Heartless (18 page)

Anna. His wife and his duchess. Foolish as it seemed, he had almost forgotten her for a moment. He went to take his place beside her and allowed her to warm him with her sunny smile as his mother poured the tea.

•   •   •

They
stayed in the drawing room for half an hour over tea and succeeded somehow in conversing together almost as a family. It was not, Luke thought, a happy atmosphere to bring a new wife into, but then it was precisely for this that he had married. And Anna coped well, conversing with a brightness and a charm that drew them all into talking and that even squeezed smiles out of Doris and Ashley. It was, Luke thought as he and his wife were shown to their apartments, the sort of homecoming he had expected, no better and no worse. And somehow he had survived the meeting with Henrietta.

She was more lovely, more fascinating, than she had been at the age of seventeen, a treacherous part of his mind told him.

They had the master suite at the front of the house. Not many of the house's apartments looked out over the front since, according to the design of the old abbey, the house was far longer than it was wide. Most rooms looked out on side lawns and gardens and distant trees.

Luke joined his wife in her bedchamber after inspecting his own. Her maid and another were busy in her dressing room as he passed through it, both of them pausing in their busy job of unpacking to drop deep curtsies. Anna was standing at the mullioned window, looking out. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him, and he joined her there.

“'Tis so magnificent that it has quite taken my breath away,” she said. “If I had known, Luke, I would have urged you sooner to bring me here.” She laughed.

He felt suddenly an overwhelming relief to have the worst part of the homecoming behind him and once again to be alone with his wife. He took her hands in his and turned her toward him.

“Welcome to Bowden Abbey, Anna,” he said, raising first one of her hands and then the other to his lips. “Welcome home, my duchess.”

“Home,” she said and her eyes brightened suddenly with unshed tears. “Oh, Luke, you have no idea how wonderful that sounds. I never thought to have a home of my own. I expected to live as a spinster in my brother's.”

He almost released her hands in order to draw her into his arms. She had helped him face the ordeal of coming home and she herself was pleased with the homecoming. He could see the tears in her eyes. But he was living through a rare vulnerable moment, and experience had taught him that vulnerability was to be fought.

Anna had once belonged to someone else, as he had. But Anna was still capable of shedding tears over her remembered love—as he was not.

He squeezed her hands more tightly instead. “I certainly could not permit your brother that pleasure when he is soon to have a bride of his own,” he said.

She drew her head back and smiled at him. “I like Henrietta,” she said. “I was afraid that perhaps she would resent me, but she was very kind. It is sad that she was widowed so early in life. But perhaps she will remarry. She is very young. She must have been a child bride.”

He kissed her. He did not want to talk about Henrietta, or even think about her. Anna sighed and wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him back. They shared a deep and lingering kiss that was strangely unsexual. Alarmingly unsexual. They kissed, not for pleasure but for something else. Luke's mind shied away from putting a name to that something else even if he might have been able to do so.

The kiss must be brought back to its more familiar purpose. Luke raised his head and looked down at his wife through half-closed eyes before allowing them to stray suggestively to the bed. “That will do nicely, madam,” he said, “until I can give you a more thorough welcome home tonight.”

He always found her laughter utterly delightful. It was so much more spirit-lifting than the sophisticated titters to which he was more accustomed. “Your grace,” she said, “I can scarce wait.”

Comforting desire came at last—comforting because it was familiar and it required no real sentiment. It also could not be satisfied immediately. “I believe,” he said, thinking ruefully about the maids busy in the adjoining dressing room, “we must keep early country hours now that we are in the country. An early bedtime, that is.”

She laughed again.

Their relationship had been restored to its safe, light flirtatiousness.

•   •   •

Anna
felt cautiously happy during the week following her arrival at Bowden Abbey. It was a beautiful place and the early-summer sunshine was showing it off to best advantage. It felt wonderful to be in the country again, free from the constraints of London living. Not that she had disliked living there at all until the night of the masquerade at Ranelagh. But after that she had felt suffocated by it.

She felt free again. She knew that the sense of freedom was illusory, that she had not escaped from Sir Lovatt Blaydon and never would, but the illusion was there and she clung to it. There was air to breathe at Bowden and space to move in. There was happiness to know.

Perhaps.

Bowden was not an entirely happy place. Part of the reason was obvious. Ashley and Doris had come home against their will, both of them in disgrace and sullen, even hostile, to Luke. And he did nothing to try to improve matters. He was stiff and distant with them and made no effort to talk with them, to justify his treatment of them. There was justification for what he had done in both cases. But there should also have been love, love that had always been so strong in Anna's own family that it puzzled her to realize that it was not so in all families. Love might have soothed bruised pride and emotions. Love might have mended broken fences.

And there seemed to be no love in Luke.

Anna tried not to put the idea into words in her mind.

Other reasons were not as obvious. The dowager, Anna's mother-in-law, was kind, if not exactly warm, to her. She spent time explaining things to Anna, making it easy for her to adjust to her new role as Duchess of Harndon and mistress of Bowden Abbey and social leader of the neighborhood. But between Luke and his mother there was no warmth at all, and almost no communication. And yet they had a common cause in their concern for the well-being of Ashley and Doris.

And even with Henrietta, Luke was stiff and ill at ease. Henrietta, who was so lovely and so gracious and so very friendly to Anna. She had been his brother's wife. Had he hated his brother so much that he could barely be civil even to his brother's widow?

His brother, George, the late Duke of Harndon, was the key to it all, Anna supposed. Luke had almost killed his brother in a duel. He could not remember the cause of the quarrel. It amazed Anna after a few days at Bowden that she had ever believed him. How could one forget the cause of a quarrel that had resulted in a duel between brothers and the near death of one of them?

The past, whatever it was that had happened, hung over Bowden almost like a visible, tangible pall. And yet Anna could ask no one about it. To ask any of his family would be disloyal to Luke. To ask him was impossible. In over a month of marriage they had rarely talked about anything but trivialities. They enjoyed each other's company, they spoke to each other lightly and wittingly, they teased each other. But they had never shared anything of themselves with each other, except their bodies. They were essentially strangers to each other. The pattern had been set. She did not know now how she would ask him such a question, though she had tried once at the start of their marriage—
what happened ten years ago? Why has it blighted your whole life?

It had blighted Luke's life. He had once been different. Doris had told her so.

And yet there was a sense of freedom and happiness at Bowden. Her relationship with Luke was good if she could be content with its basic superficiality. He welcomed her home to Bowden the night of their arrival as he had promised he would, with slow and thorough expertise, and told her afterward that now that it seemed almost certain she was with child, he must allow her more sleep at night.

“Once a night will have to satisfy my voracious appetite,” he said.

He kept his word in the coming nights.

It might have been a disappointment to Anna since her own appetite appeared quite as insatiable as his, but it was not. His decision suggested something almost like tenderness. It suggested a concern for her health and a concern for the well-being of their child.

Almost as if he cared. On one level she believed he did.

And she began to get up in the mornings to go riding with him. He laughed at her when she first asked, not believing that she could get out of bed early enough. And the first time he aroused her indignation by having an ancient hack saddled for her use. And then he laughed at her wrath before changing his orders.

The early mornings became their special private time—or so she described them to herself. They talked and laughed and teased. And he often rode slightly behind her—to admire her splendid seat, he explained with an appreciative leer at it when she looked back at him in inquiry one day.

One morning they raced their horses when they were on their way back to the stables and he allowed her to win by a head and then denied that he had done so. He also announced as he lifted her to the ground that there would be no more racing until after her confinement. His son and heir must be protected from reckless harm.

“Or your daughter,” she said, smiling at him.

“Especially my daughter, madam,” he said. “She is, perhaps, of delicate sensibilities, unlike her mother, and is afraid of speed.”

Her freedom was being curtailed. He would not allow her to make love more than once a night. He would not allow her to gallop her horse. It felt very like tenderness. It felt wonderful.

Henrietta became her friend. It felt good to have a friend. In the last several years, Anna realized, she had had no time for friendship, only for family.

It was Henrietta who spent several hours with her the day after her arrival at Bowden, explaining the running of the house, showing her parts of the house that would be relevant to her running of it, going over the household accounts with her, and accompanying her on her first daily consultation with Mrs. Wynn. And Henrietta insisted, with what appeared to be warm sincerity, that she was not at all unhappy to relinquish control.

“I enjoyed my duties as duchess, Anna,” she said as they strolled arm in arm through the formal gardens. “I will not deny it. But the enjoyment has gone since George's passing. And look what I have in return for a little loss of power. I have Luke home where he belongs. I have you—I have so longed for a close friend and for another sister. And I have Agnes, who is so pretty and so sweet, and Emily coming soon. I just know I am going to love her, too.” She squeezed Anna's arm. “Perhaps I can be happy again. I believe I can.”

Yes, Anna thought as the days passed, perhaps she, too, could be happy again. Sometimes she believed she could.

She tried constantly not to think of those words that sometimes haunted her dreams, over which she had no control:
Keep in mind that you are merely on loan to him at my pleasure.
She was in control of her waking mind, and she chose to be happy. Or at least to try.

A
PALE
little face was pressed close to the window of the old carriage, gazing anxiously out, first at the house itself and then at the people gathered on the cobbled terrace, awaiting her arrival—Luke, Anna, Agnes, Doris, and Henrietta. The anxiety in her face increased for a moment until her eyes alit on her sisters. And then she smiled.

She smiled as Anna did, Luke noticed, with all the sunshine behind her eyes. He had been feeling rather wary at the prospect of having a deaf-mute living in his house, having never had to deal with any person with a handicap. She was difficult to communicate with, Anna had said. How did one communicate with her? Apparently the girl could neither read nor write—how could she when she did not hear or know the alphabet? So one could not write down what one wanted her to know.

He had consoled himself with the thought that she was Anna's concern. Anna had wanted her and had dealt with her all her life. Apparently a nurse-companion was coming with the girl. He need not concern himself with her at all beyond providing her with a home and his protection. Yet, knowing the day of her probable arrival, he had stayed at home out of courtesy to his wife and he had come outside with her when word was brought that a strange carriage was approaching up the driveway. Anna was brimming with pent-up excitement.

He would normally have stepped forward to help a guest alight from a carriage at his doors. But he held back when the footman who had ridden up beside the coachman set down the steps and held out a hand for hers.

Lady Emily Marlowe was fourteen years old, of medium height and thin, her body only just beginning to bud into womanhood. She wore a closed gown over full petticoats, but no hoops. Her hair, fair and unpowdered, was pinned back from her face but rippled free down her back. She wore no cap. She set Luke rather in mind of a young colt.

And then she was in Anna's arms, and Anna was laughing and crying. The girl made a few incoherent sounds. Agnes joined her sisters, her arms going about both. They stood huddled together in a close hug.

Anna took the girl by the hand eventually and spoke to her. “Emmy,” she said, “I want you to meet my husband, the Duke of Harndon.”

She neither slowed her words nor yelled. And yet the girl turned her head in his direction. Huge gray eyes in the thin, flushed face looked him over slowly—rather as her sister had done in the Diddering ballroom, he thought. He expected to see fright in her face as he always saw in Agnes's—though fright was perhaps rather too strong a word. He had made very little concession to country fashions since moving to Bowden Abbey and realized that young girls were sometimes overwhelmed by his appearance.

He took a step toward the girl and reached out his hands toward her. She looked at them one at a time and then raised her own to place in them. Small, cool hands. He felt an unexpected tenderness for the child. He also felt a certain foolishness. What now? It was pointless to say anything, and yet silence was unnatural in such a situation.

“Emily,” he said, just as if she could hear him, “welcome to your new home. I am Luke, your new brother.”

Her eyes, he noticed, were intent on his lips. She looked up when he stopped talking and smiled slowly and radiantly into his eyes. He squeezed her hands more tightly. Good God, he thought, she had been listening to his lips. He drew her arm through his—she did not resist—and turned her to present Doris and Henrietta to her. Doris smiled, looking as awkward as he had felt a few moments ago. Henrietta called her a dear, sweet child, who was bound to bring happiness to her sisters and indeed to all of them. But she addressed her words to Anna, not to Emily. The girl was clinging to his arm rather tightly, he realized.

He patted her hand and she looked up into his face immediately. “Come into the house for tea,” he said.

She smiled slowly again and then nodded.

“She does not usually take to strangers,” Anna said, moving to her sister's other side as he led her into the house. “I believe she likes you, Luke.”

He felt curiously pleased. He had felt very little liking from his own family since his return home. Not that he had done much to court it. He was content that there had been no open unpleasantness.

His mother was gracious to the new arrival but made no attempt during tea to pay her any attention. Lady Emily was, of course, a child and should have been in the nursery according to his mother's strict notions of what was correct. The girl sat on a sofa between her sisters, gazing occasionally at Agnes, sometimes at him, but most of the time at Anna. Always it was a gaze, never a glance. But then he supposed that to someone who could not hear, the sense of sight was more precious than to those who could.

Ashley arrived late for tea. He was often late for meals or did not appear at them at all. Luke did not know where or how he spent his days. There had been almost no communication between them since their return from London and almost never any eye contact. But Ashley was not made for general sullenness. He was always polite with the rest of the family, often cheerful. He was cheerful now.

“Anna,” he said as soon as he had nodded to everyone else in the room, “'tis said that your sister has arrived, and sure enough, I see a stranger sitting beside you. Present me, if you please.”

Anna did so and Ashley stood directly in front of them. “As I live,” he said, grinning and making his bow, “a beauty in the making. Your servant, madam.” He took the girl's hand and raised it to his lips.

He spoke with his usual careless charm, Luke noticed. He knew, of course, that Anna's youngest sister was a deaf-mute. Perhaps he had spoken, like Luke, because silence would have seemed unnatural. But Luke watched the girl's reaction to the introduction. She did not smile, as she had smiled at him, but she watched his brother's lips as she had watched his, and her eyes followed Ashley across the room to where he took a seat and accepted a cup of tea from Doris. She continued to gaze at him even after he had caught her eye and winked at her.

Ashley, Luke thought in some amusement, had made a conquest.

•   •   •

In
the weeks after his return to Bowden, Luke spent a great deal of time about estate business, talking with Laurence Colby and going over the books with him, riding about his farms and visiting those who worked them, calling on his tenant farmers.

Adjustments would have to be made. Colby was a humorless, efficient, closefisted man, Luke found, far more eager to bring money into the estate—and it was extremely prosperous—than to spend. And perhaps there was some foundation to the charge that he had acted for the past few years more as if he was the owner than the steward. But there were no signs of dishonesty in the man, and he had undoubtedly guarded Luke's inheritance from the extravagance of those who might have spent it for him. On the other hand, he had kept money from those who needed it badly with the result that there was some small suffering and certainly some discontent on his farms.

Reluctantly, Luke was going to have to set about asserting himself, getting involved in the lives of those dependent upon him. The very idea made him shudder. He began to realize how very much for ten years, at first deliberately and then unconsciously, he had cut himself off from involvement with others. He had involved himself only for pleasure.

He was pondering both the changes in his life and the changes he must begin to institute in the running of his estate as he rode home from one of his farms one afternoon. Anna, he had discovered there, had already been visiting the cottages and sampling homemade cider and promising to share her own recipe and suggesting that perhaps she could look into the organizing of a school for the younger children. He was going to have to prove himself worthy of his duchess, he realized ruefully.

And then his attention was caught by a splash of pink among the greenery surrounding him and he looked up to find Henrietta sitting on a stile that separated a hay field from the path along which he rode. She looked quite achingly pretty perched there, an open book in one hand. Something inside him lurched uncomfortably.

He had managed to avoid being alone with her. He had even convinced himself that there was nothing to avoid. His initial meeting with her had been easier than could have been expected and she had been friendly toward him and more than friendly to Anna. Everything that had been between him and her was obviously dead, ancient history. Except that there had been those letters she had sent him in London and his own dread of coming home. And so he had avoided being alone with her and would continue to avoid it if he could.

He drew his horse to a halt for a moment, but she had seen him, of course. He moved reluctantly forward.

She closed the book and looked at him unsmilingly. “Luke,” she said uncertainly. “I thought you were spending the afternoon in your study with Mr. Colby.”

“No,” he said, drawing his horse to a halt close to the stile. He had a vivid memory of lifting her down from that very stile one day long ago and deliberately sliding her body down his before stealing a quick kiss as her feet touched the ground. She had scolded him and then swayed against him and raised her mouth for another kiss. Having grown up together, they had found it easier than it should have been to wander away unchaperoned, sometimes for a whole hour. He had never done more than kiss her, with closed lips. He had known nothing in those days about even the most basic skills of making love—unless kissing with closed lips was considered the most basic. He had known nothing else. It had been a time of incredible innocence.

“Oh,” she said now, and flushed. There was an awkward little silence before she rushed on. “Luke, forgive me for the letter I wrote you in London. I swore to myself that I would never either speak or write those words to you, that I would go to my grave guarding the secrets of my heart. But I wrote them and sent the letter on its way with William. I thought he was leaving a day later than he did. I rode over to Wycherly to get it back from him, but he had left already. I was frantic. I wished I could die.”

He could think of no answer to give. He gave none. There was nothing to be said and nothing to be done. Besides, it was the second letter, not the one Will had brought, that had been more personal. But it was dangerous to be alone with her and talking of such things. And dangerous to be gazing into blue eyes huge with misery. “You wish to continue reading?” he asked her after another short silence. “Or are you ready to go home?”

“'Tis time to go home,” she said. “But you ride on ahead, Luke. I will come at my own pace. If you will but help me down?”

He wished he had taken a different route home. But a different route would have added miles to his journey. He wished she had not asked him to help her down from the stile. He did not want to touch her. And of course, once descended from his horse's back, he could not possibly mount up again and ride away from her while she walked home.

She looked delicately, innocently lovely sitting there with her book. God, how he had loved her, that innocent, long-dead young man of his memory. She was dressed, he realized suddenly, very fashionably in a formfitting sack dress with dazzling white petticoat and stomacher. Her straw hat was trimmed with real flowers. She wore hoops. All for wandering out to sit reading on a stile?

He dismounted and walked closer to the stile. She made no move to hold out a hand so that he could assist her to descend the two steps to the ground. She looked sorry that she had asked for assistance. And yet he wondered how chance a meeting this was. He reached out both hands, set them at her waist, and lifted her down while she set her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. A waist as small as it had been when she was seventeen. A body light as a feather. A special fragrance that assaulted his nostrils and his memory.

He had loved her with all a young man's romantic idealism, with all a young man's ardent passion. For a moment, before he released her, he held the memories and the past between his two hands again. For a moment the years rolled away. He heard her inhale and exhale rather unsteadily. He did not look at her.

“Would you like to ride while I walk?” he asked her. He could hear the strain in his voice. But how could she ride in hoops?

“No.” She spoke very quietly. “I will walk with you, Luke.”

He wanted Anna with him suddenly and foolishly. Anna with her bright smiles and her amusing, witty chatter. Anna, his wife, his present, with their child, his future, in her womb. He did not care to admit to himself that he was afraid. Or tempted.

“Luke,” Henrietta said, her voice as strained as his, “you made a wonderful marriage. I love Anna. She is just right for you—pretty and charming and devoted to duty. I hope she will be able to do for you what I was unable to do for George.” She drew breath and let it out rather raggedly. “I hope she will be able to give you sons.”

He had an irrational longing for a daughter. For a little girl to pamper and be proud of. He would not mind at all if it were a daughter Anna was carrying. The realization surprised him. He had married her for heirs. All that really mattered in their marriage was that she give him sons, at least one, preferably two or more. But he wanted a little girl.