“Velma,” he said. “Because she d-did not get her way.”
She had suspected it,knownit, really. But what did the countess have to gain now? Flavian was not going to divorceher, after all, merely on the strength of who her mother was.
Because she did not get her way,he had just said. Was that sufficient motive? Simple spite?
She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.
“Tell me what you know about her,” she said. “About Lady Havell, that is. My mother.”
Neither of them was looking at the sky any longer. They moved off the path into the even-deeper seclusion of the ancient trees, and she stood with her back against the trunk of an oak, while he stood in front of her, one hand braced against the trunk on one side of her head.
“They have been shunned by society ever since their m-marriage, I would guess,” he said. “I believe they are fond of each other but not particularly h-happy.”
“He is definitelynotmy father?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I am as sure as I can be that she was faithful to your father until after she left him. You were five years old by then.”
She closed her eyes and lifted one gloved hand to set against his chest. At the same moment they both heard a group of people approaching along the path, talking and laughing until they must have spotted the two of them. There was a self-conscious silence then as the footsteps went past, and some stifled giggling after that until the group had passed out of earshot.
“One can only h-hope,” Flavian said on a sigh, “that we were not r-recognized, Agnes. There is nothing more damaging to a man’s reputation than to be seen in close and clandestine embrace with his ownw-wife.”
“What a pity,” she said, “that they misinterpreted what they saw.”
“Andthat,” he said, “is even more lowering.”
He took a firm step closer, pressing her to the tree along her full length before kissing her openmouthed. She laughed in delighted surprise when he lifted his head a moment later and regarded her lazily. And she wrapped her arms about him as his came about her, and they kissed at far greater length and with warm enthusiasm.
“Mmm,” he said.
“Mmm,” she agreed.
He took a step back and clasped his hands behind his back.
“She admits,” he said, “that you have every right to hate her. She admits that she abandoned you and your s-sister—and your brother too—when she might have stayed. She r-ran away, she told me, after your father had denounced her at an assembly and told her for all to hear he would divorce her for adultery. She had f-flirted rather too incautiously with Havell, she said, but had done nothing more indiscreet than that until she ran away. She might have returned. Apparently your f-father had had too much to d-drink, and everything might have been patched up if she had gone home a few days later. But she d-did not go.”
Agnes closed her eyes again, and there was a long silence, during which he stood where he was, not touching her. It was all so believable. Her father did not drink to excess very often. It was very rare, in fact. But when he did, he could say and do foolish, embarrassing things. Everyone knew it. Everyone made allowances and conveniently forgot his lapses.
And her mother, it seemed, had acted upon the sudden impulse not to return home when she might have done so and had chosen to remain with the man who then became her lover and, later, her husband. A sudden, impulsive decision. She might just as easily have decided the other way. Just as she, Agnes, might just as easily have said no to Flavian the night he returned from London with a special license.
The course of one’s whole life—and the lives of those intertwined with one’s own—could be changed forever on the strength of such abrupt and unconsidered decisions.
“You did not say I would call on her?” she asked him.
“I did not,” he said.
“Maybe one day I will go,” she said. “But not yet. Maybe never. But you are right. It is as well to know. And to know that Dora and Oliver are my full sister and brother. Thank you for going, and for rescuing me from shock and embarrassment last evening. Thank you.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at him.
From a distance they could hear the sound of other people drawing closer.
“Shall we move on?” He offered his arm, and she took it.
They walked in silence until they had passed an older couple, exchanging smiles and nods as they did so. The day was growing warmer.
“Would you like to go to Candlebury, Agnes?” he asked her.
“Now?” she asked in surprise. “But there is the Season, my presentation at court, the ball to introduce me to theton. Everything else.”
