The Constantines were not prisoners in this time, even if it felt a little as though they were. They went to visit the Bartrums and the Drinkwaters, Cecilia driving the dog cart so that Miss Macintyre could stay at home and nap.
Nothing of any significance whatsoever was said or done in either place. Cecilia was very careful in her attitude towards Alistair that afternoon, not looking at him or addressing him too much or too little, and she could tell (though she hoped others could not) that he was doing exactly the same in return. She couldn’t be confident she’d succeeded in portraying herself as entirely indifferent to him, not to someone who knew her as well as her mother must, but at any rate, Leontina said nothing afterwards, offered her no challenge and forced no confidences, and she must be content with that and ask for nothing more.
She could, of course, have headed out alone onto the sands one day when Alistair was walking, and come across him as if by accident and had private speech with him there, but she must be aware that her protectors and others would see them together, which seemed unwise in their current somewhat precarious situation. Perhaps she was being overcautious and nobody would have thought it at all unusual, not even her ever-vigilant mother; the balance of her mind was sadly unsettled, and she could not tell. All she could do was watch him from her window as he walked, day after day, night after night, and wonder what might be going through his mind.
As for her own thoughts… She told herself that it was foolish to imagine that whatever lay between them could be so easily destroyed by the adverse circumstances they had recently experienced. It might be fragile and new, their understanding, but if it could be torn apart by events entirely outside their control, it would prove, she had to acknowledge, that it had never been worth anything in the first place.
If the conditions of scrutiny under which they were currently living – which she found irksome even though she knew that they existed chiefly for the family’s safety – were soon to be relaxed, which surely they must be because they could not be guarded by constables forever, she could only hope that Alistair would hear of it directly through the extremely efficient rural news system, and come to see her at night as soon as possible. She’d be out there waiting till he did. The truth was, she missed him, missed talking frankly with him as much as anything else; seeing him in public was not the same, and not enough for her. And again, she wondered if he could possibly share her feelings.
50
Alistair was waiting patiently at the bottom of the steps at midnight. He’d heard through the gossip grapevine, via his mother, that the constables who’d been guarding Albery Hall had been withdrawn and sent back to their ordinary duties, since after the first couple of days, nobody had tried to approach the house from any direction apart from people who had legitimate business there. He had no means of knowing for certain if Mrs Pritty’s stout young relatives were still present at night, which was why he had cut inland long before he drew close to his destination, so that nobody who happened to be watching from the property would see him.
He thought it reasonable to infer that Cecilia would not risk coming outside if she knew herself to be observed, so he did not climb the steps, but merely lingered in what he had come to think of as his usual place. How often had he done this? Only a few times, in all honesty, but these clandestine meetings had already grown to be an important part of his life – the most important, now – and he had been restless and unsettled all the while when coming here had been out of the question.
His whole body was on alert, his ears straining to hear the slightest whisper from above, and he started, his heart pounding, when he heard it at last, after he had almost given up hope and made up his mind to leave. ‘Alistair, are you there? There’s no one up here but me; it is quite safe.’
He mounted the stair much faster than he would have believed possible, and reached Cecilia’s side, but he had no time to revel in the mere sight of her, because she drew him swiftly into the summerhouse.
‘I knew you would come the first night you could,’ she said softly once they were alone in the small room with the door securely closed. ‘But I had to wait until I was reasonably confident that my mother was asleep; the room we have given her does not overlook the shore, by my deliberate contrivance, but I was afraid she would hear me on the stairs. I know she is not the deepest of sleepers.’
‘Unlike your sister Bianca. But you could have used the secret passage,’ he said. He was so happy to see his love at last, intoxicated by her presence, and was aware that he was not fully in control of what he said to her as a result.
‘Well, the entrance panel creaks horribly, as you know – though I suppose it could be oiled easily enough. But I cannot say that the idea of going down there in the dark, retracing Lord Pallant’s footsteps, was very appealing to me. We have been talking about having some part of it bricked up, Bea in particular, though Bianca is strongly against the idea because she loves the thought of having a secret way in and out, even if we never use it. But in the meantime, we have found by experimentation that the stable entrance can be locked with one of Mrs Pritty’s most ancient keys, as can the inner panel upstairs. So we have no fear that anyone can gain entrance that way again without our knowledge. I don’t think any of us slept soundly, even under guard, while it lay open to the world.’
‘I cannot blame you,’ he said fervently.
They were sitting together on the padded seat, which must call up powerful associations for both of them, very close, but not quite touching. Every fibre of his body was aware of her nearness; he could hear the slightest sound she made and feel the slightest movement. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to lose himself in her, but he dared not, because he had no idea if she felt the same, and not the least clue what she might be thinking.
A little silence fell between them, and along with it crept in a sense of awkwardness, which Alistair could not recall feeling before in Cecilia’s company.
They both began speaking at once, but he stopped, and deferred to her.
‘We have not had a chance to talk since the night of the assembly,’ she said. ‘I barely thanked you for your intervention; so much has taken place since. And I have been wondering as I lay sleepless in bed whether everything thathashappened has been my fault, though when I tell my sisters so, they reassure me that I am being nonsensical, and even absurdly self-important. One can always rely on siblings to insult one roundly for one’s own good, I find.’
He laughed softly, knowing this to be quite true. ‘I don’t see how any of it can be laid at your door, Cecilia. You know better than I do that Pallant was always bound to pursue you up to the point where you gave him a definite no, and at that point, you would always have told him of the conditions under which you all inherited, purely in order to get him to leave you alone. And everything else flowed from that. Even if your extraordinary governess had told you of her suspicions about the Rembrandt, nobody but His Lordship knew about the secret passage. Short of giving him the damn painting as a birthday gift, which you would never have done, how could anything else that happened have been prevented? And even that might not have satisfied him, if he was out for revenge on you for daring to reject him, as seems likely.’
She sighed: a low, intimate sound in the darkness. ‘I know you’re right. You’re only saying what everyone else said. It’s just shocking that he should have been so recklessly determined. I wonder if Mrs Albery, who after all knew him well, set the conditions that she did with him specifically in mind, in order to protect us?’
This was a golden opportunity, and Alistair could not fail to take it. ‘I conjecture that she stipulated that you will lose your portion of the fortune and the house if you marry or engage yourself within a year?’ he asked. She had implied as much but not said so outright. He hoped she would not think he gave a damn for the money – but he could not help it if she did. It was a natural enough question for him or anyone to ask, he thought.
‘Yes, and if any of us does so, formally or informally, we lose the third that is ours to our sisters.’ She turned to look at him directly, though he could see little but her eyes glittering in the darkness. ‘Of course we would all still share equally, whatever happened, but it would be unfair, I think, for any one of us to ask that of the others. I know none of us wants to be dependent on family charity again, as we have been for so long. And the independence we have just barely tasted for a few weeks is, as I think I have told you from the outset, of great importance to each of us. I am sure you can understand why.’
‘Of course, but… that leaves anyone who would woo you now because he loved you with a serious dilemma,’ he said carefully. This might be a mistake – but he had to speak, he knew, or regret his cowardice forever. There might never be another chance like this.
‘I can see that it might,’ she replied, her tone deadly serious to match his, and he hoped he was not deluding himself that her voice too was a little unsteady.
‘Someone who loved you with all his heart and cared nothing for your fortune might still hesitate to speak of his devotion in such circumstances because… because he feared that asking you to deprive yourself of such a fortune and such rare and precious independence for his sake would be a dreadfully selfish act. While still worrying that if he said as much to you in plain words, said that he was prepared to wait…’
‘I might still think that all he cared for was possession of the money,’ she finished for him, ‘and all the rest was but fine talk that anyone might easily say, meaning not a syllable of it.’
‘Exactly.’ It was more a groan than a word.
Was he imagining a smile in her voice? ‘Perhaps such a person, if he existed, might have a little more confidence that I – or any woman in my position, since we are only speaking hypothetically, after all – could be able to distinguish between genuine feeling and deception.’
‘There are very many clever rogues about, especially when a lady is young and beautiful and rich. You’ve seen that recently enough.’
‘But there are honest men too. My father was one, and my brothers-in-law, all three of them, different as they are in character, are others. With that experience, and four Seasons behind me, I might, or any woman might, trust in my own good judgement, and trust too in the man she loves. Loves with all her heart and body and soul, as he loves her. Don’t you think?’
