Silent Melody (25 page)

“Given the fact that I have been envious of each of them at this stage of their existence, madam,” he said, “perhaps I can be forgiven for indulging a little spite.”

She laughed.

•   •   •

Lady
Verney wished to discuss her health and inquire after that of each of Ashley's houseguests. Barbara Verney conversed about London and the entertainments of the Season in which she and her brother had participated. Sir Henry Verney sat silent except for uttering the barest of courtesies. Ashley turned to him at last. He, after all, was the object of this visit.

“I wonder if I might have a private word with you,” he said, “on a matter with which I would not wish to bore the ladies.” He smiled at them and felt rather sorry for the insult to the intelligence of Miss Verney that his words had implied. She was a lady he liked and respected.

“La, if 'tis business you wish to discuss, Lord Ashley,” Lady Verney said, “Henry will take you out into the garden or into the study. Such matters give me the headache.”

Sir Henry suggested the garden, since the day was sunny and warm. They strolled along a secluded path that took them about the perimeter of the small park. A couple of dogs—a collie and a terrier—were soon ambling at their heels and making the occasional detour among the trees to sniff at roots.

“It is the dogs who are the main attraction for Eric Smith,” Sir Henry said. “There is one more in the stables with a litter of puppies. The boy scarcely moved from them yesterday.” It was his first attempt at conversation, though he was making no great effort to ingratiate himself, Ashley noticed. He was glad there was no pretense of friendship between them.

“Yesterday,” he said quietly. “You were early at Binchley's cottage. Did you encounter anyone on your way there?”

Sir Henry looked at him consideringly. “It is no idle question, is it?” he said. “I cannot remember without giving the question concentrated thought if I met anyone or not. Is it important that I go through that process? Perhaps you would like to tell me whom you suppose I met.”

“Lady Emily Marlowe,” Ashley said. He watched his neighbor closely and despite himself felt sorry that he had come to Penshurst so burdened. If he had known nothing about this man before he came, they might have been friends. But then he might have been deceived in the friendship. Something had happened to Emmy yesterday.

“Ah.” Sir Henry said no more for a while. His voice was decidedly chilly when he did speak. “I understand, Kendrick, as I understood when we were in London, that you are a jealous and a possessive man. I do not know if your claim to Lady Emily's affections is real or imaginary, but either way, the lady has my sincerest sympathy. Have you confronted her too? Expressed your displeasure or your cold disapproval to her? Do you imagine that because I was abroad early and because she presumably was out too, we must therefore have enjoyed a clandestine meeting? And would my denial make any difference to these suspicions of yours?”

“Are you denying it?” Ashley asked.

“No,” Sir Henry said. “Nor am I admitting it. Unless you can assure me that you are betrothed to the lady, Kendrick, or married to her, I do not recognize your right to question either her movements or mine in relation to her. I was prepared to welcome you to this part of Kent with all the courtesy and even amiability due a neighbor and possible friend. I believe that you absolved me of any such obligation the last time we met in London.”

They were trading civil insults. The thought of becoming openly uncivil was markedly unpleasant, especially in broad daylight and in the civilized surroundings of Verney's park. But Ashley had come for answers. He remembered the night before and the desperation in Emily that had drawn him into a repetition of his indiscretion at Bowden. “I am neither married to Lady Emily nor betrothed to her,” he said. “But I will protect her, as I hope I would protect any lady, from harm and from terror. Moreover, she is a guest in my home. I mean to discover what happened to her yesterday morning. I need to know to what extent you assaulted her.” It was as well to call a spade a spade.

“Terror? Assault?” Sir Henry had stopped walking and stood facing Ashley, with a coldness and a tension in his manner to match Ashley's own. “I am a gentleman, sir. By my life, instinct directs me to slap a glove in your face, since clearly you believe I have been responsible for both. Good sense, however, tells me that perhaps I should answer your earlier question after all. No, I did not meet or even set eyes on Lady Emily Marlowe yesterday morning. I have not seen her since I walked in the garden with her at Lady Bryant's ball.”

Ashley stared hard at him while the dogs circled them, obviously eager for them to move onward. Dammit, Ashley thought, he believed the man. And yet he surely could not expect an instant admission even if he were guilty. Verney's open, honest face was perhaps his greatest asset. Alice must have trusted it, after all. “I must accept your word as a gentleman,” he said.

“But with the greatest reluctance,” Sir Henry said, lifting one eyebrow, “and with only a grain of trust. Very well, then. But I am sorry in my heart that something appears to have happened to upset Lady Emily. If she is unable to tell you the cause of her terror, then I can understand your concern. I can even perhaps excuse the conclusion you appear to have jumped to, since I
was
out riding early and was alone until I took Eric up with me. But I did not see her. Perhaps it will help you to know that my affections are otherwise engaged and have been—to the same lady—since I was a boy. And that at last it appears I may be having some success in engaging the lady's affections.”

Ashley's head went back, almost as if he had been struck. Zounds but the words were wicked. Deliberately so? Verney had loved another woman since boyhood? He had never cared at all for Alice? Well, he had come for answers and he would not be diverted. “Why did you treat my wife so badly?” he asked.

Sir Henry stared back at him before breaking eye contact and bending to pat one of his panting dogs on the head. He began to walk onward and Ashley fell into step beside him.

“I have regretted the harshness with which I spoke to her and the coldness with which I treated her during that final month before she left for India,” Sir Henry said. “I was perhaps unjust. Certainly I was hasty. I should have taken more time for consideration. Undoubtedly she was devastated by the power of her own feelings, and my words only made matters worse for her. At the time I did not care. Any fondness I had ever had for her was forgotten. I cared for Katherine—and for myself. And yet a part of me, a guilty part of me, could not help being secretly glad of the gift Alice had presented to me. And so I lashed out at her to cover my own guilt. I am sorry—woefully inadequate words. Did I do her lasting damage?”

“I believe,” Ashley said, “your question must be rhetorical, Verney.” He had abandoned her—apparently quite abruptly and quite cruelly—for Katherine Binchley. And Katherine in her turn had abandoned him in order to marry Smith. It seemed hardly just that Verney was now having a second chance with her.

Sir Henry sighed. “The answer is apparently yes,” he said. “Your coldness to me is understandable, then. But I cannot help but wonder if any permanent damage to Alice's happiness was not caused more by personal guilt than by anything I said to her.”

Guilt? Guilt at having lain with her seducer, the man she had loved? The man she had been unable to forget? Ashley knew what it was to see red at that moment. His fist beneath one side of Sir Henry's jaw caught the man unprepared. He reeled backward and only just kept his footing. His hands balled into fists and he glared with anger. But he did not use his fists, Ashley was disappointed to find. He would have welcomed a good fight.

“She was your wife,” Sir Henry said, breathing hard. “I must remember that. I am sorry. Sorry for the whole sordid mess and for your doubtless painful attempts to come to terms with it. But perhaps 'twould be as well, Kendrick, if we kept our distance from each other in future, maintaining merely a distant courtesy as neighbors.”

“Perhaps,” Ashley said coldly, “it would. Answer one more question for me before I take my leave. Did you kill Gregory Kersey?” The question hung between them almost like a tangible thing. But he would not withdraw it if he could have, Ashley thought. Verney was correct: Ashley was trying to come to terms with the past, though he doubted that knowing the full truth would help ease him of his own guilt. Perhaps he felt somehow honor-bound to understand the wife he had been unable to save better than he had ever understood her while she lived. Had she known that her lover was also her brother's murderer? Had that knowledge added to her torment?

Sir Henry blanched and the hand that had been rubbing at his jaw stilled. “Did I kill Greg?” he said in little more than a whisper. He closed his eyes. “Oh, God. Is that what she told you?”

“'Tis a possibility that has struck me,” Ashley said. “Did Kersey find out the truth? Did he confront you?”

“He had always known,” Sir Henry said. “We quarreled bitterly over her, yes. There was a marked coolness between us up to the time of his death, though we had been close friends for too long and were still too close as neighbors to be fully estranged. We were shooting together that morning—along with several other neighbors.” He paused to draw a deep breath. “No, I did not kill him. I wonder if Alice believed I did. She never accused me of it. But if she did believe it, then that would mean . . . Ah, who knows? The past is best left in the past, buried with the two of them.”

“Why did Ned Binchley retire so abruptly after the death of Gregory Kersey?” Ashley asked.

Sir Henry sighed again. “You would have to ask him,” he said. “Though it was not retirement. Alice dismissed him.”

“Why?” Ashley frowned.

“I believe,” Sir Henry said, “that she did not realize he owned his cottage. Sir Alexander had made it over to him after a number of years of good service. I suppose Alice thought dismissing him would be a good way of ridding herself permanently of Katherine. There—I have answered your question after all.”

“Yes,” Ashley said curtly. “Yes, I see now.” And he did, too. Alice had been in love with Verney and he, unable to win Katherine Binchley's affections, had taken advantage of Alice's devotion and had lain with her. That fact had caused a quarrel and a deep rift between her brother and her lover. And then, after all, Verney had abandoned her for Katherine. Had Katherine Binchley teased him—held back from him one moment, encouraged him the next? Alice's brother had died—perhaps at Verney's hands—Verney had abandoned her, and Katherine was still at the cottage with her father, the steward at Penshurst. And so Alice had tried to get rid of them, and failing at that, had gone to India to join her father. It was little wonder that she had been emotionally scarred for life.

“I have comforted myself with the thought that they are both now at peace,” Sir Henry said. “Alice and Greg, I mean. The thought would not bring you so much comfort, of course. You did not even know him, and Alice was your wife. And, of course, there was the child, your son. I am sorry. I wish you would believe that. But I understand that you blame me for some things and can never be disposed toward me in any friendly manner. I am sorry for that too. Can we agree at least to be civil?”

“Yes,” Ashley said curtly. It was all they could do. And he knew he must let the matter drop now. He had the truth, or as much of it as he would ever have. He had to learn to live with past unhappiness, past guilt. Somehow he had to live on and find some new meaning in life. He thought of Emily. She deserved better. She deserved light and wholeness. He had so little that was of any value to offer her. Even the gift of freedom he had given her less than a week ago had turned sour. There had been their night of intimacy, a night during which he had bound her to him bodily over and over again. He had to offer her once more the protection of his name. And of a love that weighed heavily upon him because there was no real honor to offer with it. He had lost his honor during a certain night in India.

Sir Henry Verney was holding out his right hand. Ashley had been looking at it, unseeing—until almost too late.

“No,” he said sharply as he watched the hand close upon itself and begin to drop to Sir Henry's side. “Please.” He extended his own hand and they shook. “The past is, as you say, past.”

He was on his way back to Penshurst a few minutes later, not sure if anything had been accomplished. Of one thing he felt sure, though—perhaps foolishly. It was not Verney who had caused Emmy's fear. Someone else had done that.

“H
ENRY?”
Barbara Verney stepped out onto the terrace as Ashley rode away from the stables. She looked at her brother with some concern.

“I walked into a tree,” he said ruefully, touching his jaw.

“I suppose his fist met the same fate,” she said. “What happened? He was so very pleasant with Mama and me, but I could not fail to notice the way the two of you glowered at each other.”

“I could cheerfully run him through with my sword,” Sir Henry said, “and yet I cannot help feeling pity for him, Barbara. He has come here a year after Alice's death to try to fit the pieces together, to make sense out of them. It was, perhaps, a difficult marriage. One does not know exactly what she told him—what truths she withheld, what lies she might have told. He asked me if I had killed Greg.”

“Ah,” she said, grimacing.

“I had to choose my words with great care,” he said. “I am not at all certain that he understands the central truth.”

“Ah,” she said again. “Perhaps he merely suspects, Henry. Perhaps he finds it difficult, if not impossible, to ask the question outright. Perhaps that is why there is a look of tension about him. He must need to know. Perhaps you should have told him.”

“How?” he said, blowing out his breath from puffed cheeks. “We cannot even be quite certain ourselves. And 'tis not something you should even know is possible, Barbara. You are a lady.”

“And should delicately swoon at far less,” she said. “Nonsense. But there is an unaskable question . . .” She took his arm and walked away from the house with him. “I have never been able to ask you. But I have always wondered. And now the question has been raised in a different form by Lord Ashley. Do you believe
she
killed him?” She bit her lip now that the question was asked.

“Egad!” he said. “I have no proof. I am not sure I would want proof. 'Tis unthinkable—though I did accuse her of it in the first flush of shock.”

“Or suicide,” she said. “Murder was spoken of, though never with Alice as a possible suspect. Suicide was whispered of at first as a possibility, but no one could think of a motive. There was a powerful one, of course.”

“'Tis best not spoken of, Barbara,” he said. “'Tis best forgotten about. They are both dead.”

“But poor Lord Ashley is alive and troubled,” she said. “Perhaps you should not have chosen your words with such care, Henry. Which ones did you choose more rashly? The ones you spoke just before colliding with a tree?”

Her brother thought for a moment. “I believe I said something about her having felt guilty,” he said. “I said that if she was unhappy in India, perhaps 'twas guilt that made her so.”

“Ah,” his sister said sadly, “then he does suspect, Henry. Poor man.”

“We must keep out of it,” he advised. “'Twere well to keep quiet, Barbara. 'Tis none of our concern after all. It never was.”

“Except that Gregory was your friend,” she said, “and you loved Katherine.”

“'Twere best to leave the past in the past,” he said.

She examined his jaw closely. “I wonder if Mama will believe the story about the tree,” she said.

“She will when I tell her I was chasing the dogs,” he told her.

She laughed.

•   •   •

Emily
was relieved to find when she left her room that Anna had not gone riding with Luke and the children. It was unusual for her not to do so. But her reason for staying at home was soon obvious, though she did not state it. She merely said that she wished to walk to the village and wanted Emily to accompany her.

Of course. Ashley had gone out alone, probably on some estate business, and the children had been eager for their usual morning outing with their parents. But Anna had decided—or had been appointed—to stay to watch over Emily. They all knew that something had frightened her yesterday.

Emily was relieved, even though she had never before feared solitude. And a walk, she thought, would be just the thing. She was tired, and part of her would have liked nothing better than to stay in her room or to find a secluded corner somewhere so that she could relive the events of the night—the repeated and glorious lovemakings interspersed with periods of relaxation and even sleep. Part of her wanted to consider the meaning of what had happened and its implications for the future. She was not sure if last night had changed everything or nothing. But part of her did not want to have to confront the issues—or to be afraid of what, or who, might be lurking behind her. The exercise and air and the company of her sister would help to clear out her head.

But it was not to be as pleasant a morning as she had hoped for. As she and Anna were preparing to leave the house, Major Cunningham came upon them, discovered their purpose and destination, and offered his escort. Anna smiled warmly and agreed. And so, when they set out on their walk, the major stepped between them and offered an arm to each.

In addition to everything else, Emily thought, taking his arm though she inwardly cringed, he had seen her and Ashley this morning, and it would have been evident even to an imbecile that they had been returning from a night spent together. Ashley had still been wearing his rather crumpled evening clothes. And his arm had been about her waist. She could feel power in the major's arm and sense it in his military bearing. He frightened her even as he smiled and conversed pleasantly with Anna, even as he turned to her occasionally with some polished gallantry that needed no verbal reply.

Eric Smith was swinging on the gate outside the cottage, apparently a favorite activity with him. He waved and started prattling as soon as they came within earshot. He wanted to know where James and George were. Emily did not see Anna's reply.

“I am going to have a dog,” he announced. “Uncle Henry and Aunt Barbara said I might have one of the puppies if Mama and Grandfer would say yes. Uncle Henry took Mama into the garden last night when he brought me home, and when she came back, she said yes.”

Uncle Henry and Aunt Barbara must be Sir Henry Verney and his sister, Emily thought, taking the opportunity to disengage her arm from the major's in order to step forward to ruffle Eric's hair and to bend and kiss him on the cheek. They must have come home from London, then. Her stomach fluttered when she remembered what Ashley had said about Sir Henry at Lady Bryant's ball. She hoped the two men would not come face-to-face any time soon.

Katherine Smith had come outside. She smiled fleetingly at Emily, but she was looking very pale and tense. Anna presented Major Cunningham. Mrs. Smith curtsied slightly, but she barely looked at him. She did, however, invite them inside for a cup of tea. Mr. Binchley met them at the door and ushered them into the sitting room.

The visit was rather longer than it might have been. Soon after Mrs. Smith had returned from the kitchen with the tea tray, Major Cunningham remarked on the beauty of the garden behind the house, visible through the window, and asked her if she would be so good as to show it to him. She rose silently and led the way without inviting either Anna or Emily to join them.

Anna was telling Mr. Binchley about Bowden Abbey. Emily watched their conversation, though she used Anna's presence as an excuse to allow her attention to wander. She also watched the two in the garden. She hoped Major Cunningham had not taken a fancy to Katherine Smith, that he did not imagine that because she lived here with her father in genteel poverty she was therefore fair game for seduction. The man made her flesh crawl.

“—did not dream you would come here,” Katherine Smith was saying. “And to Penshurst instead of here.” The sun was on her face, making it very easy, despite the distance, to read her lips.

The major had his back to Emily.

“How can you be his friend?” Mrs. Smith asked. Her face was still pale. Her eyes watched him intently. “Does he know?”

Major Cunningham made a gesture about the garden with one arm.

“They cannot hear,” she said. “The window is closed.” But she turned her head away and they strolled together about the carefully plotted flower beds.

Emily watched, the sitting room and its occupants forgotten. Katherine Smith and Major Cunningham knew each other. How peculiar that they had allowed Anna to present them to each other as strangers. And then the major was facing toward the window.

“'Twere better that you asked no questions,” he said. “'Twere better that you know nothing. They died acc—” He turned his head away.

Accidentally? Who had died accidentally? They moved out of sight and at the same moment Anna got to her feet and was taking her leave of Mr. Binchley. Emily did likewise, and within a very few minutes they were continuing on their way toward the village. Anna had promised Eric, after asking Mrs. Smith's permission, that on their return journey they would call for him and he might come to Penshurst to play with the children.

Emily watched Major Cunningham comment to Anna on the charm of the cottage and the hospitality of its occupants, but she did not try to follow the conversation.

Mrs. Smith had asked him why he had come to Penshurst instead of to the cottage.
How can you be his friend?
His? Ashley's?
Does he know?
Know what? And who had died accidentally? Why was it better for Mrs. Smith to know nothing? Major Cunningham had been in India and had become Ashley's friend there. He had been there presumably when Ashley's wife and son died. They had died accidentally. What was it that Ashley might or might not know? That his friend also knew Katherine Smith?

But if they knew each other, why had they been careful not to acknowledge the acquaintance to her and Anna?

Emily's mind puzzled over the questions for the next hour, while they looked around the church and the churchyard, talked with the rector and his wife, who came out to the gate of the rectory to bid them a good morning, and purchased a few items from the village shop.

It was a relief to Emily finally to be on their way back home. When they reached the cottage and Eric came tripping out to meet them, Emily walked with him, holding his hand while he talked without pause, and allowed Major Cunningham to walk on ahead with Anna.

•   •   •

“Thank
you.” Ashley held out his right hand to Major Cunningham. “You are a true friend, Rod. I know that a stroll to the village and a call at a neighbor's cottage is not the way you might have expected to spend your first full morning here. But 'tis a relief to me to know that she had the company this morning not only of my sister-in-law, but also of a man well able to defend them both from any danger that might have presented itself.”

The major shook his hand, and they both stood looking out of the library window at Emily, who was patiently throwing a ball alternately to George and Eric and watching them catch it perhaps twice out of every ten attempts.

“'Twas my pleasure,” the major said. “I had a lovely lady on each arm. What more could any man ask of life?”

Ashley laughed.

“She means a great deal to you,” his friend said quietly.

“Yes.” Ashley was picturing her playing thus with her own children. His. Theirs. It was a thought that warmed him and troubled him.

“You are ready to live again, Ash. I can see it,” the major said. “Did you learn any answers from your morning visits? Did you discover what happened yesterday?”

“No,” Ashley said. “No to your second question. Yes to the first. There were some facts I needed to know. Some things from the past. Some things I needed to know if I am ever to let go of the past and move on into the future. Now I know. But the fact remains, of course, that somehow they were at home when they were not supposed to be there and that I was not there when I should have been. I might have saved them. That poor innocent baby! But I was busy satisfying my lust in the bed of a married woman.” He laughed harshly.

“There is always forgiveness,” the major said. “Even for the worst offenses, Ash. And there is always redemption. Yours is playing on the grass out there with those two little boys.”

Yes, he had come home looking for redemption, Ashley thought. From Emmy, though he had not known it at the time. But it was too simple an answer. And if he drew redemption from her, what would she gain in return? He had so little to offer beyond material things. He had nothing else to offer except a wounded soul.

“You need to marry her,” his friend said, “and have babies with her. But not here, Ash. You need to leave here, put behind you everything that would remind you of the late Lady Ashley. 'Twould not be fair to the new Lady Ashley to keep her here.”

Ashley drew a deep breath. Perhaps that was part of the problem, he thought. Perhaps he should go. Perhaps there could be happiness for both Emmy and himself if he left here, started somewhere else. And yet . . . And yet he had the deep inner conviction that this thing could not be run from. And that it should not be run from. What he would be running from was deep inside himself. He must confront it if there was to be a future. If there was to be Emmy.