Web of Love (29 page)

“Are you sure you feel well enough?” she asked, sitting upright. “Are you willing to venture out, Allan? I know you did not enjoy the visit to Edmund's a few afternoons ago.”

“Only because you are so anxious to protect me from embarrassment that you would not let me speak a word,” he said. “You must learn not to do that. But we argued that out quite effectively at the time. We don't need to reopen that quarrel. Yes, let's go out. If we go in a closed carriage, I won't have to inflict the sight of me on anyone. Though of course in a closed carriage you really should have a maid. I'll ring for a carriage to be brought around.”

“I'll do it,” she said, leaping to her feet. “You sit there.”

“I said I'll ring,” he said testily, and pulled himself slowly upright with the help of his crutches. “Oh, Madeline, pull the bell rope, will you? I'm sorry. And I have the feeling I am going to be apologizing to you for the rest of our lives.”

J
ENNIFER AND ANNA, WALTER CARRINGTON, and Lord Eden spent more than an hour at the Tower of London, inspecting the armory and gazing at the crown jewels.

“It makes one wish there were some eligible princes floating around waiting to be married, doesn't it?” Anna said to Jennifer. “Can you imagine wearing all that finery?”

“It would be splendid,” Jennifer agreed rather wistfully.

“But you would get very bored sitting on a throne all day,” Walter said, drawing a giggle from both girls, “drumming your jeweled fingers on the carved arm. Picture it. No freedom to walk in the park. Or to eat ices at Gunter's.”

“Perhaps those princes would not be very handsome anyway,” Anna said, linking her arm through Lord Eden's. “Now, what was that about ices?”

“You will freeze your insides,” he said. “But so be it. And you chose an open barouche too, Anna? At the end of September?”

“Anna is always gasping for air in a closed carriage,” her brother said, “and convinced that she is missing all sorts of spectacular sights, since she can look from only one window at a time.”

“I have a new bonnet,” that young lady said gaily, “and I want the world to see it. Do you like it, Dominic?”

“Very fetching,” he said. “But I don't want you bending forward when you are within twenty feet of me, Anna, if you please. That feather would take my eye out.”

They decided to drive through Hyde Park before going to Gunter's, since the leaves, according to Anna, were too lovely to be missed. There they met the closed carriage in which Madeline was riding with Lieutenant Penworth. Madeline let down the window in order to exchange greetings with the occupants of the barouche. The lieutenant stayed back in the shadows and said nothing.

Jennifer leaned forward and smiled. “How do you do, Lieutenant?” she called. “I am very pleased to see that you are out again. Do you remember me?”

“Of course he does,” Madeline said with a smile. “We decided to take advantage of a beautiful day and come out for a drive.”

Jennifer gazed in at the man who had raised a hand in acknowledgment of her greeting. She would not have known that it was he. This man looked thin and pale, and half his face was completely covered by a type of bandage. She remembered a lithe, good-looking, high-spirited young officer who liked always to be active.

“We are on our way to Gunter's,” Lord Eden said. “Would you care to join us, Penworth? Madeline?”

“Perhaps some other time,” Madeline said quickly.

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Penworth said at the same moment. “That would be pleasant.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Are you sure you will not mind?” she asked.

“No,” he said abruptly. “Will you?”

“We will meet you there in a few minutes, then,” Lord Eden said as Madeline flushed and withdrew her head back inside the carriage.

“So I am finally to meet my future brother-in-law,” Lord Eden said as they drove on. “Madeline has been keeping him hidden.”

“I have been dying of curiosity,” Anna said.

“Poor man,” Jennifer said. “How can war be so cruel?”

“You did not wish to go,” the lieutenant was saying in the other carriage. “For my sake, Madeline? Or for yours?”

She looked at him in dismay. “For yours,” she said. “You have been unwilling for anyone to see you. And Gunter's is a very public place. Allan, you don't think I am ashamed of you, do you?”

“No.” He reached out a hand for hers. “But you have spent so long nursing me, that I think perhaps you are trying to protect me from all harm, physical and otherwise. It is exhausting for you when other people can see me, is it not? But I cannot keep you from all normal daily activities, Madeline. These are your family and your friends. You should spend time with them. If I am to be your husband, I must spend time with them too.”

She squeezed his hand.

A few customers at Gunter's turned to watch the entrance of a rather grim-faced Lieutenant Penworth a few minutes later. He crossed without assistance to the table at which the other four were seated and took the only empty chair at one end of the table, the one next to Jennifer. Madeline, having made the introductions, was forced to sit at the opposite end of the table.

The conversation was bright and hearty for a few minutes. There was much laughter at the table. Then Anna launched into a description of the crown jewels and a lament over the fact that her papa had said they were to go home to the country within the next week or so.

“Well, Edmund and Alexandra and the children will be going as well,” Madeline said soothingly. “And I am trying to persuade Allan to come too for a while. He has not said no, so I hold out great hopes.” She smiled the length of the table at her betrothed, who was talking with Jennifer.

“Are you feeling better?” Jennifer was asking. “I was sorry to hear of your injuries, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said without looking at her. “I am fully recovered.” His face was pale and grim. He was not at all the same young man as the one she had danced with and walked with in the Forest of Soignes.

“Will you be returning to Devon soon?” she asked him. “I remember your telling me about your family and about how you loved your home.”

“I have no intention of taking myself back there in the foreseeable future,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, and took a mouthful of her ice. She had lost touch with the conversation that the others were engaged in. Lord Eden, she saw, was watching them from beside his sister.

“Your mother must be anxious about you,” she said. “And your papa and all your brothers and sisters.”

“Doubtless,” he said. “I would be the object of their pity for the rest of my life. They were proud of me.”

Jennifer played nervously with her spoon. She wished he had sat somewhere else. “Are they not proud of you now?” she said.

“Oh, yes.” His voice was cold. “I am their wounded hero.”

“Why do you wear such a large bandage?” she asked, and flushed at the rudeness of her question.

“My face is not a pretty sight,” he said.

“Have the wounds not healed?”

“As well as they ever will, I suppose,” he said. “Which is not to say a great deal at all.”

“Would it not be better to wear just a small eye patch?” she asked. “The sun and air would help the other scars to fade, would they not? And if you were to ask me, I would say that the bandage is far more noticeable than a few scars would be.”

“If I were to ask you,” he said so quietly that she was not quite sure that she had heard the words correctly. She felt acutely uncomfortable for the rest of their stay at the confectioner's.

“Were you very badly snubbed by Penworth?” Lord Eden asked her with some sympathy in the barouche later.

“I deserved it, I'm afraid,” she said. “I should not have asked him any personal questions. He seems to have recovered from his outer wounds quite well. But there are other wounds, far deeper, that have not even begun to heal yet.”

“I must confess I was very embarrassed,” Anna said, “and annoyed with myself for being so. I was so afraid of saying something that I should not say.”

“How would one face life?” Walter said. “Only one leg. Only one eye. Ouch! I think I would rather be dead.”

“What nonsense!” Jennifer said, and flushed again at yet another rudeness. “There are a great many things one can do in life without a leg or an eye. I do feel sad for Lieutenant Penworth, for I knew him as he was before. But I also feel a little angry that his attitude has become bitter and cynical. No, not angry. It all happened to him only three months ago. But I would be angry and doubly sad if I were to meet him in a few years' time and still found him bemoaning his loss and not getting on with his life.”

“I'm sure you're right, Miss Simpson,” Walter said. “But, gad, how would one get on with one's life without a leg? No riding. No sports. It doesn't bear thinking of.”

“Poor man,” Anna said.

Lord Eden was smiling at her, Jennifer saw.

 

O
N THE SAME AFTERNOON
, Ellen called upon the Earl of Harrowby. She took no one with her and even thought, as she raised the brass knocker outside the huge double doors of his house, that perhaps it was improper to visit him alone. But she smiled at the thought. This had been her home for fifteen years. He had been her father.

He had been drinking again, she could see as soon as he hurried down the stairs to meet her instead of waiting for his butler to show her up to the drawing room.

“I wouldn't have touched a drop if I had known for certain that you would come, Ellie,” he said, flashing her a smile as he offered his arm. “I thought you wouldn't, once you had thought about it.”

“But I did come,” she said, looking about the drawing room and finding it exactly as it had been the last time she saw it, except that perhaps the carpet was slightly more worn and the draperies at the windows more faded.

“I didn't invite anyone else,” he said. “I hope you don't mind. It will be just you and me, Ellie. Besides”—he smiled apologetically—“there are not many ladies who would accept an invitation from the Earl of Harrowby these days. I am not considered quite respectable, y'know.”

“Are you not?” she said, looking at the marked signs of dissipation about his face and figure as he stood with his back to the fire. They did not speak as the housekeeper—like the butler, someone she did not know—brought in the tea tray. She felt awkward. She did not know what to call him. “Shall I pour?”

“If you had not left me,” he said, extending one hand to indicate that she should take a seat behind the tray, “I would not be the wreck you see. I loved you, girl. You should not have left.”

“You did not take up drinking just after I left,” she said, holding up a full cup and saucer to him. “Now, be honest with yourself. I do not need the blame for that heaped on my shoulders.”

His smile was almost boyish. “You are quite right,” he said. “But you were always good for me, Ellie. You never did put up with any nonsense. You always said what was what. You used to tell me to go away when I was in my cups. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

He laughed. “Sometimes, not often, I admit,” he said, “I used to stay sober just so that I could come to the nursery or the schoolroom and see you. And then I would drink afterward. But not so much in those days, girl. Not so much then. Have some cakes.”

They looked at each other.

“You were always my St. George,” she said, “who would slay all my dragons.”

“Was I, Ellie?” he said. “Was he good to you?”

She knew he was not referring to Charlie. “Yes,” she said, “he was good to me.”

“But he didn't slay any dragons?” That boyish smile again.

“I was older,” she said. “I knew that no man is infallible. Not even fathers.”

“Tell me about your life,” he said. “It is as if you were dead, Ellie, and have come back to life again.”

She told him about Spain and about Belgium. She told him about Charlie and Jennifer and her other friends. She must have talked for half an hour, she realized with something of a jolt as she finished telling him about her meeting with Sir Jasper Simpson. But he was interested. He had scarcely moved or withdrawn his eyes from her face.

“It is me you should be turning to for support, Ellie,” he said, “not him. Do you feel that he is more your father than I am?”

How could she answer the question? “He is Jennifer's grandfather,” she said. “That is why meeting him is so important, Papa.” And she bit down hard on her lip and closed her eyes.

“Perhaps I am too,” he said. “Perhaps I am your papa, Ellie. But the important thing is that I was for all those years. I was your papa. I loved you. I wasn't perfect, but I didn't ever mistreat you, did I?”

She shook her head, her eyes on the silver milk jug on the tray.

He got to his feet and pulled on the bell rope for someone to come and remove the tray. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece and tapped one knuckle rhythmically against his teeth as he waited, saying nothing. But he turned back to her when the footman had disappeared, and came to sit down beside her.

“Don't go yet,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “Stay and talk awhile longer, Ellie.”

She looked down at his hand, fatter now than it had been, but a hand she would have recognized anyway, with its blunt, dark-haired fingers, the nails broader than they were long. Hands that had held her as a child, hands that she could remember clinging to sometimes as she walked, though she could no longer remember where it was they had walked.

“What did you mean,” she asked, “that you might be?”

He looked at her with his heavy-lidded, rather bloodshot eyes. “Your mother and I,” he said. “We always said what would most hurt, even if it were not always the truth. You might be mine, Ellie.”