Lois Menzel (20 page)

“What did he say,” Celia asked, “when you finally told him the reason you would not marry him?”

“He did not say anything. He just looked at me . . . and I will never forget that look. Never, not as long as I live.”

The door opened, and a maid carried in the tea tray. No sooner had she departed than the butler entered to announce two visitors.

“At this hour, Walker? I did not invite anyone for tea.”

“It is Lord Walsh, miss, and Mr. Hardy.”

This announcement brought both women to their feet as the men entered the room and offered cordial greetings. Both gentlemen were dressed in dark coats, pale pantaloons, and shiny Hessians. Robert’s face was a study in anxiety.

“Shall I bring more tea, miss?” Walker asked.

“Yes, certainly. Please, gentlemen, won’t you be seated?”

As soon as the door closed behind Walker, Celia protested, “This is highly irregular, my lord.”

To give him credit, Robert both looked and sounded apologetic as he tried to excuse his cousin. “I tried to stop him. But he insisted upon coming. I thought I had best come along rather than let him burst in here on his own.”

“Ursula,” John said. “I must speak with you. I have been badgering Robert since he told me you were in Town, but he refuses to give me any information. He insists my answers must come from you. Is there someplace we can talk privately?”

When he cast a meaningful glance at Celia, Ursula said, “Celia knows the conditions of my birth, and she also knows that I have refused your suit. There is nothing you can say to me that she and Robert cannot hear.”

“Very well. If you had opened any one of the letters I sent you during the winter, instead of returning them unopened, you would know that my offer of marriage still stands, despite what you call the ‘conditions of your birth.’ I don’t care
who
or
what
your father was; I don’t even care if you don’t
know
who he was. I am in love with
you.”

“But I care, John, don’t you see?”

“Yes, I do see, but we cannot change what has happened in the past. We can only start with what we have today and build for the future.”

Walker arrived with another tea tray and conversation lagged while he was in the room. When he had gone again, Robert said, “I think we should build up the fire and make ourselves comfortable. Then, with Ursula’s permission, I would like to tell you, John, and you, too, Celia, who Ursula’s father is, for we do indeed know who he is.”

He cast a questioning look at Ursula. “Go ahead,” she said. “Tell them. Tell them everything you know. And if there is anything you have not yet told me, I would like to hear that, too.”

John sat near Ursula on a small sofa and took one of her hands in his. Robert and Celia sat on a facing sofa, close, but not touching.

“Ursula,” Robert began, “is my sister. To be precise, she is my half sister. She is also Tony’s half sister. We all three share the same father. You were right, John, when you detected her feelings for Tony and for me. Only they were not quite the kind of feelings you thought they were.

“Lest I should now be accused of speaking ill of the dead, let me say that the words I am about to speak, I would say to my father’s face were he alive, and in fact, did say to him on more than one occasion.

“When he was a man in his late forties, he saw, and lusted after, Eleanor Bates, who is now Eleanor Browne, Ursula’s mother. She was a young girl not yet twenty, the daughter of the village doctor. My father was lord of the manor—handsome, wealthy, powerful. She has told me herself that she loved him, and believed he loved her, and gave herself to him because of that love.

“When Eleanor became pregnant, the doctor was one of the first to notice. When he demanded of my father that something be done to save his daughter’s reputation, my father paid a young cleric, who had recently taken orders and had no position, to marry the girl and pass the child off as his own.

“This poor, but nonetheless worthy, man was our own Mr. Browne, who married Eleanor and took her to a living in Sussex, arranged for him by my father. As part of their bargain, the living here in Little Graydon was promised to Mr. Browne as soon as it became vacant. The vacancy occurred when Ursula was about eight. The Brownes moved to Little Graydon, and Ursula lived in the shadow of her father’s house. No one suspected that the Brownes’ lovely child was anything other than she appeared to be.

“When all this first began, I was only eight years old and, of course, had no notion of what had occurred. But the year Ursula turned sixteen that changed. I was then twenty-five, and Tony twenty-three. Mrs. Browne came to me that summer and told me her story. She said that now that Ursula was of an age, and knowing how young people could be attracted to one another, she thought it imperative for the three of us, Tony and Ursula and me, to know of our blood relationship. She feared my father would not have told us. She had guessed correctly, of course; he had said nothing. I told Tony almost immediately, and after some consultation, Mrs. Browne and I told Ursula.”

He looked at her now. The tears she had been holding back with difficulty suddenly overflowed. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, smiling at her fondly. “I remember so clearly how heartbroken you were that day, not because you fully realized at sixteen what your illegitimacy meant, but because you learned that your dear father, the only father you had ever known, was not your father at all.”

When he finally stopped talking, Celia asked Robert, “If you and John are first cousins, are John and Ursula related?”

“No. John’s father is my mother’s brother. There is no blood relation between John and Ursula.”

John put an arm around Ursula’s shoulders, pulling her against his chest. ‘‘You are the daughter of an earl, my dear,” he said, looking down into her tearstained face. “That is better breeding than I have.”

“It is no breeding at all when you are a bastard,” she insisted.

“Do you think that every man in the country who calls himself a gentleman is legitimate? Some of our leading families recognize illegitimate offspring. Look at Devonshire. Ursula, you are gently born. No blame should attach to you for the mistakes of your parents.”

Turning his attention to his cousin, John asked, “Who knows about this? About who her real parents are?”

“The four of us here, Ursula’s parents, and Tony. No one else. My mother never knew.”

“But other people could find out.” Ursula said.

John took both her hands and turned her on the sofa to face him. “How? No one here will ever tell, and there is no way anyone else could discover it. I want you for my wife, Ursula, and if you will not marry me, I will never marry.”

Ursula turned confused eyes to Celia. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should follow your heart and forget about your birth,” Celia replied. “Why should you spend the rest of your life paying for your father’s mistake?”

Ursula looked to Robert. “I agree with Celia,” he said. “If John has no doubts or reservations, then you need have none, either. John loves you for who you are and what you are today, and if you love him the same way, then you should be together.”

When John took Ursula into his arms once again, Robert rose to his feet, took Celia by the hand, and led her to the far side of the room. They sat in a large bay window with a padded seat facing the garden behind the house. Having moved behind the high-backed sofa where Ursula and John sat, they could not see the other couple at all. Nor could they distinguish the words that came to them as a soft murmur.

The steady rain pattered against the window-panes and ran in rivulets down the glass. Robert collected a warm shawl from a chair and draped it about Celia’s shoulders.

“There is a chill here by the window, but they need some privacy, and we cannot leave them alone.” Celia remained silent, and in the light from the candelabra on the table nearby, he saw her regarding him with a troubled expression on her face. “Why do you look at me so?”

“You are always surprising me,” she replied. “Just when I think I am beginning to understand you, you do something totally unexpected.”

“Like what?”

“The way you were just now with Ursula. So loving and understanding, seeing everything so clearly and stating the facts plainly.”

“But I do love Ursula. And the facts are plain, though admittedly sometimes hard to see through pain.”

When she still looked troubled, he prodded, “What else?”

“Earlier, when you spoke of your father, it sounded as if you despised him.”

“I despised his behavior, it’s true. Can you blame me? His careless need to satisfy his own desire at the expense of others has led to a great deal of unhappiness.”

“But how can you judge his behavior so harshly, when you have followed so closely in his footsteps? Done the same thing. Hurt people even as he did.”

“I have? How?”

“You know how. With Mrs. Drew and her son.”

“I know they have been hurt, but not through any fault of mine. I have done all I could.” When she looked skeptical, he asked defensively, “What more would you have me do?”

“You should have married her when she discovered she was increasing. You were single at the time, you had not your father’s excuse that he already had a wife.”

“
I
should have married Harriet?” he asked, his voice incredulous.

“Yes, you should have. Both to take responsibility for your actions and to give your son your name.”

“Give my son?—What on earth are you talking about, Celia? Alan is not my son. He is my father’s child, and like Ursula, my half sibling. You thought he was
my
son?”

“Mrs. Forbes told me he was.”

“That old gossip! And you believed her?”

“Well, I had already realized that you took special notice of the boy. And I knew that you called regularly to visit Mrs. Drew.”

“Next you will say you thought she was my mistress,” he replied caustically.

“Actually I did think she was, but when you told me the other day that you only went there to see the boy, I believed you.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” he mocked. “How long have you been regarding me in this flattering light?”

“Since a few days before I left Walsh Priory. I visited with Mrs. Forbes the same day I made my last trip to the children’s home. She told me then.”

“Told you what, exactly?”

“That everyone in the village knew that Mr. Drew was not Alan’s father. That Alan had your eyes and voice.”

“How can everyone in the village know something that is not true? Did it never occur to you that I have my
father’s
eyes and voice?”

“No, why should it. He was a frail old man, bedridden—”

“So it was much easier to think the worst of me.”

“Mrs. Forbes does not think badly of you. She said young men would be wild, and things happen.”

“I would like to tell Mrs. Forbes a thing or two, and perhaps shall when I get home. Old men can be wild, too, and my father was among the worst. Until a few years ago he was a striking man, tall, quite handsome, obviously virile. God knows how many bastards he sired about the countryside. Ursula and Alan are the only two I know about, but I am willing to bet there are more.”

“How did you learn about Alan?” she asked.

“Harriet and I were friends, close to the same age. She came to me when she discovered she was pregnant. She was actually considering suicide—said she could never hold up her head again once her shame was discovered.

“I thought of George Drew. I had met him at the Newmarket races when I was about seventeen. I invited him here several times during school holidays. His father was a solicitor in Norwich, and George was planning to be the same. He knew Harriet from the times he had stayed here; I knew he admired her. I wrote to him, explained the situation. He said he would marry her if she would have him. They were wed the following week. She had trouble with the birth and could never have another child, but George loved that boy as his own, and he loved Harriet, too. It was a good marriage.

“It was nearly six years later that I found out about Ursula. I never doubted Mrs. Browne’s story, for I already had my father’s measure.”

Celia reached out to touch his wrist, and he turned his hand over to take hers in a warm clasp. “I cannot tell you,” she said, “how sorry I am that I gave any credence to Mrs. Forbes. It was foolish of me, because I know better than most how destructive gossip can be.”

“Maybe you wanted to think ill of me.”

She looked shocked at such a suggestion. “Why would I want that?”

“Because it made it easier to walk away, easier to forget what you felt when I kissed you.” He took her face gently between his hands and kissed her as he had that day in the maze, slowly and deliberately.

And Celia experienced again what she had known that day, the all-consuming warmth, the mesmerizing passion. She felt that she would be content to stay right there in his arms forever. When he finally freed her mouth, she whispered somewhere between joy and tears, “I love you, Robert.”

He immediately held her away so he could look into her face. “Oh, do you, now?” he said with such a twinkle in his eye and such a glow of happiness that her heart turned over. “One moment I am the evil ogre, besmircher of innocent women, and the next I am beloved. How can this be?”

“I loved you even when I thought you were a besmircher of innocent women,” she said. “That is why I was so unhappy.”

He took her hands and kissed them, then held them together between his. “Celia, will you marry me?” When a cloud instantly crossed her face, he said, “Forget the gossips. We will not let them worry us. Should we both be unhappy for the rest of our days because we care what nosy busybodies think?”

“I do not care about them, but I care about Tony.”

“Tony will understand. In fact, I think he understood long before we did. So what do you say? Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” Then at his gleam of victory she added quickly, “But not soon. And we cannot announce our engagement until Tony knows first. I will not have him reading about it in an outdated London paper, or hearing it secondhand from some traveling gossip-monger.”