Joan Wolf (16 page)

“Good heavens,” said Frances, really shaken now. “Didn’t I say? That was my sister-in-law, Margaret Macdonald.”

“Lochaber’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” There was a pause, then he said flatly, “She doesn’t much care for the Campbells, I take it.”

Frances’s eyes dropped to her hands, which were slowly folding a piece of embroidery over and over. “She is a Macdonald of Lochaber and Glencoe. It is a clan that has a long memory,”

“Yes, I know.” There was a moment of strained silence and then the door opened and Ian came in. He sensed the unease, took in the somber look on Campbell’s face, the tenseness of Frances’s body, and frowned. “Is anything wrong?”

   “Of course not,” Frances said too quickly and Campbell seconded her eagerly. By unspoken mutual consent neither said anything about Margaret. In a few minutes Ian led Ardkinglas away to the library and Frances was left alone in the morning parlor.

   She knew what it was she had just seen. Frances was a firm believer in love at first sight. It had happened to her when she was a great deal younger than Margaret. But like her sister-in-law, she was appalled at who were the parties involved. Ian wouldn’t like it. Of that she was positive. Even Frances found her mind shying away from the thought of marriage to a Campbell. And what, for the love of heaven, must Margaret be thinking?

****

A second confrontation occurred that week to disturb the accord of the Lochaber household. The Earl and Countess of Aysgarth came to town and Frances took Nell to see them. She had been slightly apprehensive about their reaction to her marriage, but they seemed to be genuinely pleased for her.                                                         “After all,” as Lady Aysgarth had said to her husband when they first received the news, “it has been two years since Robert’s death. One could hardly expect a beautiful young woman like Frances to remain a widow forever.’’ The only fear that the Aysgarths had was that they would lose touch with Nell.

“Of course you will continue to see her,” Frances had said warmly when she divined this concern. “Why you know how Nell loves her Grandmama and Grandpapa.” And when Lady Aysgarth asked if Nell could return with them to Kent for two weeks, Frances had not been able to say no. She was acutely aware that from Ian’s point of view it was not the time to bring in the Sedburghs, but he would have to accept their relationship to Nell one day. So she said yes, to Nell’s delight; her grandparents spoiled her shamefully and she reveled in it.

   Frances and Margaret were going to the theater with a party that evening and Ian was engaged with some South American friends, so he was not going to accompany them. He came into Frances’s dressing room before he left to say goodbye, and she dismissed her maid and said, “I have something to tell you, Ian, and I’d better do it before you hear it from Nell.”

He sat down in a fragile chair and Frances offered a silent prayer that it wouldn’t break under him. “What is happening?” he asked.

“I went to see the Aysgarths today,” she said quietly. “They arrived in London this week.”

At the name Aysgarth Ian’s face had hardened. “Oh?” he said only.

“Yes. I took Nell.” He said nothing and after a moment she went on, conscious that her heart was beating uncomfortably fast. “They wanted to take Nell to Aysgarth with them for two weeks and I said she could go.”

Ian’s mouth looked like it was set in iron. “No,” he said.

Frances had promised herself never to quarrel with Ian again, but on this subject she knew she could not give in. “Why not?” she asked steadily. “Surely you are not so small-minded that you can’t share Nell with two old people who love her?”

It was not Nell that Ian found it impossible to share, but he could hardly say that to Frances. How could he explain the fact that he was jealous of a dead man? The shadow of Robert Sedburgh had been hovering over him ever since they arrived in London. “After all, Ian,” he heard Frances say, “they are her grandparents.”

He rose to his feet, intimidatingly large in that delicate, woman’s room.
“They are not her grandparents,”
he said with harsh emphasis.

   She stared at him, her face taking on that remote look it wore when she was angry. “They don’t know that.”

He suddenly took a step toward her. “How did they know you were in town?” he asked grimly.

She didn’t drop her eyes. “I wrote to tell them, of course.”

Ian suddenly bent his head so that his eyes were shielded from her. “You just can’t let him go, can you?” he asked softly. Then, as Frances stared at him in utter stupefaction, he looked up and his face was a stranger’s mask. “Do what you want with Nell,” he said in a clipped voice. “You will anyway no matter what I say.” And he walked out of the room.

Frances sat in bewildered silence which slowly smoldered into anger the more she thought about what he had said. Little did Ian care about her loyalties and her obligations. He had never forgiven her for not telling him about Nell. That was clear to her now. Well, if he thought he was going to just erase four years out of Nell’s life he was mistaken. With bitterness in her heart, Frances summoned her maid and finished dressing for the theater.

Chapter Twenty

To luve unluvit it is ane pane

—
ALEXANDER
SCOTT

Frances did not enjoy her theater party that evening. She and Margaret had been invited to share the box of the Earl of Carstairs, a Scot who was very influential in English society. He was thirty years of age, unmarried, good looking, and wealthy. Frances did not think it would hurt to give Margaret the opportunity to become better acquainted with him. Unfortunately her plans did not include the presence of James Campbell.

He came into the box a few minutes before the play began and Frances felt Margaret stiffen beside her. They exchanged a few brief pleasantries and then the lights dimmed and everyone’s eyes turned to the stage. However, even Edmund Kean’s demonically energetic Richard III could not keep the attention of three of the watchers in the Earl of Carstairs’s box.

   Margaret sat like a statue, but Frances was not fooled by that quiet composure. And James Campbell on the other side of her was equally tense. From time to time he glanced from the stage to Margaret. There was something in the straight lines of her profile that caused his hands to close hard on the edge of the box. When the intermission came he turned and said immediately, “Would you care to take a stroll into the lobby, Miss Macdonald?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, and without further words the two of them left the box. Frances frowned slightly but made no attempt to follow them.

Lord Carstairs was not at all displeased to be left with Frances, and after a few minutes his box filled with the usual collection of her friends and admirers. Margaret and Campbell returned a few minutes before the curtain rose again. She looked pale but calm, and the rest of the evening passed in relatively easy accord.

Frances slept later than usual the next morning and as soon as she got up she was assailed by a wave of nausea. She quickly got back into bed and lay quietly, feeling the sickness slowly subside. She drifted back to sleep, and when she awoke two hours later she felt fine. She dressed slowly, an abstracted expression on her face. This was the fifth day this had occurred, and the stirrings of hope she had resolutely been beating down were now too strong to ignore. She was almost sure she was with child.

   Uppermost in her emotions was relief. She had lived with Robert Sedburgh for two years after Nell’s birth and she had never conceived. She had begun to be afraid that she never would; that God was punishing her for her sin with Ian. Rob had laughed when she told him this and said not to worry, they would have children in time. Frances, who very much wanted to give him a son to make up for all her own shortcomings, had not been so confident.

But this morning’s queasiness was too familiar for her to disregard any longer. She had had it only once before. That, and the unusual sleepiness she had been experiencing lately.

She was going to have a baby. Her heart swelled and she yearned with dizzy tenderness toward the time when she would once more hold an infant in her arms, feel the downy softness of its fragile head under her lips. She smiled radiantly. How pleased Ian would be.

At this point in her imaginings she came thumping uncomfortably back to earth. The memory of her last encounter with him was unpleasantly clear. She had been bitterly angry with him and he with her. But she could not harbor anger in her heart now. She was anchored to Ian by ties far stronger than the strongest chain; ties that she could not cut without breaking herself in two. Why fight him, then? She would put her resentment behind her and, when she told him of the coming baby, he would do the same.

Frances went down to lunch feeling comfortably hungry and looking forward to meeting her husband. When he didn’t appear she was not overly disturbed and she made plans to go shopping with Margaret. When Margaret asked if she were feeling well she replied composedly, “Oh, yes. Just a trifle tired. I need to sleep later in London than I do at home.”

   Margaret was preoccupied with her own thoughts and did not notice anything odd in Frances, who had always had the energy of a young lioness, confessing that a few parties had tired her out. Margaret had had a very interesting conversation with James Campbell of Ardkinglas that morning at Hookham’s lending library, and she was looking forward to seeing him at Lady Cowper’s ball that evening. She had too many problems of her own at the moment to worry about her sister-in-law. Consequently they dropped Nell and her nurse at Aysgarth House and then spent an abstracted but busy afternoon at the Pantheon Bazaar.

****

Ian was not home for dinner either, and arrived only to change into evening dress in time to escort his wife and sister to the Cowpers’ ball. His face was hard and unyielding and his eyes did not soften as he regarded Frances, breathtaking in a gown of water green Italian silk with an opera comb set behind the heavy knot of ash-blonde hair on the crown of her head. She smiled at him tentatively but he said only, “I’m sorry to be late. Let’s go.” Then he looked at her again as he held her cloak and frowned. “Isn’t that dress rather low cut?”

She looked surprised. “For Edinburgh perhaps, but for London it is really quite conservative.”

He stared for a minute at the beautiful curve of her breasts, discreetly revealed by the scooped neckline of green silk. He shrugged. “If you want to show yourself to the world it’s your affair I suppose. I can’t say I like it.”

Her long green eyes narrowed with dawning temper. “You never did have any taste in clothes,” she said sweetly, took her cloak from his hands and walked out of the room.

   The ride in the coach to the Cowpers’ was distinctly uncomfortable. Margaret chatted gamely but got little assistance from either of her companions and at last she gave it up. As soon as they arrived Ian disappeared in the direction of the card room, Frances was claimed by four different men, and Margaret agreed to dance with James Campbell.

About half way through the evening, Ian appeared with the Condessa de Losada, a Spanish widow who had been enlivening London society for the past several months. The Condessa was about thirty years of age, with a voluptuous figure, heavy-lidded brown eyes, and a full, sensual mouth. Any man who looked at her immediately thought of one thing only, but she had remained surprisingly elusive for one so obviously tantalizing. There was talk of a liaison between her and the Duke of Leyburn, but no one was certain of their exact relationship. She had been in Sussex for the past month, so this was the first time her path had crossed the Lochabers’.

“Who is that?” Frances asked Douglas, who was waiting to partner her in the next set.

Douglas looked. “That is the Condessa de Losada,” he replied. “She is the widow of a rich Spaniard and has been gracing our shores for a few months now.”

As they watched, Ian smiled down at the Condessa and, putting a hand on her waist, led her onto the floor. “Well!” said Frances, indignation trembling in her voice. “And to think he had the audacity to make nasty comments about my neckline! If hers were any lower she’d fall out of it.”

There was certainly a great deal of the luscious Condessa on view, but Ian didn’t appear to be at all scandalized. The Condessa gave him a smile that could only be labeled seductive, and he bent his head to murmur something in her ear.

The waltz music started and Douglas lightly clasped Frances around the waist and swung her into the dance. He could feel the tenseness of her body as they went round the room.

   “What’s the matter?” he asked gently. “Surely you’re not upset because Ian is dancing with the Condessa?”

“Upset?” Green panther’s eyes looked into his. “Of course I’m not upset. What a silly thing to say, Douglas.”

“I beg your pardon,” he replied automatically, but a faint furrow appeared between his brows. When Frances looked like this she made him nervous.

His apprehension was not allayed as the evening progressed. Ian appeared to be engrossed by the Condessa, who was making the most blatant bid for a man’s attention that anyone had ever seen her make. Frances did not seem to be concerned, but there was a wintry remoteness about her that Douglas did not like at all. She spent half an hour in serious conversation with James Campbell of Ardkinglas, but otherwise her behavior appeared to be perfectly normal. However, she came up to him as everyone was going into supper and asked if he would take her home.

“What about Margaret?” he asked, although that was not the question that was on his mind.

“My aunt is here. She will keep an eye on Margaret. I hate to drag her away so early but I am really very tired.”

She did look tired, Douglas thought. The skin under her eyes had a faint bluish cast, and though she walked as uprightly as ever it appeared to be an effort for her. “Are you all right, Frances?” he asked anxiously.