The men had gone out with sporting guns and were not seen until the late afternoon.The sun was setting when Nicholas sought Eleanor out and found her feeding the baby.
“It’s an onerous duty, isn’t it?”he said, running a finger through the soft down on the oblivious baby’s head.“Will you feel able to come down to dinner tonight?”
Eleanor was glad her head was lowered.Her heart started to thump in her chest.
Already?
“I see,” she said, assuming an air of cool detachment.“It’s to be the grand exoneration, is it?”
She saw the hand on the baby’s head stop as if frozen and felt unable to breathe.Then the hand started to stroke again, and he spoke in his usual controlled tones.
“If you wish to put it that way.I didn’t think, when I came, that I would find you lying-in.I wasn’t even sure when the child was expected.I’d like to give you longer to recover, but we can’t keep Amy, Peter, and Francis here indefinitely.I would rather they were available to you if you need them.”
But I’m not ready, she said to herself.My nerves aren’t up to this.Then she summoned her courage.She disciplined her voice to match his even tones, but she kept her face turned attentively to the baby.
“I will be down for dinner,” she said.
Without further word, he left.
Eleanor took care to dress in a becoming gown.It was a warm dress of deep blue wool, trimmed with braid of the same color.She had Jenny take a little time from her nursery supervision to dress her hair in a town style, high on her head with tumbling curls.She had not been so fine for months.
She looked in the mirror.She had not regained her figure yet and her breasts were very large, but overall she thought she looked well.The long country summer had suited her.
She opened the box of Nicholas’s magpie collection of jewelry and chose a heavy collar in the form of a snake of beaten gold with jeweled eyes.She had always thought it barbaric and that she would never wear it.
It seemed eminently suited to this occasion.
The dinner table was highly civilized, however.Everyone could sense a climax in the air and everyone was on their best behavior lest something explode.
Eleanor’s nerves were on edge and she contributed little to the conversation, but she enjoyed the witty repartee between Nicholas and Miss Hurstman.She noted that although the lady would have denied it heartily, she had already been won over.
It seemed Amy, too, had found it impossible to harbor resentment, and though she was no longer boisterously fond of Nicholas there was no enmity.
Eleanor felt a spurt of resentment at the ease with which her husband bent people to his favor, at the way he could be so lighthearted when she, the innocent party, was taut with nerves.Everything was easy for him.It was so unfair.
As she watched him, however, she began to see it was a virtuoso performance.He too was strained beneath his light manner, and occasionally it showed.Once his eyes met hers across the table and the laughter in them faded.What did she see?It seemed to be a distant longing.
It did not speak of confidence at all.
Did he really place such importance on this explanation of his absence?My love, my love, she thought, do you not know I will never of my own will let you go?Even if what you have to say is the worst—that you fell again under the wiles of that woman, that you still are not totally free of her—still I will hold you if I can.
If that is what you want.
For that was her greatest fear: that his confession would be that he did not want to stay.
She felt her mind begin to spin into panic again and banished the thought.She concentrated instead on the discussion of the torturous progress of the Congress of Vienna, which was glittering and waltzing itself in circles.
Eventually it was time for the ladies to leave, and no explanation of Nicholas’s conduct had been given.Eleanor was aware of a cowardly hope that he had changed his mind, but Nicholas stopped her as she would have risen.
“Would you not like to stay and take port with us, Eleanor?”he said with a smile that called back that time in the early days of their marriage.“I know Miss Hurstman will not object.Amy, do you dare to flout convention?”
Amy flashed a cautious glance at her slightly scandalized husband.“Since Eleanor has already introduced me to the delights of brandied tea…” Then she remembered those circumstances and went pinker.“I would not mind,” she went on quickly, “but can we not remove to the drawing room and greater comfort?”
This was agreed upon, and soon they were all established there by the large fire.The long red velvet curtains were drawn against the dark, and oil lamps gave soft pools of light.
If Amy took only tiny sips of the unaccustomed drink, no one appeared to notice.
Eleanor braced herself for what was to come.
