The Secret Pearl (9 page)

He thought in particular of that time six years before when he had returned after so long and so painful an absence. The porter’s wife had had her apron to her eyes, crying at the sight of him—her wrinkled face was wreathed in smiles now as she bobbed him a curtsy. He raised one hand in greeting and smiled at her. All the servants had been out on the upper terrace to greet him—they had even cheered him—and he would swear that their happiness had not been feigned.

And Thomas. The memory lost some of its luster. He had not thought—foolishly he had not thought of what the year of his reported death had meant to Thomas. He had been the Duke of Ridgeway and was now merely Lord Thomas Kent again.

The duke had always thought Thomas was fond of him, although they had had their differences and although they were only half-brothers—Thomas was the son of his father’s second wife. Perhaps he had been. Perhaps the blow of finding himself suddenly deprived of a title and property he had thought his had been just too much.

And Sybil later that same day. Sybil, about whom he had dreamed for weeks before that, ever since his memory had returned. Back in his arms again—for a brief moment. More beautiful than ever.

He would not think of it. He was coming home again now and there was excitement in him despite the fact that Sybil was there.

Mrs. Laycock and Jarvis, the butler, were standing at the top of the horseshoe steps before the massive double doors leading into the hall. Dearly familiar. Mrs. Laycock had been housekeeper at Willoughby for as long as his grace could recall, and Jarvis had been at the house all his life, rising through the ranks of the footmen to his current position, which he had assumed four years before.

Mrs. Laycock curtsied and Jarvis inclined his body into the bow that had stiffened noticeably the very day of his promotion. The duke smiled and greeted them.

Sybil had not come outside or even into the hall to meet him. She was in her sitting room, Mrs. Laycock informed him.

Almost an hour passed before he attended her there. Sybil would not appreciate being greeted by an eager husband dressed in the creased garments he had traveled in. He bathed and changed first.

His wife was reclining on the daybed in her sitting room. She did not rise at his entry.

“Adam,” she said breathlessly, smiling at him. The same beautiful, fragile, wide-eyed Sybil he had fallen in love with once upon a time. “Did you have a comfortable journey?”

He bent over her to kiss her and she turned her cheek to his lips. “How are you, Sybil?” he asked. There was a high flush on her cheeks.

“Well,” she said. “Bored. Sir Cecil Hayward held a dinner last evening and entertained the company with stories of his new hunter and praises of his hounds. I left early. I could not stop yawning.”

“He is, I’m afraid, just a typical country gentleman,” he said with a smile. “Have you recovered from your chill?”

She shrugged. “You are not going to fuss, are you?” she said. “Nanny does enough of that.”

“I must remember to thank Nanny, then,” he said. “How is Pamela?”

“Well,” she said, “despite circumstances, the poor darling. You really must get rid of that governess, Adam. What whim was it that made you send her here?”

“Is she not doing a good job?” he asked.

“Pamela is too young to be spending hours in a schoolroom,” she said. “And she dislikes her governess. I would like to know what she was to you, Adam.”

“Houghton hired her,” he said. “Whom have you invited here apart from Chesterton?”

“Just a few people,” she said. “It was so dull here with you gone.”

“You know that you could have come with me,” he said. “I asked you. I would have taken you and Pamela both. We could have shown her London.”

“But you know you would have been playing jealous husband as soon as I smiled at another gentleman,” she said. “You always do, Adam. You hate to see me enjoy myself. Have you come home to spoil things for me again? Will you be scowling at all my guests?”

“Will I need to?” he asked.

“You are horrid to me,” she said, her large blue eyes filling with tears. “Did you know about the ball?”

“Ball?” he said.

“I have arranged it for the night after everyone arrives,” she said. “And I have invited everyone, Adam. You need not fear that anyone will feel slighted.”

“You planned a ball without me here?” he asked. “Would that not have struck our neighbors as strange, Sybil?”

“Can I help it if you take yourself off to London at every opportunity in search of pleasure?” she said. “I would imagine everyone would sympathize with me. It is to be an outdoor ball. An orchestra has been hired to play in the pavilion. A dance floor is to be laid on the west side of the lake—in the usual place. And the lanterns have been arranged for and the refreshments. I hope it does not rain.”

“This is all to take place in four days’ time?” he said. “I am so glad you thought to mention it to me today, Sybil. I hate surprises.”

“And I hate that tone of sarcasm,” she said. “You used not to use it with me. You used to be kind to me. You used to love me.” She started to cough, and drew a handkerchief from beside her.

“It is so hot in here,” she said fretfully. “I think I ought to rest now. The doctor told me to rest more. You will be anxious to leave me and go about your own business anyway.”

“Let me help you to your bed,” he said, bending toward her. “I would have brought a physician with me from town if I had known you were still unwell. Obviously Hartley is not doing you much good.”

“You never wrote to ask after my health,” she said. “I shall be quite happy to rest here, thank you, Adam.”

Don’t touch me
. She had not said the words, but her actions had said them for her. The slight shrinking from his outstretched hands. The refusal to be helped. The turning of her cheek for his kiss of greeting. The duke’s jaw tightened as he stood outside her door a few moments later. The old familiar words, sometimes spoken, sometimes merely implied.

Would Pamela still be at her lessons? he wondered. Or in the nursery? He would go and see. He had missed her.

F
LEUR WAS READING A STORY TO LADY PAMELA, although she knew that the child was not listening. She had seen her father arrive more than an hour before from the nursery window, where she had been with Mrs. Clement. But her nurse had not allowed her to rush downstairs to greet him and had sent her to the schoolroom soon after.

The child was torn between an impatient eagerness for him to come and a stubborn insistence that she did not care, that she did not wish to see him anyway.

Sullen and petulant as her charge was much of the time, sometimes Fleur ached to take her into her arms, to hold her close, to assure her that she was loved, that she mattered, that she was not forgotten.

She knew what it was like. Oh, she knew, though she had not known at so young an age. And by the time it had happened she had been old enough to know that her parents were in no way to blame. She had always been able to comfort herself with the knowledge that they had loved her totally, that she had meant all the world to them.

Perhaps Lady Pamela’s case was worse than hers after all. Her mother rarely visited her, though she showered her with love and endearments when she did. Her father had been away for many weeks.

But he did come at last. They heard a firm masculine tread in the corridor outside the schoolroom and a deep voice talking to Mrs. Clement. And Fleur breathed a sigh of relief for Lady Pamela, whose face brightened into that rare expression of pretty eagerness as her governess got quietly to her feet to cross the room and put the book away in order to leave father and daughter some privacy.

The door opened and she heard a childish shriek. She smiled and arranged the book carefully on its shelf with the others. She was nervous, if the truth were known. The Duke of Ridgeway! She had always thought of him as a very grand personage indeed.

“Papa, Papa!” Lady Pamela shrieked. “I have made you a picture, and I lost a tooth—see? What did you bring me?”

There was a deep masculine laugh, the sound of a smacking kiss.

“Cupboard love,” his voice said. “I thought it was me you were happy to see, Pamela. What makes you think I have brought you anything?”

“What did you bring?” The child’s voice was still a shriek.

“Later,” he said. “You look lopsided without your tooth. Are you going to get a big one instead of it?”

“How much later?” she asked.

The Duke of Ridgeway laughed again.

Fleur turned, feeling foolish at her own nervousness. She was the daughter of a baron. She had lived in a baron’s home, at Heron House, for most of her life. There was no reason to be awed by a duke. She held herself straight, folded her hands in front of her in what she hoped would look like a relaxed attitude, and raised her eyes.

He had his daughter up in his arms and was laughing as she hugged him tightly about the neck. The scarred half of his face was turned to Fleur.

She felt suddenly as if she were in a tunnel, a long and dark
tunnel through which a cold wind rushed. She could hear the hum of it, though there was surely not air enough to breathe.

His eyes met hers across the room, and the coldness rushed into her nostrils and up into her head. The sound of the wind became a thick buzzing. Her hands felt cold and clammy and a million miles away from her head.

“Miss Hamilton?” The Duke of Ridgeway set his daughter down on the floor and took a few steps toward Fleur. He made her a slight bow. “Welcome to Willoughby Hall, ma’am.”

She knew that if she could just breathe deeply and evenly for long enough, her vision would return and blood would flow to her head again. She thought only of her breathing. In. Out. Don’t rush it. Don’t fight it.

“I trust you have found everything to your satisfaction here,” he said, indicating the schoolroom about them.

Breathe slowly. No, don’t give in to panic. Don’t faint.
Don’t faint!

“Papa.” Lady Pamela was tugging at the leg of his pantaloons. “What did you bring me?”

Those intense dark eyes turned from her to look down at his daughter. He smiled, but the side of his mouth that Fleur could see, the scarred side, did not lift.

She felt a black terror, which had her gasping for air for a moment before she imposed control over her breathing again.

“We had better go down and see,” he said, “or I am not going to have any peace, am I? Sidney grumbled about it all the way from London. I only hope you like it.”

He held out a hand for his daughter’s—a hand with long, well-manicured fingers.

Slowly. In. Out.

“Sidney is silly,” was Lady Pamela’s opinion.

“I shudder to think what Sidney would say if he were ever to hear you say that,” he said.

“Sidney is silly, Sidney is silly,” she chanted, giggling and taking his hand.

Those dark eyes were on her again, Fleur could feel, though she kept her own resolutely on Lady Pamela.

“Miss Hamilton will come down with us,” he said, “and bring you back again before Nanny can send out a search party.”

Fleur walked through the door ahead of him and along the corridor beside him to one of the twin staircases that flanked the great hall.

“Ma’am?” he said at the head of the stairs, extending his free arm to her.

But she heard an inarticulate sound come from her throat, and she shrank farther away from him so that her dress brushed against the wall as they descended. He turned to listen to Lady Pamela’s chatter.

Fleur listened to the echo of their footsteps as they crossed the great hall, noted the smart way a footman sprang forward to open the double doors for them, felt fresh air and sunshine against her face, counted the marble steps as they descended them, and felt beneath her feet the cobbles of the winding avenue that led to the stable block.

She concentrated hard on immediate physical sensation. It was by far the best way to occupy her thoughts.

“Where are we going? What is it?” Lady Pamela tripped along at her father’s side, still clinging to his hand.

“You will see soon enough,” he said. “Poor Sidney.”

“Silly Sidney,” she said.

It was a puppy, a round, snub-nosed little Border collie with white fur about its nose and in a lopsided stripe over its head and about its neck. Two feet and its stomach were white. The rest was black.

It was protesting the fact that it had been placed in a makeshift pen with a pile of straw that it tripped on as it tried to walk. It was crying a loud protest, a demand for its mother.

“Ohhh!” Lady Pamela withdrew her hand from her father’s and stood staring speechlessly until she went down on her
knees beside the pen and lifted the little bundle into her arms. The puppy stopped its crying immediately and licked at her face so that she wrinkled her nose and turned aside, giggling.

“Sidney traveled from London with a clean face and nipped fingers,” his grace said. “And frequently with wet breeches.”

“Oh.” Lady Pamela gazed in awe at her present. “He is mine, Papa? All mine?”

“Sidney certainly does not want it,” her father said.

“I am going to take him to my room,” she said. “I am going to sleep with him.”