Constant Heart (24 page)

“It is you who are kind to take a moment to speak with us, although . . . perhaps we can provide more lively company than the earl’s.”

I remembered Lady de Winter’s words.
“Declaim everything that
is good about him. No one could believe that you love a person you do
not respect.”
I forced lips into a smile. “Aye. Perhaps you can.”

The other man joined the conversation. “He cannot be as dull as they say.”

“Oh, nay!” I remembered myself. “Nay. He is . . . much duller.”

“They say he cannot write poetry worth his quill.”

Oh, but he could. “He has not written any for me.”

“I would write you sonnets by the dozens!”

I stood there alone, speaking with them for over an hour. By then my smile was flagging and I was filled with remorse for all of the dispersions I had cast upon Lytham’s character. Just as that thought passed through my mind, I glanced off behind the men and noticed the earl.

He was watching me with a stricken gaze.

I saw myself then as he must see me. A lone woman, speaking intimately with a group of young libertines. What must he think of me?

But then, why should I care? Had he not just this morning spoken to me of love? And had he not then immediately turned his attentions to another?

She was Elinor all over again.

Is this what it felt like to see hope die? A dull, grinding despair in the gut?

Would that she had not hid her true character from me for so long a time. Would that I had not just professed my love.

Lytham did not accompany me home that night. In fact, he did not return home at all. And I did not know what that should mean.

Was I destined to live my life in fear of what my husband might be doing behind my back?

I slept not at all, and in the morning’s light all of my anxieties could be found upon my face. I stared into a glass, looking at a stranger; a stranger gray of face and aged of skin. I looked haggard.

Harassed. Devoid of hope.

“Are you not well?” Joan squinted at my face as she began to mix up my paints.

“You can tell? By what? My pallor, my skin? All the many lines?”

I threw the glass onto the table, not caring at all if it broke.

Joan leaned toward me and took a good long look at my face.

“Your skin looks as it ever has. Since you began painting, that is.”

She paused as if trying to gauge the effect of her words. “Nay. ’Tis your eyes. They look bruised.”

They felt bruised. The same as my heart. “He does not love me.”

“I cannot believe it.”

“At least not with constancy.”

“You are certain?”

“As certain as you would be if you had seen him plunge his hand down the front of some girl’s bodice.”

“Perhaps . . .” She tried to come up with some explanation. I could see the traces of her thoughts upon her face. But she too failed, the same as I had the previous night.

She had nearly finished painting me when the steward knocked and then entered the chamber with a message. “Mr. Chilton, Mr.

Greville, and Mr. Stoughton are asking for you, my lady. I will await your answer in the passage.” He disappeared, shutting the door behind him.

I was blushing, though by that time, thanks to Joan’s work, it was not able to be seen.

Joan paused in her application of vermillion and then bent close to my ear. “Tell me quick before the maids come to style your hair: what have you done?”

“Nothing!”

“There can be no good reason for three men requesting to see you.”

“I have done nothing . . .”

“What are you playing at, Marget?”

“If I flirt, innocently, with the men of the court, ’tis my business.

And certainly none of Lytham’s.”

“Sweet heaven!
You
may flirt innocently, but I am certain
they
do not. Men are all the same. They hope for something. What did you give them to hope for?”

“Nothing—I am not that kind of woman!”

Her cheeks colored.

For some reason, I felt . . . shamed. “They introduced themselves to me.”

“And did you talk to them before or after you saw whatever it was you thought you saw between Lytham and the girl?”

“After.” I felt like a child who had been reprimanded.

She set the paint on the table and stepped out into the passageway.

I followed after her.

“Now, listen well.”

The steward nodded just as I would have done, confronted thus with Joan’s formidability.

“You are to tell the men that she regrets she does not know them. Do you understand?”

“Regrets she does not know them. Aye.”

“But—”

Joan silenced me with a look. And turned her attentions to the steward. “Go!”

The steward turned and walked down the hall, presumably to deliver the response.

“But I
do
know them, Joan.”

“And after this morning, you will not. You can thank me later.

Once you realize that I have saved your virtue. You do not want to know such as those.”

“I might.”

“Do not flirt with evils you know nothing of. There is nothing good that could come from knowing men who would press themselves on a lady at this hour.” She pushed me back into the room, took up the brush, and finished her work upon my cheeks.

“So . . . what am I to do . . . about Lytham? Just let him wander?

Without doing anything at all?”

“Why could you not just ask him about her?”

“And make my humiliation complete?”

Joan squeezed my hand. “It cannot be any worse than how you already feel.”

I went through the day at court with Joan’s words echoing in my head. And finally, I admitted that she was right. I could not feel any worse than I already did with anger, humiliation, and sorrow at work in my soul. So upon my returning to Lytham House, I waited, pacing in the Great Hall for the earl to return. I waited long past supper, yet he never appeared.

Shaken and despairing, I at last abandoned my post and went up the stairs.

Joan helped me from my gown and eased a chemise over my head.

“I waited for him. He has not returned.”

Joan’s gaze was marked by compassion. “Go to bed, Marget.”

“Aye. To bed.”

I burrowed under the sheets, but I could not stop my thoughts from burrowing into my heart. Was all truly lost? Had what we once shared truly disappeared? A longing for Lytham welled up inside me. A yearning for his laughter, his warmth, his presence. It was so fierce, so tangible, that I slipped from my bed and wandered through the passage to his chambers. I did not expect to find him there and I was not mistaken.

But behind me, I could hear his chamberers slip out into the corridor.

Let them think what they must. I
was
shameless. I
was
begging.

I no longer had any pride. I would have crawled into his bed had I been sure of my reception. But I crept into a chair instead, pulled my knees to my chest, and began to weep.

I did not care if there was no place in the court for love. I had possessed it once. I wanted it again.

I do not know how long I sat there, but at some point in the night, long after my eyes and thoughts had been dulled by tears, he returned.

And he was not pleased. With anything.

“Where are my . . . ? Is there no one here to help me? By— Ow!”

He fumbled with the pins of his ruff.

I might have offered to help him, but in his presence I had grown afraid.

And then he reached down to his thigh and drew a knife from some hidden scabbard. Holding the point to his neck, he drew it away through the ruff and pulled off the material, flinging it to the floor.

I gasped.

Sweet heaven! I had been tormented by thoughts of the girl all day. Did I have to be tormented by visions of her at night as well?

The vision shimmered. And then sniffled.

It was not a vision at all. It was the girl herself. What had I done to provoke such persecution? Was it not enough that she had thrown my love away? Embarrassed me by cavorting with the court dissolutes? Why did she insist on hounding me?

She lifted her eyes to mine as if it required some great feat of courage. Tears had worn a path down her cheeks. Her eyes seemed glazed by sorrow. She looked exactly as I felt.

“So. You think me blind? And dull as well?”

“Nay.” Her eyes flickered fear.

I glanced down and saw I still held the knife in my hand. I sheathed it, stood before her. “It is said that you told Chilton, Greville and Stoughton that very thing.”

“But to proclaim what I truly think, that you are a man above all men, would that not be precisely what I should
not
say? I am not supposed to love you. Tell me how not to love you. Because I cannot do it.”

“You have a strange way of showing your love.”

“As do you! How can
you
profess to love me and then dive into the front of some girl’s gown?”

“The front of—”

“Did you think to hide it behind her fan?”

“Her fan?”

She pushed herself from the chair. “If you must be unfaithful, then at least have the decency to form your liaisons where I cannot see them. Could you not at least do that for me? I have tried to please you, I have painted myself like a . . . vixen for you. I have tried every way that I can to promote you in court. I have
loved
you!

Is it not enough? Why do you have to seek the arms of another?

Why am I not enough?”

I could not understand what she was saying. Was she saying I was . . . that I could . . . was she not accusing
me
of being Elinor?

I walked as an aged man to the chair she had just left and placed myself into it. “What is it that you think I have done?”

Her eyes went bleak. And when she spoke, it was in a whisper.

“Must I say it?”

“But how could you . . . ?” How could she think that? And more, why was she accusing me of something I was accusing her of? Was it not she who was starting off down Elinor’s old trails? “How could you think me so despicable? And if I were so, why would you even care?”

A sob broke from her throat.

“It certainly seemed as if you found your own solace elsewhere, in the company of other men.”

“If I did, it was only because I had seen
you
!”

“Seen me what?!”

“With that
girl
! With your hand down the front of her gown!

Do not think to tell me you cannot remember.”

But I could not.

“Do not think to tell me it meant nothing!”

But it must have if I did not remember it. A cold sweat broke out upon my brow.

Marget spit her words at me in fury. “She must be . . . enchanting. Does she worship you as you worship her? I could almost hear her giggle at you from across the Presence Chamber.”

Gown. Fan. Giggle. I felt my body sag in relief. “Brickbat Kat.”

“Is that her name? And you would tell me of it! Even my own father never stooped so low!”

Suddenly, I understood everything. “I would tell you of my friend’s youngest daughter. Of a babe I once bounced upon my knee. A lass newly married who has every expectation that she will not succeed in this court. A lass not, may I add, entirely unlike
you
.