“Would it not be better to wear just a small eye patch?” she asked. “The sun and air would help the other scars to fade, would they not? And if you were to ask me, I would say that the bandage is far more noticeable than a few scars would be.”
“If I were to ask you,” he said so quietly that she was not quite sure that she had heard the words correctly. She felt acutely uncomfortable for the rest of their stay at the confectioner’s.
“Were you very badly snubbed by Penworth?” Lord Eden asked her with some sympathy in the barouche later.
“I deserved it, I’m afraid,” she said. “I should not have asked him any personal questions. He seems to have recovered from his outer wounds quite well. But there are other wounds, far deeper, that have not even begun to heal yet.”
“I must confess I was very embarrassed,” Anna said, “and annoyed with myself for being so. I was so afraid of saying something that I should not say.”
“How would one face life?” Walter said. “Only one leg. Only one eye. Ouch! I think I would rather be dead.”
“What nonsense!” Jennifer said, and flushed again at yet another rudeness. “There are a great many things one can do in life without a leg or an eye. I do feel sad for Lieutenant Penworth, for I knew him as he was before. But I also feel a little angry that his attitude has become bitter and cynical. No, not angry. It all happened to him only three months ago. But I would be angry and doubly sad if I were to meet him in a few years’ time and still found him bemoaning his loss and not getting on with his life.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Miss Simpson,” Walter said. “But, gad, how would one get on with one’s life without a leg? No riding. No sports. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”
“Poor man,” Anna said.
Lord Eden was smiling at her, Jennifer saw.
ON THE SAME AFTERNOON, Ellen called upon the Earl of Harrowby. She took no one with her and even thought, as she raised the brass knocker outside the huge double doors of his house, that perhaps it was improper to visit him alone. But she smiled at the thought. This had been her home for fifteen years. He had been her father.
He had been drinking again, she could see as soon as he hurried down the stairs to meet her instead of waiting for his butler to show her up to the drawing room.
“I wouldn’t have touched a drop if I had known for certain that you would come, Ellie,” he said, flashing her a smile as he offered his arm. “I thought you wouldn’t, once you had thought about it.”
“But I did come,” she said, looking about the drawing room and finding it exactly as it had been the last time she saw it, except that perhaps the carpet was slightly more worn and the draperies at the windows more faded.
“I didn’t invite anyone else,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. It will be just you and me, Ellie. Besides”-he smiled apologetically-“there are not many ladies who would accept an invitation from the Earl of Harrowby these days. I am not considered quite respectable, y’know.”
“Are you not?” she said, looking at the marked signs of dissipation about his face and figure as he stood with his back to the fire. They did not speak as the housekeeper-like the butler, someone she did not know-brought in the tea tray. She felt awkward. She did not know what to call him. “Shall I pour?”
“If you had not left me,” he said, extending one hand to indicate that she should take a seat behind the tray, “I would not be the wreck you see. I loved you, girl. You should not have left.”
“You did not take up drinking just after I left,” she said, holding up a full cup and saucer to him. “Now, be honest with yourself. I do not need the blame for that heaped on my shoulders.”
His smile was almost boyish. “You are quite right,” he said. “But you were always good for me, Ellie. You never did put up with any nonsense. You always said what was what. You used to tell me to go away when I was in my cups. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said.
He laughed. “Sometimes, not often, I admit,” he said, “I used to stay sober just so that I could come to the nursery or the schoolroom and see you. And then I would drink afterward. But not so much in those days, girl. Not so much then. Have some cakes.”
They looked at each other.
“You were always my St. George,” she said, “who would slay all my dragons.”
“Was I, Ellie?” he said. “Was he good to you?”
She knew he was not referring to Charlie. “Yes,” she said, “he was good to me.”
“But he didn’t slay any dragons?” That boyish smile again.
“I was older,” she said. “I knew that no man is infallible. Not even fathers.”
“Tell me about your life,” he said. “It is as if you were dead, Ellie, and have come back to life again.”
She told him about Spain and about Belgium. She told him about Charlie and Jennifer and her other friends. She must have talked for half an hour, she realized with something of a jolt as she finished telling him about her meeting with Sir Jasper Simpson. But he was interested. He had scarcely moved or withdrawn his eyes from her face.
“It is me you should be turning to for support, Ellie,” he said, “not him. Do you feel that he is more your father than I am?”
How could she answer the question? “He is Jennifer’s grandfather,” she said. “That is why meeting him is so important, Papa.” And she bit down hard on her lip and closed her eyes.
“Perhaps I am too,” he said. “Perhaps I am your papa, Ellie. But the important thing is that I was for all those years. I was your papa. I loved you. I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t ever mistreat you, did I?”
She shook her head, her eyes on the silver milk jug on the tray.
He got to his feet and pulled on the bell rope for someone to come and remove the tray. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece and tapped one knuckle rhythmically against his teeth as he waited, saying nothing. But he turned back to her when the footman had disappeared, and came to sit down beside her.
“Don’t go yet,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “Stay and talk awhile longer, Ellie.”
She looked down at his hand, fatter now than it had been, but a hand she would have recognized anyway, with its blunt, dark-haired fingers, the nails broader than they were long. Hands that had held her as a child, hands that she could remember clinging to sometimes as she walked, though she could no longer remember where it was they had walked.
“What did you mean,” she asked, “that you might be?”
He looked at her with his heavy-lidded, rather bloodshot eyes. “Your mother and I,” he said. “We always said what would most hurt, even if it were not always the truth. You might be mine, Ellie.”
“She said not,” Ellen said. “And he did not argue.”
“When your mother was expecting you,” he said, “I never did so much as think of questioning whose you were. I would have if there had been any chance of your not being mine, wouldn’t I? I always knew when she had someone else. I knew she had lovers. But I wasn’t suspicious at that time. Besides, your mother was a careful woman. She would have made sure that you were mine. You were our first-and our only, as it turned out. You might have been a boy, Ellie. You might have been my heir. I think you are mine.”
“But why would she have said such a thing?” Ellen asked.
“To hurt me,” he said. “She must have been feeling particularly vicious. She knew you were the only person I ever really loved. She wanted to turn me against you. You weren’t supposed to know. But I came and told you, didn’t I? I suppose I was foxed at the time. And then your mother went off with Fenchurch and I haven’t seen her since. She was in Vienna for the Congress the last time I heard of her. With someone I have never heard of. We weren’t a pretty pair, girl. It wasn’t all her fault, what happened. But you are the one who suffered most.”
“Yes,” she said, “I did. But everything in life has a purpose, perhaps. I would not have met my husband if I had not gone to Spain. And I would hate to have gone through life without knowing him.”
He patted her hand. “Say it again,” he said, “what you let slip a little while ago. It sounded good, Ellie.”
She looked at him and swallowed. “Papa?” she said. “I didn’t ever call him that, you know.”
He patted her hand again.
She looked at him. And looked beyond the bloodshot eyes and the flushed cheeks, and the double chin. He had been her papa. She had curled up on his large lap and played with the chain of his watch. And had felt as if
