A Chance Encounter

Chapter 13

The older generation was somewhat disturbed when they found out that Mr. Mainwaring had left Ferndale.

"He is a quiet sort of a man," Mrs. Rowe told her family and Elizabeth at dinner, "but not bad-natured, I believe. I did think at first that he was conceited, but recently I have been convinced that he is merely shy. What do you think, Mr. Rowe?"

"Indeed, my dear," he replied, "I have not considered the question at all. But now that you press me to do so, I would say I find him a gentlemanly man, a worthy neighbor."

"It seems most extraordinary that he should leave Ferndale without telling anyone," his wife continued. "I wonder where he can have gone and why. And I wonder if he plans to return soon."

"If I had only had an inkling of his going," Mr. Rowe returned, "I should have backed him into the nearest corner, my love, and forced answers from him. As it is, I am afraid I cannot enlighten you."

"Oh, how absurd you are, Mr. Rowe," his wife said crossly. "I am merely showing a neighborly interest in the man."

Elizabeth did not join in the conversation, or tell anyone what she knew of Mr. Mainwaring's journey. She did not want anyone to know of her secret betrothal until Hetherington had sent her the divorce papers. And for all William's optimism, she believed that that could take quite a while.

Cecily too showed no inclination to join in her mother's curious wonderings. She and the other young people of the area were too full of enthusiasm over the presence of the young visitors at Squire Worthing's. While her mother talked, Cecily's head was full of a certain auburn-haired giant who had paid her lavish and quite outrageous compliments the night before. He had also told her that he and his sisters and cousins were staying for a week, perhaps longer.

Elizabeth had expected the following days to drag by as she waited for William to return and tell her how Hetherington had reacted to their request. But she had little time to brood. The young people began a frantic round of activities: riding, walking, shopping, picnicking in the daytime, playing cards, charades, and other games during the evening. Elizabeth accompanied Cecily everywhere and, by popular request, was made the sole chaper-one at the daytime activities. This proved to be a dizzying task as the group often showed a tendency to break up into smaller groups that wandered off in different directions. How did one watch a couple visiting a traveling library, while four others had gone for ices, and a few more to a haberdasher's? She finally solved the problem by laying down the rule that no group of fewer than three persons could go off on its own. Once that rule was accepted, she felt that she could relax her vigilance somewhat.

In the evenings, too, Elizabeth was expected to accompany Cecily. The elder Rowes usually went to the same house, glad of the excuse for increased visiting, but they usually settled with the older adults, playing cards or just gossiping. It was again up to Elizabeth to oversee the activities of the younger set and settle the disputes that frequently arose.

One of the most heated arguments arose when Ferdie and the auburn giant, captains of the two teams for charades, were picking their team members. Ferdie took loud exception to the giant's choosing Cecily. But Elizabeth pointed out that Ferdie had had first pick and had chosen Anne Claridge ("because she's the best actress in the whole county," he explained, exasperated) and that the giant was therefore free to choose whomever he would. Ferdie sulked and Cecily flirted for the rest of the evening. Elizabeth was forced to scold her at home later, when they were alone.

"I do not know how you feel about Mr. Harry Worthing," she said, "but you did set your cap at him in a rather vulgar manner tonight, Cecily."

"Pooh," said her charge, "I was merely cross with Ferdie, Beth. Why must he always behave as if I belong to him? I have never even kissed him more than two or three times, and he has never made me a declaration. I cannot resist teasing him when he becomes so possessive." She blushed suddenly. "I was not so outrageous, was I, Beth?"

"I am afraid you were, love," her companion replied, "and that young man seems quite taken with you."

"I really did not mean to encourage him so," Cecily said in dismay. "It is exciting to have new company, but I really have not meant to set my cap at anyone."

"I know that, love," Elizabeth said. "But I do not wish anyone to gain the impression that you are fast."

By the fourth day after William's departure, Elizabeth was exhausted. She had a headache by dinnertime and a tickling in the back of her throat that seemed to threaten a cold. She begged to be excused from that evening's gathering at the vicarage.

"Well, of course, my dear Miss Rossiter," Mrs. Rowe said, all solicitous concern. "You must go to your bed immediately. I shall have some warm milk and laudanum sent up to you and a hot brick for your feet. Don't worry about a thing, my dear. I shall watch Cecily tonight. I knew when I saw you outside yesterday without a pelisse that you would catch a chill. I told Mr. Rowe so."

"And so you did, my love," her husband agreed. "But since it was almost too hot yesterday to wear a dress even, I do not believe the absence of a pelisse caused the cold. I should say that Miss Rossiter is probably hagged from chasing after a pack of young devils for several days."

"Papa!" Cecily complained.

Elizabeth retired to her room, the relief of having a quiet evening to herself already easing the headache. She undressed and sat in her nightgown close to the empty fireplace. She drank the warm milk that Mrs. Rowe had sent up, but set aside the laudanum. She never felt rested after a drug-induced sleep; she would avoid it if she could. She smiled too at the hot brick, wrapped in cloths, that the maid placed between her bedclothes. She would certainly not retire until that had cooled off thoroughly. The night was almost too warm to allow of bedclothes at all.

She took John's latest letter from a drawer beside her bed and sat down to read it again. They missed her. Louise had begged him to tell her that she was very welcome to come home again to stay. Louise was in good health. The tiredness and nausea that had troubled her in the early months had almost disappeared now. The baby was a bundle of mischief. That very morning he had toddled into the flower garden and picked a magnificent bouquet of blooms for his mama. The only trouble was that there was not a stem among the whole bouquet, only heads. John himself had had to leave his office before the gardener was pacified.

Elizabeth smiled. What a lovely family John had. And how envious she was. Would life with William be that cheerful, that full of minor crises? By this time next year would she be married to him, expecting his child, perhaps? Inevitably, her thoughts passed to Robert and the pleasure he had seemed to take in Louise's company and in Jeremy's. She caught herself before she could become too deeply engrossed in the if-onlys. She had decided, on the night of the anniversary ball after accepting William's proposal, that she would no longer allow herself to brood on the past. She had to put Robert finally out of her mind. She would probably never see him again. She must forget him. She could not be fair to William if she did not. She got up and put the letter back in the drawer.

There was a tap on the door.

"Come in," Elizabeth called. When she saw the maid, she smiled and pointed to the empty glass on the hearth.

"You have a visitor, ma'am," the maid said. "The butler told him you were unwell, but he said it was important. He is in the drawing room."

"Oh." Elizabeth had been counting the days until William's return, but she was still taken by surprise. What would he have to say? What had Robert said? Would he have sent any message for her? A message of regret, perhaps, like the very last words he had spoken to her? Would he perhaps have sent her a letter?

She dressed in feverish haste, selecting the pale-green silk with the lace inset that she and Louise had altered and that she had brought back with her. She brushed her hair so that the short curls bounced into place, and descended quickly to the drawing room. She smiled brightly as she opened the double doors.

Hetherington's eyes were a particularly cold shade of blue this evening, her mind registered as they met hers from across the room. In fact, his whole face and manner were stiff and cold. The smile faded from her own lips.

"Oh," she said foolishly.

His eyes traveled slowly and insolently down her body. "I am sorry to disappoint you," he said. "I see that you have prepared yourself for your lover. You look extraordinarily beautiful, Elizabeth. It is a shame to waste such a dazzling appearance on me, is it not?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked, finding the business of moving her lips and tongue unusually difficult.

His eyebrows rose. "My closest friend paid me a visit two days ago," he said frostily, "to ask if he might marry my wife. Is it surprising that I am here?"

"Your wife!" she said contemptuously, crossing the room toward him. "Why do you persist in this farce, Robert? I am not your wife. We are strangers."

"Did I imagine that wedding service we attended together in a small church in Devon?" he asked. "Did I imagine that we consummated the marriage in a very thorough manner for two nights?"

Elizabeth blushed hotly. "Such things do not make a marriage," she said. "Soon after that time you wanted me no more. For six years you have not cared if I lived or was dead. Are you now planning to put an obstacle in the way of my marriage to William?"

"The obstacle already exists," he said coldly. "You are my wife, Elizabeth, and my wife you will remain."

"Then you refuse to grant me a divorce?" she asked.

"Of course," he answered. "I do not believe in divorce."

She stared at him in impotent fury. "You are despicable," she spat out. "You have no such scruples. You merely wish to put a rub in the way of my happiness."

He bowed slightly in her direction.

"Then I shall divorce you!" she cried, the idea striking her for the first time. "I do not know how I may go about it, but Mr. Rowe will advise me. I shall ask him tomorrow."

"It will not work," he said quietly. "You have no grounds."

"No grounds?" she repeated. "I shall find grounds and to spare, my lord, you may depend upon it."

He smiled arctically. "Adultery?" he suggested. "It would not be worth your while to try, my love. Unbelievable as it may seem to you, I have been faithful to our marriage. It is quite a joke among my set, you know, that I do not even keep any high-flyers."

She stared at him.

"Desertion?" he continued. "It would not succeed. You left me, remember? It was my express command that you stay at my grandmother's house in Devon until I sent for you. You disobeyed and went home to your father. If questioned, I should make it quite clear that I am willing to return to you anytime you so desire."

"You would be prepared to lie so?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Oh, I never lie," he said, smiling into her eyes. "I would remind you that there is documentary evidence that you and I spent a night together at a certain inn just a few weeks ago. You are a remarkably attractive woman, Elizabeth, and six years has been a long time. I should not say no to an invitation to your bed."

His hand shot up to grasp her wrist as her hand flashed toward his face. "No, not this time," he said, eyes narrowing. "That last time you had the advantage of surprise, my love, but I learn by experience. Hit me again, Elizabeth, and I may reply in kind. You would not escape with a kiss this time." He released her wrist.

She turned away from him. "Where is William?" she asked.

"He suddenly remembered pressing business that will keep him in London for an indeterminate length of time," he replied.

"And you are staying at Ferndale?"

"Under the circumstances, that would not be good ton," he replied. "The inn at Granby seems comfortable enough."

"What does he intend to do about me?" Elizabeth asked, and then despised herself for having spoken out loud.

"What can he do?" Hetherington asked. "I told him that he may not marry my wife, and like the honorable gentleman that he is, he has retreated to lick his wounds."

"You are utterly heartless," she cried, turning on him once more in fury. "You are enjoying this situation, are you not? It gives you pleasure to cause pain for two people."

"You are wrong, madam," he snapped, his face showing anger for the first time. "It is precisely because I care for William Main waring that I am behaving as you see. You have ruined my life, Elizabeth, making it quite impossible for me to lead a normal life or to love another woman. Do you think I would stand idly by while you do the same to my friend? He may hate me now, he may be suffering now, but I would prefer to feel his hatred and watch his pain than see him later with all faith in life and love shattered."

Elizabeth had clutched her throat with one hand and sunk down onto a sofa. "What are you saying?" she whispered. "What have I done to make you hate me so?"

He came to stand in front of her and glared down into her eyes. "Money was more important to you than I was," he said, "and you professed to love me. William, by his own account, you claim to hold only in affection. But I'll wager that you love his money, Elizabeth. It will be so much more accessible to you than mine was."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, barely able to get the words past her lips. "This is not the first time you have accused me of being mercenary, Robert. What do you mean? You were poor when I married you."

He smiled unpleasantly. "Ten thousand pounds was so much more attractive to you than a husband who had only love and a title to offer, was it not?" he asked.

"Ten thousand pounds?"

"Had you planned it all along, Elizabeth?" he asked. "Or was it just the momentary temptation to which you succumbed?"

"Oh, Robert," she whispered, feeling the blood draining from her head and fighting waves of faintness, "what are you talking about?"

His expression changed. A kind of wild fear was in his face. He grabbed her by the upper arms. "Are you ill?" he asked harshly, and when she did not reply, he pulled her to her feet and folded her in his arms. She sagged against him, dizzy with faintness.

"Oh, God, Elizabeth," he said against her hair, his voice heavy with pain, "tell me you did not plan it. Tell me that you were merely tempted, that it was a decision you made on the spur of the moment. Tell me you loved me when you married me, that those days and nights in Devon were not just an empty sham. Please, darling, give me that much consolation at least."

Elizabeth fought the buzzing in her ears and the coldness in her head. "Tell me what you are talking about," she said.

His hand came beneath her chin and lifted her pale face. "Ah, don't lie to me," he said. "Believe me, I want to understand, I want to forgive. When I see you and when I hold you, I cannot believe that you are capable of the villainy that I have accepted all these years. I want you, Elizabeth."

His mouth was on hers with a passion and an urgency that she could not have denied even had she wished to. As it was, in her semiconscious state, the embrace seemed like one of the many she had dreamed of in the previous years, only more delightful. She pressed herself to the warmth of him and allowed his demanding lips to tilt her head back and part her own. Her mouth relaxed beneath his so that his tongue plunged an easy entrance and set her afire. His one hand had somehow dealt with the row of buttons down the back of her gown and was caressing the naked flesh of her back beneath her chemise. His other hand fondled one breast and then dropped behind her hips and brought her hard against him. She gasped and regained some of the consciousness that had been slipping from her. He was looking at her with passion-heavy eyes and then stooped down and swung her up into his arms.

"Tell me the way to your room," he said, beginning to move around the sofa.

Elizabeth was fully conscious again. "Put me down, Robert," she said distinctly.

"I shall carry you, love," he said, looking down into her eyes. "You always were the merest feather."

"Put me down, Robert," she said again, willing her voice to steadiness.

The passion was gone from his face instantly as he set her feet back on the floor. "You are a tease, ma'am," he said, "and I fell for it again."

"Enough!" she yelled, her control snapping altogether. "I am sick, Robert, sick of hearing your accusations. I am heartless, I am a tease, I am mercenary. I know myself as none of these things. You have accused me of accepting ten thousand pounds for something. I know nothing of ten thousand pounds. I have never even seen so much money. Now, if you care to explain what you have hinted at, please do so. If not, if your purpose here is merely to insult and accuse me, you may leave, my lord. You are not master here, and in the absence of the Rowes, I command. Now, which is it to be?"

She sat down straight-backed on the nearest chair. He too sank onto the sofa that she had occupied earlier. He looked at her narrowly for a long while, and Elizabeth almost lost her nerve. She set her chin and glared back.

"I refer, of course, to the ten thousand pounds that you accepted from my uncle," he said tonelessly.

"From your uncle?" she asked, a frown creasing her brow.

Hetherington got restlessly to his feet and paced the room. "My uncle was opposed to our marriage from the start," he said. "You told me that yourself. What you did not tell me was that he had offered you money even then to break off with me. Two thousand pounds, I believe. You laughed at him and told him it would take a lot more than that paltry sum to buy you off."

Elizabeth had whitened again. "The details are not quite as I remember them," she said, "but yes, he did talk of money."

His penetrating look again almost unnerved her.

"After we were married, he might have let us alone," he continued, "though you probably thought you could push up his price. Circumstances certainly played into your hands, my dear. How you must have cheered when you realized that I was the new marquess. You must have waited in great glee for my uncle to contact you."

Not a muscle moved in Elizabeth's face. "Go on," she said.

"My uncle responded like a puppet on a string, of course," he said. "When he came to offer you eight thousand pounds, you forced him to pay out ten. You were foolish, my dear. He would have paid double the sum to rid the family of such an unsuitable connection."

"Yes, I imagine he would," she commented.

"I was furious with him when I learned what he had done," Hetherington said, his eyes blazing again, "until I had had time to think, of course. Then I realized that it was probably as well to know the truth about you so early. It was a tragic irony for you, was it not, Elizabeth, that my grandmother died just a year later and left me all her wealth? You might have had the title and a great deal more money than ten thousand pounds, my love."

"Have you finished?" she asked. He made her an ironic bow. "I know nothing of ten thousand pounds," she repeated, "and I have not set eyes on your uncle since that night when he asked me to name my price for leaving you alone. All I do know, my lord, is that I waited for a whole week at my father's house after writing to tell you where I was. I excused you in my mind, knowing that you would be contending with shock as well as the business attending on the funerals and their aftermath. But I longed for a letter, just a little note, from you. At the end of that week, I began to write to you, every day, pleading with you to let me come to you; or to write to me at least. For two whole weeks, Robert. Do you have any conception how long a time that seems to a bride who has just been separated from her husband and who cannot understand the reason why?

"And then finally you wrote." Elizabeth glared at him in angry scorn. "But not to me, my lord. Never to me. Could you find the courage to write only to my father? He was never a particularly loving man, but even he felt pity enough not to show me those letters. He tried to soften the blow by telling me himself that you did not want to see me, did not want to be burdened with my letters. I tried to convince myself that you loved me, that you would become yourself again when the shock of your brother's and your father's deaths had worn off. It took John, brought home from Oxford by my worried father, to convince me that you really did wish to be rid of me. Someone of my social standing suited you well enough when you were plain Robert Denning with no expectations. But as the wife of the Marquess of Hetherington I was merely an embarrassment. You must divorce me as speedily and as quietly as possible."

"But I did not," he pointed out quietly.

"No," she agreed, "because I very meekly gave up the struggle. It might have caused some scandal had a whisper of what was happening reached the ears of the ton. It was safer to leave matters as they stood, was it not?"

They stared at each other, worlds apart.

"How can I disbelieve my uncle?" Hetherington said finally. "He is my own flesh and blood. He has always devoted himself to my family. He even came to live with me in the months following the accident, to help me adjust. What he did, though wrong, was done for love of me."

"But you will disbelieve your wife?" she cried, leaping to her feet. "You have made your choice, Robert. There is nothing more for you and me to say to each other."

Again they regarded each other across the room. Finally Hetherington withdrew his eyes and, without a word, strode from the room.