Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(59)

“You believe that you lost your reputation along with your marriage two years ago, then?” he had asked.

She had made an impatient gesture with one hand. “It does not take much when one is dealing with the ton,” she had said, “and when one is female. I do not care. And if my family and even the Westcotts—who are not my family—cannot accept the fact that at the age of forty-two I am free to take a little time for myself and to spend it in any manner I choose and with whomever I choose, then they have a problem. It is not mine.”

“I believe, Viola,” he had said, “you deceive yourself.”

“If I do,” she had said, “it is none of your concern. I am none of your concern. I am not going to marry you, Marcel. It would be kinder, especially for your daughter, if everyone were informed of that fact now before we leave.”

Yet she had not threatened to go and do it herself. He wondered if she had realized that. And he wondered why he had not stridden back up the hill to do exactly what she demanded. He had no wish whatsoever to tie himself down in matrimony again, after all, and to live in tame domestication at Redcliffe for the rest of his life, pretending to himself that she had not grown tired of him even before they were betrothed.

“The horses are champing at the bit,” he had said, “and so are all the humans in the cottage. We will resume this discussion, if we must, at Redcliffe.”

“It will be too late then,” she had said. “It will be general knowledge that we are betrothed even if no official announcement has been made. Estelle will have planned her party and invited guests. Do you not care that her feelings will be more terribly hurt then than they would be now?”

“It is because of my daughter and my son,” he had said, “and because of your daughters and your son too that we must do the decent thing, Viola, regardless of our own feelings on the matter.”

“Since when,” she had asked him, all incredulity, “have you cared one iota for your children’s feelings?”

It was a good question.

Since Estelle had called him Papa the day before, perhaps. She had only ever called him Father before that, and all her life had rarely raised her eyes to his or spoken to him beyond largely monosyllabic answers to any direct questions he had asked her. He had often wondered if she was actually afraid of him or if she simply disliked him. He had almost always cut his visits shorter than he had planned. Bertrand was still calling him sir and was still behaving with stiff good manners.

“It is a fair question,” he had said, forcing himself to speak with cool arrogance instead of allowing himself to lash out in bitterness. “Call it the autocrat in me, then, this insistence of mine upon not having my will thwarted. You will marry me, Viola—for your own sake and for that of your children. You may not care about the loss of your own reputation, though I am not at all sure I believe you—or even that your reputation has been lost. But I am very sure you care about your children’s. Do you want them to have to deal with yet another scandal to pile upon what they dealt with not so long ago? Do you wish them to hear their mother called a slut?”

He had heard the sharp intake of her breath. “How dare you!” she had said.

“You see?” He had raised his eyebrows. “I rest my case. I will see you in Northamptonshire, Viola. Every day between now and then will seem like a week.”

“You do mockery awfully well.” She had not done as well as he. She could not hide the bitterness from her voice.

He wondered what had happened to the man he had been just three weeks ago—the man who did not care a tinker’s damn for what anyone thought or said of him, the man who looked upon the world and its rules and conventions and judgments with cynical indifference. But his mind shied away from any answers that might have presented themselves.

If only there had been a few more days—and a few more nights. He would surely have worked her out of his system and would no doubt have taken a different course upon the arrival of the search parties. He would have thought of every argument there was—and a few there were not—to avoid having to marry her. Or perhaps he would have used no argument at all. That would have been more like him. If he had been forced into a duel with either Riverdale or Cunningham, he would have shot contemptuously into the air and taken his chances on what they chose to do—and on the accuracy of their aim.

Had he broken with his usual practice, then, and insisted upon marriage because of some leftover lust? He had missed her like a gnawing toothache since their last night together, and it kept occurring to him that the last time he had traveled this road she had been beside him, her hand often in his, her head sometimes upon his shoulder, the whole of their glorious escape ahead of them.

He felt vicious.

It was a feeling that was threatening to become habitual.



* * *



? ? ?

Everyone had remained in Bath. It was the final humiliation. Even Michael, Viola’s brother, had stayed, though he had had to make hurried arrangements to have another clergyman carry out his duties in his parish. For those staying at the Royal York hotel it was a huge extra expense they had not planned for.

The carriage stopped at Joel’s house first before making its descent into Bath, and Camille, who must have been watching for it, came dashing out in her thin slippers despite the cold, Sarah balanced on one hip, Winifred close behind her. She grabbed her mother in a one-armed hug as soon as Viola’s feet touched solid ground.