It was still a shock to hear her speak, her words slowly and distinctly spoken, her voice low and toneless and yet strangely sweet.
“There are so many things about me you do not know,” he said. “There were seven years when you did not see me, Emmy. So many things.”
“No, no, no,” she said. She set one hand flat over his heart. “I know you, Ahshley.”
Why was it, he wondered, that he so often found himself fighting tears when he was with Emmy, even though she could also bring him closer to happiness than he had thought ever again possible? He had shed no tears after the death of his wife and her son.
Tell me, then.She spoke now with her hands and her eyes.
“Not here.” He got to his feet and took her hand in his. He had to make this more real to her. She had to understand that he was not the man she had loved more compassionately than his own sister had ever loved him. It seemed that she must marry him now. But he needed her to understand how unlovable he was, how despicable. He could not even offer himself to her again with all the darkness shut up within. She had a right to know.
He did not talk to her as they descended the hill and approached the house from the side. They did not see anyone on the way, for which fact he was thankful, and the servants’ stairs were deserted too. He paused for a moment outside the door of Alice’s suite and took Emily’s hand firmly in his own.
“These were her rooms,” he said when they had stepped into the dressing room and he had shut the door firmly behind them. “As she left them. No one cleared them out when she died because no order to do so was ever given. I have not given that order since my own arrival here, though I have wanted to and have been on the verge of doing so numerous times. These were her clothes.” He had released her hand in order to open the double doors of a large wardrobe. “You can breathe in her perfume if you take a deep breath.”
She did so, then stood very still. He opened the door into the bedchamber and she followed him inside.
“She was a very feminine woman,” he said. “As you can see, she loved pinks and lavenders—and frills and flounces and fussiness. She was very beautiful—small and dainty and seemingly fragile. She aroused all of a man’s protective instincts. Men routinely fell in love with her.”
She touched the frilled satin bed hangings, a look of deep sadness in her eyes.
“Come,” he said, beckoning her toward the door leading into the small sitting room. “This is where she sat and wrote letters and sewed. It has all the daintiness one would expect of Alice’s personal domain.”
He watched her run a hand over the inlaid wood pattern on top of the small escritoire. She slid open a desk drawer, something he had never been able to bring himself to do. She reached in after a few moments and drew out two oval picture frames, hinged together in the middle, then turned them over and stood looking down at the two pictures. He took a step toward her and drew in a slow breath as he looked over her shoulder.
“Alice,” he said, though she did not look up to see him speak. Alice, looking as lovely and as vital as she had looked before they married, when she had nursed him, when he had been weak and in need.
Emily looked up at him. She was pointing to the other portrait. She pointed at him and then back at the picture.Like you,she was telling him.
He was a young man, dark like Alice, blue-eyed. He must be her brother, Gregory Kersey, Ashley reasoned. And yes, he thought, there was perhaps a slight likeness.
“Gregory Kersey,” he said. “Alice’s brother.”
She set the portraits back inside the drawer as she had found them and closed it carefully. She looked up at him.
“I hated her, Emmy,” he said.
She gazed at him, her face without expression.
“We fell in love in great haste,” he said. “She was my nurse when I was very sick. I was her patient when she was grieving and adjusting to life in a new country. We married before we really knew each other. I repulsed her. She would—make no attempt to like me. She was repeatedly unfaithful to me. I suppose I was much to blame. Rarely is the fault all on one side in a failed marriage. I grew to hate her. A hundred times I must have wished her dead.”
“No,” she said aloud.
“My mind shied away from the wish,” he said. “But ’twas there. I longed to be free of her, to be free of the endless nightmare of being bound to her for life.”
Her eyes were wide with shock.
“Thomas was not mine,” he said. “I would tell no one else this, Emmy. I would defend the honor of his memory with my life if anyone were to challenge his legitimacy. I acknowledged him as mine. He had my name. He was an innocent child whom I loved.”
She frowned.
“Emmy,” he said, “the ‘business meeting’ that kept me from home the night of the fire was no such thing. I spent the night in the bed of a married woman.” He wondered suddenly if she had understood his torrent of words. He had not even tried to sign any of the meaning to her. But it appeared she had understood.
She closed her eyes and tipped back her head. He waited for her to look at him again. When she did so, her eyes were filled with pain. Pain for herself? Pain for him? Knowing Emmy as he did, he did not doubt there was plenty of the latter.
“There was nothing between Alice and me after our wedding night,” he said. “The night of the fire was my first adultery, though I do not suppose it would have been my last. ’Tis no excuse anyway: Adultery is adultery. My wife and the child I loved died while I was committing it.”
Her face had lost all vestiges of color. He wondered if she would faint. But he would not step forward to support her. He kept himself rigidly apart from her.
