The Book Of Scandal (25 page)

“It’s been what…four or five years since she was last here?” his father inquired.

“Three.”

“Well! It is good she has come home at last!” he said awkwardly, and lifted his glass in toast to Nathan.

“Good evening, one and all,” Evelyn called from the door, sweeping into the room.

“Darling!” her mother cried, rising up, her arms held wide.

“Mamma,” Evelyn said, walking into her mother’s embrace. Her father was instantly at their side, taking her in his arms the moment her mother let go of her. When they at last let her go, she curtsied to Nathan’s parents.

Her skin was flushed as if she’d run from her rooms. She was beautiful, Nathan thought, her gown exquisite, her bearing elegant and gracious. He was proud, he realized. Quite proud.

“Benton, when…?”

“Supper is served, madam,” Benton said, bowing low.

Evelyn gave Nathan a look of surprise, but then quickly suggested they all repair to the dining room.

In the dining room, Nathan could hardly contain his surprise. He knew Benton’s capabilities, but this was incredible. The table had been exquisitely set, and there was, much to Nathan’s shock, a roasted bird, as well as bread and, presumably, soup in a large tureen.

“We’d like to welcome you home, Evelyn,” the marquis said as he took a seat at the table. “We are each of us happy to see you where you belong.” The four of them beamed at her.

“Thank you.”

“How are you, dear?” Nathan’s mother asked.

“Very well, thank you,” she said politely.

“Good. Very good,” the marchioness said, and the four of them exchanged little smiles with one another.

Nathan did not like how they were looking at Evelyn. It was beginning to dawn on him that this was not a social call. “Benton, wine,” he said, although the glasses brought from the blue drawing room were still quite full. “Darling?” he said to Evelyn, and helped her into her chair. She sat, folding her hands in her lap, gripping them so tightly that he could see the whites of her knuckles.

If it weren’t such a maidenly thing to do, he might have joined her. He took his seat at the head of the table.

Evelyn asked after their parents’ journey as footmen began ladling soup. The four responded in a lively manner, claiming not to have seen each other in a pair of months and expressing their delight at receiving the invitation from Mrs. DuPaul.

Nathan watched them talking and laughing. The four of them had been fast friends for as long as he could remember—it was their idea to marry their two children, an arrangement that was sealed when he was in short pants and Evelyn in the nursery.

Nathan had never objected to it. He’d rarely seen Evelyn until it came time for him to marry and assume the responsibilities of his title, but what he knew of her, he liked. She was freshly pretty then, her eyes bright and eager. He had courted her a few times to assure himself and his parents of their compatibility. He’d seen what he needed to see—that she would make a good countess and a marchioness one day. Evelyn had been eager to marry as well, he recalled, and therefore the deed was done, just as it had been done countless times before them.

He realized, as he watched Evelyn squirm a little at the questioning from her mother about life in London, that he never really thought of how his life would change once he married. He’d been a young man and had thought of marriage only when his father impressed on him that he must marry. The day he and Evelyn stood before God, their parents, the king and queen, and half of London, he did not think what his vows truly meant.

He’d thought of them since, but he wasn’t yet entirely certain that he understood how to live up to them.

Evelyn laughed politely at something silly his father said, nodding along as his father told her some terribly tiresome tale, and Nathan wondered how a man could crawl out of a hole as deep as the one into which he’d fallen with his wife.

After the meal was consumed, Benton whispered something to Evelyn, and she suggested they retire to games in the blue drawing room.

In the blue drawing room, they sat around one round table as the footman returned their wineglasses to them. Nathan dealt the first hand of Loo. They played one or two rounds before the marquis gestured to the four of them and said, “We all thank God you’ve returned to your rightful place, Evelyn. Now that you have, you won’t leave again, will you?”

“Father—” Nathan started, but his father threw up a hand.

“I really must ask, son,” he said. “The nation is gripped with scandal so foul that it threatens the existence of the monarchy. Our two fine families cannot be part of it. I mean by that, no behavior that will cause talk. No gambling debts. No mysterious fires.”

“How did you know of that?” Nathan asked.

“We could smell the burn in the air at the DuPauls’, Nathan. There is quite a lot of speculation about the fire, I am sure you know, which only strengthens my point—the two of you must have a care. You must patch up this spat between you and behave properly, as befitting your names and titles!”

Nathan looked at Evelyn; he could see the spark in her eyes and gave her a slight shake of his head. He knew his father too well—to engage him on this matter would be fruitless. “Thank you, Father,” he said tightly. “Shall we play on?”

Evelyn looked at her cards. The baroness dealt a round and glanced at Evelyn. “Are you feeling well, darling?”

Startled, Evelyn looked up. “I am very well, Mamma.”

“She will be very well indeed as long as Nathan treats her tenderly as he ought,” his mother added.

“Ah, for the love of God,” Nathan sighed.

“What?” his mother asked innocently. “Nature dealt her a harsh blow, Nathan, and naturally, it can take a bit of time for one to pick one’s self up and go on. But it is important that one do so,” she said, gesturing in a pick-yourself-up sort of way.

“Mother, really—several years have passed.”

“But she’s been in London all that time nursing her wounds.”

“That is really quite enough,” Nathan said, and looked at Evelyn. She was staring at her cards, her skin pale.

The table fell silent for several moments.

“What will you do with the orangery?” Wainwright asked after a time.

“Clear it,” Nathan said, at the very same moment Evelyn said, “Rebuild it.” She said it rather firmly for a woman who had only a few days ago requested a divorce, and who only hours ago insisted there was too much damage between them to go on. He cocked a curious brow in her direction.

“I very much enjoyed the orangery,” she said to him.

“You must rebuild it, sir,” Lady Wainwright said as she peered at her cards. “It will help Evelyn to have it restored.”

“Help me?” Evelyn echoed, and shifted her gaze to her mother. “Help me what?”

The four parents looked at one another. Lady Wainwright looked at Evelyn. “It will help you to heal, darling. You must heal so that you can be a good wife. Nathan needs you to be his countess.”

Evelyn looked helplessly at Nathan.

He felt just as helpless.

“I do beg your pardon,” Evelyn said, as she carefully laid her cards aside. She rose to her feet, looking around at the four of them. “I had not realized I’d failed you all.”

“No one said you’d failed, Evelyn,” Lady Wainwright said. “Just that we are concerned for you.”

“Concerned about your reputations, I think you mean,” she said calmly.

“Now see here!” Nathan’s father snapped.

“Excuse me,” Nathan said loudly, and abruptly stood. He walked around the table, put his arm around Evelyn. “Thank you all for your concern,” he said. “I understand that your intentions are good, but this is a matter between my wife and me. If you don’t mind, we’ll retire for the evening. Benton, please show them to their rooms when they are ready,” he said, and led Evelyn away from the room and the unsolicited judgments on their marriage.

D ivorce, Evelyn?” her mother exclaimed angrily the next morning as Evelyn sat at her vanity, her face in her hands.

It was bad enough Evelyn had spent such a wretched night. She’d paced the floor for half of it, tossed and turned the other half, trying to reconcile the extraordinary events of the last few days with feelings that had been ingrained in her for several years now.

There was the picnic, such a lovely effort, and of course the things Nathan had said that still reverberated in her heart. His words had made her heart swell, and she’d felt something fundamental shift inside her.

But then their parents had come.

This morning, Evelyn had only tried to be honest with her mother when she told her what she was thinking. It was obvious her mother thought it was insanity to even think of divorce. And if she wasn’t clear on that point, the Baroness of Wainwright would not rest until she’d made it perfectly clear.

Her mother angrily paced the floor as Evelyn stared at the hot chocolate Kathleen had brought her before she was summarily dismissed by her mother.

“It was no small feat to keep the worst of it from the marchioness,” her mother continued irritably. “She has heard the rumors from London about you and that scoundrel Dunhill, Evelyn, not to mention some complicity in the awful scandal between the Prince and Princess of Wales?”

“That is not true—”

“The point, daughter, is that she knows what is said about you! It’s nothing short of a miracle that she hasn’t heard of your desire to bring scandal to us all with this ridiculous notion of divorce!”

“It is not a ridiculous notion—”

“Hush, Evelyn!” her mother snapped. “Of all the foolishness we have endured on your account, this is the most egregious! And to think of all the effort we put into bringing you and Lindsey together again!”

Yes, there had been letters and general gnashing of teeth, and many, many tedious calls to Eastchurch. Evelyn sighed with resignation and picked up the cup of chocolate and sipped.

“When I think of the heartache we were forced to endure as a result of your madness, only to be rewarded with this!”

With a groan, Evelyn sank down, laying her cheek on the surface of the vanity.

“I should like to ask why,” her mother demanded crossly, whirling around, “you would dare to dishonor us all so completely!”

“I didn’t want to dishonor anyone,” Evelyn said wearily. “But we have lived apart these years and—”

“That was your choice. Not his,” her mother angrily interjected.

“It was indeed,” Evelyn said evenly. “But he agreed. In fact, you all agreed. Everyone seemed to think it was best for me to leave the abbey…and you, Mamma, would have put me in an asylum, but Nathan wouldn’t allow it.”

“I most certainly did not want that! How can you possibly believe such a thing! I wanted to help you, Evelyn! Do you not recall how I worried, or the doctors your father and I brought to you? I wanted you to loosen your unnatural grip on your grief!”

All of the doctors had advised the same thing—stop grieving for her son. “Yes, you’ve mentioned my unnatural grief several times now,” Evelyn said. She stood up, finished with the interview, and walked into her dressing room.

Her mother was close on her heels. “That is all in the past and neither here nor there,” she said crisply. “I cannot understand this notion of divorce.”

“Is it not obvious?” Evelyn asked irritably as she threw open the doors of her wardrobe. “Nathan and I tried, Mamma, and we failed. We’ve lived apart, and it seems impossible to repair the years of rift between us.”

“There would be no rift,” her mother said as she reached over Evelyn’s shoulder and withdrew a plain, brown day gown and thrust it at her daughter, “if you could put the tragedy behind you. It was clear that child was sickly at birth, and we all warned you to keep your distance from him. Nature can be very harsh, and you did not gird yourself properly against the inevitable.”

“We could no more have distanced ourselves from that child than we could from each of you. To suggest we somehow erred in loving our son is insupportable!”

The baroness glared at her. “On my word, you make life difficult for us all! What good does it do to dwell on it?”

“I don’t dwell on it! Not when I’m in London, anyway,” Evelyn said, and shoved the brown gown into the wardrobe and withdrew a golden yellow instead. “But when I am here, at Eastchurch, how can I possibly avoid it? There are so many things to remind me! And I can’t forget it, I can’t stop picturing Robbie’s face or hearing his laugh, or seeing him, like a ghost in every room!” She abruptly pushed past her mother, returning to the bedroom.

Tears were welling again—how was it possible that three years after his death she was still defending her grief? Why couldn’t she make anyone understand how it felt to see his marks on the wall, or the path in the rose garden where he pushed the little wooden horse Nathan had put on wheels for him? Or how a horrible, empty ache descended on her heart by merely walking past the closed door of the nursery?

“I held my child in my arms as he drew his last breath, and when his breath was gone, so was mine. For weeks, Mamma, I was completely breathless, entirely incapable of breathing, much less picking myself up and tending to Nathan’s needs!” She sat heavily at her vanity and rubbed her forehead against a sudden and fierce pain.

“Darling!” Her mother sank to her knees at Evelyn’s side and took her hand. “I say these things because I love you, angel. Do you think you are the only woman to have ever lost a child?”

Of course she didn’t. Evelyn shook her head.

“It is a tragic fact of life that women sometimes lose their children,” her mother continued. “Some babies live, and some do not. Do you remember Mrs. Wells, our housekeeper? She buried all four of her children before their fifth year. We buried her among them when she died.”

Evelyn’s heart sank. How did one woman bury four children? How could Mrs. Wells possibly bear another child after losing one?

“It is tragic,” her mother said, patting her knee, “but just as God takes those we love, He helps us to bear it. You must open your heart to that, Evelyn. Allow Him to help you bear it.”

“I have borne it, Mamma,” Evelyn insisted.

“No, you have not,” her mother said firmly. “If you cannot bear to set foot in Eastchurch yet, you have not borne it as you ought and put it in its proper perspective. You are allowing your grief to rule you.”