A Lady's Choice

by Donna Lea Simpson

  There was a dreadful notion. Imagine, she thought, going around all the time hungry for what you could never have, knowing in your heart that no matter how much you needed the other person—

  The thought arrested her and she stared blankly out the window. That was exactly what Colin must have felt for the last five or six years, ever since the first time he proposed—after considerable encouragement from her—only to be told no, she would never marry him. Time after time he had proposed, sometimes obliquely, sometimes with an outright declaration, professing his love and devotion, swearing undying fidelity. And she had always rejected him.

  And yet she had taken for granted that Colin loved her and would always love her.

  Had that love that he had professed to be eternal finally died? Had seeing her in London’s milieu, set against the backdrop of hundreds of lovely ladies, many of them eager for his attentions, finally cooled his ardor? It was a logical assumption to make.

  But not if she was to judge by his kisses.

  She touched her lips. At seventeen she had let him kiss her once, a very chaste kiss, and only fleeting. She had felt nothing, and had never let him repeat the experiment, sure she would feel no more than that one time. In truth, she had been happy she did not feel the “tingling” a girl once described to her. It had sounded horribly earthy.

  It was safer to be cool, and she had always been happy that she seemed to be cold by nature. Frozen, one did not feel pain if someone left, or died. Too much of life was lived on an emotional plane, she had always thought. Poets raved on and on about the all-consuming fires of love, the desperation of unrequited passion. They maundered on about bitter jealousy and rage, despair. She was seldom troubled by feelings of anger or jealousy, fear or sadness. She had liked it that way, been happy in her coolness.

  So what was wrong with her now? Why were her emotions in a tumult, her thinking muddled and confused?

  She traced a heart on the dusty pane of glass. The servants were clearly not doing their job in this part of the house, she thought, wiping her finger on the brocade of the hideous sofa. Her mother was failing in her usual strict discipline, but then she had been distracted lately, with Grand ill.

  She should be doing something, Rachel thought. She should go out shopping, or to the bookstore, or she should go visiting. She owed many visits before she left London, and just did not have the energy, it seemed, for any of them. She frankly did not care. What was wrong with her?

  Feelings, so long restrained or submerged, raced through her constantly, leaving her wretched with a longing for peace. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not find the way back to her former poise, and strangely, was not even sure that she wanted to. For this emotional life she was discovering had compensations. Apart from her tumultuous longings, she had found that there were pleasant moments in her newly emotional life.

  Belinda had insisted on walking arm in arm with her just the other day, and it had warmed her. Giddily, they had sung a silly song as they walked in the park, and she had not cared when people stared. And Andromeda! They had long had a difficult and strained relationship, and Rachel knew it was because of her rejection of Colin’s suit. Rachel feared it also had derived from her own disdain for Andromeda, whom she had considered just an odd spinster, negligible at best, strange at worst. But the woman had been so very kind to her lately, and she had found in her almost an older sister. Life had its difficult moments, but also its rewards.

  And most of all, there was Colin. She must face facts. She very much feared that after all this time, and all her continued rejection, she had fallen in love with him. Kissing him had thawed the last frozen bits of her heart, and it had stung, like frostbitten fingers warming near a fire. There was the tingle and the sting. She thought she could enjoy kissing him often, if he would respond as eagerly as he had that morning. Surely that must mean something, his fervent response, or was it different for men? Could they kiss someone and yet not truly care about them?

  She was no idiot. She had heard the whispered tales of girls led astray by a man with promises and then abandoned. And she knew men kept women for their own bodily pleasure with no attachment. She knew what the marriage bed meant, both to men and to women. It was described by her mother as a sordid duty, but she had known her mother exaggerated its unpleasantness to women, for surely there would not be so many children born in the world if patriotism, a desire to repopulate their isolated island after the ravages of war, was the only reason. Most women she knew were not that patriotic.

  But what she had never considered was, what if it was—scandalous thought—enjoyable, the earthy side of begetting children? If kissing was a part of it, and she supposed it must be, for she would certainly demand it be, then it could prove to be . . . entertaining. She laid her flaming cheek on the back of the sofa, wondering at the turn of her thoughts, and traced heart shapes on the brocade back. What a moonling she had become!

  Colin. If she should marry him, would he come naked to bed, and would they . . . she buried her face in her arm. Perhaps, after all, this love she thought she now felt for Colin was merely physical, some strange awakening of her womanly self. Again she traced the brocade design. No, she didn’t think that theory would hold up to the light of reason. If that was true, if what she felt for him was no more than the physical longing a woman might feel for an attractive man, she would not have been so worried for him in the ring. Seeing him hit had left her distraught, horribly fearful for his safety. And acknowledging those feelings had disturbed her more than she would ever admit to anyone.

  The familiar tap tap tap of a cane sounded in the hall, and the door opened. Rachel looked up as her grandmother came into the room. She looked so tired and frail. Sometimes it seemed as if willpower alone kept her going. There was another difficult relationship she was experiencing anew. She and her grandmother had never been close, and yet, seeing her ill, she had realized how much she treasured the troublesome old woman. It had occurred to her that their differences over the years had partly been due to her feeling that her grandmother had never been misled by Rachel’s careful, ladylike demeanor.

  “I thought I would find you here,” the old woman said. “Hiding out from your mother?”

  “Not really,” Rachel said, hopping up from the sofa and moving to pull out a chair for her grandmother. “Here, Grand, sit. You should not be up so much. And whatever happened to that Bath chair mother purchased for you?”

  “I sent it to Yorkshire.” She dropped into the chair with a groan. “Once I am there, your mother and I are going to move into the dower house, we think, and have a joyful time redecorating it. We have ordered new furnishings, wall coverings, paint, marble tiles . . . all manner of hideously expensive rubbish. She is still angry with Haven and thinks to punish him by moving out of Haven Court to Haven Wood.” The old woman’s eyes twinkled. “I shall tell him that if he wants his peace he should act heartbroken and demand she move back to the big house. It will keep her with me for years!”

  “How will you two live together? You can barely stand to be in the same room without bickering.”

  The twinkle softened and a smile loosened the purse-string wrinkles around the old woman’s mouth. “Lydia, for all her bluster and misguided notions, is a good woman. I fear I have been horribly hard on her for too many years. I would like the opportunity to make up for that now. As short as the time left to me is, I would make good use of it.”

  Rachel shook her head and curled back up on the brocade sofa. “Everything feels like it is changing. Where shall I live?”

  “Where do you want to live?”

  “With Colin.” It was immediate, the response so quick it must have been from her heart. She hid her flaming face in her arms for a moment, but then looked up to meet the dowager’s eyes.

  Grand did not seem surprised. “And what is stopping you? The puppy has always been mad for you.”

  “Not now. I think I have killed all those tender feelings, I have been so cruel. He
will never ask me to marry him now. I have rejected him too many times.”

  The old lady leaned forward on her cane. “Tell him to come see me. I will set him straight. I have done it before to the country turnip!”

  Rachel thought back to just two months before, when Colin, finally accepting her last rejection of his suit, had turned around just days later and asked her younger sister to marry him. Pamela had already received Strongwycke’s proposal, and Colin’s had confused her terribly because she had always fancied herself in love with him. Rachel raised the specter of that ill-timed proposal to her grandmother. “What did that mean? How could he want to marry me one day and then ask Pammy to marry him two days later?”

  The woman snorted. “He never truly wanted to marry her! Just thought she would make a comfortable wife and a friend for his sister. The lad has poor control over his impulses. That makes him a good fighter, I suppose.”

  Impulses. Like the impulse to kiss her, she supposed. And yet, watching him box with Sir Parnell, she had to think that boxing, contrary to her grandmother’s opinion, required a great deal of control over one’s impulses. One could not just lash out, but must choose the best time and strike wisely.

  But nonetheless, it was a relief, hearing her opinion that the proposal to her little sister had just been an impulsive gesture. Colin’s proposal to Pamela had hurt and puzzled her. She hadn’t quite known why then; now she understood herself a fraction better. She had been jealous and put out, in truth. “Grandmother, what can I do? How can I make him see that I have changed, that I love him.” There; it was said, for better or worse, and it did not feel so bad, admitting that she loved him and yet he might not love her.

  Oh, wait . . . that part did feel bad.

  “You will have to be bold, I am afraid. Men do not like to look foolish, and I’m afraid you publicly rejected him once too often. Not that you did the wrong thing, my dear. No woman should say yes when her heart says no. And yet for the longest time I believed that a marriage could be perfectly good without love; mine was for many years.” She gazed toward the hearth, her blue eyes becoming misty with remembrance. “Then, oddly, I fell in love with my husband after I lost my second child. He was heartbroken, and I thought it was because it was another son, and then I found out his pain was for me, for what I had gone through. My marriage was never the same. Love changed everything. I found out that marriage with love is so much better than without.”

  Rachel gazed at her grandmother, trying to see the young woman within her, trying to trace the image held only in the portrait in their gallery now, of a lovely woman with blazing blue eyes, wearing panniered skirts, her hair dressed high and powdered. It was too hard. Grand had always been an old woman to her.

  “Why did it change everything?” she asked.

  The elderly woman swiveled her watery gaze to her middle grandchild. “It blessed my heart.”

  Blessed my heart. What a lovely phrase. Rachel sighed. “What should I do?”

  “If you love your baby baronet, and think he loves you in return, then you will have to find a way, some bold gesture, that will let him see you will not treat him shabbily again. My dear, do whatever it takes if he is the one you would marry.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Colin, in a new suit he did not like and had been scandalized at the cost of—if he had not intended to make it do for Andromeda’s wedding, he would not have purchased it—strolled around the perimeter of the Codstead ballroom, a crowded, stuffy room with too many potted palms for its limited size. He had the impression the baroness, Lady Codstead, knowing how few people were still in London and wanting her ball to seem a squeeze, had replaced humans with palms and ferns. It felt like a tropical forest.

  But Andromeda had insisted they all come, for this was the last ball before they planned to start their journey north, home. Home. Corleigh’s green hills and rocky fells beckoned. He should never have been gone this long, more than two months; it was unconscionable when there was so much work to be done. He had a farm manager who was perfectly capable of looking after everything, but he could not bear to be draining Corleigh’s precious resources by spending time in London. They could not have stayed this long if it hadn’t been for Lord Strongwycke’s kind loan of his home. That would be their first duty, to return Belinda to her home at Shadow Manor, Strongwycke’s northern estate in the Lakes District.

  It would be good to see little Pammy, all grown up and married and mistress of a large household. How the last two months had changed all of their lives!

  He stopped and watched the dancers. Parnell and Andromeda were waltzing, their two gaunt, tall figures standing out in the smattering of shorter, punier specimens as they glided across the floor, surprisingly graceful. Though he should not be surprised. To watch them box was to watch a light-footed dance, of a sort. The knight and the spinster sparred often, their athletic grace a salutary lesson to anyone who thought that boxing was just a fight.

  Though their sessions just as often ended with an embarrassing bout of kisses and whispered exchanges. Not the usual end to a boxing match. He had never seen his sister so happy.

  He had to be content they had spent their time in London, for Andromeda had found her match, a man who would appreciate her for exactly who she was, a strong-minded, independent and sometimes eccentric woman. He had always thought he would marry and his sister would remain single, but it appeared he was the one meant to be alone. He could not see himself marrying while he still loved Rachel, and he couldn’t imagine not loving Rachel. It was a bind, to be sure. He turned his mind away from his romantic problem.

  The one thing he would miss about London would be his boxing. He had enjoyed not only the athletic aspect to his sport but also the notoriety it brought him. He had gained acceptance and a measure of fame, and found that he liked it. He even had had an idea to start a boxing club among Lesleydale lads, and that would keep him—and them—busy throughout the long and sometimes tedious Yorkshire winter.

  This ball was a dull one, he finally decided. He had done his duty and danced with the daughters of the house; they were pleasant young ladies, but he did not like the way the eldest was eyeing him and trying to maneuver him into a walk in the minuscule conservatory. He had feinted and parried, and ducked away when she was otherwise engaged. Now he was thinking that a last modest spot of gambling at cards would finish off his London stay, though he was no gambler and would never lose more than a guinea or two before becoming bored. Turning to head to the card room, he glimpsed Rachel coming in, alone, breathtakingly beautiful in a simple white gown and a wreath of white roses around her dark coronet of braids. He took in a deep shaky breath and let it out, slowly.

  God, but he loved her. And he always would.

  She had spoken of going to visit Pamela for a while once they were back up north, and he had to be glad, for as friendly as their two families were, he would have to see her often and it hurt him in some deep unexplored region under his rib cage every time he saw her and realized all over again that she would never be his wife. It was not just her beauty, though that was stunning, that he regretted. No, it was so much more than that.

  He saw her as a rose, blooming now, almost full-blown. But even when the bloom had withered, desiccating like one of the roses in Andromeda’s dry arrangements, he would love her and think her beautiful. They would get old, perhaps both single, and still see each other often, remembering the kisses they had shared one enchanted London Season. And he would still love her. But he would never plague her with his suit again. Rejection at this stage would wound too deeply, more than any one of his past rejected proposals.

  She saw him and moved toward him, gliding gracefully as if she floated, across the ballroom floor. One more dance with her would not hurt, surely. It would be something to remember in that barren future he envisioned. Though he amended it now, looking at her. She would not be single for long. Andromeda had been right about one thing; she had changed, at least in her behavior, though he did
not believe her heart had changed. He had always seen a fine, sensitive core beneath the surface hardness. She was more open now, more glowing. And even more beautiful as a result.

  Any man alive would want that angel of perfection . . . but no, she was not perfect. She was flawed, but flawed in the same way the most exquisite of world masterpieces were, faulty and vibrant and ineffably beautiful clear down to her heart. And all the more incredible for the flaws. He found that he was walking toward her eagerly, his step quickening. Her lovely eyes were wide, her expression anxious.

  “You did come,” she said as she approached. “I had hoped you would.”

  He was taken aback by her enthusiastic greeting. “I did. We leave the day after tomorrow, so this will be our last social outing.”

  She joined her hands with his in the middle of the ballroom floor. He wished they weren’t wearing gloves; damn social nuisances, anyway! He would give anything to feel her flesh, warm, silky, cradled in his rough hands. He halted his wayward thoughts and gave her a tentative smile.

  Another piece started, and couples swirled around them. “We leave next week,” Rachel said. “Haven and Jane arrive tomorrow. You will be able to see them before you go. They have something they want you to take to Pamela and Strongwycke for them, a gift.”

  Silence. He held her hand still, looking down at the fine silk of her glove, the dainty hand in his. “Will you dance with me?” he asked. “One more time before I leave?”