What then was she about?
In the end, Lord Hurstborne smiled broadly upon Alice, bowed to her, and quit her side. Lucy found herself utterly intrigued and, rather than dance, set about to watch what next would happen.
Interestingly, Alice went about her business, continuing to enjoy her come-out ball as though nothing untoward had happened. Even Mr. Colbury, who fairly ignored his “bride-to-be,” seemed to take pleasure in the ball. As for Lord Hurstborne, he greeted Lady Sandifort shortly after leaving Alice’s side and from that moment danced attendance on her.
Lady Sandifort accepted his attentions with pleasure, even permitting him to dine next to her at supper.
When the hour neared midnight, Lucy was again speaking with Robert about Alice’s betrothal. “But what can be done?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I have not the faintest notion. However, Alice does not seem to be concerned in the least. Indeed, I have never seen her so . . .” He seemed to be searching for the right word to describe her.
“In command of herself and her surroundings?” she queried.
“Precisely so!” he cried.
Lucy caught sight of Alice waving to them.
Robert waved as well. “I wonder what she means to do now,” he mused as Alice made her way to them.
“I need your help, Robert,” she said. “Will you oblige me with something?”
“Yes, of course, dearest,” he responded. “You have but to tell me what it is you wish me to do.”
“As to that, I have put a scheme in motion and you have but to follow my lead.”
Robert appeared as though he wished to inquire further, but she laid a quick hand on his arm. “Please, Robert. Will you trust me?”
At that Robert relaxed. “Of course.”
“And Lucy, I most especially wish you to come join us,” here she smiled, “merely to observe that I have learned a great deal from you.”
“As you wish,” Lucy said, but she could not imagine what Alice meant to do or why she had spoken of having learned “a great deal” from her.
Alice then smiled and in her eyes was such a look of joyful mischief that Lucy could only turn to exchange a wondering glance with Robert.
“Follow me,” she said, lifting her lovely muslin skirts carefully and turning to walk back to the terrace and into the house.
A minute later, Lucy found herself once more in the library. Mr. Colbury was present again, but this time he sat in a chair and appeared absolutely miserable. Hetty, Henry, and Anne stood to one side near the windows. None of them seemed to know what was going forward. Surprisingly, Lord Hurstborne stood next to Lady Sandifort. He whispered to her, though what he was saying could not be heard.
Alice directed Robert and Lucy to a sofa near the door. Robert obeyed and Lucy followed suit. Once seated, they again exchanged a surprised glance.
“What is the meaning of this, Alice?” Lady Sandifort cried haughtily. “You said earlier you did not mean to contest the betrothal. If that is so, I cannot imagine why you summoned all of us here.”
“I did not come to argue, contest, or quarrel, merely to inform you that I have no intention of wedding anyone at present.”
Lady Sandifort smiled in her habitually high-handed fashion. “You have no say whatsoever in the matter. Your father gave me the power to select a husband for you and so I have. Mr. Colbury will suit you far better than the Cornwall sea cliffs.”
Mr. Colbury found his voice. “If Miss Alice is not wishful of marrying—”
“Silence,” she cried, turning sharply toward him. “This does not concern you!”
Mr. Colbury appeared properly shocked but, given Lady Sandifort’s heightened complexion, he refrained from speaking further.
Alice moved to stand but three feet from her stepmother. Lucy noted that a faint sliver of doubt entered Lady Sandifort’s eye. Alice said, “I have no intention of obeying you, Stepmama , for you do not have my interests at heart. You never have.”
“How dare you speak to me in that insolent manner, ungrateful girl!”
“You are correct. I am not grateful. What have you ever done for me that was not a matter of self-interest?”
A lovely shade of red climbed Lady Sandifort’s cheeks. “Why I . . . I have never heard such words from you! You who were always a mouse, never speaking save to echo Anne.”
“You have the right of it, but I am a mouse no longer. I will not marry Mr. Colbury and all your fussing will not see the deed done.”
Lady Sandifort turned suddenly to Lord Hurstborne. “You see how badly I am treated at Aldershaw, I who have sacrificed everything to continue being a mother to these wretched, horrid girls!” She threw her arms wide, the very specter of martyrdom. However, Lucy thought the effect would have been better achieved had she not been wearing her scarlet gown.
Lord Hurstborne clucked his tongue and shook his head as one in complete agreement with her. She gained courage from his support and turned back to Alice. “Well, you may refuse all you like, but after the banns have been properly read you will marry Mr. Colbury.”
“No, she will not,” Robert said, rising suddenly from the sofa to stand beside his sister.
Again a new flush of color rose to consume Lady Sandifort’s complexion. “And you . . . you would speak to me this way when I have always loved you?”
Lucy was shocked that Lady Sandifort would make such a confession before the family. Both Anne and Hetty gasped. Henry snickered his disbelief.
“You never loved me,” he returned coldly. “You do not comprehend the meaning of the word. Why, you treat your own children as though they were dogs to be kicked about.”
“I never kicked my children,” she returned, her head held high.
Robert was silent for a moment before saying, “You might as well have.”
At that Lady Sandifort’s eyes grew quite large. Lucy thought they might pop from her head did she not have a care. Instead, she did the only thing she could and promptly burst into tears.
Lord Hurstborne was at her side immediately. “You must pay no heed to what any of them say, dearest Celeste. They do not understand you, nor appreciate you even in the slightest. But I do. I have not lived in the world so many years without having seen this sort of thing before.”
She wept into his shoulder and clung to him. He patted her back and stroked her neck. “There, there, my darling.” He then glanced at Alice, smiled, and winked. To Lady Sandifort he added, “You ought to leave this place, the sooner the better. My sister wishes to extend an invitation for you to sojourn at Highcliffe for as long as you desire.”
“I should like that,” Lady Sandifort said, pulling back slightly and looking up into his face. “You are the kindest man I have ever known.”
He dabbed at her eyes with a rather lacy kerchief. “And you are the only lady I know who can weep without losing one particle of her beauty.”
Lady Sandifort smiled, laughed, and sniffed. “How very gallant of you, my lord.”
“What do you say? Will you not pay my sister the honor of a visit?”
She nodded. Again Lucy thought she appeared like a little girl.
Alice tugged on Robert’s sleeve and whispered something in his ear. Robert nodded to her, then said, “Lady Sandifort, should you leave, you must remember the terms of my father’s will.”
“Oh, I do not give a fig who your brat of a sister weds. She may go to the devil, for all I care.”
“But what of your children?” he asked.
“When I am free to do so, since it would appear I shall be quite busy in the coming months, I shall visit them, of course.”
Lucy stared at Lady Sandifort in some astonishment. She knew her mouth had fallen agape but she could not seem to close it. She had always understood that Lady Sandifort was not particularly attached to her children, but she was still shocked that she could dismiss Hyacinth, William, and Violet without so much as a blink of an eye.
“As you wish,” Robert said somb
erly.
“Come, Hurstborne. I believe I do not desire to remain another moment where I am least wanted.”
“Very wise, indeed.” Once by the door, he added, “I encourage you to ignore them all, for it is clear to me they are a rather vulgar lot.”
Lady Sandifort smirked as she addressed Robert. “You may send my trunks to Highcliffe on the morrow.”
“If Lord Hurstborne will be so good as to leave directions with Finkley, your wishes will be attended to.”
Lady Sandifort cast a triumphant glance all round the library before she passed into the hall.
Lucy noted that, as one, she, Hetty, Robert, Henry, and Anne all turned to stare at Alice, for she had accomplished in the space of a scant few minutes what no one had been able to do since Sir Henry paid his debt to nature. She had got rid of Lady Sandifort!
Alice addressed Mr. Colbury first, however. “You are free now,” she said. “And as you can see, Lady Sandifort will not trouble you again.”
He rose from his seat and, after bowing to them all, fairly ran from the room.
Anne raced to the door and closed it softly, then turned back to rejoin the group now clustered about Alice. “How did you know what to do?” she asked. “But then of course you do have a superior intelligence, but how did you know to involve Lord Hurstborne?” She sounded as dumbfounded as Lucy felt.
Alice smiled somewhat shyly, then turned to Lucy and quickly possessed herself of her hands. “I simply asked myself, ‘What would Lucy do?’ and then I had my answer. That was what Mr. Frome suggested to me when I told him how horrid Lady Sandifort was being.”
“He said that to you?”
Alice squeezed her hands. “Yes, indeed he did and, Lucy, I do wish to thank you ever so much. You took us over a hill we had not been able to surmount by ourselves.”
“Indeed, you did,” Henry said.
Hetty added, “I believe we were too lost in our grief to know how to counter Lady Sandifort’s unhappy presence here.”
“But what of Hyacinth, William, and Violet?” Anne asked. “What is to become of them?”
At that Robert stared at her as one wholly confounded and then he began to laugh. He laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks. “I understand now!” he exclaimed, sinking down into a chair. “Papa was so much wiser than I ever comprehended until just this moment.”
Hetty patted his shoulders. “Robert, you are not well.”
“I am quite well, indeed. You see, he gave me guardianship of the children—something our stepmother would never have forgiven except that he softened the blow by giving her the power to marry off Anne and Alice, unless of course she chose to leave my house. Had she been left with no rights, there would have been no end to her displeasure. Her pride would never have allowed it. How clever my father proved in the end.”
Lucy nodded. “Yes, perfectly concocted, indeed! It would seem he comprehended her character after all, that she would not choose to live forever at Aldershaw, but once gone, not only would she forfeit her rights over Anne and Alice but she would be forbidden by law to take her children with her. She might have done so, otherwise.”
“I believe she would have, merely to spite me,” he said.
“Robert,” Anne said, drawing close to him and slipping her hand in his, “she will not come back, will she?”
“Of course not. She will discover other pleasures more in keeping with her, er, interests. However, just on the smallest chance she should decide to revisit Aldershaw, I believe I shall have a very deep moat dug, and the drawbridge always up, just to keep her out!”
“You know, the sun rises with you,” Robert said.
Lucy stared at him, a now quite familiar shiver going through her. Robert had been saying such things to her of late, nearly every day since the come-out ball. “I beg your pardon?” she inquired, fiddling with the roses she was arranging in one of the succession houses. She was quite alone with him and more nervous than she had ever been. She did not look at him.
“I believe you know very well what I mean,” he said, drawing close to her from behind and taking her shoulders gently in hand.
“Robert, you should not!” she cried, ducking down swiftly and coming up beneath his arm. “It is most unseemly!” She passed behind him and went out of doors to collect some ferns that grew in a long row outside the hothouse.
“You cannot run from me forever,” he said, trailing after her.
She glanced at him and saw that he was smiling in that wretched manner of his, as though he knew what she was thinking. Only what were her thoughts, since she felt so confused of late? He was tall and handsome and had beautiful brown eyes into which she seemed to sink every time she looked at him. He was a man she could admire because he tended his lands, his family, even his half brother and sisters. He seemed to fit to perfection her sense of the ridiculous. He was all she had been thinking about for the past sennight.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said, as she bent over the ferns and clipped one frond after another with a pair of rather dull scissors.
“No, you do not,” she returned flatly.
“You were thinking that I am quite good-looking, that you approve of the manner in which I conduct my house, and that we share a great many things in common. Admit it is so!”
She stood upright and faced him. Had he read her mind? Again, fear rippled through her. “You are being quite absurd.” Once more she pushed past him. “And now I beg you will permit me to complete my flower arrangement.” She returned inside and went directly to her bench. She thought he would follow her but instead he remained standing at the door. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. Her breathing grew shallow and labored. Tears struck her eyes.
“I fear I cannot wait forever, Lucy,” he said, his tone suddenly sorrowful. “There are circumstances, as well you know, that demand I continue to fulfill my obligations to Aldershaw and to my family.”
What was his meaning? She found her hands frozen above the roses. Finally she whirled around to ask him what he was trying to say, but he was gone.
Lucy sank into a heap on the brick floor and began to weep. She did not know why she was crying nor why his words had felt like a sword he had thrust all the way through her. What did he mean he would not wait?
Ever since the come-out ball and his abrupt declaration of his feelings, he had been tormenting her with an elaboration of his sentiments. Whenever they were alone, he did not hesitate to express his love for her, indeed, his passionate feelings for her and often in so romantic a mode that she frequently fled the chamber on one excuse or another.
He had also taken to stealing kisses from her, a circumstance that further disrupted the peaceful, secure state of her heart. She had been afraid he would do so this morning and even as she wept she wished he had kissed her, for then she would not feel so desolate. Only, what was the matter with her? Why did she toss about on her bed all night, unable to sleep for reviewing the day’s events in which he told her he loved her, or begged forgiveness a hundredfold for any slight or criticism he had ever given her, for he understood now that his object in doing so had been to keep his heart safe. He understood now that he had no need of keeping his heart safe from so sweet, generous, and genuine a lady as Lucinda Stiles.
Oh, why did he torment her with such speeches and why were his kisses like whispers of fire on her mouth and in her soul? She desired him but she feared him, because they had brangled so much and because he criticized her, because he had once said she was vulgar and interfering. Yet he had asked her to forgive him and had even offered reasons for his conduct, which he assured her were no longer difficulties for him. He loved her, he wished her to be his wife, and now . . . now he was telling her he would not wait forever!
That evening he was strangely remote from her. He smiled politely, if sadly, but withheld his expressions of affection and love. When he bid her good night, he took her hand tightly in his and though he said nothing there was such a look of longing and regre
t in his eyes that now she was frightened indeed.
On the following morning Hetty awoke her from a very deep, if troubled, sleep. “Lucy!” she cried, shaking her abruptly.
Lucy sat up blinking several times and pulling a tousled mobcap from her blond curls. “Whatever is the matter?”
“Robert is leaving for London, even now!”
“London? What for?”
Hetty’s lips trembled and tears rolled from her eyes. “He says he means to find a mother for the children.”
Lucy weaved and felt suddenly ill, as though she might cast up her accounts. “A mother for William, Hyacinth, and Violet?”
Hetty nodded.
Lucy recalled what he had said to her on the previous morning about obligations to Aldershaw and to his family. A new fear pounded in her head. “He means to marry?”
“Yes,” she said, pressing her kerchief to her eyes. “Oh, Lucy, was it a foolish thought of mine that I wished for you and Robert to wed, that I believed you were made for him and he for you and that then I would always have you as my sister?”
Lucy slipped her legs over the side of the bed. She could now hear the horses stomping on the drive. She ran to the window and looked down. There was Robert, standing by the door of the coach and pulling on his gloves. He had harnessed three teams to the coach—clearly he meant to get to London as quickly as possible. Something about that both incensed her and yet made her fears all the worse. Robert was leaving? Now?
She moved back from the windows, her hands shaking. She did not know what to do. If only Mr. Frome were still here, he would know what she should do, only, what should she do?
Hetty stood by the bedpost weeping into her kerchief.
Lucy slipped on her robe, her mind whirling. All her experiences at Aldershaw from the time she was a little girl and sitting on Sir Henry’s lap, to the many years she spent in childhood tormenting Robert, who was nine years her senior, to developing the worst tendre for him when she was seventeen, to the many years betwixt, brangling and holding all her feelings for him at bay, especially after her failed romantic entanglement with John Goodworth. John was the cause of this, all her hesitation. Mr. Frome had hinted at this truth, but she had not realized it until now. She was not afraid of Robert. Instead, she had been afraid of being hurt again as she had been hurt by John. But Robert was not John, he was not a halfling under the hateful command of an unreasonable parent. Robert was his own man and always had been, for Sir Henry would never have raised him in any other manner.
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