So she said nothing at all, except for assenting murmurs as he talked about that home, about the conservatory he intended to make into a studio, about the ruined square yard of stone wall Francis insisted was Roman and made Tristan promise not to replace.
"The village is just right for you to do your good works. Still we won't be so far that you can't keep up your activities here."
She couldn't help herself. "Just what I long for. His and hers villages to maintain." She dropped her gaze at his sharp look, and when he asked what she meant, she shook her head. "Nothing."
He frowned but apparently decided not to pursue the subject. "We'd best forego a wedding trip for the time being, by the way. I don't want to leave Anna alone just yet."
Charity's voice was as blithe as her thoughts were bitter. "But what about this winter when you leave for Italy?"
"She won't be alone then. She'll have you. And you'll have more outlet for that energy of yours." He pulled her hand away from her needlework. "I don't think I've ever seen you with idle hands. What are you working on there? Part of your trousseau?"
"We Kentish girls finish our trousseaus by our fifteenth birthdays." Charity gently detached tier hand from his to hold up her handiwork, a large white tube patched together from old shirts and pillowslips. "No, this is going to be the body of your dragon. It will be filled with paper, you see, and the neck will be of plaster of Paris, so you can easily slice it through with your sword."
From her pile of rags she pulled out another shirt to add to the tail. Yanking off the strip of lace down the front, she rolled it up and put it away in her sewing box. She held the shirt up to display the frayed elbows and torn sleeves and the stain on the back. "Charlie's rock-hunting shirt. Do you know, ten years ago it was Ned's best shirt. He wore it only to church. And then he outgrew it, and Barry inherited it. He sneaked out of Matins one morning to go fishing, and it was never the same again."
She tore the sleeves off and began to stitch the rest to the dragon, remembering all the times she had darned this particular shirt. "Charlie hasn't anyone to hand it down to anymore."
She looked up to his sympathetic gaze and, flushing, looked back down at her work. How self-pitying she must appear, almost in tears over an old shirt! Something about Tristan made her weak, that was all. Was it that she was not nearly as strong as he imagined?
Suddenly she asked, "If you were to paint my portrait—not from life, but from—from your mind, what would you paint?"
He was startled. "I told you, I don't do portraits."
She didn't know why, but she persisted. "If you did, what would my portrait show?"
He shook his head, then humored her. "Your portrait would show—oh, all your virtues, I suppose."
"But what would the scene be?"
He shrugged, still obviously puzzled by her insistence. "Well, I don't like posed portraits, with the subject gazing out. I think I'd have you engaged in some task, gardening, perhaps."
"You haven't ever seen me gardening."
"I told you." He was still polite, but his voice was edged with impatience. "I have a good imagination."
Not so good, if he only imagined her doing what she did every day of her life, weeding and pruning and clearing. "Why gardening?"
"Charity, gardening would be a—metaphor, do you see, for your virtues. Thrift and good sense, hard work and sunniness."
"Describe the picture."
He shook his head again, annoyed but unwilling to say so. "Describe. Well, I would paint you in that garden west of the house, the one with the sunflowers—"
He closed his eyes, and she saw his brow furrow as he concentrated, assembling in his mind the picture he would paint on canvas, were he the sort to paint his beloved. Then he opened his eyes and gazed at her, eyes narrowed. "I can't really picture you now. The garden, yes. But not you in it."
It seemed to trouble him as much as it troubled her, and instinctively she sought to soothe, to explain, to promise better later. "We could walk out there again, and then perhaps it will be clearer. I will be clearer."
But she felt the chill well up inside her. This mythical portrait that he would never paint had already accomplished one purpose: She knew what she had suspected all along. He didn't know her, not as she really was. And he couldn't even imagine her.
She knotted her thread and broke it, then hid her fists in the sleeves of the shirt. She had decided, she realized, sometime during his flattering catalogue of her virtues.
"There will be time for that when we are married." He reached across to touch her cheek. His caress still thrilled her, more now, when it was so agonizingly clear she would know it no longer.
Hidden in the shirt, her hands began to shake, and she gripped the dangling sleeves to still the tremors. She couldn't bear it. She jerked away from his hand as if his touch burned her.
"No. I can't marry you after all."
As if she had broken loose, she felt free, disengaged from whatever followed. It was a liberating feeling, to be outside of this experience, but odd, too. She had become alien to herself.
Her hands bad stopped trembling, so she started ripping the seam from the arms of the shirt. She spoke her thoughts into the utter silence. "That didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would! I think that must mean it is the right thing to do, don't you?"
Very evenly, Tristan said, "I'm afraid I didn't quite get your meaning there. Perhaps you could repeat it. One of your few faults is a tendency to speak too quickly."
Carefully, as if she were addressing a foreigner, Charity said, "I don't think I would make a good wife for you after all."
"Are you trying to tell me you wish to call off our wedding?"
"Not our wedding, for we've not even set the date, so how can we call it off? No, only our betrothal. I've forgot how one conducts such matters. Well, I daresay I haven't forgot, as I've never broken off a betrothal before. But I have an etiquette book in the library, and I'm sure that will tell which of us should send the notice into the Gazette. The fair thing, it would seem, would be for me to do so, if you have already sent in the betrothal announcement."
"Why?" She started to reply, but he stopped her with an abrupt gesture. "No, don't tell me why you should send in the notice. I don't give a tinker's damn about that. Why do you want to call off our marriage?"
She dropped her eyes to her needlework to escape the force of his black scowl. "Because it's clear I will not suit you."
"Don't give me that etiquette prattle." He rose and came to stand towering over her. "It's not clear at all that we should not suit. All along I've said what an excellent wife you will make."
His very height was a threat, and she didn't like being threatened. She found anger easier than regret, and besides, she hated that term. "An excellent wife. Well, I don't think I would make you an excellent wife. And you think so only because you don't know me."
"I know you perfectly well."
"No. Or you wouldn't think I would make you an excellent wife. I won't, because I'm not the person you think I am."
It made perfect sense to Charity, even as it broke her heart to say it, but Tristan didn't understand. He moved back a step to a less intimidating stance and shook his head. "Come, Charity, you are having a joke with me. Or bridal nerves, or some such. You can't confess you have some secret vice, for I know you haven't."
"It's not a vice. It's only—oh, just accept this, Tristan. I won't make a very good wife for you, and you won't be happy."
Some of the tension left his face as his hands, which had been clenched, opened in a resigned gesture. "I'll take the chance. In fifty years, if I am not happy, I will admit you were right."
Charity wasn't in the habit of acting impulsively, without thinking through the actions and goals and consequences. She was at a loss, unsure herself why she had to do this. She only knew she didn't want him to stand there looking hopeful and defiant and a little hurt. She couldn't look at his face and gazed instead at his hands, open in welcome, in
supplication. That was no better. She stared down at her needlework.
"I am sorry. I know it isn't fair, but I couldn't abide it any longer. I've made an absolute mash of this. I just can't be what you want me to be or only what you want me to be. I thought perhaps I could, I hoped I could. I realized just now that if I couldn't keep it up for a week, I would spend my life struggling to hide."
"To hide what? You aren't making any sense!"
She pulled the seam ripper all the way around the arm and let the sleeve fall to her lap before she could gather the words to answer. "Oh, that, for example. That I'm inconsistent. That I don't make sense. That I'm not sensible, at least not without trying very hard."
He closed his eyes as if to block out a vision he didn't want to remember. "I think you are just anxious about the marriage. All brides are, or so I hear."
"I am not just anxious. I am trying to tell you that you don't want to marry me."
He opened his eyes then and regarded her narrowly until she dropped her gaze back to her needle. "What do you want?"
It was a new question, one she never expected to have to answer. Her words came slowly. "I want—" How selfish he must think her, assembling a shopping list of desires and whining when it wasn't filled. "Oh, I just want more, you see. And you don't. I mean, you don't want a wife who wants more. What an awful life that would be. But—but we could remain friends. Then I wouldn't want any more." This last thought cheered her. They needn't after all lose that connection they shared. "I do make an excellent friend, I think, and without trying very hard at all."
Tristan put his hand on the back of a chair as if to give himself some support. "I don't understand you."
"I know. That is what I have been trying to tell you."
His supporting hand curled into a fist on the upholstery. "I knew you would say that. I knew it. And if I tell you that I don't worry about all your worries, that I will marry you nonetheless, you will tell me that if I understood you I would feel differently."
She didn't answer, for that was indeed what she would have said.
"That I am lucky to be allowed my escape. That someday—soon, if I've any claim on sense—I shall thank you for this."
"You will," she agreed, though the bleakness of his expression gave her pause. Gratefully she recalled the etiquette of the situation. She laid her needlework on the end table and pulled off the sapphire ring. With a gentle finger, she traced the golden circle, then held it out to him.
He looked at the token and finally took it. "You are determined to do this, then? And you won't tell me why?"
"I have told you why." Guilt made her impatient; she wanted only to have this encounter done. She should never have accepted him in the first place—he deserved better than this—but she saw no other remedy than to unmake the mistake quickly.
He jammed the ring into his pocket and strode to the door. "You are right then, I don't know you. For I would never have imagined that you, with your sweet face and manner, could be so heartless!"
The door closed, and after a moment, she rubbed the tears off with the back of her hand and rose. She still had to explain this to Francis, and he was even less likely than Tristan to understand why she couldn't marry.
Just then the drawing-room door crashed open and she found herself trapped in the burning gaze of her erstwhile fiancé. "What you are complaining about then," he said, as if their conversation had never ended, "is that you think I will not love you."
Charity took a prudent step back until she felt her chair against the back of her legs. Then she sat on the edge of her seat, poised to run. "I wouldn't say I was complaining precisely."
"Implying then. When you said you wanted more, that is what you meant."
Charity clasped her hands in her lap and stared down at them, evaluating his inquiry. Love. Such a small word, to fill such a large gap in her. "I suppose that is part of it."
"Well, then. That's fine. I have no doubt I will love you."
Charity's breath caught in her throat. "Oh, how sweet of you to say so!"
His expression was still taut, but he brought the ring out of his pocket with a flourish. "Then put this on and we'll set a wedding date. An immediate one."
Charity pushed back in her chair till her back touched the upholstery. She looked regretfully at the ring but made no attempt to take it. "But that doesn't change my mind."
Tristan pressed the fist with the ring against his forehead. "What do you want from me, you heartless vixen?"
"Now there's no call for that, you know." Knowing she had behaved unconscionably added an edge to her voice. "You have called me heartless twice now. And I'm not that at all."
Tristan was bitter, despairing. "Then what does that heart of yours want? I told you I would love you. What more do you want?"
"Something more. I don't know." So she would not have to look at him, she studied the misty June day outside the window. "Love at first sight, perhaps."
"That might be hard to arrange," he answered acidly, "as we've met any number of times already. Why isn't the other good enough as it's all we can have now?"
Charity shrugged helplessly. "It should be enough. For anyone else it would be enough. But you see, don't you now, that is why we would not suit. I am not very like you imagined, am I? Being loved—merely loved—isn't new for me. People usually do come to love me, you must have noticed. I don't mean to boast," she added hastily. "Because it isn't anything to boast of. I work hard at it, and usually I succeed. But just once, I'd like not to have to work at it. I mean, if I am just going to be the same after this, then I may as well stay with what I have. At least I will not be disappointed. Oh, I'm not explaining this well at all. Couldn't you just perhaps consider me a bit tetched and have it done?"
"No. I can't. You've taken this too far to drop it without explanation." Tristan's eyes were hard and glittering now with his anger. Anger was better, she dimly recalled telling herself recently. Perhaps he had discovered that, too. "You need only have told me that you didn't want to marry me—God! only two days ago—and it would have been put to rest. But you told me you would be my wife and let me think you meant it."
"I did mean it, or I wanted to mean it. Oh, Tristan, I can't explain. But please let it go. If you think you need a wife, you can find another easily enough. There are dozens of girls who would do you well right here on the Kent coast. Good sensible girls, who can make you a home and be happy doing it. You'll find a replacement to suit your purposes if you would only look a bit farther afield."
This bit of advice did not assuage him. Savagely he jammed the betrothal ring back into his pocket. "And will you so easily find a replacement for me? Or will that prove impossible? I'm only the latest of a series, I recall. I expect none of the rest suited either. They didn't understand you, is that it? I should write them and tell them they are lucky in that, for in my experience, you hardly improve on more intimate acquaintance!"
Although that was exactly Charity's point, hearing him rephrase it so brutally brought her to her feet in affront. "Thank you, Lord Braden, for making this so easy for me. For I know I shall never regret turning away a man who is so quick to insult a woman just because she has declined the honor of being his wife!"
From the shamed, stubborn set of his face, it was clear he knew he had gone too far. But with the air of a man who would as soon hang for a sheep as for a lamb, he said just before he slammed the door, "And I will never regret being refused by a girl who, all evidence to the contrary, believes she is too good for mortal man!"
Chapter Fifteen
Tristan was beyond shock. Instinctively he turned his horse south down the winding road out of the village. He hardly noticed the tall pastoral hedgerows and rolling fields until they suddenly ended at the brow of a rocky cliff. Below was the solitary beauty of a sandy beach. He dismounted to stand at the edge, waiting for the salt breeze to clear the dizziness from his mind. But when the vertigo remained, he guided Giotti to the steep path leading down to the beach. T
he chestnut, who had carried him uncomplainingly across the Italian Alps, dug in his hooves and refused to follow.
No one cares what I want, Tristan thought with a self-pity he recognized as particularly childish. He yanked at the reins, and with a whinny of protest, Giotti picked his way down the cliff.
In recompense Tristan took Giotti on a gallop along the beach. But the ferocity of the ride only enflamed his raging thoughts.
"I want . . . love at first sight," she had sighed, exactly like the silly dream-spinning girl he knew her not to be. Silly, fickle, vain, emotional, inconstant: exactly the sort of woman he wanted to avoid. Love at first sight.
The horse's hooves kicked up sand and saltwater, the mist stinging Tristan's eyes. He didn't want to think of having to announce this fiasco to his sister, to his nephews, to the world at large. He had always cherished his privacy, almost resenting his new fame, glad to inherit the title so he could sign his paintings in that impersonal fashion. Even writing the announcement of his engagement and sending it to the Gazette was difficult. Retracting it—God, one day after he'd posted it—would be humiliating.
He found himself thinking in Italian as he always did when he was angry, another legacy of his histrionic mother. In his mind he heard his thoughts run like the long heart-rending lamentation of a Venetian gondolier deprived of a fare. He cut the flow off. Reining in his horse, he forced himself to continue in precise, clipped English, so much more conducive to rational thought.
Barely winded by his hard ride, Giotti dropped his head to graze on the sea oats that edged the beach. Tristan walked away, the hard-packed sand crunching under his boots. At the remains of an old pier, he sat down on a battered pylon and contemplated the great gray Channel, dreaming of escape. In a month or so he could be in Italy again, away from these incomprehensible English, away from the cold gray northern seas, away from the odd silvery light that filtered through the mist, away from Charity and the hurt she had dealt him.
Charity Begins at Home Page 18
