She did so, and her husband gestured Flavian to another chair.
She had no knowledge, then, of what had happened to her family after she left?
“And Dora?” she asked. “Did she make a decent marriage after all?”
“She has made no marriage at all, ma’am,” Flavian said.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, poor Dora,” she said. “She was very much looking forward to marriage and motherhood—as we all do at the age of seventeen. I suppose she felt obliged to stay home with Agnes. Or perhaps no one would have her after Walter decided to divorce me. That man has much to answer for.”
It was a strange perspective on past events. Perhaps it was an understandable one, however. It was always easier to blame someone else than to assume blame oneself.
Havell had poured two glasses of wine. He handed one to Flavian and drank from the other himself. Flavian set his glass down on a small table beside his chair.
“And Oliver?” Lady Havell asked.
“He is a clergyman in Shropshire, ma’am,” he told her. “He is married with three children.”
She bit her lower lip. “Why have you come, Lord Ponsonby?” she asked him.
Flavian sat back in his chair and eyed his glass. But he did not pick it up.
“Agnes was told n-nothing, ma’am,” he said. “She was five years old, and I s-suppose the assumption was made that she would forget if she was not constantly r-reminded. She still knows virtually n-nothing. She does not want to know. She does not want to know who you are or where you are or evenwh-whetheryou are. But her life has been shaped by your s-sudden and complete disappearance from her life. She has lived on the f-fringes of her own life ever since, afraid to feel too deeply, not lest she be hurt again, it seems to me, but lest she be tempted to do to someone else what you d-did to her.”
“WhatIdid to her,” she said softly. “Well, and so I did too, Lord Ponsonby, for heaven knows I fell deeply enough in love with Everard that summer and spent far too much time in his company. I had no business being so self-absorbed when I had a husband and three children.”
She looked at her husband briefly and half smiled at him.
“Poor Everard,” she said. “For very honor’s sake he was obliged to take me away when Walter denounced me quite publicly at a local assembly and announced his intention of divorcing me. We fled that very night, and only later did it occur to me that Walter had been drinking freely that evening, and it was common knowledge that he could not hold his liquor without making a cake of himself. I might have brazened it out, and our neighbors would have pretended that the whole nasty scene had not happened. But it seemed he had forced my hand, and then I forced his. Poor Everard was caught in the middle.”
“I have never regretted that fact, Rosamond,” he said gallantly.
She smiled at him. It was a sad, fond expression, Flavian thought.
“I really did dislike Walter quite intensely,” she said. “But I loved my girls—and Oliver too. I ought to have gone back for their sakes. Even after a few days had passed I ought to have gone back. Everyone would have turned a blind eye. And Walter would not have carried through on his threat—not when he was sober. After a few days, though, I could not bring myself to leave Everard. I chose my personal happiness over my children, Lord Ponsonby. Agnes is perfectly justified in not wanting anything to do with me. You will keep this visit to yourself, will you?”
“Not n-necessarily, ma’am,” he said. “I will possibly tell her. She ought to know. What she decides to do with the knowledge is up to her.”
As much as anything, she needed to know that she was Debbins’s daughter. And undoubtedly she was.
“Besides,” he said, “someone has been trying to find out something about my wife—preferably something that can be turned to spite. Already someone knows of the divorce.”
“Ah,” she said.
Havell said nothing.
Flavian got to his feet, and Havell followed suit.
“Thank you for receiving me,” Flavian said. He crossed the room and took Lady Havell’s hand in his. After a moment’s hesitation, he raised it to his lips. “G-good-bye, ma’am.”
“Good-bye, Lord Ponsonby.” Her eyes turned suspiciously bright.
Havell accompanied him to the door.
“Life is never a simple matter, Ponsonby,” he said as he stood in the doorway watching Flavian climb back to the seat of his curricle and possess himself of the ribbons. “Decisions that we make in the blink of an eye, often both unexpected and impulsive, can affect the whole of the rest of our lives in a drastic, irreversible way.”
It was hardly an earth-shatteringly original thought. It was nevertheless a true one, Flavian thought. Only consider what had happened tohimrecently.
“I came for the knowledge,” he said, “because it is b-better to know than forever to w-wonder. I did not come to judge. Good day to you, Havell.”
