Mary Balogh - Web of Love

He had thought he might explain those things to her when she came back. She would have calmed down by that time. He had calmed down. Yet when he had heard her come home and gone out into the parlor, he had found himself looking at a woman wearing deep mourning and a face of marble.

“Can we talk?” he had asked, knowing that it was hopeless, that there was no way to get past the defenses she had built in the space of a few hours.

“There is nothing to say,” she had said. “I am sorry I am late with your dinner. I will have it ready soon.”

“I am not hungry,” he had said. “Ellen, let me grieve with you. Let me comfort you if I can.”

“There is no grieving to be done,” she had said, “and no comfort to be offered. I am not worthy to grieve for Charlie. And you are not worthy to offer comfort to anyone for his death. I shall show the outer respect of wearing these clothes for him for the next year because he deserves that respect. I would prefer it if you stayed in your room, Lord Eden. We can have nothing more to say to each other, you and I.”

They were ridiculous words, of course. She must have realized it herself before the evening was out. Of course she would grieve for Charlie. She had loved him. Her grief was only just beginning. But he knew that there was no getting past that barrier she had set up between herself and him. Certainly not that evening. Perhaps not ever.

He had had no choice but to return to his room and remain there, careful to have his back turned or his eyes closed every time she came in after that on some necessary errand. He had been desperate over his own helplessness by that morning. Edmund had seemed like an angel sent from heaven.

And so he had lost her. There was a vast and painful emptiness inside him that threatened to turn to panic. She did not wish to see him ever again, she had said that morning. And she had meant it.

He would never see her again. Never talk with her and laugh with her. Never sit in comfortable silence with her. Never explore her lovely face and figure with his eyes. Never sit quietly holding her hand. Never kiss her or touch her. Never make love with her.

The emptiness yawned.

But Lord Eden paced on. He had promised Edmund that he would be ready for life again by the next day. And by God, he would be ready. He was not going to pine his life away for any woman. Not even for Ellen. And if he must continue living, there was no point at all in putting it off until the next day. He opened the door of his room.

“I hope you have chosen a hotel with a decent chef,” he said when his brother looked up from a book in some surprise. “I could eat a horse.”

“Ah,” Lord Amberley said. “Was that to be boiled, stewed, or roasted, Dominic?”

ELLEN WAS STANDING at the rail of the packet from Ostend, feeling the strong wind of the channel catch at her breath and whip her cloak against her. Her new maid, Prudence, an English girl excited to be returning to her own country, stood at her side. The Earl of Amberley had hired the girl, bought her passage, and paid her first year’s salary in advance. It was a comfort to have a companion, not to be entirely alone.

She would not look back to the coast of Belgium. She set her face for England, invisible still beyond the haze of the horizon. But she would not look back.

She had left them there, both of them. Forever. Charlie in an unknown grave on a battlefield she had roamed over for several hours three days before, Lord Eden recuperating from his wounds in Brussels with his brother and mother. She would not see either again, the one because he was forever beyond her sight, the other because she chose not to do so.

Charlie was dead. She recited the fact to herself almost constantly and was continually amazed that she lived on. That she could live on. She had not thought that she would be capable of doing so without him. But she was living. She was dreadfully lonely despite the friendly sweetness of Prudence, despite the visits in Brussels in the week before she had left, daily by the dowager Lady Amberley and twice by Lady Madeline. There was no longer that sheltering, all-encompassing, totally unconditional love that had been Charlie. But she was living.

And she would live. She still had someone to live for. Jennifer was in London, doubtless distraught over the death of the father she had only just begun to really know. Jennifer would need her, even if Ellen was not nearly old enough to be a real mother to the girl. She could be a friend instead, the closest living link with the girl’s father.

And there was Lady Habersham, Charlie’s sister, who had been kind to him through the years, who had always kept Jennifer when her brother was not in England, who must have agreed to give a home to Ellen in the event of Charlie’s death in battle. She would be grieving. She too would be a friend.

And then there was her final and reluctant promise to Charlie. The promise she had not wanted to make. The one she did not want to keep. But she would keep it for all that, for she had truly loved Charlie, and she had wronged him terribly after his death, and she would do this last thing for him with all the determination that it might take. She would see to it that Jennifer met her grandfather, that he acknowledged her and took charge of her future.

She would do that much for Charlie. And for Jennifer. And then, if there was enough money, she would buy a cottage in the country. And she would live there for the rest of her life. She would even be happy there eventually, once the terrible pain of her grief had passed off. It did not feel now as if it ever would, as if she would ever wake up again in the morning glad to be alive, looking forward to what the day might bring.

But the older Lady Amberley had said that it would pass. And common sense told her that it would. Charlie was gone. And she lived on. So be it.

So be it. She would live on.

And as for that other, she would put it from her mind, and that too would fade with time. The guilt would fade. The memory of him and what she had known with him for six days would fade. A more heightened sensuality than she had ever dreamed of with Charlie, contented as she had been with every facet of their life together.

She would not think of it any longer. Or of him. It had not been love, or anything approximating love. It had been all purely physical, and therefore not anything of any lasting value.

She was sorry to have lost a friend, to have bitter memories of him instead of sweet ones, connected with the times he had shared with her and Charlie. But that was all her fault. She had spoiled their relationship. And, of course, they could never be friends again.

She would not think of him any longer.

And she would not look back to a past that could never again be her present or her future. She would look ahead.

“When may we expect to see the coast of England?” she asked Prudence, raising her face resolutely to the wind. “Do you know?”

Sometimes the pain was a real and a physical thing. Sometimes it was almost past bearing.

ELLEN SAT DOWN FACING HER SISTER-IN-LAW, Lady Habersham, and smiled. “The house is suddenly quiet with Jennifer gone out. She seems almost her old self again,” she said. “I am so glad the Misses Emery have taken to her and she to them.”

“They are sweet girls,” Lady Habersham said. “And of course I have known Melinda Emery for more than twenty years. We were girls together. It will do Jennifer the world of good to spend the afternoon shopping.”

“I had no idea when I came home that she would be quite so broken up,” Ellen said. “I expected tears, Dorothy, and regrets. But not all the rest.”

“She always worshiped her father,” Lady Habersham said, “and lived for the day when she would be free of school and free to live with him all the time. She used to talk of it when she was here, you know. It has been a terrible blow, losing him like this just when it seemed that her dream was coming true.”

Ellen smoothed the black silk of her dress over her knees. “I didn’t expect to be the way I have been, either,” she said. “I had thought of it many times during the five years of our marriage and wondered how I would react. Quite honestly, I did not think it would be possible to live on with Charlie dead. And when it did happen and I knew that of course I would survive, I thought I could fight the grief and the emptiness. I remember standing on the boat from Ostend thinking that once I set foot on English soil I would be able to put it all behind me and start life again. I even made plans. I knew it would be hard, but I thought it would be possible. That was two months ago. And I have done nothing.”

Lady Habersham picked up her embroidery frame and began to stitch. “Losing a husband is the very worst thing that can happen in the world,” she said. “I know, dear. And, believe me, you are doing remarkably well. You have allowed Jennifer to lean on you, and have been a pillar of strength for her. If it were not for your face and your loss of weight, Ellen, no one would have an inkling of how deeply you are suffering. But it is time to start living again, is it not?”

“Yes.” Ellen stared down at her hands. “You know, the very worst thing is finding myself storing up some silly little incident in my head to tell Charlie later, and then remembering that I won’t be able to do so. Ever. Oh, dear, I must stop this. You are quite right, Dorothy. It is time to live again. Where should I start, do you think?”

Lady Habersham kept her head bent over her embroidery. “Papa wants to see you,” she said.

“Your father?” Ellen looked up wide-eyed. “He wants to see me, Dorothy? Why?”

Her sister-in-law set her work down on her lap. “You are Charlie’s widow,” she said. “Charlie was his favorite child, Ellen.”

“His favorite child?” Ellen’s eyes flashed with indignation. “Yet he did not talk to him for almost twenty years?”

“He would doubtless have forgiven Charlie a long time ago if he had only loved him less,” Lady Habersham said sadly. “Family members sometimes do dreadful things to one another. Now that it is too late, of course, Papa is almost prostrate with grief. He has worn mourning ever since he heard. He asked me two months ago, and has been asking me ever since, if I would persuade you to meet him. I have not thought that you were ready for such a thing. But now perhaps you are. Will you, Ellen?”

Ellen drew in a deep breath. “I promised Charlie I would try to get his father to receive Jennifer,” she said. “It was my last promise to him, and it was one of those things on the boat home that I was going to do without delay. And now it has been made easy for me. No, not easy. It will be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.”

“I will arrange for you to take tea with him tomorrow,” Lady Habersham said with a smile that showed her relief. “He will want Phillip and Edith to be there too. You might as well meet all the family at once, Ellen.”

Charlie’s younger brother, Phillip. He had figured in most of those stories of childhood that Charlie had told her so many times.

“I wonder how Jennifer will feel about going,” she said. “Excited, do you think, Dorothy? Nervous? I do not know if she even knows much about her grandfather.”

Lady Habersham picked up her frame again in nervous hands. “Papa wants to meet you, Ellen,” she said. “He has not mentioned Jennifer. Let’s take it slowly, shall we? Perhaps after he has met you and grown to love you, as he is bound to do, then he will be willing to meet Jennifer too.”

Ellen stared at her sister-in-law. “He does not want to meet his own granddaughter?” she said. “He is grieving for Charlie, but he does not want to meet Jennifer?”

“Do you know the whole story?” Lady Habersham’s attention was concentrated on her work.

“Yes.” Ellen looked at her sister-in-law, aghast. “Charlie was right, then? His family believes that Jennifer is not his daughter? Is that what it is?”

“I believe that she is,” Lady Habersham said. “Perhaps Papa does too in his heart. They had been married long enough when she was born. But, Ellen. She was a prostitute.” She flushed and lowered her head even further over her work.

“And Jennifer is to be held to blame for that?”

Lady Habersham looked up in some distress. “You must understand,” she said, “that Papa and Charlie were very close. Papa had great hopes for him. And then he insisted on enlisting in the army. Then that marriage. And the birth just a little too close for comfort afterward. Oh, Ellen, it is so easy to judge other people. Papa is not a monster.”