Mary Balogh - The Proposal

She closed the fan with a snap.

“He had not gone to bed,” she said. “He was standing up in the gallery, without a light, looking down at us and listening to every word. We only knew he was there when he spoke. I can remember every word. My God, he said, I am not insane, Jason. You cannot believe I am mad. Jason looked up at him and told him quite bluntly that he was. And Vernon looked at me and said, I am not sick, Gwen. Or weak. You cannot think that. You cannot think that I need nursing or humoring. And that was when I killed him.”

Her fan was shaking on her lap. She realized that it was her hands that were shaking only when a large, warm, steady hand covered them both.

“Not now, Vernon, I said to him. I am weary. I am mortally weary. And I turned to walk to the library. I needed to be alone. I was very upset at what Jason had suggested, and I was even more upset that Vernon had overheard. I felt that a crisis point had been reached, and I was in no frame of mind to deal with it. I had my hand on the doorknob when he called my name. Ah, the anguish in his voice, the sense of betrayal. All in that one word, my name. I was turning back to him when he threw himself over the balustrade, and so I saw it from start to finish. I suppose it lasted for a second, though it seemed an eternity. Jason had his arms raised toward him as if to catch him, but it could not be done, of course. Vernon was dead before I could open my mouth or Jason could move. I do not believe I even screamed.”

There was a rather lengthy silence. Gwen frowned, remembering, something she almost never allowed herself to do of those moments. Remembering that there had been something puzzling, something … off. Even at the time her mind had not been able to grasp what it was. It was impossible to do so now.

“You did not kill him,” Lord Trentham said. “You know very well you did not. Depressed though Muir was, he nevertheless made the deliberate decision to hurl himself to his death. Even Grayson did not kill him. Yet I understand why you feel guilty, why you always will. I understand.”

It felt strangely like a benediction.

“Yes,” she said, “you of all people would know how guilt where there is no real blame can be almost worse than guilt where there is. There is no atonement to be made.”

“Stanbrook once told me,” he said, “that suicide is the worst kind of selfishness, as it is often a plea to specific people who are left stranded in the land of the living, unable for all eternity to answer the plea. Your case is similar in many ways to his. For one moment you were unable to cope with the constant and gargantuan task of caring for your husband’s needs, and for that momentary lapse he punished you for all time.”

“You put the blame upon him?” she said.

“Hardly,” he said. “I believe you that he was sick, that he could not simply pull himself free of his black moods, as Grayson seemed to think he could, especially with a bit of firm handling. I also believe you gave him your all—except when your all had drained you dry and for a moment you decided that you needed a little time to think and recover some strength so that you could give it to him again. I am not surprised that for seven years you have not looked for another marriage.”

She had turned one of her hands, she realized, so that it was clasped in his. Their fingers were laced. Her own was dwarfed. She felt curiously safe.

“Say my name,” she said almost in a whisper.

“Gwendoline?” he said. “Gwendoline.”

She closed her eyes.

“So often,” she said, “I hear only that other name, spoken over and over again in his voice. Gwen, Gwen, Gwen.”

“Gwendoline,” he said again. “Have you told this story to anyone else?”

“No,” she said. “And you cannot say this time, can you, that it is the house that has drawn such confidences from me. We are not at Penderris. It must be you.”

“You know instinctively,” he said, “that I will understand, that I will neither accuse you nor brush off your feelings of guilt as so much daftness. To whom do you feel closer than anyone else in the world?”

You, she almost said. But that could not be true. Her mother? Neville? Lily? Lauren?

“Lauren,” she said.

“Has she suffered?” he asked her.

“Oh, more than almost anyone I know,” she told him. “She grew up with us because her mother married my uncle and went off on a wedding trip from which they never returned. Her father’s people would have nothing to do with her, and her maternal grandfather would not take her. She grew up expecting to marry Neville, and she loved him dearly. But when he went to war, he married Lily secretly, thought the following day that she had been killed in an ambush, and came home without saying a word to any of us about her. His wedding to Lauren was planned. They were at the church in Newbury—it was packed with guests. She was about to walk down the aisle toward him and her happily-ever-after when Lily arrived, looking like a beggar woman. And so all Lauren’s dreams, all her sense of security, all her sense of self were destroyed again. It was a sheer miracle that she met Kit. Yes, she has suffered.”

“Then she is the ideal person for you,” he said. “Tell her.”

“About … what happened?” She frowned.

“Tell her everything,” he said. “Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. But sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.”

“I would not wish to burden her,” she said.

“She will not feel burdened.” He tightened his fingers about hers. “You think she imagines your marriage to have been perfect but blighted by tragedy. She probably believes, as others do, that you were the victim of abuse. You were a victim, but not exactly of abuse. She will be relieved to know the truth. She will be able to offer the comfort that I daresay you gave her during her far more public suffering.”

“The Survivors’ Club,” she said softly. “That is what they have done for you.”

“What we have done for one another,” he said. “We all need to be loved, Gwendoline, fully and unconditionally. Even when we bear the burden of guilt and believe ourselves to be wholly unworthy. The point is that no one is worthy. I am not a religious man, but I believe that is what religions are all about. No one is deserving, yet we are all somehow worthy of love anyway.”

Gwen lifted her gaze to the distant ballroom. Incredibly, everyone was still waltzing. The set had not yet ended.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said. “This is a social occasion. I ought to be helping you enjoy yourself, for you did not enjoy coming here and would not have done it if it had not been for your sister. I should be making you relax and laugh. I should be—”

She stopped abruptly. His free arm had come about her shoulders, and the hand that had been holding hers was loosely clasping her neck, her chin held firmly in the cleft between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted her chin and turned her head.

She could not see him clearly.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you say the daftest things. It must be the aristocrat in you.”

And he kissed her, his mouth firm on hers, warm, open. His tongue pressed into her mouth. She clasped his wrist and kissed him back.

It was not a brief embrace. Neither was it lascivious or even particularly ardent. But it was something she felt to the roots of her being. For, physical though it was, it was not about the physical. It was about … them. He was kissing her because she was Gwendoline, and he cared about her, warts and all. She was kissing him because he was Hugo and she cared about him.

After he had finished and had removed his hand from her chin in order to hold her hand in her lap again and she had tipped her head sideways to rest on his shoulder, she felt the soreness of unshed tears in her throat. For she was not, of course, in love with him. Or not just in love, anyway.

When had he become the sun and the moon to her, the very air she breathed?

And when had an impossibility become only an improbability?

She must not be swayed by romance. And perhaps that was all this was.

And the aftermath of her unburdening.

When had he grown so wise, so understanding, so gentle?

After he had suffered?

Was that what suffering was all about? Was that what it did for a person?

He moved his head and kissed her temple, her cheek.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured. “The dance must be almost at an end. And look, there is another couple out on the balcony and they are hovering at the top of the steps. We had better go in so that I can sit with Constance and Berwick at supper. So that we can sit with them.”

She lifted her head, dried her cheeks with the heels of her palms, and got to her feet.

“I still have to decide,” he said as she took his arm, “whether I want to court you or not. I’ll let you know. I am not sure I can bring myself to court a woman who limps.”

They were out from under the tree, and there was lamplight playing across his face when she looked up at him, startled.

He was not looking back at her. But there was a gleam of something in his eyes that might possibly be a smile.

The damnable thing was that Lady Muir had been right. The ballroom really had been buzzing with the news of his fame. A dozen or more men had wanted to shake his hand during supper, and wherever he looked, he had intercepted nodding heads and plumes and admiring glances. It had been deuced embarrassing and had ended up causing him to look down at his plate more than anywhere else, feeling awkward and very much on display. He had spent the rest of the night dodging from one shadowed corner to another, but it had not seemed to help much. And he had been unable to leave early as Constance danced until the last chord of the final set had been played.

Now this morning there had been a veritable deluge of post, almost all of it invitations to various ton entertainments: garden parties, private concerts, soirees, Venetian breakfasts, whatever the devil they were, musical evenings—how were they different from concerts? And how could a breakfast be scheduled to begin during the afternoon? Was it not a contradiction in terms? Or did it mean that the ton slept all morning during the Season, something that made sense actually, since they obviously caroused all night? Almost all the invitations addressed to him included Constance, a fact that made it difficult either simply to ignore them or to send back a firm refusal.

There were a few invitations addressed just to Constance, as well as three bouquets—from Ralph, young Everly, and someone who had signed his card with such an extravagant flourish that his name was illegible.

Hugo went off to spend the morning with William Richardson, his manager, leaving Constance with her mother and grandmother and the two little boys the latter had brought with her this morning. Strangely, Fiona did not seem unduly distressed by their energy and incessant questions, and Constance was ecstatic at the chance to talk and play with these new cousins. She was to go driving in Hyde Park later in the afternoon with Gregory Hind, one of last night’s partners, the one with the loud, braying laugh and the tendency to find everything funny. He had passed Lady Muir’s strict scrutiny, however, and Connie liked him. And apparently Hind’s sister and her betrothed were to accompany them, so all was perfectly respectable.

Hugo immersed himself in work and longed for the country.

He was not at all sure he wanted to court Lady Muir. She limped. Really quite noticeably. But when he chuckled quietly at the memory of saying that to her, he won for himself a puzzled look from Richardson and then an answering laugh as though the man thought he must have missed a joke but would pretend he had not.

No, he was not sure he wanted to court her. He would be no good for her. She needed someone to cherish her and pamper her and make her laugh. She needed someone from her own world. And he needed someone … But did he really need anyone at all? He needed someone to bear him a son so that his father could rest in peace. He needed someone for sex. The son could wait, though, and sex could be had elsewhere than in marriage.

A depressing thought.

He did not need Gwendoline, Lady Muir. Except that she had taken him with her last night to the very darkest depth of her soul and he had felt curiously gifted. And she had kissed him as if … Well, as if he somehow mattered. And when he had said that about her limp, she had thrown back her head and laughed with sheer merriment. And except that he had been inside her body in the cove at Penderris and she had welcomed him there. Yes, she had. She had, and he, who had only ever had whores before her, had known the difference even though she had lacked most of their expertise.