CHAPTER TEN
Verena’s pulse quickened. Oh, but this was too dangerous. She snatched her hand away, and got up. He rose too, and she faced him, her barriers up, although she felt as if her mask could not anywhere be found. Not in this man’s presence. Not any more.
“The risk is too great, Denzell,” she uttered roughly. “Besides, even were it possible, were you to find some way to change me, I could not leave Mama. She needs me.”
“That I appreciate,” he conceded.
“Then don’t speak of this again,” she pleaded. “I must go back now.” She hesitated, and managed a. slight smile. “I do thank you.”
Denzell shook his head. “Don’t. And you are premature. I will escort you home.”
From this determination he would not be moved, and Verena accepted his arm with gratitude.
The remembrance that she could not leave Mama had brought back the present problem to her mind.
Yet she was eased in having told her tale, and found herself much less agitated, although still nervous of the outcome of the enforced private conference.
Denzell left her at the front door, and she knocked in some trepidation.
It was opened almost immediately by Mrs Quirk, the landlady.
The woman was looking quite agog, Verena noted, but she refrained from asking any questions.
The reason for this was not far to seek, for as Verena started up the stairs she discovered Betsey waiting for her above, in full sight of Mrs Quirk.
“A rare day’s entertainment for her,” whispered Betsey, seizing her young mistress’s arm.
“Betsey, what has happened?” Verena asked.
“He’s gone,” reassured the maid. “And Mr Adam with him.”
Verena fixed eyes of painful enquiry upon Betsey’s face. “Mama?”
“In the parlour, waiting for you.”
“Oh, thank heaven!”
She hurried along the passage and threw open the door. Mrs Peverill, who was seated in the armchair that half faced the door, looked up at her entrance. She smiled, and stretched out a hand.
“My dearest girl!”
Verena ran to her, dropping to her knees beside the armchair, and seizing her hand. “Dear heaven, Mama, I was so afraid you might have gone.”
Mrs Peverill stroked her face. “As if I would have done so without your knowing.” She smiled again, with an effort, Verena thought, and gestured to the other chair. “Sit down, dearest. I want to talk to you.”
Rising from her knees, Verena was conscious of an instant drop in her chest. This boded ill. What did Mama wish to talk about? She was not distressed, but she seemed subdued, and thoughtful. On what had she determined?
“What had he to say for himself?” she asked, seating herself in the other chair.
Mrs Peverill gave a tiny sigh. “He assures me he has changed.”
“I thought he would say so.”
Her mother shook her head. “Do not speak so harshly, Verena. I believe he was speaking the truth. There can be no doubt that he is — different. He does realise his wrongs to me, and he has had a lesson, which he will not forget.”
“Until the next time,” cut in Verena on a bitter note.
“No,” said Mrs Peverill. “He is truly repentant.”
“I cannot imagine why you should think so. He always claimed to be repentant, and yet he always did it again.” A note of desperation entered Verena’s voice, for she was beginning to fear the worst. “Why should you think him changed? Why should you suppose it will be any different?”
“Because it is as I said,” stated Mrs Peverill. “He is different. He knows that he may lose me entirely, and that is new for him.”
Verena looked at her, acute suspicion writ large across her countenance. “Mama, do you tell me you are contemplating a return? In your sane mind, can you even think of it?”
Her mother chose not to answer this directly. She met her daughter’s eyes. “What of your future, Verena?”
“We have been through all that,” she returned with impatience, brushing it aside.
“But it is another case now, is it not?” insisted Mrs Peverill. She smiled. “I am not blind, Verena. And I could not mistake Betsey’s veiled hints.”
A trembling began inside Verena. This was what she had feared all along. Now what was she to do? Before she could think what to say to dismiss this wholly unwanted subject, her mother threw her into even more confusion.
“Does he love you, Verena?”
It was out before she could stop it. “He says so.”
“And do you love him?”
“No!” She knew her hands were shaking; and she bunched them into her lap. “No, Mama. I don’t … I can’t. There is no possibility of — I told him so. I cannot love anyone. Heavens above, Mama, you must know how it is with me!”
Mrs Peverill sat up, and leaning across to the other chair, reached her fingers out to close over those unquiet hands.
“Because you have set your face against it, that does not mean it cannot happen, my dearest.”
“Mama, don’t speak of it, pray,” begged Verena shakily. “You loved, and look how little good it has done you.”
Mrs Peverill nodded and sat back again. “That is true, but only because there was so little time.”
The trembling abated, for this did not make sense.
“What in the world can you mean, Mama? You must have loved Nathaniel once, I quite see that.”
Mrs Peverill looked full in her face, a note of finality in her voice. “You are wrong, Verena. I never loved Nathaniel.”
“What?”
“I never loved him,” she repeated. “Which is the reason he used me so shockingly. He knew from the beginning, for I never pretended. I tried to love him, God knows. Perhaps if he had not taken to abusing me, I might have succeeded. When that began, I tried even harder. But it is difficult to love someone who mistreats one so badly.”
Impossible, Verena would have said, could she have said anything at all. She was astounded. Could it be true? It did not make sense.
“Why did you not leave him years ago?” she asked, finding her tongue in a rush. “How could you stay, allow him to use you thus, if you did not love him? And how can you speak of having loved, Mama — and try to tell me that I should love?”
At that, Mrs Peverill’s features softened into a smile of such tenderness that Verena was startled.
“I do not mean Nathaniel when I speak of having loved, dearest. I am talking of your father.” Her eyes glowed. “Lambert and I were so much in love that we neither of us cared for the consequences.”
Verena was feeling more and more bewildered. “But Grandpapa Whicham told me that the Chaceleys treated you shockingly, refusing to assist you when you were widowed. You have yourself told me that Nathaniel rescued you from an unenviable situation.”
“He offered me the chance of respectability, of security,” corrected Mrs Peverill. “Come, Verena, you know very well that my station in life was not what I am raised to now. Papa was a lawyer.”
“I know, and therefore the Chaceleys cast you off.”
“Not me, Verena. They cast off poor Lambert for making a misalliance. At least his father did.”
Verena knew the story. Mama had been sent to the seaside under the care of a cousin to convalesce after a bout of fever.
There she had met with Lieutenant Lambert Chaceley, on his way to re-join his vessel at Chichester.
After they were married, Lambert had returned to sea, and was drowned in a skirmish in which his ship had been engaged.
Verena had been born fatherless. It was Nathaniel whom she had known in that capacity from her earliest years, but him she had repudiated once she knew what he was doing to her mother.
She had never again called him “Papa” from the day she found out, preferring to be fatherless once more, and forever.
This possible aspect of Mama’s feelings for her real father had never entered Verena’s head.
“But if you loved my father —” she began.
“We fell in love at first sight,” recounted Mrs Peverill, a long-forgotten dream in her countenance. “It was on the beach at Little Hampton.”
“Little Hampton?” echoed Verena. Then that was why her stepfather had chosen to search in that place. But Mrs Peverill was still lost in memories.
“Nothing would do for him but my promise to marry him on his very next leave. We would not have waited as long, but that there was no time to arrange a marriage and I was under age. His papa refused his consent, but we were married in spite of it, and my own papa swore he should house us both.” She sighed.
“I do not know how it would have gone had Lambert lived. Perhaps his father might have relented in time.” She looked at Verena again.
“But this I do know. Our love was strong enough to have withstood any amount of trouble, and Lambert would have died before he raised a hand to me.”
“How can you be sure?” Verena uttered, out of those deep-seated fears that would not allow her to feel — what she knew she could feel. “How can you possibly know?”
“I know, Verena, because Lambert had my heart. You see, my dearest, Nathaniel knew me before my marriage to Lambert. He had always an eye to me. Papa persuaded me to accept his proposals in the end, for I had you to think of, and Papa was ill, and he feared for my future if I was left alone with a young child to bring up, and already you were two years old. So I married Nathaniel.”
“To your cost,” Verena said.
“And his, Verena,” said Mrs Peverill. “I married him without love, for advantage only. He was jealous, you see, dearest. He did love me, and he never could forgive me for loving Lambert instead of him.” She gave a rather wan smile.
“Sometimes I think it was a judgement on me for marrying above my station.”
“Oh, Mama,” Verena protested. “God is not so cruel.”
“No, no, dearest. The judgement was that I should have lost Lambert, not that I should have been punished by Nathaniel.” She sat forward again and leaned across to take one of Verena’s hands.
“I am telling you this, my dearest, to show you that love can be a very different thing from my experience with Nathaniel. So, if you do care for this young man —”