Chapter 7

Frederick was surprised to find that he was almost sorry when the honeymoon came to an end. He had deliberately devoted a week of his life to bringing his wife some happiness and found that he had brought himself a small measure too. There was something rather pleasant and relaxing and—comfortable, he found, about having both a sexual relationship and a companionship with a woman. He had had plenty of the former, though even they could hardly be termed relationships, he supposed. He had had almost none of the latter. Except perhaps with Jule, though they had never revealed their inner selves to each other.

He and Clara had not done that either yet. But perhaps it would come in time. They found it easy to talk to each other, and they were interested in each other’s lives. If he did not reveal all of himself to her during that week it was because all of himself was not a particularly attractive person. And he was not sure that he even knew himself entirely.

What did he want from life? Pleasure, he would have said a mere week or so before without any hesitation at all. He wanted his debts paid so that he could show his face in town again and carry on where he had left off. His clubs, the races, gaming, women—he had always loved them all. He still did. But for all the rest of his life? Would those pleasures never bring boredom? Did they now? Did he want more from life? A family of his own, perhaps? A home where he spent most of his days? A wife to replace all the women of his past and with whom to share a relationship?

Did he? The thought made him shudder and brought to mind all the old cliches to which he had long subscribed—a leg shackle, parson’s mousetrap, a tenant for life, and so on. He had no wish to lose his freedom, to take on responsibilities.

And yet there was Clara. And the fact that she was his wife, that already a large part of his freedom was gone, that already he had responsibilities. He even began to wonder after a few days if she was capable of bearing children, and could see no reason why not. If she could, then he was certainly going the right way about seeing to it that she did so.

A child! The very thought was enough to make him feel panic. And a not altogether unpleasant curiosity to know what it would be like to know himself a father. A father. Papa.

He wanted to escape. He wanted to be back in London in the familiar haunts and about the familiar tasks. He wanted to be safe. And yet he was reluctant to see the week come to an end. It had been a pleasant interlude in his life. He would not dread coming back to her occasionally, showing her the occasional kindness.

His parents came after eight days, bringing Harriet Pope with them. There was a great deal of hugging and kissing and handshaking, and there were some tears— mainly from his mother. They were both looking so very well, his mother said. And what a magnificent place Ebury Court was. She had not seen it before.

The honeymoon was over. Frederick spent most of the next two days with his father—riding, walking, inspecting the stables, playing billiards. The ladies sat together in the drawing room, nattering together, stitching away at their embroidery, entertaining neighbors. On the second afternoon they took the carriage out to call on the Soameses. The newly married couple spent little time alone together except at night. Frederick found himself somewhat nostalgic for the week of their honeymoon.

His mother was delighted with him and told him so on the first evening, when the two of them were strolling along the terrace after dinner. “You must be doing something right, Freddie,” she said, “Dear Clara is quite transformed.”

Was she? The idea both alarmed and intrigued him. He looked at her with new eyes when he and his mother went back inside. Had she changed? He tried to compare her appearance now with the way she had looked when he first met her. Was she different?

No, of course she was not. Except perhaps her face. There was a tinge of color in it, caused perhaps by the fresh air he had insisted on every day since their arrival at Ebury Court. He could almost imagine that her face was not quite as thin, but that must be imagination. Although her appetite had improved, she could not possibly have put on weight yet. Her eyes were large and luminous. But then he had always conceded that her eyes were her best feature.

Of course she was no different. She was still the plain, thin woman he had decided with the greatest reluctance to woo. It was just that after one had known a person for a while, one could no longer see that person objectively. He looked at Clara now and saw—Clara. His wife. The woman he had been getting to know during the past week. The woman with whom he had been pleasantly contented. His bedfellow. The thinness, the plainness, the too-heavy dark hair no longer repelled him. They were just Clara.

Perhaps Harriet Pope saw a difference in her mistress too. Tight-lipped when she arrived, she seemed to have relaxed by the evening. She kept her distance from him, though. She probably expected him to pounce on her if he ever saw her in a dark corner, he thought with something bordering on amusement. Under different circumstances he would undoubtedly flirt with her, since she was excessively pretty. But he had never been one whit interested in seducing innocents. He impatiently thrust aside the thought of Jule.

“You are going to spend the autumn here, Freddie?” his father asked with studied casualness when they were playing billiards one morning. “Your mother wants you to come to us for Christmas. Will Clara be able to travel? You had better come if you can. Les is determined to be off to Italy within the month and your mother will be lonely without either of you.”

“We will come,” Frederick said. “I haven't decided about the autumn. I’ll probably stay here.”

And he would too, he decided quite on the spur of the moment. There was nothing really to go back to in London. He would only start gambling again if he went there, and he had sworn off gambling after the recent crisis. Besides, it would be interesting to work on his marriage and see what came of it. He was growing fond of Clara, he had to admit. Perhaps he was even a little bit in love with her, though the idea seemed absurd when verbalized in his mind. He was fond of her. He would stay for a while at least, see how things went.`

And yet within a few days his plans changed abruptly. His parents had left. Harriet was in the way, always sitting beside his wife, making his presence awkward. And yet he did not like to suggest that they get rid of the woman. She and Clara were friends, and she was doubtless impoverished and would have nowhere else to go if she were dismissed. Besides, she would be needed if and when he decided to take himself off to town for a few weeks or months.

He contrived private meetings with his wife. He took her riding one cloudy and chill afternoon. It was unwise, though they both enjoyed the outing. Rain began to drip and then pelt down on them before they could get back to the stables. He turned the horse toward the summerhouse, lifted Clara down hastily, and nudged the horse sharply on the rump to send it galloping home. He rushed inside the summerhouse.

They were both laughing.

“Papa would not have allowed me to have even a window open on a day like this,” she said.

“In some ways,” he said, sitting down on the seat and holding her on his lap, “I am beginning to realize that Papa was a wise man.”

“Your shoulder is damp,” she said, brushing at the rain drops with one hand before settling her cheek there. “I thought we would fall for sure, Freddie. We were moving very fast. Don’t laugh.”

He had taken the horse to a canter in order to avoid the rain.

He kissed her. “It is warm in here at least,” he said. “This morning’s sunshine is still trapped inside.” 

“Mmm,” she said. “It is cozy.”

Several minutes passed in warm, lazy kissing.

“I have been missing you,” he said, “with my parents here. And with Harriet here all the time.”

“You will not feel obliged to spend so much time with me now,” she said. “You will have greater freedom.” 

“Who says I want greater freedom?” he asked.

She did not answer and he kissed her again.

“Happy, my love?” he asked her after several more minutes.

“Mmm,“ she said.

“Which I can interpret any way I want, I suppose,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I am happy.”

“It was a lovely ride,” she said, “despite the rain.” 

“Because of the rain,” he said. “Without it I would not have thought of bringing you here and being cozy with you.” He nipped her earlobe with his teeth and spoke into her ear. “Are you glad it rained too?”

He felt her swallow. “Yes, Freddie,” she said.

“Have you missed me too?” he asked.

There was a long pause. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes this time, not just mmm?” he said, shrugging his shoulder so that he could smile down into her eyes. “We are getting close to a serious declaration here, my love.”

“Don’t Freddie,” she said.

“Don’t what?” He touched his forehead to hers and kissed the end of her nose. “Don’t fish? I would like to hear you say the words. I can say them. I love you. There. They are quite easy to say. A great deal easier than one expects. I love you, Clara.”

“Don’t.” She turned her face in to his neck. “It is so unnecessary. Don’t spoil things.”

He frowned and touched a hand to the back of her head. “Spoil things?” he said. “By telling my own wife that I love her? Don’t you want me to love you, Clara? Or is it that you cannot return my feelings? That is all right. I can wait.”

She raised her head and he could see that she was both upset and angry. “There is no need for the charade, Freddie,” she said. “I think we are dealing surprisingly well together. Can we not be contented with that? Must there be all the lies?”

“Lies?” The heat seemed to be disappearing from the summerhouse. He felt rather cold.

“This claiming to love me,” she said. “Calling me your love and sometimes even your darling. You do not need to do it, Freddie. Do you think I am a fool just because I am a cripple? Do you think I do not know the truth and have not known it all along? The only thing I do not know is the extent of your debts. Did the dowry cover them?”

If she had been capable of walking, he would have left her and gone out into the rain. He did not want to have to look into her eyes. But he would be damned if he would drop his own before hers.

“Yes,” he said. “If you knew, Clara, why did you marry me?”

“I am twenty-six years old,” she said, “and crippled and ugly. Need I say more?”

“You are not ugly.” His lips felt as if they did not quite belong to him.

“It is kinder to use the word plain?” she said. “I am plain, then. We both married to satisfy a need, Freddie. And it has not been quite disastrous so far, has it? Let us be satisfied with that. I do not need to be told that you love me when I know the words to be lies. I am not a child.”

“My apologies, ma’am,” he said.

She looked at him, the anger gone from her face suddenly, and sighed. “And I have just done an unpardonably foolish thing,” she said. “It was a minor annoyance. I should have continued to say nothing. It would have been better so. I have embarrassed you, have I not?”

“On the contrary,” he said. “It is always better for two people to have the truth in the open between them. Yes, my debts are paid, ma’am. There will be no others to be a drain on your fortune.”

She looked at him for a few silent moments before sighing again and returning her head to his shoulder.

“I am a fool,” she said. “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said.

He held her stiffly and silently for longer than half an hour until the rain stopped and then picked her up and walked in silence back to the house with her through sodden grass. Embarrassment, humiliation, he found, were a heavier burden than the woman he carried in his arms. She knew the truth. Of course she knew. He had never really believed that she did not. She must have had earlier experiences with fortune hunters. But having accepted him, decency dictated that they both keep up the charade.

Perhaps the words he had spoken to her were false. But he had acted on them. Everything he had done with her and to her in the past two weeks had been designed to show her a love he did not fully feel. He had tried to be kind to her and grateful to her.

He carried her into the house and straight upstairs to her dressing room. He reached a hand to the bell pull after setting her down on a chair.

“I shall order a hot bath,” he said. “I don’t want you catching a chill. And a hot drink afterward and at least an hour in bed.”

She attempted a smile and a light tone. “Is that an order, sir?” she asked. But it was too late to play charades.

“That is an order, ma’am,” he said, turning to her maid, who had answered the summons with admirable speed. After sending her to the kitchens to arrange for hot water to be sent up, he left his wife’s room without a backward glance.

He did not enter it again—or her bedchamber—before leaving for London the following morning. He took a formal leave of his wife after breakfast—her companion was with her—and told her that he would be away for a month. He fully expected that it would be considerably longer than that.

She did a great deal of crying, all of it in private, though there was no hiding the telltale signs about her eyes and in her face. Not at least from a close friend. Harriet was tight-lipped about it at first.

“You have forbidden me to say anything against him,” she blurted after luncheon one afternoon, several days after Frederick had left. “But I cannot bear this any longer, Clara. I hate to see you unhappy like this. I hate him.”

“It is entirely my own fault,” Clara said. “I’ll not have Freddie blamed, Harriet.” And the whole story of that wretched afternoon came pouring out. For a few days before that she had been planning to say something to him. Something quite calm and rational. They had known each other long enough, she had thought, and liked each other well enough that they could speak the truth. It would be better if the pretense was dropped. They would be able to concentrate on building a friendship.

“There was a possibility of friendship,” she said to her skeptical friend. “We talked and talked during that week after our wedding, Harriet. And laughed. I have never laughed so much over such a short period of time. I wanted to get rid of the awkwardness of the other. It did not seem to matter that we did not love each other. I thought we could be agreed to that. But I made a mistake.”

“That man would not have enjoyed having his little game exposed,” Harriet said bitterly.

“Perhaps not,” Clara said sadly. “But it was the way I said it that ruined everything. I was irritated because we were in the summerhouse sheltering from the rain and it was so lovely and so comfortable just being together there. But he kept saying those foolish things and spoiling everything. I was not able to talk sensibly to him, as I had planned. I was angry and spoke unwisely.”

“Just being together,” Harriet said, looking at her closely. “Why were you angry, Clara? Because he was continuing to lie to you when it was unnecessary? Or because you were hurt?”

“Hurt?” Clara looked blankly at her friend. She wanted to put her hands up defensively before her face. She knew what Harriet was going to say, but she did not want to hear it.

“Because he did not mean the words,” Harriet said. “Were you hurt because he did not love you but said he did?”

Clara drew a slow breath. “I did not marry him for love,” she said. “You know that, Harriet. I have had everything I wanted from the marriage. Respectability and... Respectability.”

But she continued to cry when alone. She could not seem to stop doing so or to pull herself together to resume a life with which she was long familiar. A life that had been interrupted for only a brief spell. She had known, after all, that the honeymoon could not last. She had not even expected a honeymoon when she had agreed to the marriage. She had not expected even that much.

She blamed herself for everything. For even if his words had been lies, he had been good to her. And life for those two weeks had become almost unbearably alive. She ached for the sound of his voice and his laughter, for the sight of his eyes. She ached at night for the touch of his body, for the warmth of his mouth on hers.

She had humiliated him. She knew that. Her anger had made her lash out to hurt as she had been hurt. Oh, yes, Harriet had been right, she thought in some despair. She had been hurt by his words, which had been lies. And so she had hurt him. Not only had she told him that she knew the truth, but she had even specifically mentioned his debts and asked him if her dowry had been sufficient to pay them off.

How could she have done that to him? She had seen shame in his eyes and then a blank mask. A blank, impenetrable mask that had stayed for the rest of the day and had still been there after breakfast the next morning when he came to take his leave of her. He had not used her name after what she had said, or any of the endearments he had used in the previous two weeks. He had addressed her formally as “ma’am,” He had not slept with her during what had turned out to be his last night at home, although she had lain awake through most of the night, expecting him and knowing he would not come.

Clara cried for what she had done to him and for what had happened to her. For of course it had been foolish to think she could marry a man for his beauty and strength and virility and be satisfied with those things. She had been as dishonest with herself as Freddie had been with her. She surely must have known that she was incapable of possessing and enjoying those things without wanting more.

She wanted more. She wanted Freddie. Oh, not to love, perhaps. They were too different from each other ever to love. But there had been something between them during those brief days of their marriage. There had been, She was sure of it. Some friendship. More than that. Some tenderness.

Yes, tenderness, even if not love. There had been that. And it might have remained if she had not been so unutterably foolish and thrown it all away in a matter of moments.

A letter came from him after a week, a short, formal little note that she opened with trembling fingers and read with anxious eyes while Harriet looked gravely on.

He hoped she was in good health. He was going to stay in town for a while. He had business to conduct there. She paused over the second and last paragraph and read it twice.

“An open barouche is to be delivered here within the next day or two,” she told Harriet. “I am to ride in it every day, weather permitting. I am to have you push me out on the terrace every day when it does not rain. I am to have at least half an hour of fresh air and sunshine each day.”

“Well, that at least is sensible,” Harriet said grudgingly. “With all due respect, Clara, I always thought that your father protected you too much and perhaps undermined the very health he thought to preserve. Are you going to follow Mr. Sullivan’s advice?”

“Yes,” Clara said, folding her letter and keeping it clasped in her hands. “Starting now. I have been missing the fresh air. I have not been outside for a week. Not since. . . .Not since the day I was caught out in the rain.”

She did not tell Harriet what Freddie had written in the last two sentences. There was no question of following his advice, good or otherwise. “And yes, ma’am,” he had written, “this is a command. I expect to be obeyed.”

She would obey him as she had always obeyed her father. She had obeyed her father because she had loved him and respected him and wanted to please him. She would obey Freddie because—because he was her husband.

The tears dried up in the coming weeks and life continued more or less as it had always been with a few changes. There were the outings, some of which she timed conscientiously so that they would not fall short of half an hour. Most of the time, though, except on especially raw autumn days, she stayed out a good deal longer than the prescribed time, from personal inclination. Once she had Robin carry her all the way to the summerhouse, and Harriet sat with her there for an hour. But she did not repeat the experiment. The tears returned when she was back at the house and alone.

She began to visit almost as much as she was visited and even went to a few evening parties and one assembly. She watched the charades and the dancing with some wonder and a little wistfulness.

Her appetite continued to improve after a lapse of a couple of weeks following her husband’s departure. She looked at herself critically in the looking glass one night and concluded that it was no longer her imagination. Her face was definitely fuller and far less pale than it always had been. She looked almost passably plain instead of ugly-plain, she thought with a private smile for the glass.

And she lived for the weekly letters that came from Freddie. Notes more than letters, all of them mere inquiries after her health and reminders of the one command he had seen fit to give her. She always answered the letters, as formally, almost as briefly, assuring him that she was in the best of health, hoping that he was too, and listing for him all the outings she had had in the previous week. Her barouche, she told him, was one of the most wonderful gifts she had ever been given. She felt a twinge of guilt, thinking of all the costly jewels her father had showered on her. But what she told Freddie was true.

Almost two months after he had left, the usual letter arrived. Clara read it with the usual eagerness, and then reread it, and read it again. She waited for Harriet to return from a short ride.

“We are going to London,” Clara said when her friend came into the drawing room.

Harriet raised her eyebrows.

“Freddie is coming home next week,” she said. “For one night only. He is taking us back to town with him the next day.”

“To London?” Harriet’s eyes lit up for a moment. Then she sobered and sat down. “You go, Clara. If you are to be with Mr. Sullivan, I will be in the way. I shall stay here, or go on a visit to my mother if you would prefer.”

“No,” Clara said. “You must come too, Harriet. Please? I don’t want to be alone. And I probably will be alone even more there than I am here. I don’t know anyone in London. Except Freddie, of course. But he will have his own interests to pursue.”

“Very well, then,” Harriet said quietly. She was excited by the news, Clara thought. Poor Harriet. So young and so pretty, and caught in a life of dreariness and poverty. Perhaps. . . She wished. . . But she had no way of bringing her friend to anyone’s attention. She knew no one.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at Harriet.

She lay in bed later that night, staring upward, her letter held flat against her bosom. She did not want him to come home. She did not want to go to London. If he was coming home, he would go away again. If she was taken to London, she would be brought home again. She had not been made for excitement and novelty, she thought belatedly. She was made for dull monotony.

She did not want her emotions all churned up again.

She did not want to see Freddie again. And she would not cry, she told herself as she felt the ache in her throat and the sting in her eyes. She was not going to cry.

Why was she crying? She despised herself heartily.