Married: The Virgin Widow

by Deborah Hale

  “Pryce, what are you doing here? Where are the ladies?”

  “Gone to bed, sir, at Mr Crawford’s insistence.” Pryce scrambled up from his chair as if he had been caught doing something mildly scandalous. “I offered to sit up in their stead. The Crawfords elected to stay the night. I put them in the blue room.”

  Ford nodded his approval of the arrangements. “Very sensible to allow the ladies their rest. I shall invite the Crawfords to remain at Hawkesbourne until after the funeral. My wife and her sisters need to be together at a time like this.”

  He glanced toward the tiny, lifeless form of his mother-in-law, properly laid out with her hands crossed over her breast. She looked as patient and serene in death as she had in life.

  “Mrs Penrose was a fine lady and the most affectionate of mothers,” he mused aloud. “Her going will leave an empty place in this house.”

  And in his heart. From the moment he’d returned to Hawkesbourne, Laura’s mother had made him feel sincerely welcome. She had been overjoyed by his betrothal to her daughter, unshakeably certain that his love for Laura had endured the devastation of the past. Had that belief been wishful naïveté or insightful wisdom?

  “So it will, my lord,” replied the butler in a hoarse murmur, his head bowed.

  The flickering candlelight glinted on a teardrop that clung to Pryce’s craggy cheek. Was there more to his feelings for Mrs Penrose than the devotion of servant to mistress? Not for the first time in recent days, Ford reflected upon the strange, ungovernable force that was love.

  Not wishing to trespass on the privacy of Pryce’s grief any longer, Ford thanked him for putting the house in mourning and for volunteering to keep the first night’s vigil. On the way to his own room, he paused by Laura’s door, listening for any sign that she might be awake. But all was as silent as if she were dead, too.

  That thought chilled Ford to the quick.

  He longed to steal in and assure himself that all was well with her. But he could not bear to disturb her much-needed sleep or, worse yet, risk giving her a fright. So, reluctantly, he continued on to his bedchamber.

  Upon entering, he heard something stirring in his bed. His weary mind harked back to the time in India when he’d found a scorpion on his pillow. But when he raised his candle, its light flickered upon a tousle of long golden hair. Recalling what disagreeable associations this room held for Laura, he was moved to find her here awaiting his return.

  He snuffed the candle and shed his clothes quietly in the darkness. Then he slid between the sheets with furtive movements, anxious not to wake her.

  But no sooner had he settled himself than Laura edged toward him, warm and soft in the darkness. “I thought you might not return home until morning.”

  “Would you rather I had waited?”

  “Of course not!” She burrowed even closer to him, seeking the sanctuary of his arms. “I have been longing for you.”

  Laura’s need for him penetrated dangerously deep into Ford’s heart, but he did not care. He gathered her into his embrace and held her tenderly as she began to weep. Pressing his lips into her hair, he crooned comforting endearments. Not even in the rapturous throes of passion or the lazy bliss after lovemaking had he felt so close and indispensable to her.

  Gradually her sobs eased and she grew calm again. At last she confided in a husky murmur, “I hadn’t shed a tear until now. I couldn’t, even when Sukie and Binny were weeping their eyes out. I cannot tell you how much better I feel for letting my feelings out at last.”

  Ford’s throat grew tight. He did not dare attempt to speak.

  Laura spared him the necessity. “You asked me once about my father’s death and I refused to tell you. Since then I have wanted to, but I could not while my mother lived.”

  He’d sensed she was hiding something and it had fuelled his wariness even when he began to wish he could trust her. Why had he never considered she might have an innocent reason for keeping her secret?

  “Now that Mama is gone,” Laura continued, “I am free to tell you and I cannot keep it to myself a moment longer. I am not proud of what I did, but I felt I had no other choice at the time. I hope you will not judge me too harshly.”

  Was that another reason she’d kept this secret from him, because she feared he would condemn her? Yet now she could trust him with the truth. Ford tried to reassure her by brushing a soft kiss upon her brow. He could not think of any words that would be adequate to the task.

  Laura took a deep breath and her body tensed, as if she were preparing to plunge into cold, dangerous waters. “I must go back a bit first, so you will understand and not think badly of poor Papa. You see, a few years after Susannah was born, my mother suffered a stillbirth and was very ill afterward. The doctors warned Papa that any attempt to bear another child would surely kill her.”

  Laura paused to swallow several times. “That left only we three girls, who could not inherit his small estate. That was why he took up the practice of architecture, to earn extra money for our dowries.”

  “I remember,” said Ford. “We first met when your father was designing that garden temple and Cyrus invited your family to visit Hawkesbourne. I counted it a brilliant stroke of luck that I was here at the time.”

  He’d been trying to dun his cousin for money to pay off his gambling debts, Ford recalled to his shame. Laura Penrose had seemed to embody every wholesome virtue he craved. She’d made him want to mend his profligate ways and do something useful with his life.

  “A brilliant stroke of luck?” Laura sighed. “I know you’ve had reason to think otherwise many times since then. I hope what I have to tell you will not make this one of them.”

  Though he yearned to assure her that was impossible, Ford could not. Would the secret she was about to reveal destroy the fragile happiness they’d begun to reclaim? Perhaps he should silence her with a kiss and remain in blissful ignorance. Not for the first time, he reminded himself that what he didn’t know could harm him.

  Perhaps Laura sensed his feelings, for when she spoke again she sounded more troubled than before. “Though he worked hard, Papa did not have a head for business. Cyrus advised him that an architect could make more money by providing workmen and materials to construct the buildings he designed. Since that required capital, which Papa did not have, Cyrus helped him find an investor.”

  Had his cousin been trying to insinuate himself with Laura even then? Ford wondered. After everything Cyrus had done for her family, it was no wonder she had turned to him for help. “The last time I saw your father, his business prospects were looking up. He had a commission for some nabob’s country house.”

  “The client was in a great hurry,” replied Laura in a tremulous whisper. “So Papa purchased stone and marble and fine wood. He engaged labourers. But when it came time to sign the contracts, the man changed his mind. Papa’s investor heard of it and demanded his money back. My family knew nothing of all this at the time, though Mama was worried that my father did not seem himself and spent all hours at his office.”

  Ford had some inkling of the pressure Mr Penrose must have been under. He had experienced the anxiety of creditors clambering for money he did not have. How much worse must it have been with vast sums at stake and the future of a beloved family threatened?

  “One evening Papa did not come home for dinner so Mama sent me to fetch him. I f-found him in his office…hanging from a beam. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I can still see his face.”

  The instant he heard the word hanging, the bottom seemed to drop out of Ford’s stomach. Until then, he’d expected Laura to tell him of the fire Belinda claimed had killed their father. Bad as that would have been, the truth was a thousand times worse for the family Mr Penrose had left behind.

  “My poor darling!” He held Laura tighter, offering comfort that was seven years too late in coming. “I would give anything to have spared you that sight.”

  “There’s more.”

  More than finding her father dea
d by his own hand?

  “I couldn’t let him be found like that. I couldn’t! Do you know what becomes of suicides? It would have killed my mother to see Papa buried by a crossroads with a stake through his heart, as if he were some wicked monster rather than a good man driven to despair. The disgrace would have ruined my family. And how would we have begun to pay his debts with all Papa’s possessions forfeit to the Crown?”

  It was a wonder the shock and strain had not driven Laura mad. “What did you do?”

  “I knew I must go home before Mama sent someone after me. I don’t know how I kept from breaking down. I suppose part of me refused to believe what was happening. I decided to say Papa had to work late again. After the others went to bed, I planned to steal out of the house and go find you. I was too dazed to think how I would get all the way from Newington to Piccadilly on my own, at night, with no money. I only knew I must try. I had this absurd belief you would be able to make everything all right.”

  He couldn’t have, of course. Yet Ford wished with all his heart he’d been there to try. But he had been abroad, pursuing an unexpected business opportunity that had promised to turn his fortunes around. It had come up so suddenly he hadn’t even had time to tell her he was going.

  Laura carried on with her account in a flat, distant tone, as if she were reliving the whole ordeal. “When I arrived home, Cyrus was there. He’d got wind of Papa’s difficulties and had come to offer his assistance. I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life. I gave Mama some sort of excuse for accompanying Cyrus to Papa’s office, hoping I could persuade him to take me to you. When he told me where you’d gone, I broke down completely. The only reason I could imagine for you going to Spa was to gamble. I felt you had forsaken me.”

  She began to weep again and Ford stroked her cheek, whispering soothing words in spite of his own agitation. How had Cyrus found out he’d gone to Spa?

  After a few moments, Laura mastered her emotions enough to go on. “When I burst into tears, Cyrus asked what the trouble was and promised to do everything in his power to assist me. I had no one else I could turn to for help. So I told him everything. He was shocked, of course, but full of sympathy. He agreed that if Papa’s suicide became known, it would kill my mother and ruin the family. But he had an idea how that might be prevented, if I would trust him.”

  Understanding dawned on Ford. “Cyrus set fire to your father’s office?”

  “He never told me so and I could not bring myself to ask, but I believe he must have. When my family were woken in the night with news of the fire, I was finally able to vent my horror and grief over what had happened. No one else was hurt in the fire, thank God. And no one suspected my father’s death was anything but an unfortunate accident. But after that, I began to be afraid what Cyrus might be capable of.

  “My mother was quite shattered by my papa’s death and losing our home to his cousin. I had to protect her and the girls. If I’d been the son my parents needed, we would have been in no danger from the entail after Papa died. There would have been no need for him to enter the treacherous world of business, which destroyed him.”

  “None of that was your fault!” Ford protested, though he knew too well how such feelings of guilt defied reason. He had long blamed himself for urging his widowed father to wed that grasping baggage, Helena.

  “I know it must sound foolish.” Laura sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hand. “But now that I am free to tell you all this, I need you to understand why I acted as I did. I was grateful to Cyrus for protecting my family, yet I feared he might reveal the truth if I crossed him. My family had nowhere to go and Papa’s debts to repay. Cyrus said the only means he could devise to assist us was to wed me. He would provide my mother and sisters with a home and make me a settlement sufficient to repay Papa’s debts.”

  So that was what had become of the money Ford had been so certain she’d frittered away. A barbed shaft of shame pierced deep into his conscience.

  “I tried to think of some other way.” An echo of her desperation tightened Laura’s voice. “I begged Cyrus to make you a settlement instead, so we could marry and take care of my family. He told me you had changed your mind and hoped I might tire of our long engagement, releasing you from your obligation to me.”

  “Damned lies, all of them!” The intense emotions building inside Ford ignited. “I was never inconstant in my feelings for you. How could Cyrus say such things about me? How could you believe them?”

  “Do you think I wanted to?” Laura shrank from his outburst. “It was not your behaviour that persuaded me it must be true, but my circumstances. The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed that a man with your prospects and personal attractions could not possibly be content with a penniless girl from a family of no distinction.”

  For so long Ford had been convinced she’d cast him aside with contempt. Despised him as unworthy of her love. Even used him to further her ambitions for a more advantageous marriage. Everything he’d done in the past seven years, all his business accomplishments, the fortune he’d amassed, had been a way of proving to himself and the world—and especially to Laura—that he did deserve her.

  What bitter irony that one of her motives for marrying his cousin had been the mistaken belief that she was unworthy of him. Understanding fell like gentle, quenching rain on the blaze of Ford’s anger.

  “A penniless girl from a family of no great distinction?” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I never once thought of you that way. I swear it.”

  How bitterly he regretted many far worse things he had thought of her since then.

  “I wanted to believe that.” Laura clung to his hand as if she feared he might change his mind and disappear at any moment. “But after I received no answer to my letter breaking our engagement what was I to think? When I heard you’d sailed off to the Indies, I thought it proved the truth of everything Cyrus had said.”

  What had made her doubt him? Perhaps the shock of her father escaping his responsibilities at the end of a rope, foisting those burdens on to her shoulder?

  “We both made mistakes.” Somehow the concealment of darkness made it easier to admit. “Both erred in our judgement of each other. Then we had seven long years for bitterness to fester and resentment to harden. Even with all that, we were not entirely able to forget what we once meant to one another. Were we?”

  “I tried to forget.” She sounded weary of the effort it had cost her. “When you returned, the last thing I wanted to be reminded of was the man you’d once been and the feelings I’d had for you. Yet I resented that you had changed. Perverse of me, I know.”

  Forgetting she could not see him, Ford shook his head. A barely audible chuckle rustled in his throat. “I love perverse women.”

  “Including this one?” Laura sounded hesitant, perhaps afraid, to ask.

  What could he say? His feelings for her were so intense and volatile, so raw and baffling. Could he reliably give them as simple a name as love?

  But he sensed it was what she needed to hear, so he pulled her close and whispered, “Only this one.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ford still loved her. Or he had learned to love her again. Perhaps a little of both.

  During the difficult days after her mother’s death, Laura held his reassurance in her heart. It comforted her to believe Mama had known the truth all along. Perhaps, content in the certainty that her elder daughters had found security and happiness at last, she had been able to let go of her feeble hold on life and slip away.

  But she did not slip away unnoticed. Ford made certain of that.

  “What a magnificent funeral cortège.” Susannah peered out of the dark-curtained window of the mourning coach she shared with her sisters, as the procession set off to St Botolph’s. “There must be thirty carriages. I didn’t think Mama knew that many people.”

  Wearing black crape gowns and bonnets swathed with veils, the Penrose sisters rode immediately behind the hearse. Four
horses, draped in black velvet with silver-trimmed harness, drew their carriage. Ford and Sidney rode in the next coach with the other pallbearers. Those included the Marquis of Bramber, the local magistrate and Hawkesbourne’s butler, Mr Pryce. Some people might consider it an odd assortment, but to Laura it seemed fitting. Her mother had never cared about titles or fortunes, treating everyone from countess to chambermaid with the same gentle courtesy.

  Dear Mr Pryce had looked after them all as best he could after Cyrus died, when money was so very scarce and conditions at Hawkesbourne far below their former standards. He could have got a better position elsewhere without any difficulty. Laura suspected his devotion to her mother had prevented the butler from deserting them. Yet she might never have considered asking him to be a pallbearer if Ford had not suggested it.

  That was only one of the many things, great and small, Ford had seen to since her mother’s death. Laura could not imagine what she would have done without him.

  “It is all very splendid.” Belinda raised her handkerchief to her brimming eyes. Perhaps because she was most like their mother in temperament, she had taken it hardest. “Sidney told me Ford hired a great many mutes and that the church will be ablaze with candles. It comforts me, somehow, to see a fuss made over Mama at last.”

  Laura agreed completely.

  “Poor Papa’s funeral was such a small, hasty affair,” added Belinda. “I always regretted that, though it could not be helped at the time.”

  Any sort of Christian rites was more than her father had been entitled to, Laura reflected with a pang of conscience over her part in concealing the manner of his death.

  “There could be twice this many mourners,” said Susannah, “and we still would not have to worry about running out of food for them. Ford bade Cook spare no expense and she took him at his word, bless her. She said she would make the refreshments worthy of a duchess, though she would far rather cook for a wedding than a funeral.”