The Hidden Years (22 page)

And then she remembered what it was like for the one or
two women she knew who had given birth to illegitimate
children—how they were shunned by the village women and
sniggered at by the men, how their children were treated by their
peers—and she felt her eyes burn with tears. One of them, a
girl of her own age, had even taken her own life rather than face the
gossip. She shuddered sickly, mortally afraid for her child and for
herself.

Oh, Kit… How could you leave me? I need you so
much, she whispered silently in her thoughts. But Kit had left her, she
was alone, and Kit had never really been hers anyway. Kit had been
engaged to someone else. He had deceived her—and she had
believed him. The bright, strong love she had thought so precious had
been nothing more than the base metal of lust. She shuddered,
remembering how little she had enjoyed Kit's sexual possession of her,
accepting it only because of her love for him.

Edward waited until the change of shift. There was always
confusion around this time when the night shift went off and the
morning shift came on.

He commandeered another patient to wheel him to the small
side-ward where Lizzie was lying.

She heard his chair and. turned to look at him, her face
flooding with embarrassed colour.

Pity and anger filled him as he watched the way she almost
cringed back from him. Already she was being marked by the stigma of
his cousin's defilement. Already she had lost her fresh look of
innocence. Already her body looked strained by the burden of the child
she was carrying.

Lizzie turned her head away as Edward reached her. The
other man had gone, leaving the two of them alone after a muttered
conversation during which Edward asked him to return for him in ten
minutes.

Tears burned her eyes. She couldn't bear to look at
Edward. She knew from his face that he knew. Now, when no amount of
anger and shock from others had been able to make her feel shame,
Edward's quiet face did.

He saw the way her shoulders heaved and fresh anger struck
him. He could have killed Kit for this alone.

'Lizzie, don't,' he said gently, touching her shoulder.
'It's Kit, isn't it? Kit, my cousin, is the father of your child. And
it's my fault that you're here like this now. My clumsiness
yesterday…'

'Is it true that he was engaged to someone else?'

Edward froze. He should have anticipated this. She had
loved him, poor child… he had realised that instantly,
knowing that Lizzie was not the kind to give herself to any man without
believing that.

For a moment he was tempted to tell her the truth, but he
couldn't. 'Yes,' he said and then added quickly, 'But he told me the
last time I saw him that he intended to break the
engagement…'

It wasn't perhaps entirely a lie. He knew that Kit had had
every intention of marrying his fiancée but he had certainly never
loved her. Privately Edward doubted that he had ever loved anyone other
than himself, but he was not going to tell Lizzie this.

'Look, I've only got ten minutes and I must talk to you.
Please try to listen. I know how much you must be suffering, but it's
important, not just to you, but to your child.'

He felt the tension in her body and although she didn't
turn round he knew he had her attention.

'You realise, don't you, that this child, Kit's child will
one day be my heir—that he will inherit Cottingdean from me,
as I have now inherited from Kit. I know from Dr Marshall that you are
to be sent home today to your aunt, and I suspect from what he tells me
that she won't make you very welcome. Lizzie, you know as well as I do
that I shall be an invalid for the rest of my life, dependent on the
care of others, that it's very doubtful that I shall have a child of my
own—but your child, Kit's child, has a right to be brought up
at Cottingdean… after all, one day it will be his. I wish I
could offer you the protection of my home as my cousin's widow, I wish
we could freely acknowledge your relationship with him and the child's,
but I'm afraid that that isn't possible. I want to take you and the
child to Cottingdean with me, Lizzie. After all, it's his right and
yours. If Kit had lived he would have married you and taken you there
himself.'

He was sure it wasn't true and that Kit would not have
done any such thing, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her as much.

'I want you to come to Cottingdean with me,
Lizzie… I want you to marry me.'

Lizzie sat up in bed and stared at him.

Was she dreaming, or had Edward just proposed to her? She
swallowed a hysterical desire to burst out laughing, more in agony than
amusement. She had dreamed so long of Kit asking her to marry him, of
being Kit's wife, that now to be asked to marry Edward struck her as
such a parody of her dreams, such a mocking cruelty of fate that she
almost didn't know how she could stand it.

Marry Edward…Edward, nice and kind though he
was, was an invalid, as he had said himself. Edward could never be a
husband to her nor would she want him to be—not sexually.
That part of her life was over. She would never again allow another man
to love her as Kit had.

Edward could never take Kit's place, but Edward could
protect her, a small inner voice told her. Edward could throw a cloak
of respectability around her and her unborn child. Edward could stop
her being sent home to face her aunt.

No, Edward was not Kit, but what man ever could be? She
shuddered sickly, trying and failing to imagine even wanting to share
with another man the intimacies she had known with Kit. Intimacies
which even with the man she loved she had found painful, and
distasteful. Intimacies which, if she was honest, she would be only too
pleased to have completely removed from her life.

Marry Edward. She ought to have already said no, so why
hadn't she?

'Think of the child,' Edward pressed, sensing all that was
going through her mind. Her face was so clear, her thoughts so readable
in her eyes.

'Think,' he urged. 'I know what a sacrifice it will be for
you, but it's what Kit would want for his child, his son—that
he should grow up at Cottingdean.'

He knew that Kit wouldn't have given a damn about his
child, son or daughter, but he was never going to tell Lizzie that.

'Marry me, Lizzie,' he demanded, suddenly bold and
decisive, reminding her sharply and painfully of Kit, so that for a
moment she was confused and lost.

She felt so weak, so helpless… she had been so
frightened, and now here was Edward offering her sanctuary, escape.
Hope for herself and her child. And he was right, she acknowledged,
taking a deep breath. Her son, Kit's son should be brought up in his
father's old home, should be saved from the slur of illegitimacy.

'It's what Kit would want,' Edward repeated firmly.

'What Kit would want…' Yes, of course it
was… Suddenly everything was so simple, so
easy—she must do as Edward said, she must marry him.

They would be safe then. She and her baby, safe for ever.
The baby from the cruelty of others because of its illegitimacy, and
she from the greed and pain of male sexuality.

Once married to Edward she would be safe, protected from
other men's desire. She would be Edward's wife and Edward would never
be able to demand of her the physical intimacy she now feared so much.

She was just eighteen years old but suddenly felt as
though she were close to eighty.

Today
Edward and I were married.
Lizzie stared at
the words, as though they were written in a foreign language and meant
nothing to her. How flat and metallic they tasted in her own mind. How
devoid of the euphoria and joy with which she had written of meeting
Kit. Everything had happened so quickly. Edward had had to get her
aunt's permission for the marriage, as she was under age. She still
wasn't sure how he had accomplished it, since her aunt had flatly
refused to have anything more to do with her. Now she was Mrs Danvers.
Pain spiralled through her. Mrs Edward Danvers, when she ought to have
been Mrs Christopher Danvers. Her eyes felt dry and gritty. She had
cried too many tears already. She had none left.

All at once she couldn't wait to leave the hospital, to
escape to the new life that Edward had promised her. He was as excited
as a small child about the prospect of returning to his childhood home.
He had painted it for her in such glowing colours that already she
could see it in her mind's eye. She wondered a little doubtfully how
she would fit into such elegant surroundings. She had visited such
houses with her aunt, and had always felt intimidated by them. All
those pretty, delicate antiques, all that fragile china…
those silky pastel carpets, and those polished, shiny floors.

But at Cottingdean it would be different. Cottingdean
would be her home. She would be its mistress, her child its heir. Her
child… not just her child any more, but hers and Edward's.

The only person to try to talk her out of it had been Dr
Marshall. Had she really thought about what this marriage would mean?
he had asked her gruffly—not just immediately, but for the
rest of her life. Did she realise how long Edward could live? he had
pressed when she stared apathetically at him, and then had added
roughly, angrily almost, 'For heaven's sake, child, you must know the
man can never be a proper husband to you. Right now you might not mind
that too much… women in your condition seldom do…
but afterwards, and in all the years to come…'

When his meaning had sunk in Lizzie had flushed, not with
embarrassment, but with guilt. Guilt, because all she could feel was
relief and a sense of revulsion at the thought of such intimacy with
any man. If she had not enjoyed sex with Kit then how on earth could
she ever possibly enjoy it with any other man? No, she obviously was
one of those women designed by nature to be sexually unresponsive.
After all, Kit himself had hinted as much. Now she realised that he had
been right.

Dimly she was aware of Edward's kindness and concern for
her, his attempt to protect her, but so vast was the ocean of pain that
engulfed her, so all-consuming her misery and inability to focus on
anything other than the knowledge that she must somehow endure the
anguish of losing Kit for the sake of the child they had created
together, that there was no room within her to comprehend anything else.

By some alchemy to which the female sex genetically held
licence she had managed to transform Kit from the selfish, arrogant,
uncaring man he had been into someone he was most definitely not.
Already in her memory he was enshrined as a perfect human being, her
one and only true love. Edward, her marriage to him, the kind of life
they would live together, they were only dim shadows when compared to
the bright glitter of her love for Kit.

The vicar, who had performed during the years of this war
more brief wedding ceremonies than he cared to remember, had been
shocked by the appearance of this particular couple: the bride so
young—too young, surely—the groom, so much older,
so obviously very, very ill.

Lizzie had been surprised to discover that Edward had
arranged for a photographer to record the moment they left the church,
watched by a largely silent group of onlookers.

'It's for the child,' he had explained to her later. The
child. Lizzie frowned, suddenly jealously anxious to protect Kit's
rights to his son. This was his child she was carrying within her.
Kit's child. And one day when he was old enough she would tell him all
about his father…she would tell him. Her thoughts stopped
abruptly, as she realised how little she could tell anyone about Kit,
how little she had actually known of him, how dependent she would be on
Edward to supply those details, that information… but Edward
wanted to bring the child up as his own. He had already told her as
much, and she had listened, too shocked in the aftermath of learning of
Kit's death to do anything else.

'If we don't marry there will be gossip,' he had warned
her. She shivered suddenly, goose-bumps lifting under her flesh, and
she stood stiffly beside Edward in the thin cotton dress he had
insisted on her buying. She had been uncomfortable and embarrassed when
he had handed her the coupons and the money, awkwardly insisting that
she was to buy herself something pretty. It had been on the tip of her
tongue to tell him that she would rather use his gift to buy something
for the baby, but something, some feminine caution that was unfamiliar
to her warned her not to. The only dress she had been able to find was
too big, its fabric cheap and flimsy, and no protection against the
cold wind howling round the small churchyard.

As they passed between the ranks of onlookers, Lizzie was
suddenly conscious of the desolate, melancholy air of the whole place,
the gravestones, bearing silent witness to the many, many generations
that had come and gone, and now were no more. Kit had no
gravestone—there was nothing to mark his passing. She
shivered again and turned impulsively to Edward, begging huskily,
'Edward, could you…? Is there a church at Cottingdean? Could
you…could you have something there for…for
Kit…?'

Edward patted her hand, pity warring with jealousy. She
was so young still, so vulnerable, and yet at the same time, because of
her youth, so hardy and protected that she still had no real idea of
what Kit had been. He could almost read in her heart how she intended
to cherish his cousin's image there. Even in death it seemed that his
cousin still intended to dominate his life.

He was not a cruel man—the blows life had dealt
him had taught him great compassion for the weaknesses of others.
Lizzie was young and malleable; more importantly, she was carrying the
child who would one day inherit Cottingdean, and he had no wish to
alienate her, to destroy her dream, to take away from her what might be
a necessary crutch. But nor was he going to allow the child, his child,
to be brought up to worship the fictitious image of his cousin.