“C-come and sit down, Agnes,” he said. “Sit by the f-fire. Pull the b-bell rope, if you will, Oswald, and order up a f-fresh tray of tea in case Biggs has not thought of it himself. I thought you were all remaining at Candlebury for Easter. I s-sent a letter there.”
“In punishing us so cleverly, Flavian,” his mother said as if he had not spoken, “you have, of course, punished yourself too. It is so typical of you. But, as Marianne observed, it is you who must suffer most as a result, just as you did when you refused to sell out after your brother’s death. How very different your life might have been if you had done your duty then.Agnes.Who are you? Whowereyou before my son elevated you to a viscountess’s title?”
It was all worse than Agnes’s worst nightmare. But she tried to make allowances for shock. She suspected this first meeting would not have been quite as bad if events had been allowed to unfold according to plan. If his family had remained in the country and had read his letter with a few days to spare before meeting her, and ifshehad had a chance to write before going, then they would have had at least a little time to prepare themselves and to hide the rawest of their horror behind good manners.
“I was born Agnes Debbins in Lancashire, ma’am,” she explained. “My father is a gentleman. I married William Keeping, a gentleman farmer and our neighbor, when I was eighteen, but I was widowed three years ago. I stayed for a short while in Shropshire with my brother, a clergyman, and then moved to the village of Inglebrook, close to Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, to live with my unmarried sister.”
“Debbins? Keeping? I have never heard either name,” the dowager complained, looking at her daughter-in-law with obvious irritation.
“Neither my father nor my late husband moved in tonnish circles, ma’am,” Agnes said, “or had any interest in spending time in London or at any of the fashionable spas.”
Though Papa would have come to London the year Dora turned eighteen if his wife had not left him for a lover. Even then, though, they would not have mingled with the very highest echelons of society.
“They were not prosperous gentlemen, I suppose.” The dowager’s eyes swept over Agnes as her daughter’s had done a few moments before.
“I have never coveted riches, ma’am,” Agnes said.
Her mother-in-law’s eyes snapped to hers. “And yet you have married my son. You surely knew that you were making a brilliant match.”
“Agnes has m-married a m-madman, Mama, as you can a-attest, and deserves some s-sort of m-medal of h-honor,” Flavian said in his bored voice, though he was having a harder time than usual getting his words out. “I am the one who has m-made a b-brilliant m-match. I have f-found someone w-willing to t-take me on. I am s-sorry you had no chance to r-read my letter before we w-walked in upon you, b-but you did not inform me you were c-coming to my London home—of which Agnes is now m-mistress. Ah, the tea t-tray at last.”
“We have been heaping blame upon Flavian’s head for springing such unexpected news upon us,” Lord Shields said, smiling at Agnes, “when it is we who are at fault for coming up to town so impulsively and even inviting visitors here the very day we were expecting my brother-in-law home. Agnes, you have had a sorry welcome to your husband’s family, and I apologize most profusely. I can only hope that Flavian would be having just such a welcome if you had sprung him upon your papa without any warning. Shall I set the tray before you?”
It had been set down before the dowager, and she had already reached out a hand to the teapot.
“Oh, no, please,” Agnes said, holding up a staying hand. “I will be very happy to be waited upon.”
“You must indeed be weary, Agnes,” Lady Shields said as she brought Agnes a cup of tea. “Traveling is a tedious and uncomfortable business at the best of times.”
Agnes thought back on the journey with some longing. She had known even at the time that it was in a sense a bridge between her old life and the new, and she had clung to it as a sort of time out of time. Her mind touched for a moment upon what they had done three separate times to alleviate the boredom of a lengthy journey. That was the excuse Flavian had given, anyway.
She had been right to cling to that bridge.
Of course it was deliberate and just the sort of thing youwoulddo. Well, you are the one who must live with the consequences.
In punishing us so cleverly, Flavian, you have, of course, punished yourself too. It is so typical of you. But, as Marianne observed, it is you who must suffer most as a result....
And somehow it all had something to do with the very sweet and beautiful Velma, Countess of Hazeltine, who was at the end of her year of mourning for her husband. And to whom Flavian had never written with any regularity. Was there some reason he ought to have done so?
“Thank you, ma’am,” Agnes said in acknowledgment of the tea.
“Oh, that must be Marianne, if you please,” Lady Shields said. “We are sisters. And how very strangethatsounds. I have been deprived of involving myself in your wedding, which is perhaps just as well, for Flavian would doubtless have called itinterference. Do tell us all about the wedding. Every detail. And you may save your breath to drink your tea, Flavian. Men are utterly hopeless at describing such events at any length that exceeds one sentence.”
He had taken the chair on the other side of the fireplace and sat there looking across at Agnes, his sleepy, slightly mocking expression firmly in place. She wondered whether his mother and sister realized that it was a mask that covered all sorts of uncertainties and vulnerability.
She described her wedding and the wedding breakfast at Middlebury Park. And she wondered what they had meant by saying that he had married herquite deliberately.
***
The trouble was, Flavian thought some time later as he led his wife upstairs, that he had never taken charge. Never. It had been quite deliberate when he was still a boy and David had inherited the title after their father’s death, and everyone had tried to preparehimfor the day in the not-so-distant future when the title would be his. There had been plans, of course, for David to marry, and the faint hope that he would beget an heir of his own, but that faint hope had come to an end when Flavian was eighteen and old enough for everyone to try arranging a marriage forhim.
He had flatly refused to have anything to do with any of it.
The bedchamber next to his own had already been prepared, he was relieved to discover when he entered it with Agnes. No one had given the order, least of all himself, though heoughtto have done so, but servants could almost always be relied upon to act on their own initiative. A young maid was visible through the open door to the dressing room on the far side of the bedchamber. She was unpacking his wife’s bags. She bobbed a curtsy and explained that she had been “assigned to my lady until my lady’s own maid” arrived.
“Thank you,” Agnes said, and Flavian nodded at the girl before shutting the door.
He turned then to Agnes. “I am s-sorry,” he said, breaking the silence that had held since they left the drawing room.
