Elizabeth Mansfield (22 page)

“I thought we’d agreed from the first that the ‘usual husbandly privileges’ do not apply in our case,” she pointed out quietly.

“Damnation, woman, I never intended to forgo them
forever!
I thought it was understood that we only meant to postpone them until we became comfortable with each other.”

She got slowly to her feet and faced him with chin high. “And was it understood, my lord,” she asked proudly, “that
you
were to decide when the time was right, or that I was?”

He was taken aback by the question. “Why,
you
, of course.”

“Then my decision is that we should accept our marriage as it is, with the limitations and restrictions we placed on it from the beginning.”

He stared at her in agonized disbelief. “But … good God, Cassie,
why
?”

She turned away. “I can’t … I’d rather not explain.”

He came up behind her and took her gently by the shoulders. “Can you give me some hope that the right time will be soon?”

“N-no,” she said, her head lowered. “None.”

She could feel him stiffen. “Cassie! Do you mean you wish to keep to those limitations
permanently
?”

She nodded. “We made a bargain. An exchange. My fortune for your title. We, neither of us, have a right to demand more from each other.”

His hands dropped from her shoulders. “Very well, ma’am,” he said, suddenly cold as ice. “If that is the way you see the terms of our ‘bargain,’ I shall certainly honor them. I shall not invade your room again. Good night, ma’am.”

She shuddered at the slam of the door behind him.
Oh
,
Robbie
, she wanted to cry,
come back! I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it!

But of course she had meant it, every word. She had to keep him at arm’s length, or she’d not be able to endure the life she’d chosen. And she’d not be able to endure it if she gave her heart to him while he withheld his from her. What she’d just done was battle for her survival.

The scene just ended
had
been a battle, and she’d won it. Any impartial observer would surely have named her the victor. Then why did she have this empty, frightened, lonely, miserable feeling that indicated quite distinctly that she’d lost?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

As the temperature between the lord and lady of Highlands turned chill, the temperature outside warmed. Any icy February turned into a muddy March. The trees in the orchards began to show tinges of color, the lawns began to green, the air was crisp and resonated with the sound of saws and hammers as the renovation of the farm buildings began, the ewes gave birth to a number of little lambs, some new pieces of furniture for the still unfinished drawing room arrived from London, and Della’s riding lessons, long postponed because of the cold, were resumed. Spring had arrived at last.

The last week in March brought not only the official beginning of the new season but a visit from Oliver Chivers. Cassie’s father thoughtfully brought Miss Penicuick along with him, and the reunion was a truly joyful one. Both her father and her old governess were delighted beyond words by the apparent change in Cassie from a painfully shy schoolgirl to the confident mistress of a grand manor house. Her father almost chortled in glee at the success of his “investment.”

While Miss Penicuick joined the ladies in their daytime activities, Kittridge took his father-in-law round the property and showed him the plans for its reconstruction. The grandeur of the manor house impressed Chivers mightily, as did the size of the property and the potential for income of the farms and new tenant houses. While he pooh-poohed Kittridge’s claim to be able to pay him back in ten years for the “dowry”—insisting that he would not accept a penny of it—he was nevertheless proud of his son-in-law for wishing to make the attempt. “My daughter,” he confided to Miss Penicuick, “‘as got ’erself as fine a fellow as ever was.”

But neither Mr. Chivers nor the fluttery governess had ever developed the sensitivity to discern the subtle undercurrents in human relations. Although they extended what was to be a two-day visit to a full week, they never noticed the coolness and tension between Cassie and her husband. Mr. Chivers was even impelled, one evening at dinner, to drop a broad and vulgar hint that he expected to hear any day that his Cassie was “breedin’.” Although Kittridge’s jaw tightened and Cassie turned alternately rose-red and ashen white, it never occurred to her father that he’d made a gross
faux pas.
He and Miss Penicuick departed from Highlands as happy as grigs, complacently convinced that their Cassie had been granted every blessing that a beneficent God, and a rich father, could bestow.

To Eunice and Cassie, the subtle undercurrents governing Kittridge’s moods were abundantly clear. As the days passed and no letters were forwarded from London, his temper grew shorter and his expression darker. It was only Loesby, however, who had the courage to berate him. “Ye needn’t bark at everyone like an ’ound wi’ distemper,” he scolded. “Ye made yer own bed, Cap’n, so it ain’t right t’ blame the world if the sheets scratch yer backside.”

Loesby’s homily was not wasted on Lord Kittridge. He made a sincere attempt to hide his unhappiness. He busied himself with the supervision of the renovation work on the farm buildings, forced himself to be a pleasant companion to the women in the evenings and threw himself with such gusto into playing wild games with the girls that Eunice feared he would make tomboys out of them. But in spite of his efforts, Cassie could see the unhappiness deep in his eyes. She found herself wishing,
for his sake, that some letters would be delivered soon. If the letters could ease his suffering, she wanted them for him.

One night, about a fortnight after her father’s departure, Cassie woke up in the wee hours with a feeling that something was dreadfully amiss. A flickering light from behind the drawn draperies caught her eye. When she opened them, she discovered, to her horror, a strange, frightening red glow in the sky. Something not very far away was burning! Through the trees she could even catch a glimpse of flames!

Alarmed, she threw on her robe and ran out of her room. The halls were dark and silent. Evidently no one else in the house had noticed anything. She ran to Robert’s door and hammered on it. “Robert! Robert! Wake up!”

It seemed an eternity before he opened the door. “Cassie?” he mumbled sleepily. “What’s amiss? Have you heard another ghost?”

“Look out the window!” she said, trying not to sound terror-stricken. “Something seems to be on fire.”

His eyes came instantly awake. Leaving the door open, he ran across the room and flung the drapes aside. “Oh, God!” he gasped. “The new barns!”

“Oh, Robert,
no
!” Cassie cried, her hands reaching out to him in sympathy.

But he took no note of her gesture. He was already pulling on his boots. “If you don’t mind, Cassie,” he said, “go and wake Loesby. Whitlock, too. And that fool of a butler. We’re going to need all the men we can find.”

Cassie ran to do his bidding. Before long, everyone was up, dressed and running down across the south lawn, past the outbuildings to the site of the new structure. They all, men and women, struggled through the remainder of the night, passing buckets of water up from the nearest pond. But their efforts were unavailing. By morning the entire structure was a blackened heap of ashes.

The destruction of the new barns was a blow to Kittridge. All his efforts of the past months had burned up in the flames of that new structure. Cassie and Eunice tried to console him with the usual platitudes: that one must be grateful the work was still uncompleted and thus the barns were empty; that there’d been no loss of human or animal life; that the structure could be rebuilt. But Kittridge knew that the cost in time and money meant a major restructuring of his plans. What was worse, he didn’t understand how the fire had started or what steps he could or should have taken to protect against such a calamity. Even though Griswold assured him that there was nothing they could have done, either before or during the fire, to prevent what was either an act of God or the carelessness or spitefulness of a trespasser, Kittridge’s confidence in his ability to succeed in the task he’d set himself was badly shaken.

Cassie’s heart ached for him during the week that followed. He seemed to have been sapped of energy, and all vestiges of joie de vivre were gone from his face. Every circumstance of his life seemed to have combined to defeat him, and she, loving him as she did, grieved that she was unable to ease his lonely lot. She watched from a distance as he stood staring out the sitting room window for hours at a time, his face rigid and his eyes seeing nothing but a bleak future. He did not deserve what fate had done to him, and she, who had married him because she believed she could make him happy, had failed him, too. It was not his fault that he couldn’t love her. It was not his fault that she loved him too much. She would have liked to let him know that if he came to her bedroom now, as he’d done those few weeks earlier, she would not refuse to give him whatever solace he required. But he was true to his word and did not come. And she had not the courage to alter what she’d wrought.

After a week of glum passivity, however, Kittridge roused himself to action. He joined the workers in cleaning up the debris, often taking a shovel in hand and laboring with them until he was ready to drop. And he immersed himself in planning the rebuilding. His vigorous activity proved a tonic for
everyone else, and soon the household was restored to normalcy.

But an event that was more likely than any other to change normalcy to cheeriness occurred on a bright afternoon in April when Cassie, Eunice and the two little girls were taking tea in the sitting room. A carriage trundled up the drive, stopped at their door and disgorged a handsome, well-dressed, top-of-the-trees dandy. Eunice, glancing out the window, gave a little shriek. “It’s
Sandy
!” she cried. “He’s
back
!”

“Sandy! Sandy!” the little girls squealed delightedly.

But Eunice’s brilliant smile faded at once. “Oh, my heavens, look at me!” she gasped, jumping from her seat. “I’ve got to go up and do something with my hair!”

“Goodness, Eunice, it’s only Sandy. He won’t mind your hair,” Cassie said, following the hurrying Eunice from the room, the girls trailing excitedly behind.

“‘Only Sandy,’ indeed,” Eunice retorted, starting up the stairs.

“I thought you were so full of doubts about him,” Cassie taunted.

Eunice paused and grinned down at her friend. “I may have doubts about my feelings for him,” she laughed, “but I don’t intend to give him any reason to doubt his feelings for me.”

While Dickle brought in Sandy’s baggage, Cassie and the girls surrounded the new arrival in the doorway, Cassie throwing her arms around his neck in welcome, and the little girls jumping up and down in glee. The commotion had barely subsided when Eunice, resplendent in her prettiest afternoon dress and sporting a jeweled clip in her hastily brushed hair, glided down the stairs. “Sandy, dear boy,” she said with complete aplomb, throwing Cassie a twinkling glance while offering Sandy her hand, “you’re back, I see.”

If Sandy was disappointed by Eunice’s restrained greeting, he did not show it. They held a merry reunion over the teacups. Sandy, in a bantering tone, berated Eunice for failing to keep their “appointment” in London, but, optimist that he was, he didn’t seem to be crushed by it. However, he announced firmly that this time he did not intend to leave Lincolnshire until Eunice agreed to return home. “I promised your mother I would not come back without you,” he declared.

Cassie, at the mention of her mother-in-law, leaned forward tensely. “Did her ladyship send any other messages?” she asked, hoping to learn if he’d brought any letters from Elinor. If ever there was an appropriate moment for Robert to receive love letters, this was that time.

“Messages?” Sandy echoed, too busy filling his eyes with his ladylove to notice Cassie’s intensity. “She sent affectionate greetings to you all, of course.”

“Did Lady Kittridge … send along any letters?”

That question drew his attention. His smile faded. “A few,” he said, biting his underlip.

Cassie didn’t feel courageous enough to pry any further. But there was something about his response that troubled her.

She was glad when Robert finally joined them. He’d spent the day at the site of the new barn, but when he returned and learned from Dickle that Sir Phillip had arrived from London, he rushed into the sitting room to greet his friend without even pausing to change from his splattered riding boots and breeches.

The gentlemen exchanged warm greetings. But Robert, after ascertaining that Sandy was in good health and intended to make a long stay, did not take many moments before he asked, “I say, Sandy, did my mother forward my letters?”

“Yes,” Sandy said, “she did.” He seemed uneasy as he removed a small packet of letters from his coat pocket. “I have them here.”

Kittridge took the packet and, breaking the string at once, rifled through the letters hastily. There
were fewer than half a dozen pieces, not one of which, Cassie noted with despair, was square and buff-colored.

Kittridge, his face unreadable, immediately begged to be excused. “I must not stay in my wife’s charming sitting room in all my dirt,” he said. “I’ll join you all at dinner.” He took himself promptly to the door. “It’s good to have you back, Sandy,” he added, shutting the door behind him so quickly that no one had a chance to protest his abrupt departure.

Eunice, noting Cassie’s stricken face, herded her daughters to the door. “Miss Roffey will be wondering where her charges are keeping,” she said. “If you both will excuse me, I’ll take the girls up to her.”

As soon as the door closed behind her, Cassie jumped to her feet. “Goodness, Sandy, what has happened?” she demanded, twisting her fingers together nervously. “Why were there no letters from Elinor?”

“You sound disappointed that there were none,” Sandy said in surprise. “One would have thought you’d be glad.”