by Vanessa Gray
Chloe paused on the threshold, and looked upon her assembled family like one returned from twenty years at sea. It seemed as though she had not seen these faces in a true light in all her life. She was somewhat feverish as she scanned the faces. Her morbid fancy told her, These faces were once loved, but are now disclosed by the harsh and blinding light of disillusion.
As Chloe stopped in the doorway, Sophy, hurrying after her, was brought up abruptly. Sophy could not see beyond her half-sister, and the expressions on the faces of those who were already in the room were lost to her.
Startled by Chloe’s unheralded entrance, all faces looked toward her — Lady Rothwell, her jaw dropping at the unexpected apparition of her stepdaughter, Edward and Lydia turned toward her as though they were puppets on a string. The fourth person in the room, whom she did not notice at first, was Sir Richard Davenant. An alert spectator might have noticed that Sir Richard, as startled as the others at Chloe’s entrance, tensed his muscles. He was alert, fearing what would happen next, and his sudden anxiety brought him politely to his feet.
Lady Rothwell was the first to recover. “Chloe,” she cried, “what can you be thinking of to appear before me in such a state of undress?”
Lady Rothwell’s remarks, characteristically, avoided the emotion on Chloe’s ashen face and addressed only her shawl awry and her curls in disarray. “And that foolish dog,” continued Lady Rothwell. “I beg your pardon, Sir Richard, but the dog is forbidden the lower floors. I will not tolerate dogs having the run of my drawing room.
“The subject has never come up before,” she informed Sir Richard, “but I certainly did not think it necessary to tell Chloe the basics of civilized behavior ...”
No one heeded Lady Rothwell, all eyes being fixed on Chloe, her breast heaving and her eyes glittering. Belatedly, Lady Rothwell’s voice trailed away.
Eventually, but more quickly than his mother, Edward became aware that something was sadly amiss with his sister.
“What is it, Chloe — what has gone wrong? I don’t believe you’ve spoken to Sir Richard,” he ended in a weak attempt at civility, indicating their guest with a gesture.
Chloe had eyes only for one person. Stalking across the room, oblivious to the others, she stopped before Lydia. “Where are my pearls?”
Lydia, cowering in her chair, protested, “I lost them. You know I lost them, and I said I was sorry!”
Chloe did not accept this. She continued to glare at Lydia. Nimrod, tired of being confined without a voice in the proceedings, growled in his throat.
Chloe said, “How much do you want to return my pearls?”
The reactions on the faces of those others in the room would, on a happier occasion, have been amusing to Chloe. Just now she was hardly aware that she and Lydia were not alone in the world.
Edward and Lady Rothwell sat as though stunned. Richard, by now knowing there was something dreadfully awry, frowned. Lydia leaped to her feet to protest. “I don’t know what you mean, Chloe,” she exclaimed. “I lost the pearls. I’ve hunted for them — and I don’t know why you are so upset now.”
Chloe said, “I’ll tell you why —”
But by now Lady Rothwell had found her voice. Speaking sharply, she cried, “Chloe, have you gone mad?”
Sophy, desperate to stop the revelation to the family, had followed Chloe. The footman held the door, hoping to hear what went on. Miss Chloe was certainly up in the air, he thought, and stood hesitantly in the doorway.
Now Sophy, recognizing trouble when she saw it, edged toward the door. However, she met Sir Richard’s gaze and found a cold warning in his blue eyes that she dared not ignore. She stopped, and although reason told her that Sir Richard could do nothing to her, yet such was the state of her unsteady conscience that she dared not risk it.
Richard, thinking furiously, decided that Chloe’s disturbance was due to the young lady in the doorway. Young Sophy was up to something, he was positive, and his fingers itched to implement his next thought — a sound thrashing might elicit the facts of the matter.
Chloe, realizing that Lady Rothwell had spoken to her, at last responded. “No,” she said with angry sadness, “I have been blind. I saw what I wanted to see, believed that my family was generous and happy for me.”
Her emotion was more than she could contain in her small figure, and she began to pace the floor. “I saw what I wanted to see — I believed that my family loved me —”
Her pacing took her toward Richard, but she apparently did not recognize his presence. As she went past, he reached out and deftly extracted the puppy from her arms. Chloe did not even notice.
The direction her thoughts took as she spoke to her stepmother was too emotional, and she shied away from the lump in her throat. She could not speak further of her sense of betrayal — instead she whirled and faced Edward. She had thought upstairs that she had successfully quieted the stirring of rebellion within her. There were many reasons why she must stay at Rothwell Manor, and her mind had been made up. But Sophy had released the gates that barred the flood, and her resolution vaulted over it. Chloe announced in a firm voice, “I am going to live at Highmoor!”
The words hung in the air, almost as though they were fringed with fire. Edward’s jaw, hanging open, echoed his mother’s astounded expression, and Sophy, her round eyes wide with excitement and dismay, was rooted to the floor. Lydia, her conscience about the pearls clear, was merely bewildered. Something was going on that was not her fault, and she did not understand it. She allowed a sound like the bleat of a lost lamb to escape from her.
Only Sir Richard was not shocked. He noticed that his dear love Chloe seemed as stunned by the words as the others. She could hardly believe she had said them. But Edward’s expression, even to Chloe, was unreadable.
Somehow the spoken words brought her to a modicum of control. She had not meant it, so she told herself, and yet rebellion, once loosed, could not be fought back.
Her long habit of looking to her stepmother for approval was strong, and she glanced now at Lady Rothwell.
Lady Rothwell herself could not have said whether her disapproval was for Chloe’s lack of decorum or her announced plans.
Chloe did not pause to consider. She knew Lady Rothwell disapproved — and in the ordinary way she would have retreated. She did hesitate, almost faltering, and one might have expected her to awaken from a bad dream and apologize. But she did not.
The dam of repression, having sprung small leaks along the way since Chloe had been informed of her legacy, was swept away, and the spate of rebellion raged unopposed.
Still, even rebellion could not sour Chloe’s naturally sweet disposition. She brought up no past injuries, and applied herself to deal, however shakily, with her present wrongs.
She buried her sense of injustice at her stepmother’s pressing Francis’s suit upon her, of Edward’s favoring Thaddeus Invers, but her listeners were not so generous.
Lady Rothwell cut across Chloe’s remarks and said, “Edward, I told you you should not bring Invers into this.”
Richard, mentally, added Julian Stoddard to the list of wrongs that Chloe had suffered, but he checked Stoddard off, for reasons of his own.
But Lady Rothwell did not take Chloe’s rebellion silently. She had long accustomed to ruling her household, and said as much.
“I am not accustomed to being spoken to by my children, even by Chloe, in this fashion.”
Edward interrupted in vain. “Mother —”
Lady Rothwell swept on. “I hope I know my duty to my son, who is the head of the house, but in my family I still claim to be mistress. Chloe, you are overwrought over a small thing like an insignificant string of pearls —”
She had made a mistake. Instead of damping the fires of Chloe’s anger, she merely stirred the embers. The flames leaped up again. “Those were my mother’s pearls — the only thing I have left from her — and they are far from insignificant to me.”
Lady Rothwell paused only briefly.
“And the pearls will turn up —”
“Sophy has them.”
Lady Rothwell was shocked. “I am persuaded not.”
Chloe, taking on a curiously remote air, an air that bothered Sir Richard mightily, said, turning her smoldering gray eyes on her stepmother, “Ask Sophy. Ask Lydia how she came to lose them. I myself am no longer interested.” She waved a hand recklessly, and Richard was glad he was holding the puppy. The puppy, seeing his mistress distressed and speaking more loudly than he was accustomed to, gave vent to a protesting bark.
Chloe added, “Edward, I beg you send word to Highmoor to have all in readiness for me in a week.”
Edward, faced with a mixture of guilt and social outrage — feeling that his world, placid as it had been, had unaccountably been turned upside down — tackled the minor problem first. “How will it look? You leave my house —”
Chloe eyed him coldly. “I leave for my own house.”
Edward said, “My mother, who’s given you nothing but kindness, and my sisters, you are leaving them to set up for yourself to live alone! I will not allow it.”
Richard judged it time to intervene. He said mildly, a voice of sanity in this melee, “Rothwell, she is of age.”
It was as though his voice had broken the spell that kept them immobile. Lydia cried out, “I truly lost the pearls.” She turned to her sister and said cryptically, “Little sneak!”
Sophy, clearly lying and knowing she fooled nobody, took refuge in denying everything. “I did not tell Chloe I had her pearls. You lost them, how could I?” Even her denial proclaimed her guilt.
Chloe, calmer now, and hearing her determination to go to Highmoor set forth unequivocally, paused for breath and caught Richard’s eye. In his steady blue gaze she read warmth, comfort, support, and even encouragement — whatever she wanted, or needed, at that moment he seemed to promise it.
The exchange of glances lasted only seconds, but it was enough to put the seal on Chloe’s fate, to tell her what she had hidden but now must acknowledge at least to herself.
She had long been conscious of a tendre for him, a sense of missing him when he was not nearby, a feeling of total trust in him, and a dismal sense of loss when she thought about his approaching marriage.
Now, this glance that took only seconds was a thunderclap that shook her to her core. No matter what happened to Richard, she herself knew there would be never another man for her.
Belatedly she remembered that her face was quite often an open book, and she turned away, afraid to reveal in her face the realization that had come to her. She turned back to her family, not realizing that Richard had read in her face the exact truth that he had longed to make sure of.
Chloe turned back to her family, who were in the throes of mutual recriminations. Although what they said only touched the surface, yet at bottom was the thought of Chloe’s fortune receding from their grasp. Only Edward did not agree. In fact, he had fallen into a studied silence. He turned his pale eyes toward Chloe, apparently on the verge of saying something, but he did not speak.
Chloe realized that she had said words that could not be taken back, and she must go ahead. It must be the right thing to do, to leave her unattractive family, to be miserable over Richard by herself, unobserved, and go to Highmoor.
Slowly she said, “Edward, I have a little income from my mother’s trust. Add that to my income from Uncle Bradford and I believe I can do very nicely. In a week I shall be at Highmoor.”
Edward, with the air of a man who has been forced into a corner and sees no escape, said, in a strangled voice, “You can’t. I’ve sold Highmoor!”
26
The room swung in erratic circles around Chloe, and failed to right itself. Blindly, she stretched her hand out in a piteous gesture.
There was no support, anywhere in the room, until Richard, one-handed because of Nimrod, provided a chair. It was just in time, for Chloe’s knees refused to hold her any longer.
A tiny voice was all she could manage. “Sold?”
Edward, not trusting his own voice, nodded. His face was alarmingly flushed.
Richard murmured, “Rothwell, are you prone to apoplexy?”
“S-sold?” Chloe shook her head as though to clear it of cobwebs. “Sold? But I thought it was mine. It is mine! I’m going to live there.” She rose from her chair, in a sudden frenzy. “I’m going there now. You’re mistaken! Edward, you can’t sell it. It’s mine!”
Richard, judging that the time had come for intervention, set Nimrod on the floor. He seized Chloe’s hands in his and held them fast. His fingers were warm and strong and steady. His grasp calmed her enough so that she could turn to Edward with a semblance of reason and say, “How? How could you sell my house? You had no right!”
Edward returned to his dogged manner. Frowning, he took on an air of aggrieved righteousness. He had learned nothing in the last half hour.
He pointed out with force, “You gave me your power of attorney. Chloe, I’ve always dealt fairly with you.” She nodded, for he spoke only the truth. “I showed you the books on your mother’s trust. You remember that, and you were satisfied with my accounting. Believe me, Chloe, I have always dealt honestly —”
She broke in. “You’ve stolen it. First, my sisters and now my brother have played me false. I had not thought it possible.”
Lydia, still smarting under the accusation that she knew where the pearls were, began to protest. Her mother put out a hand to stop her.
Edward said, stubbornly, “I didn’t steal it. I sold it.”
Chloe said, her voice stony, “Get it back.”
Edward, surprised, said, “What do you mean — get it back?”
Chloe, with an air of explaining something to a small child, said clearly and distinctly, “You have sold my house. I said, Get it back.”
“I can’t.”
Chloe said, half rising from her chair, “Why not?”
“It’s gone. I don’t even know who bought it. An agent bought it for a third party. I can’t get it back. I have the price already in hand.”
She pulled her hands free of Richard’s grasp and covered her face. She did not sob. No one could detect her shoulders shuddering with weeping, but she was the very embodiment of despair, a desolate figure hiding her face from her beloved family.
Edward, conscious of Richard’s eyes weighing him, explained, “It was a white elephant. It would take a fortune to keep it up.”
Chloe interrupted bitterly. “Fortune! And that’s what I thought I had.”
Edward explained, in far more detail than anybody cared to hear, that all the lands were sold off, all that Bradford could sell before he died. “He came to the close of his life owning only the house and grounds, which were sadly neglected. You could not have lived there, for your income would not run to taking heed of the repairs that were needed.”
Chloe’s thoughts circled and came back to the main point. “You had no right to sell it without telling me!”
Edward added heavily, “The sale brought very little, besides.”
Words, words, words! They were like a swarm of bees buzzing around her and driving her quite frantic.
Although she was not aware of her cry, she shouted out, “Edward, be quiet!”
It was an outburst totally unlike her. All but Richard were shocked. He, with a vital interest in this scene, was remarkably unmoved. His love had become furious, had lashed out in unheard-of rebellion, and he smiled.
Lady Rothwell, not for years having been constrained to react swiftly, found she had not forgotten her old ways. She did not understand Edward’s business, nor whether he was in the right of it. Did he in fact have the right to sell Chloe’s land?
Lady Rothwell cared little about the fact. She herself was used to allowing men in her family to take care of all business, and she did not even try to understand it. But there were some things she did know, and one was that her stepdaughter was behaving outrageously. “Chloe!” she said sharply. “Your lang
uage is uncivil. It’s not befitting my daughter.” She continued in this vein, battering Chloe with words. “I had not thought you selfish —”
Chloe, with more insight than tact, said, “I truly doubt you ever thought of me at all!”
The exchange between Lady Rothwell and her stepdaughter was overlooked totally by Lydia and Sophy. Sophy, still smarting from Chloe’s accusation of stealing the pearls, flung her contribution to the row in a voice that carried more than ordinary blame. “You’re no better than a thief yourself, Chloe,” she said, unjustly, “passing yourself off as an heiress when you’re not at all, and playing the great lady at Emma’s ball.”
“Emma’s ball!” cried Lydia. “She had little enough to do with it.”
Sophy, once in stride, could not be easily halted. She cried out, “And besides that, Chloe, you tattled to Edward that Emma and I practiced the waltz, when the Czar himself danced it only last month at Almack’s, and everybody knows that.”
Chloe brushed Sophy aside as though brushing off a fly.
But Sophy continued. “And we weren’t dancing it in company either, but you had to tell Edward —”
Edward weighed into the running battle in a ponderous fashion. “I am not, I thank God, responsible for the Czar, but I am —”
Lady Rothwell, seeing control of the situation fading from her grasp, cried, “You’d think her father would have provided for her, but now she’s penniless!”
Richard was reminded of nothing so much as a fox brought to earth. The hounds were yapping around her, and if he did not prevent them, there would be real danger of Chloe’s total collapse.
Richard spared a thought to the late Lord Rothwell’s improvidence, but that could not be mended now. Chloe turned blindly toward Richard, instinctively seeking support where she trusted.
