The Secret Pearl(88)

“Matthew,” she said in an agony when she had been summoned to the hall and found him waiting there, “I cannot go walking with her grace and some of her guests. I am a servant here.”

“But everyone knows that you are also a gentlewoman,” he said, “and an acquaintance of mine. And I am a guest here, Isabella, and therefore to be humored. Look, it is a glorious day for a change, and you have a free afternoon. What better way to spend it than in a walk to the lake?”

She had no choice, of course. She returned to her room for a bonnet. And she wondered, as they walked a little behind the other couples, where it would all end, when Matthew would put an end to this whole charade.

“For how much longer are you planning to be here?” she asked him.

“For how long are we going to be here?” he asked. “I don’t know, Isabella. I am in no hurry, and I thought you might prefer to get to know me again here where there are other people than at home, where there would be just you and I. You seemed to think a few months ago that there was something improper about that, though we are second cousins.”

He had a point there, she thought.

“I would like to announce our betrothal here before we leave,” he said.

“No!” she said sharply. “Not that, Matthew.”

Most of the couples showed no inclination to remain together once they arrived at the lake. Lord Thomas Kent and the duchess got into one of the boats to row across to the island; Sir Philip Shaw and Lady Underwood walked off along the path that followed the north shore; Miss Dobbin and Mr. Penny climbed the bank and disappeared among the trees.

Lord Brocklehurst drew Fleur to the south side of the lake and among the denser trees there to one of the follies she had once ridden past with his grace. It was in the shape of a temple with a semicircular seat inside, looking down on the lake.

“Let’s sit,” he said.

Fleur sat.

But she turned her head aside sharply when he would have kissed her.

“Give me a chance, Isabella,” he said. “You are so beautiful.” He touched the hair at her neck with light fingers. “And I mean nothing dishonorable. Heron House was your father’s. Your mother was the baroness. You could have it all back for yourself. I would send my mother and Amelia to live elsewhere if you do not wish to live with them. Give me a chance.”

“Matthew,” she said, turning her head to look at him, “can you not understand? I do not love you. I do not feel the sort of regard for you that would make me a suitable wife for you. Can we not just go back and tell the truth of what happened and remain second cousins at some distance from each other? Can you not let me learn to respect you even if I cannot love you?”

“Love can grow,” he said. “Give me a chance.”

She shook her head.

He placed his hands loosely about her neck, as he had done once before, tightened them a little beneath her chin, and jerked upward. And he lowered his mouth to hers.

She waited for him to finish before getting to her feet and stepping outside the temple to look down at the lake. And for the first time there was an anger in her to equal the terror, a total weariness with being a puppet on a string, with being quite out of control of her own life.

“I won’t marry you, Matthew,” she said, “or be your mistress. And I will not spend any more time with you here at Willoughby Hall. You must do what you will, but that is my decision.”

And she closed her eyes and remembered his hands at her throat, the tightening, the upward jerk. Her breath came faster.

If it ever comes to that, he had said to her once—his grace, that was—if there is ever no one else to whom you can turn, then come to me. Will you?

There was a yearning in her to do just that—to tell him all, to feel those strong arms about her once more, to hear that steadily beating heart beneath her ear again, to unload all her burdens onto someone else.

And then she would watch his look of disdain, revulsion, condemnation. And she would be alone again, as she had always been alone ever since the death of her parents. The idea that there was someone who might care and help was an illusion. She had known that she could not go to Daniel; she knew now that she could not go to the Duke of Ridgeway. She was old enough, she had lived long enough to know that.

Matthew’s hands closed on her shoulders from behind. “You will change your mind,” he said. “We will give it a few more days, Isabella.”

She bit her lip instead of replying as she had been about to do. Would she? Change her mind? The alternative was so very appalling.

“We should return to the house,” he said. “You need to do some thinking, don’t you?”