Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  In the otherwise deserted parlor, as she turned to Samuel Haverhill, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a small mirror on the wall. Her face was white, even her lips, and her gray eyes were enormous. She said, "I think you talked to my husband the day before yesterday."

  "But, Mrs. Stanford!" He looked both pitying and embarrassed. "You just told me that your husband drowned...."

  "I thought he had. There was this note from a William Carney... But now I'm sure the note was delivered to me by mistake. As you said, Patrick Stanford is not a really uncommon name. It must have been some other man who... who..."

  She broke off. After a moment, Samuel Haverhill said, "For your sake, ma'am, I hope it was a mistake, and that you're right this time."

  No one could hope it as she did. What would become of her if Patrick actually was dead, if there was no reason for this joy flooding through her? To suffer that first raw grief just once had been terrible enough. To suffer it twice would be more than she could bear.

  She said, "I am going to my room now, and write a message to my husband. Will you deliver it to him?"

  "Of course. Tell me where your rooms are, and I'll come up in about half an hour and get your note."

  ***

  Around four that afternoon she sat in a straight chair near the door of her room. Long since she had given up trying to read, or even embroider. Now she just sat there with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her ears straining for the sound of Colin's uneven step in the hall.

  She had no doubt that when Colin heard that Patrick was alive, his joy would match her own. True, she knew that he had been sincere in his offer of marriage. But his feeling for her, surely, was a tepid one, made up of affection and sympathy and respect rather than passion. Only a small regret would shadow his thankfulness that Patrick had been restored to them both.

  Her thoughts turned again to the message she had entrusted to Samuel Haverhill two hours earlier. In it she had poured out her heart to Patrick, begging him to return to her and their child, telling him of her love and longing and passionate need. She pictured him twenty-four hours or so from now, perhaps standing in a meadow in that lush Maryland countryside she had heard about but never seen, his dark gaze moving swiftly over the lines she had written. Surely he would forgive her for having called him the murderer of his own daughter. Surely, as soon as he had read that note, he would start north____

  Swiftly she rose, opened the door. Hand on the knob of his own door, Colin turned around. She said, "Oh, Colin! Come here!"

  When he was inside the sitting room, she closed the door behind him. She said, trying to keep her voice low, lest she wake her child, "Oh, Colin! He's alive. Patrick's alive! I'm almost certain of it."

  Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she threw her arms around his neck. Weeping with joy, cheek resting against his chest, she told him about Samuel Haverhill and the message he would carry to Patrick....

  Something was wrong. Colin's arms had not gone around her in a joyful embrace. Instead, he stood there stiffly, saying nothing, arms at his sides.

  Bewildered and a little frightened, she stepped back from him. Her eyes searched his face. It was very white, the eyes somber, the lips set. "Colin! What is it? Don't you believe me?" Terror tightened her throat. "Or is it that you know he's dead?"

  Instead of replying, he said in a strange, flat voice, "So you still love him that much."

  "Of course I do! Colin what on...?"

  "I thought you were changing," he said, in that same flat voice. "After all, you seemed disposed to marry me."

  "But Colin! That was only because... Please, please, Colin! If you know anything about him... I mean, anything besides what was in that note that trapper brought..."

  Her pleading voice trailed off. After a moment he said, "I know nothing, not even as much as was in the note."

  She stared up at him, bewildered. His dark, bitter eyes stared back at her for a long moment Then he said, his voice suddenly harsh, "You had best sit down, Elizabeth. I have quite a lot to tell you."

  Dazedly, she obeyed. He said, bleak gaze fixed on her face, "Whether the bastard's dead or not, I have no way of knowing. I hope he is. But from what you've heard today, I would assume he is alive."

  After a stunned moment she whispered, "You hate him, don't you? And I always thought..."

  "That I loved him? I did, until a few years ago. But even then there was hate mixed up in it. How could there help but be? I was the firstborn, but because I was illegitimate, Patrick was heir to the title and most of the land. And if that wasn't enough, he taunted me into attempting a jump I knew my mount could not make, with the result that I was crippled for life...."

  He broke off. Struck dumb, she sat motionless. After a few seconds he went on, "Nevertheless, on the whole, I admired and loved him, until he brought you to Stanford Hall. You see, I already knew how brutally he had treated you. But I didn't know what you yourself were like. It wasn't until I met you—until I heard your voice and held your hand and looked down into your face— that I realized just how despicable his act had been."

  His bitter voice went on, describing how hard it had been to conceal his own love for her, how hard to stand by while Patrick neglected her and flaunted his adultery with Moira Ashley. "And then, one day I heard him raging at you over that Englishman. You started running up the stairs... It was when you lost your child that I decided I had to do something. Two weeks later, I sent an anonymous letter to Whitehall, denouncing Patrick Stanford as a traitor."

  She said incredulously, "You? But you couldn't have been the one who betrayed him! If you had been, you would have stayed in Ireland and kept your land, and even collected some sort of reward from the English. You wouldn't have..."

  "Gone into exile with Patrick and you? You still don't understand. I thought he would be arrested. Instead, he was warned in time to make his escape. And you didn't welcome the chance to be rid of him, as I expected you to. Instead, you chose to go with him. And so I went too. That way, I could at least stay near you."

  In St.-Denis, he told her, he'd almost given up hope of anything more than that. "You seemed increasingly in love with him. I knew you would suspect him of your brother's murder, and yet, not even that..."

  He broke off. After a moment she asked slowly, "You mean that Christopher's death...? You mean that you...?"

  She was unable to go on. After a moment, he shrugged and said in that flat, weary voice, "There's no reason now that you shouldn't know."

  He told her how that night—or rather, early morning—he had emerged from one of the brothels near the foot of Harbor Street. Looking to his right, he had seen Christopher Montlow, pale hair gleaming beneath his hat, move away along the dock.

  "Because I, like Patrick, had been looking for Christopher, I was armed. I moved after him as fast as I could, and called his name. He whirled around. Evidently he realized I might shoot if he ran, because he waited until I came up to him with the pistol in my hand."

  Elizabeth pictured them there in the humid tropic darkness, her angelically handsome, unspeakable brother and this crippled man twice his age. "He readily admitted that he had robbed the distillery strongbox, and was carrying the gold pieces sewn in his coat. He started to open his coat, as if to show me the lining, but that was only a ruse. Apparently thinking he'd thrown me off guard, he reached for the pistol."

  Colin had wrestled the weapon free and tried to pull the trigger. The pistol had not fired. Somehow, though— for all that Christopher was younger and stronger—Colin had managed to bring the pistol barrel down on one side of the pale yellow head.

  "He staggered back and fell into the sea. I moved to the wharf's edge. Even though he was invisible beneath the water, I knew that if I dived in I could probably save him. But I knew that the world would be better off without him. He not only had been responsible for poor little Anne Reardon's death. He had also delivered you into my brother's far-from-tender hands. I mean, if you hadn't spirited Christopher
out of London, Patrick would not have invaded your house that night..."

  Again his voice trailed off. Elizabeth looked at him, stunned and repelled, and yet feeling too much pity to be able to hate him. She said, "And besides, you hoped that I would become convinced that my husband had killed Christopher."

  For the first time, his dark gaze slid away from hers. "Yes."

  And until now, Elizabeth reflected, she never had been able to shake all suspicion that Patrick had killed her brother. But that suspicion had not been enough to outweigh her love for her husband, her need for him.

  Colin said, as if his thoughts had followed her own, "It wasn't until he left you and Caroline alone in New Canterbury all that terrible winter that I again began to hope that I could take you away from him. And the night he came back... well, I saw a way to try to make sure of it."

  It must have been only a little while after Elizabeth had seen him praying there in the woods that Patrick had gone to Colin's house. "He told me his little girl was dying. He told me that you hated him. He asked me to do the best I could for you, and even see that you got safely back to England, if that was what you wanted. He gave me what money he had—it amounted to about two hundred dollars—and then he sat down at the table and wrote a note for me to give to you in the morning."

  Elizabeth's lips felt wooden. "A note?"

  "In it he gave you the name of someone in Hagerstown, Maryland, someone you could write to if you ever wanted to see him again. And then he left."

  "His note. What did...?"

  "I burned it."

  He had burned it. And so, for weeks she had waited and wept, not knowing where Patrick had gone. And all

  that time, Patrick, down in Maryland, with her last bitter words ringing in his ears, must have been hoping even so to receive a message from her, saying that their child still lived, and asking him to return.

  Now loathing began to stir beneath her sense of shock and pity. "And that other note, the one saying that he had drowned?"

  "I wrote it."

  He moved to the door. With his hand on the knob, he looked back at her. "It is strange. I used to think that I was one of those destined to go through life quietly, not asking much of anything or anyone, content with the affection of a calm, good-natured woman. And then Patrick brought you home..."

  He stopped. After a moment he added, "About your brother's death. As long as I had hopes of freeing you from Patrick, I felt I was more than justified in letting him drown. Now I see how little you could ever want to be free. And that makes me a common murderer, doesn't it?"

  He went out, closing the door quietly behind him. She heard the opening and closing of his own door across the hall. Still she sat there, pulled this way and that by conflicting emotions. Pity for Colin Stanford, bastard and cripple, who'd had to keep his love hidden. Hatred of him for the suffering he had brought her these past weeks. And yet gratitude that, at long last, she would never again wonder if Patrick had taken Christopher s life.

  From across the hall came the sound of a pistol shot.

  She sat motionless. Even after she heard the sound of opening doors, and a babble of voices in the hall, it did not occur to her to rise from her chair and find out what had happened. She did not have to. She already knew.

  CHAPTER 48

  Firelight flickered over the well-remembered room. Over the rosewood table, which still held the bowl of fruit Clarence had brought in at the end of this dinner for two beside the hearth. Over the graceful little desk where, those first months at Stanford Hall, she often had sat writing to her mother. And firelight shone on the bed where one night an angry and somewhat drunken Patrick had taught her body the joys of physical love.

  The gown she wore now, a ruby-colored velvet with deep cuffs of cream-colored lace, was associated with that long-ago night, even though she had never seen it until today. Only hours ago Mrs. Corcoran—grayer now, but still plump and cheerful—had brought the gown up to this room, and told how, weeks after "your ladyship and Sir Patrick" had fled Stanford Hall, she had found the bundled-up gown in a little-used storeroom. When the housekeeper had left them, Patrick had confessed, with a sheepish smile that made his dark face look years younger, that he had carried the gown from Dublin in his saddlebags, and then, in his fury with her, had tossed the bundle to the rear of a storeroom.

  Now she looked at the vacant chair on the opposite side of the table. Ten minutes ago, when Clarence had reported that he could not find a certain bottle of well-aged port, Patrick himself had left to search the cellars. Waiting for him now reminded her of another period of waiting—those two long, tormented days that, after Colin's suicide, she had spent at that Philadelphia inn, days in which she alternated between a certainty that Patrick would come to her and a terror that, after all, he was dead or, if alive, had learned how to get along without her.

  On the afternoon of the second day, aware that her tense anxiety, her frequent nervous pacing of the room, was badly upsetting Caroline, she took the child downstairs and left her with one of the maids who waited table each day in the children's dining room. Then she returned to her own rooms for more tormented waiting.

  It was just past four o'clock when she heard swift, familiar footsteps along the hall. She flew to the door and opened it before he had time to knock. Then she was in his arms. Wordlessly, with tears streaming down both their faces, they kissed, and then kissed again, trying to make up in those first moments for all the pain they had dealt each other.

  At last he said, still holding her close, "Then you forgive me for all—?"

  "Oh, Patrick! It is I who should ask forgiveness. The cruel, terrible things I said—"

  He stopped her words with a kiss. "We need never talk of that night, my darling."

  And then, even though it was broad daylight, and even though they both should have been tired—he from the journey at breakneck pace up from Maryland, she from the last almost sleepless forty-eight hours—they went into the bedroom and made love. For Elizabeth the ecstasy of their physical union was greater than ever before, because now she knew that he loved her, not just with his splendid long body, but with tenderness. Perhaps it was a tenderness that not even he had known was in his heart until the night when he had finally made his way back over still-snowy trails to New Canterbury.

  Joyful as their reunion was in that Philadelphia inn, they had still felt the shadow cast by Colin's death. As a suicide, he could not be buried in consecrated ground. And so, the morning after Patrick's arrival in Philadelphia, he and Elizabeth in a hired carriage followed his brother's coffin, borne by a wagon, out to a potter's field at the city's edge. They had stood beside the grave while all that remained of Colin Stanford, lonely and isolated in death as in life, was lowered into the ground.

  It was on their way back from potter's field that Patrick first mentioned returning to Ireland. "Parliament has passed this Act of Settlement..."

  "I know about it. In fact, I asked Colin if he might return to Ireland because of it. He seemed determined upon going to the West Indies."

  "No wonder," Patrick answered dryly. "He was afraid I might turn up in Ireland."

  "And do you want to go back there?"

  "I think so if you do, my darling. Oh, not that this Settlement Act means that Ireland is free. It may take centuries for Ireland to become free and united, if it ever does. But the English have made concessions, enough of them that I can take their oath in good conscience."

  "And the house and land in New Canterbury?"

  "I'll write to Wentworth and tell him that after he has sold the property to his cousin, he can send the money to Stanford Hall. I don't imagine," he said wryly, "that you want to see New Canterbury again."

  "No," she said, although now that he was beside her, his big warm hand clasping hers, it was hard for her to remember the suffering and fear of the past winter.

  Their passage across a smooth midsummer sea had been without incident. Three days ago their ship had docked at Dublin. And l
ate this morning they had arrived at Stanford Hall, where those who were left of the former staff—Mrs. Corcoran, Gertrude, Rose, Clarence, and old Joseph—had greeted them with embraces and tears. Young Rose and Caroline had taken to each other immediately, so much so that Elizabeth had not hesitated to place her child in the little maid's charge.

  What matter that during Elizabeth's long absence the huge crystal chandelier in the entrance hall had grown grimy and dull, and gilt picture frames had tarnished, and drapery hems unraveled? She was back now, in the house that would be home to her for the rest of her life.

  Patrick came in carrying a bottle filled with wine of almost the same shade as her gown. He sat down, filled two tiny glasses of etched crystal, and handed her one. She took an appreciative sip and then reached over to brush a bit of cobweb from his coat sleeve. "It is delicious, Patrick. But all that poking around in the cellar, just for a bottle of wine..."

  "I wanted you to have the best tonight. Nothing less would do." His gaze went over her serene face, her slim shoulders, the swell of her small, high breasts above the red velvet. "Oh, Elizabeth, you're so beautiful!" His voice roughened. "And what suffering I've brought you, when always you should have had nothing but the best, when always you should have looked as you do now."

  Not answering, she smiled at him. Yes, it was good to be warm, and safe, and richly gowned. But what he did not know, and never would, was that she had never felt greater tenderness for him than when she stood cold and half-starved and shabbily dressed at the wood's edge, and heard his harsh voice pouring out his anguish and his guilt and his love for her.