“Are you all right?” a voice asked her, and she looked up blankly, a buzzing in her ears.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Yes, thank you.”
He glanced down at the letter in her hand and up into her face again. “Why do you not sit down by the fire and read it?” he suggested. “I can come back later.”
But she had noticed the pile of letters on his desk that doubtless he had hoped to deal with while his guests were busy about their own business.
“Please do not feel obliged to leave,” she said, crossing the room and taking the chair in which she had sat last evening—though she was scarcely aware of the fact. It was only later that she thought she ought to have taken her letter to the privacy of her own room. She broke the seal.
He had heard that the new Earl of Wanstead was in England. He wondered if he was at Thornwood. He wondered if he should send his compliments. The words were difficult to read, written as they were in the same shaky hand that had addressed the outside. Christina scanned the letter quickly, hungry for news of her father, for the expression of some personal concern for her or the granddaughters he had never seen. There were words of affection, quite lavishly expressed, much as she had expected. But affection was clearly not what had motivated him to write.
She folded the letter carefully after she was finished, set it down on her lap, and stared into the fire.
“Not bad news, I hope?”
“No.”
Only memories—of an uncertain and frequently unhappy childhood, of a mother she had loved and grown to despise, of a father she had loved and come to hate. Of that contempt and that hatred turned against herself. How could she despise the mother who had always shielded and protected her? How could she love the father whose weaknesses had them all living constantly on the brink of hell? How could she conspire with both her mother and her father—though no single word of conspiracy was ever spoken among them—to live a lie?
Everyone had thought them a perfectly happy family. It was the mask they had all put on for the world. Everyone had loved her sociable, charming, handsome father. Everyone had admired her serene, dignified, loyal mother. Everyone had envied her as the focus of their love.
As she grew up, loving and hating them, she had dreamed of a different life for herself than the one she had always known. And she had planned it, intending to let sense and reason and wisdom determine her choices.
A hand appeared in front of her face suddenly. It held a glass half full of some brown liquor.
“Drink this,” the Earl of Wanstead said. “It will make you feel better.”
“I do not drink,” she said, turning her head away.
“No, of course not.” He set the glass down on the mantel. “It is sinful, no doubt.”
And then she wished she had taken the glass and at least pretended to sip from it. He came down on his haunches in front of her and took both her hands in a firm clasp. She had not realized how like ice blocks her own were.
“How may I be of service to you?” he asked.
By telling her how she might be wise—she never had learned the trick. By telling her how to stop loving people who had not earned her love—quite the contrary, in fact. How could she possiblystilllove her father? How could she read a letter that was so predictable in its selfish, self-absorbed contents that she might as easily have written it herself and saved him the effort—and feel her heart yearn toward him?
“You cannot,” she said. “It is a—a petty debt is all. Yes, perhaps you can help. I told Mr. Monck that it would be more convenient for everyone if he started paying the allowance you so generously granted me in the first quarter of the New Year. May I—may I ask him to pay it to me now instead? I will not ask for more before the second quarter, of course.”
She thought she might well die of humiliation. She kept her eyes on the dancing flames of the fire.
“Of course,” he said, tightening his hold on her hands. “I shall speak to him myself today. He will pay you a quarter’s allowance now and another in January. Will it be sufficient to cover your debt? Tell me now if it will not. I will not have you anxious over money.”
But his kindness, over which she should be feeling nothing but deep gratitude, only succeeded in suffocating and irritating her.
“It will be sufficient.” She withdrew her hands from his and looked at him. “And you will not pay me again in January. You will not, Gerard.” Her humiliation was complete when she found herself having to blink back tears.
He stood up and looked silently down at her. “This house is just not going to be big enough for the two of us, is it, Christina?” he said. “I must return to Montreal. Or if I marry and remain in England, I must house you some distance from Thornwood. Or you must marry.” He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair.
“It would be just like you,” she said hotly, “to go away again and leave me here to be plagued by the guilt of having driven you away from your own home.”
“Would it?” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Would it be just like me, Christina? To go away rather than live where I might see you again? Would guilt at having driven me away plague you? Did it the last time?”
She did not answer him. But she would not look away from his eyes either.
“You need not so burden yourself,” he said. “If it was you who drove me to go to Canada, Christina, then I must thank you. I found activity there to satisfy my restless yearning for adventure. I prospered there. And I was happy there. If you have believed all these years that I have been lonely and pining for you or for a wasted life, you have been much mistaken. It is only a sense of duty that has me thinking now of possibly staying. If you make the next week or so here as intolerable to me as the last week has been, then perhaps you will be doing me a similar favor to the one you did me before. I shall go back home and be happy again.”
“Then I wish you would go tomorrow,” she said. “Today.”
