A truly ghastly thing happened then. He had closed up the carriage and given his coachman the direction to drive indefinitely until he was told otherwise. He had expected that Elizabeth would be upset and had thought to hold her and comfort her for as long as was necessary. Yet the tables had been turned on him. He felt a tightness in his chest and a soreness in his throat. He felt tears prick at his eyes and tried desperately to blink them back. He might have succeeded too if a determined swallow had not got all caught up with a sob—and then another.
“The devil!” he said. “Oh good God.” He could cheerfully have died of mortification. And then she surged back across the seat toward him, and he held her to him again as her arms came about his waist, and he wept with his head pressed to her shoulder.
“She is my mother,” he said when he could, and then wished he had kept his mouth shut. His voice did not sound like his own.
“Yes,” she said.
It was all she said while he turned away from her, mopped at his eyes with his handkerchief, and blew his nose.
“The devil!” he said again. “I am so sorry.”
“I am too,” she said. “Sorry that there has to be such pain in your life. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to change any facts. You have correctly identified her, Colin. She is a narcissist. It must be a sort of disease, I believe, just as Desmond’s drinking was. One cannot fight against it. One can only accept it or not. I abandoned Desmond because he was doing me physical harm and was largely the cause of my miscarriages. You do not need to abandon your mother, though. She can do us no real harm unless we allow it. I have no intention of allowing it. I will not give her power over us. But I do want her in our lives if it is at all possible. For your sake I want it.”
“But why?” he asked. “Especially knowing as you do that she will never change?”
“But you can,” she said. “You can forgive yourself for any way you believe you have mishandled your life since your father died. You can even forgive her—though you know she will never change. Trust me on this.”
He looked at her, arrested for the moment. “Good God,” he said. “That is it, Elizabeth. That is what we were talking about at that infamous ball, when we did not notice the waltz had ended.”
“Oh.” She smiled at him. “So it was. Well, I meant it then, and I mean it now.”
He took her hand in his and laced their fingers. “But we could allow her a place in our lives only on our terms,” he said. “It is something she would never allow.”
“That choice,” she said, “must be hers. If a door is to be shut permanently between you and your mother, Colin, she must be the one to shut it. I am not sure she will. Everything she has done this spring has been designed to bring you back to her—with a bride who is to her liking, it is true, and certainly not with the bride you have actually chosen. Nevertheless…”
“Elizabeth,” he said, “she has put you through hell. For no reason at all except that you threatened her expectations of the future.”
“And if I seek some sort of revenge,” she said, “what do I make of myself?” He raised the back of her hand to his lips. “Besides, I care for you. And thank you for sending my carriage away and accompanying me home. Where is home, by the way? I had no idea it was so far.”
“I told my coachman to keep driving,” he said. “I thought you might need comforting.”
“I did,” she said. “And you have comforted me.”
“By soaking your shoulder with my tears?” he asked.
“An exaggeration,” she said, brushing her free hand over her shoulder. “It is scarcely damp. We will invite Sir Nelson and Lady Elwood to our wedding too.”
“And I suppose,” he said, “if it was genteel for a lady to place a wager, you would bet upon their coming.”
“I would,” she said.
He had little reason to feel any fondness for his eldest sister except that she had saved him from an unwanted marriage to Miss Dunmore. But…Well, shewashis sister, and his motherwashis mother. And there was insufficient time to write to Ruby and Sean in Ireland and to have them come here in time for his wedding. In contrast, there were a number of Westcotts and Radleys currently in London, and the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester were on their way here, bringing Abigail Westcott with them. Abigail’s sister and her family had been invited to come from Bath.
He had only Wren.
“But do I want Blanche and Nelson there?” he asked. “And my mother?”
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
He laughed then, and because the curtains made them invisible from the outside, he wrapped his arms about her once more and kissed her. More slowly and thoroughly this time. And he wanted her. He wanted their wedding to be now, tomorrow, the day after. Soon. He wanted all that was Elizabeth in his life to stay.
Twenty
Replies—all acceptances—had come to the wedding invitations that had been sent out to a select few members of theton, friends and friendly acquaintances. The church would be no more than half full, but they would know that everyone there wished them well, and what more could any couple ask of their wedding?
There had been no reply from Lady Hodges or from her eldest daughter and son-in-law. Colin might have accepted their silence as the shut door Elizabeth had referred to. If they did not answer their invitation or attend the wedding, then they had made their choice. He could not quite accept that sort of finality, however. He had set out to call upon his mother the day after the Ormsbridge ball but had been thwarted by finding that Elizabeth was there before him. Now he must go himself.
He did so on the afternoon before the wedding. His mother was, as he had half expected, entertaining. He bowed to her and his sister and brother-in-law when he was shown into the drawing room and nodded distantly to Lord Ede. He ignored the four young gentlemen visitors and the three young ladies as well as the usual attendants about his mother’s throne chair. She did not attempt any introductions but waved everyone away with the explanation that she wished to speak with her son. There were, of course, the expected protestations of surprise from two of the young men, who claimed that Colin could not possibly be Lady Hodges’s son but must surely be her younger brother. Within a minute or two, however, the room emptied out, leaving only Colin and his mother and Blanche and Nelson.
