“What must Lynn think of me?”
“I do believe he will forgive you, if you confess to him. And if you are truly contrite. You will marry him?”
“I think I must. If he will have me.”
“But you are not certain you want him?”
She did not answer this, and I was not sure I wanted her to. Whatever the answer, I was not prepared to hear it.
I left Celia to rest, though she was unsure she could prepare herself for a reappearance. But I would not allow her to repeat my mistakes. She would return to her guests. She would recover herself, one way or another, and the party would go on. Or, for her, there would never be another.
I descend the grand staircase, examining carefully the crowded reception rooms. No one seems particularly concerned with my reappearance. I do not see Lord Avery, and so make up my mind to find Lynn. I do find him, and without much trouble. He has been looking for me, it seems.
“How is she?” he asks.
“She’s a wreck.”
“I’d ask what happened, but I suppose I can guess it easily enough.”
I cannot bring myself to answer.
“It seems I’ve the worst luck, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but you keep trying. That’s the admirable thing. What will you do?”
“It’s entirely up to her.”
“Your offer still stands?”
“You know the answer is yes.”
“Because you love her.”
“Because I am a man of honour, even if it seems no one else knows what the word means,” he answers rather bitterly. Of course I cannot blame him.
“And no one knows?”
His face turns a little pale. “Lady Ponsonby, it seems, saw just enough to draw a fairly accurate conclusion.”
“Then it’ll be all over the rooms in ten minutes.”
“And in the London papers by morning.”
“Good heaven, what do we do?”
“I think, perhaps, I should go to your father. And of course I’ll want to know what Celia’s wishes are. And what are the intentions of that infidel Avery.”
“Yes. Go to Papa now. I’ll send the others to you in the library. Go.”
At the base of the stairs stands Lord Avery. Waiting, no doubt. But for whom? Or what? The look on his face speaks volumes, but he appears more frightened than concerned.
“I overheard you give directions to Mr. Townsend. He is going now to speak with your father.”
“It is right he should. Did she tell you she’s engaged to marry Mr. Townsend?”
“She did.”
“And you imposed anyway?”
“I do care for her, despite what you may think.”
“And what do you mean to do about it?”
“I meant no harm. I’m afraid I’ve always been of an impulsive nature. It’s gotten me into trouble more times than one.”
I close my eyes as the implications of this crawl upon me.
“I did not mean—” he begins, but I will not let him finish.
“I know very well what you meant, sir. If you will be so good as to join Mr. Townsend in the library, you can work out what is to be done between you. I will send Celia shortly. A footman will show you.” He knows the way, I am well aware, but I will not take the risk of his bolting. He must answer to his crimes, the same as anyone.
WHEN I WAS one and twenty, Lynford Townsend asked me to marry him. I refused. I had no very good reason to do it. I simply did not like the way he asked me, as if it were already a foregone conclusion that I would accept him, and he therefore had no reason to exert more effort than a guest at a dinner party requesting the salt.
Papa stands at the landing of the grand staircase, all the guests have gathered around. The air still rings with the sound of his spoon against the crystal glass he has carried with him from the refreshment table. I hold my breath as he prepares the words. I’ve heard this announcement before, after all. Why should it cause me such anxiety now? Perhaps because an hour or more has passed in which I have been left to my own fatal imaginings. What has happened in the library with my father and that blackguard Avery, I haven’t a clue. All I know is Papa has the announcement on his lips. Celia is there, too, with Mama’s arm wrapped tightly about her waist. To one side stands Mr. Townsend. To the other Lord Avery.
The announcement is made. The air fills with oohs and ahs and excited chatter. My sister is to marry Lord Avery? Is it possible? I am offered congratulations by the guests, but I’m afraid I’m only vaguely conscious of their words. The faint strains of music fill the background and I feel suddenly alone and lost. I feel as though I’ve aged a decade in the last two hours. I am in a bit of a daze, to be honest, and I do not fully realise the state of my shattered equanimity until I feel a hand on my arm. Unawares to me, the dance floor has cleared for my sister and her husband-to-be (looking very white and not entirely pleased with the turn of events) and I am standing very nearly in the middle of it. No longer alone.
“Would you dance this waltz with me, Miss Wallace?”
I turned to find Lynn at my side. I do not smile. In fact I feel like crying, so sorry am I for him. “Of course I will, Mr. Townsend. I would be happy to.”
“You do me a great honour,” he says with a sad, yet teasing smile.
I look at him for a half a moment, the dear, wonderful, heartbroken man. “Oh, do shut up,” I say.
WHEN I TURNED four and twenty, Lynford Townsend insulted me. I confess . . . I deserved it.
Lord Avery and my sister have been married these past two months, and are living (not quite blissfully, I’m sorry to say) in a cramped row house in London. And so, tonight, it is just Mama, Papa and Mr. Townsend to my birthday dinner. I am not quite feeling all the joy usually inherent in a birthday celebration. I am getting old, and I feel my connubial opportunities slipping past me. Mr. Townsend seems to have come to terms with his bachelorhood. I might take a lesson from his patient resolve. I am not quite so reconciled to my loneliness, and I’m afraid I have been sulking about it.
“This cake is quite splendid,” Mr. Townsend says. “Do you not think so Miss Wallace?”
Lynn has become rather formal in the months since his disappointment. I am not at all certain I like it. Though he spends a good deal of time in our dining and drawing rooms, there is a greater reserve between us than has ever been before. No doubt I have at last persuaded him to do it. I do not feel much victory in the matter.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I answer. To own the truth, I taste nothing. It is little better than parchment in my mouth.
Mr. Townsend seems to suspect my lie and offers me a puzzled look.
“Are you quite all right, my dear?” Mama asks, which of course draws all eyes toward me.
“Yes, of course, Mama. I’m just a little...tired, perhaps,” I answer with what I hope is cheery dismissiveness. It does not appear to have convinced anyone.
“Perhaps Mr. Townsend will take you into the drawing room,” Mama suggests, “where you can sit more comfortably.”
“I’m sure he’d much rather stay with Papa. I can wait until you are finished, Mama. I’m not so tired as that.”
“No, no, my dear,” Papa says, and begins fiddling with his neck cloth. “You look positively done in. And what’s more, I seem to have lost my tie pin.”
“Dear me.” Mr. Townsend lays down his napkin and rises to my father’s aid. “Let me help you, sir.”
“No,no Lynford, my dear boy. I’ve got it. Perhaps Mrs. Wallace will help me. I’m always losing it and she’s grown quite adept at finding it again.”
As Papa lays his napkin upon the table, I see something looking suspiciously like his tie pin glinting in his fisted hand. I realise then that there is a complicated deception going on and that for some reason it is wanted that I should withdraw, contrary to custom, with Mr. Townsend. Alone.
“Do go,” Papa says, dismissing us from the room with a wave of his hand.
Mr. Townsend seems only now
to understand it himself, and is suddenly eager to do my father’s bidding. He is all attentiveness. “Here, Miss Wallace,” he says, coming around to my side of the table to pull out my chair, and then to offer his arm. “Do let me help you.”
“Do I look so indisposed to you as that?” I find myself asking. Am I flirting or testing him? I cannot say that I know.
“Not indisposed. Shall we say ... out of sorts?”
“And do you suppose I will be less out of sorts, or more so, a quarter of an hour from now?”
He looks at me as if I’ve just spoken in Hebrew, but says nothing at all as we enter the drawing room, where he places me comfortably in a chair. He examines me half a moment, then flipping his coat tails out of the way, he takes a seat opposite. Perched as he is, at the very edge of his chair, I wonder what his purpose can be. Is he so very concerned for my health that he cannot rest comfortably? Or does he mean to strike and take flight.
“I want to ask you something,” he says, jumping right to the point. I must say I’m not at all impressed with his abrupt and hasty manner. Will I have to refuse him a second time? Do I dare?
“By all means,” I hear myself say. I regret that my voice is not entirely even, and that there is, to my shame, the slightest hint of warning in it. Do not ask for the salt, I find myself silently praying. Do not ask for the salt.
“I am conscious,” he says, and hesitates to go on, “that I have wronged you. And I wish to ask your forgiveness.”
Is this all? Perhaps I am tired, after all. I lean back heavily in my chair.
“I confess your manner does not encourage me.”
“I’m sorry I have held a grudge over your pushing me into the duck pond,” I say, but my voice is so heavy with disappointment over the way the conversation has gone, that I’m afraid I do not sound very convincing.
“The duck pond?” Mr. Townsend says and rises from his chair to stand over me. “The duck pond! That was ten years ago! We were practically children! And I dare say you deserved it after throwing that egg at me. And failing to miss!”
“And what of my dog? The one you murdered?”
“The fool beast jumped from my arms, after I rescued it from being shot, I might add, and fell beneath the carriage wheels. I might also remind you that it bit me quite savagely.”
“You tore my dress at my own debut. The best gown I have ever owned, and you exposed me to—”
“If you had held still long enough to let me free the pin ... And you know very well I was the only one who saw.”
“But that’s just it. You saw. Do you think I cared what anyone else thought? It was you who saw. That was quite enough. Is...quite...”
He was staring at me. Silent and staring, as if he had just seen something in my countenance he had not noticed till now.
“What is it?” I ask him. The silent scrutiny is too much.
“These grudges you bear, they aren’t that at all, are they?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do. You are a liar and a deceiver.”
“That is very unkind.”
“What is unkind is leading me to believe you did not care for me at all, that, in fact, you very nearly despised me, when you did nothing of the sort.”
“I’m quite sure, I never—”
“Yes, you did. And you know it. You drove me away, Caro. Why did you do it?”
“I suppose you will say it is my fault you offered to my sister.”
“And if I do say so?”
“I would say you were extremely unjust. And disloyal.”
“I have been that.”
I did not expect this confession.
“I said I’d come to ask your forgiveness, and so I have. But my guilt has nothing to do with pushing you into the pond—which I am sorry I did. Or with killing that wretched Juniper—which I have always regretted. Or with tearing your dress—which, had it been any other gentleman, I would have torn him to shreds. Or with any other transgression you might wish to remind me of. I’m sure there are others . . .” He paused then. “Have there been others?”
“Perhaps.”
“Such as?”
“I doubt very much you regret them.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Speak your mind first.”
He looks at me askance. “Very well. I’ve been disloyal, as I said. You explained to me the difference between pride and vanity. Which sin I have committed I’ll leave it to you to say, but after all the trouble I had taken, all the time spent, you would not have me. I could not go away empty handed.”
“That is a monstrous confession, Mr. Townsend.”
“It is. I know it. I own it. But in my defence, it was the only way to I knew to keep you near me.”
“Which is precisely why—” But I found I could not say it.
“Yes. Just so. You maintained those grudges as a safety. You lying, deceitful . . .”
I am nearly brought to tears by his cruel accusations, true as they might very well be. “You have said that already.”
But he does not stop. “...wise, clever, beautiful...”
And the tears come in earnest, but they are not so bitter now.
“Will you forgive me?”
It seems I am not quite as humbled by the exchange as one would wish. “I don’t know,” I answer him as I dry my eyes.
“You don’t know?”
“I suppose it depends.
“Depends? On what, may I ask?” He appears to be irritated with my prevaricating.
“On what you mean to do now.”
“I mean to marry you, you ninny.”
My heart leaps. “How do you know I’ll have you?”
“Well, I don’t. You’ve refused me before.”
“So I have.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Because I am not, if you haven’t noticed, table salt.”
“What?”
“You asked me as if it were granted that I would accept you, as if after nearly drowning me in the pond, and killing my favourite pet, and....tearing my gown, I could have no thought in the world but to marry you.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Perhaps not until then.”
He is silent a moment. And then: “What were the other offenses? Tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I no longer wish to discuss it.”
“Do you fear I’ll repeat them?”
“No. I’m afraid....”
“Go on.”
“I fear you won’t, if you want to know.”
He approached me then. Perhaps there are advantages to having loved someone so long as I had loved him, and he me I think. There were things I never had to say. He just knew.
“You aren’t still angry about the present I gave you on your nineteenth birthday.”
“I may be,” I say more coyly than I thought I had the courage to do.
He repeats the offense and repeats it well. Slow and lingering, gentle and earnest. I find I’m a little breathless when he at last releases me, pushing me far enough away from him to look me squarely in the face.
“I am a stupid, inconsiderate, disloyal and thoroughly unworthy lout. But I might be everything that is good and honourable and right. If you’ll have me. Say you will.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“What more can I say?”
“You’ve never once told me you love me. Not ever.”
With his hands framing my face, he presses his mouth to my ear. “Caroline Wallace, I’ve loved you as long as I can remember and I’ll love you as long as I live. Say you’ll marry me. And do it now, for I fear I hear your father coming.”
I nod my answer, and he repeats the offense once more, which leaves a great thrumming in my ears and my pulse pounding. He only leaves off when the door opens. We turn to find both Mama and Papa standing within it. Mama claps her hands together and presses them to her chest.
“At last!” she cr
ies. “God in Heaven be praised! At long last!”
I could not have said it better myself.
Blessed Offense (Sixteen Seasons) Page 2
