“No, I hardly noticed. It was the way things always were, and I never questioned them. To be honest, I grew to look forward to their trips, so that I could have more freedom at home to do what I wanted.”
“Were you lonely?”
“No. At least I didn’t think I was. I found much to interest me on the moors and in the garden, and later, in books. I know that when you came calling on Diana, I might have seemed lonely, the way I followed you about—” she glanced at him sheepishly “—but I think I was more curious than anything. About what you and she talked about and did together. I had never seen a romance before.” She flipped the heavy dough over and smiled at him, an appealing smile that made the hairs on his arm prickle. “Is it too late to apologize?”
“If anyone deserves an apology, Madeline, it is you, for we were young and selfish. You were just a child, and we should have included you.”
That apology, he decided, was long overdue.
He absently twisted his wedding ring around on his finger. Madeline stopped kneading. “I’ve noticed you have not taken that off.”
“My wedding ring?” He turned his large hands over and looked at them. How candidly they revealed his age. “No, I couldn’t bring myself to.”
“You must still miss her a great deal.”
Adam laid his hands flat on the table. “It’s not so much that….” He had never spoken of Jane to anyone, at least not about their imperfect marriage. He wondered why he was compelled to do so now, with Madeline—a young woman who had never been married herself and probably assumed that every romance had a happy ending. “I believe it is guilt that keeps me from taking it off.”
Madeline sat down across from him and gently clasped his hand. “Guilt? Adam, surely you can’t blame yourself for her death.”
“What husband wouldn’t when his wife dies on the birthing bed?” She squeezed his hand. “But more than that, I regret the misery in our marriage. Jane was an emotional woman. She cried over a chipped plate, or flew into a rage when the fire would not light on the first try. In the beginning, I was sympathetic and spent a great deal of time trying to appease her, when I was not walking on eggshells, for fear of setting her off. Later, as the years passed, I felt nothing when she wept, for she was not rational. My sympathy dried up, and she knew it. Things only got worse after that.”
“I had no idea, Adam. What about the children? Did they suffer also?”
“Penelope, of course, knows nothing, and the boys, thank God, were too young to recognize what their mother was going through. Mrs. Dalton was very good at distracting them or taking them out of the room when Jane was having one of her ‘spells’ as I used to call them.”
He began to twist the ring again, remembering the earlier days. “It’s odd, when I married her, she’d seemed so sensible. Looking back on it now, I see that the things she said to me were just words. Even if she knew what was sensible and what was not, she could not control her emotions. We married too quickly. She had known about Diana, and I don’t think she ever believed for one minute that I was over her. I think that’s what made Jane unbalanced.”
Madeline continued to hold his hand, accepting what he had confessed without pushing him for more. He felt a weight lift in his chest.
“I cannot believe I burdened you with all of that,” he said, hoping to lift the somber mood that had descended upon the kitchen. “The melodramatic regrets of an old man’s life.”
“You are not old, Adam, yet you keep saying it.”
It was true, he had been feeling his age more than usual lately. Since Madeline had arrived.
How could he tell her thatshein all her youthful splendor, by bringing forward the past, had forced him to look inside himself at the man he once was, and the man he had become?
Gazing across the table at her cheerful, tender countenance, into eyes that actually saw theoldAdam, he wanted to be that man again. Could he?
For the first time in many years, he felt the scattered remnants of his old self bucking within.
Then he reminded himself that Diana was coming, andshewas the reason for all this, even though Madeline had been the one to help awaken him and make him see that he could change.
He began to tell himself that Madeline’s arrival here—and his surprisingly strong responses to her—were happening for a reason. God had intended it. After all, if Diana had come first, and seen the empty shell of the young lover she remembered, she might not have stayed to see things come around right.
That realization disturbed Adam more than he could say. Did he have no confidence in Diana? Did he not trust her to be different this time?
Suddenly the kitchen door swung open, and both Adam and Madeline jumped. Agnes stepped inside, her gaze falling to Madeline’s hand upon Adam’s.
Madeline pulled her chair back and stood, returning to her bread dough which sat like a dry lump of clay on the worktable. She began to knead it again, asking Agnes about the weather.
Agnes hinted at nothing untoward—she never would—and rambled on about the hogs being in an awful tizzy over the water trough.
Adam stood up to leave, but Agnes stopped him. She wrung her hands together with an uncharacteristic nervousness. “Mr. Coates, before you go, I wonder if I may have a word with you.”
“Certainly. What is it, Agnes?” Good God, was she going to chastise him for sitting alone in the kitchen, holding hands with his future sister-in-law?
“I beg your pardon, sir, but may we speak in private?”
