Claire Read online

  She looked up at him for the first time, at those blue eyes lined with pain and betrayal, and saw that she had put every line there. “Varian— ”

  “How could you?” came his soundless voice. “After what I have had to live down over my father, you could believe this— you could assign this sort of guilt to me? Without even giving me the benefit of a defense?”

  “Over your father?” she asked, frowning in perplexity.

  He laughed, humorlessly, shaking his head. “You don’t know? You don’t know what my father did?”

  “Varian, I— Please— ”

  “Doesn’t everyone in England know why he hanged? Doesn’t everyone know why I limp, why I carry the scars of India on my chest? Isn’t my whole life public knowledge, now that you have thrown this crowning piece of glory in my face, in George Canning’s library? Christ in Heaven, Claire— ” he said, that mocking voice suddenly breaking on her name. “Here.” He thrust the worn pages out of his hand. “Take it. Keep it next to your heart, for that is all,” he said, in a low, intense voice, “that you shall ever have of me.”

  “Varian, please— Will you listen to me?”

  “Listen?” He shook his head. “Isn’t that just what George Canning and I have been doing? Listening to you?”

  “No! Varian— Oh, god— Can you not even allow me to ask forgiveness?”

  She had known all along; Claire had known, even in the midst of those agonizing months in Portugal, after her father left her with nothing but this, that it could not be; she had believed, in her heart of hearts, that she was wrong, and yet she had feared so to face him, and ask for the truth, for fear of what she might hear, that she had allowed herself to continue believing, suspecting, guessing— anything was better than certainty! She had deluded herself into the certainty of nothing out of a fear of the truth. And if she had hated Varian and had known even as she did so that he was innocent, then she knew very well that he could hate her, and that she, Dear God, was guilty. Guilty of believing that he was less than what he was! Guilty of believing Varian Drew was less than honorable, when he was the epitome of honor itself.

  God help her— What had she done?

  “Forgive you?” her husband asked slowly, and met her eyes as the carriage slowed to a halt in Cavendish Square. “Forgive you?” he repeated, his face lined with the rampage of some unbearable emotion. “When you could not do the same for me?”

  She knew, then; ice. In his voice was the ultimate dismissal of everything, of whatever fragile, intangible feeling that had ever been between them. In some calm, numb half-life at which she arrived in that instant, she lowered her eyes and smiled slightly; there was not a tear in her eye, nor was there one in her heart, nothing, in fact, except this sudden vast expanse of nothing.

  Without a word she reached around her neck and drew out a chain which she always wore there, beneath her chemise; she lifted it over her head, over her hat, and sighed once, soundlessly, feeling the last of life pass out of her as she took the chain, and the ring that hung on it, and placed it gently in his hand as she rose and stepped outside.

  A footman opened the door; she went silently, unseeing, past him, past Claudia, and Cleo and Clytie and Chloe, laughing and chatting in the drawing room, and went up the stairs to her chamber and closed the door.

  And in the carriage a tall, broad-shouldered young man sat very still, his guinea-gold hair shimmering, his face grim, his blue eyes closed, something grasped tightly in his hand. After a long moment of battle, he went inside to his library, closed the door, and sat down at his desk. Opening his hand, he stared at the exquisite and delicate ring lying there, the chain entangled over his strong brown fingers, the gold still warm where it had lain against her heart.

  chapter nine

  An Unhappy Parting

  There could not ever, not anywhere, have been a lovelier bride than Miss Claudia Ffawlkes on her wedding day. Tony Merrill looked up in that placid way of his from the midst of Claire Drew’s exotic garden and saw his beloved Claudia, flowers in her hair, a breathtakingly lovely vision in white silk and pearls, coming toward him down the terrace steps and across the cool green grass, and within his heart was a strong feeling that his bride would certainly not have recognized. His gray eyes fixed themselves on that delicate face as she came toward him on Varian Drew’s arm, and his friends, her sisters, the garden, everything else faded away into insignificance.

  Except Varian Drew.

  It jangled at his nerves during his wedding ceremony; he loved Varian more than any other man on earth, more than he could have loved the brother he had never had, and in the past few years, with Varian’s life turned upside down and India between them and a whole world gone by, and with Tony’s own placid existence changed finally and irrevocably by the gentle creature on his arm this noon, about to become his wife, the two men had become not less important to each other, but in that indefinable way of brotherhood, they had become closer.

  And Varian Drew was in agony.

  Tony was married; he saw his wife’s calm blue gaze lift itself to his face, and he bent and brushed his lips across hers, rather as he had that day in his library, willing himself to allow Claudia learn to love him slowly and well, as all good things of life were meant to be. Then it was done; she was his. Tony Merrill was wed at age five-and-thirty to the most enchanting, desirable, logical, reasonable, intelligent— and quiet— woman of his acquaintance, and he was, at last, whole.

  He accepted all her sisters’ kisses and embraces, and the handshakes of all his new brothers, and a solemn thump on his arm from Clytie’s eldest son, who was just shy of two, and they went inside, laughing, to drink up the champagne punch and eat up the cakes and sandwiches and generally make the newly-wedded couple blush.

  Varian disappeared; Tony glanced into Drew’s library as he passed with Timothy Dickinson and Cleo’s John Haversham on either side discussing the merits of a particular roan Haversham had just acquired, but the library was empty. Nor was Varian in the drawing room, which they had opened up to accommodate all of the guests, friends of the family, some few of Tony’s friends, who had been invited to Banning House.

  The host of the party seemed to have left it.

  “Claudia, darling,” Tony said after an hour, catching her arm as she passed him in the midst of a cheerful confusion, at the height of the happy celebration, “have you seen Varian? In fact, have you even seen Claire lately?”

  “Claire’s in the kitchens, darling,” Claudia responded without thinking, and smiled up at him as she continued toward the punch bowl across the dining room, where Clytie and Cleo, who was expecting her first child in November, were discussing nurseries and nannies. Smiling faintly at that casual endearment, he watched that slender figure go by; she had been so long in calling him Tony that he had never expected to graduate to darling quite so easily.

  Delightful woman; Tony allowed his gaze to linger for a moment longer on that small waist, on the curve of her arm as she lifted the punch ladle and smiled calmly at something one of her sisters had said.

  He glanced over the room once again, wondering vaguely if he ought to go and look for his oldest friend, now his brother-by-marriage. Merrill’s placid smile faded at the recollection of Drew’s eyes this morning, coming toward him with Claudia on his arm, as Drew passed his wife Claire. There had been a tiny second of energy, fiery, unreleased, uncontrollable, in Varian’s eyes, and then a closed, unreadable expression had settled over his face, his mouth set with pain just as when he had come to Merrill House straight out of prison, his foot so infected and swollen that even the doctor had flinched.

  Tony saw Claire a little later, just as Lady Swaffingham teetered over to say farewell to her hostess as she left. As she patted Claire’s arm affectionately, her aged, reedy voice suddenly leapt out toward Tony across a room of chatter and laughter; “He’ll be home before you know it, my dear,” and then the old lady turned imperially to Stiles and requested her carriage.

  It took Ton
y almost a quarter of an hour to reach Claire. His progress was slow, owing to the handshakes and congratulations to which he had to respond as he crossed the room. Then Alvanley stopped him to discuss a paper on John Milton recently presented at the Royal Academy, and when Merrill reached the hallway, Claire had disappeared again.

  By then he was determined to talk to her; he gave over all pretense of casual interception and searched out the drawing room and dining room and the library, and finally found her, alone, standing, leaning really, on the open door to the terrace.

  “Claire, my dear— ”

  “Oh, Tony!” She turned a pleasant face toward him and smiled up at him, but did not face his eyes. “What a lovely wedding! You cannot imagine how wonderful it is to have all of us married off at last!” she said, in a light, laughing voice.

  “Claire, where’s Varian?” Merrill asked, without preamble.

  The smile disappeared, but somehow she retained the lightness. “Didn’t he tell you? He’s left for— for Portugal. Lord Canning asked him to go down as interpreter for a few weeks. He— he meant to say good-bye, I am sure— ”

  And he sensed in that small phrase that Varian had neglected to say goodbye not only to him, but also to his wife, and that something, Tony was certain, was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  “To Portugal?”

  “Yes; Tony, please excuse me. I mustn’t stay away too long,” she said, turning away from him and going back in to the party.

  Merrill pursed his lips in that deliberate and placid way of his, vaguely considering a basket of violets on the low terrace wall, and then turned lazily and strolled inside again, greeting Robert Shellingham with a firm handshake. He merely laughed when Shellingham asked him how much he would take for that rumored first edition he had of Cymbeline.

  The last of the guests lingered on until almost three o’clock; Chloe had allowed her small son to come downstairs for a while with Clytie’s toddler, and the two children added a lightness to the party that almost made Tony imagine that he was in the country, in Essex, home again. He was thinking of how pleasant Claire’s wedding party had been, and recalling suddenly Clytie’s stricken face that day almost three years ago, and how everyone’s lives had toppled over then, and it had all happened in the midst of one of John-gardener’s merry dancing tunes.

  Today there had been quiet string music from behind a screen in the salon, almost inaudible, cool and classical, very much, he thought to himself with a small smile, like his wife, just as John-gardener’s merry tunes had been very much like that plump, happy child that Varian had married so long ago. It was then that he noticed Claire was gone.

  “Claudia, I wish you will go upstairs and see if Claire has laid down,” Tony said quietly, pulling his bride a little away from the laughter over one of his new nephews’ antics. “Did you know Varian’s gone off to Portugal?” he inquired blandly.

  “To Portugal?” repeated Claudia, blinking up at him.

  “Something about an interpreter; I didn’t get much out of Claire. Varian left without a word. Did something happen between them this morning?”

  “No,” Claudia said, frowning slightly. “I don’t think I even saw Varian until the wedding. Claire has been with me since before breakfast.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Tony,” she said, her serious blue eyes fixing themselves on his face, “I don’t know.”

  “Will you go and see if she is upstairs? Perhaps she will consent to talk to me for a bit?”

  “You’re worried, aren’t you?” asked his wife, for the first time being very certain of someone else’s feelings.

  “A little,” Tony admitted calmly.

  “Very well,” Claudia nodded, and went quietly upstairs.

  She was gone less than ten minutes; Tony was watching for her, and saw those blue eyes wide with horror as she came down the last two or three steps, clinging to the banister. He went quietly toward her and drew her away from the laughter in the drawing room, beneath the stairs, into the cool shadows of the hallway.

  “Claudia— darling— ”

  She had covered her face with her hands, shaking; he took her instantly into his arms and held her tightly, wishing rather philosophically that he could have supposed it possible to marry into this family without an attendant disaster on one’s wedding day. “What it is, my dear? Is she all right?”

  Claudia shook her head; “No, she is not,” she whispered in a shaking voice, drawing away from him, “all right. She would not let me in. I— She would not even answer me. I went around through Varian’s chambers and the door to the dressing rooms was unlatched, and I— Oh, Tony, I think she— I think my sister has just tried to kill herself,” she said blankly, with tears of sudden feeling standing on her lashes, staring up at those calm gray eyes as his grasp on her arms tightened and the gray eyes burned beneath a sudden frown.

  “My god— ”

  “She was drinking down a glass of something— I— I don’t know why I did it. I knocked it out of her hand.”

  “What— ”

  “It was laudanum,” Claudia said, then, with certainty.

  Tony held his wife most securely against his chest as he drew in a deep, unhappy breath. “Damn.”

  “I think we had better go upstairs. She won’t speak to me. Consuela is with her now. Oh, Tony— I— ”

  He kissed her quickly and sent her to the kitchens for a tea tray, and then he went, deliberately, silently, in that graceful way of his, upstairs, and opened Claire’s door without knocking.

  She was sitting in the windowseat overlooking the garden, staring out at nothing; she did not move as he entered and closed the door behind him. There was the sickly sweet smell of opium hovering just on the edge of sense, and a broken glass on the carpet in the midst of a large stain. He came around it with hardly more than a glance and sat down in a chair across from her.

  “Well, Claire, I see that I was right,” Tony said, sighing briefly.

  There was no reply; Claire Drew did not breathe, or move, or in any way acknowledge his presence, but simply gazed outside as if entranced.

  “Something has happened,” Tony said after a moment. “Suppose you might tell me about it?”

  She stared out at the garden as if she were the only human being left in the world. With sudden intuition, Tony realized that in her world, she was quite alone.

  “Varian’s left, and I see that you’re upset over it,” he remarked.

  There was no answer.

  “Claire,” he said, and sighed again and raised his eyebrows slightly. He searched around in that magnificent mind of his for some means of entry into this world of hers. “The letters,” Tony said suddenly. “Has Varian found out about the letters?” He knew nothing about what had really happened, but he recalled Varian saying that she had asked him why he did it, and then had said something about a letter, or somesuch, that had had Varian in such a quandary for weeks.

  She made a tiny sound; he heard Claire whisper, “Yes,” without moving, hardly moving her lips, with hardly a breath of sound.

  “And is that why he has gone off to Portugal?”

  She turned her head slightly, as if realizing for the first time that he had come in, and who he was, and that someone was speaking to her. For a long moment she stared at him, and then she said, “Tony?”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  Claire hesitated. Tony could almost see her forming the words in her mind before she spoke. At last she asked, in a small, steady voice, “What did Varian’s father do?”

  He blinked; he swallowed hard and drew in an uneasy breath and, for the moment, was not at all placid. “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head. “He was— hanged?”

  The calm gentleman frowned slightly at the toe of his boot. “Yes, he was,” he said slowly. “He was convicted of a crime. But before the trial he sold off everything he owned and lost it all on a single horse race at Ascot, and then came home, here to this house, and tried to shoot him
self. Varian found him; there was a struggle, and Varian was shot in the foot. Varian’s father was held in gaol in Fleet Street, and Varian himself went to debtors’ prison a few days later; his mother had died of a seizure, blessedly, I have often thought. That was the summer of 1804. I didn’t find out about the whole thing until a year later, when your father sent me word of it. Oh, I knew of Lord Banning’s trial, and all, but the rest of it was kept pretty quiet. Lady Swaffingham, you know.”

  Her customarily rosy face devoid of color in the south window in the afternoon light, Claire asked slowly, “What sort of crime was it?”

  Merrill grimaced. “Treason. He was hanged for treason. Drew’s father was selling English naval secrets to Napoleon in Egypt.”

  Tony was not prepared to see her draw away, her eyes wide and staring, as if he had struck her; her eyes closed in sudden shock, and in a terrible torturous voice he heard her say, “Oh my god,” as she raised her hands to cover her face, and turned away from him.

  He laid his hand on her shoulder. “Claire, my dear, come and lie down and rest just a bit, won’t you? Claudia is bringing up some tea, and then you’re going to tell it all to me, and perhaps I can make things a little better, for I have known Varian a long time.” She allowed him to help her up, and he led her over to her bed and laid her down, then took off her shoes and drew the coverlet over her. “There, now. Claudia, darling,” Tony said, seeing his wife come inside and meeting her quiet gaze in a moment of silent communication. “Would you like a cup of tea, Claire, if Claudia will pour it out for you?”