen, “that it is not that I wish to appear ill-mannered to your dear father-in-law, ma’am. But you will know just how very alone one is when one’s husband is gone. You at least are fortunate enough to have a stepdaughter to give you some company.” She lifted a delicate handkerchief to her eyes.

“I will take you up in my carriage, Susan,” Lord Eden said. “We will go together.”

“How very kind you are,” she said. “But I would not wish to impose upon you, my lord.”

“It is no imposition at all,” he said.

His eyes, when they looked back to Ellen, were inscrutable.

The wound had been rubbed quite raw again.

The conversation had moved on to another topic.