She could not hear the noise that the announcement aroused, but she could see its effect. Everyone looked at her, and everyone looked suddenly joyful. It had to be right, she thought, smiling. What she had done had to be right. Her family and Luke’s were happy for her; they believed Lord Powell would make an excellent husband. But there was no chance to think further. She was being engulfed in hugs. And her betrothed, she saw when she was able, was receiving his fair share as well. At the moment, Constance, Victor’s wife, was embracing him, tears in her eyes.
Yes, it had to be right. Itfeltright.
Ashley was sitting in a far corner of the room. He had sat there all through tea, smiling, laughing, James on one knee, Amy on the other, Joy beside him. But they had abandoned him now, Emily saw, though she did not look directly his way, in order to join the general bustle of excitement about herself and Lord Powell. He sat there alone, still smiling.
“How can he smile and laugh?” she had seen Agnes say earlier to Constance. “Has he no feelings?”
But Emily, even without looking directly at him, had been able to feel the unbearable tension behind his smile. His wife and his son had died. Between leaving for a meeting and returning, he had had his whole family wiped out.
Ashley. She wished desperately that he had confided in her out at the falls that morning. Though that was not quite true either. For if he had told her, she would not have come back to change into pretty clothes and listen to Lord Powell’s apology and agree to have their betrothal announced. She would have been caught up in a past that would have overshadowed her present and her future. Besides, she would have been unable to comfort him as she had used to do. Nothing could comfort him for what had happened to him. It would have hurt to know that she was powerless to ease his pain.
Ah, but she wished—with her heart she wished—that he had told her.
And then, while Jeremiah—the Reverend Jeremiah Hornsby, Charlotte’s husband—was congratulating her and Lord Powell and hoping that they might do him the honor of asking him to conduct their wedding service, Ashley touched Emily on the arm.
“Well, Emmy.” He took her hands in his and kissed her on both cheeks. “It seems I have returned home just in time to say good-bye to you. You were always like a dear sister to me. I hope you will continue to think of me as a kind of brother.”
Like a dear sister.That was all she really saw. Yes, she had been that to him. That was how he had seen her. Like a sister. It was good to have been seen thus. Closer than a friend. A sister. And she was to continue to think of him as a brother—yes, he had said that too. Oh, Ashley. She smiled at him, but she squeezed his hands very tightly as well and spoke to him with her eyes. He understood her. Of course he understood. But lest he did not, she closed her hand into a fist and pulsed it against her heart.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know it makes you sad, Emmy. But I have come home to give up sadness. Seeing you happy is good for me. ’Tis hard to believe you are no longer the child you were when I went away. You are all grown up. Be happy, little fawn. Promise me always to be happy.”
Yes. She smiled again.The child you were when I went away.Ah, Ashley. Yes, she would promise. She would promise to try.
And then Joy was smiling sunnily up at her—she was so like Anna, even in her smiles. “Aunt Emmy,” she said, “may I be your bridesmaid? I am seven and a half years old.”
Emily laughed and touched the child’s hair.
•••
Ithad been a difficult evening. Agnes and William had stayed, toasts had been drunk at dinner, everyone had gathered in the drawing room afterward for conversation and cards and music—Constance and Charlotte and Doris played the pianoforte; William and Jeremiah sang. The tea tray was ordered later than usual and they all went to bed late.
But none of them had known quite if they should be sober and solemn out of respect for Ashley or bright and merry in celebration of the betrothal they had toasted at dinner. The only one of them who was unashamedly cheerful all through the evening—he had even suggested that the carpet be rolled back for dancing—was Ashley.
Luke had said quite firmly that the carpet would stay where it was. They had all had quite enough of dancing the evening before. And of course they were all rather tired after the evening before, and thus it was more difficult to keep up their spirits. At last, an hour after Agnes and William had left for home, the dowager duchess got to her feet and the rest of the party took her doing so as the signal to go to bed.
Emily changed into her nightgown without assistance and brushed out her hair and was thankful that the day was finally at an end. It had been an unbearably eventful day, and the evening had been almost intolerable. Everyone talking. Everyone focusing on her, expecting her to listen and understand. She had been unable to leave early, to relax into her own solitude as she had longed to do. Her eyesachedfrom such intent watching. And one foolishly insignificant fact had dominated her thinking all evening: She still did not know his name. She was to be his bride in two or three months’ time, yet she did not know his name. The thought struck her as funny, and she laughed softly. It did not matter anyway. She could never speak his name.
He knew hers. It was almost all he knew of her. Another foolish, insignificant thought.
She was tired. She remembered suddenly that she had not slept at all last night and had snatched only perhaps an hour’s rest this afternoon between tea and dinner. She was very tired, but she was not sleepy at all. There was a difference, she thought, wandering from her dressing room into her darkened bedchamber and standing before the window, still absently brushing her hair.
She did not believe she would sleep even if she lay down. She was betrothed, she thought, trying to feel different. She was going to be married. There were going to be form and purpose to her life. A totally new direction. Even her home and her companions would change. She would spend her days with his mother and his younger brothers and sisters. And with him.
He was going to have paper and pens and ink set in each room. Without them she could not hope to communicate in the simplest ways with all those strangers.
He was a stranger too, she thought. And she would never be able to communicate with him. He would never know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words—even if she could speak or write them—could never explain her world to him.
She rested one bent knee on the window seat. It was a lovely night, bright with moonlight and starlight. It was a tempting night, one that beckoned her. How lovely it would be to throw on a dress and a cloak and to slip outside to wander. Down across the lawn, along by the river. But it could not be done. She had made the decision. She had promised herself this morning. He would never understand a wife who wandered outside alone at night. If she were to, he would soon be echoing Luke’s words, but in all seriousness. He would be calling her a witch.
Emily sighed. Her new life was not going to be easy. But it was one she had chosen deliberately.
She longed for it to begin. She looked back involuntarily at her bed. She wanted that too. It was strange how her body had come to crave it during the past couple of years or so, even while her head had been unable to fix upon any man—until now—and her heart had been faithful to an impossibility. Her body wanted to know...
She lifted her shoulders and turned her eyes back toward the window and the shadowed lawns and trees beyond it. How she yearned to go out there, to wander quietly, not doing anything in particular. Merely being. That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned tobe.Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth fromdoing.They pitied her idleness, believing it denoted emptiness, boredom. But now she had chosen to enter the world of doing.
She wondered if it would disappear with time and perseverance, this yearning to be free, to be a part of everything that was natural and beautiful and timelessly turning with the days and the seasons.
And then her brush stilled against her head and she leaned forward, her lips parting.
