“Another woman, a stronger woman, would not have been laid so low by the baby’s death. Bella has had disappointments. Your mother lost a child. They both assured me that my grief was unnaturally intense, selfish even, and I must…”
“Soldier on?” Gill said, finding a new least-favorite phrase. “Bella and Mama both had other children, other sons. They had been married much longer than a year when their losses befell them, and they weren’t twenty years old and wed to a man stumbling into a title when his wife needed him by her side.” He opened the front door, wishing good manners allowed last-minute cancellation of their dinner plans. “A stronger, wiser husband would not have left you to contend on your own for so long, Penelope.”
That had needed to be said aloud. Gill had chided himself in the odd moment for those months apart, but had followed his moments of self-doubt with reassurances that Penelope could have come down to the Hall if she’d wished. He’d invited her to often enough, while she had returned his invitations with silence.
“It’s chillier than I expected,” Penelope said, joining Gill on the front terrace. “I should wear my cloak.”
“I’ll fetch it.” Gill left her by the door and went to the wardrobe in the bedroom. Penelope’s purple merino cloak hung next to her old dressing gown, some sort of metaphor for the woman versus the viscountess.
Gill took out the cloak and draped it around Penelope’s shoulders and let the stroll up the path put distance between sad, intimate discussions and an hour intended to be social. At the dinner table, he exerted himself to be pleasant to Lord Tregoning and his lady. Gill smiled, he listened politely, and in the back of his mind, he turned over a puzzle.
That old dressing gown, the one that was four sizes too big for Penelope, had belonged to Gill long ago. The elbows were worn, and one lapel was frayed, suggesting regular use. Penelope’s jewelry box had been open, and atop her trinkets and earbobs had been Gill’s embroidered handkerchief. A shiny green ormer shell had glinted among her necklaces and bracelets, the thin chain of a golden locket wrapped about the shell.
Unless Gill was mistaken, that locket held a curl of his hair and his likeness.
Penelope’s determination to end the marriage was at least tinged with regret, which broke Gill’s heart all over again, yet some more.
“I had not appreciated how much of a service the present marquess has done us by living into great old age,” Amanda, Lady Tregoning, said. “We had a chance to find our balance as husband and wife and to weather a few storms before William had to start taking on the duties that go with the title.”
She gazed fondly at her husband’s retreating form. The waiter who’d brought out the fruit-and-cheese course had informed Vergilius of a note arriving for him at the front desk. Lord Tregoning had excused himself to have a word with old friends seated nearer the veranda, and thus the ladies had a moment to themselves.
“How long have you been married?” Penelope asked.
“Ten years,” Lady Tregoning replied. “Arranged, though we were cordially acquainted prior to the betrothal. We finished growing up together, to the extent anyone ever finishes growing up. You and Summerton seem quite settled.”
That erroneous observation was kindly meant. “We are contemplating a separation.” Penelope should probably have kept that admission to herself, except the knowledge of what lay in store at week’s end loomed larger and larger in her awareness.
Summerton was granting her wish, her dearest, most heartfelt wish, and now… she wasn’t sure her wish made such great good sense after all.
“I’m sorry,” Lady Tregoning said. “William and I reached the same point after the second miscarriage. We raised the topic of a separation gingerly at first, but then realized that it wouldn’t solve anything. We’d still be childless, we’d still be relying on the younger brothers to see to the succession, but we’d…”
Penelope wrapped four small raspberry tarts in a linen napkin and slipped them into her reticule. Vergilius liked them with his breakfast.
“You’d be giving up?” Penelope suggested. “Creating a scandal, fueling gossip?” She’d be doing all of that in spectacular fashion once word got out that the lawyers were involved.
“We’d be compounding our losses,” Amanda said. “I’d reached the point that when I looked at William, all I could see was the man to whom I owed sons, not my friend, not my partner in mischief, not a fellow who’d need allies when his father died. Not the only person who knows just by looking at me that my dancing slippers are pinching. I had to widen my focus to encompass all of him again. That was work, but work worth doing, and he had to see in me more than an unhappy wife.”
“But two miscarriages… How can you face the prospect of the same thing happening yet again?”
“We are careful, and whether to try again is an ongoing discussion. When I’m ready, William isn’t. When he’s feeling courageous, I’m not. We have three nephews. Children for us would be a blessing, but they are not a necessity. Being honest and kind with each other is what matters.”
Elsewhere in the dining room, people were laughing and talking, while in Penelope’s mind, ten years of marital history were taking on a very different aspect. Lady Tregoning and her husband had been talking for years about whether to try for more children, while Penelope had been hiding behind the Society pages and stuffing her calendar with committee meetings.
“How did you cope?” she asked, keeping her voice down. “When you felt you no longer knew your husband, when you wanted to stay home yet again, when the sight of family coming to roost in your home for the Season made you bilious?”
Lady Tregoning’s smile was wistful. “We didn’t cope very well at the start. We muddled along for the first couple years, and everybody told us to try again. To put the past behind us. Carry on, and don’t dwell on what cannot be changed. I hate those words—‘don’t dwell.’ It felt as if they were telling me to ignore my own broken heart. Then I lost the second baby—a boy—and carrying on was beyond me.”
Penelope sipped her wine, a pleasant white. “Precisely. I sometimes hate my sister-in-law.”
Amanda bit into an orange tart. “How many?”
“Seven. Four boys, three girls, and I suspect she’s not done. She pops them out like some broodmare. At her oats for breakfast, a baby in the straw by noon, at grass an hour later.”
“We hate them, the broodmares, and then we feel guilty because we aren’t among them, and we know nobody pops out a baby without considerable pain, danger, and struggle. But if I’m a broodmare, is my dear William merely a stud colt? I will never forget the day he asked me that, and I had no answer for him.”
“It’s different for men.” Penelope was horrified to hear herself quoting her mother-in-law.
“It could well be worse,” Amanda replied, selecting a chocolate from the arrangement on the platter. “The fellows are supposed to be strong, stoic, manly. Impervious to suffering. How lonely that must be.”
“We don’t think of them as lonely.” Vergilius had been the most generous and tender of lovers, and good God, Penelope missed him intimately. They had made passionate love, but they had also talked in bed. Long, thoughtful conversations punctuated by rest and affection. Did his lordship have anybody else to simply talk to?