“Marcel.” Viola was on her feet though she did not approach him. His head jerked away from the window as though he had only just realized he had an audience.
“I cannot remember much of the following hours or even days,” he said. “I do not recall who pulled me away from her. I do remember her sister coming and her brother-in-law—Jane and Charles. I cannot remember what they said to me, though they said a great deal. I can remember the funeral. My mother was there—she was still alive then—and my brother and sister, though they were still very young. I cannot remember their leaving, or if, indeed, they left before I did. I can remember not daring to go near the babies lest I lose my temper with them and harm them too. I cannot remember leaving. I can remember only being gone. And remaining gone.”
Viola had closed the distance between them and laid a hand against his back. He did not turn.
“Marcel,” she said, “it was an accident.”
“I caused her death,” he said. “I opened the window. I shoved her away from me. If I had not taken either of those actions, she would not have died. She would still be alive. My children would have grown up with parents. All this would not have happened. I would not have caused you unutterable embarrassment.”
He turned and looked at her, his face hard and bleak in the candlelight. He had been blaming himself all these years for what had been essentially an accident. Yes, he had pushed his wife, and there was never any real excuse for that. But his punishment had been vast and all consuming. He had judged himself solely responsible for his wife’s death and for depriving his children of their mother. And so he had deprived them of their father too, the foolish man. He had cut out his heart and become the man the ton knew and she had known.
“I want you to promise me something,” she said.
He raised one eyebrow.
“No.” She frowned. “I do not want a promise. Only an . . . assurance that you will give serious thought to something. Had nothing happened that morning, the quarrel between you would have been long forgotten by now, replaced by layer upon layer of other memories. You were not to blame, Marcel, except for pushing your wife out of the way. The catastrophic consequences were unforeseeable and quite accidental. You did not intend that she would die or even be hurt. I want you to forgive yourself.”
“And live happily ever after, I suppose.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a parody of a smile.
“Forgive yourself,” she said. “For the sake of your children.”
They gazed at each other for a few moments and she wondered why on earth this was happening. Why had he set her free tonight if this was to follow? What did it mean? She supposed it meant nothing beyond a certain need in him to unburden himself. But why her?
“And I want you to promise me something,” he said, “or not to promise. Merely to give it serious thought. You learned when you were very young and married a scoundrel to suppress love. Not to kill it, but to push it deep. You love your children far more than they probably realize. For two brief weeks in Devonshire you allowed yourself some temporary escape, but now you have command of yourself again. I want you to think about . . . loving, Viola. About allowing yourself to love a man who will love you in return. There is such a man for you. You will find him if you will allow yourself to.”
She gazed at him in amazement. “This,” she said, “from you?”
“It is as suspect as all the wisdom Polonius poured out to his children, I must admit,” he said. “Wisdom from a foolish man. But it was wisdom, nevertheless. Shakespeare was perhaps a perceptive man—and I am hardly the first person ever to have noticed that.”
He was referring to Hamlet. And he was mocking himself. And surely her too—there is such a man for you. You will find him if you will allow yourself to. I want you to think about loving . . . a man who will love you in return.
He took her right hand in his, raised it briefly to his lips, released it, and walked past her and out of her room without another word. He closed the door quietly behind him.
Viola turned blindly back to the bed and snatched up the pink bag to hold against her mouth again. If it was possible to feel more wretched, she did not want to know it.
Twenty-one
For the first half hour Viola could do nothing but draw air into her lungs and expel it, over and over again. If she did not concentrate upon breathing, she felt she would simply forget to do it—or perhaps she would be too tempted to let herself forget. If she watched her breathing, counted her breaths, kept her eyes on the scenery passing by the carriage window, perhaps she would be able to put enough distance between herself and . . . and what? But she would not let her mind search for the appropriate word. There was only the feeling that if she could allow enough distance to pass by all would be well again.
Abigail, gazing from the window on her side, was mercifully silent.
It had been awkward. No one in her family had seemed to know if they would stay a day or two longer as originally planned or follow immediately after her. Her leaving before any of them must have appeared incredibly bad mannered since she was their reason for being there. But she could not worry about that. She seemed to have established the habit in the last while of leaving when she ought to stay, of making an utter pain of herself to those whose worst sin was that they loved her.
She had shaken hands with all of Marcel’s family and thanked them for the welcome they had extended. Bertrand had surprised her by kissing her on the cheek. Estelle had hugged her tightly and clung wordlessly for several moments before doing the same with Abigail.
Viola had hugged her own family amid bustle and overly cheerful farewells. Sarah had kissed her on the lips, her own little ones puckered. Winifred had hugged hard and raised a plain, shining face.
“I wanted to tell you about the start of Robinson Crusoe, Grandmama,” she said. “But maybe by Christmas I will be able to tell you about the whole book. We are all going to Cousin Wren’s for Christmas.”
“Or you could write to me after each chapter,” Viola had suggested.
“Mama says I have better penmanship than she does,” Winifred had replied. “But I do not think that is correct, for hers is perfect.”
Jacob had frowned and released some wind.
Marcel had not appeared at the breakfast table or during all the bustle of leave-taking that followed it. Viola had willed him to stay out of sight until after she left. And she had fought panic at the possibility that he would do just that. She and Abigail had been inside the carriage, the door closed, her coachman climbing up to the box, when he had finally appeared at the top of the steps under the portico—remote, austere, immaculately elegant. He had not hurried down the steps to bid her farewell. Instead, meeting her eyes through the window, he had inclined his head, raised his right hand not quite to the level of his shoulder, and shifted his gaze to give the coachman the nod to leave.
And that had been that. That was that. Inhale, exhale, watch the miles slip past. Home and safety awaited, and broken hearts mended. Indeed, it was a silly concept—a broken heart. It was all feelings, and feelings were all in the head. There was no reality to them. Reality was her daily life, her friends, her family, her many, many blessings.
Harry. She swallowed and wondered if there was a letter from him.
And finally, after half an hour or so, she let go of her concentration upon her breathing and trusted it to look after itself. She turned her head to look at Abigail.