“Do you?” He smiled. “At least I have brought you back from the brink of fainting. I have my uses, my lady. Pardon me, I must summon Monck. I imagine you would rather not be present to hear yourself spoken of as if you were a child without a voice of your own.”
She rose hastily to her feet, grasping her letter in one hand. How rude she had been. She was beholden to him. He had been kind and he had been generous and she had hated him for it and ripped up at him without any just cause.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for granting my request.”
“If it is any comfort to you, Christina,” he said, crossing the room ahead of her and holding the door open for her, “I find your financial dependence upon me as suffocating as you. I would dearly like you to feel free to invite me to go to hell without suffering pangs of guilt at the thought that you owe me allegiance. For God’s sake if you must hate me, do so wholeheartedly. You were Gilbert’s wife. You are the mother of his daughters. As such you have every right to the support of this estate. As much right to it as I have. In future when you want something of it,tellme so. You do not need toask. Much less do you need to thank me.”
“Oh,” she said, pausing to look at him, “how you enjoyed that. And how very true your words are. I have arightto the support of this estate. Not to your support, but to its support. I wish I had realized that before. But it is true. And now I may hate you with my whole heart.”
“Yes,” he said curtly, but there was the merest suggestion of a smile lurking behind his tight-jawed glare.
She smiled dazzlingly at him as she passed through the door.
It did not take long to instruct Charles Monck to pay her ladyship a quarter’s allowance without delay and to talk with him about a few other items of business. It did not take much longer to go through the morning post and dispose of the bulk of it and set aside the few items that would need more attention when he had the time to spare.
He needed to think.
She had not had money of her own since her marriage. Monck had confirmed her claim that Gilbert had paid all her bills, and those bills had been few. The earl had looked himself through the account books for the past six years and had discovered incredibly few entries relating to clothes or jewels—there were none at all of the latter, in fact—or other personal items for either the countess or her children.
She had had no spending money since Gilbert’s death. She had submitted the bills for her few mourning clothes but had never asked for money.
What debt could she have incurred now that she would not merely submit as a bill for payment? There was no evidence that she had ever been extravagant—quite the contrary. Her spontaneous reaction to the proposed card games last evening, which she had expected to be gambling games, had demonstrated her puritanical horror of wagering.
It was no trifling debt despite her description of it as such. She had come very close to fainting. Even before she had opened the letter her pallor had been apparent—it had shown up shockingly in contrast to the two bright spots of color that remained high on her cheeks from the outdoor chill. She had recognized the handwriting and had known what debt was being called in.
What debt?
It was none of his business, he told himself. He would willingly pay it, whatever it was, but she had rejected any more help than an advance on next quarter’s allowance.
It had looked like the handwriting of an old or sick person.
He was prevented from further thought on the subject by a light tap on the library door followed by its opening. A head peered cautiously around it.
“Oh,” Jeannette Campbell said, looking mortified, “there is someone in here. I am so sorry for disturbing you, Gerard. I was told I might find a book here, but I can come back another time.”
“Come in.” He strode toward her, smiling. “I cannot imagine anyone by whom I would more prefer to be disturbed. There are shelves of books, some few of them even readable, I believe. But can your choosing one wait, Jeannette? Will you put your cloak and bonnet back on and come outside with me again?”
She looked at him in some surprise, but she shared his love of the outdoors, he knew. They had agreed long ago that it was the best place in which to do one’s thinking and relaxing.
“Of course,” she said. “Give me two minutes.”
They were striding off in the direction of the lake five minutes later. They did not talk. That was one thing he liked about Jeannette. She did not need either to chatter constantly or to be chattered to. They could be perfectly comfortable together in silence.
“There,” he said at last after they had threaded their way through dense trees. “It is rather large, but it is quite hidden from the house.”
“Ah,” she said, gazing at the lake, which was completely iced over now. It was surrounded by trees, many of them evergreens, most with bare branches. “The sight makes me feel homesick. There is a vastness and a starkness about the scene untypical of what I have seen of England. It is lovely.”
“Yes,” he said.
She looked at him after they had stood side by side in silence for a while. “Do you wish to talk about it?” she asked.
He chuckled softly. That was another thing about his friendship with Jeannette. They could sometimes sense each other’s mood. “Not really,” he said. “I am not even quite sure what it is. Have you ever hated anyone, Jeannette?”
She gave the question some consideration. “You do not mean just the flashes of intense dislike and anger we feel against people sometimes, do you?” she said. “You mean something deep-rooted and long-lasting, something that eats away at you.”
“Yes.” That was it exactly.
“No,” she said. “I have never hated like that. Is it something fairly recent, Gerard? Perhaps it will pass off and you will forget about it. Does it hurt badly?”
