Deceived

by Nicola Cornick

  It was like opening a window onto the past.

  The trunk was full of clothes. Walking dresses, day dresses, evening gowns, shawls and gloves, all in pastel colors, stacked upon one another in a pile of lavender-scented cloth and accessories. Isabella remembered that India had always favored pale colors and modest styles. It was very strange to see her entire wardrobe stored here. It looked faded and lifeless, like the ghost of India herself. At the bottom of the trunk was a pile of improving books.

  The second case yielded all the other bits and pieces that told the story of India’s life. There were tumbles of silk stockings, petticoats embroidered with lace, bodices and stays. There was a scattering of sheet music, a little yellowed about the edges. There was a soft bag containing filigree necklaces in delicate silver and gold. There was an artist’s box with the dried paint flaking around the edges and a tambour frame for needlework. Isabella felt her throat close unexpectedly with tears. How sad to see the remains of India’s life spread out before her like this, a little worn and smelling faintly of mothballs…

  There was no diary. Isabella had been hoping for a diary, for she had known that India kept one. Her cousin had forever been scribbling secretively in it when they were children. But perhaps Marcus had destroyed it when India died. Or perhaps Lady Jane had done so. The Southerns had always been so concerned of what other people thought that no doubt they would not want India’s diary falling into the wrong hands.

  Isabella straightened up feeling vaguely disappointed. For all the evidence of India’s life that was spread before her, there was not a single truly personal item to give a clue as to what had happened.

  There was a click as something rolled out of the folds of a silk handkerchief and fell with a soft clatter onto the bare floorboards. Isabella bent to pick it up. It was a silver locket. She paused. It seemed prying to open it but she wanted to see the miniature inside. A watercolour of Lady Jane, perhaps, or Lord John…Or maybe even a picture of Marcus…Her heart jerked with a mixture of emotions at the thought but now she knew she had to look, even if it confirmed her worst fears of the unbreakable bond between Marcus and India, even if it broke her heart.

  Her fingers shook slightly as she released the catch. The hinge was a little stiff but the locket opened reluctantly to spill its secret.

  The picture was indeed that of a young man. Furthermore, it was a young man in the striking red uniform of His Majesty’s Army. A young soldier with an arrogant smile, laughing, confident, a twinkle in his eye…he would have a swagger in his step and the panache of a man who knows he can take what he wants and snap his fingers in the face of the world…

  With a shiver like the brush of a cobweb across her face, Isabella recalled another memory—a handsome young army lieutenant introducing himself to her and to India in the Assembly Rooms thirteen years before.

  He had spoken to Isabella as the elder cousin, but his eyes had been on India the whole time. Isabella had been intrigued; it was not often that her quiet cousin eclipsed her. She had been a little piqued, too, which was only natural. But then the young man had bowed deeply to India and asked for her hand in the dance and Isabella had smiled ruefully to see them go off together with eyes for no one else in the room.

  She had only met him the once. Until this moment, she had not even remembered that he was the same man who had come to the Assembly Rooms a year later and been thrown out for his trouble. He was the man whom Pen had said used to meet India secretly, the suitor her parents had apparently sent away.

  Isabella sat down heavily on the edge of one of the trunks. The call of the seabirds came to her softly here, mingling with the breeze along the roof and the distant crash of breakers in the bay. The air felt hot and oppressive. A lock of hair, caught within the locket, drifted down on the air to scatter on the floorboards. Isabella bent automatically to gather it up again. The hair was fine and baby soft. It was flaxen: blonder than India, fairer than her own had been as a child before it had darkened in the way that children’s hair often did with age. It was tied with a small blue ribbon.

  Isabella placed the lock of hair carefully within the locket and snapped the catch shut. Her mind was full of images of India, mingled with Pen’s words and those of Mrs. Goring. India fatter and happy, then thinner and sad…a mysterious trip to Scotland by her cousin and Lady Jane…a lock of hair, and a miniature…a rumor of Lord John’s by-blow that she had thought from the beginning must be impossible…A handsome young lieutenant making a scene in the Assembly Rooms and Lord John having him ejected in a rage….

  She gave a violent shiver in the warm air. The locket rested in the palm of her hand and her fingers closed tightly over it. She knew India’s secret now.

  ISABELLA WAS NOT SURE HOW LONG she sat in the dusty attic room, the locket enclosed in her palm. When she finally stood up, the silver links of the chain had scored her hand and she winced a little. She closed the trunks and made her way wearily downstairs. She knew that she had to speak to Marcus now, and she quailed to think of it.

  She pushed open the door of the study. Marcus was sitting at the desk by the window. Bright morning sunlight spilled through the panes and polished the patina of the wood to a deep shine. Marcus was reading a book about engineering, his glasses poised on the end of his nose. He was quite still and so utterly engrossed that he did not appear to hear her entry.

  For a moment, Isabella watched him. His brow was furrowed with concentration and the sun picked out the tiny strands of gray in his hair. Neither of us, Isabella thought, are young anymore. She felt such a powerful rush of love for him then that she must have made some involuntary movement, for he looked up. After a moment, he smiled and put the book down. Isabella’s heart started to race.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “What may I do for you, Isabella?”

  “Marcus,” Isabella said. She stopped. Suddenly the thought of broaching the subject of India seemed so remote and impossible that she almost turned tail and ran. How could she do this? Marcus would be angry with her for rifling through his late wife’s effects. As for the suggestions—accusations—that she was about to make…well, he could only greet those with contempt. He would be bitterly hurt and his memories despoiled. She loved him too much to do that to him. And yet she was sure she held the key to the mystery of Edward Warwick in her hand and she had to tell him. She could not keep silent any longer.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “It is about India. Marcus, it is important.”

  His smile faded. She saw the withdrawal in his eyes. It was the same expression he always assumed at any reference to India. It set her at a distance. But this time she was determined to persist.

  “Please, Marcus,” she said. “I realize that this must be very difficult for you.”

  There was a flicker of something in his eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It is difficult but I have been meaning to speak of her to you for some time.”

  Isabella paused. “Oh?”

  Marcus gestured her to a seat and she sank down onto the cushions. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “There is something that I have to tell you, Bella.”

  The silence spun out like a spider’s web between them. Isabella waited, her heart beating in her throat.

  “I never loved India,” Marcus said baldly. “God knows, I tried hard enough but I could not do it. I pretended that I loved her—I pretended it to myself and to everyone else, but I always knew that it was false. Even at the point of marriage, when we made our vows, I knew it for the mistake it was. I married the wrong cousin and I knew it from the start.” He looked at Isabella’s white face and a faint smile touched his lips. “You seem startled, Bella. Did you not suspect?”

  Isabella found her voice. “I…I am astounded. I had not the least suspicion in the world. I thought you devoted to her in life and to her memory now.”

  Marcus grimaced. He leaned against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms.

  “Why on earth did you t
hink that?”

  “Why?” Isabella paused. She had misread him badly and caused herself considerable pain as a result, but she had only been basing her judgment on his behavior. There had been evidence enough.

  “Where do I begin?” she said. “You were so hot to defend her when we spoke in London. You accused me of ruining her relationship with her mother. You believed her word over mine. At every turn you showed that she still held your love and loyalty.” She stared unseeing at the pattern on the Turkey rug feeling indignant as well as upset.

  “When you told me about the fire and I found out that you had left India’s chamber untouched since her death, what was I to think?” she burst out. “It was like a shrine to the memory of your dead wife! And I knew that I—” She stopped and swallowed hard.

  “That you…what?”

  “That I could never compete with her memory, that you would never love me as you had loved her, that your heart was not free to love again.” Isabella stopped and stared at him. “Why did you not tell me the truth of your feelings for her?” she demanded. “Why did you keep all the pictures and mementos of India, and leave her chamber untouched, unless it was because it was too painful for you to do aught else?”

  Marcus’s gaze was somber. “It was too painful,” he said. “But that was from guilt, not love.”

  Isabella stared at him. She was clenching her hands tightly on the arm of the chair.

  “Guilt? About what?”

  Marcus came across and sat in the other chair at right angles to her. They were close enough to touch, but both of them held themselves stiffly upright. The tension in the room was palpable, like the crackling of sheet lightning.

  “I felt guilty that I could never love her,” Marcus said simply after a moment. “I realized that I could not make her happy. She deserved better.” He looked up abruptly and Isabella flinched at what she saw in his eyes. “I married the wrong cousin,” he said again, “and I tried to make her into what I wanted. I tried to make her you. She lived in your shadow for all of our marriage. She knew it and I knew it, but we never spoke of it.”

  Isabella was shaking her head with bewilderment. “I thought that I was the one living with the incomparable.”

  Marcus smiled wryly. “I can understand that you might think that. The room, the portraits, all her collections…”

  “And more than anything your fierce protectiveness of her memory!” Isabella made a slight gesture. “Was that guilt, too, Marcus? That you had not been able to give her what she wanted in life, so you were determined to try to make recompense?”

  Marcus put his head between his hands briefly then looked up again. “It was the least that I could do,” he said bleakly. “I felt responsible for her death. If only I had been with her in Town…But I spent as little time with her as I could.”

  Isabella took his hand. She half expected him to pull away from her, but he did not. “I am very sorry,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Maybe not.” Isabella hesitated. “But I know what it is like to try to build something worthwhile and to fail. Although—” she smiled a little “—I must confess that with Ernest, I soon gave up trying. It was a lost cause.”

  Marcus smiled, too. He raised the back of her hand and pressed a kiss on it. “Was it so bad, Isabella?”

  “Oh, shocking!” Isabella said. Her smile faded. “It was probably not as sad as for you, though, I think. You must have hoped for happiness with India, whereas I knew from the start that I had made a marriage of convenience.”

  Marcus shifted a little, though he did not let her go. “I quickly realized that there was a part of India I could never reach,” he said. “You said yourself that she was very self-contained and it was true. I knew there was something troubling her. She was unhappy and I was very afraid that I was the cause.”

  Isabella trembled. This was her opportunity to tell Marcus about Edward Warwick and yet she hesitated to do so. Marcus had confided in her and there was a fragile trust between them. Would she blow it all apart before it had begun if she told him that she suspected she knew the real cause of his wife’s unhappiness?

  Marcus had felt the tremor that shook her and was looking at her questioningly. His dark gaze was suddenly so tender that Isabella felt a fierce pang of regret at what she had to do. But there had already been too many secrets between them for her to keep quiet about what she knew. Besides, there was Warwick to consider.

  Still holding his hand, she went down on her knees beside his chair. She spoke very carefully.

  “I am sure that it was a source of regret to both of you, Marcus, that your marriage was not as happy as it might have been. However, I think there may have been another cause of India’s grief.”

  His hand tightened briefly on hers. “What can you mean, Isabella?”

  Isabella took a deep breath. There was no going back now.

  “I think that India was in love with someone else,” she said. “I think she loved Edward Warwick, Marcus, and I think she had his child.”

  SHE SPARED HIM NOTHING. All the things that Pen had said, their memories and joint discoveries, the news of the illegitimate baby that was supposedly fathered by Lord John and the locket in the portmanteau…Throughout it all, Marcus sat silent, his dark gaze never wavering from her face, his expression impassive.

  “I think that the tragedy of it all was that Warwick truly loved her,” Isabella finished. “Why else would he come back to Salterton the following year but to find her? He wanted to marry her but Lord John refused to countenance his suit and he was powerless to act.”

  Marcus moved slightly. He had been so still and so silent that it had been impossible for Isabella to judge his reactions to her words. He had not shouted her down, or condemned her words or instinctively denied her suggestions. Even so, she could feel the apprehension gnawing at the pit of her stomach, and not only for India but also for herself. She did not wish to destroy Marcus’s respect for his dead wife but she was honest enough to admit that she did not want to lose his good opinion either.

  “I do not understand why Lord John and Lady Jane would not allow her to marry Warwick,” Marcus said slowly. “If she had borne his child, surely the necessity to keep the scandal quiet would outweigh any other consideration?” He sounded distant, as though he were trying to solve a puzzle that held no personal concerns but was a mere intellectual challenge.

  “You knew the Southerns,” Isabella said. “I loved Lady Jane in particular, but she was very conscious of her position and her status. She was similar to my mother in that respect. Why, I remember her reminding me that I should not form a tendre for you when we first met because you were so ineligible. India was their only child. All their hopes and aspirations were invested in her. They could not permit her to throw herself away on some nobody without fortune.”

  Marcus let go of her hand abruptly and got to his feet. He ran his fingers through his hair in an agitated gesture.

  “India in love with another man…Giving up her child…”

  “I cannot be certain,” Isabella said quickly, “but the evidence suggests that may be so.” She looked up at him, trying to gauge his feelings. “I am sorry, Marcus. I do not wish you to think ill of her.”

  “I do not know what to think,” Marcus said, with a long, unreadable look at her. “I am going out for a while.”

  “Marcus—” Isabella scrambled to her feet. She was stiff from kneeling on the floor and her skirts were creased but all she could think of was the need to banish that empty expression from his face and soothe the hurt. She put out a hand to him but it was too late. He was already turning away. The door of the room closed with a soft click. She thought about running after him, but she did not move.

  INDIA IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER MAN…Giving up her child…

  Marcus sat by the sea for a very long time. His gaze traced the movement of white sails on the horizon but his mind was largely empty. He was oblivious of the sta
res of curious passersby. Someone even addressed him, but they withdrew when he did not even turn his head, let alone reply.

  After a while he became aware that he was chilled from the onshore breeze. He rose stiffly to his feet, walked along the esplanade and took the steps up toward the Hall. He saw Freddie Standish emerge from the inn on the harbor and exchange a few words with someone standing in the shadow of the doorway. He did not want to talk to Standish, not now. He picked up speed.

  The house was quiet.

  He found Isabella in the laundry room. She looked up when he came in and her hands stilled in the folding of the sheet. She put it down slowly. Her face was open and troubled. He realized that she was working to blot out more uncomfortable thoughts. He could tell that she was deeply distressed at the thought that she had hurt him. It made him feel tender inside in a very different way from the raw hurt he had felt to think of India’s lonely misery.

  “I always wondered,” he said, without preamble. “I wondered whether India was holding the memory of someone else. God knows, I could not blame her, for was I not doing precisely the same thing myself? We never spoke of it and somehow we muddled along together and yet it was like hobbling on one leg when previously one had run…. Poor India…” He smiled ruefully. “We did try, but in the end the odds were too great.”

  Isabella came toward him and raised her hand to rest it on his chest. A curl had come loose from the ridiculous lace cap she was wearing. It rested against her cheek. She was flushed from the warmth of the room and her exertions.

  “You cared sufficiently about each other to try to be happy,” she said softly. “That is what counts.”

  Marcus nodded. “I do not think any the less of her for what happened,” he said. He turned his face away. “I did at first. I could not help myself.”