“It’s Richard. May I come in?”
“Are you alone?”
“Of course.” There was an unmistakable edge to Richard’s voice.
“Well, come in, then,” Jonathan said with an equally testy tone.
Richard entered, pausing a moment to look around the room. He apparently failed to note or at least chose not to comment on the general disarray. He closed the door behind him, then found a chair and pulled it near Jonathan’s.
“You and Isabelle appeared to be having quite an exchange just now.” Jonathan indicated the window with a motion of his head.
Richard sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out dramatically. He didn’t seem to notice Jonathan’s lack of greeting, nor the accusatory tone of his statement.
“There was an incident involving her sister.”
“Incident?”
When Jonathan leaned forward anxiously, Richard hastened to explain. “No cause for concern. She wasn’t hurt. It was simply . . . ” He seemed to be searching for the right word. “Simply a misunderstanding.”
Jonathan had to allow that drink may have clouded his mind; nevertheless, it did not require any great perspicacity on his part to know that Richard was hiding something. His thin explanation strained credulity.
“A simple misunderstanding that had you riding out here on horseback? You must have come straight from your surgery.”
“Exactly. A simple misunderstanding. That’s all there was to it.” Richard clamped his lips together and jerked his chin up defiantly.
Under different circumstances, Jonathan thought he might have found Richard’s response amusing. But looking past the doctor’s stubborn reserve, he saw how very tired his friend looked. Tired and surprisingly old. He decided against pressing him for an answer.
“Whatever brings you here, I’m glad you’ve come. Your timing is actually quite fortuitous.”
“Oh?” Richard met his eyes, though it was clear his mind was elsewhere.
“I want to change my will.”
“What?” Finally jarred from his preoccupation, Richard frowned, then added suspiciously, “Why?”
It rankled, the fact that he was obliged to justify his wishes to Richard. An old resentment surfaced, which Jonathan did nothing to disguise.
“I have never understood why Mother appointed you trustee of my estate in perpetuity.”
“She had your best interests at heart.” Richard’s frown deepened. “As do I.”
“I am twenty six years old. I could contest the terms of probate.”
Jonathan knew he should have waited to broach such a delicate subject. He was in no condition to argue with Richard, who had the force of his mother’s wishes as well as the law on his side.
“You hold the upper hand, however, knowing my unwillingness to take this matter to court.” He shrugged, then added more honestly, “And my abhorrence of appearing in public.”
“You have yet to answer my question.” Richard narrowed his eyes and gave Jonathan a sharp look. “It seems to me you have already assumed my disapproval.”
“I won’t argue with you on that point.” Jonathan took a deep breath, making an effort to keep his voice steady. “I have asked Isabelle to marry me.”
Richard clutched the thin wooden arms of his chair, his knuckles bulging with the strength of his effort. His features froze in an expression of disbelief.
Jonathan waited for Richard’s shock to pass, bracing himself for the inevitable barrage of objections. Instead, Richard buried his face in his hands. His despair unsettled Jonathan, much more so than his anticipated anger.
It was a good while before Richard recovered his self control. When he eventually lifted his head, he fixed Jonathan with such an anguished look that Jonathan turned aside to avoid it.
“I’m afraid you are making a grave mistake, my son.”
My son. He resented Richard’s patronizing tone. He resented Richard’s assumption that his greater years assured him greater wisdom.
“What is your reason for such an opinion?” Jonathan fiddled with the curtain, looking out his window at the last remnants of daylight fading from the sky.
“There are so many reasons, I don’t know where to begin.”
Jonathan could feel Richard’s eyes studying him. He fancied he could almost hear the cogs shifting in Richard’s brain as he set his mind’s engine to work on the problem. In a moment, he would begin churning out the arguments against this folly.
And of course, he would be right. What greater folly could there be than his desire to marry Isabelle? Why had he ever thought she would allow the bonds of matrimony to tie her to a monster?
“Jonathan, look at me.”
If he did so, Richard would see the heat that flushed the unscarred portion of his face.
“Please, look at me.”
Reluctantly, he turned toward Richard, his face and neck flushing even hotter.
Richard studied him for a long moment. Jonathan stared back, wanting to believe that Richard’s inscrutable expression bespoke compassion, and not pity. He could accept anger, scorn, even mockery. But not pity. Anything but pity.
“Tell me,” Richard began in a gentle voice, then hesitated tactfully. Jonathan imagined that his manner must be identical when he advised a patient of a terminal illness. “Does she love you?”
It was the pertinent, the inescapable question. And its answer was just as inescapable.
“How could she? How could any woman love a monster?”
Richard opened his mouth to answer, but Jonathan plunged ahead before he had the chance to speak.
“I did not phrase my proposal in those impossible terms. Rather, I asked for her companionship. In exchange, I can give her financial security, something that has been sorely lacking in her life.”
“And you would be happy with such an arrangement?”
Jonathan had no intention of insulting the man’s intelligence. “Happy? That would be the wrong word. Less miserable, perhaps. I entertain the hope that her companionship might make my life bearable.”
“You would be happy—” Richard corrected himself. “Less miserable accepting her companionship in exchange for your wealth? Why not draw up a contract of employment? To ask her to marry you for your money makes her appear to be a . . . ” He searched for the word. “A gold digger.”
“You mean a prostitute?” Jonathan laughed bitterly.
Richard didn’t deny that was his meaning, yet he looked puzzled. “I fail to see the humor.”
“That was the same reason Isabelle used in refusing me, only where you minced words, she did not. She accused me of treating her as though she were a prostitute.”
Richard shook his head the way someone might shake off an annoying insect. “She . . . ” He came up against the word and began again. “She refused you?”
Richard’s question provoked another bitter laugh from Jonathan. “Why do you find that so difficult to believe?” He swept his hand through the air, in a single, brusque gesture dismissing his world and everything in it. “This is not the sort of life any woman dreams of.”
Richard bowed his head. “I have underestimated her,” he murmured to himself.
Jonathan drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “As, apparently, did I.”
Richard lifted his head. “She refused you for a number of valid reasons, none of them what you think.” He hesitated, searching Jonathan’s eyes. “Isabelle—through no fault of her own, mind you—would be a poor choice for a wife. I must give her credit for recognizing that fact. And for having the integrity to act on it.”
Jonathan’s first instinct was to defend Isabelle. Yet Richard’s pronouncement hinted at revelations he was unwilling to entertain. Moreover, that Richard claimed a greater knowledge of Isabelle than his own raised the all too familiar demon of jealousy.
“The reasons are moot. Whatever her motive, the result is the same. She refused me.”
“Perhaps she recognized what you avoid admitting. Yo
u want more than her companionship.”
Richard had gone too far.
“As I said, such considerations are irrelevant.” Though Richard deserved his anger, Jonathan tried to hide it. He had to remember his original purpose in initiating this particular conversation. “I see now how selfish I was to ask Isabelle to stay here with me. Regardless of her decision, I would take comfort in knowing that she is to be provided for. I am requesting that you establish a lifetime trust for her.” As an afterthought, he added, “And her sister.”
“Yes. Indeed, I agree.”
Jonathan scarcely had time to recover from this ready assent, when Richard abruptly leaned forward. “There is one thing on which we must always agree,” he declared, placing his hand on Jonathan’s knee.
Richard often showed his affection in a casual manner, but this sudden, passionate plea was uncharacteristic of him, and smacked of desperation. It was unsettling.
Jonathan nodded uneasily. Though a mild response, it was all the encouragement Richard needed.
“I loved your mother. I still do. I always shall. And I love you, Jonathan.”
Jonathan knew he should respond in kind. However, it was not the sort of declaration he was accustomed to deliver. Richard had long ago displaced Cornelius in his affection. He had thought that was understood between them. But he had never before been called upon to openly state his feelings.
“Yes.” It was all he could manage.
Richard ignored—or was possibly oblivious to—the ambiguity of his response. He squeezed Jonathan’s knee, then continued with his speech.
“I must confess, I feel ill equipped to dispense advice when it comes to matters of the heart. I had always assumed that life would become simpler, its problems more understandable, as I grew older.” He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Now I find quite the opposite to have occurred. There is very little of which I am certain. Even when I act with the best of intentions, the outcome often falls far short of what I hoped to achieve.”
“Of course.” Jonathan realized too late that his response sounded as much a criticism as agreement. “I mean, I know your intentions are always good.”
One side of Richard’s mouth lifted in an off kilter smile. “They are where you are concerned.”
A dull pain began to throb behind Jonathan’s forehead, and he blamed the excess liquor before it occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten in more than a day. The realization provided an excuse to end the awkward silence that filled the room.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner? Then Roger can drive you back into town.”
Richard leaned back in his chair and seemed to relax for the first time since he’d arrived. “Thank you, Jonathan. Nothing would please me more.”
Richard stared at him in the strangest manner, with a look of intense longing coupled with the certain knowledge of a tragic outcome. He might have misinterpreted Richard’s look as pity if not for the plea it held, which spoke more than words, the silent entreaty of an unrequited lover who knows his love will never be returned in kind. It was like looking in a mirror, seeing the image of the way he felt whenever he met Isabelle’s eyes, knowing that the only longing he would ever discover there was merely the reflection of his own.
An unnamable, unfathomable emotion rose inside his breast, unfolding layer upon layer, like the petals of a flower. In fact, he could almost smell the heady musk of a full blown rose, so familiar because it reminded him of his mother.
The odd turn his thoughts had taken frightened Jonathan. He stood abruptly. “I’ll call for Nellie to inform Cook.”
He swayed unsteadily, forced to wait until the dizziness passed. When the room around him settled back into place, he saw Richard’s immediate look of concern.
“Nothing a good meal won’t fix.” Jonathan laughed sheepishly, then walked slowly in the direction of the bell pull, focusing his awareness on taking careful, deliberate steps.
Nothing lasts forever, he told himself as he plodded across the room. These odd feelings were simply the last vestiges of a vicious hangover. Soon enough, after he’d eaten, his world would lose this sense of unreality, he would no longer ascribe emotions to others where none existed, and his life would return to normal. A normality where he would spend day after dreary day in utter, grinding loneliness.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Isabelle sat at her dressing table, studying the stranger in the mirror, and found herself cautiously approving of what she saw. During her last few visits, Monique had been patiently teaching her how to apply the creams and powders in a way that enhanced her features. Perhaps her efforts might not show so well in the light of day, but in the lamplight it appeared she had done a passable job of recreating Monique’s handiwork.
The question was, why did she care to bother?
Isabelle sighed. She put down her hairbrush and slumped against the dressing table.
She should be happy. Dr. Garrick had persuaded Jenny to give up her foolish idea of moving to New York. When he brought the good news earlier that evening, she had felt an overwhelming relief. But once she laid that concern to rest, the hurtfulness of Jenny’s words returned full force, all the stronger for having been previously ignored.
Isabelle leaned forward until her nose almost touched the mirror. Yes, why did she care to bother? She frowned, hating the person she saw staring back at her, and spoke the word aloud. “Gelding.”
Nothing but a gelding. A creature devoid of sexuality. An impostor, a sham of a woman that no decent man could possibly want.
You don’t even like men, Jenny had said. You’ll never fall in love.
Her sister was right, of course, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to be like other women. She wanted to know how it felt to love a man. How it felt to be loved. She wanted to know how women like Monique could find pleasure in a man’s touch. Her own experience had taught her the opposite to be true. She had found pain and fear and disgust at the hands of men.
Those men had robbed her of innocence and trust, they had robbed her of the joy of children, of any prospect of a normal, happy marriage. A paid companion, that was the best offer she could hope for. Poor Jonathan—to think that her companionship was the best he could hope for.
Perhaps Monique was right. Isabelle remembered her knowing smile when she made her pronouncement, one that rang with the authority of experience: “They want us women to think we are poor, helpless creatures who must rely on men for our well being. But the opposite is true. Men need us more than we need them.”
Isabelle picked up the ivory handled brush and stroked her hair, remembering, too, how Monique had gone on to school her in the art of seduction. You must suggest intimacy, she had said, while making yourself unattainable. To that end, Monique advised she wear her velvet lounging robe, chastely fastened from neck to ankle, but without undergarments. Isabelle had laughed at the outrageousness of Monique’s suggestion.
“Trust me,” Monique said, smiling herself. “He will not be able to see, but he will know, and it will make him crazy!”
Isabelle loved Monique’s uninhibited wickedness, and she envied her freedom. When she had objected that she didn’t know this he Monique referred to, her friend laughed gaily.
“He could be standing in front of you, but would you admit it to yourself?” Monique pointed her finger at Isabelle dramatically, like a schoolteacher admonishing a stubborn pupil. “That is my real challenge, to teach you to permit your heart to speak.”
Isabelle set her hairbrush down, then mindlessly rearranged the items on her dressing table, mulling over Monique’s advice. Once, in a moment of kindness or pity, Jonathan had called her beautiful. It was a polite lie, to be sure, but she wanted to pretend otherwise. She wanted to know how it felt to enter a room and have admiring eyes turn in her direction. What harm could there be in playing the part, if only for one night? If only for Jonathan, an audience who was more captive than captivated. A man desperate for companionship, but who had made it plain he did not want a
n intimate relationship.
Isabelle stood and, after one last look at herself in the mirror, left her room to make the familiar journey to the library. The velvet mules she wore slapped against the soles of her feet as she walked, a gentle sound in the otherwise silent house.
For all she knew, her performance might be to an empty theater. She had no reason to believe Jonathan would be waiting for her. She had hurt him terribly, she knew that now, when she only wanted to do good. It was the same mistake she had made with Jenny.
Turning onto the last corridor, Isabelle saw the light spilling out from the open door of the library. A sudden onrush of nervousness slowed her steps. When she reached the room, she entered cautiously, unsure of her welcome.
Jonathan was sitting on the sofa, reading. When he heard her close the door behind her, he immediately stood.
“I’m glad you’ve come.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Isabelle said, speaking at the same time.
They both laughed nervously at their awkwardness, then fell silent. Isabelle looked down and tried to hide her embarrassment by arranging the skirt of her robe. She had worn a gown beneath, too much a coward to abandon herself completely to Monique’s scandalous advice. Despite this precaution, when she glanced up and caught Jonathan staring at her breasts, Isabelle realized that the soft velvet molded itself to her form with a degree of fidelity she had not intended. Her cheeks were burning. No doubt their color matched the deep burgundy of her robe.
Monique would have handled the situation with aplomb, Isabelle thought miserably. Now she knew how actors must feel when they step onto a stage for the first time. She was suffering an attack of stage fright which rendered her incapable of assuming the role she had wanted to play, that of an alluring beauty. Rather than inspire Jonathan’s admiration, she had earned his disapproval of her shocking behavior. It was a thoroughly dispiriting thought.
Jonathan turned to lay his book aside, most likely embarrassed that she had caught him leering at her. When he looked at her again, his eyes went directly to her face, confirming her suspicion. He must be wondering what she was playing at, dressed as she was. To be quite honest, she didn’t know herself.
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 33
