Elizabeth Mansfield (24 page)

“Anything, Cassie, my love, anything,” Eunice assured her, blowing her nose into an already soaking handkerchief.

Cassie put a hand into the bosom of her dress and withdrew some folded sheets of paper. “I’ve written some letters. Three of them. I want you to … to take care of them for me.”

“Take care of them?” Eunice’s eyebrows rose. “Keep them safe, you mean?”

“No. I mean
send
them.”

“I don’t understand, Cassie.” She cocked her head suspiciously. “Are you up to some mischief?”

“Yes, I’m sure you will think so. They are … forgeries.”

“
Forgeries
? What on earth—?” Her eyes narrowed. “Has this something to do with Elinor?”

“Yes. Please, Eunice, don’t scold. I know what I’m doing is very dreadful, but I can’t bear to see Robert so unhappy. If he learned that Elinor no longer cares, it would break his heart. So I’ve written these in her name. Written them
for
her, so to speak.”

Eunice couldn’t believe her ears. “You’ve written letters for
Elinor
?”

Cassie nodded. “All you need do is find the proper note-paper, copy these letters exactly as I’ve written them, seal and frank them, and have your mother send a messenger back here to deliver them to Robert.”

“You, my love, have taken leave of your
senses
! The whole scheme is impossible. It will never work! Even with the proper notepaper, can you really believe that Robbie won’t see at once that the letters are false? Why, the handwriting alone—”

“I’ve taken care of that. The first letter explains that she burned her hand badly with candlewax, which is why she couldn’t write at all for several weeks. She is now better, but her fingers are still bandaged, so she must write with her left hand. If you use
your
left hand when you write, I’m certain we can be convincing.”

“Even so, Cassie, this is
wrong
. Why should you feel compelled to indulge in so elaborate a pretense? Let him forget her. It will be better for all concerned.”

Cassie shook her head sadly. “He won’t forget her, any more than I would forget
him
if we were separated. Try to understand, Eunice. You and Sandy and the children will be gone. Robert will have no one left but me, and—”

“Good!” Eunice cut in firmly. “Perhaps then he will learn to appreciate you properly.”

Desperate to make her friend understand, Cassie grasped her by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Eunice! Ever since he left the cavalry, Robert has had to make sacrifices. When he married me, he sold his
future
, don’t you see that? And it wasn’t for his own benefit. It was for the family—for
you
! It isn’t fair! Can’t we give him this one little gift? Doesn’t he deserve to have this one bit of secret happiness?”

Eunice stared at her sister-in-law in awe. “I don’t understand you, Cassie. You love him, yet you are willing to give him ‘this one bit of secret happiness’ with
another
woman. Why?”

“I can’t bear it when his eyes get that faraway, yearning look. It makes me miserable. In a way, you know, I am the one who killed his dreams. It can’t be right, can it, for a man to have no dreams? We can’t change the
reality
of his life, but perhaps we can keep his dreams alive. In the dimness of his future, shouldn’t we try to give him one small ray of light that he can look forward to?”

“Oh, Cassie,” Eunice moaned in surrender, throwing her arms about her sister-in-law’s neck, “when you speak so, you give me no choice but to do your bidding. I’ll write your blasted letters for you.”

They held each other tightly for a long moment. Then Eunice took the folded papers and stuffed them in her reticule. Cassie, in relief, gave her one last, fervent embrace. “Thank you, Eunice,” she murmured in Eunice’s ear. “I shall be forever in your debt.”

“I don’t want you in my debt,” Eunice retorted gruffly as she went to the door, “but if truth comes out, and this whole, preposterous scheme explodes in your face, I shall refuse to take even a
speck
of blame!”

Chapter Thirty

The messenger delivered the packet of letters in midafternoon of a rainy day a week later. Kittridge was out at the building site when Dickle accepted the packet. Cassie, who’d waited on tenterhooks all week for this moment to arrive, hid behind the curve of the stairway to await his return. She wanted to see Robert’s face when he first glimpsed the letters.

It was teatime when he came home. Dickle, pompous as always, admitted him into the Great Hall and held the packet out to him. “These came from London, my lord,” he announced. “A messenger delivered them at three this afternoon.”

Robert, in the act of brushing the raindrops from his shoulders, froze. He stared at the buff-colored envelopes for a long moment, quite stony-faced, and then, snatching them from Dickle’s hand, strode off to his study without a word. If Cassie had hoped to see a sign of gladness or excitement in his face as a reward for her endeavors, she was doomed to disappointment.

Robert, for his part, was filled with ambivalence. He hadn’t thought about Elinor for days. He’d been thinking, instead, about Cassie. She, not Elinor, was his life’s companion, and he’d been trying to think of ways to overcome her stubborn resistance to his advances. Now the letters brought his memories of Elinor flooding back to confuse him, and he wasn’t sure he welcomed them. The past, he was beginning to realize, could sometimes become a burden. His own past was suddenly appearing so to him. It seemed to be a barricade in his advance to the future, and he had enough barricades to climb already.

Nevertheless, his feelings for Elinor were of such long standing that, almost without thinking, his old reactions swept over him. Staring at her letters, he tried to bring her lovely face to mind, as he had done hundreds of times before. But the vision he conjured up was indistinct, and he wondered guiltily if he was even forgetting what she looked like. Sighing, he broke the seal of the first letter. The awkward handwriting disconcerted him for a moment, but soon the warmth of her words riveted his attention. The mood of the letter was different from the earlier ones. It was more gentle, and sadly reminiscent. And the last paragraph brought a clench to his heart. “
I like to imagine
,” she wrote, “
that sometimes you can feel what I feel, despite the miles between us. When my hand burned, I convinced myself that at the same moment you must have experienced a sting. One day, when I felt an unexplained tingle on my cheek, I let myself believe that you were rubbing yours and sending the touch through the ether right to me. I suppose such thoughts are foolish, but it comforts me to believe that love like ours is capable of creating small miracles. Please, my beloved, when you read this, rub your cheek and think of me!
”

Her continuing devotion, so obvious in her words, made him wince. How was it possible, he wondered, that so lovely a girl—who, with the crook of a finger, could summon a dozen suitors to her side—would keep her affection for him alive so long without the hope of any response? While he, cad that he was, was already growing attached to someone else.

The next letter made him feel worse. “
It was warm today
,” she wrote, “
and I sat on a garden bench looking up at the sky. The cloud formations irritated me, for none of them took your shape. There was
one cloud like a man’s head, but the nose was not yours. I began to have the silliest thoughts. I wished that I could find a brush long enough to paint on the sky. I could not paint your face, of course—even in dreams I know I am no artist—but I had this ridiculous urge to paint your name—Robert, Robert, Robert!—over and over in an arching line until, like a rainbow, it would stretch from horizon to horizon. I am growing quite demented
.”

But it was something in the last letter that undid him. “
I like to remember your quirks
,” she wrote. “
They keep you real for me. I remember how you rub the underside of your nose with your right forefinger when you’re about to say something you’re afraid you shouldn’t. Or the way a muscle right above your jaw twitches with tension when you’re angry. Or the way you run your fingers through your hair when you feel bewildered. Just writing these words is enough to conjure up your face for me, and I can see you in such detail that you become palpable … as real as if you were standing here. It’s only when I try to touch you that the vision dissolves into nothingness, and I am left bereft
.”

The words made Robert groan in agony. His fingers tightened into fists, crushing the last letter into a crumpled ball. Poor, lovely Elinor! She could conjure him up in every detail, while he cauld scarcely remember her face. She offered him her love with such openhearted generosity that the very words with which she expressed it made his throat burn, while he lusted every day, with an ache in his loins that drove him to distraction, for someone else entirely! He was not worthy of Elinor! Or of Cassie, either, for that matter. The letters made him see himself for the loathsome toad he was. They made him hate himself.

But what sin had he committed to cause this shambles, this triangular trap that had distorted three lives? Had he sold his soul to the devil when he’d made his bargain with Chivers? But that bargain had not been the cause of Elinor’s pain. His father, and hers, had done the damage long before he’d signed his devil’s pact with Chivers. But even if he took the blame upon himself, it made no difference, for there was no way out of the trap no matter who was to blame.
It’s as if I were cursed
, he thought as he tenderly smoothed out the paper he’d crushed, folded it and put it with the others into the cubicle. He was living under some witch’s curse for which there was no antidote. Why couldn’t he find a magic amulet, a wand, a wizard’s potion, a virgin’s kiss that would break the spell under which he was doomed to live? But no, not in this life. Only in fairy stories did the toad turn into a prince after a maiden’s kiss.

* * *

Cassie, meanwhile, having no idea of the turmoil the letters had aroused in her husband’s breast, basked in self-satisfaction over the success of her forgery. She’d done it! Robert had been closeted for hours in his study. If he’d found anything wrong with the letters, there would surely have been some sign of it by this time. As the minutes passed, she became more and more convinced that her letters had been a success. Robert was surely finding in them the solace he needed. Just as she wished, the letters were balm to his wounded soul. The feelings they generated would probably nourish him for weeks.

For weeks
. The two words seemed suddenly to reverberate in her head.
After a few weeks, what then?
she asked herself with a start. How soon would it be before he began to look for more? What could she do then? She could write more letters, of course, but Eunice would probably refuse to commit her hand to any more forgeries. And even if she did, how could Cassie get the letters to her without being discovered? Why hadn’t she thought of that before? The letters, to be effective, had to keep coming, but she had no way of accomplishing that. Yet, if they stopped coming, Robert would be in a
worse case than before. What had she done?

She prowled round the sitting room, searching her mind for an answer. And right before dinner time, it came to her. She simply had to get to London, to give Eunice a new supply of letters and convince her to keep up the pretense a while longer. It could be done, if only Robert would agree to take her to town.

At the table that evening, she looked across at him speculatively. He seemed abstracted and somewhat dazed. It gave her a feeling of rueful pride that her words—her own love feelings—had had so strong an effect on him. But the apparent success of the letters made it all the more necessary to solve the problem at hand. She hesitated to raise the subject that was on her mind, but sooner or later it had to be done. After almost an hour of complete silence, she cleared her throat. “Robert?” she began timidly.

“Yes,” he said absently.

“Do you remember, that night before we were married, when we talked about settling in the country?”

“Yes, of course.” He pushed his plate away from him. “What about it?”

“Do you remember saying that you would take me back to town for a month or so in season?”

He lifted his head abruptly. This was the request he’d expected from the first—her admission of her desire to mingle with the
ton
, to play the role of Viscountess Kittridge on the town! It was the purpose for which he assumed she’d married him. All thoughts of Elinor evaporated as his eyes focused on the woman across the table, his whole body tensing. “Yes, I remember,” he said, watching her carefully.

“The season has already begun, you know. Do you think we might go, at least for a fortnight?”

“Well, we shall be going, you know, for Eunice’s wedding.”

“But that’s in June. Two months away. Couldn’t we … would it be asking too much to go now, and then again in June?”

He leaned back in his chair. “It would be too much for me, I’m afraid. The ground is to be broken for the tenants’ housing strip next week. I don’t see how I can spare the time.”

“Oh … I see.”

He could hear the disappointment in her voice. He clenched his teeth, trying to bring his own disappointment under control. She’d seemed so satisfied to be in the country all these months that he’d forgotten his original estimate of her motivation for marriage. But now it was clear—she
was
a parvenu after all. Well, if it was a life in society that she wanted, she could have it. She’d certainly paid for it. “You could go without me, I suppose,” he offered, testing her.

“Could I, Robert? I do so wish to go. I would only stay a week or so.”

“You can stay as long as you like,” he said, a wave of disgust toward her sweeping over him. “Until the wedding is over in June, if you like.”

His words struck her like a slap. She didn’t understand why he’d said that. She wanted to go to town only to make the arrangements about the letters. The week away from home would seem like an eternity to her. Yet he was willing to part with her until the end of June! “Oh, no,” she murmured, her voice choking up with tears. “A w-week will be quite enough.”