Never Call It Love (15 page)

Christopher.

Mrs.
Montlow looked up, blue eyes shining. "How earnest he sounds, how mature!
Perhaps the terrible ordeal he suffered has been good for him, after all. And
just think of the proud, loving things he says about you!"

"Yes,
that was kind of him. And it is wonderful to know he is all right. Will you
excuse me now, Mother? I still have things to do."

She
went back to the kitchen, where Mary Hawkins was shelling green peas, and hung
the feather duster on its hook on the wall. Then she went out the back door,
picked up a rectangle of old carpeting from the bench against the house's rear
wall, and carried it down to the
maple tree. Kneeling on the carpet, she
began to pull up the small weeds sprouting among the iris and tulips.

She
had heard of Cordot's Emporium. Probably her brother had been given employment
there. But Elizabeth doubted the sex of his benefactor. Christopher's ways,
however winning, were not such as to recommend him as an employee to a
hardheaded merchant.

The
flowerbed looked clean now. She stood up.

Nausea
in the pit of her stomach. A gray mist closing in on her, turning black,
engulfing her.

She
opened her eyes, to find herself lying on the ground. Mary Hawkins was beside
her, cradling her shoulder and head with one arm, holding a glass of water in
her other hand.

Elizabeth
said, "I fainted?"

"Yes,
miss. I saw you from the kitchen window. Drink this."

Elizabeth
took a sip of water. So she had fainted. She had been fifteen when she found
one of the housemaids, Ellen, crumpled in a faint on the scullery floor. Weeks
later the girl had been sent home in disgrace to her family's tumbledown
farmhouse a few miles the other side of Parnley. Sometimes Elizabeth had caught
a glimpse of Ellen, scrubbing the front steps of some village householder or
carrying water from the farmhouse well with her bastard child, a girl, walking
beside her.

Hawkins
said, "Best to get in the house before your mother sees you. Do you think
you can walk?"

"Yes."

As
she moved toward the kitchen door with Hawkins' hand supporting her elbow, the
older woman said, "You have been overburdened, Miss Elizabeth. All that
trouble over Mr. Christopher. And now, planning for your marriage. It is to be
in late June, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"If
you will forgive my saying so, miss, I wish it were
sooner. I don't
believe in long betrothals. They are a strain on everyone concerned."

Elizabeth
darted a side glance at the woman. Did she suspect? It was impossible to tell
from her face. But if she did suspect, plainly she thought that the child was
Donald Weymouth's, conceived when she and Donald, sometime during Mrs.
Montlow's stay at Aunt Sara's house, had succumbed to temptation.

Would
that we had, Elizabeth thought bitterly. Would that the child she carried was
Donald's. But as it was... Again she had a vision of how Donald would look if
he ever learned how Patrick Stanford had treated her. All the gentleness and
humor draining from that beloved face, and in its stead a cold, implacable fury.

In
the kitchen, Elizabeth said, "I had best go upstairs and lie down."

Hawkins
nodded. "You do that, miss."

Elizabeth
moved down the hall toward the open door of the side parlor and the closed door
of the library opposite. "It be seldom, albeit not unknown..." that
old book of her father's had said. Why had she taken so much comfort from the
first phrase that she had ignored the second?

Her
mother, absorbed in perhaps the fifth rereading of her son's letter, did not
look up as Elizabeth passed the doorway. She went on up the stairs to her room,
closed the door, and then stood at the south window, staring blindly at a green
hill now dotted with golden dandelions.

There
were at least two alternatives open to her. In the back streets of London, she
had heard, there were women who, for a fee, would end an unwanted pregnancy.
The thought of seeking out such a woman sent a shudder through Elizabeth. It
was not just moral scruples, nor the fact that women so aborted sometimes died.
Even in her misery and terror, she felt a certain responsibility toward
the new life
within her. However conceived, the child was
her
child.

She
could cross the channel upon some pretext or another—to visit Christopher?—and
prolong her stay in Amsterdam or Brussels or some other city until her child
was born. Then she could promise some woman a quarterly sum to raise the child
as her own. But what excuse could she give her frail mother, already deprived
of a son, for her own absence of many months? How could she prevent Donald from
following her and learning the truth?

And
how would she feel in the years ahead, making excuses to cross the channel for
furtive visits to her child, and in the long stretches between visits,
wondering how the child fared?

She
grew very still. Perhaps there was a third alternative.

Patrick
Stanford, lying beside her on that bed over there, and saying, "I am
willing to marry you. After all, I could use your twenty thousand pounds."

Had
he just been mocking her? Undoubtedly. But still, if she wrote to him...

Because
of what had happened in this room, she could never feel anything for him but
loathing. And yet, justice compelled her to acknowledge that he had not been
without provocation. Nor was he an entirely evil man. There had been real grief
behind the savagery in his voice when he spoke of his ward dying before his
eyes. A truly heartless man would not have felt that grief.

And
even if her own plight struck no compassionate chord within him, there was
still her twenty thousand pounds. The thought was matter-of-fact. In her
extremity, irony was an emotional luxury she could not afford.

Surely
she had another two months before her condition became apparent to everyone.
Her letter would take about a week to reach him, and his answer another week
to reach her.
If she received a negative reply, or none at all, she would still have time to
decide between the crone in the London back street and the lonely months posing
as a pregnant young widow in Brussels or Amsterdam.

What
was his address? She recalled him on the witness stand, his face a cold mask as
he said, "I am Sir Patrick Stanford, baronet, of Stanford Hall, near Cork,
Ireland."

She
crossed to the small mahogany desk in one corner, sat down, and took letter
paper from the desk drawer. With the quill pen in her hand she sat, motionless,
sickened and terrified by a memory. His body, weighing her down there on that
bed across the room.

But
that had been an act of revenge and hatred rather than desire. Surely a man
like Patrick Stanford had no lack of willing bed partners. Perhaps all she had
to do was to make it clear...

She
drew the sheet of paper toward her and began to write.

As
long as Patrick Stanford could remember, the servants at Stanford Hall had
displayed a cheerful nonchalance toward black beetles in the scullery, lamps in
need of trimming, and dust on chandeliers of Waterford glass. Patrick was quite
used to it. As he sat in the big library, Elizabeth Montlow's letter in his
hand, he was not aware that books leaned every which way on the shelves, that
the ashes of a fire kindled ten days earlier still lay in the grate, and that
there were smears on the windowpane
through which he gazed somberly at a
distant line of green hills.

He
looked down at the letter and began to reread it. It was as stark and
forthright as any business communication, holding none of the terror and
desperation that must have caused her to appeal to him, her despoiler. She had
written:

My
dear Sir Patrick,

I
find I am with child.

At
our last meeting, you described yourself as willing to marry me. Even though I
realize that you did not mean it at the time, I am writing now in the hope that
you would be willing to contract such a relationship.

As
you apparently know, my inheritance consists of approximately twenty thousand pounds.
It would of course pass to your control upon our marriage, although I hope you
would make some small provision for my mother.

I
am sure you realize that what I propose would be a marriage of form, not fact.
Accordingly, I would make no objection to any other relationship you might
choose to enjoy.

It
was only in the last two sentences that she had given him a glimpse of her
desperation:

If
we do not marry, I must very soon decide upon some other course of action.
Therefore I would appreciate an early reply.

She
had signed herself, "Your obedient servant, Elizabeth Montlow."

He
found his breathing restricted, as if a band had tightened around his chest. A
child. His child.

Whenever
a twinge of regret had struck him these past weeks, he had conjured up
justifying memories. Little Anne's dying face. Elizabeth Montlow, telling her
lies on the witness stand. Christopher Montlow, stepping down from the dock.
That carriage, the one his sister had arranged for, rattling away down the
alley behind Old Bailey, with a vicious and unpunished young murderer inside
it.

Such
defenses failed him now. All his mind's eye could see was Elizabeth. Elizabeth
standing stripped before him, head drooping like that of a stricken doe.
Elizabeth when he had left her, her face hidden in the pillow.

Somehow,
more poignant than either of those memories was one of a year earlier.
Elizabeth at that ball in London. An Elizabeth who had impressed him as
charming but not coy, self-assured but not vain, looking up at him as she said,
"Should I go about swathed in veils ten months of the year...?"

Would
she ever be like that again, or had that Elizabeth died forever that night in
her bedroom?

He
crossed to the massive table in the center of the big room, and after a certain
amount of rummaging, found a leather box of letter paper engraved with the
Stanford crest. He drew up a chair, and then sat motionless for a while. How to
frame his answer?

In
such a relationship as theirs, begun in hatred and violence, there could never
be mutual goodwill, let alone warmth. The best that could be hoped for would be
formal courtesy. Undoubtedly it was that realization that had caused her to
write in such stiff, businesslike terms. It would be best if his answer was
couched in the same manner. He wrote:

My
dear Miss Montlow,

I
am in receipt of your letter.

Tomorrow
I shall book the earliest possible passage for England. In the meantime, I
hereby ask you to do me the honor of becoming my wife.

Since
it would be best for us to marry as soon as possible, perhaps you will make
preliminary arrangements as to posting of the banns, et cetera. Your letter did
not mention the possibility of religious barriers, and so perhaps I should tell
you that there are none. My father, although born a Catholic, renounced his
faith and became a member of the Church of England, in order to avoid the
disabilities which English law decrees for Catholics in Ireland.

As
for your mother, I shall accede to your wishes that proper provision be made
for her.

I
remain,

Your
obedient servant,

Patrick
Stanford

After
further rummaging, he found sealing wax and a stamp incised with the Stanford
crest. He folded the letter and addressed and sealed it. For a few moments he
sat motionless. Then he shoved back his chair and went out into the vast,
shadowy hall. Twin staircases of oak, built in massive Tudor style, curved
upward to a balcony that ran along three sides of the hall. He walked back
beyond the left-hand staircase to an open doorway.

Inside
the room, a much smaller one than the library, his illegitimate half-brother,
Colin, looked up smilingly from a ledger outspread on a desk. At thirty-five,
Colin was three years older than Patrick, and yet his dark-eyed face looked
younger than his brother's.

Perhaps
it was because he had always lived more quietly. He had never been to London,
nor did he have any desire to go there. The management of his brother's estate
and of his own much smaller one ten miles away filled most of his life.

Colin's
smile wavered and then died. "What is it?"

Patrick
walked over to a casement window, open on this fine day, and looked out at the
rear courtyard and the line of stables beyond. A stableboy of about fourteen
was leading two rangy black Irish hunters across the cobblestones, lest their
muscles stiffen after their brisk morning exercise.

Patrick
turned back into the room. "I am to be married."

Colin
had turned around from his desk. He said, once more smiling, "So she
finally caught you."