Silent Melody (10 page)

“My dear.” Luke held up a staying hand. “Do not go away, I beg of you.”

Anna lifted her head, apparently only just becoming aware of Emily's presence. Her face was red from crying.

“Oh, Emmy,” she said, “Emmy. Ashley's Alice and Thomas are
dead.
They perished in a fire more than a year ago and we were not there to comfort him. He has borne the burden entirely alone. And the burden too of having been from home himself when it happened. How he must blame himself. He has come home for comfort, Emmy.”

She saw every word, as if she really could hear and could not stop hearing.

Luke, as was to be expected, was in command of himself, though only just, Emily guessed as her eyes widened and turned to him.

“Emily,” he said, “stay here with Anna, my dear. She has need of you for a while. I must find my poor Ashley. He has offended my mother by
laughing
as he told us about it, the foolish man. He is deeply, deeply hurt. You will stay?”

There was a faintness in Emily's head, but she nodded as Luke transferred Anna from his arms to hers and then hurried from the room.

Ashley, she thought. Ah, Ashley. Why had he not told her? Had he thought her arms not strong enough, her heart not big enough? Seven years was an eternity after all. The distance between them had grown vast. He had not told her.

Ah, Ashley.

As she sat down on the sofa with Anna, their hands clasped tightly together, she forgot why she had come to the sitting room.

“Emmy,” Anna said, her reddened face a mask of grief, “we are going to have to be very gentle with him and very kind to him. Poor Ashley.”

Emily raised her sister's hands and set them against her cheeks.

•   •   •

Luke
had come to stand beside him on the bridge. He said nothing, as he rested his arms on the stone parapet and gazed down into the water of the river flowing beneath. Ashley was throwing stones into it, trying to skip them, but the angle was too sharp. They all sank quite decisively.

“I suppose,” he said, breaking the silence at last, “you left Anna and Doris in tears, and Mother
not
in tears?”

“Theo and Lady Sterne bore our mother off between them,” Luke said, “and I left Doris to Weims's care. Anna was in tears, yes.”

“For something that happened more than a year ago,” Ashley said, throwing the next stone farther than the others. It still sank. “To people she did not even know. 'Tis foolish. Ah, well. I noticed that Powell had Emmy almost in an embrace in the garden a short while ago. Anna must be in high hopes of having a summer wedding to plan.”

“Ash,” Luke said, “you need to talk about it, my dear.”

Ashley laughed. “Zounds,” he said, “I remember how disconcerted and indignant I was when you first called me that, Luke. You have still not abandoned all your Parisian ways, I see. I noted your fan last evening. 'Twas a glittering occasion, by the way. I am thankful I came in time for it.”

“You are as brittle as glass,” his brother said quietly. “And I believe you could shatter into as many pieces.”

Ashley tossed his last stone over the parapet into the water and turned to rest one elbow on the wall. He looked at Luke with some amusement in his eyes.

“No longer,” he said. “Look at me, Luke. I am quite relaxed. 'Twas merely the ghastly prospect of having to break the news to you all, you see. I was sorry in my heart I had not written to you before dashing off home. I knew very well that Anna and Doris would dissolve into tenderhearted grief, that Mother would stiffen her upper lip and accompany it with a face of stone, and that you would square your shoulders and attempt to take my burdens upon them. You play the part of head of the family exceedingly well.”

“I did not come down here as head of the family, Ash,” Luke said. “I came as your brother. Who loves you. You are in pain.”

“Am I?” Ashley smiled. “It was a long and a tedious voyage. I ate poorly and slept worse. Both will be rectified now that I have my feet on firm earth.”

“You came home,” Luke said. “Not just to England, Ash. You came to Bowden. You might have stayed in London. You might have gone to Penshurst—'tis yours, I assume? But you chose to come home. Why? Just so that you might hold us at arm's length? So that you might spurn help?”

“Help.” Ashley laughed.

Luke turned his head and looked assessingly at him before directing his gaze back at the water. “I have been trying to imagine,” he said, “how I would feel if 'twere Anna and one or all of my children. You are right: There could be no help, no comfort. Not immediately. Perhaps never. But I believe that after a year I might turn to my family. Yet I can see that even then I might be afraid to allow them inside the shell I would have constructed about myself.”

“Damn you,” Ashley said.

“I would be bitter and brittle. I might laugh from behind my shell.”

“You know nothing,” Ashley said. “You know
nothing.”

“No, I do not,” Luke admitted. “Tell me, Ash. Tell me what happened.”

“I told you,” Ashley said. “They died. They burned with the house. I did not know until a friend came to fetch me. I came home to smoking ashes. I had been away—at a business meeting.”

“How did the fire start?” Luke asked. “Was the cause ever determined?”

Ashley shrugged. “A candle caught the draperies,” he said. “A lamp was tipped over. Who knows? There was a war in progress. There had been any number of sporadic and inexplicable atrocities.”

“There was a suspicion of arson, then?” Luke asked.

“But no proof,” Ashley said with another shrug.

“Did you have enemies?” Luke asked.

“A nationful,” Ashley said with a laugh. “I am an Englishman, Luke. Englishmen were at war with Frenchmen. And there were Indian men fighting on both sides. 'Twas not a wise time to leave one's wife and son alone at home.”

“Anna said that you must be blaming yourself,” Luke said. “She was right. Were there no servants, Ash?”

“My valet was with me,” Ashley said. “Alice had dismissed the other servants for the night except her faithful nurse and companion, who had been with her since she was a girl. She died with them.”

“Only one servant.” Luke frowned. “Why did she dismiss the others? Was it customary? Even when you were from home?”

Ashley merely shrugged. “There were those, you know, who said I did it,” he said. “When a wife dies in inexplicable circumstances, the husband is always suspect.”

“Zounds,” Luke said.

“They were, of course, wrong.” Ashley laughed and drummed his fingers on the parapet of the bridge. “I should not have come here, Luke. I should have gone straight to Penshurst. Yes, 'tis mine. I was penniless seven years ago, but I am now in possession of two sizable fortunes: the one that I amassed for myself and the other that my wife brought me. And I am free to enjoy both, unencumbered by wife or child. What more could any man desire?”

“Stay here for a while,” Luke said. “Let yourself be loved, Ash. Let yourself be healed. I cannot know what you have suffered or what you still suffer—'tis beyond imagining. But there is love to be had here. And perhaps healing too if you will but give it a chance. If you will give it time.”

“I will stay for a few days,” Ashley said with a shrug. “And then I will be on my way to Penshurst. To my new life. 'Tis the one I have worked toward since joining the East India Company, Luke. And now 'tis within my grasp. And so he lived happily ever after.”

Luke turned his head to smile at him. “And perhaps 'twill do the trick, too,” he said. “But stay here for a while. Anna will want to fuss over you. The children will wish to become acquainted with you and discover how indulgent you can be when wheedled. And I have missed you. Come back to the house with me? I will have toast and coffee brought to the study, unless you wish for something stronger. I noticed you ate almost no breakfast after all.”

“Later,” Ashley said. “I still revel in the coolness of English air. I would not willingly exchange it so soon for the indoors.”

Luke nodded and after a moment turned to walk back to the house alone. Emmy, Ashley noticed when he looked after him, was no longer in the formal gardens with her beau.

He should have written to them a year ago. And when he returned to England, he should have gone straight to Penshurst. He was a mature man now, independent, confident, assertive, resourceful. He had spent six years achieving that effect, overcoming the handicap of having grown up as a dependent, irresponsible, bored younger son of a duke. So he had lost a wife and a child. Every day men lost wives and children.

He should have continued with the life he had made for himself and by himself.

But he had resorted to instinct rather than to cool judgment and good sense. He had come running home—home to Bowden and to Luke. And, without consciously realizing it, to Emmy. To a wild and happy child who no longer existed.

He should have told her this morning, he thought. It somehow hurt to know that she would learn it from someone else. She would be sad for him. He should have told her himself. But he knew that he could not have done so. He could not have told her the bald facts as he had to his family at breakfast. If he had said that much to Emmy, he would have grabbed for her and poured out everything else too. Somehow with Emmy words could never be used as a shield. She seemed to know them for the inadequate vehicle of truth they were. Emmy saw to the heart.

But he had no desire to use a woman as an emotional crutch.

He had a sudden unbidden image of Thomas with his soft down of gingery hair. It was an image he often held behind his sleepless eyelids when he lay down. Poor child. Poor innocent little baby. The sins of the fathers . . . No! It had been an accident. A tragic accident. That was all. No one, least of all God, would punish a child . . .

T
HE
Earl of Royce was delighted by his talk with Lord Powell. He had begun to have doubts when nothing had been said after all last evening during the ball. Now he was happy and relieved for his youngest sister, whom he had not really expected to be able to settle in life. And he was grateful to his brother-in-law, who had made such efforts to find her a husband of suitable rank and fortune and one who would be kind to her. Powell seemed genuinely fond of Emily.

The earl did, though, hesitate about making the announcement on this particular day. It had not taken long for the news to spread through the house, to those who had not been present at breakfast, that Lord Ashley Kendrick's wife and child had perished in a fire a year ago in India.

But the Duke of Harndon was pleased too to hear that the betrothal had been agreed upon and that Powell was both ready and eager to have it made public. The duke insisted the gloom that had descended on the house must be lifted and that his brother certainly had no wish to wallow in it. The celebration of a betrothal in the family would be just the thing to lighten everyone's spirits, he maintained.

And so the announcement was made during tea, when everyone was gathered in the drawing room, including the children. Even Lord Harry Kendrick was there, asleep with open mouth against his father's shoulder. Agnes and William had come from Wycherly Park with their children. The mood of the gathering was subdued, or rather determinedly cheerful, until Victor rose to his feet, cleared his throat for silence, and informed them that Lord Powell had offered for his sister, that Emily had accepted, and that there was no more to be said on the matter except that making the announcement gave him the greatest pleasure and that the nuptials would be celebrated some time during the summer. And that really he was no great speech maker.

There was general laughter.

Emily, standing beside her betrothed, watched her brother's face intently and felt a sense of finality. A calm contentment. It had been done now. The words had been spoken to all the people who mattered most in her life. There was no going back now. Not that she felt any wish to go back. She needed this marriage. She might be deaf, she might be different, but she was a woman.

Lord Powell had taken her hand and was bowing over it in a touchingly courtly manner and bringing it to his lips.

She could not hear the noise that the announcement aroused, but she could see its effect. Everyone looked at her, and everyone looked suddenly joyful. It had to be right, she thought, smiling. What she had done had to be right. Her family and Luke's were happy for her; they believed Lord Powell would make an excellent husband. But there was no chance to think further. She was being engulfed in hugs. And her betrothed, she saw when she was able, was receiving his fair share as well. At the moment, Constance, Victor's wife, was embracing him, tears in her eyes.

Yes, it had to be right. It
felt
right.

Ashley was sitting in a far corner of the room. He had sat there all through tea, smiling, laughing, James on one knee, Amy on the other, Joy beside him. But they had abandoned him now, Emily saw, though she did not look directly his way, in order to join the general bustle of excitement about herself and Lord Powell. He sat there alone, still smiling.

“How can he smile and laugh?” she had seen Agnes say earlier to Constance. “Has he no feelings?”

But Emily, even without looking directly at him, had been able to feel the unbearable tension behind his smile. His wife and his son had died. Between leaving for a meeting and returning, he had had his whole family wiped out.

Ashley. She wished desperately that he had confided in her out at the falls that morning. Though that was not quite true either. For if he had told her, she would not have come back to change into pretty clothes and listen to Lord Powell's apology and agree to have their betrothal announced. She would have been caught up in a past that would have overshadowed her present and her future. Besides, she would have been unable to comfort him as she had used to do. Nothing could comfort him for what had happened to him. It would have hurt to know that she was powerless to ease his pain.

Ah, but she wished—with her heart she wished—that he had told her.

And then, while Jeremiah—the Reverend Jeremiah Hornsby, Charlotte's husband—was congratulating her and Lord Powell and hoping that they might do him the honor of asking him to conduct their wedding service, Ashley touched Emily on the arm.

“Well, Emmy.” He took her hands in his and kissed her on both cheeks. “It seems I have returned home just in time to say good-bye to you. You were always like a dear sister to me. I hope you will continue to think of me as a kind of brother.”

Like a dear sister.
That was all she really saw. Yes, she had been that to him. That was how he had seen her. Like a sister. It was good to have been seen thus. Closer than a friend. A sister. And she was to continue to think of him as a brother—yes, he had said that too. Oh, Ashley. She smiled at him, but she squeezed his hands very tightly as well and spoke to him with her eyes. He understood her. Of course he understood. But lest he did not, she closed her hand into a fist and pulsed it against her heart.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know it makes you sad, Emmy. But I have come home to give up sadness. Seeing you happy is good for me. 'Tis hard to believe you are no longer the child you were when I went away. You are all grown up. Be happy, little fawn. Promise me always to be happy.”

Yes. She smiled again.
The child you were when I went away.
Ah, Ashley. Yes, she would promise. She would promise to try.

And then Joy was smiling sunnily up at her—she was so like Anna, even in her smiles. “Aunt Emmy,” she said, “may I be your bridesmaid? I am seven and a half years old.”

Emily laughed and touched the child's hair.

•   •   •

It
had been a difficult evening. Agnes and William had stayed, toasts had been drunk at dinner, everyone had gathered in the drawing room afterward for conversation and cards and music—Constance and Charlotte and Doris played the pianoforte; William and Jeremiah sang. The tea tray was ordered later than usual and they all went to bed late.

But none of them had known quite if they should be sober and solemn out of respect for Ashley or bright and merry in celebration of the betrothal they had toasted at dinner. The only one of them who was unashamedly cheerful all through the evening—he had even suggested that the carpet be rolled back for dancing—was Ashley.

Luke had said quite firmly that the carpet would stay where it was. They had all had quite enough of dancing the evening before. And of course they were all rather tired after the evening before, and thus it was more difficult to keep up their spirits. At last, an hour after Agnes and William had left for home, the dowager duchess got to her feet and the rest of the party took her doing so as the signal to go to bed.

Emily changed into her nightgown without assistance and brushed out her hair and was thankful that the day was finally at an end. It had been an unbearably eventful day, and the evening had been almost intolerable. Everyone talking. Everyone focusing on her, expecting her to listen and understand. She had been unable to leave early, to relax into her own solitude as she had longed to do. Her eyes
ached
from such intent watching. And one foolishly insignificant fact had dominated her thinking all evening: She still did not know his name. She was to be his bride in two or three months' time, yet she did not know his name. The thought struck her as funny, and she laughed softly. It did not matter anyway. She could never speak his name.

He knew hers. It was almost all he knew of her. Another foolish, insignificant thought.

She was tired. She remembered suddenly that she had not slept at all last night and had snatched only perhaps an hour's rest this afternoon between tea and dinner. She was very tired, but she was not sleepy at all. There was a difference, she thought, wandering from her dressing room into her darkened bedchamber and standing before the window, still absently brushing her hair.

She did not believe she would sleep even if she lay down. She was betrothed, she thought, trying to feel different. She was going to be married. There were going to be form and purpose to her life. A totally new direction. Even her home and her companions would change. She would spend her days with his mother and his younger brothers and sisters. And with him.

He was going to have paper and pens and ink set in each room. Without them she could not hope to communicate in the simplest ways with all those strangers.

He was a stranger too, she thought. And she would never be able to communicate with him. He would never know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words—even if she could speak or write them—could never explain her world to him.

She rested one bent knee on the window seat. It was a lovely night, bright with moonlight and starlight. It was a tempting night, one that beckoned her. How lovely it would be to throw on a dress and a cloak and to slip outside to wander. Down across the lawn, along by the river. But it could not be done. She had made the decision. She had promised herself this morning. He would never understand a wife who wandered outside alone at night. If she were to, he would soon be echoing Luke's words, but in all seriousness. He would be calling her a witch.

Emily sighed. Her new life was not going to be easy. But it was one she had chosen deliberately.

She longed for it to begin. She looked back involuntarily at her bed. She wanted that too. It was strange how her body had come to crave it during the past couple of years or so, even while her head had been unable to fix upon any man—until now—and her heart had been faithful to an impossibility. Her body wanted to know . . .

She lifted her shoulders and turned her eyes back toward the window and the shadowed lawns and trees beyond it. How she yearned to go out there, to wander quietly, not doing anything in particular. Merely being. That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to
be.
Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from
doing.
They pitied her idleness, believing it denoted emptiness, boredom. But now she had chosen to enter the world of doing.

She wondered if it would disappear with time and perseverance, this yearning to be free, to be a part of everything that was natural and beautiful and timelessly turning with the days and the seasons.

And then her brush stilled against her head and she leaned forward, her lips parting.

He was not strolling. He was not out there with any thought of enjoying his surroundings or of merely taking the air before retiring to bed. He was hurrying with purposeful strides, his head down. He looked almost as if he thought himself pursued, though he did not look back either.

He looked haunted.

He was going to the falls. Of course he was going there. He was close to breaking. All last evening, all today, his smiles, his laughter, his gaiety had scandalized some of the family and aroused the pity of others.

“How very brave the poor boy is being, Theo,” she had seen Aunt Marjorie, Lady Sterne, say to Lord Quinn.

Emily had known that the gaiety had been no more than skin-deep. She had known that the company of his family had not helped him at all but had possibly had the opposite effect. She had known that he was close to breaking and that he might very well break.

She could not help him. She leaned forward until her forehead was against the glass of the window, and closed her eyes. Ashley.
Ashley, I cannot help you.

But she would not believe it. Nothing had really changed. She was here and he was here. She could still listen to him. And he could still talk to her. Luke had come back to Anna's sitting room that morning, pale and weary, and said that he had tried to talk to Ashley, had tried to assure him that there were love and healing to be had at Bowden for the taking, but that he was not sure he had accomplished anything. Ashley had built a wall about himself.

Luke had
talked
to Ashley. Perhaps what Ashley really needed, as he had more than seven years ago, was someone to listen. Someone who could not give him verbal consolation or advice. Someone like herself.

Perhaps he would talk to her if they could be together at the falls again, as they had so often used to be. As they had been this morning. Perhaps he would feel some of the old magic return. Perhaps some of the burden could be lifted from his soul. Perhaps he could be saved from breaking apart.

She had been like a dear sister to him, he had said just that afternoon. His words had hurt. They still hurt. He had been so much more to her than a brother. But her feelings did not matter. Besides, she no longer could be more to him than a sister. And perhaps a friend.

But was she fooling herself? She kept her eyes closed and looked honestly at the question. Could she go to him there, break the promise she had made to herself just that morning, and not be deeply hurt herself? Would she be going only for her own sake? Because she wanted to go to him?