Claire

by A. S. Harrington

  “Me?” she repeated, in surprise, allowing him to lead her up the stairs with her hand tucked under his arm. She sounded a bit like Susie, John-gardener’s daughter of all those years ago.

  “Of course; and at Windsor, out of all that press of people, I realized that I was sitting beside the most elegant woman in the place. You have a flair for public appearances, you know. I never expected it out of someone who used to steal tulips,” he said, with a hint of teasing in his voice.

  “Varian— ” she began, uncertainly, glancing up at him with a slight frown drawing her straight brows together.

  “So in public we shall remain the Earl and his very lovely and delightful wife,” he said, as if she had not spoken, although it seemed to be an answer; she looked down as he released her hand from his arm at the door to her chambers. “You shall give me my son in January, and I shall in return give you a position in my household— as you have pointed out, you are an excellent hostess and a delightful companion. Shall that suit you?”

  A trade, of sorts, a truce; very well. She had said she would take whatever he was willing to give her, and she had not thought it would be this much. “Of course,” Claire said quietly, and told Varian good night, and went inside her door and closed it behind her.

  She lay in the dark for a long while, thinking, and listening to the fire crackling faintly in the grate. The young lady will bear her basket, but without anything in it, and the husband slaughters the tiger, but without blood flowing from it. There will be no advantage in any way. She shivered suddenly in the cool night, recalling the way Rajat’s eyes had fallen as he had stared at his mysterious balls in the circle on the ground, and she had had a sudden intuition that he knew something but he did not want her to know. Nor had he told her. He had given her the epigraph, and then had refused to explain it.

  With a sudden dislike for her bed, Claire threw off the covers and found her dressing gown, and, taking up the book of sonnets, went quietly downstairs. she would find some dusty volume to put her to sleep, rather than these glowing bits of love poetry.

  Like a wraith she slipped inside the library in the dark and took up the tinder box to light the lamp on the table by the door. As she turned, she halted on a startled gasp: her husband, dressed still in his white shirt, but with his coat and cravat pulled off, sat behind his desk with a glass of wine beside his elbow, with something closed suddenly in his hand to hide it from her view.

  “Oh, Varian! I did not— ”

  “Claire? Is anything the matter?” he asked.

  “No! Nothing! Only I have brought back a book, and I wanted something to read,” she said, uncertainly, and then gave him an attempt at a smile and went to the corner bookshelf and turned her back on him.

  “What are you reading?” he asked quietly, just beside her.

  Claire jumped slightly, and stared at the book unseeingly for a moment, and then turned and handed it to him with a smile. “Just a sonnet or two,” she said pleasantly.

  Varian glanced down at the book and then back up at her. “I did not know you cared for Shakespeare.”

  “I am learning a little,” she said, backing casually against the bookshelves. “Claudia told me that I would like them, and I did.”

  “Did you?” Drew had seen that drawing away, and he had not mistaken it. “Will you have a glass of wine, perhaps, and sit in the chair by the fire for a while?” he asked unexpectedly. “If you cannot sleep, it will be exactly the thing for it.”

  Claire nodded unsurely. “I suppose so,” she conceded after the briefest hesitation, and went past him quickly. She did not realize that he watched her tread straight across Balaghat, instead of her usual circumvention.

  He poured her glass only half full and carried it to her, to where she had taken her customary place by the fireside; she looked young with her hair down around her shoulders, and a little tired. He realized suddenly that she was but one-and-twenty, no matter that she had braved an ocean and capture by privateers, a daring escape from an enemy ship, and a battlefield, to come to him in Portugal.

  “There you are,” he said, and smiled down at her, and went back to his desk and picked up something lying there.

  “Shall you want this back now, Claire? I’ve kept it for you,” he said, and did not tell her how many nights he had spent here at his desk, staring at nothing, allowing a gold chain and a ring on it to slide back and forth over his fingers in bitter contemplation.

  “What?” She glanced up and saw the chain hanging from his finger, and the diamond like a tiny star as it glinted briefly in the firelight. She raised questioning eyes to his face. “Do you wish me to have it?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Of course; I had it made for you,” he said negligently, and knelt casually beside her chair and unclasped the chain to remove the ring. He took her hand and slid it onto her third finger and kissed it lightly. “Now; there, it looks much better on your hand than lying in a box somewhere. Do you like it?”

  She stared at him for a moment, unsmiling, uncertain, and then withdrew her hand and nodded. “Yes, of course. I have always liked it. It’s quite beautiful.”

  He rose and went back to his desk and sat down. With a casual glance he picked up the book she had handed him and flipped through it. “You have given it back to me twice, the first time over a sin I did not commit, and the second time over one that I did. I don’t want it back again, Claire, do you hear?”

  “No, I shall keep it this time,” she said calmly, and leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine, and then closed her eyes, unwilling to analyze his remark for fear that doing so might ruin this sudden pleasant friendliness that she had stumbled onto in his library.

  “Shall I read you something to make you sleepy?” he asked, his eyes on the book.

  “Yes, I should like that,” Claire said, in a low voice without opening her eyes. “I am— a little tired,” she confessed.

  Drew read a sonnet to her in a quiet voice; he glanced up now and again at her face, at the rosy cheeks and those fervent brows, now composed in restfulness, her head against the chair, those sky-blue eyes closed. He saw her raise her glass once, and then she set it down on the table beside her, and laid her hands out along the chair, and sighed faintly. He read another without stopping; he hardly knew what he read, so absorbed was he in that lovely figure across the room.

  “Claire?”

  She was silent for a moment; then he heard a faint, “Um?” as though she were half asleep.

  “Shall I read you my favorite?” He smiled faintly when she did not answer, and began in his rich, even voice,

  How like a winter hath my absence been

  From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

  What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

  What old December’s bareness—

  “Claire?”

  There was no sound; she sighed once, and he smiled a little ruefully at the book in his hands and, closing it up, laid it down on the desk. Then he stood and went over and blew out the lamp by the door; he trod over Balaghat in the darkness and laid his hand lightly on his wife’s slight shoulder.

  “Claire?”

  “Um?”

  “Shall I carry you upstairs, darling?”

  Silence. He bent and lifted her out of the chair and felt her arms close instinctively around his neck, and for a moment, all he could do was breathe in the freshness of her hair as he held her there, standing with his eyes closed and a sudden tightness around his mouth. Then he carried her up the stairs, his slight limp hardly noticeable at all; he laid her out in her bed and pulled off her pretty dressing gown and threw it across a chair, and tucked the coverlet gently around her. With a last hesitation over her peaceful face, he bent and kissed her, lightly, on the lips, before he went quietly to his own chambers.

  There had been no revelation, no mystical imparting of truth. But when Varian had seen her yesterday morning as he opened her chamber door, her stiff back turned on him as she packed up her valise,
he had known that if she left him this time, there would be no returning, and suddenly it had seemed the end of the world to him that she should go.

  That confession at the breakfast table had struck him to his soul; could I have come to you? and in that instant had flashed into his mind the thought, You have this within your grasp, and you will allow her to walk away? You will allow her to think you do not care?

  Could I have come to you?

  He lay down on his bed still in his clothes, thinking that he had been the worst fool in the world if she had to ask him that.

  Could I have come to you?

  He would have thrown it in her face if she had asked him, if she had ventured the smallest question over anything so painfully close to his father’s mortal sin. And she had known; I did not want to hear the truth. She had known that she could not ask him.

  Could I have—

  No.

  Chapter Fourteen

  the hosts in motion

  By the third week of October, when they departed London for Banningwood, there had been between Varian and Claire in the past fortnight a sort of polite and unthreatening friendship in the few hours that they happened to spend at home together. Varian Drew had been home very little at all; he had been more and more at the Foreign Office discussing with George Canning not only Spain and Portugal, and explaining the mind of the Portuguese to this insular Englishman, but also India and Egypt and the East, and the indecisive and unpredictable Muscovites to the north. Canning had been so impressed with the young man’s brilliance in his observations, with his unvarying ability to divine the truth, that he had offered him a position on his staff, if he cared to take it.

  That Varian Drew had been surprised was obvious. Those incredibly blue eyes had raked over Canning’s face in a moment of questioning, and then Drew had said that perhaps he might consider it after January; that he meant to stay with his wife at Banningwood for the winter.

  Not that Claire would have met him at Banning House had he been there, for she had been busy as well. She had given Thomas-gardener detailed instructions on how she wished him to lay out the bulb beds in December, as she would be gone to Banningwood. She had shopped for Yule gifts for her family, and for the servants, and she had bought herself a few warm gowns for the country to accommodate her ever-increasing waistline. She recalled, a little ruefully, how very unpleasant her thick waist had been at eighteen, and sighed over this precious baby and the mess he was making of her figure.

  Of course, he was precious, in spite of his not being here yet, and she loved him already. For he had been, in some subtle, intangible, unknowing way, the cause of this fragile truce with her husband; this unborn child of hers had afforded her a place once again in his father’s life. And she rather suspected, considering his father, that he would be the most wonderful child in the world. She would lavish all the attention and love and care on him that his father could no longer accept from her. Consequently she did not mind a great deal the kicks that woke her from sleep at night, or the occasional heaviness she had begun to feel.

  The child had somehow rearranged their lives into a temporary state of placidity that Claire did not question. Varian was kind to her; she had accepted the ring back from him, thinking that he did not know how very much the offering of it meant to her, and in the same spirit had she accepted a book of French love poetry that he had brought to her one day, with a calm and friendly smile, and with a severe dismissal of that instant of longing which she had worked so hard to control. She did not seduce him; he did not come to her again, and, after that night of drunken madness, she avoided carefully any hint of intimacy that might destroy this tenuous truce.

  They were friends; it was enough for the present, and very likely it would be all there would be for a long time in the future. With a great deal of innocent wisdom, Claire did not look past that.

  They left London early one morning. It was a matter of some ninety or a hundred miles to Banningwood, and they were to take two days for the journey, which, she rather suspected, was out of his careful consideration for her comfort. Varian was to ride his favorite horse beside the carriage to allow her and Consuela to have the inside to themselves, so she would be comfortable. Indeed, he had begun to put so much thought into the baby’s well-being in the past week or so that she had developed a kind of amused jealousy of her unborn child.

  She saw Rajat on the box with John-coachman as she came down the step the morning they left London, and in addition there were a number of grooms and footmen to accompany the party, for safety and comfort. Inside the carriage was a basket of food and lemonade and a mound of pillows and quilts for which Claire gave Consuela a word of thanks as they settled down after they had driven off, and then discovered that her maid had had nothing to do with any of it.

  “Are you quite comfortable, my dear?” he asked as he threw open the carriage door when they stopped for lunch at the posting house outside of Barnet. He extended his hand to help her down.

  “I am doing very well, thank you, Varian,” she said, with the hint of a smile. “Someone kind has provided me with all sorts of luxuries, and I have had a nice nap on the pillows.”

  “You’re certain it’s not too much of a strain on you?” he asked solicitously, tucking her hand under his arm as he led her inside the inn for lunch.

  “No, of course not! I am not a piece of porcelain, you know,” she said, glancing up in some amusement at that handsome face over her.

  “If I could transport you to Banningwood on a cloud and avoid the potholes in this very poor road, I would be much happier,” he said.

  “You forget that this baby and I have been to Portugal and back, most of the way in care of a French privateer, and we both escaped unhurt,” she said teasingly.

  “No,” he replied, suddenly serious, “I have not forgotten.” Then, with a not altogether genuine lightness, he inquired, “Shall you have some of this chicken for lunch? It looks very good,” he said, as they came inside the private parlor where the innkeeper had laid out luncheon for them.

  “Yes, that sounds delightful,” she nodded, and allowed him to seat her and carve her a slice of cold chicken, and they chatted amiably about Banningwood for the next hour or so, until they were ready to continue.

  They spent the night at Fowlmere, which was a little more than halfway; she did not question that he had provided her and her maid with a private room for her comfort. What surprised her was the abrupt appearance of Rajat at her door, a little while before she was ready to go downstairs to the private parlor Varian had arranged for dinner.

  “Rajat! Is anything amiss?” she asked, her eyes opening wide to find him standing at her door.

  “No, Doña,” he said. “I have come to ask your indulgence.”

  “Of course! Come inside, here,” she said, and sent Consuela downstairs for something trivial. “What is it?”

  “I have a small request,” he said. “That you will carry this with you tomorrow,” he added, extending his hand, his turban stark against his brown, impassive face.

  She took it, puzzled, and glanced down at it; a piece of stone, of black and green and white crystals, carved into a curious elephantine shape. “What is this?” she asked, glancing up at his unreadable face.

  “It is jade,” he said simply. “A carving of very powerful god called Ganesha. He is . . . remover of obstacles. A guardian of those who travel. It is my wish that you should have it with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wish it?” he put forth hesitantly.

  “Rajat,” Claire said, suddenly still, “have you— do you know something? Something that is going to happen tomorrow?”

  “No, Doña,” he said, shaking his head. “But the wise man prepares for every step of the journey.”

  “What sort of power does it have?” she asked quietly, holding it in her hand, and glancing up at him, and then again at the beautiful stone.

  “To the sincere it imparts knowledge, to the weak it gives bravery
, to the imperiled it grants protection,” he said, bowing slightly.

  “And which am I?”

  He inclined his head slightly. “You are all; so are we all. In everything we go forward with expectations of good fortune,” the young man said.

  “Rajat— What— what do you know?” she inquired, in a low voice, gazing up at him.

  “We are travelers,” he said quietly. “We will go together tomorrow to cross the great stream, and there will be much good fortune if we tread resolutely.”

  She nodded and dropped her eyes. “Very well; I shall carry it, if you ask it of me.”

  She could not have known; she could never have known what lay ahead, and neither, perhaps, had he.

  The day passed pleasantly enough, and Claire forgot the curious green stone in her reticule. Eager to be home, Varian did not allow them to linger at lunch, but pressed on northward over the autumn fields and forests. He told Claire of the beauty of Banningwood, how it was situated at the top of a long rise, flanked on west by lush gardens and a lake, and on the north and east by the shady expanses of the Home Wood, rich with deer, fox, and rabbits that he had often hunted as a lad with his father’s steward while the Admiral was at sea. Coming up to Banningwood in the early evening, just after the lamps had been lit, its white stone facade burnished under the setting sun— Varian Drew smiled and shook his head, and told her she would understand very soon.

  Claire listened quietly, hearing beneath her husband’s love for the land the lingering loneliness of an only child, the sole offspring of a marriage that had begun as a love match unsanctioned by the bride’s family and had ended in betrayal and disgrace, as though in perfect validation of Elizabeth’s family’s disapproval. The most obvious result of the strain in family relations had been on Varian’s parents’ marriage; his father’s long absences at sea, combined with continued disapproval of Lord and Lady Swaffingham for their son-in-law, had gradually turned romance to regret. But the innocent victim, Claire began to realize, had been the young Varian Drew.