No Greater Love (39 page)

“Are you still married to her?” Edwina looked at him as she asked, and blew her nose again. The thought of having married Patrick instead was an intriguing one, and she was sorry again that she’d never met him until their crossing on the
Paris.

“I am,” he said stoically. “We have three fine sons, and we speak to each other approximately once every two months, between trips, and over breakfast. I’m afraid my wife is … ahh … not overly fond of gentlemen, and she’s far happier with her lady friends, her female relatives, and her horses.” Edwina thought he had just said something rather important to her, but she was too embarrassed to ask him to elaborate, so she didn’t. Suffice it to say that he was married to a woman he didn’t love, and who didn’t love him, and perhaps what the “lady friends” meant was unimportant. But in fact Patrick had said what she thought he had. The only amazing thing was that in a very few attempts, they had actually managed to have three children, and that was unlikely to happen again, as the attempt was no longer made, nor desired by either party.

“Would you ever divorce her?” Edwina asked quietly, but Patrick slowly shook his head.

“No, for a number of reasons, among them my sons. And I’m afraid my parents would never survive it. No
one in our family has ever divorced, you see. And to complicate matters further, thanks to a French grandmother, I am that rarest of all birds, a British Catholic. I’m afraid that Philippa and I are bound for life, which leaves things rather lonely for me, if not for her, and a rather grim prospect for the next forty or fifty years.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but underneath it, Edwina could hear the loneliness and see it in his eyes as he described his marriage.

“Why don’t you leave her then? You can’t live like that for the rest of your life.” It was amazing. They were strangers and they were sharing their innermost secrets. But those things often happened on shipboard.

“I have no choice,” Patrick said quietly, referring to his wife again. “Just as you didn’t when you were faced with bringing up your brothers and sisters.
Noblesse oblige
, as my grandmother would have said. Some things are a matter of duty as well as love. And this is mine. And the boys are wonderful, they’re growing up a bit now, and, of course, they’re all away at school. Richard was the last to go last year, at seven. It frees me up quite a bit now. Actually, I don’t have to be at home at all, and most of the time I’m not.” He smiled a boyish smile at Edwina. “I spend a great deal of time in New York. I go to Paris on business whenever possible. I have my father’s lands to keep up. I have friends in Berlin and Rome … you see, it’s not as bad as all that.” But Edwina was honest with him, as she stood close to him and he kept his arm around her.

“It sounds very empty and very sad.” She didn’t mince words with him, and he looked down at her honestly.

“You’re right. It is. But it’s all I have, Edwina, and I make the best of it. Just as you do. It’s not a life, but it’s my life. Just as yours is. Look what you’ve done, you’ve spent a whole lifetime mourning a man who’s been gone
for a dozen years. A man you loved when you were twenty. Think of it … think of him. Did you really know him? Do you know who he is, who he was, if he would ever have made you happy? You had a right to so much more than that, so did I, but simple fact is, we didn’t get it. So you make the best of it, surrounded by the brothers and sisters you love, and I do the same with my children. I have no right to more than that, I’m a married man. But you’re not, and when you get off this ship, you ought to go find someone, someone you love, maybe even someone Charles would have liked, and marry him and have children of your own. I can’t do that anymore, but you can. Edwina, don’t waste it.”

“Don’t be foolish.” She laughed at him, but he had said wise words to her, whether or not she knew it. “Do you know how old I am? I’m thirty-two years old. I’m much too old for that. My life is already half over.”

“So is mine. And I’m thirty-nine. But do you know what? If I had another chance, a chance to love someone, to be happy, to have children again, I would jump at it in a minute.” And as he said that, he looked down at her, and before she could answer him again, he kissed her. He kissed her as she hadn’t been kissed since Charles had died, and she couldn’t even remember having been kissed that way then, and for an instant what Patrick had just said crossed her mind. Was he right? Was Charles only a distant memory from her childhood? Had she changed so much? Would she have outgrown him? Did she really even remember? It was impossible to know now, and there was no doubt in her mind that she had loved him. But perhaps she had carried him for too long. Perhaps the time to let him go had come at last. And suddenly, as she kissed Patrick back, all else faded from her mind, as they held each other like two drowning people.

It was a long time before he let her go again, and they
stood there holding each other close as he kissed her again, and then he looked down at her and told her something she had a right to know from the first. And he knew he had to tell her.

“Edwina, no matter what happens between us, I can’t marry you. I want you to know that now, before you fall in love with me, and I with you. No matter how much I come to love you one day, I am a dead man. I will stay married to my dying day. And I don’t want to destroy your life too. I’ll tell you right now that if you let me love you, I will set you free … for your sake, and for mine … I won’t hold on to you, and I won’t let you hold on either. Do you understand?”

“I do,” she said huskily, grateful for his honesty, but she had sensed from the beginning that he was that kind of person. It was why she had let herself talk to him, and why she already knew she loved him. It was absurd, she scarcely knew him, yet she knew she loved him.

“I won’t let you do what you did with Charles … carry the memory for years … I want to love you, and send you on your way, a whole and happy person. And if you do come to love me one day, you’ll marry someone else and do what I told you.”

“You worry too much.” She smiled. “You can’t foresee everything. What if Philippa dies one day, or leaves you, or decides to move away somewhere?”

“I won’t build my life on that, or let you do it either. Remember, my love, I will set you free one day … like a little bird … to fly back home from where you’ve come, far across the ocean.” But as he said the words, it made her lonely for him before anything began and she clung to him and whispered softly, “Not yet … please …”

“No … not yet …” he whispered back, and then like a memory in a distant dream, he ruffled her hair
with his lips, and whispered again, “… I love you …” Strangers though they were, their confessions, and the link of Charles, had brought them together.

IT WAS THE SORT OF THING THAT ONLY HAPPENED IN BOOKS, OR
one of George’s movies. They met, they fell in love, and they existed suspended between two worlds, as Edwina discovered a life she’d never had, or had forgotten about in the past eleven years. They talked, they laughed, they walked for hours around the ship, and gradually she lost her terror that they would sink at any moment. He made sure to be with her at lifeboat drill, although in point of fact he belonged at another station. But the purser didn’t object. And from the distance, other passengers watched them with warm smiles and envious looks and silent cheering from the sidelines. They were discreet as they sought private spots and hideaways just to talk and kiss and hold hands. It was what they had both missed for so long, although Edwina suspected that Patrick had had it from time to time, although he claimed that he had never loved anyone since he got married, and she believed him.

“What were you like as a child?” he asked, wanting to know everything, every detail, every smallest bit about her.

“I don’t know,” she smiled happily up at him, “ I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it. Happy, I guess. We had a pretty ordinary life, until they died. Before that, I went to school, I fought with Phillip over our toys … I used to love to help Mama in the garden … in fact,” she remembered now, “when she first died … after we came home, I used to talk to her out there, clipping her rosebushes, and pulling weeds, and sometimes I’d get pretty angry. I wanted to know why she had done what she did, what made her stay with him when she had all these children that I felt she had deserted.”

“And did you ever get any answers?” He smiled down at her, as she shook her head.

“No, but I always felt better afterward.”

“Then it must have been a good thing. I like gardening, too, when I get the chance. Although it’s not considered very manly.” They talked about everything, their childhood friends, their favorite sports, and most-beloved authors. He liked the serious, classical stuff, and she liked popular authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos. They both liked poetry, and sunsets, and moonlight and dancing. And she told him with tears in her eyes how proud she was of George and what he had done, and how much she liked Helen. She even told him about giving Helen the veil she had been meant to wear for Charles, and that time Patrick cried as he listened.

“I wish you’d have worn it for me.”

“So do I,” she whispered as she wiped the tear off his cheek, and that night, the day after they’d met, they went dancing. She bemoaned the fact that she didn’t have a single decent dress, but miraculously, he had a stewardess find her one for the evening. It fit perfectly
and had a label from Chanel, and all night she expected some irate first-class passenger to tear it off her back, but none appeared and they had a wonderful time circling the floor in the first-class lounge. Everything was perfect.

And the ship didn’t sink, but it arrived too soon. It seemed like only moments before they reached Cherbourg and then Southampton.

“What do we do now?” she asked mournfully. They had discussed it a hundred times, and in her head she had rehearsed leaving him, but she found that now she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

He repeated it all for her again, “You find Alexis, and we have lunch or dinner in London to celebrate, and then you go home again and begin a happy life and find a nice man to marry.” She snorted as he said the words.

“And how was it you suggested I do that again? I put an ad in the San Francisco paper?”

“No, you stop looking like a grieving widow, and you go out in the world, and in ten minutes there will be a dozen men at your front gate, mark my words.”

“That’s nonsense.” And it wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted Patrick.

She had long since confessed why she had come to London at all, and he had been irate at her description of the errant Malcolm. And he had already volunteered to help find the girl. Together they were going to comb the small hotels, and he had several in mind where actors stayed. He suspected that it might not be very difficult to find them. He was going to go to his office that day, settle some affairs, and meet her later that afternoon to begin their search, but as much as she wanted to find Alexis again, she didn’t want to leave him, even for a moment. After being together almost every hour of the day for three days, it was going to seem strange now being without him. The only time they had left each
other had been at night, by silent agreement. They had kissed and hugged and held hands, but he didn’t want to take advantage of her and then leave her. And in a way she agreed with him, and yet in a way she wished that things were different. It was ridiculous, really. Her seventeen-year-old sister was having a wild affair, and she was returning to the United States, a virgin spinster. She laughed at the thought and Patrick smiled at her, seeing something in her eyes.

“What are you up to, you bad girl?”

“I was just thinking how incongruous it is, that Alexis is off misbehaving with that deadbeat, and I am being very circumspect. I’m not sure I like the scenario at all!” They both laughed, but had they wanted it to be different, it would have been. It had just been too soon, for both of them, and they didn’t want to cheapen what they had. What they had, they both knew, was very rare and very special.

He took the boat train to London with her, and they sat quietly in the same compartment and talked, while he explained that Philippa didn’t know or care that he was arriving that day, and he suspected she would be away anyway, probably at some important horse trials in Scotland.

He checked her into Claridge’s then, and promised to be back at five, it was not yet noon by then. And she immediately sent a telegram to the children, telling them where she was, and that all was well, and requesting that they wire her if they had news of Alexis. And she could only assume that they were fine, or in the next day or so they would wire her at Claridge’s, to tell her their problems.

She went to Harrods quickly then, and bought more dresses in less time than she had ever done in her life, got her hair done nearby, and took a cab back to the hotel, laden with hatboxes and dresses, and her new
hairdo. And when Patrick arrived at five, he found her elegant and smiling, and excited to see him.

“Good heavens,” he grinned, “what have you been up to all afternoon?” But he had been busy too. He had bought her a rare copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and had she been more familiar with London shops, she would have known that the box he pulled out of his pocket came from Wartski’s. She gasped at first when he handed it to her, and she was afraid to open it, but at last she did, and for a long moment, she fell silent as she stared at his gift. It was a narrow diamond bracelet, and the legend was that it had been given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert. It was rare that items like that came up for sale at all, but for special customers, they sometimes offered one or two very special items. It was the sort of thing she could wear all the time, and she knew as she put it on her arm, that it would stay there for a long, long time, in memory of Patrick.

He had also brought her a bottle of champagne, but after only one drink, they both decided that it was time to start looking for Alexis. He had hired a car and driver just for that and they began their search of every hotel in Soho. And at eight o’clock as they tried “just one more,” Edwina walked in with a photograph, as they had for the last two hours, and Patrick slipped a five-pound note to the desk clerk.