The ladies withdrew to the drawing room after the toast, leaving the men to their port and their male conversation. In the drawing room later, the Marchioness of Dorchester, Gil’s mother-in-law, came to sit beside Charles. She spoke of the difficulties her daughter had faced after the discovery that her father had married her mother bigamously. She spoke too of her conviction that her daughter’s marriage to Gil would be a happy one for both of them.
“Ma’am,” Charles said, “you do not have to convince me, if that is indeed what you are attempting to do. I agree with you.” They smiled at each other, two parents linked by the marriage of their offspring.
He conversed with other members of the family too, even the Dowager Countess of Riverdale after she had beckoned to him, almost like a queen summoning her subject. He was not fond of that particular lady, though he had had no dealings whatsoever with her for many years and it would be foolish to hold a grudge for what she had done more than half a lifetime ago. But even this evening she had annoyed him. He had seen her as soon as he walked into the drawing room earlier, perhaps because Matilda had been standing behind her chair beside the fireplace, and Matilda was the Westcott he had least wanted to encounter this evening. But as he had approached with Riverdale to pay his respects, she had bent over the back of the chair to adjust her mother’s shawl about her shoulders. The old lady had batted away her hands and admonished her not to fuss, a thinly disguised impatience in her voice, though she must have been aware that she might be overheard.
Or perhaps she had not been aware. Perhaps she was so accustomed to treating Matilda that way that it did not strike her as inappropriate behavior before a stranger. But then she had compounded her disregard for her daughter. Charles had acknowledged the older lady and turned his attention to Matilda and asked her how she did. But it was the mother who answered, leaving her daughter with nothing to say and perhaps feeling foolish. He had felt irritation with both of them, with the dowager for behaving as though her daughter did not even exist and could not possibly be the object of his inquiry, and with Matilda for meekly accepting it.
Was this the life for which she had renounced him all those years ago? But why should he care? It was all ancient history. Good God, he had had a full life since then. Matilda was living the life she had chosen, as the spinster daughter who had remained at home, the prop and stay of her parent in old age.
But who would care for Matilda inherold age?
He would have rather enjoyed the evening if she had not been there. But every moment he was aware of her and hated the fact. He had been aware during dinner and had deliberately avoided looking her way and perhaps meeting her glance. He had relaxed briefly while the men were alone together after dinner. But then he had been aware of her again in the drawing room.
He had no real ideawhy. He had been involved in a brief, passionate romance with her when they were both very young, had been rejected by her father when he had asked to pay his addresses to her, had been rejected byherafterward to the extent that she had told him firmly to go away and refused ever to speak to him or so much as look his way ever again. And that had been the end of that. It had been surely the sort of disappointment that most men, and probably many women too, suffered during their volatile youth. He had not pined with unrequited love for long. Maybe a few days. Perhaps a few weeks. No longer than that. He had promptly got on with his life.
And it had happened all of thirty-six years ago, for the love of God. Why was it, then, that he was so aware of her now and so irritated by her—and for her? Society was full of aging, fussy spinsters who were used by their relatives and lacked the spirit to fight back. But none of the others irritated him or aroused ire in him on their behalf.
She was standing over at one end of the room, talking with a couple of the other ladies. After they had moved away she remained there, straightening a pile of sheet music on top of the pianoforte. Then she looked across the room toward her mother. Perhaps, Charles thought, this needed to be settled—whateverthiswas. He strode toward the pianoforte before she could hurry away to see if her mother’s shawl needed straightening again.
“Howdoyou do, Matilda?” he asked, emphasizing the one word. She had not been given the chance to answer the question earlier.
“Oh.” She looked into his eyes and kept her gaze there. “My mother thought you were addressing her.”
“Even though I was looking at you?” he said. “Does she imagine you are invisible?”
She drew breath and closed her mouth. Then she drew breath again when it must have become obvious to her that he was waiting for her answer. “I do not suppose so. I do not know what you expect me to say.”
“I expect you to tell me how you are,” he said. “It would be the courteous thing to do, to answer a question politely asked, would it not?”
She tipped her head slightly to one side, and he was instantly assailed by memory. It had been a characteristic gesture of hers when she was twenty, and apparently it still was.
“I am well,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Why did you not say so when I asked earlier?” And why was he pressing the point? He had no idea except that he was still feeling the irritation she seemed to arouse in him.
“My mother answered,” she said.
“To inform me thatshewas well,” he said. “Does she always answer questions that are addressed directly to you?” He frowned at her.
“It would perhaps have embarrassed her if she had realized it was me you were asking,” she said. “Charles, what is this about?”
It was a good question. He did not have an answer. She looked her age, he thought. But she was not actually a faded creature, as one might expect her to be under the circumstances. She was tall, still as straight backed as she had been as a young woman, her posture elegant, even proud. She was no longer slender. But she was well proportioned and elegantly dressed. Her face was virtually unlined, her hair still not noticeably graying. She was what might be called a handsome woman. She had been pretty as a girl, with a spark of animation to make her beautiful in his eyes. She might have married any of a dozen eligible men during that first Season of hers. She had not married him. She had not married anyone else either. Or during all the Seasons after that.
“Are you happy?” he asked her, his tone sounding abrupt even to his own ears.
She frowned but said nothing.
“I expected every time I opened the morning papers for a year or more afterward,” he said without stopping to explain what he meant byafterward, “to see a notice of your betrothal to someone rich and eligible and respectable. It never happened, even after I stopped specifically looking. Are you happy?”
“I scarcely know what to say,” she told him. “I make myself useful. My mother needs me, and it is a comfort to my sisters to know that she has constant companionship.”
He gazed steadily at her. He had his back to everyone else in the room. But he did not suppose his conversation with her was being particularly remarked upon. Why should it be? He had conversed with most of the rest of the family by this stage of the evening. Why not with Lady Matilda Westcott too? No one in this room with the exception of her mother would remember their brief, intense courtship. And even if anyone did, it was a long time ago.
What would life have been like if they had married? It was impossible to know. So much would have been different. Everything would have been. Gil would not exist. Neither would Adrian nor Barbara nor Jane. Nor any of his grandchildren. But perhaps other children and grandchildren who had never been born would have had existence in their stead.
“Do you live to serve, then?” he asked her.
“There are worse ways to spend one’s life,” she told him.
