Chapter 14

Self-loathing could sometimes reach such depths that one plummeted frighteningly close to despair. Frederick touched very close the morning after his drive in the park with his wife. He walked home, still wearing evening clothes, feeling unclean and unkempt and unshaven. Mostly unclean.

He had joined Archie for dinner at White’s after all, and had drunk reckless amounts of wine with his meal and lavish glassfuls of port after it. The evening had developed along predictable lines from then on. The night rather. Lizzie had not said anything to Annette, it seemed. He had been admitted with no trouble at all and assigned a new girl, a young one who could not have been at work for any great length of time, though she had not been a virgin. But her skills had been used with conscious deliberateness and she had protested her pain when he had been rough with her. He had given her a generous gift of money before leaving her, though he knew she was strictly forbidden to accept any personal payment. He still felt as he walked away with Archie as if he had deflowered innocence.

“Trouble in paradise?” Lord Archibald had asked.

“I don’t want even to think about it, Arch,” he had said, “much less talk about it.”

Nothing more had been said.

And then the gaming and the drinking—at a private home rather than at a club. And waking up, or rather regaining consciousness, in a bed in the same house when it was already light, with a head like a lead ball and spirits even more leaden than that. He had looked about him gingerly. At least there was no naked female beside him or anywhere else in the room. It was a marginally cheering thought until he remembered the little girl at Annette’s. And until he remembered the card games, at which he had lost a sizable sum as far as he could recall. And all the drinking.

Gaming, drinking, womanizing—all vices he could give up at a moment’s notice. It was simply a matter of willpower. He threw an arm over his eyes to prevent the daylight from paining them further. Yes, he could give them all up. When hell froze over. Perhaps.

He walked wearily homeward feeling unclean. Knowing that he would still feel so even after having a hot bath and a shave upon arriving home. Knowing that he would probably never feel clean again. Or be clean.

At first when he had woken up and even when he had dressed and dragged himself outside, no one else in the house having been up yet to delay his leaving, he had forgotten the events of the day before. Now memory of them hammered through his temples and into his conscious mind.

Jule had had her revenge and told Clara everything. And so he, noble mortal that he was, had whipped up his guilt and his hurt and despair into cynical fury and had unleashed it all on the most precious possession that remained to him. His wife.

He had told her, among other things, that he had bedded a dozen women or more since their marriage. She probably had known it anyway. Clara was not stupid. But it was a firm convention of society that wives were to be protected from the harsh reality of knowing without a doubt that their husbands were unfaithful. He had broken one of the strictest taboos of the ton. And, which was far more important and far worse, he had hurt her immeasurably too. She might not love him and she might have known the true state of affairs, but it must have been painful and humiliating to be told the bald truth by her husband himself. He must have made her feel even less of a woman than she already seemed to feel.

He had done that to her. For that alone he deserved to be shot.

He was going to have to apologize to her, he thought as he approached his own house and glanced up at the blank windows. An apology was a pitifully inadequate atonement, of course, but it must be made. And with it a vow to change if she could just find it in her to overcome the disgust she must feel for him. He could change, and he would change. It was merely a matter of wanting to do it. And he wanted to. He was sick of that other life. Mortally sick. The very thought of last night was more powerfully nauseating than the headache he still carried around with him.

He went straight up to his rooms when he entered the house and ordered hot water for a bath and his shaving gear. He would clean himself up on the outside at least before going to face Clara, though he was all impatience to do it without delay. He was going to start a new life and he was all eagerness to begin it—with his wife at his side. He would be able to do it with her there. But it would be discourtesy itself to go to her now. He would wait until he was clean.

An hour later, too nervous to go along himself to her sitting room as he normally would, he sent his valet to ask if he might have the honor of waiting upon her. The formality might seem a little excessive coming from a husband and directed to his own wife, but he was very aware that she might well not want to see him. He might have to exercise a patience that would be agony to him and send regular such messages through the day until she weakened and admitted him to her presence.

His valet returned. “Mrs. Sullivan is not at home, sir,” he said.

Frederick frowned. Out? This early? “Did you find out where she has gone?” he asked.

“To Ebury Court, I gather, sir,” his valet said, wooden-faced.

I shall go back to Ebury Court tomorrow. Frederick could hear the words as she had spoken them in the barouche the day before. He had forgotten. She had meant them, then.

“When did she leave?” he asked.

“A little over half an hour ago, I gather, sir,” the valet said.

He had been in the house already. Immersed in a bathtub of hot soapy water. Trying to make himself clean for her. Perhaps she had known he was at home. Perhaps not. Perhaps she had not been interested in knowing either way.

“Thank you, Jerrett,” he said. “That will be all.”

For the first two weeks there seemed to be nothing to live for. Nothing at all. It was frightening to know life to be so empty, so devoid of all meaning. It hardly seemed worth getting up in the morning. She had to do so in order to keep up appearances for Harriet and the servants. And of course her neighbors and friends started to call as soon as they knew she was at home again. Some of the visits had to be returned.

She had to go on living unless she was prepared to take the step of actively ending her life. That was the one thing she could not contemplate doing. But she did only the living she felt forced to do. She stopped going out except for the occasional visit and to attend church, when she took a closed carriage. The weather was turning from autumn chill to winter cold. It was too cold to go out in her barouche or in her chair onto the terrace. Besides, she could not have bothered to make the effort of dressing up warmly and having Robin carry her outside.

She wondered if letters would start coming from Freddie again, ordering her to take the air each day. If they did, she supposed she would obey him. He was still her husband and always would be until one of them died. But no letter came.

She stopped exercising. It was troublesome and time-consuming and painful. And worthless. She was never going to be able to walk. There was no point in even trying. She spent her days indoors, embroidering, reading, talking with Harriet or with the occasional visitor, sometimes doing nothing at all.

Two weeks passed during which she tried to persuade herself that she was no worse off than she had been until just a few months before when she had been Miss Clara Danford. Life was the same as it had been then—dull and tedious, perhaps, but also comfortable and respectable. Thousands of poor souls in England would give a right arm to change places with her. If she could just blank the last few months from her mind, from the moment of her meeting with Freddie on, then she should be able to pick up the threads of her old life without any great damage having been done.

But life was not that simple, of course. The months of her marriage could not be blocked from either her mind or her emotions. Neither could Freddie.

After two weeks she glanced at herself in the looking glass one morning and saw herself. Really saw herself. She looked somewhat familiar except for the short hair. Thin face, so pale that it was almost yellow. Large, wistful eyes. She wondered if she had been eating well or even adequately, and could not remember.

“How has my appetite been?” she asked Harriet at breakfast. She had had the butler put two sausages and two slices of toast on her plate and now found the prospect of having to eat everything quite formidable.

Harriet gave her a strange look. “Poor,” she said. “Like it used to be.”

“When was I last outside?” Clara asked.

“The day before yesterday,” Harriet said, “when we called on the Goughs.”

“In a closed carriage,” Clara said. “When was the last time I was out in the air?”

Harriet thought. “I think that must have been in London,” she said.

The afternoon when she had driven alone in the park with Freddie. An eternity ago. She looked toward the windows. Gray, heavy clouds. Trees bending in the wind. It was a wintry scene. Chill, raw winter, not the cheerful frost winter of Christmas imaginings.

“I shall drive out in the barouche for half an hour this afternoon,” she said. “You may stay inside if you wish, Harriet.”

But her friend smiled. “Welcome back,” she said.

Clara looked down at her plate and determinedly speared a piece of sausage. It was the closest either of them had come in two weeks to admitting that there was anything wrong. Harriet probably had no real idea of what had happened to bring them back so precipitately to the country.

Welcome back. Yes, she was back, she thought grimly, taking a slightly larger than ladylike bite out of one slice of toast. She was back to stay. She might feel regret at no longer being Miss Danford of Ebury Court. She might feel pain at the memories of the last months, which had transformed her into the Honorable Mrs. Frederick Sullivan. But she had a life to live. One God-given life not to be wasted in self-pity.

“I wonder,” she said, “what Robin knows about teaching someone to walk.”

Robin had been a pugilist with a promising career ahead of him until one ill-fated bout in the ring with a famed prize-fighter had put him in a coma for almost a month and he had given in to advice not to fight again. But he had trained to box for a living. He knew something about making the body fit and strong.

It was a little embarrassing having a man help her exercise her legs. Her neighbors would have been scandalized had they known. Her father would have turned over in his grave. Freddie would probably be furious. Harriet was intrigued.

“I have always felt so helpless,” she said. “So eager to help you, Clara, but not knowing how to go about it. There was always so little progress.”

Clara had a daybed set up in her private sitting room, that setting seeming a little less intimate than her bedchamber. She always covered herself carefully from the waist down with a white cotton sheet. Harriet was always in the room, quietly sewing or knitting and smiling encouragement when it was needed.

And it turned out to be not really embarrassing at all. Robin’s hands were strong and impersonal, as was his whole manner. Indeed, Clara had heard the rumblings of rumors from belowstairs, rumors occasioned by the fact that Robin, young and brawny and reasonably good-looking despite a broken and crooked nose, seemed quite uninterested in any of the maids or in any other female of the neighborhood. But Robin’s personal preferences were none of her business, Clara had decided long ago. She was grateful for the fact that he did not make her aware of him as a man.

The exercises were frightening but surprisingly free of real pain. There was to be no more gentle clenching of the toes and flexing of the ankles. Her legs were bent and straightened, bent and straightened with speed and force, both while she lay on her back and when Robin rolled her over onto her stomach. Her legs were massaged by hands many times stronger than Harriet’s— sometimes Robin reached his hands beneath the sheet without removing it—until she could feel the blood pulsing through them and the feeble muscles clenching and relaxing. Until sometimes she had to bite her lips in order not to scream. Once—only once—she began to cry almost hysterically.

“How long, Robin?” she asked him after the first week, when her progress was exciting her. “In your expert opinion, how long?”

“By Christmas, Mrs. Sullivan,” he said, “if you have the courage and if you keep eating well.”

Robin had even been giving her instructions on the food she was to eat. Wholesome, body-building food.

“If I have the courage to put up with this torture,” she said, “I will surely have enough to walk when the time comes.”

Robin grinned, one of the rare occasions when he lost his impassive expression. “By spring I will be looking for new employment, Mrs. Sullivan,” he said.

She had not thought of that. Robin was conscientiously working himself out of a job. “What will you do?” she asked.

“Open a boxing saloon,” he said. “See if I can take some business from Gentleman Jackson.”

“If you need a recommendation,” she said, “refer your customers to me, Robin.”

She began to be able to move her legs as she sat in her chair. She could even lift them one at a time from the floor. But Robin, a strict taskmaster, would not allow her to try to stand. She would fall and perhaps hurt herself and certainly discourage herself and they would have to start all over again, he told her. She waited with forced patience for him to decide that it was time.

But she began to feel alive again. She began waking up in the mornings to find herself looking forward to a new day.

There were three unexpected visitors, one coming alone, two together. But no Freddie. And no letter from Freddie. It was better so, Clara told herself. It was better to reconstruct her life without looking back.

Clara and Harriet had returned from a drive one sunny afternoon and had only just settled in the drawing room when the butler arrived to announce visitors.

“The Earl and Countess of Beaconswood, ma’am,” he said grandly.

Clara glanced quickly at Harriet. “Show them up,” she said. Her heart plummeted. She had liked Julia. She still did. But she did not want to see her. She wanted to look forward, not back. She smiled as the butler reappeared and bowed to the guests as they entered the room.

“Clara,” the countess said, almost rushing across the room, hands extended. “How lovely it is to see you again.” She took both Clara’s hands in hers, squeezed them tightly, and bent to kiss her cheek. “How do you do, Harriet?”

“Clara,” the earl said less effusively but in a thoroughly kindly manner. He took her right hand and raised it to his lips. He bowed to Harriet while Clara made the introductions.

“We happened to be passing and decided to call on you,” the countess said brightly, and then she went off into peals of laughter and seated herself on a sofa. “Actually we came here quite deliberately, did we not, Daniel?”

“Yes,” he said. “Julia has been feeling cheated of the company of her new cousin, Clara, since you left town. And my sister is upsetting herself with the thought that perhaps you will not return for her wedding next month. Hence this rather long journey to call for afternoon tea.”

“I am glad you dropped the hint, Daniel,” the countess said, laughing again. “I am parched. And starved too, though I know it is indelicate to say so and you will frown at me ferociously when you think Clara and Harriet are not looking.”

“Julia!” he said sternly as Harriet got to her feet to ring the bell.

“We were about to order tea anyway,” Clara said, smiling.

“It is all Daniel’s fault that I am so hungry anyway,” the countess said. “All his fault. Not mine at all.”

“Julia,” the earl said a little more quietly.

“Clara is family,” she said, smiling up at him, “and you know I burst to tell everyone I can. I think myself enormously clever, as if I am the only woman in history to have accomplished such a wonderful feat. Besides, it will be obvious to the eye soon, Daniel, and everyone will know anyway. Unless you plan to be Gothic and lock me up to save the blushes of those young ladies who still believe in storks. We are going to have a child in five months’ time, Clara.”

Clara restrained her hand from spreading over her own abdomen. “How wonderful for you,” she said.

“Do stop glowering and come and sit beside me, Daniel.” the countess said, reaching up a hand for his. “You know you are fit to burst with pride. You need not pretend to be angry with me.”

“Angry?” he said, shaking his head, but taking her hand and seating himself beside her. “You cannot see that it is embarrassment, Julia, having my impending paternity announced with only ladies present except for me?”

The countess laughed and gazed at him fondly.

Fondly. She had developed feelings for him, then? It was hardly surprising, Clara supposed. Feelings sometimes did develop after marriage even if they had not been there before. And Lord Beaconswood was a very handsome man—almost as handsome as Freddie. Clara guessed he was devoted to Julia.

Conversation was light during tea, and dominated mainly by the countess, though the earl was careful to keep topics general and was even courteous enough to draw Harriet into the conversation. Harriet usually made herself invisible to visitors.

“Miss Pope,” the earl said when they had finished their tea, getting to his feet, “I believe I saw a conservatory to the west of the house as we drove up. Are there many plants there? Would you care to show them to me?”

Clara looked at him, startled. Harriet was rising. The countess seemed quite unperturbed but was sitting smiling at Clara.

“It was planned, you see,” she said after the other two had left. “I hope you do not mind Harriet’s being without a chaperon for a short while. Daniel and I thought it would be better if I spoke to you alone.”

Clara looked at her warily.

“You left London the day after Camilla and I called on you,” the countess said. “Perhaps there was no connection between the two events, and you must tell me to mind my own business if there was not. Or even if there was and you think me impertinent for prying. Your marriage really is none of my business, as Daniel has been telling me for weeks past. But I cannot help feeling responsible for the fact that you have been banished here.” 

The brightness had totally disappeared from her face. She was gazing at Clara earnestly and unhappily.

“Banished?” Clara said. “Freddie did not banish me, Julia. I came of my own free will.”

“But on the spur of the moment,” the countess said. “You were not planning to come, were you? Surely you would have told us if you were. You would not have led us to believe that you were going to pay a call on my mother-in-law within a day or two.”

Clara clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them. “I sometimes do things impulsively,” she said. “But it was thoughtless of me not to send you a note. I am sorry, Julia. It was kind of you to call on me in town. I should have sent an explanation when I decided to leave.”

“I think it was because of what I said, was it not?” the countess said unhappily. “And because of the quarrel I had with Freddie downstairs. He went back upstairs and quarreled with you too, didn’t he? And made you so miserable that you came here. I am so meddlesome. I should have left well enough alone. I should not have tried to explain something that perhaps did not need to be explained. I should have left it to Freddie if he thought it necessary.”

“Nothing was your fault, Julia,” Clara said. “And nothing is wrong. It is just that I prefer to live here and Freddie prefers to live in town. I visited him there for a few weeks and then came home. It was as simple as that.”

“And you will return for the wedding?” Julia asked. Clara hesitated.

The countess jumped to her feet. “I think we made a dreadful mess of it,” she said. “Although I discussed it with Camilla ahead of time and Camilla is always marvelously sensible, I think we made a mess of it. You think that Freddie was in love with me, don’t you? You think that is why he offered for me.”

“It does not matter,” Clara said. “What happened before my marriage is none of my concern, Julia.”

“Oh, but it is.” The countess had tears in her eyes. “If he was in love with me, asked me to marry him, was rejected, and then went to Bath and married you, it would be dreadful, Clara. Dreadful for you. But it was not like that. He did not love me. He was just being gallant. And I was not in love with him. Did you think perhaps I was, but married Daniel because he was rich? I married Daniel because I love him. Because I adore him. There never has been anyone else and never could be.”

Clara examined her hands. She did not want to ask the question. She did not want to know any more. But she asked it anyway.

“What is between you and Freddie, then?” she asked, 

“Embarrassment,” the countess said quickly.

“No,” Clara said. “But we will leave it at that. I don’t think I want to know. I am afraid to know. There is so much more than what you have told me, is there not?” 

The countess sat down again and was quiet for a while. “Why did you leave so abruptly?” she asked. “Camilla and I visited deliberately to try to make things easier for you. Because you are our cousin. Because we like you and wanted you to be our friend. Why did you leave?”

“I told Freddie that you had told me everything,” Clara said. “You had not. I don’t think you told me even a fraction of everything. But I think Freddie must have believed me.”

The countess closed her eyes and bowed her head. “It was nothing, Clara,” she said. “Nothing of any lasting significance. Oh, Freddie. Idiot Freddie. I could kill him. You love him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Clara said.

“I suppose he made you fall in love with him within five minutes of meeting you,” the countess said crossly. “Freddie is an expert at that. I could kill him.”

“No,” Clara said. “I was not quite a foolish innocent, Julia. You don’t have to be afraid that he deceived me into marriage with protestations of love.” She smiled fleetingly. “Though he did try it, I must admit. I married him for reasons of my own. I have come to love him since.”

The countess leaned forward. “Forget about what happened at Primrose Park, then,” she said. “Whatever it was, you do not want to know. It was utter foolishness, typical of Freddie, and harmed no one in the end. Forget it, Clara, and be happy with what you have. Freddie is not a vicious person, believe me. He is even lovable in an annoying sort of way. I always loved him—as a cousin and a friend. Almost as a brother. Forget it all, Clara. Come back to London. Be a part of the family. We all want you.”

Clara smiled. “That is kind of you,” she said. “But I don’t think Freddie can forget, Julia. I think he was harmed. Whatever happened was all his fault, wasn’t it? I think he cannot forgive himself. And I cannot forgive him and give him the absolution he needs. It did not concern me.”

The countess closed her eyes.

“I think only you have that power,” Clara said sadly.

And yet a part of her rejoiced too. Whatever had happened—and it must have been something dreadful—it was not what she had thought. She had misinterpreted all the signs. Julia did not love him. She loved her husband. And if Julia was right—and she seemed quite certain she was—Freddie did not love her either. Never had. Oh, yes, part of her rejoiced. She did not care what it was as long as it was not that.

“I told him that afternoon,” the countess said, “the afternoon Camilla and I called on you, that I would never forgive him. Not because of what he had done to me. I think after all that that only helped bring Daniel and me together. But because of what he had done to you so soon after. I told him I hated him. It was such a lie. How could anyone hate Freddie?”

“He did not do anything to me,” Clara said, “except marry me and give me a taste of joy.”

“And a great deal of misery,” the countess said.

“Yes.”

“Oh, Freddie,” the countess said. “I could kill him.”

Clara smiled.

“I wonder if Daniel and Harriet have examined every leaf of every plant in the conservatory yet,” the countess said. “I must go down to rescue them, Clara. And we must be on our way. The inn we picked out must be five miles along the road.”

“But you will be staying here,” Clara said. “Of course you will. I took so much for granted that you would do so that I did not even think to issue the invitation when you arrived. Forgive me.”

“But we would not wish to impose,” the countess said.

“Impose?” Clara laughed. “You keep telling me that we are family. Well, then.”

“How delightful,” the countess said, getting to her feet. “But I must still go and rescue those two downstairs. I shall come right back. Is it dreadfully annoying to be confined to one spot all the time? And is it dreadfully rude of me to refer to your disability? Daniel would be frowning fiercely at me if he were here.”

Clara laughed as Julia swept from the room without waiting for a reply to either of her questions. She had been deliberately trying to lighten the atmosphere, and had succeeded. Somehow, Clara felt that a load had been lifted from her shoulders. Though why she should feel that she did not know. Nothing really had changed.

Nothing at all.