Bed of Flowers Page 12

  Mr. and Mrs. Gavin always seemed so happy with one another. Bonny had assumed that, by accepting Charles Gavin, she’d guarantee the same connubial bliss for herself. Seeing both Gavins together made her heart squeeze. She wanted what they had.

  Her attention shifted, inevitably and painfully, to her fiancé. Charles Gavin was watching her with an expression she couldn’t decipher, but it was cool enough to banish her fleeting enthusiasm.

  Automatically she crossed the room to greet him, to soothe and flatter. Before she could say a word, however, a servant arrived to announce that dinner was ready.

  Papa Gavin offered Mrs. Reed his arm, and the assembled company formed up to follow. The dining room was, if anything, more magnificent than the receiving room. The two twin chandeliers ablaze with candles hung from the ceiling, casting a warm glow over a long table covered with two cloths—one exquisite cotton, the other fine lace. The room had been designed to accommodate a much larger party, so only half the table had been set.

  Soon after the first course had arrived, a creamed celery soup, Mrs. Gavin cleared her throat in the sort of deliberate way that brought all conversation to a quick halt.

  “It’s really quite fortuitous that we scheduled this dinner for tonight,” she said. “I thought we might have a little talk among ourselves. My husband and son came home this afternoon with very troubling news.”

  “That’s right,” said Charles. “We stopped at the Black Lion after our hunt, where nearly everyone we met told us that Miss Reed and Lord Loel were seen walking together this afternoon. Right through the center of town!”

  “That can’t be right,” protested Mrs. Reed while Mr. Reed turned a heavy, doleful stare on Bonny.

  “We thought the same,” said Charles Gavin.

  The elder Mr. Gavin chimed in. “Couldn’t believe it.”

  “But everyone we spoke to told the same story. They couldn’t all be wrong. I found myself forced, reluctantly, to believe.”

  “I take it you weren’t aware, Mrs. Reed? Mr. Reed?” Mrs. Gavin asked gently.

  “No, I—” Mrs. Reed took a deep breath. “Bonny, is this true?”

  Bonny hesitated, but there was no sense in denying it. She’d let Lord Loel escort her right through the center of town on a market day. She nodded.

  “And can you explain yourself?” Charles Gavin asked.

  Bonny wasn’t ready to confront him with what she’d learned about his son; she hadn’t decided if she ought to say anything at all. She needed time.

  So she hid the larger truth in a smaller one. “A few weeks ago I asked Lord Loel about donating a few books to our circulating library. It seemed the least he could do.”

  Her mother prompted, “You asked him… how? Where did you cross paths?”

  “I was on my way home from a visit to Mrs. Twisby. The road runs right past the gates to Woodclose.”

  “You went to his home?” Mrs. Reed exclaimed. “Alone?”

  “I walked up the drive,” Bonny said. “I didn’t go inside the house.”

  “You shouldn’t have set foot on the property!”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.” She crossed her fingers under the table. “And nothing came of it—he wouldn’t donate.”

  “What difference does that make? You’ve been walking out that way—” Mrs. Reed cut herself short, paled, and with obvious effort, reined in her temper. “I’m sorry. We’ll discuss this later. Thank you for bringing this news to our attention, Mrs. Gavin.”

  Mrs. Gavin fluttered her fingers, a gesture that seemed caught between an attempt to draw attention and to ward it away. “Don’t apologize. In truth, I’d hoped we could discuss this together, calmly and sympathetically. Especially because you must have strong feelings about Lord Loel.”

  Mr. Reed let out a brief, bitter bark of laughter. He cast his deep-set eyes from one end of the table to the other and said in a low, emphatic tone, “Do you know, he never apologized?”

  Bonny flinched. Her parents didn’t know about Loel’s letter. They’d had so much to do after the fire—it turned out that sudden financial ruin created a great deal of work. Every day a new insurance agent knocked at the door with a list of questions, a suddenly out-of-work employee or servant needed a reference, an antiques dealer wanted a tour.

  Bonny had taken on many of her mother’s usual household chores, which included sorting through the mail. She’d never told her parents about Loel’s letter or his visit. At first she hadn’t seen the point—her parents had neither the time nor the energy to coddle a soft-mouthed lordling. Later, after Loel had gone, she’d been too ashamed.

  She hadn’t realized her parents noticed, hadn’t imagined they cared. Her father had never said anything before. Why choose today to speak about it for the first time?

  “I’ve heard from others that he sent letters, paid visits… but he never darkened our doorstep.” Mr. Reed tipped his chin at Bonny. “That boy’s a coward.”

  Coward was the last word Bonny would have used to describe Lord Loel.

  The elder Mr. Gavin lowered his voice. “I’ve often thought it’s a good thing that Lord and Lady Loel didn’t live long enough to see what’s become of him…”

  “They must be turning in their graves,” agreed Mrs. Gavin in the contented tone of one whose opinion, often repeated and never challenged, has acquired the shine of an established truth.

  Bonny, who’d nodded along to similar comments more often than she could count, cringed. She didn’t know what Lord Loel had done to disappoint his parents—but neither did the Gavins! No one did, but they condemned him with such relish.

  “For a coward, he’s grown bold,” said Charles Gavin. “If he’s taken to accosting women on the streets—one of his own victims even—perhaps it’s time that we had a word with him.”

  “What?” Bonny spluttered. That sounded like a threat. “No!”

  “No?” Gavin’s eyebrows rose, then flattened. “Several of the people we spoke to insisted that you seemed very friendly with Lord Loel. Heads drawn together, speaking in confidential tones.”

  Bonny opened her mouth. She was supposed to say that she wanted nothing to do with Lord Loel, that he’d imposed himself on her, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Her mother, who’d been silent for several minutes now, began to shake her head in silent horror. She’d guessed some of the truth—and now her imagination was filling in the rest.

  “What exactly was his business with you?” Charles Gavin pressed. “You spoke of a visit to Woodclose but not today’s meeting. What were you discussing?”

  “It was—” Bonny stuttered to a halt. She wasn’t ready for this conversation! “I’m not—”

  “I think you had better answer that question, Miss Reed,” said Mrs. Gavin. “Hesitating only casts doubt on your own behavior.”

  Charles Gavin grunted his agreement. “Just so, I’m afraid. Just so.”

  Bonny closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It seemed that the choice had been made for her. She settled herself, squared her shoulders, and said, “During my visit to Woodclose, Lord Loel said something I found very disturbing.”

  “I won’t stand for it,” muttered Charles Gavin. His mother reached across the table to give her son’s arm a comforting pat.

  “Something very disturbing about you, Mr. Gavin,” Bonny said sharply. “He said that you have a… a… natural child.”

  Chapter 10

  The atmosphere in the room chilled abruptly. Mrs. Gavin’s posture stiffened, the light in Papa Gavin’s eyes went out, and a flush crept up Charles Gavin’s neck.

  The Reeds all felt it, drawing away from the table, glancing nervously at one another. Margot sat on her hands. The hairs at the back of Bonny’s neck prickled.

  “And you listened?” Charles Gavin asked in a low, dangerous voice.

  “I tried not to!” Bonny’s voice climbed up the register, high and thin. “I refused to believe him. I tried to put it out of my mind…”

 
“Have you been spreading these foul stories?” Mrs. Gavin demanded. “Is this how you recompense a man who has treated you with respect and courtesy?”

  “Of course not!” Bonny recoiled. “I’d hoped to prove Lord Loel wrong—to stop him from spreading foul rumors. But instead, I discovered that he’d told me the truth.”

  Charles Gavin’s eyes narrowed. “So you’ve been snooping about, behind my back—”

  “Do you know what’s become of your child?” Bonny demanded.

  “No,” Charles Gavin snapped. “And I don’t care.”

  Bonny stubbornly continued. “He’s been put to work. As a houseboy.”

  “So?”

  Something died in Bonny right then.

  Charles Gavin was not the man she had believed him to be. But he didn’t fall from grace alone; she fell with him. She had been wrong. She had believed a lie.

  Now she stumbled in the dark. All the lights she’d used to find her way had blinked out, and yet it was more important than ever that she choose the right path.

  “I had hoped to do you a favor tonight,” said Mrs. Gavin. “I thought we could discuss your misstep together, like family—it never occurred to me to view these reports from the pub in the worst possible light. But now I am forced to consider the possibility that you were committing an act of disloyalty.”

  “Because I wanted to know the truth?” Bonny asked.

  “A wife is answerable to her husband—and not the reverse. You have no right to an accounting of my son’s actions. Not now or ever.” Mrs. Gavin’s fingers were so tight around her cutlery they were white. “But I will offer one for your instruction. I made the mistake of hiring the strumpet who carried that child as my lady’s maid—she lived under our roof, ate our food, wore the clothes we provided—and you see how she repaid us. She disgraced herself.”

  “Thought she’d trapped us.” Charles Gavin snorted. “Greedy tart got what she deserved: nothing.”

  “The child is innocent,” Bonny whispered.

  “If so, it’s only because we have prevented its dam from using her babe as a weapon against us,” said Mrs. Gavin. “Just like this… blackguard… Lord Loel has tried to use it as a weapon against us. And you have abetted his calumny, Miss Reed.”

  Bonny sat frozen, speechless, heart pounding. She looked to her parents for support and found her father staring into his full plate as though it might whisper the secrets of the universe at him, shoulders slumped. Margot blinked owlishly, as though she’d been startled by a very bright light, and her mother…

  Mrs. Reed had one hand fisted in her lap and the other propped against the table, fingers loosely curled, projecting a calm she obviously did not feel.

  “Mrs. Gavin,” Mrs. Reed said softly. “We’ve been friends for a long time; you know my daughter. She means well. The fault here is mine and my husband’s. We ought to have instructed her better. Don’t judge her too harshly.”

  Bonny couldn’t believe her ears. “Mama?”

  Mrs. Reed turned in answer to this plea. It was a slow, controlled movement designed to hide pain, but Bonny saw such dignity in her mother, such strength. Here was a woman who had learned to hold her head up even after her whole world had collapsed, and she’d had to carry what was left on her shoulders.

  Bonny had never admired her mother more and never felt more ashamed.

  “Bonny, I think you should apologize to the Gavins,” said Mrs. Reed. “Thank Mrs. Gavin for her advice and for her patience.”

  Bonny swallowed. She couldn’t refuse. It would have been ungrateful. It would have added to her mother’s humiliation, and she couldn’t bear that.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Bonny. “It seems I forgot something that I ought to know very well and believe deeply—there is nothing more important than family. I could ask for no higher calling than to love and support my family in every possible way. I’m sorry that I ever, even for a moment, forgot this most essential truth.”

  Mrs. Gavin’s expression softened. “I confess, if you’d said anything else… but I can see you understand and that you’re sincere. Charles?”

  Charles Gavin let the silence linger—cruelly, in Bonny’s opinion. The suspicion had not lifted from his eyes; a hardness lingered about his mouth.

  In the end, he accepted her apology with a brief, gruff, “Don’t let it happen again.”

  The rest of the meal passed slowly. Mrs. Gavin peppered Margot with questions about her drawing and her reading. Mr. Gavin and Mr. Reed discussed trade and politics, with occasional contributions from Charles Gavin.

  Bonny spoke as little as possible. The courses followed, lavish and delicious, but she’d lost what little appetite she’d brought to the table. It was a relief when they finally left, one of the crisply uniformed footmen doling out their lanterns, freshly re-lit for the walk home. The temperature had chilled, or perhaps it just seemed colder after an evening in the bright and toasty rooms of the Gavin house. In any case, Bonny wasn’t the only one who shivered as they walked single file along the deserted pavement.

  An eerie silence held until they’d turned the corner on the Gavins’ house. Even Margot held her tongue. And then, at last, the dam burst.

  “Lord Loel, Bonny?” said her father.

  Right on the heels of this mournful question, Mrs. Reed demanded, “What were you thinking!”

  “He feels guilty about the fire,” Bonny explained. “He thought he was doing me a favor.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “I do now,” Bonny said hotly. “He told me the truth.”

  “To what end?” her mother asked. “Do you tell every sick person you meet that they’re looking poorly? Do you remind your thin friends that they need to put on weight or your plump ones that they were slimmer the last time you saw them? Truth is very easy to abuse.”

  “You’re saying it would be better if I married Mr. Gavin without knowing who he is? What he’s done?”

  “It’s the way of the world, Bonny,” said her mother. “You can reject Mr. Gavin, but at best you’ll find a replacement who hides his vices better.”

  Bonny’s jaw dropped.

  “These are hard words for an innocent to hear, I know,” said her mother. “But if you insist on discussing subjects that aren’t meant for innocent ears, you must be prepared for the answers.”

  “Are you telling me I should expect all men to behave like tomcats?” Bonny demanded. “Or that I should expect them to neglect the illegitimate children they father?”

  “I’m asking you to think,” her mother said. “Are you going to break your engagement? Is that where this is leading?”

  Bonny shrugged. She didn’t know.

  “Because if an hour in the company of that houseboy broke your heart, explain to Margot here that you care more about Charles Gavin’s bastard than your own sister.”

  “She doesn’t,” said Margot, loyally.

  “I don’t think you’d marry him if you were in my place,” said Bonny. “I think you’d find someone better.”

  “You’re probably right.” Her mother brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, lit from below by the swaying lantern light and looking so human, so fallible. And every bit her age. “But, Bonny, I brought an income to my marriage, family connections… I wish things had worked out so that you could have the same advantages, but they didn’t.”

  “So Mr. Gavin is the best I’ll do,” said Bonny. “And you still think I should marry him.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “I’m sorry, Bonny, but yes.”

  Bonny visited Cordelia after breakfast the next morning. It was one of those days when her workshop was the best possible place in the world to be—cold and clear outside, and yet the heat radiating from below stairs combined with bright sunlight streaming through the windows made the converted nursery almost too warm.

  Cordelia, accordingly, wore one of her lightest spring dresses, white muslin sprigged with bright green flowers. The pattern would have been unbearably sacc
harine on Bonny, but through some peculiar alchemy of character looked dashing and fierce on Cordelia. She’d set about binding a new copy of Pride and Prejudice, which she’d bought because the old one had fallen apart from constant use.

  Bonny offered to help. Cordelia gave her a single signature, about sixteen sheets of paper with four pages printed on each side that, once properly folded, could be sewn down the middle. Cordelia had done all the folding, a process that mystified Bonny, but she could sew along a dotted line.

  So she drove the slender steel needle into the stack of paper, pulled it through, turned it around, repeated the process. Watching the trail of neat stitches emerge helped her gather her courage. She might be floundering in a sea of doubt, but here, at least, was something she could do well.

  “I need to tell you about our dinner at the Gavins’ last night,” said Bonny.

  Cordelia was in the middle of cutting a sheet of thick card stock into what would become the front cover, back cover, and spine of the book. She had a lethally sharp knife for the purpose and a pumice stone to smooth the edges when she was done.

  “It turned into a complete disaster because…” Bonny paused. “I suppose I should start at the beginning. I’ve visited Woodclose several times since that afternoon when I asked Lord Loel to donate books to the library.”

  Cordelia finished her cut, fingered a snag where the card stock had wrinkled, and looked up. “After what he did to you? And your family? Why?”

  For the first time, Bonny told the truth. “I like him.”

  Cordelia wrinkled her nose. “Lord Loel?”

  “He’s different from any other man I’ve ever met,” said Bonny. “He speaks plainly and doesn’t mind if I answer in the same way—I talk to him as frankly as I talk to you. He listens and takes me seriously.”

  “That’s all very nice, Bonny, but he destroyed a company that your family spent several generations building.”