Silent Melody (6 page)

Ashley.

He was the same and different. His eyes were the same, his blue eyes that searched desperately for meaning, for peace. His smile was the same—boyish, mischievous, reckless. His restless energy was the same. He was the Ashley she had known and adored. But he was different. Peace had forsaken him, and with it . . . hope? Was it despair that impelled him forward now? It looked very like despair to her searching eyes. And he was no longer a boy to whom restlessness and eagerness were appropriate. He was a man, hard and harsh beneath the surface gaiety. He was thin, haggard. Not with the paleness of one who has traveled long and far, but with the paleness of one who has suffered almost more than he can bear.

He looked like a man who was close to breaking and who might yet break.

Ashley!

Yet he was there before her. He had come home. And he needed her to dance with him. Not only wanted it, but needed it. She sensed his need like a tangible thing. Even such a small thing as her refusal might snap him in two.

But despite that realization, there was magic. Irresistible, wonderful magic. He was asking her to
dance.
He did not doubt for a moment that she could dance. And he knew instinctively that she wished to dance, that she had always wanted to dance. She had almost forgotten how well Ashley had always understood her. Perhaps it was one reason she had loved him so dearly. He had seemed so nearly the other half of herself.

He was asking her to
dance.

How could she possibly resist? How could she possibly say no? The temptation was just too powerful. Though at the time she did not even think of it as temptation. If she had, perhaps she would also have paused to realize that there was something wrong about accepting. But she did not realize it—until later.

And so she danced. A minuet. With Ashley.

It was not as easy as she had expected. Now that she was moving herself, she was not at liberty to watch as she always could when she sat at the edge of the floor, sometimes with her eyes half closed, seeing the rhythm and patterns of the dance as an ordered, visual kaleidoscope. Feeling them in the pulsing of her blood. Although she knew the steps, now that she was part of the kaleidoscope, she was not quite sure of the timing. But Ashley grinned encouragement at her and the magic caught at her again. She closed her eyes for several moments, not even trying to watch the other dancers, merely feeling the vibrations of their feet on the floor and of the instruments playing the tune. And then it was almost easy. She could feel the rhythm pulsing in her body. She moved her feet in time to the pulse, using the remembered steps and patterns of the minuet. As if she had stepped into a painting and had become part of the perfect symmetry of its composition.

It was, she thought, the most glorious moment of her life. She was dancing. With Ashley. And then she was smiling at him, feeling all her happiness flowing out to him, feeling all the joy of the music she had never consciously heard and never would hear.

“Ah, Emmy,” he said after a half hour, when sadly the set was coming to an end, “you need to throw off the disguise of fashionable woman and become again my little fawn. Though you never can be quite that again. You are all grown up.
Is
it a disguise you wear? Or is this what they have done to you? Have they tamed you and your heart has not cried out for the wild? Do they have you singing prettily here, like a linnet in a cage?”

She saw his words. In addition she could see the harshness and bitterness in his face. Ashley's face, also in disguise. Like a grotesque mask that needed to be peeled away.

“Ashley.” Doris had come up to them and had taken her brother's arm. She was laughing. “You came back downstairs. I thought you were exhausted. And Emily, you can
dance.
How very clever of you. How do you do it when you cannot hear?”

“Emmy can feel the music,” Ashley said. “'Tis inside her, Doris, whereas 'tis merely outside you and me.”

“Oh, fie,” she said, laughing, “how strangely you talk, Ashley. You are to take me in to supper. I have a thousand questions to ask, eight hundred of them about young Thomas. Here is Lord Powell for Emily.”

It was then that Emily too saw Lord Powell approach and that the magic was broken. She realized what she had done. She turned to smile uncertainly at her suitor.

•   •   •

“Egad,
but the lad has the energy of a twenty-year-old,” Lord Quinn said to Lady Sterne as they sat at the supper table, watching Ashley talking and laughing with his sister and her husband, with his mother, and with Agnes and William. “One would have sworn when he first arrived, Marj, that he was on the verge of collapsing with exhaustion. He is happy to be home, I warrant you.”

“Lud, but so thin,” Lady Sterne said. “He looks ill, Theo, though he is as handsome as the devil when he smiles, it must be admitted.”

“Aye, but 'tis the voyage that has done that to him,” Lord Quinn said. “A few English dinners and a few draughts of English ale will soon coat his ribs and plump him out again.”

“Is he here to stay?” she asked. “'Twill mean much to Anna and Luke if he is. He has been sorely missed.”

“I daresay,” Lord Quinn stated. “He has made his fortune in India, or so 'tis said, and he has married a rich wife into the bargain. Her papa has died and left everything to her, and therefore to my nephy too. They have come home to stay, I warrant you, Marj. There is the young lad to be considered, after all. England is the place to raise children.”

“Yes.” Lady Sterne smiled. “And so I may drift into old age and know my adopted family and yours to be happily settled, Theo. 'Tis a comfortable feeling. All will be complete by the time this night is out, think you?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded in the direction of the dining room door. Lord Powell and Emily, having finished their supper early, were leaving the room together.

“Aye, by my life,” Lord Quinn said. “A wedding in June, would you say, Marj? And Lady Powell will be delivered of a boy come nine months following that same night?”

Lady Sterne sighed, too accustomed to the bluntness of her lover's language to be shocked by the indelicacy of his remark. “Faith, but 'tis to be hoped,” she said. “My little Emily settled. I did not think to see the day, Theo. I thought no man would be willing to overlook the affliction.”

“Nay, but the gel is as pretty as a picture, Marj,” he said, handing her a large linen handkerchief, with which she dabbed at her eyes. He chuckled. “And not daunted by her affliction. She can dance, by Jove. Egad, but my nephy had some audacity to lead her out into the set as he did.”

“Dear Emily,” Lady Sterne said. “And dear Anna. Who will make the announcement after supper, do you think, Theo? Luke or Victor? I can scarce wait.”

“L
UKE?”
Anna touched his arm and looked in the direction of the dining room door. “They are leaving.”

He stopped cooling her face with his fan for a moment. “And so they are,” he said. “Neither is hungry and both find the indoors stuffy and long for air and exercise. 'Tis nothing to be alarmed about, my dear. 'Tis called youth and young love, I believe.” He smiled at her.

She gazed at him as if all the answers to life's worries might be found in his eyes. “She will have him, you think?” she asked. “She feels an affection for him, Luke? She will be happy with him?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your questions become progressively less possible to answer, madam,” he said. “'Tis my belief that the answer to all three may be yes. But only Emily and Powell can answer them for sure—and only with the passage of time. Are you intent upon creasing my cuff by gripping so hard?”

She released her grip immediately. “Luke,” she said, “why did he come back downstairs? He was so very tired.”

“I believe for that very reason,” he said. “He was too tired to sleep. Too emotionally excited, perhaps, at being home again after so long. I may have trouble sleeping myself, Anna—unless you can be persuaded to help me, of course.” His eyelids drooped over his eyes for a moment.

“Why did he dance with Emmy?” she asked. “And why did she dance with him, Luke? She
danced
with him. I had no idea she could.”

Luke shrugged elaborately. “He wished to dance with the loveliest lady at the ball,” he said. “Emily is the loveliest—after you. She danced with him because, apparently, she has wished all her life to dance. She did remarkably well, my dear. She did not make a spectacle of herself.”

“Luke.” She looked at him with appeal in her eyes. Yet she seemed to have no words for what she wished to say. “Luke . . .”

He drew his closed fan along one of her arms to the ends of her fingers. “Emily is receiving her offer at this very moment,” he said. “She has appeared somewhat enamored of him, my dear. Certainly she has grown into a sensible young lady who is unwilling to pine her way through life as either Victor's dependent or mine. And she is not near the untamed creature she once was. Ashley has his wife and his son staying at a London hotel. Tomorrow I shall go and fetch them home. I will persuade him to stay here and rest instead of accompanying me. You must not upset yourself unnecessarily. There are realities to dictate everyone's behavior.”

“I am so very happy to see him at home again,” she said. “Happy for you, Luke, because he is your only surviving brother and there is a close bond between you. And happy for him. I cannot believe that India is the place to spend more than a few years of one's life. It is certainly not the place in which to raise a young family. I am happy.”

“But you could wish that his timing had been a little better,” he said with a smile. “That he had arrived at least a few days later, or preferably a few weeks.”

“Yes,” she said lamely.

“You have ever been overprotective of Emily, my dear,” he said. “You persist in seeing her as delicate and more than usually vulnerable merely because she lacks one of the five senses most of us take very much for granted. Emily is not delicate. Merely different—
very
different, I will confess. But she has a strength of character beyond that of almost any other woman I know, I do believe. Since the day he left, has she given one sign that she cannot order her life without him?”

She shook her head. “But we knew—,” she began.

He interrupted her. “Even on the day his letter announcing his marriage arrived?” he asked.

“I remember how you avoided for hours reading it aloud to her,” she said, closing her eyes briefly.

“Or on the day the letter came telling of Thomas's birth?” he asked.

She shook her head again.

“Yes,” he said, “of course we
knew,
my dear. But Emily is a strong person. You can safely allow her to live her own life in her own way.”

She smiled ruefully at him. “He is dreadfully pale and thin.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“I hope Alice and Thomas are well,” she said.

“Doubtless,” he said, “if they are back in England to stay, they will wish to remove to Penshurst without too long a delay since 'tis Alice's home and now belongs to Ashley. In the meantime, you will persuade them to stay here, my love, and you will fuss over them and feed them and tuck them into their beds to your heart's content. They will look quite human again by the time they leave here.”

She smiled.

“That is better,” he said. “I thought the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. And of course, my dear, you will have a wedding to prepare too. Royce seemed agreed that this would be the better place for it. You may plan and spend as lavishly as you wish. I shall not ask for an accounting.”

“Luke.” She leaned slightly toward him. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining again, her more normal expression. “All will be well, will it not?”

“All will be well,” he told her, covering her hand with his own. “But we neglect our guests, madam. Shall we lead the way back to the ballroom?”

•   •   •

“Lady
Emily.” He leaned toward her at the supper table until her eyes focused on his mouth. “May I send a maid for your cloak? Will you step outside with me?”

Her heart was heavy with guilt and other things. She had been unable to do anything more than toy with her food. And rightly or wrongly, she felt that much attention was being directed at her. Probably rightly. She would be under observation for two reasons. It was expected that Lord Powell would declare himself tonight. And she had just danced for the first time in her life. Besides, she felt suffocated. She was very aware of the group clustered about Ashley not far distant and of Ashley himself, brightly chattering in their midst.

She still could not quite grasp the reality of his return home.

She would give anything in the world, she thought, to escape to her room. Or better still, to escape alone outdoors. She always found crowds and conversation overwhelming. She missed so much. She was always so aware of her differentness, of her inability to understand more than a fraction of what was being said, of the impossibility of communicating her own thoughts beyond the simplicity of smiles and nods. But she could not escape—she
would
not. She had pledged herself to be like other women as far as she could.

She smiled and nodded. Lord Powell drew back her chair as she got to her feet, and offered his arm. She took it and felt the eyes of everyone in the room follow them to the door and through it. Or so it seemed.

It was not really cold outside, although it was only April and late at night. The slight breeze even felt refreshingly cool. They strolled the length of the cobbled terrace and back again. There was no one else outside. He stopped at the top of the steps leading down to the upper terrace of the formal gardens, perhaps thinking it would be too dark down there for her to be able to read his lips. He turned to her.

“Lady Emily,” he said, “I believe you must know why I came to Bowden Abbey at his grace's invitation.”

She gazed mutely at him. If she could have stopped this moment, delayed it for a day or two, she would have. Her head was pounding in a tight band just behind her eyes. But it could not be delayed. Every moment since his arrival five days ago had been leading to this one. She wished suddenly that she had a voice, that she could apologize for her bad manners in dancing with Ashley when she had promised the set to him. His own manners had been too polished to allow him to refer to the matter during supper.

“I came here not knowing you,” he said. “Not knowing if . . . You are beautiful. Poised and elegant and perfect in every way.”

And a fraud. And without a whole heart to give. But perhaps he did not want her heart.

“You cannot speak,” he said. “'Twould be thought by many men to be an insuperable handicap in a w-wife. But not to me. I have always preferred quiet women. And my mother will gladly continue to run my household and entertain our guests—'tis what she does best. You would merely have to charm everyone with your beauty and your smiles.” He smiled at her.

No. Oh no. So she would merely be another protected child in another household that would run very well without her. He merely wanted an ornament for his home, a—a breeder for his children? He was choosing her because she was quiet and biddable—and because she would allow his mother to continue dominating his household? Did he believe that what he saw, what he had seen in five days, was everything that was her? She felt a stabbing of fear. He saw only a smiling, placid, reasonably lovely woman? Was she nothing more to him?

But when it came to the question of what she meant to him—what did
he
mean to
her?
And what really did she know of him beyond certain facts she had read from his lips? Was she merely using him to give purpose and a measure of independence to her life? Was it enough? Was it even fair?

She had believed she had thought through her decision very sensibly and very carefully. Suddenly she felt that she had not thought it through at all.

“Lady Emily.” He had possessed himself of her hand. Unwillingly she noticed the difference between his touch and Ashley's. His hand lacked the warmth, the strength of Ashley's. She shook off the unwelcome thought. “Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

He had said nothing of love. That realization at least brought relief with it. But only for a moment. He was offering her everything else—his name, his home, his family, a place at his side for the rest of her life. He thought she was poised and elegant and perfect.

Have they tamed you and your heart has not cried out for the wild?

She could see in her mind Ashley's mouth forming the words.

But Ashley was married. He had forgotten her—or rather, she had never been of any importance to him as a woman—and he had married someone else. He had been married for three years. The fact that he had come home and had danced with her made no difference to anything at all. She had learned to live without Ashley. She had taken her life back for herself and had pieced it together again. She had enriched it, making it more deeply lived than it had been even before she met him. The fact that Ashley would be a part of her for as long as she lived mattered to no one but herself.

She wanted marriage. She wanted a home of her own. She wanted children. She wanted to be
normal.
She could fight for the right to run her own home and entertain her own visitors. She could show that she was capable of doing both. It would be the new challenge of her life. And she could do no better than Lord Powell. Luke had chosen well.

“Lady Emily?” He was peering at her anxiously in the near darkness. “Will you? Do you understand what I have said? Is it too dark out here?”

For one who had made up her mind quite deliberately over the past five days, she reasoned, she was alarmingly hesitant. There was no reason to hesitate. There was every reason not to. She had no reason to feel guilty. Her heart was no less whole than it had been five days ago. Her love for Ashley was her own private concern—always had been and always would be. Lord Powell had neither offered his own heart nor asked for hers. He had merely offered an arrangement that could be comfortable for them both. And as for the loneliness of not being known—well, she had never been known by anyone. Though almost by Ashley, an unwilling part of her mind whispered. She half nodded.

“You will?” He smiled broadly. “Zounds, but I was not sure. Not sure at all. You
will
marry me?”

She nodded a little more firmly, though his lips were moving faster now and she could not see every word. But he looked so very pleased. She resisted the temptation to close her eyes, to block out everything except herself. She had made every effort over the past few years to live outside herself as well as deeply within, to be a part of the social world in which she had to live her life.

He had taken her other hand, and kissed the back of each before holding her palms against his chest.

“You have made me the happiest of men, Lady Emily,” he said. “My mother will be pleased. So will all my family. They have made me realize in the past year or two, you see, that 'tis my duty to bring home a bride and to set up my nurs— Well.” He looked embarrassed.

But she had stopped making the effort to follow the rapid movement of his lips.

“I knew as soon as Harndon approached me,” he said, “that you would be the perfect choice. You are the daughter and sister of an earl, sister-in-law of a duke, the possessor of a competent dowry. You are the right age.” He smiled. “Pardon me, but I did not want someone directly from the schoolroom. I wanted someone who has proved that she knows how to behave in society. I have a position to maintain. I have brothers and sisters yet to marry. I wanted someone I could trust.” His smile became almost boyish. “And someone quiet. I could scarce have done better on that score, could I?”