Never Call It Love (46 page)

She
had no doubt that when Colin heard that Patrick was alive, his joy would match her
own. True, she knew that he had been sincere in his offer of marriage. But his
feeling for her, surely, was a tepid one, made up of affection and sympathy and
respect rather than passion. Only a small regret would shadow his thankfulness
that Patrick had been restored to them both.

Her
thoughts turned again to the message she had entrusted to Samuel Haverhill two
hours earlier. In it she had poured out her heart to Patrick, begging him to
return to her and their child, telling him of her love and longing and
passionate need. She pictured him twenty-four hours or so from now, perhaps
standing in a meadow in that lush Maryland countryside she had heard about but
never seen, his dark gaze moving swiftly over the lines she had written. Surely
he would forgive her for having called him the murderer of his own daughter.
Surely, as soon as he had read that note, he would start north____

Swiftly
she rose, opened the door. Hand on the knob of his own door, Colin turned
around. She said, "Oh, Colin! Come here!"

When
he was inside the sitting room, she closed the door behind him. She said,
trying to keep her voice low, lest she wake her child, "Oh, Colin! He's
alive. Patrick's alive! I'm almost certain of it."

Scarcely
aware of what she was doing, she threw her
arms around his neck. Weeping with joy,
cheek resting against his chest, she told him about Samuel Haverhill and the
message he would carry to Patrick....

Something
was wrong. Colin's arms had not gone around her in a joyful embrace. Instead,
he stood there stiffly, saying nothing, arms at his sides.

Bewildered
and a little frightened, she stepped back from him. Her eyes searched his face.
It was very white, the eyes somber, the lips set. "Colin! What is it?
Don't you believe me?" Terror tightened her throat. "Or is it that
you know he's dead?"

Instead
of replying, he said in a strange, flat voice, "So you still love him that
much."

"Of
course I do! Colin what on...?"

"I
thought you were changing," he said, in that same flat voice. "After
all, you seemed disposed to marry me."

"But
Colin! That was only because... Please, please, Colin! If you know anything
about him... I mean, anything besides what was in that note that trapper
brought..."

Her
pleading voice trailed off. After a moment he said, "I know nothing, not
even as much as was in the note."

She
stared up at him, bewildered. His dark, bitter eyes stared back at her for a
long moment Then he said, his voice suddenly harsh, "You had best sit
down, Elizabeth. I have quite a lot to tell you."

Dazedly,
she obeyed. He said, bleak gaze fixed on her face, "Whether the bastard's
dead or not, I have no way of knowing. I hope he is. But from what you've heard
today, I would assume he is alive."

After
a stunned moment she whispered, "You hate him, don't you? And I always
thought..."

"That
I loved him? I did, until a few years ago. But even then there was hate mixed
up in it. How could there help but be? I was the firstborn, but because I was
illegitimate, Patrick was heir to the title and most of the land. And if that
wasn't enough, he taunted me into attempting
a jump I knew my mount could not make,
with the result that I was crippled for life...."

He
broke off. Struck dumb, she sat motionless. After a few seconds he went on,
"Nevertheless, on the whole, I admired and loved him, until he brought you
to Stanford Hall. You see, I already knew how brutally he had treated you. But
I didn't know what you yourself were like. It wasn't until I met you—until I
heard your voice and held your hand and looked down into your face— that I
realized just how despicable his act had been."

His
bitter voice went on, describing how hard it had been to conceal his own love
for her, how hard to stand by while Patrick neglected her and flaunted his
adultery with Moira Ashley. "And then, one day I heard him raging at you
over that Englishman. You started running up the stairs... It was when you lost
your child that I decided I had to do something. Two weeks later, I sent an
anonymous letter to Whitehall, denouncing Patrick Stanford as a traitor."

She
said incredulously, "You? But you couldn't have been the one who betrayed
him! If you had been, you would have stayed in Ireland and kept your land, and
even collected some sort of reward from the English. You wouldn't have..."

"Gone
into exile with Patrick and you? You still don't understand. I thought he would
be arrested. Instead, he was warned in time to make his escape. And you didn't
welcome the chance to be rid of him, as I expected you to. Instead, you chose
to go with him. And so I went too. That way, I could at least stay near
you."

In
St.-Denis, he told her, he'd almost given up hope of anything more than that.
"You seemed increasingly in love with him. I knew you would suspect him of
your brother's murder, and yet, not even that..."

He
broke off. After a moment she asked slowly, "You
mean that
Christopher's death...? You mean that you...?"

She
was unable to go on. After a moment, he shrugged and said in that flat, weary
voice, "There's no reason now that you shouldn't know."

He
told her how that night—or rather, early morning—he had emerged from one of the
brothels near the foot of Harbor Street. Looking to his right, he had seen
Christopher Montlow, pale hair gleaming beneath his hat, move away along the
dock.

"Because
I, like Patrick, had been looking for Christopher, I was armed. I moved after
him as fast as I could, and called his name. He whirled around. Evidently he
realized I might shoot if he ran, because he waited until I came up to him with
the pistol in my hand."

Elizabeth
pictured them there in the humid tropic darkness, her angelically handsome,
unspeakable brother and this crippled man twice his age. "He readily
admitted that he had robbed the distillery strongbox, and was carrying the gold
pieces sewn in his coat. He started to open his coat, as if to show me the
lining, but that was only a ruse. Apparently thinking he'd thrown me off guard,
he reached for the pistol."

Colin
had wrestled the weapon free and tried to pull the trigger. The pistol had not
fired. Somehow, though— for all that Christopher was younger and stronger—Colin
had managed to bring the pistol barrel down on one side of the pale yellow
head.

"He
staggered back and fell into the sea. I moved to the wharf's edge. Even though
he was invisible beneath the water, I knew that if I dived in I could probably
save him. But I knew that the world would be better off without him. He not
only had been responsible for poor little Anne Reardon's death. He had also
delivered you into my brother's far-from-tender hands. I mean, if you hadn't
spirited
Christopher out of London, Patrick would not have invaded your house that
night..."

Again
his voice trailed off. Elizabeth looked at him, stunned and repelled, and yet
feeling too much pity to be able to hate him. She said, "And besides, you
hoped that I would become convinced that my husband had killed
Christopher."

For
the first time, his dark gaze slid away from hers. "Yes."

And
until now, Elizabeth reflected, she never had been able to shake all suspicion
that Patrick had killed her brother. But that suspicion had not been enough to
outweigh her love for her husband, her need for him.

Colin
said, as if his thoughts had followed her own, "It wasn't until he left
you and Caroline alone in New Canterbury all that terrible winter that I again
began to hope that I could take you away from him. And the night he came
back... well, I saw a way to try to make sure of it."

It
must have been only a little while after Elizabeth had seen him praying there
in the woods that Patrick had gone to Colin's house. "He told me his
little girl was dying. He told me that you hated him. He asked me to do the
best I could for you, and even see that you got safely back to England, if that
was what you wanted. He gave me what money he had—it amounted to about two hundred
dollars—and then he sat down at the table and wrote a note for me to give to
you in the morning."

Elizabeth's
lips felt wooden. "A note?"

"In
it he gave you the name of someone in Hagerstown, Maryland, someone you could
write to if you ever wanted to see him again. And then he left."

"His
note. What did...?"

"I
burned it."

He
had burned it. And so, for weeks she had waited and wept, not knowing where
Patrick had gone. And all

that
time, Patrick, down in Maryland, with her last bitter words ringing in his
ears, must have been hoping even so to receive a message from her, saying that
their child still lived, and asking him to return.

Now
loathing began to stir beneath her sense of shock and pity. "And that
other note, the one saying that he had drowned?"

"I
wrote it."

He
moved to the door. With his hand on the knob, he looked back at her. "It
is strange. I used to think that I was one of those destined to go through life
quietly, not asking much of anything or anyone, content with the affection of a
calm, good-natured woman. And then Patrick brought you home..."

He
stopped. After a moment he added, "About your brother's death. As long as
I had hopes of freeing you from Patrick, I felt I was more than justified in
letting him drown. Now I see how little you could ever want to be free. And
that makes me a common murderer, doesn't it?"

He
went out, closing the door quietly behind him. She heard the opening and
closing of his own door across the hall. Still she sat there, pulled this way
and that by conflicting emotions. Pity for Colin Stanford, bastard and cripple,
who'd had to keep his love hidden. Hatred of him for the suffering he had
brought her these past weeks. And yet gratitude that, at long last, she would
never again wonder if Patrick had taken Christopher s life.

From
across the hall came the sound of a pistol shot.

She
sat motionless. Even after she heard the sound of opening doors, and a babble
of voices in the hall, it did not occur to her to rise from her chair and find
out what had happened. She did not have to. She already knew.

Firelight
flickered over the well-remembered room. Over the rosewood table, which still
held the bowl of fruit Clarence had brought in at the end of this dinner for
two beside the hearth. Over the graceful little desk where, those first months
at Stanford Hall, she often had sat writing to her mother. And firelight shone
on the bed where one night an angry and somewhat drunken Patrick had taught her
body the joys of physical love.

The
gown she wore now, a ruby-colored velvet with deep cuffs of cream-colored lace,
was associated with that long-ago night, even though she had never seen it
until today. Only hours ago Mrs. Corcoran—grayer now, but still plump and
cheerful—had brought the gown up to this room, and told how, weeks after
"your ladyship and Sir Patrick" had fled Stanford Hall, she had found
the bundled-up gown in a little-used storeroom. When the housekeeper had left
them, Patrick had confessed, with a sheepish smile that made his dark face look
years younger, that he had carried the gown from Dublin in his saddlebags, and
then, in his fury with her, had tossed the bundle to the rear of a storeroom.

Now
she looked at the vacant chair on the opposite side of the table. Ten minutes
ago, when Clarence had reported that he could not find a certain bottle of
well-aged port, Patrick himself had left to search the cellars. Waiting for him
now reminded her of another period of
waiting—those two long, tormented days
that, after Colin's suicide, she had spent at that Philadelphia inn, days in
which she alternated between a certainty that Patrick would come to her and a
terror that, after all, he was dead or, if alive, had learned how to get along
without her.

On
the afternoon of the second day, aware that her tense anxiety, her frequent
nervous pacing of the room, was badly upsetting Caroline, she took the child
downstairs and left her with one of the maids who waited table each day in the
children's dining room. Then she returned to her own rooms for more tormented waiting.

It
was just past four o'clock when she heard swift, familiar footsteps along the
hall. She flew to the door and opened it before he had time to knock. Then she
was in his arms. Wordlessly, with tears streaming down both their faces, they
kissed, and then kissed again, trying to make up in those first moments for all
the pain they had dealt each other.

At
last he said, still holding her close, "Then you forgive me for
all—?"

"Oh,
Patrick! It is I who should ask forgiveness. The cruel, terrible things I
said—"

He
stopped her words with a kiss. "We need never talk of that night, my
darling."

And
then, even though it was broad daylight, and even though they both should have
been tired—he from the journey at breakneck pace up from Maryland, she from the
last almost sleepless forty-eight hours—they went into the bedroom and made
love. For Elizabeth the ecstasy of their physical union was greater than ever
before, because now she knew that he loved her, not just with his splendid long
body, but with tenderness. Perhaps it was a tenderness that not even he had
known was in his heart until the night when he had finally made his way back
over still-snowy trails to New Canterbury.