The Ideal Wife(56)

“Abigail,” Mrs. Harper said, “I knew you would come.” She linked her arm through Abigail’s. “Have you cut your hair? I thought you never would. Severn wishes you to be fashionable, does he? I can understand that a woman would wish to please Severn. You did well for yourself. How did you do it?” She laughed in that low, seductive way that Abigail found unfamiliar and thoroughly unpleasant.

“Rachel,” she said, “why did you leave home? I could never quite understand.”

“Why?” The other laughed. “He probably would have ended up killing me if I stayed. He had given me bruises enough. I chose life, Abigail. Is that so incomprehensible?”

“But you left the children behind,” Abigail said. “They were little more than babies. How could you have left them to Papa?”

“It was not easy.” The other woman shrugged. “But I knew you would look after them, Abigail. You were fond of them, and you always had a way with your father. He never laid a violent hand on you, did he? And Boris was growing up. I thought he would protect them.”

“You were their mother,” Abigail said. “And you did not leave alone, Rachel.”

“John Marchmont?” Rachel laughed. “He was just my means of getting away. You cannot know how helpless I felt, a woman alone, and how good it was to have someone who appreciated me. I was still only twenty-four—your age now. Don’t judge me. Life became intolerable and I had only two alternatives—to take my own life or to run away. I ran.”

“Bea and Clara did not have those alternatives,” Abigail said. She noticed that even in the daylight her stepmother wore cosmetics. She turned her head to look away. Rachel had been a beautiful girl when she married Papa.

“Well.” The other woman’s manner became brisker. “The past can be amended yet. I have been thinking of writing to Aunt Edwina and taking the stage down to Bath. Though I daresay I could persuade Sorenson to take me down in his carriage. Do you think it would be a good idea to go, Abby? Would they like to see their mother again?”

Abigail swallowed. “What do you do in London, Rachel?” she asked. “Is it true that you run a gambling hell? Are you Lord Sorenson’s mistress?”

Mrs. Harper laughed. “I have a respectable home in a respectable district,” she said. “I like to entertain. And you know what gentlemen are. They like to play cards, and they cannot enjoy a game unless they are playing deep. And I am no one’s mistress except my own. Do you think I would allow any other man to have power over me as your father did? I learned my lesson many years ago, Abigail. One should use gentlemen for one’s pleasure and convenience and discard them without hesitation when they become possessive, as they always do. You would do well to remember that, though of course you were never one to allow yourself to be bullied. I always admired that in you.”

“I’ll take the girls,” Abigail said quietly. “I have Severn Park to offer them, Rachel, and all my time and devotion. I can offer them proper schooling and respectable marriages when they grow up. I am sure Miles will give them suitable dowries. They can be happy. They were attached to me emotionally, you know, before I was forced to send them away to your aunt’s. And I was happy with them. We will recapture that happiness.”

“And what about my happiness?” Mrs. Harper asked. “Don’t you think I deserve some, Abigail? I bore them, after all. I suffered all the discomfort for nine months with each one of them and all the pain at the end of it. For what? For nothing? I have a hankering to see them again.”

“Rachel.” Abigail stopped walking and disengaged her arm from her stepmother’s. “You do not need my permission to go down to Bath. As you say, they are your children, and I have no legal custody of them. Why have you arranged this meeting? What do you want of me?”

Mrs. Harper laughed. “That is something else I always admired about you, Abigail,” she said. “You always liked everything out in the open. Very well, then. My life is at a crossroads. I am thirty years old—a restless age. A little frightening. What do I do? Do I recover my children and settle down to a cozy domestic life with them? Or do I travel to other lands and taste all the delights that the world has to offer before I really am too old?”

Abigail said nothing. She continued to look steadily but warily at the other.

“But I fool myself to believe that there is a choice,” her stepmother said with a shrug. “There is none. How could a woman like me afford a year or so on the Continent? One does not earn enough from . . . the means I have of earning a living.”