“Thank you,” she said.
“Did I do wrong, Christina?” he asked her. “Should I not have encouraged her to dance?”
She did what she had no idea she was about to do until she did it. She burst into tears and realized even as her hands shot up to cover her face that there was going to be no way of controlling them for a while. She felt his hands close about her shoulders, but she had leaned into one man already this evening for comfort and found none. She turned away from him and went to stand before the embers of the fire, her back to the room.
He handed her a large handkerchief without a word when her sobbing finally ended. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose firmly. She was not even sure herself why she had wept. It just seemed to her in a moment of painful clarity that she had never learned how to cope with life and that she had dragged her children into her own helpless darkness. And so the cycle would be perpetuated....
He was kneeling before the hearth, she realized, in all his evening splendor, building a fire and then lighting it. He drew a chair close to it and motioned her to sit down.
“Tell me,” he said, standing before her, one elbow propped against the mantel. “Did I do wrong? I did not mean to hurt you.”
“You did not,” she said, watching the flames catch hold, feeling the first thread of warmth. “I am the one who has done wrong. Always. All my life, it seems. Bringing misery to everyone I have ever loved. To Rachel.” Only as she heard her own words did she realize how melodramatic, how self-pitying they sounded. And how true.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
And so she told him about Rachel as a very young child, quiet and affectionate and trusting. Choosing Gilbert as a hero. Worshiping her father. Following him about whenever she had been allowed out of the nursery. Always wanting to do things for him to win his approval, his praise, his smiles. Persevering even when it had been obvious to her mother that even for his own child there would never be any warmth.
“She found her way into his study one day,” she said. “She had watched him trim his pens once and thought she could do it herself to please him. When I came into the room with him, she was busy ruining his favorite pen, and she was humming a tune and dancing about the room at the same time.” She swallowed awkwardly. “She smiled at him with all the sunshine behind her eyes and held out his pen.” She bit hard on her upper lip.
“He was angry?” he prompted.
“He hit her so hard across the head,” she said, “that she fell over. Then he spanked her more methodically. Then he made her stand on a chair in the hall for two full hours—at a time when the vicar and his wife were expected for tea. It was not just the broken pen. It was the singing and dancing that really infuriated him. He told her she was a child of the devil. She was four years old.”
“The bastard!” the Earl of Wanstead said, barely suppressed fury in his voice.
“And I did nothing to defend her,” she said, staring unseeing now into the fire. “Nothing—except to keep her away from him as much as possible afterward and to make sure that she did nothing to attract his attention. No singing, no dancing, no smiles, no laughter. I did nothing to defend my own child, and now I fear she will never recover.”
“She will,” he said. “All the beauty is there inside her and she is capable of letting it out. You saw that tonight.”
“But she has me for a mother.” She spread her hands over her face again, but wearily this time. There were no tears left.
“She is fortunate,” he said. “You must not blame yourself, Christina, because she had a brutal father.”
The silence extended between them. A silence that was gradually filled with unspoken words, almost as if their minds connected though they did not speak. She knew what he was going to ask next and was powerless to stop him. The words were quietly spoken.
“Christina,” he asked her, “did he ever beat you?”
Sometimes out of anger, vicious cracks across the face or arms, once even with a whip. But he considered uncontrolled anger sinful and usually apologized very formally for such outbreaks—though he always went on to explain what shortcoming in herself had tempted him. At other times the chastisement had been more formal and methodical, punishment for sins, usually involving the way he claimed she looked at other men—correction he had called it. Painful and deeply humiliating.
“I cannot forget,” the earl said, “that on two separate occasions you have cowered away from me as if you expected me to strike you. He was a wife-beater?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“It is as well for him,” he said, “that he is already dead. He would suffer this night if he were still alive, Christina. He ruled you with terror? No, do not answer that. He is dead. Gone. I am the Earl of Wanstead now. I am master here now, though never yours. You and your children are free to be and to do whatever you wish. You are free. Look at me, please?”
She raised her eyes to his. To the golden boy who had lit her world for a couple of months one springtime long ago— so little happiness to occupy the space of twenty-eight years.
“You are free, Christina,” he said. “Perhaps I did not like your choice of husband, but you could not have known what your decision would involve you in. I did not suspect it myself though I grew up with him. You must not blame yourself—for anything. You did protect your children as best you could and I can assure you that your love for them is quite apparent to them. You must not bear the burden of guilt any longer. You must understand that you are free. He died over a year ago. He is gone. You mourned him very correctly for longer than a year. You have paid your dues to both him and society. You owe nothing more to his memory.”
She was still gazing at him. “Do I understand,” she asked him, “that you are forgiving me?”
He stared back, the side of his hand against his mouth, his eyes unusually bright. “Yes,” he said at last. “I am forgiving you, Christina.”
She had not even known until that moment how much she had always craved his forgiveness—and his understanding. He still did not understand, but he had forgiven her anyway. The bitterness that had been between them for over a week was gone, she realized. It seemed like a precious Christmas gift.
“Go to bed,” he told her. “I must return to the drawing room. I will make your excuses for you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
