“I am glad.” Ellen smiled back. “Everyone deserves to know some of that kind of happiness in life.”
Madeline opened her mouth and closed it again. Her eyes saddened. “It will happen for you again,” she said very quietly.
Lord Eden helped all three ladies from the carriage when they reached Kensington Gardens, Ellen last. By the time she stepped down onto the pavement, she was dismayed to find that Madeline had already linked her arm through Jennifer’s and was walking off with her. She drew a steadying breath.
“This is what you did not wish for, is it not?” Lord Eden said, offering her his arm. “I must confess that I had hoped to avoid it too. It is difficult to meet again.”
Well, Ellen supposed, if they must speak to each other, it was probably better to speak openly like this rather than in the stilted manner in which they had conversed at Dorothy’s. “Yes,” she said.
“Do you blame me for coming?” he asked. “Do you wish I had not?”
“Why did you?” she asked. “Nothing can be accomplished by our meeting again. Only embarrassment for both of us.”
“I had to come,” he said. “I promised Charlie that I would see you and Miss Simpson safe.”
She felt her stomach lurch and was afraid that she was going to be overcome by dizziness again.
“We must not avoid his name,” he said. “He was my friend. The two of you were my friends, Ellen. I would hate to think that a few days of thoughtless madness have wiped out three years of friendship.”
She said nothing for a while. “But they did,” she said at last.
“Yes, I suppose so.” He looked about him at the grass dotted with fallen leaves. “I had hoped that perhaps we could still be friends. But I suppose we can’t. We can make all sorts of excuses for what happened between us, but the fact is that it happened and will always be there, a shared embarrassment.”
“Yes,” she said.
He drew an audible breath. “So what are your plans now?” he asked. “You are going to call on Charlie’s father, you said?”
“Yes,” she said. “I promised Charlie that I would. But as it happens, Sir Jasper has been the one to make the first move. I am hoping that he will take Jennifer in and take charge of her future.”
“And you?” he asked.
“Charlie left me an independence,” she said. “I will buy a cottage in the country and move there. I don’t know exactly where yet.”
“Alone, Ellen?” he said. “It will be a lonely life.”
“I think not,” she said. “It is what I want.”
“You will not stay with your father-in-law?” he asked. “You are very young still.”
“I would rather be independent,” she said. “And what about you, my lord? You have sold out of the army?”
“As you see,” he said. “I think I will be moving to my property in Wiltshire soon. It is time I stopped wandering and settled down. I would think that Edmund will be removing his family back to Amberley soon, now that we are all safely home from Belgium. I don’t know about Mama and Madeline. I suppose a great deal depends upon Penworth. I will be going soon, I think.”
And there seemed to be no more to say. Ellen held to his arm and was reminded of the walk they had taken in the Forest of Soignes the day after she had become physically aware of him for the first time. Oh, no, they could never become merely friends. Because she could never again be without this almost sick awareness of him when he was close, this urge to flatten her palm and her fingers more firmly on his arm, to close her eyes and lay the side of her head against the broad shoulder so close to it.
Dear God, she thought, it was this man’s child she was carrying in her womb.
They could certainly never be just friends again.
“Why did you faint?” he asked abruptly.
“I have not been in the best of health,” she said.
“You have lost weight,” he said. “You have suffered, Ellen.”
“You must understand,” she said, “that he was my world. I have lost people before, by death and otherwise. But they were always a part of my life, not life itself. Charlie was my life. The world is a very empty and a very frightening place without him.”
“Yes,” he said, and laid a warm hand over hers. She did not try to pull away from it. “I can believe that, though fortunately I have not experienced it. Not directly. I remember my mother after my father died. I’m sorry, Ellen. And more sorry than I can say that I am unable to offer any of the comfort I might have been able to offer had I remained just Charlie’s friend.”
She drew a deep breath. “I have forgiven you for that,” she said. “And myself too. I would rather not dwell on it. And you are not to think that I am a broken woman. I am not. I have lived through two months of intense grief, when the pain of living at times seemed almost too much to bear. But I am through them now and on my way back to life. I will live again if only for Charlie’s sake. He would have been upset to see me as I have been. But for my own sake too. Life is too precious a gift not to be lived. You are not to feel sorry for me, my lord.”
He smiled. “I remember your saying those exact words in Spain,” he said, “when you were soaked to the skin after fording a river at night, only to discover that your servant had lost your tent in the crossing. And Charlie was off somewhere else on duty. Of course, your teeth were chattering so loudly that it was hard to hear the words. Do you remember?”
She looked into his face for the first time that afternoon. She gave him a fleeting smile. “Yes,” she said, “though it was a good thing that you had to ride off immediately. I believe I spent the rest of that night howling with self-pity and huddling over an inadequate fire.”
She looked away again when his green eyes crinkled at the corners and smiled back at her.
“Here comes Susan,” Madeline said suddenly, looking back over her shoulder at Lord Eden.
The lady who was approaching on the arm of a portly gentleman of haughty bearing was also in deep mourning, Ellen saw. She was small and dainty. She carried a lace-trimmed handkerchief in her free hand. It was impossible to see her face until she drew close, as she wore a heavy black veil over it.
She was also a wilting little creature, Ellen discovered, noting the contrast between her affected greeting of Lord Eden and his sister and their effusive greeting of her. And then Ellen recognized her as the pretty auburn-haired lady who had spoken and danced with Lord Eden at the Duke of Wellington’s ball in Brussels.
“Well, Susan, how do you do?” Lord Eden asked when Ellen and Jennifer had been introduced on the one side, and Lord Renfrew on the other.
“Quite as well as can be expected, my lord,” Susan said, dabbing at her eyes beneath the veil. “It is quite devastating to be without my poor dear husband, but my brother-in-law has been kind. I am sure you must quite know how I feel, Mrs. Simpson.”
Ellen inclined her head.
“Your mother is here with you too, Susan?” Madeline said. “I have been meaning to call upon the two of you. I shall do so one day, and bring Mama or Dom with me.”
“Oh, that is very kind of you, I am sure,” Susan said, large hazel eyes gazing soulfully at Lord Eden. “But I would not put you to any inconvenience on my account.”
“It will be no inconvenience at all, Susan,” Lord Eden said with a bow. “Perhaps we may call upon you tomorrow?”
“How very kind!” Susan murmured. “I find it very hard not to be able to venture outdoors until his lordship has the time to take me. Even a simple visit to the library becomes out of the question. Oh, Mrs. Simpson, we take husbands so very much for granted until they are no longer there at our convenience, do we not?” Another dab of the handkerchief.
Ellen inclined her head again.
Lord Eden was smiling. Ellen could hear it in his voice. “If it is the library you wish to visit, Susan,” he said, “your need is easily answered. I shall accompany you there tomorrow morning while Madeline converses with Mrs. Courtney.”