Estelle dropped her head on to her arms. She was twenty-five years old, why had it taken her so long to ask herself these questions? And why was she asking them now! She was married to a man so racked with guilt about his first wife’s death that he was in danger of destroying their marriage. Why did he feel so guilty when he’d done everything he could to make Aoife happy, even to the extent of making himself miserable? It didn’t make sense, but she daren’t raise the subject again for fear it would break his already fragile mental state.
* * *
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ Aidan pushed the door into the attics open to find Estelle perched on a metal box, a number of maps spread out on the floorboards. ‘What have you got there?’
She eyed him warily, clearly assessing his mood. ‘I think it’s the original plans for the rebuilding of the castle.’
‘May I see?’
He pulled up another metal chest and squatted down on it beside her, studying the map. ‘The east wing is missing.’
‘I know, and see here, where the foundations of the old castle are, it looks as if the intention was to rebuild them, incorporate them into the new castle.’
‘So it does. I wonder why they didn’t.’
‘There’s no explanation here, but I hope to find something in the other papers from the time. There are whole boxes full of stuff, accounts books, bills, even a diary.’
‘Enough to write a history?’
‘It’s a huge project to embark on. It would take years.’
Did they have years? It made his heart contract, seeing the unasked question in her eyes, knowing that the seeds of her uncertainty had been sown by him. Warning her that there was ill-founded speculation that Aoife’s midnight wanderings were a result of his mistreatment of her seemed an inadequate response. He needed to repair the shattered trust between them. Dammit, he claimed he wanted to build things! A solid foundation for his marriage was much more important than any bridge or canal.
As ever, he longed to pull her into his arms and hold her, tell her everything would be fine, but she deserved more than that. In any case, he didn’t want her to misconstrue his desire to break down the barriers between them. ‘Estelle.’ He reached for her hand, rubbing it against his cheek. ‘We have years and years ahead of us, more than enough time for you to write an archive and reconstruct the gardens. Ample opportunity for me to build a bridge and a canal and add another wing to the castle if you want. Time to establish the most important thing of all.’
‘A family?’
He kissed her knuckles. ‘It’s not that I’ve forgotten why we married, I promise you.’
‘Oh, Aidan, do you think I can’t see that? I just wish you’d tell me what you’re finding so difficult. You blame yourself in some way, I know, but I can’t understand why.’
He jumped to his feet, pulling her with him, needing to act before his confession spilled out. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you something that might explain better than words ever could.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘The east attics.’
His heart was pounding, his mouth was dry as he led the way down the stairs along the corridor to the east wing.
* * *
Estelle watched with astonishment and some trepidation as Aidan searched through his chain for the key. ‘Mrs Aherne told me the key to the east attics was long lost. She said that the door hadn’t been opened in years, that the attics held nothing of interest. Broken furniture, old hangings. I take it she was lying?’
‘Not lying, protecting someone.’ Aidan turned the lock. ‘Before I show you what’s behind this door, I need you to know I haven’t kept it from you because I too was protecting someone.’
Icy fingers clutched at her heart. ‘Aidan, you’re starting to frighten me.’ Was this where all the relics of Aoife had been stored? Was she about to see some sort of macabre shrine?
‘It’s not frightening, it’s simply tragic,’ he said, holding the door open. ‘I won’t say any more. There’s no need, this place tells its own story.’
Heart pounding, Estelle stepped through the door. She was standing in front of a set of thickly carpeted stairs leading to a landing with a door off it, before the stairs continued up. The walls were not merely whitewashed, as they were in the west attics, but painted a pretty primrose yellow.
The landing door opened into a furnished room. Picking her way carefully to the shuttered windows across a carpet thick with dust, fingers shaking, she opened the catch and threw them wide to reveal what was unmistakably a day nursery, lavishly furnished. The furnishings had not been covered. Save for the dust, the room had been left as if the owner had simply stepped outside, and would return at any moment. A nursing chair sat ready at the empty grate, a patchwork blanket folded neatly over the back of it. Beside it was a wooden cradle made up with linen which the moths had made a meal of. A baby carriage had been similarly made up with linen. An ivory teething rattle replete with silver bells sat exactly in the centre of the pillow. A beautiful carved wooden rocking horse occupied one corner. There was a child’s wooden high chair beside the table in the centre of the room, and a set of child’s china set out on the table itself. It was perfect and pathetic. A thwarted dream frozen in time, a fossil set in amber.
Aidan was standing in the doorway, his own deep sadness at this tragic tableau writ large on his face. His own lost dream was reflected here too. For the first time Estelle felt she was truly beginning to comprehend what he had endured, the enormity of what he had lost, and why he found it so difficult to forget. In the face of this shrine, she felt naïve and selfish.
Chastened, she made her way to the top of the stairs to the night nursery, leaving Aidan to his own thoughts. A day bed was made up beside the child’s cot. There were stacks of linen in the closet, all moth-eaten. Tiny nightgowns, exquisitely embroidered in white but now mottled with mildew, were folded beside a heap of hats and mittens. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she imagined the hope and tender love that had gone into making this layette.
She closed over the shutters and returned to the day nursery. Aidan had gone back down the stairs. Looking around with fresh eyes, it struck her as extremely odd that Aoife had chosen the attic as a nursery, when there were any number of rooms which would have served the purpose much better, rooms which she had already marked out for her own nursery that could accommodate a nanny’s bedchamber and sitting room. It wasn’t usual for a nanny to sleep in the night nursery alongside her charge, was it? Why choose such a cramped place? And such a remote one. If she had been Aoife, expecting her first child, and such a desperately longed-for child too, she wouldn’t have wanted to let it out of her sight, let alone have it sleep a ten-minute walk away from the master bedchamber, in an attic. But there was no doubting the love that had gone into furnishing this little suite. It was heartbreaking to think it had never been used, and now never would be.
But Aidan had said there had never been a child. She set the rocking horse going. It was not unusual for a mother to furnish the nursery in eager anticipation of their child’s imminent arrival. What sort of person furnished a nursery for a child that had never existed?
* * *
Aidan locked the attic door carefully behind them. ‘We’ll talk in the library.’
Rain teemed down, battering the leaded panes of the normally cosy room. It was unseasonably cold. Seeing her shiver, he stooped to put a light to the kindling in the grate. Estelle sat on one of the wingback chairs by the fireside, clasping her hands together to stop them from trembling. He stood at the window, leaning his cheek against the panes.
‘Obsession,’ he said, breaking the tense silence. ‘Do you remember, I told you that I understood it.’
‘Wanting something to the exclusion of all else, regardless of the consequences.’
‘Do you understand now, Estelle?’
She nodd
ed, holding her hand out to him. ‘After what I’ve just seen, I’m beginning to. What made you decide to show me that place now, Aidan?’
He crossed the room to join her, pressing her hand before taking the seat opposite. ‘When I first met you, one of the things that drew me to you was that I could read you like a book.’
‘So much for my carefully cultivated air of mystery.’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘Don’t, not now.’
‘I’m so sorry, I’m...’
‘Nervous. I know.’ He smiled at her wanly. ‘But there are too many occasions now when I’ve no idea what you’re thinking. It’s my fault, I know that. You feel I’ve shut you out and made it difficult for you to ask.’
‘It sounds to me as if you can still read me perfectly.’
‘I’ve had a lot of practice at reading between the lines. Unfortunately, I’ve also become expert at keeping my thoughts to myself.’
There was a world of suffering contained in those two understated sentences. She yearned to comfort him, but his hands were gripped so tightly on the arms of the chair that his knuckles gleamed white. She daren’t risk oversetting him, so she remained silently in her seat.
‘I should have shown you that place earlier, but I couldn’t bring myself to face it. It’s like a mausoleum. The last resting place of dead hopes and dreams.’
‘It must have been very difficult for you to open the door at all. They were your hopes and dreams too.’
‘No.’ Aidan uncurled his fingers, stretching his legs out in front of him. ‘That place was not of my making. I didn’t show you it before, out of loyalty to my—to Aoife. It’s too private. It meant so much to her, what people thought of her, but anyone can see, looking at that place, that it’s the work of a deeply troubled mind.’
‘It’s certainly not a place for a child,’ Estelle said carefully. ‘Not a real child.’
‘I knew you’d see that. You’re right. There was never a child to occupy that nursery, not even the possibility of one. I knew it. She knew it, but she wouldn’t accept it. I found out today that she told Finn she was expecting, a few weeks before she died. I can only assume she also told Mrs Aherne too. I really have wronged that woman.’
‘You made it up to her by providing her with a glowing reference and a very generous pension when she left.’
‘And for releasing her from her bondage by marrying you, which I’m pretty certain is how she came to view her time here, after—after. Perhaps even before. This wasn’t a happy home for a long time, Estelle. When Aoife and I married we were both set on having a big family. After a while, with no sign of a baby, she resorted to prayer, then quack remedies, any number of well-meaning natural healers and a good few charlatans who prey on desperate souls like her. I didn’t interfere, for on the whole it gave her comfort and did her no harm—save that it did, for it offered her false hope.’
‘What about seeking help from a doctor or a midwife?’
‘Oh, we had both come along and ask all sorts of intimate questions.’ His cheeks stained with colour. ‘The only practical advice they gave us was to keep trying and not to give up hope.’
‘And she didn’t,’ Estelle said softly. ‘The evidence is there, in the attics.’
‘That was later, not more than a year before she died, when we couldn’t keep up the pretence between us any more.’ Aidan gazed into the fire. ‘Sometimes, she gave in to her frustration. She’d shout, or throw things at the wall. I could deal with that, she always calmed down quickly enough, but I couldn’t stand it when she cried. That was the worst. She didn’t sob, she never made a sound, but suddenly, right in the middle of dinner or a conversation, the tears would start, and she couldn’t stop them. I’d have done anything then, if I could have.’ He shuddered. ‘The worst thing was that she’d say she was sorry afterwards. She knew she was making me unhappy, but she couldn’t see a solution beyond the one thing we couldn’t have. In the last months, her moods became more and more erratic, and it frightened her, I think. She made me keep the likes of Clodagh and some of her closer friends away. If you’d seen her then, you’d have thought she was ill.’
‘Couldn’t you persuade her to see a doctor?’
‘There was nothing a doctor could do, save dose her up with laudanum, and that was no solution. There was only one solution, and it was the one we couldn’t have. It was a vicious circle.’
‘Oh, Aidan.’
‘Don’t pity me. I can’t bear it and I don’t deserve it. She was my wife, it was up to me to take care of her.’
‘You did.’ Stoically enduring what sounded to Estelle exactly how he had described it, a living hell. ‘You did all you could and more.’
But once again, he shook his head. ‘Latterly, she took to fleeing to the island at night.’
‘The island?’
‘She called it her sanctuary.’
Estelle’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘She drowned trying to reach it?’
‘That’s the story we put about. We tried to pass it off as an accident, but there were too many things that didn’t add up. It was a perfectly calm night, and the boat was still upright when it was found.’
‘She could have fallen. Reaching for an oar perhaps.’
‘The oars were in the boat. We found stones in her pocket.’
Estelle shivered. ‘Oh, God Aidan, please don’t tell me it was you that found her?’
‘No, Hera her faithful hound did, at daybreak. Her barking attracted a few people before I was summoned. Some of them must have talked. There were whispers. No one could understand why would someone so young and so happy, with everything to live for, would take her own life.’
‘But you knew why.’
‘Oh, I know exactly why.’
Aidan was clutching at the arms of the chair again, his head bowed, taking deep breaths. She couldn’t decide whether this confession was cathartic or destructive. He didn’t want her to comfort him. All she could do was wait. It wasn’t your fault. She daren’t utter the words. Poor Aoife. And poor, poor Aidan. He’d tried so hard to do what his wife wanted, to bear the burden of their problems himself. A terrible pity welled up inside her for the desperate woman, but it was tinged with anger. Aoife had not given up hope, and so Aidan could not be allowed to. ‘I take it that the question of adopting never arose between you?’
Aidan looked up, rolling his shoulders. ‘To be honest, it never even occurred to me. It’s not exactly common practice, but I’m pretty sure it would have been a pointless suggestion. Adopting someone else’s child would have been admitting defeat for her. She wanted her own baby, her own flesh and blood.’
‘But if it was clear she couldn’t have what she wanted...’
‘You mustn’t blame her, Estelle. She wasn’t being rational, it was more like a kind of primitive urge. The nursery, that was an offering. She thought that if she—oh, I don’t know, if she demonstrated that she was ready, then fortune would smile on her.’
‘But it didn’t?’
‘By that time, it would have required more than dame fortune’s intervention,’ he said heavily. ‘When I first discovered what she was doing in the attics—not that she made any attempt to hide it from me—I knew in my heart it was wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. Perhaps I should have.’
‘You’re being very hard on yourself, Aidan. She was a grown woman, and capable of fooling almost everyone into thinking that she was perfectly happy. You can’t take responsibility for her every decision and action.’
‘I knew she was overwrought, not thinking straight.’
‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think you can have been expected to be clear-headed either. I take it you didn’t unburden yourself to anyone? Finn?’
‘I couldn’t. It would have felt like a betrayal. She was so ashamed of being childless. She couldn’t bring herself
to admit it to anyone.’
‘Which is why she blamed you?’
He flinched, jumping to his feet and making for the window again. ‘She had just cause.’
She didn’t, Estelle wanted to shout. Why did he persist in the belief that it was his fault?
‘It’s time that travesty of a nursery was dismantled. You’re my wife now and this is your home. We can’t have a shrine to my previous marriage locked away in the attics. It’s time for it to be consigned to the past along with everything it represents. I want you to be happy, Estelle, I want us to be happy.’
She joined him at the window. ‘I’m not altogether unhappy.’
‘You’re not yourself. I don’t want you looking at me as if I’m a pot about to boil over. I don’t want you having to think about what you are about to say before you say it.’
‘How do you know I do that?’
‘You catch the corner of your bottom lip between your teeth, like you’re biting back your words, when you’re debating a tricky issue. At breakfast time, you turn your cup around and around in its saucer when you’re trying not to say something.’
‘I had no idea I was so transparent.’
‘There’s no sides to you, my father would have said. He’d have liked you.’ He slipped his arm around her waist, edging her closer. ‘I know we can’t live in our little glass dome for ever, but these last few weeks, it’s felt like one of us has been trapped inside it while the other has been stuck outside. I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too.’ She turned in his arms, leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘And I’ve missed this.’
‘You have no idea how much I’ve missed this.’
She closed her eyes, burrowing closer. ‘When we’re like this, nothing can come between us.’
‘It was because you didn’t want intimacy to come between us that we agreed we’d banish it.’
The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3) Page 17
