In the cold early dawn Emily, Dodo and Celestine trundled off in the carriage with the Sedgely crest, down the sloping road, over icy ruts and through the village. Faint light glowed in the windows and smoke curled from chimneys in homes where the man of the house was already out doing his duty to his family, and where the women were tending to their household chores. Emily thought that if her life had gone in a different direction, she would have been one of those women, married to a respectable but poor farmer or solicitor or shopkeeper. Instead she had met and married a distant, titled relation with whom she had fallen deeply in love, and was now separated from for complex and varied reasons.
There was silence in the cozy, dim confines of the elegant traveling vehicle, made warmer by heated bricks buried in straw at their feet. Maybe, Emily thought, the other two were lost in their own contemplation, as she was. Or maybe they were just recovering from the scramble of leaving after a quick breakfast in the half-light of early morning.
The eldest lady of the three, Lady Dodo Delafont, yawned behind a gloved hand and eyed the uncurtained window with distaste. She preferred never to see the cruder side of nature, and especially not that early in the morning, but in deference to her niece-by-marriage, who enjoyed the scenery, she left the curtains drawn back. She was nominally Emily’s companion, though she chose to live with her out of affection and not any need to have a place to stay. She was wealthy in her own right.
But when her nephew separated from his wife, and Dodo’s sister-in-law, the dowager Marchioness of Sedgely, demanded that Emily leave the country estate of the marquess, Dodo had offered to go to Yorkshire with her. Over two years ago they had removed to the Yorkshire estate that Baxter Delafont had deeded to his wife free and clear in the separation settlement. It was the house where Baxter and Emily had first met and it was precious to Emily for that reason.
“Whyever must all journeys begin so early in the morning?” Dodo asked, stifling another yawn.
It was an unanswerable question, and so the three continued gazing out their respective windows at the wintry landscape, the first glimmers of silvery morning light casting long shadows from the snow-coated fells into the valley, the shadows shortening as the day advanced. Emily glanced over at her niece from time to time, wondering if she was doing the right thing. She was interfering insufferably in what was essentially a private affair between Celestine and Lord St. Claire.
But it didn’t seem to her that there had been any real end to things between them. She had seen the tension on Celestine’s face after the puppet show the previous day, and how her niece had fled with one heartbreaking glance back at her love. St. Claire had watched her leave the room with unaccountably bleak eyes, and she just could not leave it that they would creep away.
Whatever would become of the two?
For her part, as the carriage trundled along marking off the miles, Celestine was replaying every word, every look, every caress that had occurred between her and the man she had come to adore. How had it happened? How had she fallen in love with a man so far above her touch as Lord St. Claire Richmond? It had taken place, she supposed, in imperceptible degrees, stealing over her like age, one moment at a time.
But it would not do. He could not possibly love her, not really. She had dismissed the competitive angle as unlikely, in light of Emily’s doubt of that as a motive for offering for her. So perhaps his offer of marriage had been genuine. But surely what he felt for her was lust at worst, pity at best. Lust she could not understand, since he had at his disposal the voluptuous Lady van Hoffen, who cast him amorous glances whenever he entered a room. Surely any man with eyes in his head would prefer the beautiful and experienced widow to a plain, arthritic spinster?
So it must be pity. He was capable of great affection, she believed, having observed him with the children, whom he genuinely loved. And he had been so gentle and caring toward her. He was a man with a large, untapped well of softer feelings: sympathy, compassion, pity. He had spoken of taking care of her for the rest of her life, and so perhaps his offer of marriage was real, and inspired by concern for her deteriorating health. Certainly that hypothesis was borne out by his solicitousness in ordering her a hot bath every morning.
Could a marriage based on pity thrive? She gazed out the window at the harsh landscape and contemplated. At first, he would be all compassion for her affliction. It would be such a delicious feeling to be cared for by a man like St. Claire, especially since her love was real, based on his good qualities and sweetness of character.
But he was like a bright star on the horizon, dimming every other person when he was in the room. Women and men alike were drawn to him, to his energy and wit and fire. And all of that would be hers? Impossible. She could never match his boundless energy, nor his blazing fire, and her wit seemed feeble compared to his brightness. It would be like trying to hold quicksilver, making a marriage with a man like that.
After a while his compassion would remain, but he would tire of her limitations and long for love. He would still be kind to her, but always she would be the one who loved while he grew restless and regretted his benevolent impulse. Or maybe—ghastly thought!—he would find his true love, and yet be stuck with her for the rest of his natural life. Would he take mistresses? Probably. And it would kill her if he did.
She would always know, always feel that she had robbed him of something precious, the opportunity for real love. She loved him far too much for that. She wanted for him the rich, complex emotion she experienced whenever she thought of him, which was often.
She was physically affected by his nearness. He made her heart thud faster, her pulse race and her blood heat. His lips on hers made her melt into a warm pool of desire. But more than that, she felt a tenderness toward him inspired by his sparkling personality and sweetness of temperament. She ached to give him love, unstinting and powerful, but feared that she could serve him best by leaving him to find his true love, the woman who could capture his heart and his soul. It was better this way.
• • •
“What do you mean, Miss Simons is gone?” St. Claire stared at Gwen and Lottie’s maid.
The girl wrung her hands together and said, with a plaintive whine, “It were ever so sudden, milord. It were decided yesterday, but I weren’t told till this mornin’, when Miss Simons came to bid the wee ones good-bye.”
St. Claire swore fiercely and thrust his fingers through his hair. This was Elizabeth’s doing, he would swear. “Where is she gone?” His voice was harsh with anger and the girl flinched. He softened his voice. “Please tell me.”
Elise was gazing at him with awe and fear. She gaped like a fish and, impatient, he exclaimed, “If you do not know, girl, then perhaps Lady Delafont does.”
He turned to go, but Elise called out, “She’s gone, too, milord. This mornin’ right early. Taking Miss Simons with her.”
She had gone to Yorkshire; that must be it! He tore down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and flung himself into the breakfast room, where Elizabeth was seated with the Miss Stimsons. He strode up to his sister-in-law and stood over her. “You think you have ended it, Lizzie, but you haven’t!”
His voice rasped with anger, and she gazed up at him with a mixture of irritation and concern on her pretty, scheming face. “Whatever do you mean, St. Claire? Please have a seat. Looking up that way gives me the headache.”
“I don’t have time to sit because I have a carriage to find. Which way did they go? Are they going straight to Yorkshire or are they heading south?”
“I won’t pretend to misunderstand you, St. Claire,” Elizabeth said, her voice cold and haughty. “I would wish that you would offer more courtesy to my guests, but obviously you have taken leave of your senses.”
The Stimson girls were watching and listening avidly, Caroline stifling a well-bred giggle behind her hand. St. Claire bowed to them impatiently, and then turned back to Elizabeth.
“Miss Simons has received the offer of another post,” Elizabeth said. “She is off to take it this day. Emily is merely conveying her thence, so you need not badger me, St. Claire. I don’t even know where it is. I merely agreed to release her from our employ.”
“Threw her out on her ear is more like it,” St. Claire ranted, pacing back and forth by the mahogany dining table. “You two just couldn’t accept my choice, could you?” he said. He stopped and looked down at Elizabeth, who calmly tore a buttered muffin into pieces and ate it.
There was silence for a moment, the Stimsons’ large brown eyes gazing at him over the evergreen centerpiece as they waited for the final act of the drama. He mastered the overwhelming urge to throttle his meddling sister-in-law, though he could almost feel the satisfaction of her soft flesh giving way under his strong grip as he choked the life out of her smug, self-satisfied little body.
He was calmer when he finally spoke, having subdued his violent urges. “I meant what I said, you know. I will marry her! Somehow, after a life spent seducing and bedding bored wives and widows—” There were shocked gasps from the girls as he said that, and he was glad. “And breaking the hearts of silly little debutantes, I have found a woman of depth and sweetness. She is an angel, far too good for me. In my whole conceited life I have never said anything like that, but it is true. Celestine Simons is an angel, and I mean to marry her.”
Elizabeth’s expression was frigid and her next words dropped one by one from her pursed mouth like frozen shards of ice. “You are out of your mind!”
He slammed his fist on the table and the silver danced, the teapot lid jumping and settling back out of kilter. The Stimson girls gasped as one and clutched each other, their eyes round and big as saucers. He leaned over and glared. Elizabeth started and drew back at the ferocious expression on his face and in his eyes. His hair was tousled and his cravat was askew. “I am finally in my right mind. I love Celestine Simons, and I will find her and convince her to marry me if it is the last thing I do on this earth. She will have to take me without my family, though, for I am convinced I have nothing more to say to you or August.”
He whirled on his boot heel and stormed from the room, shouting to Dobbs to find his valet and order him to start packing yet again. The portly butler glanced around with a strangely covert look, though, and whispered, “My lord, I have a letter for you!”
A thrill shot through St. Claire as he took the missive, addressed in a slanting, feminine hand. “From Miss Simons?” he said.
“No, my lord. From another lady.” Dobbs bowed. “I will see to your valet.”
St. Claire split the wax seal and scanned the letter. A sublime smile spread over his handsome features and he followed the butler up the stairs, passing him as he took the stairs two at a time. He was whistling a tune as he went. Dobbs smiled and nodded. Some gentlemen knew as to who was real gentility and who wasn’t, among the ladies in this household, Dobbs thought. And St. Claire was one of the smarter ones to have picked out Miss Simons, though he had never thought so before in his long years of service to the present marquess’s family.
• • •
A day that had started out promising was now, in the early afternoon, closing in suddenly, as sometimes happened in the Pennines. The sky was a leaden gray and flakes of snow, first sparse and then thick, began to come down. Emily gazed out at the sky with some trepidation. She had not counted on this, though she was about to ask the coachman to stop at an inn anyway, on the excuse that she was tired and hungry. She then had planned on coming down with some slight malady to delay their departure until the next morning. But from the looks of the weather they wouldn’t be leaving any time soon, regardless of her ruse.
Dodo gloomily stared out at the snow. “It never snows like this in London,” she said in a sepulchral tone.
“Of course it does,” Emily said. “You just can’t tell because it turns mud-brown from soot before it makes it to the ground. Everyone thinks it is just an unusually heavy covering of ash.”
“It’s very beautiful,” Celestine said. “But I dare say not too good for the poor coachman.”
Emily nodded sharply. She let down the window and leaned out, shouting up to her driver. “Gorse, are we near an inn?”
The coachman answered in the affirmative, which Emily already knew from previous arrangement with him.
“Let us break our journey, then.” She put the window back up and shivered.
Not more than half an hour later they pulled into the courtyard of an inn in a small village.
“I had hoped to make Penrith before we broke for the night,” Emily sighed. Dodo glanced at her sharply.
“Surely if the weather clears we can continue on? It is no later than two in the afternoon,” Celestine said. “It’s a ways to North Yorkshire, and I know you must be impatient to be home,” she added.
Emily shook her head and gazed out at the thick shower of snowflakes that fluttered against the window. “I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere today.”
The coachman, Gorse, opened the door and placed a step by it for the ladies to step down onto. One by one they descended and hurried through the curtain of white into the inn, where welcome heat billowed at them from the noisy public dining room, which was open off the main entrance.
The landlord’s wife, instantly assessing the costly garments Emily and Dodo wore, curtseyed and offered to show them into a private dining room where they could shed their cloaks. They followed her beyond the public room into a clean, large chamber where a huge fire blazed in the hearth. It was a low-beamed space, and so the heat stayed very much at body height. Celestine shed her snow-damp pelisse and moved over to the fire, where some chairs were set in a semicircle.
Emily paced over to a window and pulled back the curtain. “I really don’t think we will be able to go on tonight,” she said. “We don’t know how far back Agnes and Peter are following with the luggage.” Agnes, her and Dodo’s abigail, was traveling with Peter, Gorse’s son, who drove her luggage carriage. “I don’t want to get so far that the poor girl cannot catch up with us. Better to stay here and have attire to wear tonight and tomorrow morning, than to lose my poor girl in the storm.”
“Whatever you wish, Aunt,” Celestine said over her shoulder.
Dodo had taken a spot by the fire and eased her damp boots off with a sigh. “That suits me just fine, my dears, for I hate long travel at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. At my time of life a good fire and hot tea are much to be preferred over quick arrival at our destination.”
Emily cast a sympathetic look over her shoulder. If everything went as planned, there would be no need to continue the longish journey to Yorkshire. But the storm had cast those plans into doubt, and she would just have to see how things went. She didn’t even know if she had done the right thing. She hoped that she had.
They settled around the fire and the landlady, a Mrs. Shruggs, brought a tray with tea, dark and steaming, and a plate of biscuits, light as a feather and hot from the oven. Emily broke one open, buttered it and bit into it with a sigh of pleasure.
“Mmmm,” she murmured and swallowed. “Wonderful. At least Mrs. Shruggs is a good cook, so we will not starve.” She glanced down at her plump figure ruefully. “Though there is little danger of that for me. I have gained at least two stone in the last five years. No wonder Elizabeth hardly recognized me.”
Celestine smiled over at her aunt and sipped the strong, bitter tea. “You are lovely and you know it,” she said.
Emily’s smile softened as she gazed at her niece. The fire cast a glow over Celestine’s pale oval face. She believed, in the light of what she had observed and what Celestine had told her about St. Claire’s words and actions lately, that the gentleman really was in love with her. He had never, to her knowledge, taken so much care over a woman, nor offered to marry her. She was gambling that it was in Celestine’s best interests to marry St. Claire.
But was it?
Years ago she would have answered unequivocally “yes.” That was before her own marriage had started to crumble under the pressures of family and her inability to produce an heir for her husband, the Marquess of Sedgely. She was still bitter over the way his mother had interfered in her marriage until there was no peace between her and Baxter. And in that time she had lost her belief that love conquers all.
But it was Celestine she must think of, not herself and her own failure to make her marriage work. Her niece picked at a biscuit, her gnarled hands reducing it to a pile of crumbs as she stared into the fire, stirred back to crackling life by the attentive landlord just minutes before.
“Celestine, if you could have anything you wanted in life, what would it be?” Emily’s voice was quiet in the warm, cozy room.
Dodo opened one eye and glanced over at Emily. Then she sighed, closed her eye again and leaned her head back in her chair.
Celestine pursed her full lips and her delicate brow furrowed. “Anything?”
“Anything. Or anyone. Just what you believe would make your life perfect.”
Celestine’s gray eyes lit with a glow and her lips curved up in a smile that became sad after a moment. She turned her head away and said, “I think you probably know the answer to that already, Aunt.”
“I suppose. Maybe that is not an appropriate subject to bring up right now.” Emily glanced up at the clock. Would her plan work? What would she do if it didn’t? “What can we talk about on this gloomy day to brighten us up?”
“Aunt Emily, do you think that a marriage where there is unequal love on both sides can last? Can it be good?”
“I don’t know if I am the right one to be asking about good marriages. I am a failure in that respect, my dear.”
“Takes two to fail,” Dodo said, without opening her eyes. “Or sometimes more. Seems to me you and Baxter had a lot of help from my interfering, long-nosed, busybody sister-in-law.”
“Maybe. But I am sure there are a hundred things I could have done differently that would have changed how things ended. Maybe Baxter and I would still be together if . . .” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and glanced over at Celestine. “But that is not what you asked, is it?”
There was an expression of compassion on Celestine’s face that Emily had seen before when she spoke of Baxter, but there was something new. Now there was an added hint of understanding. Unsuccessful love made women compatriots in pain.
Emily shifted in the hard chair and gazed down at the ruby ring on her finger that Baxter had given her when he asked her to marry him. Almost to herself she said, “Marriages with unequal love? Perhaps they can be successful, but it is up to the one who loves more, I think. For you must be prepared to make allowances, to take less than you need or want, to be satisfied with the small things, the perfect moments.”
Celestine nodded. She had been pondering all day and had come to the conclusion that perhaps she should have taken St. Claire at his word and agreed to marry him. Even if he married her out of pity or compassion, he could come to love her in time, if she was a good wife to him. A few scraps of his affection, as sweet and beautiful as they were, were better than the bleak nothingness that seemed to stretch out in front of her now.
In her dreams as a young girl she could have imagined no man more perfect than St. Claire, not just in form and grace but in deeper attributes. He might hide it from the world, but she had learned his soul and knew the depth of tenderness and core of sweetness no one else suspected. She had dreamed of marrying someone like him one day, and it had been within her grasp.
But in her heart she knew that if she had it to do all over again she would do exactly the same thing. What she did, by saying no, she did for St. Claire. Someday, if they had married and he had fallen in love with another woman, his life would be destroyed. She could not do that to him. She wanted love for him, not just the affection and esteem he might hold her in. Even if she never had him, at least she had her love for him to remember and hold sacred.
But it would be cold comfort through the long winter nights of her life.