Never Call It Love (25 page)

Weakly
she raised her head and looked down at her body, lying flat beneath the
coverlet. So that was how it had ended. That new life, conceived in violence,
had been snuffed out in a welter of blood and futile suffering.

"Milady!"

Until
Mrs. Corcoran spoke, rising from her chair in one corner, Elizabeth had not
known the housekeeper was in the room. The woman hurried over to the bed. Even
though she already knew the answer, Elizabeth asked, "Then the child is
dead?"

Mrs.
Corcoran compressed her lips to stop their trembling. "Yes, milady. There
was no chance of it being otherwise. You were well short of your seventh month,
you know."

"Was
it...?"

"You
would have borne a son, milady." The housekeeper's face was swollen from
recent tears. Elizabeth thought: I wish I could cry.

"Is
there anything I can get for you?"

"Not
right now, thank you."

Mrs.
Corcoran hesitated, and then burst out, "Please try not to grieve, milady.
You will have other children." Perhaps this miscarriage would prove a
blessing in disguise, the housekeeper was thinking. Perhaps now Sir Patrick
would stay closer to home, instead of chasing after that woman who, for all her
lands and grand tide, had always reminded Mrs. Corcoran of a mare in heat.
Certainly he had seemed distressed enough last night, although whether it had
been because of his wife's suffering or because of losing the child, it would
be hard to say.

"Sir
Patrick is downstairs, milady. He told me to tell him as soon as you felt able
to see him."

She
might as well get it over with, Elizabeth decided. "He can come up now if
he likes."

Mrs.
Corcoran hurried out. Elizabeth stared at the ceiling. Something she once had
read flitted through her mind. Anne Boleyn, and the miscarriage she had
suffered after a violent scene with her abominable husband, Henry VIII. His
majesty had rushed into the room where she lay weeping with pain and terror,
and had shouted at her, "Madam, you have killed my son!"

Would
Patrick...?

Someone
knocked. She called, "Come in."

The
door opened. He stood there for a moment, his face well-controlled, and yet
holding tired lines that told her he had slept little, if at all, during the
last twenty-four hours. He crossed the room and stood beside her bed. "Are
you in pain?"

"No.
I am merely... very tired."

He
wondered, looking down at her white, remote face, if she meant that she wanted
him to leave her as soon as possible. Probably she did. "Colin set out
early this morning for Dublin. He will bring a doctor back with him."

"A
doctor?"

"Yes.
I must know how you are."

No
doubt what he must know, Elizabeth thought, was whether or not Lady Stanford
was still capable of providing Sir Patrick Stanford with an heir.

He
saw how her mouth had twisted, as if at the taste of something bitter. He said,
"Is there anything I can do for you right now?"

"No,
thank you. I think I would like to sleep." Bruised-looking in her white
face, her eyelids closed.

"Very
well. I will be down in the library, in case you need me." When she did
not reply, he added in a rapid, almost harsh voice, "I am sorry about the
child." He walked out of the room.

As
he moved toward the stairs, he reflected that he should have known there would
be no living child. What good could come of a marriage such as theirs?

If
only there was some way of turning time back, some way that he and Elizabeth
could become once more the man and woman they had been at first meeting,
smiling at each other over punch in a candlelit London ballroom. But of course
they could not, any more than a stream could flow uphill to its source. They
were what they had become, and that was that.

In
the library he added a small log to the feeble fire in the grate. He would stay
at Stanford Hall until he heard the doctor's verdict. After that, it would be
high time to set out on the long and crucially important journey he had planned
for late September, a journey that would take him as far north as Belfast and
as far west as Galway.

Trying
to blot out all thought of his wife and dead child, he stood with palms propped
against the mantelpiece and stared into the fire.

***

Three
more days passed before Colin returned from Dublin with the doctor. On each of
those days Patrick visited Elizabeth in the morning and again in the afternoon.
Their brief conversations, concerned with the
weather or minor household
matters, included no mention of the son they had lost.

The
doctor, a stocky, reserved-looking man of about forty, arrived late in the
afternoon. When he had completed his examination, he told Elizabeth that her
health had suffered no permanent damage. And there was no reason why she should
not have half a dozen children. "You are young and strong," he said,
as he prepared to leave. "You should be completely recovered within two or
three weeks."

After
Rose had taken her supper tray away that night, Patrick came into the room.
"The doctor gave a good report of you."

"Yes.
Is he still here?"

"No,
he decided to start back to Dublin tonight." He paused. "I came to
tell you that I too am leaving on a journey."

"When?"

"Early
tomorrow morning."

As
a matter of fact, he intended to leave Stanford Hall within the half-hour, ride
over to Wetherly, and in the morning set out from there. He could no longer put
off seeing Moira. News of Elizabeth's miscarriage must have traveled to
Wetherly within an hour or two after it happened. Ever since then, Moira had
been sending messages demanding that he come to see her.

Elizabeth
said, in a tone of polite interest, "How long will you be gone?"

"Perhaps
a month. You see, I am thinking of leasing additional farmlands and then
subleasing them, not only here in the south but in other parts of
Ireland."

Was
he telling the truth? If so, it was the first time he had revealed any of his
financial dealings to her. And if he was not telling the truth...

She
looked up into his dark face, realizing that she still knew very little about
him. What was he really like? And
his frequent absences from Stanford
Hall. Could visits to Moira and to his tenants account for all of them? Or were
there times when he was doing... something else? She felt a stir of a new kind
of uneasiness, so vague that she could not identify it.

He
said, "You look tired. I had best say good night."

She
answered, still in that polite voice, "Good night. I wish you a pleasant
journey."

As
the doctor had predicted, her health mended rapidly. In another two days she
was sitting at her desk, writing to her mother about the miscarriage, but going
into no details. A little more than a week after that, she was once more
consulting with Mrs. Corcoran and Gertrude about menus, and even moving out of
her room for brief inspection tours of the rest of the house.

Now
that Patrick was away, Colin spent more time at Stanford Hall. He not only took
supper with Elizabeth each night. Often he was there all day. With the potato
and grain harvests in, he explained, there was no need for him to visit tenant
farms, either those of Patrick or his own. Several mornings after Elizabeth was
fully recovered, they went for horseback rides, moving with Gypsy past fields
where grain had been gathered into shocks, and past apple orchards where the
trees stood bare of both fruit and leaves. One such morning, hoarfrost covered
the ground. Turning in the saddle, Elizabeth saw the hoofprints her mount and
Colin's left on the gray-white rime, prints that disappeared so rapidly that
they might have been made by ghosts.

In
mid-October she received a letter from Madame Leclerc in Dublin. The
Frenchwoman begged to inform Lady Stanford that her gowns were now finished,
and could be fitted at any time after Lady Stanford's
accouchement.
Elizabeth
folded the letter quickly after reading it. As much as possible she avoided
thinking of the child she had lost.

As
for the gowns, perhaps when Patrick returned he would suggest that they go to
Dublin to get them.

The
next night, she was in her room, changing, with Rose's help, before going down
to supper, when she heard a clatter of hooves in the forecourt. Quickly she
slipped into a robe and then went to the window. By the light streaming through
the front doorway she saw Patrick hand his mount's reins to young Joseph and
then turn toward the steps. Heartbeat strangely rapid, she turned back to Rose.
"Please help me into my gown. Then I won't need you any longer."

She
was alone in the room, pulling the stray tendril of hair into place before the
mirror, when someone knocked. "Come in."

He
entered the room, looking rumpled and with dust on his boots. "Colin tells
me you have quite recovered," he said, "but I wanted to see for
myself." He looked at her face in its frame of chestnut curls. "Yes,
I see that he is right."

Elizabeth
felt faint color in her cheeks. "And your journey?"

"It
went well enough." He turned toward the door. "I must try to tidy
myself before I go down to the supper table."

"Just
a moment." Then, as he turned back to her: "Madame Leclerc has
written that my gowns are ready. I was wondering if we might go to Dublin
within the next few days."

"I
am sorry. But I will be busy here for at least a week."

Busy
doing what? Having a prolonged reunion with Moira Ashley?

Until
now, when she felt a sharp pang of disappointment, she had not realized that
she had very much wanted that trip to Dublin with Patrick. She was not sure
why. Perhaps over the past weeks she had begun to hope,
not for a happy
marriage—that was quite impossible— but at least for a certain companionship
with her husband.

Or—humiliating
thought!—perhaps her treacherous body, now restored to health, had begun to
clamor for the lovemaking of this man she had every reason to loathe, and yet
could not help desiring. Perhaps without her ever admitting the thought to her
consciousness, she had hoped that during the course of a few nights away from
both Stanford Hall and Wetherly, she might lure him permanently away from
Moira's bed.

He
said, "You could take Mrs. Corcoran to Dublin with you. Or if you want to
wait awhile, perhaps I could go with you. But not now. In fact, I plan to ride
out again right after supper, perhaps to be gone several days."

"In
that case," she said coldly, "I will not wait. I will go with Mrs.
Corcoran."

In
Dublin one afternoon less than a week later, Elizabeth stood in the sitting
room of her two-room lodgings, the same lodgings she and Patrick had occupied
the previous summer. In her hand was a note a manservant had just brought to
the door. Frowning, she read it for the second time:

My
dear Lady Stanford,

Since
I too am staying at this inn, would you grant
me the great pleasure of serving
you tea in my rooms? They are directly above your own.

I
do hope to see you at four this afternoon.

Your
obedient servant,

Moira
Ashley

Elizabeth's
gaze went to the traveling clock she had placed on a desk in one corner. Almost
three-thirty. Should she go? Even as she asked herself the question, she knew
that she would. Curiosity alone would impel her to do so.

What
did Moira Ashley want? Was her arrival at this particular inn at this
particular time a coincidence? Elizabeth did not think so.

She
herself, with Mrs. Corcoran riding beside her in the Stanford coach, had
arrived in Dublin the day before, too late in the afternoon to visit Madame
Leclerc's establishment. It was not until this morning that she had gone to the
Frenchwoman's shop. In a letter written from Stanford Hall, Elizabeth already
had informed Madame Leclerc of the miscarriage. Yesterday the modiste, after
expressing sympathy, had abandoned the topic. Nevertheless, as Elizabeth turned
this way and that at the Frenchwoman's direction, she thought of how
differently she had once visualized her second visit to this establishment,
with herself describing to an appreciative Madame Leclerc the charms of her
little son or daughter.

"Voil
à!
This gown will now
be of the perfect fit through the waist. Can you remain in Dublin until late
tomorrow afternoon, Lady Stanford?
Bon!
I will have your gowns ready to
put in the trunk of your carriage."

Elizabeth
had returned to her rooms at the inn. Only minutes later, Lady Moira's note had
arrived.

How
had Moira known that Elizabeth was even in Dublin, let alone at this particular
inn? Through Patrick? Probably, but not necessarily. Servants from both
Wetherly
and Stanford Hall, traveling to and from the village on various errands,
regularly exchanged information.