CHAPTER EIGHT #2
Overwhelmingly, the cumulative effects of the night struck at her. She must get away. She could not talk to them now. She must be alone.
She tried to smile and put out a wavering hand. “We shall — we shall deal with it when the time comes. Pray forgive me. I am tired … I must go to bed.”
Turning, she walked out of the room. She did not see Betsey’s concerned features watch her pass by.
She did not see anything at all, except the blurry outline of the wall and her own bedchamber door.
She managed to open this and to stagger within, the cloak dropping from about her to the floor.
But it was by feel alone that she found her bed and sank down upon it, her shoulders sagging, the blinding tears wetting her cheeks as she choked on the sobbing breaths rising up through her tightened throat, and tried with useless fingers to pluck off the mittens from her hands.
She did not notice Betsey enter the room. But when the maid sat down beside her and those firm hands — hands that had so often cradled the forlorn little girl she once had been — took hold of her, removed the mittens, and then drew her against the comforting breast, she yielded instantly.
“There, my dove,” crooned the maid, rocking her. “There, my little one.”
Verena clutched her, the painful sobs rasping in her throat as she tried to speak. “Oh — Betsey. What has he — made of me?”
Betsey stroked her hair, held her tight, and patted her. Yet her voice was puzzled. “Who, my dove? What is it you mean?”
“Nathaniel,” came the choked reply. “I am marble, Betsey — and that is his work.”
The latch clicked behind Denzell’s back as he slipped the front door to in the silent house.
It was early yet, but the household must already be asleep, except perhaps for the servants waiting to put Osmond and Unice to bed when they returned.
For himself, he was glad to think he had given his valet leave for the evening.
He did not wish to go to bed just yet. What he wished for was a bottle of his host’s brandy.
A candle in a silver holder awaited him on a side table by the parlour door. He took it up and crossed into the little breakfast parlour, where he knew Osmond kept a decanter handy on the dresser for just such an occasion.
The hand with which he poured himself a glass was not quite steady, and he swore as a little of the golden liquid ran down the outside of the glass. He wiped the glass with his pocket handkerchief, and was about to replace the stopper on the decanter when he paused.
He might as well go to the devil, might he not?
Laying down the stopper, he seized the decanter, dragged a chair out from the table and, stripping off his russet coat and flinging it aside, slumped into the chair.
Then he sat, a silhouette against the candle on the dresser, the glass cradled in his hands, the decanter before him.
But he did not drink. Resting an elbow on the table, he dropped his forehead into one hand, half covering his eyes, and stayed so, helpless against the images that crowded one another through his mind: images to haunt his heart and stretch ahead of him into a future promising nothing but defeat.
“Denzell?”
He jumped, dropping his hand. His hostess stood in the doorway, clad in a pretty pink dressing-robe, and holding up a candle. Denzell rose at once. “I thought you were still at the dance.”
She came further into the room. “I returned early to feed my little Julia. Is not Osmond with you?”
Denzell shook his head. “I don’t know where he is. I have not seen him since —” He stopped, recalling just when he had last seen his friend, at the moment when he had pirated Verena away from him.
Unice came closer, holding the candle up. There was concern in her features. “Denzell, you look dreadful. What in the world is the matter?”
A great sigh escaped him, and he sank back down into the chair, looking away from her. But it did not occur to him to prevaricate. He was glad rather to have someone to whom to unburden his soul.
“Oh, Unice, I am sick at heart. I have ruined everything. Though indeed I had no intention — I did not even know … which was why, I believe. I shocked myself into a too precipitate declaration and — oh, the deuce, I wish I were dead!”
Unice tutted. She retrieved his coat from the floor and laid it on the back of a chair. Then, with an air of determination, she pulled out another chair for herself and sat, setting down the candle on the table between them. Laying her hand over Denzell’s, she squeezed it a little.
“Come now, it cannot be as bad as all that. You have had some sort of disagreement with Verena, I take it?”
“Disagreement!”
“Well, what then?”
“I kissed her.”
Unice sighed in relief. “Lord, Denzell, is that all?”
He looked round. “It is not all. And I could have done nothing more prejudicial to my chances.”
“Oh, fiddle. I dare say she may have been angry with you, but —”
“Oh, no, she was not angry. She was —” He stopped, sighing again. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how to describe it. She responded to me at first. She melted like snow in a thaw. For a moment it was quite as if we belonged together, as if she loved me just as intensely as I love her.”
Unice sat up, clasping her hands together. “Then you do love her. Oh, Denzell, that is splendid!”
“Splendid, ha!” Denzell seized his glass, and tossed off the brandy, putting the vessel down with a snap.
“Do you know what she said? After kissing me back with all the fervour I could wish, mark you, she said she could never love me, or anyone, and that I should take my love elsewhere for she would never accept it.”
“She said that?”
“And a great deal more besides. She even said she was sorry. Sorry!”
“But, Denzell, what is there in that to distress you so?” exclaimed Unice. “It is obvious she was denying her own feelings.”
Struck, Denzell gazed at her. Was it possible? “What makes you say so?”
“Consider a moment. Here is Verena, whom we know to be sorely troubled by some difficulty that concerns her mama. Has she shown any warmth towards any gentleman? No, she has not. Yet when you kiss her —”
“I only kissed her,” put in Denzell, on the defensive, “because I had that instant realised I had fallen in love with her. I told her so, too.”
“Even better. You declare yourself, and kiss her, and she responds favourably. I promise you, she could not have done so had she been indifferent. She must have struggled at once, and likely struck you into the bargain. She didn’t, did she?”
“Not with words,” agreed Denzell, reliving a little of the painful dismay he had experienced at Verena’s wholehearted rejection.
But Unice had not finished. “Denzell, you must forgive me for speaking so free, but think of this. Verena may be master of her emotions under normal circumstances, but I cannot suppose she can have had an opportunity to learn to control those sort of sensations.”
A glow of warmth drove away some of Denzell’s gloom.
Even the memory of Verena in his arms had the power to move him.
What if she, too, had been conscious of an equal strength of passion?
He recalled how the cool, calm, and exquisitely polite Verena had vanished at his touch. A surge of hope rose in his chest.
“You mean her true feelings were in that kiss?”
“Which she afterwards denied,” agreed Unice. “Out of confusion, in all probability.”
The hope sank a little. Confusion, perhaps. But something more. Something so strong he doubted he had power to shift it, just as Verena had said. He could hear her voice now: I wear an iron shield.
“Not confusion, Unice,” he said, “but the bugbear that plagues her life. The thing that threw up this mask she wears. How the devil am I to find my way past that? I don’t even know what it may be.”
Unice sighed. “Would I could help you, but I cannot. She has not confided in me.”
A thought struck him, and he seized his hostess’s hand. “But she might, Unice. Especially now. If you were to go to her on my behalf, pleading my excuses and conveying my regrets — for she cannot realise but that you must be privy to my actions —”
“Yes, but will she then not believe I will pass on anything she says to you?” objected Unice.
“You will, in any event,” Denzell pointed out, “and I will not have her deceived. It may even be that she will feel safe enough to send a message by you in that manner.”
Unice blinked at him. “Safe?”
Denzell groaned, leaning back in his chair with a gesture of helplessness. “There’s the rub, Unice. She is afraid of me — I don’t know why.”
“If that is so,” Unice mused, “then it must be because of the way she feels about you.”
If he could but believe that. He shook his head, saying in despairing tones, “What’s the use of speculating? I feel as though I don’t know anything any more.”
Unice patted his hand. “Leave it to me. I promise you, if I discover nothing else, I will find out what her feelings are towards you.”
A disgusted voice spoke from the doorway. “Don’t tell me you are allowing yourself to become embroiled in Hawk’s amours, Unice.”
They both jumped, turning towards the intruder. Unice was the first to find her tongue, scolding at once. “Osmond, what a fright you gave me!”
“Never mind that,” said her husband, strolling into the room. “A pretty scene, I must say. I ought to call you out, Hawk, drinking alone with my wife in the middle of the night. In shirt-sleeves, too. And she in her dressing gown!”
“Oh, be quiet, Ossie,” said Denzell. “I am in no mood for your nonsensical gibes tonight.”
“Osmond,” said Unice, rapping on the table, “Denzell has had a most upsetting evening. He is in difficulties with Verena.”
“Ha!” triumphed Osmond. “Let that be a lesson to you not to cut in on a fellow when he is about to dance. Unice, do you know what —”
“Osmond, he is in love with Verena.”
Arrested, Osmond gaped at his friend. “In love? Hawk?”
“What the devil is so fantastic about it?” demanded Denzell.