Silent Melody (14 page)

He turned to stride away in the direction of the house, not pausing to see if his brother would accompany him.

•   •   •

They
all knew or would soon know. The whole family would know why she had put an end to her betrothal just the day after it had been announced. Because he had foolishly spoken to Victor and had foolishly assumed that she would marry him. He might have asked her first. They might have spared their families the sordid, painful truth.

But perhaps not. Perhaps they would have suspected—Lord Powell had—and questioned and cajoled. And then they would have thought the worse of Ashley for keeping silence. They would have thought, perhaps, that he was trying to avoid doing what was honorable.

What was honorable! Emily, still in the conservatory, stared down at her hands. She had given her promise two days ago. Yesterday she had consented to a public announcement. And last night . . . She sighed.

And she had been so very wrong. She had thought to give comfort. When she had understood what he needed of her, she had gone ahead anyway. She had sacrificed everything, including honor, in order to give comfort. And she had failed miserably.

But she would not make matters even worse. She would not take the coward's way out. She would not marry him. Ashley. She spread her hands on her lap. There was not a part of her that did not ache, she thought. Even her fingers. Even her heart. Especially her heart.

Anna was the first to find her, a long time later or five minutes later—time meant nothing to Emily this morning. Her sister drew up a chair and sat down beside her. It was tempting not to look up, to remain hidden inside her very private and silent life. And she did not look up for a while. But she could not hurt Anna more than she already must be hurt, Emily told herself. Anna had been a mother to her. She raised her eyes.

Anna's face still showed the red marks of dried tears. “Emmy,” she said. “Oh, Emmy.”

Emily reached across and touched her hand. But it was too late to be offering anyone comfort.

“Lord Powell was so stiff and angry on the outside, so hurt on the inside,” Anna said. “But you did the right thing meeting him face-to-face instead of having Victor do it for you. I must admire you for that.”

Dear Anna. Always so reluctant to condemn. Always looking for good, even when there was none. Emily patted her hand.

“Luke just came to me,” Anna said. “He told me you will not marry Ashley. Is it true, Emmy? And is it true that . . .” She shrugged her shoulders, and color flooded into her cheeks. “But that is none of my concern. He told Luke that he will ask you again. Will you not have him?”

Emily shook her head.

“But you love him.” Anna had taken her sister's hand in both of hers. “You always have. Even during the years he was away. Even after he married and after his son was born. That is the only explanation for—for what perhaps happened last night. It must have been dreadful for you to have watched the suffering he tried so very valiantly yesterday to hide from us. Now you could marry him, Emmy. Indeed, many people would say you have no choice but to marry him.”

Emily shook her head.

Anna squeezed her hand tightly. “Then I will support you in your decision,” she said. “I will not allow anyone to bully you. I have always told you that you need not marry anyone, that you may remain here for the rest of your life. You are my sister, but you have always felt like one of my own children. You were just a child when Mama was so ill, and even when she died. I love you like one of my own, Emmy. You are as dear to me as Joy or any of the boys.”

That was the trouble, Emily thought. Oh, that was the trouble. She would have no choice but to stay here, a burden for the rest of her life on people who had lives of their own to live. Ashley's own brother. There would be no escaping now. She had lost her chance with Lord Powell. She had refused her chance with Ashley. And there could be no other man.

“Come and have something to eat,” Anna said. “I would guess that you have not eaten all day.”

She shook her head. She could not eat. Even less could she go back into the house and face other people. They would all know by now. They would all look at her, perhaps with condemnation, perhaps with pity, perhaps with embarrassment. They would all know that last night she had lain with Ashley. How very public it had become, what they had done together at the falls. Ashley, she thought, would have the additional embarrassment of having it known that she had refused to allow him to retrieve his honor.

And she had thought to comfort him!

Anna left her, but had a tray of food sent in a short while later. Emily ate an apple and sipped a cup of tea.

•   •   •>

“She
will have to be made to see reason,” Charlotte said. “The trouble with Emily is that she has always been allowed to do whatever she wishes because of her affliction. No one has ever taught her any sense of duty. Perhaps you would explain it to her, Jeremiah. Perhaps she will listen to you, considering the fact that you are—”

“I hardly think, my love—,” the Reverend Jeremiah Hornsby began.

“If anyone is to speak to Emily,” the Earl of Royce said sharply, “'twill be me.”

Everyone, with the exception of Emily and Ashley, was gathered in the dining room, though very little food was being consumed. A family conference was in progress.

“No one will speak to Emily,” Anna said. “She has made up her mind. We would do well to remember that she is of age, that she is no longer a child.”

“Pox on it,” Lord Quinn said. “My own nephy is the villain of this piece. As I live, I would draw his cork for him this very minute if he were to walk through that door.”

“There are ladies present, Theo,” Luke said.

“Lud, Theo,” Lady Sterne said, “have you not noticed what Luke is hiding beneath the table by keeping his hands in his lap?”

Luke pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “My dear,” he said, “I have already explained. I skinned my knuckles while playing roughly with my sons and nephews and even a niece or two this morning.”

“Pshaw!” Lady Sterne said.

“You must talk to Emily, then, Victor,” Charlotte said. “But you must be firm with her.”

“Lookee here,” Lord Quinn said, wagging a finger about the table. His brows were knit together in a ferocious frown, marring his usually good-humored expression. “'Tis my nephy who must be firm with her. And I shall tell him so the next time I see him. Egad, she is such a sweet little gel, and with such speaking eyes. He has doubtless frightened her to death. He has to be made to convince her that he has put behind him grief for that unfortunate wife of his and will devote himself to her comfort. Did he do that this morning, eh? I will wager not, as I live.”

“'Tis a dreadful thing,” the Reverend Hornsby said, “and a reflection on the honor of the whole family. Broken vows, seduction, a refusal to accept the consequences of sin. Pardon me, my love and Anna, but the blame must be put squarely on Emily's shoulders. It does not signify how Lord Ashley expressed himself this morning, Lord Quinn. The fact is that he
did
express himself and did offer to do the honorable thing.”

“Perhaps,” Lady Sterne said, “she will change her mind. Ladies like to be persuaded. Perhaps Lord Ashley forgot this morning to mention the fact that he is fond of her. Faith, but 'twould be a disastrous omission.”

“Perhaps,” Luke said, sounding infinitely bored, “we should eat the food that has been set before us. Perhaps we should allow the two people most central to our discussion to order their own lives as they see fit.” He held up a staying hand when Charlotte opened her mouth and drew audible breath. For a moment everyone had a shockingly clear view of the raw knuckles he had skinned while playing with the children. “I shall speak with Emily myself before the day is out. I believe I have some influence with her.”

“Luke—,” Anna said, reaching out to touch his arm.

“Madam.” He turned his steady gaze on her. “Will you have some cold beef with your bread? Or would you prefer the chicken?”

E
MILY
had changed into the very old dress that had so shocked Lord Powell only the day before. She had taken the pins out of her hair and shaken it loose down her back. She had kicked off her shoes and removed her silk stockings. It looked wet and dreary outside, though the rain had stopped. She did not care. She slipped down the servants' stairs at the back of the house and out through a side door.

She would not go to the falls. She was not sure she would ever be able to go back there, to the place where she had made the biggest mistake of her life. All of her memories of Ashley would be tied up in that one spot—all of them. Culminating in the memory of how she had hung herself about his neck like a millstone just at the time when she had been trying to free him from suffering.

Gifts were dangerous things, she thought. Sometimes one succeeded only in taking far more than one gave.

She ran lightly in the other direction, across wet and chilly lawns, among trees whose branches dripped large drops of water onto her head and face and arms, and through to the meadow beyond. She had always loved this place—for the opposite reason to her love of the falls. The falls closed her into a small and private world; the meadow opened the world before her in a long and wide vista across fields and distant rolling countryside.

She stood for a long time and gazed at the world beyond herself. At order and beauty and peace. The grass was wet beneath her feet. But she would not be deterred by it. She went down on her knees and then lay facedown on the ground, her head tilted back so that she could gaze across the meadow almost from ground level. She saw the grass and the wildflowers as they would see themselves, rooted to earth and growing upward toward light and rain. She could see droplets of water on individual blades of grass and petals of flowers.

Then she rested her forehead on her arms. Her hands were flat against the ground, her fingers spread. She could feel the world spinning with her. She could feel the pulse of the universe against her own heartbeat. She lay still and relaxed, feeling the connection.

She felt no alarm, no unease when she realized that she was not alone. She did not even move for some time. She knew who it was. He would not disturb her or go away. She turned her head eventually and looked at him. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass a short distance from her. His elegant brown skirted coat and the breeches beneath were going to be soaked, she thought. She studied his battered face—one eye swollen half shut, both cheeks red and raw-looking, a swollen, cut lip. Victor had given him the bruise beneath his jaw. Who was responsible for the rest? Lord Powell? Luke?

“Luke,” he said, almost as if she had asked the question out loud.

She sat up and noticed how her dress was dark with wetness and clinging to her all the way down the front. It did not matter. She raised her knees and clasped her arms about them.

“I saw you from my window,” he said, startling her by signing the words with his hands in the private language they had started to devise long ago, “and followed you. There is no peace for you today, is there?” He smiled at her and then winced before touching a finger gingerly to his lip.

She wondered if Luke looked as bad. Why was it, she thought, that no one had come to beat her? She deserved a beating more than Ashley.

“We need to talk, Emmy,” he said, still signing the words. “It never even entered my head that you would refuse me. And so I nobly blurted out the whole truth to Royce, and he spread the glad tidings to everyone else in the house. Doubtless it did not enter his head either. I have put you in a very awkward position—to put the matter mildly.”

She wished he would stop taking responsibility for her. What she had done she had done freely. He had offered her respectability and she had refused. He owed her nothing else. He owed her nothing at all. She wanted to smooth her fingers very, very gently over his hurt cheeks and lip.

“Ah, those eyes,” he said. “They speak volumes, but sometimes even I cannot translate the language. And we never did invent enough signs for deeper thoughts and feelings. 'Tis not fair that all the burden of listening and understanding be on you. I remember once telling you that I would come back to teach you to read and write. Do you remember?”

He had said it when he was leaving. On that most painful of all mornings—even more painful than this morning.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I should remain here for a while, Emmy, and teach you. Forget about last night. Forget about this morning. And just be dear friends again. Brother and sister, as we used to be.”

She smiled sadly. But she pointed to herself, spread her palms flat before her, and read them as if she were reading a book. Then she dipped an imaginary quill pen into an imaginary inkwell and wrote an imaginary word with a flourish. She looked back at him.

“You can already read and write,” he said. “Who taught you, Emmy? Luke?”

Yes, Luke.

“Damn him,” he said.

She lifted her shoulders.

“And so there is nothing I can do for you, is there?” he said. “Strong, self-sufficient Emmy. You were always the same. It was always a ridiculous fallacy to believe you weak and vulnerable because you could not hear or speak, yet many people believed it. And probably still do. Perhaps I should ask what I can learn from you. We always think of teaching you, Emmy. Teaching you to communicate. Perhaps we should do the learning—and learn
not
to communicate, or to do it in a different way. Now there is a thought. Perhaps we could learn your peace if we could share your silence. What is it like? 'Tis not a dreadful affliction to you, is it? You have found meaning in silence. You are almost like a different being. You have perhaps the strongest character of anyone I have ever known.”

He had stopped signing. And he had spoken at great length, as he had always used to do. She had always understood him, perhaps because she had loved to gaze at him. She felt anything but strong. At this moment she almost wished she had given in this morning and let life happen to her for the rest of her days. She would have had Ashley—for the rest of her life. As her companion, her lover, her husband. No! No, she would never have had him. Even if she had agreed to marry him, she could never have him. Ashley's heart was given, buried with his dead wife. She could never be happy with just what was left—especially when it was offered out of a sense of obligation, an obligation she had placed him under.

“Perhaps one day I will learn silence,” he said, and his one good eye smiled gently at her, making him look like the old Ashley despite the mutilation of the rest of his face. “But in the meantime perhaps I should teach you to speak, Emmy. Now that might be a gift worth giving.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

“Have you ever tried?” he asked. He leaned slightly forward toward her. “I suppose 'twould not be impossible. You make sounds, you know, Emmy, especially when you laugh. You could probably speak if you could only hear. Have you ever tried?”

When I was a small child,
she told him with busy and eager hands,
I
did speak a little.

He gazed at her. “You?” he said. “You could speak? You could hear, Emmy? What happened?”

I
had a fever,
she told him as best she could.
And then I could not hear.

“Zounds,” he said, “I did not know that. Do you remember sound, Emmy? Do you remember speech?”

No,
she told him sadly.
No. I was very small.

“You should be able to speak again then, Emmy.” He had leaned forward, looking eager and almost boyish despite his battered face.
“Have
you tried?”

She had often sat before a looking glass forming with her mouth the words she read on other people's lips. She had even tried making sound. But she had no way of knowing if the resulting effort was speech. She had never tried it out on anyone. And she could not remember how it felt to speak.

“Zounds, you
have.”
He smiled broadly and then fingered his lip again. “Admit it.”

She nodded, feeling embarrassed.

“Say
yes,”
he said. “Let me hear you.”

She felt breathless, as if she had been running for five miles without stopping. She should never have admitted the truth. But he would have known.

“Say
yes
to me.” His smile had softened.

She drew breath and moved her lips in careful formation of the word. At the same time she forced what she thought was sound. Then she hid her face in her hands.

There was laughter in his face when she gathered enough courage to remove her hands and peep up at him. He had been
laughing.
“The word was correctly formed,” he said, “and there was sound. But there was no communion between the two, Emmy. I believe you blocked the sound—perhaps with the back of your tongue? It came through your nose.”

She bit her lip, horribly mortified. What had happened to his idea of learning silence? Would
she
laugh at
him
if he got it wrong?

“Try again,” he told her. “Let the sound come through your mouth. Let the air come through your lips.”

She did not know how. She could not remember.
Say the word to me,
she demanded with one hand. But when he did so, she still did not know how. She wriggled closer to him until their knees almost touched.
Again,
she commanded.

“Yes,” he said while she stretched out one hand and set her fingertips lightly against his throat. She could feel the vibrations.
Again,
she motioned, frowning in concentration.

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

She set her fingers against her own throat and tried to make vibrations. He had told her to let the air out through her mouth. She set the other hand before it. She could feel the air—and then the vibrations. She darted a look up at him.

“You have it, by my life,” he said. “Sound, Emmy, coming through your lips. Now say
yes.”

“Yyaaahhhzzz,” she said.

The gleam in his good eye was not exactly amusement. It was . . . triumph. The type of look she had seen in Luke's eyes when Joy took her first step.

“Yes-s-s,” he said, stretching his swollen, cut lips and showing her that the final sound was a more violent one than the one she had produced.

“Zzzzsssss,” she said.

He was enjoying himself. The old Ashley, though somewhat battered. But she was concentrating too hard for the thought to be conscious.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yyaazzss.”

“Yes-s-s.”

“Yyaassss.”

“Yes.”

“Yyass.”

“Yes.”

“Yass.”

He was laughing. “Yes, Emmy, yes,” he said, and he opened his arms to her.

She was laughing too, helplessly, excitedly, like a child with a hard-won prize. She could speak! She could form words and make sound and be understood. She could speak all of one word. She could not stop laughing. She swayed forward a couple of inches—and stopped.

The laughter went from his face even as she felt it drain from hers. His arms dropped back to his knees.

“Emmy,” he said, “marry me. Marry me and make me laugh again. Marry me and teach me your silence, your serenity. Marry me and let me teach you to speak—to hold a whole conversation. To drive people distracted with your constant chattering. Marry me.”

The temptation was almost overwhelming. For a few minutes seven years had fallen away and they had been purely happy together as they had always used to be. In a rare two-way communication he had stepped into her world as surely as she had stepped into his. The temptation to believe that those few minutes could be expanded to a lifetime was powerful indeed.

She shook her head.

He had sat looking at her for a long time before she gave in to a small temptation. She lifted one of his arms from his knee, nestled her cheek against the back of his hand, and turned her head to kiss it. Then she set his arm back over his knee.

“Yes, I know,” he said when she looked into his face again. “You love him, Emmy. And there have been Alice and Thomas in my life. Our fondness for each other will not overcome those barriers. Have it your way then.”

She smiled at him.

“But Emmy,” he said, and he was signing again, “if there is a child—and there may be a child—you must marry me. You must. Do you understand? 'Twould not be just you and me then. There would be someone else, more important than you or me. Children are so very fragile, and so very innocent. Protecting them must always come before any other consideration. Promise me?”

She could see in his face the rawness of memory. The knowledge that there had been one child—his own son—whom he had been unable to protect. His hands made a baby seem a tender, precious being.

She nodded. “Yass,” she said.

“Thank you.” He reached across and took both her hands in his. He raised them one at a time to his lips. “If you do not catch a chill, Emmy, in that soaked dress, there is no justice in this world. Come back to the house with me.”