His hand tightened around hers for an instant, then he turned and walked up the steps and into the house.
Laura watched him go.
“A tender scene.”
She lifted her head at the sound of the woman’s brittle voice and saw Patricia sitting on the shadowed terrace. Determined to be pleasant, Laura smiled and strolled over to her.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Salstone.”
“You might as well call me Patricia. Clearly we’re going to be stuck here together forever.”
“Surely not that long.” Laura smiled. “But it would be nice to be Patricia and Laura, not Mrs. Salstone and Lady de Vere.”
Patricia gazed off into the garden, not looking at Laura, as she said in a quiet voice, “James seems . . . happy.”
“I hope he is.”
“What about you?” Patricia narrowed her eyes at Laura. “Are you happy? Is this what you wanted? Or did you hope he’d die?”
Laura started to snap back an angry retort, but caught herself. “I never hoped for James’s death. I’m not sure what I wanted or expected. I didn’t envision the life I have now. But, yes, I am happy.”
She refrained from adding “far happier than you,” but there was no need to; the truth hovered in the air between them.
Patricia’s mouth pursed into its usual pout. “James loves you.” There was an almost wistful note in her voice. “The way Graeme loves that American.”
Laura’s heart squeezed in her chest. She managed to say, “I would like to think he holds me in regard.”
Bidding the other woman a quick good-bye, Laura turned and walked on to the house. Her thoughts tumbled wildly about in her head. Did James love her?
There were times when she thought so, when he made love to her with such tenderness that she almost cried or when he turned and saw her approaching and a smile broke across his face like the sun rising. But he had never come close to expressing anything more than the assertion that she was beautiful. Of course, pulling a confession of love from James would probably require torture. He was so closed off, his emotions shielded behind an impenetrable wall, that she sometimes feared James could never love her. And what was she to do then?
chapter 36
James watched his wife circle the ballroom with Graeme. She was beautiful, her face alight. James wondered how much of the glow arose from the fact that she was waltzing with Graeme. James glanced over at Abigail, in animated conversation with Tessa and Aunt Mirabelle. Obviously Graeme waltzing with his first love didn’t disturb her. It was foolish to let it nibble at him.
The difference, of course, was that Abigail knew she held Graeme’s heart in her hand. Whereas Laura . . . but that was nonsense. It was absurd to have this cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, this sense that something was lacking. Laura was his and his alone. She’d never been in any other man’s bed, never felt anyone else’s touch, never taken another into her warmth as she had him. If there was any lack, it was only love, and he was not some weak milksop of a man to sit about whining about romance. And how unfair, unkind, to wish he had Laura’s love, when he could not offer it in return.
James was fully aware that he did not love deeply. Heartache was foreign to him. Indeed, it was vaguely unsettling even to think about it.
There was nothing wrong in Laura dancing with Graeme. Nor was it worrisome that Laura visited Lydcombe Hall frequently. It was only . . . Laura never mentioned her visits to James. She had not once asked if James would like to accompany her. In fact, she seemed to call on them when he was not around—the day he had gone to Tunbridge Wells, for instance, or of a morning when he was in his study working. The thought that Laura didn’t want James with her left a slender thread of emptiness in its wake.
“They make an attractive couple, don’t they?”
Salstone, of course. The man had a knack for showing up when James least wanted to see him. James turned, polite inquiry on his face. “Who does?”
Salstone gave an irritating chuckle. Blast the man; it was he who had first put this maggot of doubt in James’s head. For that reason alone, James ought to dismiss the idea.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” James said with a little fillip of satisfaction at the wary look that entered Archie’s eyes.
“Talk away.” Salstone surveyed the room as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“I understand you’ve run up a bit of debt in London.”
Archie shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “Where’d you hear that?”
James gave him the smile he’d perfected over the years, a thin lift of the lips that contained a predatory anticipation. “Archie, dear fellow, do you think I don’t keep up with what you’ve been doing in London? Don’t you know roulette’s a fool’s game?”