“Velma, my love,” her mother pleaded, “you must not say these things. Not to Lady Ponsonby. It is not kind.”
“Perhaps we would have made something of our marriage if Flavian had not started to recover,” Lady Hazeltine continued, just as if her mother had not spoken. “But Leonard never forgave himself, and I... Well, I ought to have waited longer.”
Agnes felt a bit sick. Perhaps she had been mistaken at the library yesterday. She had thought then there was some calculation, even a hint of spite, in the countess’s words.
“And now,” Lady Hazeltine said, “just when I might have made amends, I have been treated as if I had been merely faithless and heartless all those long years ago. And I have become the object of a cruel revenge. Was it justified, Lady Ponsonby?”
No, Agnes thought. Oh, no, she had not been wrong.
“My love.” Lady Frome was clearly distressed. “Lady Ponsonby is in no way to blame.”
“Your bitterness is understandable, Lady Hazeltine,” Agnes said. “At this point, however, it will accomplish nothing. You and Flavian loved each other years ago, but people change. He has changed, and I daresay you have too, and will recover from your disappointment and even be thankful that you are no longer tied to the past. Flavian married me last week because he wished to do so, and I married him for the same reason. It is an accomplished fact.”
“It is clear that you have never loved,” the countess said with a sad, sweet smile. “True love does not die, Lady Ponsonby, or recover fromdisappointment. It is not affected by the passage of time.”
Agnes sighed.
“I wish you well,” she said. “I wish you future happiness with all my heart. And I wish for peace and amicable relations between our families. But I will not be made to feel like someone whom my husband married only because he wished to punish a former love of his. I will not tolerate being seen as the other woman in a tragic love story. He marriedme, Lady Hazeltine. More important, as far as I am concerned, I marriedhim, and Icount. I am a person, too.”
She had got to her feet while she was speaking, and picked up her reticule in preparation for leaving. Her legs were not feeling any too steady, though at least her voice had not shaken.
The other ladies had stood too.
“I do assure you, Lady Ponsonby, that I wish you every happiness,” Lady Frome said with apparent sincerity. “And I do thank you for calling. It was a brave thing to do, and all alone too. I shall look forward to our being neighbors.”
“I wish you well too,” the countess said. “Though I believe, Lady Ponsonby, you will need all the good wishes you can get.”
Agnes nodded and took her leave.
At first she walked briskly homeward, Madeline at her heels, but after a few minutes she calmed and slowed her steps to a more ladylike pace. She was not sure the visit had accomplished a great deal beyond upsetting her horribly. But she was not sorry she had gone. She hated situations in which people did not talk out their differences. At least if there must be malice and enmity between her and the Countess of Hazeltine—and she suspected there must—then it was as well that its existence and causes be out in the open.
Nothing had ever been said after her mother left. Nothing. Ever. One day a five-year-old child had had her beautiful, vibrant, laughter-filled mother there with her, and the next day her mother was gone, never to reappear. No explanation had ever been given. Agnes had had to piece together the little she knew from snatches of conversation she had heard down the years, none of it ever spoken directly to her.
And so the hurt, the sense of abandonment, had festered. Perhaps it would have anyway, but the pain would have been different. Or so she had always believed. Perhaps not. Perhaps pain was simply pain.
She had planned to be on a stagecoach by now, on her way home to Dora. After just one week of marriage. What a dreadful humiliation that would have been. Instead she had agreed to stay for one more week, and then, perhaps, to go to Candlebury Abbey instead of to Inglebrook.
One more week. To piece together a marriage. Or to bring it to an end in a lifelong separation. But the sense of defeat in that last thought filled her with sudden anger.
She would be... Oh, what was the very worst word she could think of? She would bedamnedbefore she would give up her marriage after two weeks just because Flavian had once loved a beautiful woman who had chosen spite over stoical dignity when he had marriedher. She would be... Well, she would bedoubledamned.
So there!
He wanted to give their marriage a chance.
Well, then. So did she. More than a chance. She was going to make amarriageof what they had. See if she didn’t.
19
Flavian did not sleep or even try to. He had one week. Seven days. He was not about to waste even an hour of one of them catching up on his beauty sleep. The trouble was, though, that he did not know what he could do to convince Agnes to stay with him, beyond making love to her night and day. He was good at that, at least. Or, rather,theywere good at it.
He did not think sex alone would persuade her to stay, however. And he was not even sure she was going to allow him near her bed in the next seven days or nights. Besides, good sex might actually convince hernotto stay. She had that alarming belief that passion must be obliterated from her life if she was to maintain any sort of control over it. All because of her mother.
He had his valet prepare a bath for him. He felt a bit better once he was clean and in fresh clothes, and once he was shaved. He had also done some thinking. He had not come up with any short-term solutions, and they were what he really needed, but at least he could dosomething. He went back to the book room, seated himself at the desk, and wrote two letters—nothis favorite activity at the best of times. But they were necessary and overdue. He could hardly call in person on his father-in-law, since to do so he would have to leave London and squander his precious week. The same applied to his brother-in-law. It was a courtesy to write to them both. More than that, though, he had a few questions to ask them, and he hoped at least one of them would be more forthcoming with him than they had ever been with Agnes.
Having written the letters more or less to his satisfaction, and sealed and franked them and handed them into the care of his butler, Flavian sallied forth to White’s Club, partly because he could not think of anywhere else to go, since Agnes had other plans for the day and he was not involved in them. But partly he went in the hope that he might find someone to whom he might address a few discreet questions. Maybe therewassomething he could do.
Any number of gentlemen greeted him there. He might have attached himself to congenial company for the rest of the day and most of the night if he had wanted to, despite the fact that at least half thetonwas still waiting for Easter to come and go before descending upon London. Most of the company was roughly his own age, however, and of no use to him today. And he was not well enough acquainted with any of the older men, he realized as he sat down in the reading room and gave the morning papers only a small amount of his attention.
