Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [101]
One day Helen Carfax would know that, would understand that she would never earn from James what he did not have to give her, or to anyone else.
Zenobia remembered some of her own romantic adventures, the rash giving, the clinging to hope, and wondered with a cold, sick fear if Helen had already paid the greatest price of all, having taken her father’s life with her own hands, for the money to buy her husband’s loyalty.
Then she looked again at the pale face with its white-rimmed eyes, now resting on James’s elegant figure, and thought the fear was for him, not for herself. She was afraid that he had done the deed, or somehow contrived to have it done.
She stood up slowly, a trifle stiff from having sat so long.
“I am sure, Lady Mary, that you have family business to discuss and would care for a little privacy. It is such a delightful day I should like a short walk in the sun. Mrs. Carfax, perhaps you would be so kind as to accompany me?”
Helen looked startled, almost as if she had not understood.
“We might walk as far as the top of the road,” Zenobia persisted. “I am sure the air would do us good, and I should appreciate your company, and perhaps your arm.”
It was ridiculous—Zenobia was far stronger than Helen and assuredly had no need for support, but it was an invitation Helen could not civilly refuse, phrased in such terms. Obediently she excused herself to her husband and mother-in-law, and five minutes later she and Zenobia were outside in the sunny street.
It was a subject that could not possibly be approached directly, yet Zenobia felt impelled, even at the risk of causing serious offense, to speak to Helen as if she had been a daughter, a reflection of her own youth. She was prepared to mix truth of emotion with invention of setting in order to do it.
“My dear, I sympathize with you deeply,” she began as soon as they were a few yards from the house. “I too lost my father in violent and distressing circumstances.” She had not time to waste recounting that piece of fiction; it was merely an introduction. The story that mattered was of Zenobia’s desperate attempt to win from a man a love of which he was not capable, and how instead she had lost her own integrity, paying a fortune for an article that did not exist, for her or for anyone.
She began slowly, extending her invented bereavement into her journeys to Africa, avoiding the numbing reality of Balaklava and Peter Holland’s death. Instead she created first an imaginary father snatched in his late prime, then on to a suitor, a mixture of men she had known and cared for in one fashion or another—but never Peter.
“Oh my dear, I loved him so much,” she sighed, looking not at Helen but at the briar hedge a little to their left. “He was handsome, and so considerate, such delightful and interesting company.”
“What happened?” Helen asked out of politeness, not interest, because the silence seemed to require it.
Zenobia mixed disillusion with a modicum of poetic license.
“I gave him the finances for his trip, and unwisely many gifts towards it also.”
Helen’s whole attention was caught for the first time. “That is only natural—you loved him.”
“And I wanted him to love me,” Zenobia continued, aware that she was about to wound, perhaps intensely. “I even did things that on looking back I realize were dishonorable. I suppose I knew it at the time, had I been brave enough to admit it.” She did not look at Helen, but kept her eyes on the white drifting clouds scudding across the sky ahead of them. “It took me a long time and much heartache before I understood that I had paid a high price for something which was not real, something I could never hope to gain.”
“What?” Helen swallowed hard, and still Zenobia did not look at her. “What do you mean?”
“That it is an illusion many women have, my dear, that all men are capable of the kind of love we long for, and that if we are only faithful, generous, and patient enough they will give it to us in the