The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  She spoke with the steward at Heron House, and he promised to communicate with Lord Brocklehurst’s man of business in London concerning her affairs.

  She had her answer in an unexpected way. She was sitting in her small parlor one afternoon, sipping on a cup of tea after a tiring day at school and wondering if she had the energy to go outside later to clip a hedge that had grown untidy again. She got to her feet with a sigh when there was a knock at the door. And she stood gaping at Peter Houghton a few moments later, her stomach feeling as if it were performing a complete somersault.

  “Miss Bradshaw,” he said, making her a polite bow.

  “Mr. Houghton?” She stood aside, inviting him to enter.

  “I was sent to London to carry out some business for you, ma’am,” he said. “It seemed as well to call here on my way back to Willoughby Hall instead of writing you a letter.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She would not at all have enjoyed receiving a letter from Willoughby, only to find that it was from the secretary. “Won’t you have some tea?”

  She sat on the edge of her chair listening to him, drinking in the sight and sound of him, this fragile link with Willoughby and Adam. And remembering the first time she had seen him at Miss Fleming’s agency.

  Matthew had indeed fled the country. Someone must have tipped him off to the fact that his deception had been uncovered and that awkward, incriminating questions were about to be asked. Mr. Houghton, it seemed, had spoken with Matthew’s man of business, had pulled a few strings in high places, and had arranged it that her guardian was now a distant cousin, Matthew’s heir, whom she had met only once. And that man, whom Mr. Houghton had also called upon, had been quite uninterested in guarding either the person or the fortune of a twenty-three-year-old female relative he did not even know.

  She was to be given a very generous allowance for the following year and a half, after which her dowry and her fortune would be released to her whether she was married or single.

  Mr. Houghton coughed. “I believe his exact words were that you could marry the sweep’s climbing boy tomorrow for all he cared, ma’am,” he said. There was a gleam in his eye for a moment.

  She had never known that Mr. Houghton had a sense of humor, Fleur thought, smiling.

  He would not stay for dinner or even for a second cup of tea. He wished to cover several more miles before darkness, he said.

  Fleur got to her feet and clasped her hands in front of her. He would be gone in a few minutes. Until then she would hold firm. She would not ask a single question about him. Not one.

  Peter Houghton coughed again, pausing by the outer door before opening it. “His grace could not go himself to London, of course,” he said. “He sent me in his stead.”

  “Yes,” Fleur said. “I am grateful to you, sir. And to him.”

  “He is making plans to take the duchess and Lady Pamela into Italy for the winter,” he said.

  “Is he?” Wounds that had scarcely begun to film over and knit together were being ripped apart again.

  “For her grace’s health,” Houghton said. “And I believe for his own too. He has not been quite himself.”

  A sharp-bladed knife was scraping at the wound.

  “The climate of Italy should help them both,” she said.

  He reached for the knob of the door and turned it.

  “I was instructed to make a purchase in London, ma’am,” he said, “and to make sure that it was sent on to you here. It should arrive within the week. I was to inform you that it is more in the way of a contribution to the school than a personal gift.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It should arrive within the week,” he repeated.

  And he bowed to her again, bade her a good day, and was gone.

  She was left with the painful ache of knowing that the one small link with Adam was even then rolling out of the village. And with the knowledge that he loved her enough to have sent his secretary to London on her behalf. And that he was sending her a gift, supposedly for the school.

  But really for her.

  And with the knowledge that soon—within a few months—he would be gone from England. Not that it mattered. She would never see him again anyway. But Italy! Italy was so very far away.

  Sometimes pain could be almost past bearing.

  There was plenty to do to keep her busy, but she wished it were possible to keep her mind as effectively occupied as her hands and body.

  She could not keep the thoughts of him at bay. And they were painful beyond belief. She would never see him again, never hear from him again. And yet she was to know and to believe for the rest of her life that he loved her. Twenty years later, if she was alive then and knew him to be alive, she was to believe that he loved her. And yet she would never be able to verify the truth of it. She would wonder—she was already wondering—do you love me still? Do you remember me?

  In some ways, she felt, it would be almost easier to know that he did not love her, that he was happy somewhere else with someone else. At least then she would be able to set about the task of living her own life with a little more determination.

  Perhaps. And yet, as she lay in bed at nights reliving those days of travel with him, when they had talked easily to each other and grown to be friends and sometimes sat quietly together in perfect peace and harmony, their hands clasped, she was not sure she would be able to live with the knowledge that he was happy somewhere else, that he had forgotten her. And as she relived that night, when they had told their love over and over again with their bodies, she did not think she would be able to bear knowing that there could ever be another woman for him.

  And yet it hurt to know that he was unhappy, trapped in a marriage that was really no marriage at all, undertaken for the sake of a little girl who was not even his.

  It hurt to know that the barrier that kept them apart, and would do so for the rest of their lives, was as flimsy and as strong as gossamer.

  The culmination of her pain came with two events that happened on the same day, one month after she had moved to her cottage.

  She was called from the school early in the afternoon to take delivery of a pianoforte, which had been brought all the way from London. There was a number of curious people in the street, and somehow all the children were out there too, swarming about the large wagon that held the instrument.

  “A pianoforte!” Miriam gasped, and clasped her hands to her bosom. “For you, Isabella? Did you order it?”

  “It is for the school,” Fleur said. “It is a gift.”

  “A gift? For the school?” Miriam turned wide eyes on her. “But from whom?”

  “We must have it carried in,” Fleur said.

  She did not know where Daniel had come from, but he was there.

  “It is too valuable an item for the schoolroom,” he said. “We must put it in your cottage, Isabella.”

  “But it is for the children,” she said. “So that I can teach them music.”

  “Then you must take them one or two at a time to your cottage for their lessons,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” Miriam agreed. “That will be the best possible idea, Isabella. What a wonderful, wonderful gift.” She squeezed her friend’s arm but did not repeat her question about the giver.

  And so Fleur found herself with a pianoforte in her parlor and a whole box of music. When she was finally alone, having been assured by Miriam that she was no longer needed so close to dismissal time at school, she sat on the stool and touched the keys with shaking fingers.

  But she did not play. She lowered the gleaming lid over the keys, pillowed her head on her arms, and cried and cried until she was sore from the crying. They were the first tears she had shed since his leaving.

  She could see him in the early mornings opening the connecting door between the library and the music room, standing there deliberately until she saw him so that she would not think that he intended to eavesdrop without her knowledge. She could hear herself
playing, lost in the music, but feeling him there in the next room, silently listening.

  For so long she had thought that she hated him, that she feared him and was repulsed by him. And she had been afraid—oh, mortally afraid—of the strange, unexpected attraction she had felt to him.

  He had sent her this one precious gift, knowing how much music meant to her. But he would never hear her play it. She would never be able to play it for him.

  All her tears were spent by the time, later the same evening, she discovered a flow of blood, which told her that she would not bear his child either. She was more than a week late.

  It had been foolish, foolish, of course, to have hoped that it was true. She should have been panicking for that week. It would have been disastrous if it had been true.

  But the heart cannot always be directed by the head, she was discovering. She felt as bleak and as empty, lying on her bed after she had cleansed herself and put the padding in place, as she had the day he left.

  She would not have cared, she told herself. She would not have cared about all the awkwardness and scandal. A great deal of hope could build in eight days. She had begun to believe in her hope.

  “Adam,” she whispered into the darkness. “Adam, there is too much silence. I can’t bear the silence. I can’t hear you.”

  The words sounded ridiculous when she heard them. She turned onto her side and hid her face against the pillow.

  SOON AFTER PETER HOUGHTON’S VISIT, Fleur asked Mollie, the maid from Heron House, if she would like to move to the cottage to keep house for her. Mollie was delighted at the chance to be housekeeper and cook as well as maid. But she hinted that Ted Jackson would be unhappy to have her so far away. Before a month had passed, Mr. and Mrs. Ted Jackson were both living at the cottage, and Fleur had a handyman and gardener as well as a housekeeper.

  Once she was no longer alone in the house, the Reverend Booth sometimes visited her without his sister. He found her presence relaxing, he would say, watching her at her embroidery. And he liked to listen to her play the pianoforte.

  Fleur enjoyed his visits and looked back with some nostalgia to the time when she had believed herself in love with him. If all those events had not happened, she often thought—if Cousin Caroline and Amelia had not left for London, if Matthew had not stopped her from leaving the house, if Hobson had not fallen and she had not fled, thinking she had killed him—how different life might be now. She would have moved to the rectory as planned and lived there with Miriam until Daniel had come with the special license.

  They would have been married now for many months.

  They would have sat every evening as they often sat now. Perhaps she would be with child.

  And she would have been happy. For without the experiences of the previous months, perhaps she would never have seen the narrowness of Daniel’s vision. Perhaps she too would have continued to see morality in strict terms of black and white. And she would never have met Adam. She would never have known the passionate, all-consuming love she felt for him.

  She would have been happy with the gentle love that Daniel had offered. Sometimes she wished she could erase the past months, go back to the way things had been. But one could never go back, she realized, or truly wish to do so, because once one’s experience was enlarged, one could no longer be satisfied with the narrower experience.

  Besides, despite all the pain, despite all the despair, she would not wish to have lived her life without knowing Adam. Without loving him.

  “You are happy here, Isabella?” the Reverend Booth asked her one evening.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “I am very fortunate, Daniel. I have this home and the school and friends. And a wonderful feeling of safety and security after all the anxiety of that thing with Matthew.”

  “You are well-respected and liked,” he said. “I thought that perhaps you would find it difficult to settle here after all you had gone through.”

  She smiled at him and lowered her head to her work again.

  “I sometimes wish we could go back to the way things were before that dreadful night,” he said, echoing her own thoughts. “But we can’t, can we? We can never go back.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I thought,” he said, “that it would be possible to love only someone I felt to be worthy of my love. I thought I could love other people in a Christian way and forgive them their shortcomings if they repented of them. But I could not picture myself loving or marrying someone who had made a serious error. I was wrong.”

  She smiled at her work.

  “I have been guilty of a terrible pride,” he said. “It was as if I believed a woman had to be worthy of me. And yet I am the weakest of mortals, Isabella. I can only look at you and marvel that you have not been embittered or coarsened by your experience. You are far stronger and more independent than you were before, aren’t you?”

  “I like to think so,” she said. “I think I realize more than I did before that my life is in my own hands, that I cannot blame other people for anything that might go wrong with it.”

  “Will you do me the honor of marrying me?” he asked.

  For all the words that had led up to the proposal, she was taken by surprise. She looked up at him, her needle suspended above her embroidery.

  “Oh, Daniel,” she said. “No. I am so sorry, but no.”

  “Even though I know of your past?” he said. “Even though I can tell you that it makes no difference to my feelings for you?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Daniel,” she said. “I can’t. Oh, I can’t.”

  “It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and touching her shoulder. “But you have severed all relations with him, have you not? I would expect no less of you. He is a married man. I am sorry, Isabella. I am truly sorry. I would wish for your happiness. I will pray for you.”

  He left the house quietly while she stared down at her work.

  He did not come alone again for several weeks, though he called sometimes with his sister. And he frequently came to the school.

  When he did come alone once more, it was during the afternoon of a day when there was no school. He brought a letter with him.

  “I would send it back unopened if I were you,” he said to her gravely as he handed it to her. “As your minister, I would advise it, Isabella. You have put up such a strong fight against your weaker self and have come so close to winning the battle. Let me send it back for you. Or destroy it without reading it.”

  She took the letter from his hands and looked down at the seal of the Duke of Ridgeway and the handwriting that was not Mr. Houghton’s. It had been longer than four months—or perhaps four years or four decades or four centuries.

  “Thank you, Daniel,” she said.

  “Be strong,” he said. “Don’t give in to temptation.”

  She said nothing, but continued to stare down at the letter. He turned and left without another word.

  She hated him. She had not expected ever to feel hatred for him again. But she hated him. He had said that he would never see her again, never write to her. And she had believed him.

  She had pined for him, thought she could not live on without one more sight of him or word from him.

  And he had written. To open the still-almost-raw wound once again. To force her to begin all over again. And in the future she would never again be able to trust him to keep temptation out of her life.

  Daniel was right. She should send the letter back unopened so that he would know that she was stronger than he. Or she should destroy it unread. She should give it to Daniel to send back or destroy.

  She went into the parlor and stood it, unopened, against a vase on the pianoforte. And she sat quietly in her favorite chair, her hands in her lap, looking at it.

  WELCOME HOME, YOUR GRACE,” JARVIS SAID with his characteristic stiff bow.

  The Duke of Ridgeway acknowledged his butler’s greeting with a nod and handed him his hat and gloves.

&nb
sp; “The house seems very quiet,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

  “All of the guests have left, your grace,” the butler said. “Most of them departed two days ago.”

  “And Lord Thomas?” the duke asked.

  “Left yesterday, your grace.”

  “And where is the duchess?”

  “In her apartments, your grace.”

  The duke moved away from him. “Have Sidney sent to me,” he said, “and hot water for a bath.”

  It was an enormous relief, he thought as he strode along the marbled corridors to his private rooms, to be out of his carriage finally. It had seemed so very empty and so very quiet without her. And there had been little to do all through the journey except think. And remember.

  He did not want to do either. He was going to have a brisk bath, change into clean clothes, go up to see Pamela, and then call on Sybil. Thomas had left, then, without her. And he supposed that he would be the villain again, as he had been the last time.

  Poor Sybil. He felt genuinely distressed for her, and he knew well how she was feeling—sore, empty, quite unable to convince herself that life could ever again bring any happiness. It was hard sometimes to know with one’s heart as one knew with one’s head that there would ever be reason to laugh again.

  “Where the devil is that water?” he said ungraciously as his valet came through the door of his dressing room.

  “Somewhere between the kitchen and here, sir,” Sidney said. “You will only tighten the knot of your neckcloth beyond any possibility of loosening it if you jerk on it like that. Let me undo it properly.”

  “Damn your impudence,” his grace said. “How have you managed to live through the past week without me to fuss over like a damned mother hen?”

  “Very peacefully, sir,” his valet said. “Very peacefully indeed. The side is aching?”