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“No one expected that,” Nathan chided softly, “but it is possible for you to be happy with another woman.”
“How?” Simon asked desperately. “When I know how fleeting happiness can be?”
“You worry that if you begin to feel ardour or affection for Marion, it might lead you to sorrow?” Nathan asked, his face dawning with comprehension.
Simon nodded miserably. “How could I not? The pain is still so keen. I do not think I could endure it again.”
“But there is nothing to suggest that Marion would bring you pain!” Nathan exclaimed, turning his friend to face him with a firm grip. “Listen to me, Simon. What happened to Stella was a tragedy, it is not inevitable. Not every love story must end in pain.”
“I know that!”Simon shook him off, a little frustrated with his friend’s lack of comprehension.
Nathan had no idea how bitter it was, to live every moment wondering if there was some way he could have averted his wife’s death. He did not know how such a loss shaped a man, how it tortured and moulded his soul until he was not sure he was even capable of loving again.
“Listen, my dear man,” Nathan tried again, raising his hands as if to show he was unarmed, and not in any way trying to attack his friend. “I am only saying that if you have feelings, there is no shame in allowing those feelings to grow.”
Simon breathed deeply, trying to calm down the rage inside him that rose when he thought of Stella. His friend was only trying to help him find happiness. Anyone with two eyes could see that he had been mourning for Stella these past five years, and he knew that everyone who loved him wanted this mourning period to end.
Simon wished that he felt clearly one way or the other, but the truth was that he was in a turmoil of both. In one breath he wished the long nightmare of grief would end, that he could walk away from this graveyard and leave Stella here. And then in the next, he clung to her memory as if his life depended on it. Surely, with his heart so tumultuous, it was better to keep Marion at arm’s length?
“Let us go back to the house,” Simon said, turning away from his wife’s grave and the inscription upon it.I thank God upon every remembrance of thee.Did he, Simon wondered, as they walked back along the path, truly thank God for every remembrance of Stella? Or did he sometimes wish he could forget entirely, and forego the pain of her death.
Then, perhaps, Marion’s company would fill him with joy, and not guilt.
* * *
“How was your dinner with the Dowager Countess?” Eleanor asked in a hushed tone, as she and Marion sat in the conservatory at the back of the house, away from the hustle and bustle of the main house. “You were so worried about it, I was concerned for you!”
“Yes, I was,” Marion smiled at her friend. The two women sat sewing together, enjoying the infrequent sunshine as it came through the scattered clouds. When she had known that her mother-in-law would be coming to dinner, she had immediately written to Eleanor to ask her advice, which had been, as usual, very helpful and pragmatic.
“I did just as you said,” Marion continued, “I focused on the details of the evening, and listened to the staff about her favourite things. I think it went as well as could be expected.”
“Was she kind?” Eleanor asked, leaning forward eagerly.
Marion hesitated. She did not necessarily want to disrupt the image Marion had that the Dowager Countess was a good woman. Marion was sure that she was—she was a moral and loyal mother and matriarch—but Marion was a potential threat to her family in her eyes, and had been treated as such.
Eleanor would never understand why Marion was being treated like the enemy, because despite the difference in their statures, Eleanor had never been able to see Marion as anything other than her surrogate sister. Her equal.
“She was…inquisitive,” Marion said cautiously. “She asked me about my father.”
“Oh,” Eleanor’s eyes grew wide with surprise and shock. They had not talked about Marion’s father often in their lives. “What did you say?”
“I told her the truth. What else could I do?” Marion shrugged helplessly. “It was quite uncomfortable.”
“It must have been.” Eleanor reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly. “You know so little of him.”
“It’s true,” Marion sighed. “I wish I knew more.”
“Do you?” Eleanor raised her eyebrows, returning to her sewing. “Perhaps it is better not to. What if you found out he was a bounder or a criminal? Surely it would be much worse.”
“I don’t know.” Marion considered Eleanor’s point carefully. She imagined what she could find out about him that would make things worse, and she wasn’t sure there could be anything. “At least I might have answers from him.”
“What would you wish to know?” Eleanor asked. “Say he was imprisoned for some crime, would you want to make inquiries of such a man?”
“You don’t understand, Ellie.” Marion sighed and put aside her sewing. “Now thatMamanhas died, I have lost all connection to that part of my life.”
“What could he give you that you couldn’t get from your memories with your mother?” Eleanor frowned. Like any good friend, Eleanor had no high opinion of the father who had betrayed both the woman she had come to see as a second mother and the girl she loved as a sister.
“Reasons,” Marion replied simply. “He could tell me why. Why he choseMaman,why he left her…why he left me.”
