30. Chapter 30
thirty
B y the night of the final performance, Jenny sat at her dressing table fairly certain she’d made the biggest mistake of her life in telling David to go back to London.
She hadn’t counted on how deeply and painfully she would miss him.
It was an all-consuming ache that only found relief when she sang.
She was still haunted by the pain in his voice when he’d called her name.
No part of her had expected him to be gone when she’d returned home the night they had argued.
She’d expected him to come to her performance, and when he hadn’t, she’d convinced herself she was happy for his absence.
But he hadn’t been in his room when she’d returned and the housekeeper had confirmed he’d left for London.
She’d never felt such loneliness even though she told herself it’s what she wanted.
That certainty had melted away a little more every day.
The reviewers had noticed a change in her.
Luci and her mother both had brought her clippings that wrote of how poignant her voice was when the little duke had been sent off to war and was separated from his duchess.
Jenny hadn’t explained that it was because her own heart was broken.
She knew how it felt to be separated from the person she loved. It was a horrible, wretched pain.
Jenny took in a sharp, biting breath and fought down the ache in her throat. Then she tried once again to line her right eye with a thick line of kohl. Stupid tears had smeared her earlier attempts .
Fanny’s voice could be heard above the fray as she celebrated what would be their final successful night for the show.
Her mother had become a regular fixture backstage and Jenny usually welcomed her.
Tonight, however, was different because she sat at her dressing table determined to get ready but having a devil of a time getting the paint right.
She took up a handkerchief and wiped at the black line that ran down her cheek but only succeeded in smearing the kohl across her face.
“You’re not ready yet?” Fanny asked from the doorway.
“I’ll be out in a moment,” Jenny called, and leaned in toward the mirror as she slicked on yet another layer of flesh-colored cosmetic to hide her mistake.
The door shut but Fanny had no more left her alone than a dog would abandon a fresh bone. “What’s bothering you, darling?”
Jenny sighed and sat back. Her face looked a mess. She dropped the brush to land on the pots of cosmetics scattered across the dressing table. She tried to make her voice normal, but it was thick with sorrow when she said, “Nothing. Why do you ask?”
“Sakes alive, Jenny.” Fanny’s heels clipped over the floor and she sat on the nearby bench that Luci used when she needed to stitch a low hem. “You are in here crying and you tell me nothing’s wrong?”
“I’m not crying.” A fresh tear spilled down her cheek as she denied its existence. She dabbed it away with a convenient handkerchief.
Fanny gave her a very knowing and very concerned look that had Jenny hiding her face in her hands.
Fanny tutted a bit and then put her arms around Jenny’s shoulders.
She held her until Jenny could finally find the strength to pull the handkerchief away again.
Surveying the damage in the mirror, she used her own tears to help clean much of the makeup away.
She still looked a sight but most of the kohl was gone.
“Is it David?” her mother asked .
Of course it was David. Everyone had been very suspicious in how they had avoided asking Jenny about his absence, but she had assumed they must know his tenure in Paris was meant to be limited.
Obviously, he’d get back to his real life in London eventually.
Her family knew that the two of them would never live happily ever after.
“We had a…a disagreement and he returned to London. I wanted him to go. I told him to go. But now…I miss him. I miss looking out every night and finding him in that box watching me. I didn’t think I would mind so much that he was gone, except tonight…
” She took in a breath and her lips trembled as a fresh wave of tears threatened.
“Tonight is the final show and I wanted him here with me. To celebrate with me.”
“Oh, darling.” Fanny brushed the hair back from Jenny’s forehead. “What was your disagreement about?”
She took in a breath. “When we made our marriage agreement, one of the terms was that we would divorce.” Her mother frowned, disappointed, but didn’t interrupt.
“He didn’t want to any longer. He said he’d refuse a divorce.
And I…reacted badly. It’s only because he’d been so kind and tender with me.
It frightened me. I made him think that I didn’t need him.
I wanted to not need him, but it was a lie.
I do need him. No matter what I’ve done these past months to try to be free of him… I need him.”
Fanny rubbed slow circles on her back until the trembling that had begun anew subsided. “Why would you want a divorce? He’s been good to you. Why end things?” She didn’t ask it in a judgmental way, but in a very gentle, very loving way that had Jenny saying more than she should.
“Because I love him.” Dear God, she did love him. She’d never said it out loud before but the words had been quietly lurking in the dark corners of her heart for almost as long as she’d known him. “I love him, but it isn’t real.”
“What isn’t real?”
“Love, not the sort that I feel for him anyway.”
“Jenny, you are not making any sense. If you feel it, then of course it’s real.”
Jenny shook her head. “But it’s not, or if it is it’s a flighty thing. You loved Charles Hathaway and look what happened.” Her conviction gave her strength. “It ruined your life. You gave him three children and years of your life but it didn’t last, because I’m damned sure you don’t love him now.”
“Is that what this is all about? You think David will forsake you?”
Jenny’s laugh was bitter. “I know he will, Mama. He’s a known womanizer, a rake; I doubt he has the ability to love any one woman.
Even if he believes he does, I think he lacks the conviction of such an emotion.
” But the words didn’t ring true now, not like she wanted them to.
His womanizing had been rooted in how he’d felt abandoned.
“Jenny Dove!” Such a strong voice from her mother startled Jenny. “Do you truly believe that you would love a man with a lack of conviction?”
Jenny shrugged. “I know that I can. I’ve done it before.” Jenny had never told her mother the entirety of what happened with Vincent, but the woman knew enough to understand what she meant.
Sitting back down on the bench, Fanny took Jenny’s hands and leaned forward to stare up into her eyes.
“That was a long time ago and you were naive then. That’s not who you are now.
You have seen more of the world and know yourself better.
When you think of David and all the things he’s done for you, do you truly believe him to have so little principles? ”
Jenny shook her head.
“No, I didn’t think so. But before we move forward talking about your husband, we should perhaps discuss my own youthful recklessness, because I fear you’ve come away with the wrong impression.
” Fanny took a breath in through her nose and she looked off to the left, as if her thoughts were ordering themselves in her head.
“I met Charles when I was merely a child. I’d barely turned nineteen.
I know you’ll say that women in London are married off every day at that age.
But I grew up in an orphanage. I had no family to guide me or help me choose.
When Charles charmed me, I thought it was love.
I’d never been noticed before and he noticed me.
I thought that meant something more than it did.
Truth be told, I don’t know that I ever loved him for who he was so much as the attention he gave me.
I didn’t know how to tell the difference.
He wanted me because I was different and beautiful, an exotic bird to add to his collection. ”
“But David wants me for the same reason.”
“Ah, does he?” Fanny gave her a long and searching glance. “Perhaps in the beginning when he chased you across London from ballroom to ballroom. Perhaps even when he married you, though I would argue he would not have gone to such lengths for a mere possession.”
Jenny bit her tongue and decided it best her mother not know about the night in bed she’d promised him.
“But that isn’t what I see when he looks at you here in Paris. I see real and genuine affection. I see a man struggling to understand his own feelings and sometimes overcome by them. I see a man hopelessly in love.”
Was that really true?
“Even if that’s true, how can we last? Society hates me.
I don’t fit in there. I’ll never be who they want me to be.
” As she said the words, Jenny realized that was the fear underlying all of this.
Yes, the other was true, too. She feared their love wasn’t real.
She feared his ability to be faithful. Yet this fear was deeper than all of that.
“You’re right, darling.” Fanny brushed away a stray tear that had fallen down Jenny’s cheek.
“You do not fit in and most of them will never accept you. Is that what truly matters? David loves you. Alfred and Kit accept you. We do have friends among the ton who will stand with you. I think the real question is…do you accept yourself?”
Jenny had never had trouble accepting herself.
She’d known from an early age that she wanted to sing on the stage.
It had taken a couple of years for her to know what form that would take but she’d quickly discovered opera and her passion for it.
She’d long since known she wanted to perform on stages across the world.
Now, however, a new identity was attempting to emerge. That of Lady David Felding. It wasn’t only the title she had railed against appearing on the program, but the very identity that was trying to claim her. Who was that person?
Jenny didn’t know. She didn’t know her, but perhaps for the first time, she thought she might like to.
“I’ve made a mistake. I should never have made him think I didn’t want him.” She should never have sent him away. None of this was his fault. It had been her all along. “Do you think he’ll have me back?”
Fanny gave her a knowing smile. “Darling, he never left because of you.”
“He did. We argued and I…Oh my God, I insisted on a divorce. I sent him to London and said I didn’t need him.” Nausea churned in her soul as she remembered how cruel she’d been.
But her mother only gave her a sad smile and shook her head.
“He never left because of you,” she repeated, her smile melting into a serious expression.
“He came to me on his way to the train station. Alfred’s been in a riding accident and was severely injured.
Kit sent for him.” Jenny opened her mouth to exclaim her surprised outrage, but Fanny hurried on.
“David didn’t want me to tell you because he didn’t want anything to disrupt your final performances.
I’m sorry to have kept it from you, but at the time I agreed it was best. I didn’t know you had argued and you blamed yourself for him leaving. ”
Jenny was reeling. How could they keep this from her? She was overcome with worry for both Alfred and the anguish David must be going through. She couldn’t believe that she was sitting here and not with him. She couldn’t bear that he was facing this on his own.
She’d been a fool a thousand times and she’d spend the rest of her life making it up to him. If he’d let her. No, she’d force him to let her. She’d strap him to his bed if she had to.
Oh God, what if he didn’t want her anymore? What if the worst had happened and she’d not been there and left David to face it on his own?
Fingers going to the buttons of her costume, she rose and said, “I have to go to him.” Being with him was more important than the last show.