The Ideal Wife (16 page)

She had told him she was ill. And she had used that excuse to spend the night in her own bed, unable to face his lovemaking with such a burden on her conscience. But she had tossed and turned and cried a little all night long.

“I would change places with you in a trice, sir,” she said now with a laugh to Lord Darlington, who had been teasing the ladies about the comfort in which they were traveling, “except that I would not look quite the thing on your man’s saddle and I would not know quite what to do with my parasol.”

“But I could shade my complexion with it, ma’am,” he said, laughing back at her.

“Its purpose is not to shade me from the sun,” Abigail said, “but to make me look lovely and alluring.”She gave the parasol an energetic twirl.

“This is the moment at which you are to bow from the saddle, Darlington, and assure the lady that she needs no parasol to achieve that effect,” Sir Gerald Stapleton said.

They all laughed, and Lord Darlington leaned forward to address a remark to Constance.

She could die of embarrassment, Abigail thought, looking at Sir Gerald and feeling her eyes slide away again. She had always had an alarming habit of speaking first and thinking after, but the afternoon before had taken the prize. How could she have asked him for a loan? It was unthinkable that she had done so. He was a virtual stranger to her even if he was Miles’s friend. She was going to have to find a moment during the afternoon to explain the episode satisfactorily to him, though she had still not decided exactly what she would say.

She turned her head to look at her husband. It was difficult not to keep staring at him when he looked so splendid on horseback. She smiled when she caught his eye, and dipped the parasol.

Another major embarrassment! How was she going to explain to him in a week or so’s time that she was bleeding again? Would he believe that a recent marriage and unaccustomed sexual activity—but would she find the courage to say just that to him?—had sent her system awry? Why, oh, why had she not simply told him that she had the headache the day before?

It was a relief to arrive finally in Richmond Park and to be able to busy herself organizing everyone for a walk along the rolling lawns and among the ancient oaks. She soon had everything arranged to her satisfaction, and Sir Gerald was strolling with Laura, Boris with Miss Lestock, and Lord Darlington with Constance. Abigail slipped her hand through her husband’s arm.

“You must be feeling very proud of yourself, Abby,” he said. “Everyone is behaving like a puppet on a string—so far.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said gaily. “I will take no credit for Constance and Lord Darlington, but I will claim all the glory for Laura and Sir Gerald—you see how compatible they are in height and how easily they converse together? And I shall be observing Miss Lestock and Boris to see if a match can be promoted there. Of course, Boris will have to be more eligible first. Have you found a suitable cheat yet?”

He had been very quiet all through luncheon and had not smiled or conversed a great deal during the journey to Richmond. But he smiled now, and she felt a twinge of relief. She had been wondering if he resented having to attend her picnic.

“I have been interviewing them all morning,” he said. “There are a dozen men eager for the job, not to mention the women.”

“Are there?” she said, smiling at his teasing. “And have you chosen one?”

“I think so,” he said, touching her hand. “I hope that in a couple of days’ time, everything will have been settled. And then you will be able to relax and enjoy your new life.”

She smiled a little but said nothing.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “That indisposition does not last long, you know. One day and I am myself again.”

“Shall I call in a physician?” he asked. “Perhaps he could prescribe something that will help you.”

“No, thank you,” she said, feeling wretched. “I am not always unwell.” She hated the lie. She had never ever felt ill as a result of her monthly cycle.

“Well,” he said, moving his fingers lightly over hers, “perhaps we can arrange it by the time the next one is due, Abby, that we will give you nine months free of even the possibility. Would you like that as much as I would?”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you mean . . . ?”

But of course he meant. She flushed. And remembered his reasons for marrying her. And thought of what he would hear from Rachel long before that month was over unless she could suddenly produce two thousand pounds within the next six days. And she wound up her resolution to tell him the truth even then.

Except that then was a quite inopportune time.

“Yes, I do,” he said, smiling. “There is a very cozy nursery at Severn Park, Abby, just crying out to be occupied.”

At Severn Park. Yes, of course.

“B
ORIS
.” The Earl of Severn got up from the blanket on the grass and the remains of a banquet spread on it and patted his stomach. “Would you care for a stroll to work off some of this feast?”

Boris Gardiner looked up from his conversation with Laura and scrambled to his feet. “A good idea,” he said. “My horse may sag in the middle if I mount it as I am now. Your cook is to be commended, Abby.”

“I shall be sure to give her your message,” Abigail said. “She will be pleased.”

The earl clasped his hands behind his back and made remarks about the weather as he strolled away from the group with his brother-in-law.

“It would not be fair to the ladies if we were away for long,” he said as soon as they were firmly beyond earshot. “Do you mind if we dispense with small talk and get straight to the point?”

Boris looked at him in some surprise. “Not at all,” he said. “But the point of what, pray?”

“Are your debts heavy ones?” the earl asked, looking straight ahead across the wide lawn.

His brother-in-law stiffened. “They are my concern,”he said. “They were my father’s, my only inheritance, as it happens. They are not Abby’s and they are not yours, Severn.”

“Those are not the debts I referred to,” the earl said. “My question related to your gaming debts.”

Boris sounded annoyed. “I have none,” he said. “Do you think I would gamble beyond my means when I am already burdened with another man’s obligations? I don’t know what Abby has told you of our family, but we are not all totally without principle. As it is, I am well aware that I am head of the family yet quite incapable of supporting my sisters.”

“I did not mean to touch on a raw nerve,” the earl
said. “I had better approach this matter from another angle, it seems. Why would Abby be visiting Mrs. Harper? And why would she have a sudden need of approximately seven thousand pounds? Do you have any idea? Does she have a weakness at the tables?”

“Abby?” Boris sounded incredulous. “Abby has an even greater abhorrence of gaming than I do. How could it be otherwise when she kept our family together almost single-handed while our father gambled everything away and even more than everything? And is it not obvious why she is visiting Rachel? Oh, Lord, she hasn’t told you, has she?”

“No, she has not,” Lord Severn said quietly. “For some reason, I think Abby is a little afraid of me. You had better tell me, Boris.”

“In awe more than afraid, I would guess,” Boris said.

“It always bothered Abby that we are not quite respectable, that our father frequently made an ass of himself in public and made us all suffer disapproval and even some ostracism as a result. She showed it by loving us all quite fiercely and managing us and caring for us all like a mother. And by raising her chin in public and saying frequently outrageous things so that people would think she did not care. But she did—does. More than any of us. I think she cared for our father more than the rest of us did.”

“Your father drank?” the earl asked.

“Like the proverbial fish,” the other said. “He drank himself to death. Abby had to feed it to him like medicine at the end. She was as gentle with him as if he were a baby, despite everything.”

“Despite everything?” the earl asked.

“He was not a pleasant man,” Boris said. “And that is a polite way of saying that he was selfish and brutal. Abby and I were fortunate that he was not quite so bad when we were young children. When he did fly into rages, it was our poor mother who bore the bruises. But in later years Abby had to work hard to protect the little ones. He was usually crafty enough to go for them when I was not around. And I am afraid I played irresponsible brother for many years and kept myself from home as often as I could. Abby did it all even before Rachel left. She held everything together afterward.”

“Rachel?” the earl said.

“Abby should have told you before she married you,” Boris said. “I scolded her for not doing so, and I think I gave her the notion that she had played a dastardly trick on you. She has obviously been afraid to tell you. Maybe she has good reason. Who knows? But you are going to find out anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the earl said.

“Rachel is our stepmother,” Boris said, “mother of Clara and Beatrice. She married our father in defiance of her own and lived to regret it almost from the first moment. He gave her several severe beatings. She finally ran off with someone else and surfaced here as Mrs. Harper.”

“I see,” Lord Severn said. “I thought the lady was dead.”

“Well, she is not,” Boris said, “and Abby should stay away from her. She is not like she used to be. She used to be a poor abject creature. Bitterness has changed all that. Rachel has learned how to look after herself at everyone else’s expense.”

“You know nothing of seven thousand pounds?”the earl asked.

Boris shook his head. “It went to Rachel?” he said. “Blackmail, maybe? Would Abby be foolish enough to pay the woman to keep all this from you? Is it that important to her that you have a good opinion of her?”He looked candidly at his brother-in-law for a moment. “Yes, I suppose it could be. Abby never did expect much out of life for herself. When everything came apart after our father’s death, I was afraid for her. She looked as if she had been turned to marble. I thought perhaps everything had died in her. Don’t hold this against her, Severn. She cannot help anything that has happened. Indeed, for as long as she could, she gave all of herself for the sake of the rest of us. Even for my father, damn him.”

“I love her,” the earl said quietly. “You don’t have to plead her cause with me, Boris. I love your sister.”

“Well, then,” Boris said, “perhaps there is some justice in this world, after all.”

“The question is,” Lord Severn said, “how much do you love her?”

His brother-in-law looked at him sharply.

“We have been too long away already,” the earl said. “I will make this brief. Abby has concocted a masterly plan whereby I am to hire a card cheat, pay him to see to it that you win a fortune, and then watch you pay off your father’s debts with part of it and live happily ever after with the rest, quite unaware that you do not owe your happiness to Lady Luck.”

Boris’s jaw hardened. “You know what my opinion of that ridiculous idea is likely to be,” he said.

“We would never have got away with it,” the earl said. “But Abby does not know that. She thinks it a quite splendid scheme.”

“She would,” Boris said. “Have you discovered yet that she is somewhat lacking in common sense?”

“Sometimes her heart rules her head,” Lord Severn said. “It is the quality in her that I love above all else, I believe. Her scheme is going to work, Boris, down to the last detail.”

His brother-in-law laughed. “I would have known
even without the warning,” he said. “Clearly it is out of the question now, Severn.”

“Do you still wish to buy a commission in the army?” the earl asked. “It was your ambition, was it not? I think you are not too old. If it is what you still wish, then you will win precisely enough to pay off your father’s debts and to buy a pair of colors. You will be astounded and ecstatic at your good fortune. And afterward you will make your own way in the world.”

Boris’s manner had stiffened again. “This is my concern,”he said. “I will not brook interference, Severn, well-meant as I know it is. I am not your concern.”

“But Abby is,” Lord Severn said. “I am going to do this for her happiness, not for yours. And if you love her, if you wish to repay some of the love she lavished on you and your family, then you will let me do it. I know this will mean sacrificing some of your pride. But remember some of the sacrifices Abby has made in her lifetime.”

Boris clenched his teeth. “The devil!” he said.

“Remember that your father was hers too,” Lord Severn said, “and my father-in-law.”

“You have me backed quite firmly into a corner, don’t you?” Boris said, his voice revealing his frustration.

“I’m afraid so,” the earl said. “I will play quite unfairly, you see, when Abby’s happiness is at stake.”

“I don’t understand,” Boris said. “You have known her for less than two weeks.”

The earl smiled. “One does not have to know Abby very long to know that she is a very precious gem,” he said. “Good fortune was smiling on me when she decided to pay me a call to remind me of a very remote kinship. We have an agreement?”

“It seems so,” Boris said, “though I wish there were some other way.”

“There is not,” the earl said. “Give me your direction and I shall call on you tomorrow. I shall tell Abby that everything is set up for tomorrow evening. You will call on her the morning after to delight her with your good fortune and the grand success of her plan. Shall we rejoin the ladies?”

“I suppose so.” Boris scratched the back of his neck. “Why is it that so often one could hug Abby and shake her all at the same time?”

The earl grinned. “I am becoming familiar with the feeling,” he said.

15

I
WAS VERY VEXED WITH BORIS,” ABIGAIL said. “But I think the picnic went well, don’t you, Miles?”

The Earl of Severn sat back in his chair and twirled the stem of his empty wineglass between his fingers. “If the amount of food consumed was an indicator,” he said, “I would have to say it was a roaring success, Abby. What did Boris do to incur your wrath?”

“Oh,” she said, “he monopolized Laura’s attention during tea, and then afterward, when you came back from walking with him, he took her off for a stroll. It was most provoking.”

“While the ardent lover panted in the background?”he said. “But why did Gerald not bear her off while I was talking with your brother?”

“Because Lord Darlington was discussing horses with him,” Abigail said, “at great length. I could have screamed. However, I must not be impatient. They will have the whole of the summer in which to become better acquainted. And there was a definite spark there this afternoon, was there not?”

“Abby.” The earl smiled at her. “You see Gerald womanless and at the age of thirty and you feel that you must add a woman and happiness to his life. You see Miss Seymour, pretty and alone and making a dull living as a governess, and you want to add brightness and marriage to her life. Your feelings are admirable. But you cannot live other people’s lives for them, you know.”

“I don’t intend to,” she said. “I just wish to give them a chance to get to know each other and to realize how very compatible they are.”

“Gerald is in love with someone else,” he said. “And I believe that Miss Seymour is soon to be in that happy state too, if she is not already.”

Abigail stared at him blankly. “Sir Gerald?” she said. “In love? And not with Laura? With whom, then?”

“With someone he has known and been fond of for more than a year,” he said. “He is only now realizing, I believe, that he cannot live without her.”

She looked searchingly into his eyes. “A mistress?”she asked.

He nodded. “A sweet girl,” he said. “Of course, he would not expect to fall in love with his mistress, and has been quite blind to his feelings. He thinks he is opposed to marriage and to women in general. He is not—only to any marriage that does not involve his Prissy.”

“Oh,” she said, “and what about Laura? Where are we to find a husband for her?”

“I would imagine that we have no responsibility to find one at all,” he said. “But I think you have done just that already, Abby.”

She frowned. “I?” she said. Her eyes blazed. “And don’t go mentioning Humphrey Gill, Miles. You have not seen him. Besides, he is years younger than Laura.”

He laughed. “Abby,” he said, “is that a nose on your face? Can you see beyond the end of it?”

She looked at him in mute indignation.

“Your brother and your best friend had eyes for no one but each other this afternoon,” he said. “A blind man would have been affected by it. Indeed, they disappeared from sight for ten whole minutes after tea, and when they reappeared, her face was looking remarkably rosy—remarkably as if it had been thoroughly kissed, in fact.”

“Boris?” she said blankly. “And Laura?”

“I plan to put my disreputable cheat into action tomorrow night,” he said. “He comes highly recommended, Abby. He has never been caught in his life even by the sharpest of card sharpers. After tomorrow night your brother should be in a position to offer some sort of future to a young lady who cannot have very high expectations of a great fortune.”

Abigail folded her napkin very carefully and set it beside her empty dessert dish. “Laura,” she said. “And Boris. She would be my sister-in-law. My sister-in-law.” She smiled. “Are you quite sure.”

“That she will become your sister?” he said, smiling back at her. “No. That they are starry-eyed over each other? Definitely.”

“Well,” she said. “Well.”

“Abby speechless?” he said, getting up from his place and coming around the table to hold back her chair for her. “I must have given you startling news indeed. Are you sure you do not wish to go to the Vendrys’ tonight?”

“I liked your suggestion,” she said, “that we spend the evening in the library again, just the two of us. You do not find my company dull, Miles?”

“Dull?” he said, taking her hand on his arm. “If I think back on all the evenings we have spent together, Abby, the one that stands out most in my mind is the one we spent at home together. I think I enjoy being a staid old married man.”

She smiled. “Laura and Boris,” she said. “I have been remarkably foolish, haven’t I?”

“Now, how can I agree with that,” he said, “without appearing quite ungallant? ‘Eager,’ I think, would be a better word. Eager to see to the happiness of your friend and mine.”

“Will Sir Gerald marry his mistress?” she asked. “Is it done?”

“It is not done,” he said, “though there is no law against it, as far as I know. Anyway, it may already be too late. She left him a week ago to go and marry someone else. Or perhaps the truth has still not punched him on the nose. I don’t know, Abby.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “you should tell him, Miles, that—”

“No,” he said firmly.

She sighed. “I have to go upstairs for my embroidery,”she said.

“Do you?” he said. “I shall see you in the library in a few minutes’ time, then.”

H
E WAS BEING COWARDLY
, the Earl of Severn thought as he drew the book he was currently reading from a shelf and sat with it in his favorite chair beside the fireplace. There was a great deal of talking to be done, and he had intended to do it as soon as they came home. But Abigail had been happy and had disappeared into her room, humming tunelessly.

He had intended to talk to her at the dinner table, but had realized as soon as they were there together that he could not talk about such private and personal matters in the presence of servants.

He had suggested to her that they miss the evening’s entertainment, intending to bring her into the library and have his talk with her. And yet he was being seduced by the memory of that one evening they had spent there together, and he was settling down to a hoped-for repetition of it. She would come in with her embroidery and seat herself opposite him, and he would relax with his book, concentrating on it, but feeling even so the contentment of knowing that she was there with him.

He set the book down impatiently and got to his feet. He stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him, and watched her when she came in a few moments later, her workbag in one hand.

“Everyone at home would have been amazed to see how dedicated a needlewoman I would become one day,” she said. “Embroidery was never one of my accomplishments.”

“I suppose,” he said, “you were too busy drying tears and soothing headaches and bandaging cuts and telling stories. And nursing your father.”

She smiled at him a little uncertainly and sat down on the chair she had occupied a few evenings before. “Life was never dull at home,” she said.

“And compensating two little girls for their mother’s desertion,” he said. “And protecting them from the violent rages of a drunken father, standing in for the half-brother who might have been there to protect them himself but was away much of the time.”

“What did Boris tell you?” she said, releasing her hold on her bag, which fell with a plop to the floor.

“And taking all the burdens of the world on your own shoulders,” he said. “And looking to everyone’s happiness but your own, Abby.”

“What has Boris told you?” She stared up at him from her large gray eyes.

“Enough,” he said. “Enough that I think I understand everything, Abby. Except your opinion of me. Did you really think it would make a difference to me?”

“You know about Rachel?” Her voice was a whisper.

“About Mrs. Harper?” he said. “Yes.”

“I said I was your cousin,” she said. “You married me, knowing nothing else about me. You would not have done so if you had known what a ramshackle lot we are. A drunken, violent father who shamed us in public and abused us in private and gambled away all of his son’s inheritance and all of his daughters’ security. A stepmother who ran away with another man and who now operates a gaming hell and a brothel in London. Even what you knew was bad enough. I had been dismissed from my job for flirting with my employer’s son. Yes, Miles, I thought it would make a difference. In fact, I know it would have.”

“Abby,” he said, his head to one side.

She looked up at him, her jaw set, her face pale. “Can you tell me honestly,” she said, “that it would not have done? Had I told you everything on that first morning, what would you have done? Given me a letter of recommendation? I think not. Sent me on my way with a few coins? Probably. Married me? Never. And do you think I have not had that fact on my conscience?”

“And is that what the six thousand pounds was for?”he asked. “And the fifteen hundred more that you tried to borrow?”

She looked down sharply at her hands. “I thought he was a gentleman,” she said.

“He is,” he said. “He was concerned about you, Abby. First asking for the money and then rushing away without waiting for an answer. He thought I was the best person to help you. Is your stepmother blackmailing you, threatening to come to me with all these facts?”

He watched her hands twisting tightly in her lap. “She threatened to take Bea and Clara,” she said. “She said she would go away to the Continent if she had five thousand pounds. I love them, Miles. They are just little children and have already been forced to live through disturbing upheavals. It killed me—I know you will think I am dramatizing, but it is true that it killed something inside me—when I lost them the first time. But there was no possible way I could keep them with me. Then, after two whole years, hope was rekindled and she tried to dash it again in the most cruel of ways. She would have taken those little girls into that house.”

“No, she would not have.” He stooped down on his haunches and took her cold hands in his. They were rigid with tension. “She would have to spend time and money on them if she had them here with her, Abby. But she knew that you love them. She knew that you were a mother to them between the time of her leaving and your father’s death. And she knew that you do not always think with your head but with your heart. She saw a sure way to a never-ending supply of money. How much have you given her?”

“Five thousand,” she said, her eyes on their clasped hands.

“And she wants fifteen hundred more?”

“Two thousand,” she said. “That will be all, Miles. She will leave as soon as she has that.”

“You do not believe that any more than I do,” he said.

There was a blank look in her eyes, and one of her fingernails dug painfully into his palm.

“But let me give it to her anyway,” she said. “Just this once, Miles, to avoid unpleasantness. I shall tell her that it will be the last. I shall tell her that you know everything and that you will see to it that Bea and Clara come to me. She will understand that there cannot possibly be more. I know it is a dreadful lot of money to ask of you, but you can take it off my allowance for next year. And indeed six thousand pounds is far too much to give me. I would not have dreamed of asking for so much if I had not needed it so desperately. I’ll go tomorrow—”

“Abby,” he said, easing the cut on his palm away from her nail. “Hush, dear. You don’t have to be so agitated. I shall call on Mrs. Harper myself and tell her—”

“No!” she said sharply. “No, Miles. It will be better if I go. We know each other and understand each other.”

“We will go together if you insist,” he said. “But you are not to go alone, Abby. I expressly forbid it.”

“Oh,” she said. “But, Miles, we will give her the money? Please? I promised, you see, and I cannot feel good about going back on a promise.”

There was a look of something in her eyes—terror, desperation, he was not quite sure what. He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands.

“There is really no need to do so,” he said. “Indeed, we should not do so, Abby. No one should be allowed to get away with blackmail or extortion.” He watched her face closely. “But if it will make you feel better, then perhaps we will make an exception in this case. There will be not one penny more, though.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I am costing you a prodigious amount of money, am I not, what with my own debts and Boris’s?”

He got to his feet and drew her up with him and into his arms. “I think you are probably worth ten times more, Abby,” he said. “In fact, I think perhaps you are priceless.”

“Not plain and dull and likely to fade into the background?”she asked. “Not someone to be got with child and taken to Severn Park and left there forever after?”

He searched her eyes, a mere few inches from his own.

“I heard it from the gentlemen in the box next to ours at the theater,” she said.

He closed his eyes briefly. “Abby,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “I know I am not lovely. You did not make any false claims when you offered for me.”

“You have felt guilt over withholding information from me?” he said. “I have felt no less guilt over choosing you so glibly to fit a cynical ideal that I thought was desirable. Shall we just forgive each other and get on with our lives?”