CHAPTER EIGHT #3
Deuce take it, had his erstwhile conduct been so outrageous that it seemed impossible to his friend that he could have fallen in love?
Not that he had recognised the condition in himself.
Now his unprecedented distaste for the season made sense, as did his avoidance of women which had been noted by his friends.
“Yes, he is in love,” averred Unice, “although he has but just discovered it himself. Isn’t that so, Denzell?”
A faint laugh escaped him. “I was so blind, yes. Much good may the discovery do me, however.”
“Don’t say that. All will be well. I am determined that it should be. Particularly if I discover that her feelings match your own, as I am certain will be found to be the case.”
“Hey! Not so fast, Unice. If my fool of a friend fancies himself in love, that is one thing. But I’m dashed if I’ll have you involve yourself in the matter.”
Unice stared up at him. “I cannot believe I am hearing you say such a thing, Osmond. After all that I owe Verena — and Denzell is your best friend.”
“But, dash it, Unice, you know what the fellow’s like,” protested her spouse.
“It’s true, Ossie,” Denzell cut in, unwontedly meek. “I was a flirt. I did at the start intend just what you imagine with Verena. But all that is changed.”
Osmond whistled. “You don’t mean you really are in love with the chit?” Then he drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t tell me you are thinking of marrying her.”
“If I could ever persuade her to have me, yes.”
“She will have you, Denzell,” Unice urged. “You have only to be patient.”
“You’re mad,” Osmond said. “You know nothing about the girl. What is her background? Who is she? Dash it, Hawk, how can you even think of marrying her?”
“What do you imagine I care for all of that?”
“You have to care, dash it. You’ve a title to think of.”
Denzell almost snorted. What nonsense was this? “Deuce take it, Ossie, I’m only going to be a baron. Do you imagine I am like old man Chaceley, too high in the instep to think of anything but a good match?”
He stopped, aware that both his host and hostess were staring at him in amazement.
“Chaceley?” repeated Osmond in a blank tone.
“Denzell, do you realise what you have just said?” asked Unice, awed. “Who is ‘old man Chaceley’?”
“He means that martinet who is his neighbour at Pittlesthorp,” Osmond explained. “Dash it, Hawk, why in the world didn’t you think of that before?”
“I did,” Denzell replied, shrugging. “I thought of it at Teresa’s wedding. I tackled both Kenrick and his father on the matter, but neither seemed to think there was any relationship.”
“But you do,” Unice said shrewdly, watching him. “Don’t you?”
“Unice, I simply don’t know. All I can tell you is that Bevis Chaceley seemed interested, and then just brushed it off. It was rather a feeling I had, than any firm idea.”
“What feeling?” she demanded.
Denzell gave a self-conscious laugh. “A ridiculous feeling, born I am sure out of my then unrecognised emotions towards Verena. I felt as if they had cast Verena off.”
Osmond moved to the dresser, seized a glass, and poured himself a brandy. Lifting the vessel, he spoke in his most determined voice, just as if, Denzell thought, he had never made any previous objection.
“There is nothing for it, Unice. You will have to go and beard the girl. This matter must be sifted. Ferret out every bit of information you can.”
Verena received her guest in the little parlour.
She was wary, and a little sorry that Mama and Adam should have chosen to go down to the Rooms this Saturday morning, for Unice’s demeanour indicated she was going to touch on matters Verena would prefer not to discuss.
It was clearly dangerous to be private with her today. Nor was she mistaken.
“Verena, you look terrible,” Unice began by way of opening. “So pale and wan.”
Oh, heavens. She knew how haggard she looked, for the mirror in her bedchamber had told her so, the paleness of her features emphasised by the plain white muslin gown.
It was why she had chosen to remain at home.
She should have denied herself, only Unice was too kind a friend to be served so shabbily.
“I have had the headache,” she offered. “It — it kept me awake the better part of the night.”
“The headache,” repeated Unice in the flattest of tones.
She leaned forward and reached across to the other chair, pressing the hand that lay on its wooden arm.
“Dear Verena, you will not fob me off with such a taradiddle, so do not think it. Headache indeed! You are greatly troubled, are you not? What is the matter, Verena?”
Verena was obliged to force down a rising lump in her throat before she could speak. “There is — there is nothing the matter, Unice. Beyond the headache, that is.”
But Unice was not to be deflected. “Oh, Verena, how can you? After you have sat at my bedside all through my toiling with little Julia. We cannot be anything but intimate now. Pray don’t reject my friendship.”
Verena swallowed. She managed a faint smile. “I could not do so, Unice. Indeed, I am grateful for — for your concern. But you mistake —”
“It is Denzell, is it not?” broke in Unice with candour.
Verena closed her eyes, bringing up her fingers to her cheeks, which seemed to burn. She bit at her lips to stop their trembling, and became aware of Unice’s fingers grasping her arm.
“Well, he said he had blundered, but I had not thought he had overset you as much as this,” she uttered.
Verena’s eyes flew open, and she regarded the other woman in doubt and concern. “He told you?”
Unice nodded. “I found him last night, starting on the brandy. He was in such despair, poor Denzell.”
An instant stab of conscience attacked her. “Don’t say that! Pray don’t say that, Unice.”
“He loves you, Verena.”
Not that again. Please not that. She shook her head. “No, he cannot love me. I told him he must not. He does not love me.”
“Well, I have known him a very long time, and I have never seen him behave this way over any girl.”
It was the last thing Verena wanted to hear after last night. Betsey thought she had cried herself to sleep, but she had lain prone with exhaustion, unable to speak or move as the maid covered her and went away.
Sleep had come, fitfully. But mostly she had thought.
Thought and thought and thought through those long night hours, trying to persuade herself Denzell had mistaken some other feeling for love.
He did not know her. She had never given him anything but the false picture of herself that she gave to the world.
How was it possible that he might love her?
It must be some image he carried, some creature he had summoned up in his own mind.
But it was not her. And now, when she was tired and wretched, and on tenterhooks at the expectation of Nathaniel’s arrival — though she was trusting he could not get here for another couple of days — here it was again.
“Unice,” she said in a voice of strict control, “do not encourage him in this theme, I beg of you. If it was true — if he did indeed entertain such feelings for me, it could only lead to his unhappiness.”
“I don’t believe you mean that, Verena,” Unice said. “If you wish to know what I really think, it is that you care more for Denzell than you dare to say.”
A flare of emotion ripped through Verena.
An emotion she did not recognise. She felt her own trembling and a bursting in her chest. But the little corner of coherent thought that still remained urged her to refute this impossible idea.
She thrust the words up through a throat that seemed to rasp at every sound.
“You would wish to imply that I am in love with him, is that it?”
“Yes, Verena, yes!”
A harsh sound that might have been a laugh escaped Verena’s lips. “How little you know, Unice.”
She rose from the chair, pushing herself to the window and staring out at the green of the trees and the way the sun dappled through their leaves to fall in uneven shadows on the ground below.
The rough passage of feeling that had torn through her but a moment before was subsiding.
A hollowness was descending upon her chest. That emptiness she knew she could never fill.
Never — because Nathaniel had forever closed the doors on the possibility.
“I have no heart with which to love,” she said into the glass of the window, her tone bleak.
“That cannot be true,” cried Unice on a note of distress. “You have such warmth, Verena. You proved that the night my Julia was born.”
Verena turned slowly, and all the tortured past was reflected in her countenance for Unice to see.
“Look at me, Unice. Is this an object for devotion? I have grown too cold, too hard — too bitter. I cannot love — and I cannot bear to be loved.” She saw doubt and concern in Unice’s face, and dredged up a faint smile.
“You would do better to advise Denzell to forget me, than to try to win me to his heart.”
There was a moment of bleak silence. Then all at once, Unice shook her head, rising to face her.
“No! No, I won’t believe it. You speak as if you are past redemption, past all change. That cannot be. You are young, Verena.”
Verena sighed. “I feel a hundred today.” She moved a little and reached for Unice’s hands. “Pray give it up, Unice. Even were it possible — were I changeable as you insist — there is no power on earth that would persuade me to leave Mama.”
Unice returned the pressure of her hands. “I understand, my dear. But surely, when your Mama is well again, when she returns home…”
Verena dropped her hands, turning away. “She will never return home.”
“But Verena, you don’t mean that you intend — Lord above, you cannot devote your entire life to your mother.”
“But I will,” said Verena fiercely, turning on her. “I had rather lose ten thousand chances of happiness than see Mama endangered yet again.”
“Endangered?” echoed Unice, blinking at her. “I don’t understand.”