CHAPTER 24 #2
“Silly,” she said, clucking her tongue. “If you marry her, she will be my sort-of mama, will she not? I loved Mother, Papa. I really did. I miss her dreadfully. But I would like to have a new mama—if she is Miss Martin.”
“Not sort-of mama,” he said. “She would be your stepmother.”
“My sort-of stepmother,” she said. “I am a bas—I am your love child. I am not your proper daughter. Mother taught me that.”
He clucked his tongue, took her firmly by the hand, opened the door, and marched her in the direction of the stairs. The dog trotted after them.
Claudia was still in the schoolroom. Julia Jones was not. She had finished playing the spinet and had gone about some other business.
“I need your opinion on something,” Joseph said, shutting the door firmly behind them as Claudia rose to her feet and clasped her hands at her waist, her spine ramrod straight, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Lizzie informs me that if you were to marry me, you would be her sort-of stepmother. Not her full stepmother because she is not my full daughter. She is only my love child, which she understands to be a kindly euphemism for bastard offspring. Is she right? Or is she wrong?”
Lizzie, who had removed her hand from his grasp, looked from one to the other of them almost as if she could actually see them.
“Oh, Lizzie,” Claudia said, sighing and relaxing and transforming herself all in one second from stern, starchy schoolteacher to warm woman, “I would not be your sort-of stepmother or even your stepmother except in strictly legal terms. I would not even be your sort-of mother. I would be your mama. I would love you as dearly as any mother ever loved her child. You are a love child in all the best meanings of the term.”
“And what if,” Lizzie asked while Joseph gazed unblinkingly at Claudia and she gazed unblinkingly anywhere but at him. No, that was unfair—she was looking steadily at his daughter. “What if you and Papa were to have children? Legitimate children.”
“Then I would love them too,” Claudia said, her cheeks an interesting shade of pink.
“Just as dearly. Not more so, not less. Love does not have to be portioned out, Lizzie. It is the one thing that never diminishes when one gives it away. Indeed, it only grows. In the eyes of the world, it is true, you would always be different from any children your father and…and I might have if we were married. But in my eyes there would be no difference whatsoever.”
“Or in mine,” Joseph said firmly.
“We are going to live at Willowgreen, the three of us,” Lizzie said, walking toward Claudia with her hands outstretched until Claudia took them in hers.
“And Horace. It is Papa’s home in the country.
And you will teach me things, and Papa too, and I will have all my stories written down and make a book of them, and perhaps some of my friends can come and visit us sometimes, and when there is a baby I will hold it and rock it every day and… ”
The pink in Claudia’s cheeks had turned to flame.
“Lizzie,” she said, squeezing the girl’s hands, “I have a school to run in Bath. I have girls waiting for me there and teachers. I have a life waiting for me there.”
Lizzie’s face was upturned. Her eyelids were fluttering, her lips moving even before she spoke.
“Are those girls more important than me, then?” she asked. “Are those teachers more important than Papa? Is that school nicer than Willowgreen?”
Joseph spoke at last.
“Lizzie,” he said, “that is unfair. Miss Martin has her own life to live. We cannot expect her to marry me and come to Willowgreen with us just because we want her to—because we love her and do not know quite how we will live without her.”
He was looking at Claudia, who was obviously in deep distress—until his final words. Then she looked indignant. He risked a grin.
Lizzie drew her hands free.
“Do you not love Papa?” she asked.
Claudia sighed. “Oh, I do,” she said. “But life is not that simple, Lizzie.”
“Why not?” Lizzie asked. “People always say that. Why is life not simple? If you love me and you love Papa and we love you, what could be simpler?”
“I think,” Joseph said, “we had better go out for a walk. This triangular discussion is definitely not fair to Miss Martin, Lizzie. It is two against one. I will raise the matter with her again when we are alone together. Here, take the dog’s leash and show us how you can find your way out of the house and around to the lake without any other help. ”
“Oh, I can,” she said, taking the leash. “Watch me.”
“I intend to,” he assured her.
But as the three of them stepped outside a couple of minutes later, Lizzie stopped and cocked her head.
Even above the sound of the water gushing from the great fountain she could hear something else, it seemed.
Miss Thompson and the other girls were approaching.
She held up a hand in greeting and called to them.
“Molly?” she cried. “Doris? Agnes?”
The whole group approached and bobbed curtsies.
“I am going to come with you,” Lizzie announced. “My papa wants to be alone with Miss Martin. He says it is unfair to her for there to be two against one.”
Miss Thompson regarded her employer with pursed lips and eyes that danced with merriment.
“You will not be leaving today after all, then, Claudia?” she said. “I shall let Wulfric know. Go and enjoy your walk.”
And she shepherded the girls—Lizzie included—back into the house.
“Right,” Joseph said, offering his arm. “It is one on one, fair odds, a fair fight. If you wish to fight, that is. I would far prefer to plan a wedding.”
She clasped her hands firmly at her waist and turned in the direction of the lake. The brim of her straw hat—the same one as usual—waved in the wind.
Eleanor had been waiting up for her last night—or rather early this morning. Claudia had poured out much of the evening’s proceedings, and Eleanor had quite possibly guessed the rest.
She had repeated her offer to take over the running of the school, even to purchase it. She had urged Claudia to think carefully, not to choose impulsively, and not to think in terms of what she ought to do rather than what she wished to do.
“I suppose,” she had said, “it is a cliché and an oversimplification to advise you to follow your heart, Claudia, and I am not at all qualified to offer such advice, am I? But…Well, this is really not my business, and it certainly is long past my bedtime. Good night.”
But she had poked her head back about the door seconds after leaving the room.
“I am going to say it anyway,” she had said. “Follow your heart, for goodness’ sake, Claudia, you silly thing.”
By this morning it seemed that everyone knew.
It was all excruciatingly embarrassing, to say the least.
“I feel,” she said as she strode in the direction of the lake, Joseph beside her, “as if I were on the stage of a theater with a vast audience gathered all about me.”
“Waiting with bated breath for your final lines?” he said. “I cannot decide if I am part of the audience, Claudia, or a fellow actor. But if I am the latter, I cannot have rehearsed with you or I would know what those final lines are.”
They walked in silence until they came to the bank of the lake.
“It is impossible,” she said, noticing that the wind was creating white-topped waves on the water.
“No,” he said, “not that. Not even improbable. I would call it probable, but by no means certain. It is that small amount of uncertainty that has my heart knocking against my ribs and my knees feeling inadequate to the task of holding me upright and my stomach attempting to turn somersaults inside me.”
“Your family would never accept me,” she said.
“My mother and my sister already have,” he told her, “and my father has not disinherited me.”
“Could he?” she asked.
“No.” He smiled. “But he could make my life dashed uncomfortable. He will not do so. He is far fonder of his children than he will ever admit. And he is far more firmly under my mother’s thumb than he knows.”
“I cannot give you children,” she said.
“Do you know that for certain?” he asked her.
“No,” she admitted.
“Any girl fresh from the schoolroom might not be able to if I married her,” he said.
“Many women cannot, you know. And perhaps you can. I hope you can, I must confess. There is all that dreary business of securing the succession, of course, but more important than that, I would like to have children with you, Claudia. But all I really want is to spend the rest of my life with you. And we would not be childless. We would have Lizzie.”
“I cannot be a marchioness,” she said, “or a duchess. I know nothing about what would be expected of me, and I am far too old to learn. I am not sure I would want to learn anyway. I like myself as I am. That is a conceited thing to say, perhaps, and suggests an unwillingness ever to change and grow. I am willing to do both, but I would rather choose ways in which to grow.”
“Choose to change sufficiently to allow me into your life, then,” he said.
“Please, Claudia. It is all I ask. If you are not willing to have Lizzie and me live in Bath with you, then come to live at Willowgreen with us. Make it your home. Make it your life. Make it anything you want. But come. Please come.”
She felt all the unreality of the situation suddenly.
It was as if she took a step back from herself and saw him as a stranger again—as he had first appeared to her in the visitors’ parlor at school.
She saw how very handsome and elegant and aristocratic and self-assured he was.
Could he possibly now be begging her to marry him?
Could he possibly love her? But she knew he did.
And she knew she could hold this image of him in her mind for no longer than a few seconds.
Looking at him again, she saw only her beloved Joseph.