“Do you mind sitting, Miss Pembroke? I confess I am quite wearied from the walk about the gardens and would like no exhaustion to keep us from open communication.”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” Nora said slowly, coming to sit alongside the older woman. She was not at ease yet, although if the woman intended to make some apology for her former behaviour, Nora was prepared to receive it. She ventured the first overture in an attempt to put her visitor at ease. “I thank you for coming today,” she said quietly. “I know that things have been somewhat confused between our families, and I think it quite noble that you should make an effort to maintain the connection.”
“I do not wish to speak about our families,” Lady Colbourne interjected kindly but firmly. “And I think I know enough of you to be straightforward. I think it will honour you more.” She bit her lip. “And I would like to ask that you keep this conversation between us alone. I do not wish any word of it to reach my son.”
Nora was startled to hear a woman who had been so careful about her emotions on any subject be so frank, but she found it oddly refreshing and nodded for her to continue. “The conversation can stay between us, Lady Colbourne.”
“I can see that you are in love with my son,” Lady Colbourne said, folding her hands on her lap and pausing as though to allow Nora to interject or protest.
Nora was taken aback, and yet she felt that the emotions she held for Gerard were too precious, too fragile to bandy about in such a way. She did not admit to her feelings, but neither did she deny them. Instead, she looked at Lady Colbourne with unwavering eye contact and left the other woman speak. She didn’t have long to wait.
“I am not angry at you for this attachment,” Lady Colbourne said. “I think my son a worthy man in every way, and I cannot fault you for recognising in him the qualities I know he possesses. You will also note that I do not suspect you of ulterior motives. I believe your affection to be genuine – it is only that I consider the match to be inappropriate, and I have come to offer you an alternative.”
Nora felt her heart begin to beat more quickly. This was beyond direct. This was insulting, and yet, strangely the most at home she had felt with Lady Colbourne in the entirety of their connection, for at least now the woman was saying how she truly felt instead of pretending to be satisfied with a situation she clearly abhorred.
Nora took a deep breath. “You wish me to end my courtship with Lord Colbourne?”
“Of course I wish that,” the woman answered quickly. “If you do so, I will reward you.”
“I am not in need of money.”
“I know that.” Lady Colbourne tilted her head to the side. “It appears to me that you care about two commodities in particular – the wellbeing of my son, and the possibility of a life that is more full than the petty worlds of the other fine young women in your acquaintance. If I could prove to you that my way fulfilled both these needs, would you consider it?”
Nora blinked, taken aback yet again by how well this woman had guessed her heart. For all the affront of the conversation, Lady Colbourne was at least giving her the benefit of supposing that she really did wish the best for Gerard.
“Speak on,” she said quietly.
“I know you do not agree with me at present,” Lady Colbourne went on in a soft voice, “but I believe wholeheartedly that you are not a suitable wife for my son. I believe that you will find yourself craving adventure one day, and he will be forever torn between his duty to his estate and your desire to live life to the fullest. I believe that your tongue, which is so free in matters of society, will be his undoing, and I believe that other than your fortune you have little to recommend yourself as his wife.” She looked down and then up again at Nora, who was struggling to fight the wounded pride these words brought. “I don’t think you mean to hurt my son,” she went on quietly. “And I think that if you are honest with yourself you will come to the same conclusions that I have reached in this area.”
Nora thought about the conversation she’d had with her father. Lady Colbourne believed that she had nothing but a fortune to offer Gerard, and yet she didn’t know yet the most recent development, that Nora would not even have that to offer. Without a dowry, she had nothing at all to offer him.
“I am not finished,” Lady Colbourne went on. “I will also be in a position to take you abroad so that you can have your adventures, expand your repertoire, and paint to your heart’s content. I know this is a love of yours, and I know that you have a talent for it. I will take you as my companion when I travel abroad, and you can have the best that Europe has to offer.”
“You think that I will turn on Gerard for the sake of my own interests?” Nora asked, angry.
“No, I think you will recognise what is best for my son, and you will welcome a chance to leave the country during what is sure to be a difficult separation.”
Nora could see the honesty in Lady Colbourne’s intentions, as painful as they were to hear. Everything in her wanted to proclaim her genuine love for Gerard, to protest that her intentions were honest, but Lady Colbourne had already pre-empted that – the other woman had proclaimed that she believed Nora to mean the best, but that she didn’t think Nora knew what was best for Gerard. The truth was Nora wasn’t certain she knew what was best either.
She loved Gerard. She wanted to be married to him. And yet she could see what Lady Colbourne clearly anticipated, a life where she was quite happy, but Gerard spent all his days putting out the fires that Nora started. She saw how deeply he cared for his estate, how much he wanted to honour the memory of his father and responsibly bring the estate back to its feet, and she could not see that she would be an asset to him without her dowry to support her good intentions. Even with a dowry, she had been far from the refined wife that Gerard needed, but without…without she was a liability. Still, a single thought battled with all Lady Colbourne’s logic.
“I think he cares for me,” she said quietly.
Lady Colbourne nodded soberly. “I think you are right,” she said. “But Gerard is a man who can do whatever he needs to follow his duty. He will never end this courtship, but if you were to do the right thing, then he will accept the situation as it is and move forward with his life. I am doing you the greatest justice I can, Miss Pembroke – I am offering you an opportunity to prove your true love for my son by sacrificing your own heart for his own good.”
Nora felt as though her heart was breaking. She saw, for the first time, that all her attempts to justify her attachment had been in the hopes that Gerard loved her – when she saw that he did, she was willing to set aside all other concerns. Now that she was having to face the possibility that Gerard would not do what was best for himself and his family, she saw her responsibility and it tore at her.
“If I end this,” she said hoarsely, “you will take me away from here?”
Lady Colbourne didn’t smile. She only nodded stiffly, and Nora thought for a moment she saw a hint of tears in the other woman’s eyes. But in the next instance the tears were gone, and she was marble again.
“I will take you with me to Europe. I had a trip already planned, and it seems the quickest way to get you free of this situation.”
“This heartbreak, you mean,” Nora said softly. She set her chin and looked up at the older woman. “I do not agree with the metric imposed upon us by society, but I recognise that you are not the one imposing it, and I suspect that you are right about your son’s duty to his promise over the estate. It would be better for him if he didn’t have…undue distractions.” She fought back the tears that were threatening to come and, when she saw that she would lose that battle, stood and turned her back to the other woman to disguise her emotion. “I will go with you to Europe, and I will write to your son to break off the engagement.”
She felt as though everything she’d held dear was being ripped away from her, and yet it wasn’t – she was giving it up of her own free will.
Chapter 35
“Where have you been?”
William asked when Nora finally appeared in the drawing room that evening. “You missed the evening meal, which isn’t like you.” He grinned, but the grin faded when he saw her face. She knew she should fight back against being so outwardly downcast, but the letter to Gerard was in her pocket and it seemed to weigh her down like a stone. “I would have expected you to be more upbeat after our visitors today.”
Mr and Mrs Pembroke were already retired for the night, and David sat quietly in the corner with James reading. Nora knew that it would be a good time to talk about all that had transpired, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It felt like a raw wound, and she feared to allow anyone near enough to touch it.
“I found I had no appetite,” she said, coming to sit across from William.
David looked up from his book and frowned. “Mother said that Lady Colbourne came crawling back here to apologise for her misbehaviour to our family, that her little daughter came too. I would have thought you delighted in the extreme.”
Nora looked at William, and he raised his eyebrows as though to agree with David’s assessment. She sat down across from him.
“A game of chess?” she enquired.
William nodded and pulled out the board nearby, setting up the pieces in their proper squares. He had been the one to first teach Nora the game, when she was a very little girl, and it was her safe place – playing with him by the fire in the evenings. She found it gave her time to think, to understand her own life whilst unfolding the strategy of another.
A few moves in, William cleared his throat and attempted to question her again. “What did she speak with you about?”
Nora moved her bishop forward so that it protected a line of her pawns advancing across the board. “We only spoke for a short time.”
“I know. Mother and I saw you out the window.” William countered her move with a knight. “But a lot can be said in a short amount of time, Nora. Don’t avoid the subject any longer. What did she say to you?”
“You mean you and Mother and Lady Diana, don’t you?” Nora asked, frowning. “I thought they had gone inside to look at a painting.”
“There you go, attempting to change the subject again.” William took one of her pawns, starting a chain of back and forth attack and retribution. “If you must know, they only looked at the painting for a moment, and then your little friend excused herself. I’m not certain where she got off to, but she was back by the time you and Lady Colbourne were walking inside.”
“That’s odd.”
“Nora. What did Lady Colbourne say to you?”
Nora looked up from the chess board. “She said what needed to be said, William. She was not unkind or unjust, but she did convince me of some matters that I had been blind to all this while, and I cannot fault her for that.”
“I don’t much like the sound of that,” William said, keeping his voice low so that the conversation could stay between the two of them. “It sounds to me as though she talked you out of your own feelings for her son.”
“Nobody could talk me out of my feelings.” Nora stood up suddenly, a feeling of hot rage passing over her. “I will always have these feelings. She only talked me out of the plans I had for them.”
With that, she turned and whirled away from William, walking to the tea set up on a nearby table and pretending to busy herself with fetching a cup while she regained her composure. She didn’t even realise she’d dropped the letter from her pocket until she turned around and saw William reading it by the light of the fire.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “You have no right. Give that back to me at once.”
David and James were both watching them now with interest. David walked over to look at the paper, but William shook his head.
“This is between Nora and I,” he said calmly. “Perhaps you two could give us the benefit of some privacy and retire early this evening?”
David exchanged a look of annoyance with James and then slipped out of the room, but James didn’t leave so quickly. He lingered by Nora looking uncomfortable.
“I have some investment in this matter, if you remember correctly,” he said after a moment. “If it has to do with Lord Colbourne, I will remind you that I recently was sent to Holcombe as an emissary on behalf of this arrangement between you two, and I now have a vested interest.”
Nora took another step forward and held out her hand, a hot anger rushing through her. She knew enough of her own nature to understand that she really wasn’t angry at William – she was angry at this situation, at the words Lady Colbourne had said, at the letter she had to write, and more than anything at the love that wouldn’t leave her chest. Regardless, William was the one with the letter, and it was upon him that she levelled her fury.
“That is mine,” she said, looking over at James. “And I care not how vested you feel in this matter. It is my business and not yours.”
“That’s not what it says here,” William said crisply, opening the letter. “This is a letter written and addressed to Lord Colbourne, my dear friend.” He began to read from it, stepping sideways a few times to avoid Nora’s attempts to retrieve it. In the end she simply stood still before the fire and let him read through the entirety of her letter aloud, letting it tear at her heart to relive the things she’d said. When he’d finished it, he looked up at her with a shake of his head. “You’re going to refuse him, Nora?”
She looked down at her hands. “I appreciate that you have been a part of our arrangement since the beginning, William, but it is no longer your heart that is at stake. It is mine. I do not know that you have any say in this matter.” She shrugged. “I know that you are concerned about your friend’s feelings, and I do not doubt that this will be a surprise. But I am certain that he will recover.”
“I am not concerned about my friend’s feelings,” he said, coming suddenly across the room and putting his hands on her arms. “I am concerned about you, my little sister. My beautiful, sweet sister. You love him. I can see it in your eyes.”
James joined in, adding his voice to his brother’s entreaties. “Nora, I can vouch for Lord Colbourne’s feelings as well. I believe him to be quite taken with you.”
Nora shook her head and reached forward, taking back the letter from her brother. “Please,” she said hoarsely, “leave me be.”
There was a moment of silence and then James seemed to consider himself at last to be overstepping his role and he walked out of the room without another word. Nora felt tears coming forth despite her best efforts, but she brushed them away and bit her lip to hold back more. She turned to William, the only person remaining in the room.
“My feelings in this matter are of no concern,” she said quickly. “I believe that my reasons are good ones. You read the letter. You cannot argue with all that is at stake.” She tilted her head to the side and looked up at him. “And there is another reason, William – one that I cannot put in the letter for fear of causing further offense to Lord Colbourne.”
“Speak on,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“Father suspects the worst of Lord Colbourne. You know that, perhaps even better than I do. His solution to be certain the man is marrying me for the right reasons is to deny me my proper dowry – thus, I bring nothing to a possible alliance with Lord Colbourne than my own self, and I am certain that my own self is not enough to save his estate. He needs to marry well.”
William took a step back, clearly taking in this new piece of information with astonishment. “I knew that Father was angry,” he said slowly, “but this is a new surprise indeed. It is hard for me to imagine that he would just deny you what is rightfully yours for the sake of proving a point.”
“I believe he is trying to protect me,” Nora said wearily. It was difficult, running through this conversation again with William that she had already repeated over and over again in her own head. There was no way out – and trying to think about it more creatively only drove that point further home.
“I know Gerard well…” W
illiam trailed off as though thinking again over his history with his friend. Then he shook his head and added, “Yes, I know him very well, and as much as he cares about his estate, he would not sacrifice you for the sake of a bit more certainty.”
A Baron Worth Loving: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 22
