“I knew you would understand,” she said, “once you got used to the idea. I knew you would. I am going to be the happiest person in the world; you will see. And you are going to be happy too. I could hug the life out of you, but I am afraid that Mrs. Simpson will come in here brandishing some weapon if I make you yell out again. I am going to love her as a sister-in-law, Dom. I really am. And I won’t say anything to her on the way out, since you have not asked her yet. I must go. He will be needing me.”
She kissed him again on the other cheek, smiled gaily down at him, and was gone.
Lord Eden clasped his hands behind his head again and smiled at the door. Should he get up and go and find Ellen? She was probably still hiding her embarrassment somewhere. It was just a very good thing that she had refused to join him beneath the covers. Both she and Mad would have had an apoplexy apiece. He grinned at the canopy above him.
He closed his eyes and felt his drowsiness return. Lieutenant Penworth indeed! Mad had scarce looked at the man twice when he had two legs and two eyes. What a disaster she was going to make of her life if he could not talk her out of marrying Penworth just because she pitied him. Silly goose! He yawned loudly. He should go and find Ellen. He could just open his mouth and yell for her, but he should exert himself and get out of the bed and go to find her. Another silly goose. He was going to enjoy kissing away her blushes and explaining that Madeline was just his twin. Nobody any more formidable than that.
But when he opened his eyes, it was to find that she was standing silently in the doorway looking at him, her face a pale and expressionless mask.
“Ellen!” he said, sitting up sharply and wincing. “You have not taken it so much to heart, have you?”
“What have we done?” Her voice was toneless.
“What…?” He frowned at her.
“We have been living here together for almost a week,” she said, “like a pair of carefree lovers. You are Charlie’s closest friend. I am his wife. What have we done? He trusted us both. We have both cheated him.”
“No.” He stood up and reached out a hand to her, but she did not move from where she stood. “No, that is not true, Ellen. I never…Good God, I never thought of you in this way while you were married to Charlie. You never thought of me in this way.”
“I am an adulteress,” she said.
He passed a hand over his eyes and felt for the edge of the bed with the backs of his knees. “No,” he said. “Of course you are not. Calm down, Ellen. You were always a faithful wife. I always admired you for that. So did everyone who knew you.”
She laughed harshly. “A faithful wife indeed,” she said. “I have been lying with you in that bed each night, taking pleasure from you. As if pleasure were relevant to my life at present. In that bed. My husband’s bed. Oh, my God!”
He sat down heavily. “Don’t make it sordid, Ellen,” he said. “Please don’t do that. It has not been a matter of simple pleasure. You know that. It has been love. I have loved you in the past five days. You have loved me.”
She laughed again. “Love!” she said. “I do not love you, my lord. You are a very attractive man. I have given in to the power of your attraction. And you do not love me. I am the woman who has nursed you during your recovery from injury. You have seen no other woman in three weeks, except for your sister. Did you not know that men always fall in love with the women who nurse them? This has not been love. This has been lust. And sordid. Oh, yes, very sordid.”
He was angry. He surged to his feet and grasped his side. The wind felt as if it had been knocked out of him for a moment. “So you would spoil it all,” he said, “because my own carelessness and the arrival of Madeline earlier embarrassed you. I am sorry about that, Ellen. But don’t make something ugly about what has happened here. It is not ugly. We love each other.”
“I love Charlie!” she cried. “I love him. I worship him. He is twice the man you are. And now what have I done to him? What have I done?”
“You have done nothing,” he said. He took a few steps toward her. “Charlie is dead, Ellen.”
She stared back at him, her mouth open. The color that had returned to her face with her anger fled again.
“He is dead,” he said dully. “Charlie is dead, Ellen. He died on the battlefield south of Waterloo. I was with him.”
She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. But when he took another step toward her, she looked up and held a hand in front of her.
“Don’t come near me,” she said. “Don’t touch me.” She swallowed more than once and looked down at herself. “I am dressed in green. Green. The color he liked me to wear. Not in black. I have known for almost a month that he is dead, and I am not wearing black. And I have not gone out as other women have on the fruitless search for his body. I have allowed him to be buried in an anonymous grave. I have refused to open the doors of my mind to the truth. He is away with the army, I have persuaded myself. A month, and I am not in mourning.” She smiled.
“Ellen,” he said, “come and sit down.”
“You knew he was dead.” She looked up at him, the strange smile still on her face. “You knew he was dead, my lord. You were with him. You brought me the news. And yet this is what you have done to his memory?” She pointed to the bed behind him.
He shook his head slowly. “Don’t,” he said. “It has been with me as with you, Ellen. He was my closest friend. I watched him die. I told you-I did, didn’t I?-and then I let go of the knowledge.”
“So,” she said with a little laugh. “We are a pair of fools, my Lord Eden. And a pair of sinners.”
“No,” he said, “not that. We would not have done what we have done if Charlie were still alive. Both you and I are incapable of that. You know it. This has not been wrong, Ellen. Only very poorly timed. We should have waited-for a year, perhaps. But love will not always wait. And we have needed the comfort of each other.”
She held her hands palm-up before her and looked down at them. “Charlie is dead,” she said. “This time he is not coming back. I will never see him again. There will be no cottage in the country. No safe and secure times together. Only the past. Only memories. He’s gone.”
“Come over here, Ellen,” he said softly, reaching out a hand to her again. “Let me comfort you. Let us comfort each other.”
Her eyes were brimming with unshed tears when she looked up. “You cannot comfort me,” she said. “He was my husband. My life. I loved him.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you did. And he was my friend, Ellen. You are my friend. Let me hold you.”
“You are not my friend,” she said. “Not any longer. Not ever again. You are my guilt. For all during these months in Brussels I have wanted you. I have looked at you and touched you and wanted you. Even though I had the best man in the world as a husband. Even though I loved him more than I love life.”
He put his head down and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “We each need some time alone,” he said. “The atmosphere is too charged at the moment for either of us to talk sense. Let us not say anything that we will forever regret, Ellen. Let’s talk later.”
When he looked up, she was staring down at her hands again, her expression stony. One tear had escaped and was trickling unchecked down her cheek.
“There is nothing to say,” she said.
“Only perhaps that I love you.”
She shook her head. “Not even that,” she said. “You will see that it is not true when you have had time to think. There is nothing to say, my lord. Nothing at all.”
She turned without looking at him and left the room.
He was sitting on the bed, his head in his hands, when he heard the outer door of her rooms open and close and knew himself to be quite alone.
Chapter 12
SOMEWHAT LATER THE SAME EVENING Madeline was summoned downstairs in Colonel Potts’s home. She closed the book she had been reading aloud from, smiled cheerfully at Lieutenant Penworth, who was lying staring
