Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

20

One of Flavian’s aunts and two of his female cousins came during the morning to meet Agnes, about whose existence they had learned late yesterday upon their arrival in town. They ended up bearing her off with Flavian’s mother for a drive in Green Park. It was his aunt DeeDee—a corruption of Dorinda, he seemed to remember—his mother’s younger sister, and his cousins Doris and Clementine, her third and fourth daughters. Or was it the fourth and fifth? Dash it, he should know. Clemmie was the youngest, anyway, and yet another cousin about to make her debut into society. She was a giggler, Flavian discovered during the few minutes he spent in her company, but then, most girls her age were.

He wondered whether Agnes had been a giggler at that age, but would bet his fortune she had not been. She had married her William when she was eighteen, and if there had ever existed a duller dog and one less romantically inclined, he would be surprised to hear it. Not that he had known the man, of course, and not that Agnes had said much about him. But much was to be deduced. . . .

If Flavian had the right of it, she had married Keeping because her father’s remarriage had made her feel like a stranger in her own home. She had married him because he was safe. Strange, that. For now he,Flavian, had married her for the same reason.

He stood outside the front door of Arnott House after handing the ladies into the open carriage, all five crowded in together, and waving them on their way. He brooded for a few moments before going back inside.

A family was a good thing to have, even if it sometimes seemed that its numbers must extend into the hundreds and that it was made up almost entirely of the noisiest, most talkative members of the beau monde, both on his father’s side and his mother’s. Yes, it could be a very good thing to have, for his family had always been close-knit. Every member pulled for every other member, even if there were sometimes squabbles among individuals, especially siblings.

Every member of the family currently in London would surely have been invited to Marianne’s party this evening. And every one of them would go. Flavian did not know who else had been invited. And he did not know whether the little flaring of gossip about his wife at Lady Merton’s party had been fanned into flame, though he would wager it had been. He was going to be prepared anyway if any mention of it should be made tonight.

Whether he would warn Agnes and so make her more nervous than she would be anyway of her first ton party, he had not decided.

He turned and made his way back into the house.

He reappeared dressed for the outdoors a short while later, after a groom had brought his curricle and pair up to the door. He shook his head after he had climbed up to the seat and taken the ribbons in his hands, and the groom, looking somewhat surprised, refrained from scrambling up behind. Flavian would rather not have any witnesses among his own servants to the visit he was about to make. Servants, even loyal ones, were always the worst gossips in the world.

He drove himself out to Kensington, following vague directions to a house that Peter Jenkins had heard was quite invisible among an unruly forest of trees, though he had never seen it for himself. Jenkins also had no knowledge of whether the house was lived in or empty. He had had no dealings with his relative for as far back as he could remember. Havell might be in Kensington or in Timbuktu for as much as he knew—or cared, his tone had implied.

Flavian found the house. Or, rather, he found the unruly forest and followed a bumpy trail into its midst until he discovered the house—larger and in somewhat better condition than he had expected, and surrounded by a small, well-kept, colorful garden. There was a thin trail of smoke coming out of the chimney. There was someone here, at least.

An elderly retainer, his dark coat shiny with age, answered the knock on the door. He looked openly surprised to discover that Flavian was not simply a traveler who had got lost in the woods and needed directions to find his way back to civilization. He showed the visitor into a parlor that was clean and tidy, if a little on the shabby side. The servant went to see whether his master and mistress were at home. His right boot heel creaked as he walked, Flavian noticed.

They arrived together no longer than a few minutes later, both looking as surprised as their butler, as though they were not in the habit of receiving unexpected visitors—or perhaps any visitors at all.

Sir Everard Havell was a tall man with receding hair that still retained some brown mixed in with the predominant gray. His face and figure were fleshy, the former florid, the complexion of a man who perhaps indulged rather heavily in the bottle. His blue eyes were pale and somewhat watery. He had the remnants of good looks, but he was not well preserved.

Flavian could not see even the faintest resemblance to Agnes.

Time had been a little kinder to Lady Havell, even though she was apparently older than her husband. Her figure was still good, though she must be close to sixty. Her hair was still thick and a becoming shade of silver gray. She was a handsome woman, though her face was lined. There was some animation in her dark eyes. She was pleased, Flavian guessed, to have a visitor, though obviously curious too.

He could see nothing of Agnes in her either. On the other hand, she bore a more than passing resemblance to Miss Debbins.

“Good day . . . Viscount Ponsonby?” Havell rather unnecessarily consulted the card Flavian had handed to the butler.

Flavian inclined his head. “I have the p-pleasure,” he said, “of being Lady Havell’s son-in-law.”

The lady’s eyes widened, and she pressed the fingers of both hands over her mouth.

“I married Mrs. Keeping a little over a week ago,” he said. “Mrs. Agnes Keeping.”

“Agnes?”the lady said faintly. “She married one of the Keeping brothers? Not William Keeping, surely? He was such an unappealing young man and years too old for her.”

“Mr. William Keeping, yes,” Flavian said.

“But he died?” she said. “And now she has married you? A viscount? Oh, she has done well for herself.”

“Rosamond,” Sir Everard said, “you had better sit down.”

She did so, and her husband gestured Flavian to another chair.

She had no knowledge, then, of what had happened to her family after she left?

“And Dora?” she asked. “Did she make a decent marriage after all?”

“She has made no marriage at all, ma’am,” Flavian said.

She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, poor Dora,” she said. “She was very much looking forward to marriage and motherhood—as we all do at the age of seventeen. I suppose she felt obliged to stay home with Agnes. Or perhaps no one would have her after Walter decided to divorce me. That man has much to answer for.”

It was a strange perspective on past events. Perhaps it was an understandable one, however. It was always easier to blame someone else than to assume blame oneself.

Havell had poured two glasses of wine. He handed one to Flavian and drank from the other himself. Flavian set his glass down on a small table beside his chair.

“And Oliver?” Lady Havell asked.

“He is a clergyman in Shropshire, ma’am,” he told her. “He is married with three children.”

She bit her lower lip. “Why have you come, Lord Ponsonby?” she asked him.

Flavian sat back in his chair and eyed his glass. But he did not pick it up.

“Agnes was told n-nothing, ma’am,” he said. “She was five years old, and I s-suppose the assumption was made that she would forget if she was not constantly r-reminded. She still knows virtually n-nothing. She does not want to know. She does not want to know who you are or where you are or even wh-whether you are. But her life has been shaped by your s-sudden and complete disappearance from her life. She has lived on the f-fringes of her own life ever since, afraid to feel too deeply, not lest she be hurt again, it seems to me, but lest she be tempted to do to someone else what you d-did to her.”

“What I did to her,” she said softly. “Well, and so I did too, Lord Ponsonby, for heaven knows I fell deeply enough in love with Everard that summer and spent far too much time in his company. I had no business being so self-absorbed when I had a husband and three children.”

She looked at her husband briefly and half smiled at him.

“Poor Everard,” she said. “For very honor’s sake he was obliged to take me away when Walter denounced me quite publicly at a local assembly and announced his intention of divorcing me. We fled that very night, and only later did it occur to me that Walter had been drinking freely that evening, and it was common knowledge that he could not hold his liquor without making a cake of himself. I might have brazened it out, and our neighbors would have pretended that the whole nasty scene had not happened. But it seemed he had forced my hand, and then I forced his. Poor Everard was caught in the middle.”

“I have never regretted that fact, Rosamond,” he said gallantly.

She smiled at him. It was a sad, fond expression, Flavian thought.

“I really did dislike Walter quite intensely,” she said. “But I loved my girls—and Oliver too. I ought to have gone back for their sakes. Even after a few days had passed I ought to have gone back. Everyone would have turned a blind eye. And Walter would not have carried through on his threat—not when he was sober. After a few days, though, I could not bring myself to leave Everard. I chose my personal happiness over my children, Lord Ponsonby. Agnes is perfectly justified in not wanting anything to do with me. You will keep this visit to yourself, will you?”

“Not n-necessarily, ma’am,” he said. “I will possibly tell her. She ought to know. What she decides to do with the knowledge is up to her.”

As much as anything, she needed to know that she was Debbins’s daughter. And undoubtedly she was.

“Besides,” he said, “someone has been trying to find out something about my wife—preferably something that can be turned to spite. Already someone knows of the divorce.”

“Ah,” she said.

Havell said nothing.

Flavian got to his feet, and Havell followed suit.

“Thank you for receiving me,” Flavian said. He crossed the room and took Lady Havell’s hand in his. After a moment’s hesitation, he raised it to his lips. “G-good-bye, ma’am.”

“Good-bye, Lord Ponsonby.” Her eyes turned suspiciously bright.

Havell accompanied him to the door.

“Life is never a simple matter, Ponsonby,” he said as he stood in the doorway watching Flavian climb back to the seat of his curricle and possess himself of the ribbons. “Decisions that we make in the blink of an eye, often both unexpected and impulsive, can affect the whole of the rest of our lives in a drastic, irreversible way.”

It was hardly an earth-shatteringly original thought. It was nevertheless a true one, Flavian thought. Only consider what had happened to him recently.

“I came for the knowledge,” he said, “because it is b-better to know than forever to w-wonder. I did not come to judge. Good day to you, Havell.”

“She adored those girls,” Havell said, “if it is any consolation to Lady Ponsonby when you tell her of this visit. Both of them, the older one and the little child. She adored them.”

But not enough to sacrifice her own happiness for their sakes, Flavian thought as he drove back out into the world—as though for the past hour he had somehow stepped right out of it. But who was he to judge? A mother ought never to abandon her children. It seemed a fundamental truth. A woman, once owned by a man, ought never to seek her own freedom and happiness, if that man would not help her to achieve both. Yet it was unfair, unjust. Debbins, it seemed, had publicly humiliated his wife and threatened worse. What would her life have been like if she had defied him and stayed and renounced the one man who had seemed to offer her a bit of happiness? What would Dora Debbins’s life have been if she had stayed? And Agnes’s? One thing was for sure: he would not have met her if her mother had stayed with her husband all those years ago.

How strangely random a thing life was.

And now he had the problem of what to do with his knowledge. Tell Agnes, when she had specifically told him she did not want to know? Withhold it from her? He might have been tempted to do the latter if there was not the risk that someone else would unearth the details and spring them on her without any warning in some very public manner.

Anyway, he thought as he made his way closer to home, if this week of his marriage had taught him anything, it was that openness and truth between partners were necessary if the marriage was to have a chance of bringing them any sort of happiness.

Now that he knew, he must tell her, even if only the fact that he had found and visited her mother.

He did not look forward to telling her.

He wished suddenly that Lady Darleigh had not asked him last autumn to grant her the favor of dancing with her particular friend at the harvest ball, lest she be a wallflower. He wished he had not gone back without any coercion at all for the after-supper waltz and had not therefore allowed himself to be enchanted. And he wished Vince could have waited six months or so before proving to the world how fertile he was, so that the Survivors’ Club gathering this year might have been at Penderris Hall, as usual.

And he might as well carry this line of thinking to its logical and absurd conclusion. He wished he had not been injured in the war. He wished he had not been born. He wished his parents had not . . .

Well.

*   *   *

Agnes was dressed in one of her new evening gowns—white lace over silk of a deep rose pink. She had been dubious about it until Madeline had given it the nod of approval, though she had directed Madame Martin to abandon the large pink silk bows that were to have caught up the lace skirt in deep scallops and to replace them with tiny rosebuds and far shallower scallops. Agnes thought the neckline was a little too revealing, but her maid laughed at her misgivings.

“That’s not revealing,my lady,” she said. “You just wait till you see some.”

She had just finished pinning Agnes’s hair up in a style of smooth elegance when Flavian appeared in the dressing room doorway. He was dressed as he had been for the autumn ball last year in black and white with a silver waistcoat. He paused in the doorway and raised his quizzing glass to his eye. He looked her over unhurriedly.

“Enchanting, I feel compelled to say,” he said and lowered the glass.

Madeline smirked and bobbed a curtsy and slipped out of the room.

Agnes got to her feet and turned. She smiled at him. It seemed a little extravagant to her that they were both dressed with such formal magnificence for what was to be little more than a family gathering at Lord Shields’s home, but she was looking forward to the evening with some pleasure and only a little nervousness. The dowager’s sister, who had told Agnes to call her Aunt DeeDee, and her daughters had treated her with kindness earlier today, after an initial half hour or so of reserve. The rest of Flavian’s family would have had time to learn of his marriage and to recover from any surprise and disapproval at its suddenness. They would be polite, at the very least.

Flavian had been rather quiet at the early dinner of which they had partaken a couple of hours ago. He looked a bit somber now too, despite calling her enchanting.

She was feeling far more cheerful than she had this time yesterday. He had not loved Lady Hazeltine—not before he went to the Peninsula, anyway, and she suspected there were other lost memories surrounding that leave of his, when his brother had died and he had celebrated his betrothal, though not quite in that order. She did not know exactly what had happened, apart from the bare, indisputable facts, but she hoped to find out. For his sake, she hoped to find out.

He had propped his shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I paid a call earlier today,” he said. There was a longish pause, during which she raised her eyebrows. “On your mother.”

She wished then that she had not stood up. She reached behind her with one hand to clutch the edge of the dressing table.

“My mother.” She fixed her eyes on his.

“She was remarkably easy to f-find, actually,” he said. “Divorces are rare and always a bit scandalous, and people remember them. I did not expect, however, to discover her whereabouts so easily. She lives not too f-far from here.”

Agnes took a step back until she felt the dressing table bench with the backs of her knees. She sat down heavily.

“You went looking for my mother,” she said. “You went looking for her against my express wishes.”

“I did.” He was regarding her with hooded eyes.

“How dare you,” she said. “Oh, how dare you! You know that she has been dead to me for twenty years. You know that I do not want to hear of her or from her. Ever. I do not want to know her name or her whereabouts or her circumstances. I do not want to know. Oh, how dare you go asking about her and finding out who she is and where she is. And how dare you call upon her.”

She was alarmed to realize that she had raised her voice and was shouting at him. If she was not careful, she would be attracting the attention of her mother-in-law and the servants. She got to her feet and hurried toward him.

“How dare you!” she said more softly, thrusting her face close to his.

He did not move, even though she had come too close for comfort.

“Do you not think,” she said, “that if I had wanted to know more about her or to find her anytime in the years since I grew up, I could have done it? Do you not think Dora could have done it if she had wanted? What my mother did to Dora was ten times worse than what she did to me. She destroyed Dora’s whole life. And she must have caused our father unbearable pain and embarrassment. She must have hurt Oliver dreadfully. Do you think we could not have found her if we had wished? Any of us? We did not wish. I did not wish. I do not wish. She abandoned us, Flavian. For a lover. I hate her. Hate, do you hear me? But I do not enjoy hating. I choose rather not to remember her at all, not to think of her, not to be curious about her. I will never forgive you for finding her and going to see her.”

She was gasping out her words, trying not to let her voice rise again. She stopped talking and glared at him.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“How could you?” She brushed past him and went into her bedchamber. She stood at the foot of the bed, clutching the bedpost.

“Blocked memories, s-suppressed memories, memories we do not even know we are supposed to have—they all damage our lives, Agnes,” he said. “And our relationships.”

“This is about you, then, is it?” she asked him, whipping her head about to glare at him.

He had turned, though he still stood in the doorway. He looked broodingly at her.

“I think, rather, it is about us,” he said.

“Us?”

“You were the one who s-said more than once that we did not know each other,” he reminded her, “and that if we w-were to marry, we needed that knowledge. We married anyway, b-but you were right. We need to know each other.”

“And that gives you the right to pry into my past and seek out my mother?” she asked him.

“And we n-need to know ourselves,” he added.

“I know myself very well,” she retorted.

He did not say anything. But he shook his head.

His words repeated themselves in her head and left her feeling shaken. His knowledge of his own past, and therefore of himself, was marred by an uncertain memory. But that was not the same thing as a memory one had deliberately chosen to turn off for very good reason, was it?

“I will help you remember, if I can,” she said. “And we will work on our marriage. I am determined that we will.”

“You are determined,” he said. “You will help me r-remember. So that I will be all better, and everything will be well with our marriage. By all give on your part, all take on mine. Because you need nothing. Because you have never needed anything but a little quiet c-control over your world. You gave in b-briefly to the wonderful chaos of life by marrying me against all your better instincts, but now you can control your m-marriage by helping me remember—if there is more to remember.”

She turned suddenly to sit on the side of the bed, though she kept one hand on the bedpost.

“Is that why you went?” She was almost whispering. “To do something for me?”

“I thought perhaps you n-needed to know,” he said. “Even if what I discovered was no more savory than you expected. Even if the knowing did not change anything. Even if you never w-wanted to see her for yourself. I just thought you needed to know. So that your mind would no longer keep touching upon the wound that has been festering deep inside since you were a child.”

“Is that what has been happening?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I just thought it was something I could do for you.”

She gazed at him, and their eyes locked on each other’s.

“By the time I w-went, though,” he said, “there was another, more urgent reason.”

She continued to gaze.

“Divorces applied for by petition to Parliament are rare enough and p-public enough to be remembered,” he said. “Someone wanting to know more about a Mr. D-Debbins of Lancashire and asking a few questions would almost inevitably discover that he had once m-made such a petition and had b-been granted his divorce.”

Her eyes widened.

“I do not know to how many p-people you have mentioned your father’s name,” he said. “I m-mentioned it the afternoon I called upon Frome and his lady and Velma. I am sorry. It did not occur to m-me that—”

Agnes had jumped to her feet. “My father’s identity is no secret,” she said. “I am not ashamed of my father.”

“If the search for information was m-malicious,” he said, “then more will be discovered. It was easy enough for me to discover, Lord knows. There could be gossip, Agnes.”

Lady Hazeltine had done this, she realized. And, oh, her motives would be malicious. Agnes felt no doubt about that.

“Tonight?” she asked.

“Unlikely,” he said, “though even the fact that your father was d-divorced from your mother will cause talk, even among my family. I am sorry, but I had to w-warn you. If you would rather not go tonight but stay at home—”

“Stay at home?” She glared at him. “Cower at home, you mean? Never. And we are in danger of being late, which I understand is fashionable in town. I am not of London, however, or of the ton. I prefer to do my hosts the courtesy of being on time when I am expected or even early. Where are my shawl and my reticule?”

She brushed past him back into the dressing room, but he caught her by the arm as she passed. He was, amazingly, grinning.

“That’s my girl,” he said softly. “That’s my Agnes.”

And he kissed her hard and openmouthed on the lips before letting her go.

“Who is she?” she asked briskly as she picked up her things. “Just in case I should need the knowledge tonight. And where does she live?”

“Lady Havell,” he said, “wife of Sir Everard Havell. They live in Kensington. And he is not your father.”

She felt a little dizzy. Lady Havell. Sir Everard Havell. They were strangers to her. And she wished they might remain so. Kensington was very close.

She nodded and looked at him.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Flavian.”

He offered his arm and she took it.

. . . He is not your father.

Flavian would not have added that if he was not sure.

. . . He is not your father.