Gifts of Love (11 page)

“Laura, what’s wrong?” Hale asked.

“Everything. It’s been wrong since the beginning.” She peeled her gloves off and wiped her stinging eyes. “Jason has no idea how overwhelming he is. I don’t know how to please him, and when I try I fail miserably. I—I think something is wrong with me. Whenever we try to…be intimate, I don’t do whatever it is he expects me to do, and—”

“Laura, wait.” Hale cleared his throat uncomfortably, his cheekbones tinged with red. “If you’re referring to the sort of thing that goes on in the bedroom, I think you had better discuss it with a woman.”

Laura thought of her prudish mother and her straight-laced sisters. “Who do you suggest?” she asked.

Hale groaned and clutched his head in his hands, looking down at the flowered carpet. “All right,” he said in a muffled voice. “Tell me. But keep in mind that a fellow doesn’t like to hear about his sister and…that.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing to tell you.” After a brief pause, she repeated meaningfully, “Nothing.”

Hale’s astonished green eyes met hers. “Are you trying to tell me…my God…that you and Jason have never…
never
?”

“No,” Laura said, embarrassed but strangely relieved to be telling someone.

Hale opened and closed his mouth several times before he could form another word. “Why not?” he finally managed to ask.

She held her head in her hands much as he had a moment before, while her words burst out in a swift torrent. “Jason has approached me a few times, but I—I make him so angry. The last time we argued he accused me of being cold, a-and I suppose I must be, but I can’t seem to help myself! I thought that as time passed we might come to some kind of understanding, but things only worsened. He spends his days at his business offices, and he dines at his club, and whenever he is in the house we avoid meeting in the same room! There’s not the least bit of trust or friendliness between us. The best we’ve been able to manage is politeness, but now even that seems to be beyond us.”

“I see,” Hale said, sounding strange. He stroked his mustache and shook his head.

“And tonight,” Laura continued, “I was in the library with Perry Whitton, who kissed me—”

“He
what?
” Hale gave her a disapproving glance.

“Perry and I are friends, nothing more.”

“All the same, Laura, you shouldn’t have allowed it.”

“It happened too quickly for me to say or do anything! And of course Jason walked in and misinterpreted the situation, and said that I must be ashamed of being the wife of a shanty mick…and I don’t even know what that is!”

“That’s what they call an Irishman, one from a peasant family so poor that even the women have to work.” Hale sighed heavily. “A mick, a blackleg, a greenhorn. A few of the fellows at Harvard didn’t give a damn about his being Irish, but most of them did. Jason was excluded and subtly insulted at almost every turn. After all, his background was the same as that of their servants. You know how they can be.” He made a face. “Frankly, I can’t blame Jason for being upset if he saw you with Perry Whitton. He is the epitome of all Jason could never be, a gentleman with the right name, the right family, the right upbringing.”

Laura nodded in understanding. Boston society was fastidious about every entry in a family’s genealogy. Change was regarded with suspicion, and everything depended upon who one’s grandfather had happened to be. It was considered vulgar to work hard or make much money. The ideal Bostonian man was genteel, dignified, and intellectual. Someone like Jason, ambitious and driven, a self-made man, was a shock to the more refined Bostonians such as the Whittons.

“Hale,” she said fervently, “if I had wanted a man of Perry’s ilk, I wouldn’t have married Jason. How can I make him understand that?”

“I don’t know.” Her brother looked guilty. “It won’t be easy to convince him. Your entire family disapproves of his heritage. We all know that Father only consented to the betrothal because of the extraordinary amount of money Jason’s made in real estate. And I…well, I told Jason at the beginning that I was against the marriage because he’s Irish.”

“Y-you couldn’t have!” Laura exclaimed, horrified. “Hale, you don’t really feel that way!”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded stubbornly. “I explained to Jason that I valued him as a friend, but I couldn’t approve of him marrying one of my sisters. Especially not you. I knew how difficult it would be for you, never quite belonging in one world or the other. I had known for a long time that Jason wanted to marry someone with a name, someone who could gain him entry into our circles. And—hell, I’ll be frank—he comes from crude beginnings, Laura.”

“That doesn’t matter to me,” Laura said, and cleared her throat awkwardly. “It has never mattered to me that Jason is Irish.”

The maid knocked at the door and brought in their toddies on a small silver tray. Laura took the tray from her and dismissed her with a wan smile of thanks. She gave Hale his drink and sipped slowly on hers, welcoming its bracing effects.

“Well,” Hale said, “let’s address this business about this ‘coldness’ of yours. I’ll wager some of this is Mother’s influence.”

“Hale, I can’t blame her for—”

“Don’t defend her, sweetheart. She raised all three of her daughters to believe that it is natural for a husband and wife to live as strangers. For years I knew about the ridiculous things she told you and Anne and Sophia, but it wasn’t my place to contradict her.” He sighed and regarded her sympathetically. “These matters are not complicated, Laura. It’s very simple. All you have to do is show Jason that you’re willing to accept his attentions, and he will take care of the rest of it. He is an experienced man. Just allow him to…” He stopped and began fiddling uneasily with the silk fringe of the brocaded chair. “He wouldn’t be cruel to you, Laura, not in that way.”

She clasped her hands together tightly. “I wish I could believe that. But I don’t know what to think about him anymore. I find myself wondering why I married him.”

“Well, why did you?” Hale demanded.

“Father wanted me to, and it was a help to the family.”

“Father and the family be damned! You know he wouldn’t have forced you to marry Jason. The wedding would never have taken place had you uttered one word of objection.”

Laura bit her lip and nodded, ashamed. “Yes, you’re right. I…the truth is, I was more than willing. I wanted to be a wife to Jason.” She drew her legs up and tucked them beneath her. “Jason thinks he doesn’t need anything from anyone. But I knew the first moment I met him that he needed someone like me, to help and comfort him, to bring some warmth into his life. I was so certain I could soften him, and bring out another side of him.” She laughed shakily. “And instead he seems to be changing me into something I never wanted to be.”

It was three hours later when Hale made his way downstairs and discovered that the last of the guests had departed. Sliding his hands in his pockets, he ambled through the ballroom, where the musicians were packing their instruments.

“Was it a success?” Hale inquired of the young lank-haired violinist.

“Quite lively for your kind of crowd,” came the cheerful reply.

Hale grinned and wandered past a pair of Irish maids carrying trays of empty glasses. “Pardon, miss,” he inquired of one of them, “where might Mr. Moran be? Retired for the evening? No? Ah, drinking in the library. I’m not surprised. Mr. Moran does have a taste for whiskey, doesn’t he?”

Jason was sitting in a chair before the fire, holding a bottle of liquor loosely in his hand. His legs were stretched out, his head resting against the brocaded upholstery. His black evening coat had been discarded, while the sleeves of his starched white shirt were rolled up to the elbows. His eyes were half-slitted as he stared into the flames, while the firelight played over his raven hair. He did not move as Hale walked into the room and closed the door.

“Usquebaugh,”
Hale said, using a Gaelic word Jason had once taught him. He gestured casually toward the whiskey. “You micks call it the water of life, don’t you?”

“Go to hell.”

“Very likely.” Hale dragged up a heavy chair with his foot and collapsed into it. “First, however, I’m going to have a talk with you.”

“If you’re half-witted enough to think I’m going to listen—”

“I believe I’ll begin with a few observations.” Green eyes met black, and they exchanged a long glance, the glance of adversaries who knew each other’s secrets. “So far everything has gone according to your plan, hasn’t it?” Hale said. “Remember telling me about the plan years ago? Remember what you said?”

Jason arched a black eyebrow. “I said that by the time I was twenty-five I would have graduated from Harvard with honors.”

“And established yourself in the Boston business community.”

“Yes.”

“And married a girl whose name would allow you into the most elite social circles.”

“Yes.”

Hale smiled ironically. “At the time, although I admired your ambition, I didn’t believe you could do it. But you’ve accomplished all that. You married my own sister. You’re being referred to in Boston as ‘that damned Irish tycoon,’ and by the time you reach thirty, you’ll have multiplied your fortune several times over.” He leaned forward, losing some of his flippancy as he demanded, “What, then, is the cause for bitterness? Why are you behaving like such a bastard to Laura, when you have everything you ever wanted out of life?”

Jason swished the whiskey in the bottle and stared into its swirling contents. He was tempted to confide in Hale, but he could not let go of the grudge between them.

“Don’t answer, then,” Hale said. “I already know why.”

Jason’s eyes gleamed dangerously. “You’ve always known all the answers, haven’t you? A Prescott’s prerogative.”

Hale shrugged.

Jason extended the whiskey bottle with a scowl, and Hale took a drink without hesitation. “You’ve been talking with Laura,” Jason said.

“Yes, and she’s owned up to a few things I’ve been suspecting for some time.”

“It’s a dangerous game, prying into matters that have nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Hale exclaimed, his temper sparking. “Laura is my sister, my
favorite
sister, and you’re making her miserable! Of all the girls in Boston you could have married and made miserable, why did it have to be her?”

Jason rested his forearms on his knees, a shock of black hair falling over his forehead. He answered slowly, watching the fire with a brooding gaze. “There weren’t all that many girls to choose from. It had to be someone with a name, and someone with the qualities I wanted in a wife. And most of all it had to be someone whose family was in financial straits and had need of a rich son-in-law.”

“So when it came time to marry, you cast your eyes around and there was my youngest sister—”

“I decided to marry Laura the first Christmas I spent with your family.”

Hale frowned, the ends of his mustache curving downward. “That long ago?”

“Yes. Laura was only fifteen. When the family sat down to dinner I nearly made some excuse and left. I would rather have faced a firing line than confront that endless row of spoons and forks at each plate. I didn’t know which one to pick up first, or how to eat the damned asparagus. And there was your mother, watching every move I made like a hawk. But Laura was slower and more painstaking than everyone else, and I was able to imitate everything she did. Halfway through the meal I realized she knew I was aping her. She was being slow and precise in order to make it easier for me.”

“Hell,
I
never bothered with Mother’s blasted rows of forks.”

“You didn’t have to,” Jason said flatly. “You had nothing to prove.”

“And so you decided to marry Laura because she helped you get through a meal?”

“Because I knew she would be the kind of wife I needed.”

Laura had said much the same thing. Hale set down the bottle of whiskey and stood up, glaring at his former friend. “Ah. A housekeeper. A social companion. A teacher of etiquette. A pretty ornament to impress the hoi polloi. There were other girls you could have married if that was all you wanted. Laura has more to give than that, and she deserves more than to spend the rest of her life trying to make you into a gentleman.”

Jason smiled nastily. “You think she’s too good for an Irishman?”

“Not at all. I think she’s too good for
you.
”

Retrieving the whiskey bottle, Jason gestured toward the door. “Understood. Now get the hell out of here.”

Hale paced around the room in frustration. “I’ve never seen Laura as high-strung and nervous as she was tonight. You’re crushing all the fire and spirit out of her.”

Jason stood up to face him. “
Fire
and
spirit,
” he repeated sarcastically, thinking of his pale, poised wife, “are not words I would apply to your sister, Hale.”

“Oh? Now I’m beginning to understand how little you really know her. She’s the most adventurous, free-spirited girl I’ve ever…why, once on a dare she sneaked into Father’s room and cut off half his mustache while he was sleeping. She loves swimming and skating and riding. She’s a crack shot, a first-rate pianist, an excellent dancer. She’s always dreamed of going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids, and traveling up the Nile in a
dahabeah—
”

“A what?”

“
Dahabeah.
One of those long boats.”

Jason stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Hale, I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about, but it isn’t my wife.”

“It damn well is! And there’s something else you should hear—”

“I’ve heard enough.”

“Falling-out or not, I should have talked to you before the wedding about Laura. This notion you both seem to have—this supposed coldness of hers—”

“Out,” Jason said tersely, herding him toward the door.

Hale talked rapidly. “Dammit, Jason, you obviously haven’t realized how sheltered she’s been. My other two sisters had a devil of a time adjusting to marriage after the way they’d been reared. If Mother were a Catholic, she’d consider the
convent
too permissive for her daughters. Most girls have opportunities to flirt and hold hands with men, enjoy a stolen kiss or two. My sisters had none of that. As you know, Jason, I have a great deal of respect for my mother—but there’s no denying that she’s a bitter woman. My father has been unfaithful to her, not once but many times. My parents’ marriage went sour long before Laura was even born. Laura’s been brought up with some mistaken ideas about men and women, and by God, you’ve probably confirmed every last one of them! All because you seem to expect her to hop into your arms like some barmaid!”