But now Len was dead. It was no wonder there were stirrings of hope among a certain contingent for a happily-ever-after at long last.
Flavian, however, had never forgiven either one of them.
He had still been unable to speak with any clarity or coherence when Velma had come to tell him less than two months after he had been brought home that the notice of the end of their engagement was to appear in the morning papers the next day, and that three days after that her new engagement announcement was to appear. He had not been able to speak, but he had understood well enough. She had patted his hand gently and wept copiously.
“You will never recover, Flavian,” she had told him. “We both know that—at least, no, I do not suppose you do or ever will. Perhaps it is merciful that you know nothing—more merciful than what has happened to me. I love you. I will love you to my dying day. But I cannot remain bound to you. I need more of life, and I will try to find that with Leonard. I am sure if you understood and could speak to me, you would agree wholeheartedly. I am sure you would be happy for me—for us. You would be happy that I will spend my life with Leonard and he with me—two of the people who love you most dearly.”
He had tried desperately to speak, but he had not got beyond a few stuttered and meaningless sounds. Anyway, in those days his mind still had not recovered the concept of sentences. Even a recognizable word or two would not have sufficed if by some miracle he had spilled them out. And chances were they would have been the wrong words, something quite different from what his mind was intending, most probably some horrible blasphemies. His mother had sometimes begged him to stop swearing. But the nature of his injury was such that he lost control of his speech and of the words he used when he could utter a sound.
“I am sure you would give us your blessing,” Velma had told him, stroking his hand. “I am certain you would, and so I have assured Leonard. We will always love you.Iwill always love you.”
After she had gone, leaving behind the familiar scent of lilies of the valley, he had virtually destroyed the drawing room, where he had been lying on a daybed. It had taken two burly footmen and his valet to subdue him, and they had succeeded only because eventually there was nothing left to destroy.
Len had not come, even if he had intended to, and who could blame him? That had not been Flavian’s first violent rage. More and more he found that the frustration caused by the consequences of his injury—his missing memories, his confused mind, his frozen tongue—manifested itself in an urge to physical violence he could not control.
Three days later, the very day the notice of the engagement of Miss Velma Frome to Leonard Burton, Earl of Hazeltine, appeared in all the London papers, George, Duke of Stanbrook, had come to call on Flavian at Arnott House.
Flavian had sworn foully at this new stranger and hurled a water glass at his head, missing by a yard but enjoying the satisfying sound of smashing glass. He had not been in the best of humors, having been locked in his bare room ever since the tirade following Velma’s visit. It was amazing, looking back, that there had even been a glass to throw. Someone must have been careless.
But soon he had found himself traveling to Penderris Hall in Cornwall with the duke—without any restraints or hefty guards in the guise of servants. George had conversed quietly and sensibly with him—or, rather, he had delivered monologues, maybe a quarter of the contents of which Flavian had understood—through most of the long, tedious journey, before Flavian discovered that Penderris was not the lunatic asylum he was expecting but a hospital with other patients—other veterans of the war—as badly messed up as he.
And he had loved George with a passionate attachment ever since. A funny thing, love. It was not always, or even mostly, a sexual thing.
He did not go out to the meadow immediately after his return to Middlebury. Indeed, he tried to talk himself out of going at all. Ben and Vincent, the latter’s music lesson at an end, were going to ride out to the racetrack with Martin Fisk, Vince’s trusty valet. Flavian might have gone with them. But his horse was lame, was it not, though he suspected the groom would be hard put to discover how. Hugo and his wife were going to sit for a while at the highest point of the wilderness walk, from where they could expect the best view. Flavian was invited to go with them, but he agreed with Ralph that three could sometimes be a crowd, and those two had been wed for less than a year and were obviously still delighted with each other. Lady Harper and Lady Darleigh were going to pay a few social calls and would have been happy to have Flavian’s escort. He told them that he had a few letters to write and really ought to get on with them before he lost the urge entirely. Then, of course, he felt obliged to write to his sister. He made it very clear that, when he left here, he was going straight to London. He even told her the date he expected to arrive there so that it would be clear that he intended to spend Easter, as he did every year, in London. It did not matter that Parliament would not sit or the Season swing to life until after the holiday. He liked London when it was relatively quiet. Being there was better than being at Candlebury, anyway—especially this year.
He had not been to Candlebury Abbey since four days before David died, two days before his and Velma’s grand betrothal ball in London.
What on earth had possessed him to go through with that? At such a time? He frowned, rubbing the feather of the quill pen back and forth across his chin, trying to remember the exact sequence of events during that most eventful and ghastly of weeks.Ghastly?But the deeper he thought, the more a headache loomed and the closer he got to the sort of frustration that had once been a prelude to a bout of uncontrolled violence.
He got abruptly to his feet, toppling the desk chair with the backs of his knees, and set out for the far side of the park. She would have left long before now, even if she had gone there rather than somewhere else to paint, he told himself. He tried to convince himself that he hoped shehadleft, though why the deuce he would walk so far just for the exercise he did not try to explain to himself. Itwasa long walk.
He would not be good company.
This morning she had been wearing a simple cotton dress and no bonnet. Her hair had been caught back in a plain knot at her neck. Her posture had been prim and self-contained, her expression placid. He had tried to tell himself that she was quite without sexual appeal, that he must be very bored indeed out here in the country if he was weaving fantasies about a plain, prim, virtuous widow.
Except that he wasnotbored. He had all his closest friends here, and three weeks was never a long enough time to enjoy their company to the fullest. One of those weeks had already gone by while he blinked. This was always his favorite three weeks of the year, and the change of venue had not affected that.
Perhaps he would have convinced himself this morning if he had not noticed the one thing that had betrayed her. Her hands clasped at her waist were white-knuckled, suggesting that she was not as at ease, as unconcerned at seeing him, as she seemed at first glance.
Sometimes sexuality was more compelling when it was not overt.
He had wanted her again at that moment with a quite alarming stab of longing.
And she was not plain. Or prim. And if she was virtuous—and he did not doubt she was—she was also full to the brim of repressed sexuality.
When he arrived at the far side of the park, he found she had not gone elsewhere to paint and she had not left.
She was where she had been five days ago, though she was not flat on her back this time. She was on her knees before her easel, sitting on her heels, painting. He knew why she was so low. She had explained to him that she wanted to see the daffodils as they saw themselves. And though he stopped some distance behind her, one shoulder propped against the trunk of a tree, his arms folded across his chest, he could see that her painting showed mostly sky, with grass below and daffodils reaching up between the two, connecting them. He was not close enough to judge the quality of the painting—not that he was a connoisseur anyway.
She seemed absorbed. Certainly she had neither heard nor sensed his approach, as she had last time.
His eyes moved over the pleasing curve of her spine, over her rounded bottom, over the soles of her shoes, the toes pointing in, the heels out. She was wearing a sun bonnet. He could see nothing of her face.
He should turn and leave, though he knew he would not do so. Not after coming all this way and forfeiting the company of friends and a visit to Gloucester.
He was badly smitten, he thought with some surprise and not a little unease.
And then she dipped her brush in water and paint and slashed it violently across the painting from corner to corner and again from the opposite corner to corner, leaving a large, dark X on the paper. She tore it from the easel, crumpled it, and tossed it to the grass. It was only then that he noticed other similar balls of paper scattered about her.
