The Ideal Wife(23)

Her husband had folded his paper and set it beside his plate. He was smiling at her in some amusement.

“Do you like the country?” he asked. “I intend to take you to Severn Park in Wiltshire for the summer. I believe you will enjoy being there.”

“I have something to tell you,” she said in a rush. “I ought to have told you right at the start, and certainly before you married me. In fact, I should not have called upon you at all. I did so under false pretenses.”

“Ah,” he said, resting one elbow on the table and supporting his chin on a lightly clenched fist. He looked at her very directly from his blue eyes. “Confession time?”

“Don’t smile, Miles,” she said. “You will not be amused when I have told you all. Perhaps you will even cast me off. I am sure you will wish to do so.”

His eyes continued to smile, but he said nothing.

“I am not your relative at all,” she said, and felt her heart pounding up into her throat. She had not planned to tell him. Not yet, in any case. She drew breath to continue.

“Yes, you are,” he said quietly. “You are my wife.”

“But apart from that,” she said. His eyes were disturbingly blue. She wished he would not look at her. And she was very glad that it had been dark during the night when he had . . . She could feel herself flushing. “Well,” she continued lamely, “only very distantly related anyway, Miles. I ought not to have called myself your cousin.”

“And this is your greatest confession?” he said, smiling at her.

No, it was not. That was not it at all. But she had turned craven. And perhaps she need never tell him. No one else knew. When her father had died, she had been the only one left to know. Perhaps she need not tell him? What if no one had ever told her? She would be none the wiser, would she? She would not know that she was deceiving him.

“No,” she said, “there is more. There are more of us.”

“More like you?” he said, reaching across the table for her hand and squeezing it. She had not realized until he touched her that her hands were like blocks of ice. “You are one of triplets? Quadruplets?”

“Oh, heaven save the world,” she said. “No. But there are Boris and Bea and Clara.”

“Tell me about them,” he said. He was using his fatherly voice again, talking to her as if she were a child. He sat back in his chair, rested his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

“Boris is my brother,” she said, and swallowed. That was not quite the truth, but she no longer had the courage to tell him the truth. She should have done it, if she was going to do so, as soon as she had sat down at the table and before looking at him. “Beatrice and Clara are my half-sisters. They are still just children. They are Papa’s and my stepmother’s, but she . . .” She picked up a fork from the table and played absently with it. “She passed on.” That was not a total untruth, she thought.

“Where are these children now?” he asked.

“Bea and Clara?” she said. “They are with a great-aunt in Bath. Their great-aunt, not mine. But they are not happy there. She took them in only because there was no alternative, and she subscribes to the ridiculous notion that children are to be seen and not heard.”

“You are fond of them?” he asked.

She glanced down at her hands and replaced the fork beside her plate. She was surprised to see that the plate was empty of all except a few crumbs.

“They are almost like my own children,” she said. “After their mother lef . . . er, was gone, I had the full care of them because Papa was . . . well, indisposed. It broke my heart when I had to set them on the stage and see them on their way to Bath. They have never had a happy life, but at least I used to be there to love them and to allow them to get dirty and to shout and run once in a while.”

“Your brother inherited,” he said, frowning, “and would not care for either you or your sisters?”

“Oh, there was nothing to inherit,” she said, “except debts. Papa was . . . ill, you know, for a long time and was unable to pay his debts. We sold everything and still did not pay them all. Boris is here in London somewhere—I rarely see him. He is determined to make his fortune the quick way.”

“Gambling?” he asked.

“He wants to pay our debts,” she said. “He always wanted something better than Papa would . . . Well, Papa was ill and Boris did not have a chance to do any of the things he would have liked to do.”

He looked at her without speaking.