Page 85 of An Ill-Made Match

“You’re going back to Hallam Hall then?” Eden asked nervously. Her grandmother did not answer, and Eden sat in the chair opposite her. “I wrote you a letter,” Eden added, after a moment’s heavy silence. “Actually, I wrote you three.”

Her grandmother sat very still. When she spoke, her voice was harsh. “I understand you have been fraternizing with the Vawdrey family, despite your own flesh and blood being kept at bay.” She shot an accusatory look at Eden.

“I have not seen my husband since I arrived here at court,” Eden answered. “Though it is true, I did see my sisters-in-law yester’een.”

“Yet you did not see fit to send for your own cousin?” Lady Dorothea did not wait for Eden’s answer. “Is it too much to hope you have not been taken in by your new friends?”

“Fenella has been my very good friend now for many months,” Eden answered quietly.

“Well, far be it from me to offer any advice to my own granddaughter!” huffed Lady Dorothea. She glared at Eden. “I want to know what happened,” she said distinctly. “And I don’t want any of this rubbish Lenora has seen fit to spout at me. I thought, from you at least I would get plain dealing.” She broke off her words with a gesture of impatience. “Out with it, child! Come, did someone put you up to it?”

Eden stared. “No.” Such as who? She wondered.

“You thought you’d set yourself up as some sacrificial lamb then, is that it? To spare your cousin?”

Eden gave a shocked splutter. “Of course not!” Her cheeks turned red. “My sense of duty never extended that far!”

Her grandmother narrowed her eyes at her. “Then I cannot understand you.”

“I would have to have been a complete fool to even think of such an idiotic scheme,” Eden pointed out.

“You’d rather I thought you out to snare a husband for yourself, would you?” Lady Dorothea’s eyebrows rose. “Was it Leo’s plan? I want to know. How on earth did you of all people, end up in bed with the King’s champion,” snapped Lady Dorothea.

Eden fell back breathless in her chair. “Stop it grandmother!”

“It’s no use playing coy, if that’s the story you’re sticking to, my girl!”

Eden noticed the haggardness about her grandmother’s features and the tension in her tall, thin body. She had not been to court in twenty years, and yet she had dragged herself here to try and demand justice for her granddaughter who she had believed had been wronged. Even if it meant dragging her family name through the mud. “He – I mean, Roland - has been very… good about it,” she said avoiding Lady Dorothea’s pale blue eyes.

Her grandmother’s thin hands twitched in her lap. “If you’ve nothing else to say on the subject, then I will take my leave of you,” she said coldly.

Eden’s eyes darted to her face, which was an outraged mask. The older woman swept suddenly to her feet. “Wait!” she said, throwing up a hand. “If I tell you…” she gulped. “You will not… You must not..”

“If you cannot find it in your heart to trust me, your own kinswoman,” said her grandmother vehemently. “Then…”

“I walked into it,” said Eden. “You remember my old affliction, when troubled? How I… used to walk. In my sleep.” She covered her face a moment with her hand. Eden heard a rustle and peeped through her fingers. Lady Dorothea had dropped back into her seat, her face white as chalk.

“No,” she whispered. “Eden, you could not have!”

“I’m afraid I must have,” she replied tonelessly. “I’ve been over it in my head time and again. There can be no other explanation.” She swallowed. “He – he was uppermost in my thoughts at the time. We had discussed him that very afternoon, as you remembered. How we hoped Lenora would come to her senses and not go through with it,” she broke off a moment. “Of course, Uncle Leo always put his most honored guest in the yellow bedchamber, I would have known that instinctively. He was very drunk that night, and would not have woken when I let myself in.” Her grandmother’s face, when she steeled herself to look at it, was horrified. “I could not think straight the next morning. We were discovered, it was all such a living nightmare. I felt so unwell and unlike myself. I was confused, I had no defense or idea at that point what had even happened. When I realized later, well… You can imagine how I felt. Guilty, utterly wretched to find I was in fact, the author of my own undoing.”

Lady Dorothea rose to her feet and walked to the fire a moment, where she stood staring down at it. “I hardly know what to say, Eden,” she said awkwardly. “I had no idea you still did this childish thing.”

“I’ve only recently re-started,” said Eden tonelessly.

“You have done it again, since?”

“At least twice,” she admitted. “And probably would have done so more than that if it were not for-” she broke off, not wanting to admit that Roland would throw a leg or arm across her to still her unquiet slumbers.

“What an unhappy start to wedded life,” said Lady Dorothea heavily. She returned to her chair. She sighed heavily. “You say he has been kind to you?” she said after a moment’s pause. “Is it too much for me to hope that is the truth? He must have been exceedingly angry when you confessed, my girl and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”

Eden hesitated. “I – I have not confessed,” she said, raising her chin.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have not confessed,” she reiterated clasped her hands together in her lap. “I tried to have a frank discussion with him on the subject, but somehow… it did not go to plan. We ended up quarrelling. I got extremely emotional. It’s hard to explain.”

Lady Dorothea tipped her head to one side. “Quarrelling,” she repeated.