Blessed Offense (Sixteen Seasons) (3 page)

“Would you dance this waltz with me, Miss Wallace?”

I turned to find Lynn at my side. I do not smile. In fact I feel like crying, so sorry am I for him. “Of course I will, Mr. Townsend. I would be happy to.”

“You do me a great honour,” he says with a sad, yet teasing smile.

I look at him for a half a moment, the dear, wonderful, heartbroken man. “Oh, do shut up,” I say.

WHEN I TURNED
four and twenty, Lynford Townsend insulted me. I confess . . . I deserved it.

Lord Avery and my sister have been married these past two months, and are living (not quite blissfully, I’m sorry to say) in a cramped row house in London. And so, tonight, it is just Mama, Papa and Mr. Townsend to my birthday dinner. I am not quite feeling all the joy usually inherent in a birthday celebration. I am getting old, and I feel my connubial opportunities slipping past me. Mr. Townsend seems to have come to terms with his bachelorhood. I might take a lesson from his patient resolve. I am not quite so reconciled to my loneliness, and I’m afraid I have been sulking about it.

“This cake is quite splendid,” Mr. Townsend says. “Do you not think so Miss Wallace?”

Lynn has become rather formal in the months since his disappointment. I am not at all certain I like it. Though he spends a good deal of time in our dining and drawing rooms, there is a greater reserve between us than has ever been before. No doubt I have at last persuaded him to do it. I do not feel much victory in the matter.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” I answer. To own the truth, I taste nothing. It is little better than parchment in my mouth.

Mr. Townsend seems to suspect my lie and offers me a puzzled look.

“Are you quite all right, my dear?” Mama asks, which of course draws all eyes toward me.

“Yes, of course, Mama. I’m just a little...tired, perhaps,” I answer with what I hope is cheery dismissiveness. It does not appear to have convinced anyone.

“Perhaps Mr. Townsend will take you into the drawing room,” Mama suggests, “where you can sit more comfortably.”

“I’m sure he’d much rather stay with Papa. I can wait until you are finished, Mama. I’m not so tired as that.”

“No, no, my dear,” Papa says, and begins fiddling with his neck cloth. “You look positively done in. And what’s more, I seem to have lost my tie pin.”

“Dear me.” Mr. Townsend lays down his napkin and rises to my father’s aid. “Let me help you, sir.”

“No,no Lynford, my dear boy. I’ve got it. Perhaps Mrs. Wallace will help me. I’m always losing it and she’s grown quite adept at finding it again.”

As Papa lays his napkin upon the table, I see something looking suspiciously like his tie pin glinting in his fisted hand. I realise then that there is a complicated deception going on and that for some reason it is wanted that I should withdraw, contrary to custom, with Mr. Townsend. Alone.

“Do go,” Papa says, dismissing us from the room with a wave of his hand.

Mr. Townsend seems only now to understand it himself, and is suddenly eager to do my father’s bidding. He is all attentiveness. “Here, Miss Wallace,” he says, coming around to my side of the table to pull out my chair, and then to offer his arm. “Do let me help you.”

“Do I look so indisposed to you as that?” I find myself asking. Am I flirting or testing him? I cannot say that I know.

“Not indisposed. Shall we say ... out of sorts?”

“And do you suppose I will be less out of sorts, or more so, a quarter of an hour from now?”

He looks at me as if I’ve just spoken in Hebrew, but says nothing at all as we enter the drawing room, where he places me comfortably in a chair. He examines me half a moment, then flipping his coat tails out of the way, he takes a seat opposite. Perched as he is, at the very edge of his chair, I wonder what his purpose can be. Is he so very concerned for my health that he cannot rest comfortably? Or does he mean to strike and take flight.

“I want to ask you something,” he says, jumping right to the point. I must say I’m not at all impressed with his abrupt and hasty manner. Will I have to refuse him a second time? Do I dare?

“By all means,” I hear myself say. I regret that my voice is not entirely even, and that there is, to my shame, the slightest hint of warning in it.
Do not ask for the salt,
I find myself silently praying.
Do
not
ask for the salt.

“I am conscious,” he says, and hesitates to go on, “that I have wronged you. And I wish to ask your forgiveness.”

Is this all? Perhaps I am tired, after all. I lean back heavily in my chair.

“I confess your manner does not encourage me.”

“I’m sorry I have held a grudge over your pushing me into the duck pond,” I say, but my voice is so heavy with disappointment over the way the conversation has gone, that I’m afraid I do not sound very convincing.

“The duck pond?” Mr. Townsend says and rises from his chair to stand over me. “The duck pond! That was ten years ago! We were practically children! And I dare say you deserved it after throwing that egg at me. And failing to miss!”

“And what of my dog? The one you murdered?”

“The fool beast jumped from my arms, after I rescued it from being shot, I might add, and fell beneath the carriage wheels. I might also remind you that it bit me quite savagely.”

“You tore my dress at my own debut. The best gown I have ever owned, and you exposed me to—”

“If you had held still long enough to let me free the pin ... And you know very well I was the only one who saw.”

“But that’s just it.
You
saw. Do you think I cared what anyone else thought? It was
you
who saw. That was quite enough. Is...quite...”

He was staring at me. Silent and staring, as if he had just seen something in my countenance he had not noticed till now.

“What is it?” I ask him. The silent scrutiny is too much.

“These grudges you bear, they aren’t that at all, are they?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do. You are a liar and a deceiver.”

“That is very unkind.”

“What is unkind is leading me to believe you did not care for me at all, that, in fact, you very nearly despised me, when you did nothing of the sort.”

“I’m quite sure, I never—”

“Yes, you did. And you know it. You drove me away, Caro. Why did you do it?”

“I suppose you will say it is my fault you offered to my sister.”

“And if I do say so?”

“I would say you were extremely unjust. And disloyal.”

“I have been that.”

I did not expect this confession.

“I said I’d come to ask your forgiveness, and so I have. But my guilt has nothing to do with pushing you into the pond—which I am sorry I did. Or with killing that wretched Juniper—which I have always regretted. Or with tearing your dress—which, had it been any other gentleman, I would have torn him to shreds. Or with any other transgression you might wish to remind me of. I’m sure there are others . . .” He paused then. “Have there been others?”

“Perhaps.”

“Such as?”

“I doubt very much you regret them.”

“Tell me.”

“No. Speak your mind first.”

He looks at me askance. “Very well. I’ve been disloyal, as I said. You explained to me the difference between pride and vanity. Which sin I have committed I’ll leave it to you to say, but after all the trouble I had taken, all the time spent, you would not have me. I could not go away empty handed.”

“That is a monstrous confession, Mr. Townsend.”

“It is. I know it. I own it. But in my defence, it was the only way to I knew to keep you near me.”

“Which is precisely why—” But I found I could not say it.

“Yes. Just so. You maintained those grudges as a safety. You lying, deceitful . . .”

I am nearly brought to tears by his cruel accusations, true as they might very well be. “You have said that already.”

But he does not stop. “...wise, clever, beautiful...”

And the tears come in earnest, but they are not so bitter now.

“Will you forgive me?”

It seems I am not quite as humbled by the exchange as one would wish. “I don’t know,” I answer him as I dry my eyes.

“You don’t know?”

“I suppose it depends.

“Depends? On what, may I ask?” He appears to be irritated with my prevaricating.

“On what you mean to do now.”

“I mean to marry you, you ninny.”

My heart leaps. “How do you know I’ll have you?”

“Well, I don’t. You’ve refused me before.”

“So I have.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because I am not, if you haven’t noticed, table salt.”

“What?”

“You asked me as if it were granted that I would accept you, as if after nearly drowning me in the pond, and killing my favourite pet, and....tearing my gown, I could have no thought in the world but to marry you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Perhaps not until then.”

He is silent a moment. And then: “What were the other offenses? Tell me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I no longer wish to discuss it.”

“Do you fear I’ll repeat them?”

“No. I’m afraid....”

“Go on.”

“I fear you won’t, if you want to know.”

He approached me then. Perhaps there are advantages to having loved someone so long as I had loved him, and he me I think. There were things I never had to say. He just knew.

“You aren’t still angry about the present I gave you on your nineteenth birthday.”

“I may be,” I say more coyly than I thought I had the courage to do.

He repeats the offense and repeats it well. Slow and lingering, gentle and earnest. I find I’m a little breathless when he at last releases me, pushing me far enough away from him to look me squarely in the face.

“I am a stupid, inconsiderate, disloyal and thoroughly unworthy lout. But I might be everything that is good and honourable and right. If you’ll have me. Say you will.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“What more can I say?”

“You’ve never once told me you love me. Not ever.”

With his hands framing my face, he presses his mouth to my ear. “Caroline Wallace, I’ve loved you as long as I can remember and I’ll love you as long as I live. Say you’ll marry me. And do it now, for I fear I hear your father coming.”

I nod my answer, and he repeats the offense once more, which leaves a great thrumming in my ears and my pulse pounding. He only leaves off when the door opens. We turn to find both Mama and Papa standing within it. Mama claps her hands together and presses them to her chest.

“At last!” she cries. “God in Heaven be praised! At long last!”

I could not have said it better myself.