Heartless (20 page)

No. He had not told her any such thing. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had told her there was no love. He had married her so that she would breed his sons. She had known that from the start. There was nothing chilling in hearing confirmation of that fact now.

But once he had loved. Loved deeply enough to try to kill his own brother over it. Deeply enough to kill all love inside himself after the tragedy hit. He had loved Henrietta. And even a few weeks ago he had not wanted to come back to Bowden. He had not wanted to come back to Henrietta. He had been afraid to come back.

And now they had met again, the two of them, and walked alone together long enough to upset Henrietta. Yet they were forever divided by the facts that she had been married to his brother and that he was now married to Anna.

“I am glad you told me, Henrietta,” she said. “'Tis something I needed to know and something I was curious about. I knew about the duel, you see.” She smiled. “Don't feel bad about letting it slip.”

“Oh, but I do,” Henrietta said earnestly. “'Twill come between us, Anna, and I have so enjoyed having a friend.”

Anna got up from her chair and rushed over to hug her. “And so have I,” she said. “Nothing will come between us, silly goose. You are my sister and my friend.” She hoped desperately that she spoke the truth.

Henrietta hugged her in return. “I swear to you, Anna,” she said, “that 'tis all in the past. For both Luke and me. It has to be. Even if he had not married you, he could not possibly have married me. So you must not fear. There was not a word of impropriety this afternoon.”

“Silly goose,” Anna said. And yet, she thought unwillingly, her sister-in-law's protestations were almost too vehement.

A
SHLEY
was horribly bored. He had been home for two months and had never in his life felt more idle. He had read and ridden and walked and fished and visited neighbors and flirted with neighbors' daughters and bedded one laborer's daughter, who was both pretty and eager. He had ended that liaison almost as soon as it had begun. He did not fancy facing the embarrassment of having a bastard to support on the family estate. His father had always been strict about such matters.

He was estranged from Luke. They had scarcely exchanged a word in two months. And the worst of it was that Ashley knew himself to be in the wrong. He had been living recklessly in London and quite beyond his means despite the fact that he had a large income for a younger son—and Luke, true to his word, had enlarged it. Ashley had been at school when his father died and at university when George died. But he knew for a fact that they would have come down on him as hard as Luke had if he had lived as wildly while they were alive. Perhaps harder. Ashley had not known that Luke had been cut off altogether after the duel. He had assumed that he had continued to receive his income.

The trouble was, Ashley was finding, that it was not easy to admit publicly that one was in the wrong. Doing so would be too hurtful to one's pride. And it was not easy to feel fond of the person who had put one in the wrong. He was not feeling fond of Luke.

He still felt betrayed by the changes in his brother. He remembered the good-natured, always smiling, always indulgent and patient older brother who had been his idol. George had been too far distant in both age and position for any close relationship during their younger years and too unhappy in later years. But Luke had always been there, willing to play, to help with lessons, to listen, to sympathize when the younger boy had been punished for some offense. It was to Luke he had looked most for approval and love, Ashley realized now. He had not thought of it in quite those terms at the time.

He had known that Luke had changed. For years, all through his youth and young manhood, he had listened avidly to any fragment of news about his brother that had reached his ears, usually from Uncle Theo, and he had built a mental image of a fashionable, attractive, daring, and devil-may-care brother. When he heard that Luke was coming to England, he had expected that his brother would be his greatest ally. He had pictured them drinking, carousing, gambling, and womanizing together. He had pictured his friends envying him such a dashing older brother.

But Luke was nothing like he had been and nothing like he was reputed to be. Oh, he was fashionable to an extreme and doubtless very attractive to women. But there was a reticence, a coldness, a hardness about him that had bewildered Ashley at first and then alienated him. Luke seemed even more sternly devoted to duty and the preservation of his heritage than their father or George had been. There was no love in him, no compassion. Consider what had happened to poor Doris. And to himself. It just did not seem right coming from Luke even though both he and Doris had behaved rather badly.

He could leave home, Luke had told him, when he had satisfied his brother that he had good reason to do so. Ashley knew himself to be in the wrong, but at the same time he felt a stubborn determination never to go begging—never again, that was. And what good reason could he find for leaving? He did not know what he wanted to do with his life. And so he remained at home with nothing to do, bored and unhappy.

One afternoon he was wandering aimlessly along the river, which looped around to the west of the house among trees, flowing faster and faster, until he came to the falls, a long and rather steep slope over which the water tumbled and bubbled. The sight of flowing water and particularly the sound of it was always soothing. He would sit on the dry rocks beside the falls, he decided as he approached them, and miss tea. He was not hungry.

But someone else was there before him. She was standing on the flat rock that jutted out over the falls. She was barefoot and her dress had been tucked up at the waist to expose her ankles and the lower part of her legs. She wore no hoops beneath her closed gown and no full petticoats either. Her hair was loose and in tangled waves about her face and down her back. Even though she was of only medium height, she was too tall for her weight and shape. She was only beginning to bud into womanhood. She was holding up her dress and reaching out one foot into the rushing water.

“You had better be careful not to tumble in,” he called. He did not believe there was any danger of anyone's drowning in the falls unless a head was hit on the rocks. But he knew from experience that the water was very cold. Falling in would not be a comfortable experience.

There was no response, and he remembered that the child could not hear. He walked slowly toward her so as not to startle her. She caught sight of him eventually and returned her foot to the rock before turning to smile at him. It was a sunny smile, rather like Anna's. She stepped down from the rock, clambered down over the others, and looked up at him. The top of her head reached barely to his chin.

“Have you escaped too, little fawn?” he asked. It was pointless to talk and yet one felt foolish remaining silent and grinning like an idiot.

Her eyes were going to slay men by the dozens when she was a few years older, he thought, deafness or no deafness. They focused on his mouth as he spoke, and she smiled again and nodded. She could understand what he said?

“Are you supposed to be alone?” he asked. “Where is your nurse?”

The smile became rather impish and she pointed through the trees in the direction of the house.

“You like being alone?” he asked.

She turned her head to look at the water and the trees and the falls. She set both her hands over her heart and then made a wide gesture all about her. She looked back at him.

“You love all this?” Who would not love such beauty and such solitude? But what would it be like not to be able to hear the water? “And you prefer to escape and come here alone?”

Deafness, he supposed, would lock a person up in a very private world. It would lead to loneliness or at least to aloneness. He wondered if this child was lonely. Yet she had a happy smile.

“I have disturbed you,” he said. “I will go away. But be careful.” He pointed to the rock on which she had been standing and turned to leave her.

But she caught at his hand with both of hers and shook her head. Well, he thought in some surprise, someone needed him, if only a child.

“What is it, little fawn?” he asked.

For answer she tugged on his hand and led him back toward the rocks. She bounded up them and onto the one that jutted over the water and he scrambled up after her. She sat down, motioned to him to sit beside her, and lowered her feet over the edge of the rock to dangle in the water. She turned her head and smiled at him.

“Is that a challenge?” he asked.

She leaned over, her hands cupped together, and scooped up a palmful of water. He expected that she would hurl it at him and braced himself for the shock, but she lifted her hands, closed her eyes, and dipped first one cheek and then the other in the water. There was a look of near-ecstasy on her face.

Did the other senses come more alive when one was absent? he wondered.

The temptation was irresistible. Ashley removed his shoes and set them behind him and then pulled off his stockings, tugging them from beneath the tight bands of his knee breeches and rolling them down his legs and off. He swung his legs gingerly over the edge of the rock and into the water, gasping as he did so.

“Zounds!” he said.

Emily was looking at him and laughing at him, the sounds she made strange and rather ungainly.

He pulled his feet up again and rested his heels on the edge of the rock. He draped his arms over his knees. She drew her feet up onto the rock too, clasped her arms about them, and rested one cheek on her knees. She looked steadily at him.

“What are you looking at, little fawn?” he asked her. “The water is cold.”

She smiled rather dreamily. A sweet child. How old was she? Fourteen, had he heard Anna say? Fourteen to his two-and-twenty. An eight-year difference—the same age span as between him and Luke. Had he seemed such a child to Luke? And yet his brother had never shown impatience with him, had never given the impression that he had better things to do than spend time with a nuisance of a younger brother.

He turned his face fully to her. “You can understand me,” he said, “but you cannot express yourself to me. Is it painful, little fawn?”

Her eyes—those wonderfully expressive eyes—grew wistful. He wondered if she had any way of communicating with the people in her life. There had been the few hand gestures she had used earlier. Did anyone—Anna, perhaps—care enough to build on those signs, to make something of a language of them? Even then, would it be possible for her to express any of her deepest feelings?

He smiled at her. “Answer my question,” he said softly.

She nodded her head against her knee, her eyes still wistful.

He reached out a hand and gently smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. She smiled again and lifted one hand. She pointed at him, made a flapping movement of her four fingers against her thumb, and then pointed to herself. She did it again when he made no immediate response.

“You want me to talk to you?” he asked.

She nodded.

And so he talked, telling her about his childhood, telling her about coming home from school one holiday to find Luke gone, telling her about his stupid, immature behavior in London—though he did not mention the mistress whom he had been unable to afford—and about his boredom at home. He told her about his feeling of betrayal, about his feeling of guilt.

There was a sense of great relief in unburdening himself to another person, he found, even if it was to a person who would not understand much of what he said and would be unable to do anything about it even if she did. It was soothing to feel human sympathy. Soothing to his loneliness.

“I am a poor, abject creature, little fawn,” he said finally, grinning at her.

She shook her head slowly.

“And you are a good listener,” he said, aware of the irony and yet the truth of his words.

She smiled back at him.

He said no more but listened to the soothing rush of the water and looked into its sparkling, fast-moving depths. And when a little hand stole into his, he clasped it, drawing comfort from it, giving comfort. She was a child in need of love, and he was an adult in need of company.

“Ashley! What the devil is going on?”

The voice, cold and haughty, cut into his peace like a knife. He turned his head sharply to see his brother standing several feet away, close to the trees.

Luke strode closer. “I suppose it did not occur to you,” he said, “that Anna would be almost frantic with worry? Did you bring her here? She is a child who should be with her nurse.”

But Emily had realized that there was someone behind them and had turned her head to look. She rose to her feet and bounded down the rocks like some wild and graceful woodland creature, holding her hands out to Luke. He took them and smiled at her. Ashley realized that it was the first time he had seen his brother smile in over ten years.

“Anna is worried about you, my dear,” Luke said to her.

So he, too, must have realized that the child could read lips.

“Come home for tea?” Luke asked her.

She linked her arm through his and turned back to Ashley to reach out her other arm for his. He shook his head.

“You had better come,” Luke said stiffly.

Ashley pulled on his stockings and shoes and got slowly to his feet. Emily was still reaching out an arm toward him, her face eager and smiling. He wondered as she took his arm and he was forced to begin the long walk back to the house with his brother, only the deaf-mute child between them, how much she had understood of what he had poured out to her.

“Deuce take it, Luke,” he blurted after a few silent minutes, “what do you think of me? That I am a spendthrift and a gamer and drinker and womanizer? You are right. But as I live, I am not a child molester.”

He glared across the top of Emily's head at his brother, who looked as cold and composed and immaculate as ever. His hair was even powdered and he had dressed for tea in a green silk coat over a paler green waistcoat.

“Damn you, Luke,” he said. “Say something.”

“I know you are not,” Luke said without looking at him. “But she is a child in my care, Ashley. She is dear to my wife. She has a handicap that would make it impossible for her to hear searchers calling to her and impossible for her to call for help. And it is late afternoon with the evenings growing darker as autumn approaches. I was annoyed—angry—that you appeared careless of those facts and of how Anna would be worrying. But I put too much on your shoulders. Emily is not in your care. And I trust you to behave toward an innocent child as I would expect any brother of mine and any gentleman to behave.”