The Corn Maiden, page 24
Lindsay seemed taken aback by the comfortable domestic scene he had disturbed; he remained standing, silent and awkward, with his back to the fire, staring at Nell. She swept him with frosty eyes and said, “I have no idea why you should choose to intrude on my privacy here, Lindsay. Your presence is most unwelcome, and I wish that you would leave.”
As he neither spoke nor moved but simply continued to glower at her, she went on angrily, her curiosity getting the better of her, “Why are you here? At least you can tell me that before you go.”
“I called on you in London and Lady Hartismere told me you had left with your companion for the country and were not intending to return this season.”
“That is so. But what was your motive in calling on me? You had been in London for six weeks and had not thought it necessary to call on me…” She turned away from him to hide the sting of hurt in her eyes, wishing she had not so betrayed her feelings, praying for the strength to stay calm and unconcerned.
“I am your guardian after all, Elinor. Not a very effective or concerned guardian, perhaps, but I thought it my duty to hear from my ward herself why she had disdained my written permission to marry Henry Collingwood. After delivering it to you at Carlton House, I waited for a week, but no banns had been called, no special license applied for. And the lucky groom returns to Spain next week…Why, I even accosted Collingwood myself and affected to congratulate him on his forthcoming marriage! He told me, Elinor, in some surprise, that his plans in that direction had come to nought. Indeed, he was very inclined to lay the blame at my door. A very awkward exchange ensued, I can tell you! Am I to understand that you have rejected my offer, madam? That you no longer are seeking your freedom?”
Nell coloured and looked at her feet. He went on in a more kindly tone, “Is there perhaps someone else you would wish me to approve of? Some other union to which I may give my blessing? You may speak out, for I am conscious that I owe you much and would like, in spite of all, to see you happily settled…or at least, settled in a way of your choosing.”
Nell sighed and replied with obvious difficulty, “Cousin, I thank you for your consideration and for your belated remembrance of your duty, but no—there is no action I wish you to take on my behalf. I have no schemes to marry. Indeed, marriage, for me, will always now be out of the question.” Her voice trailed away, and she hurriedly turned her back on him again. Would the man never leave? Surely he would have the decency to go before she was overwhelmed by her emotions and burst into tears?
At the ball a week ago, she had been painfully aware, through his scorching accusations, that she was still in love with him. The calm and resignation she had worked for weeks to acquire since her departure from Scotland had been shot to pieces in minutes by his appearance at the dance. The last thing she had been prepared for had been to see him the elegant man about London, soigné, handsome, even fêted for his bravery by the Prince and the target of much female admiration and, though quite a different figure from the rough poacher she had fallen in love with, she had had to admit that the Roderick Lindsay she had met that night would have turned her head had she been seeing him for the first time. What a cruel irony that here was the man she had unconsciously been seeking through all those tedious balls and soirées and had in the end lost hope of ever finding. Doubly cruel that she should have fallen in love twice, and each time her choice the same impossible one. His angry words to her at Carlton House had been bitter and accusing, and she wondered at the effrontery that enabled him to attack her—and she still suffering from the effects of his heartless scheming.
Every glance had been a dagger in her heart, and it had been more than she could bear to see him in the proprietorial arms of Amelia Sinclair. So why was he now come here into her private place, to disturb her calm retreat from the world? Could this sudden concern for her welfare be genuine? He was talking in the annoyingly sententious tones of a guardian, but it seemed to her that his eyes were giving her quite a different message. This was too much! He had hurt her beyond reason, more than he could possibly know, and now it seemed she must defend herself from a further onslaught on her emotions.
He moved over to her and put his hands on her shaking shoulders, gently turning her towards him. No! This was unfair! Bad temper and accusations she could withstand, but tenderness would melt her resolve at once.
“Come, Elinor, surely there is some direction in which happiness lies? You have given me mine with the utmost generosity, and I would see you happy. I have a guardian’s power, with no more effort than to sign my name to any document you choose, to set you free to find your happiness. If you will only tell me how.”
She remained silent and rigid, fighting down tears.
He shrugged, unable to penetrate her silence.
“The world seems peopled with men you have refused to take as husband—Fanshawe and a hundred others, Collingwood and myself—all rejected. Tell me, Elinor, why did you not accept Collingwood when you could have had him?”
Wearily, she replied, “Because I did not love him, and, poor, obliging fool that he is, I found I could not deceive him.”
“This is not the sprightly, scheming Elinor Somersham I pulled out of the mud ten weeks ago!”
“You are right. I am greatly changed. You do not know how changed.”
“And why did you not accept me when you could have had me?” The question was asked with such intensity that she knew she would have to reply, though she dreaded being shaken out of the security of her monosyllabic answers.
“I thought you had formed your own theories as to that, sir. At the ball you set them out very clearly for me…”
“At the ball I was angry still at your treatment of me and eager to punish you for running away, for refusing to commit yourself to me and mine. I blamed you for indulging wantonly in a piece of romantic dalliance that satisfied a passing whim. My opinion of a woman who could behave with all the convincing appearance of a passionate attachment to a man, only to run away from him when he offered her his hand is low indeed. I despised you for tricking me and going back to your glittering empty life in London, for saying you loved me when you were simply playing with me. But when I saw you dash away from poor Collingwood in tears, I…I began to wonder whether I had reasoned aright.”
“So you came all the way up here to Suffolk to find out? This is very meticulous of you, cousin! Your effort deserves a reward, and I shall tell you the plain truth,” said Nell with a flash of scorn. Anger at the injustice of his accusations pushed her at last to drop her protective silence and offer some explanation of her thoughts and actions. Confronted with this demanding man, she could no longer keep a cover on her bubbling sense of outrage. “I left you because I would not be entrapped into marriage with a man who did not love me. It was clear to me that from the moment you knew who I was you were determined to lay siege to me with the object of appropriating my fortune for your own purposes, and you began the moment you hauled me onto your horse. You encouraged me fall in love with you by pretending to be other than you were, and then you set about destroying my reputation and…and attempting callously and knowingly, I do believe, to get me with child in order to—how did McPherson express it? ‘To make sure of the girl, the dog!’”
“McPherson?” he asked in amazement.
“Yes, your neighbour McPherson. I overheard him in the courtyard conversing man to man with Kintoul. They were very admiring of the way in which you had single-mindedly set about gaining control of your estates, if not by law than by other devious means, and,” her voice choked on the words, “the money to sustain them by seducing me into marriage.”
Into his stunned silence, she rushed on. “Such was McPherson’s faith in your scheming and so notable your prowess in dalliance that he had a full year before wagered five pounds on a favourable outcome for you! Five English pounds,” she added uselessly. “A year ago you knew nothing of me except that I had what you so dearly wanted. You determined to get it from me one way or another, and if the legal path proved impossible, then you would get it by marrying me. I could have been ugly, unalluring, and disagreeable like Laetitia Kintoul, and it would have made no difference to your schemes! But you were lucky, Moidart, were you not? It must have been so easy for you! Your prey was impressionable enough to be swept off her feet by a handsome Scottish rogue! Your prey sprang willingly into your trap and did not even recognise it for the trap it was! How pleased with your schemes you were, Moidart! You must have thought you had captured the Corn Maiden herself—she who would ensure bounty and increase for your clan and a full cradle in your own house before the next harvest! I even conjured her up myself! How you must have laughed to see me plaiting up with my own fingers the symbolic sacrifice…” She broke off with a sob.
His grasp on her shoulders had tightened, and the pressure of his fingers was hurting. “Elinor! Is this true? Oh, look at me, girl!” She knew that he was, with difficulty, restraining himself from shaking her. “Are you saying that you loved me when you ran away? That perhaps you still do?”
She raised a tear-stained face, looked searchingly into his eyes, and could tell him nothing less than the truth. “Yes, I did love you, and I begin to acknowledge that perhaps I always shall, but I despise you and fear you for so tricking me and attempting to ensnare me. For it is true that you did so, is it not? McPherson was not mistaken, was he? Was he?” Her wide grey eyes, awash with unshed tears, were searching his face, drawing the truth out of him, hoping that, at the last, he would deny her accusation, sweep her into his arms, and kiss her into insensibility.
Looking steadily back at her he said quietly, “Yes, it is true, Elinor. Your suspicions were well founded. I have deceived you enough. I will not make myself more loathsome in your eyes by continuing to deny it.”
He sighed and dropped his hands from her shoulders before continuing in a dull tone, “It was the letter you wrote to me asking my permission to marry Collingwood that put the scheme into my head. I had met the fellow in the Peninsula, thought badly of him, and was incensed by the idea that a chit of a girl could so carelessly attempt to pass my birthright and the lives of my clan on by marriage to such an oaf…That Moidart of Moidart should count his new English lord’s sheep, sow his corn, mend his roofs, polish the boots of the incompetent jackanapes was unthinkable. I wrote back to you proposing a marriage of convenience, being quite certain that one liaison would be as good as another to such a heartless schemer as yourself. I hated the whole idea of Lady Elinor Somersham and would not have hesitated to do her down. I had not expected that you would take my proposal seriously and was quite astonished to find that you had delivered yourself into my grasp. I would have married you for certain, yes, and if you had been unattractive I would not have cared, indeed it would have made it easier for me to have sent you off back to England with my name in exchange for my lands.”
Although she had known this to be true, it was still a shocking thing for Nell to hear it from his lips. She turned pale but listened intently as he went on in the same measured tone, “I set out to entrap you. I confess it. But Elinor, it was not long before I realised that I was, myself, ensnared. I was not lying to you when I told you why I let you go on thinking of me as Moidart. By the time I pulled you off the road and onto my horse, I knew there was a strange feeling linking us, a feeling I wanted to explore and encourage to grow, and I was determined that you should know me without the barrier of guardianship between us. I deceived you, yes—because I was head over ears in love with you from that first evening, and I was sure that if you knew me as Lindsay you would rightly regard me as your enemy and would be off back to London in a trice. My deceit was to keep you close to me until you had learned to love me.” He paused for a moment. “I struggled hard not to force you, Elinor…I had thought that you came to me willingly.”
“I did,” she whispered. “No, we were equals in loving, Moidart.”
They were silent for a moment, the thoughts of both flying back unbidden to the days and nights they had spent together in companionship and love.
“I did not set out deliberately to get you with child, Elinor,” he said slowly. “It would be unjust to ascribe such a depth of cunning to me. I loved you, I wanted you, I was sure you wanted me, and I thought no further than that. But in this, too, I was guilty of deceiving you—I knew that all would be well with us, that our loving each other was innocent, was good, and would lead to the security of a legal tie, but you, Elinor, I left you without the comfort of that knowledge, and for that carelessness I cannot forgive myself!” He looked away, unable to meet her eye. “I was selfishly enjoying the sensation of knowing that you loved me, had given yourself to me without consideration of rank and fortune. I was secure in the knowledge that you had given me all because you loved me and for no other reason.”
Nell guiltily censored the thought that this had been her motive too—to be loved for herself—but she remained hurt, agitated, and unconvinced.
He went on, slowly. “And over the days, the physical attraction I felt for you was swelled by a deep admiration for your other qualities—I thought you were a fitting wife for Moidart, Nell Somersham! It did not take me long to see that there was a fine woman under the layer of spoilt sophistication. The girl I watched gleefully cracking the head of a McGregor at Achill, the girl who could argue about the price of wool and plait up a corn dolly…” his voice sank to a low intensity, “the girl who welcomed me with passionate directness on the hill was surely a Lindsay. I had thought that you had understood this, had seen the life I could offer you and were ready to embrace it as you embraced me. It was unimaginable to me that you could not prefer it to a life of shallow, meaningless amusement in London.” He sighed and gave her a bitter look. “Unimaginable until I watched you at the Prince’s Ball dancing like a moth in the moonlight, as lovely and as ephemeral. But Elinor, I asked you if you loved me and if you loved the House of Lindsay. Surely you remember what you replied?”
“I remember it well, but my reply was given to Moidart, whom I loved and would have spent the rest of my days with at whatever cost—not to sleek, complicated, scheming Lindsay, who had not the courage even to ask for my hand, lest I should refuse it!”
He flinched and hung his head. “I am ashamed so to have pushed you along, but I feared you would prance skittishly away at the last moment and, for the first time in my life, I took the coward’s way and avoided the risk of your refusal.” He smiled and shook his head. “The hero of Talavera, Elinor! You see to what you can reduce him! I could more easily have faced the blast of the French cannon than listened to your denying me. But, that last night we were together…” Nell quivered at the memory, but he went on, “You said you wanted to spend every day of the rest of your life with Moidart. I took that as your acceptance. I am still Moidart…I always was. I am still the man who met you on the road and who knew that he loved you before he set you down from his horse.” He looked down at her with the compelling dark gaze she had seen in imagination every hour since she had left him and gently brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
He took a deep breath and said softly, “Elinor Somersham, Roderick Lindsay, Laird of Moidart, is asking you if you will marry him because he believes you love him and he knows he loves you and cannot live his life without you. If there are impediments to the match—as, for example, your ridiculously large fortune—he recommends that you make it over to your stepmother or Henry Collingwood or your butler or any other deserving party…”
“But Lindsay needs a fortune…” she began.
“And Lindsay could have had any of three fortunes the equal and better of yours had that been of importance to him,” he reminded her gently. He slipped an arm around her shoulders, unwilling to kiss her, for both knew they would be lost to reason if he did.
Nell’s eyes, which had been lifeless and unfocussed with grief and staring abstractedly into an uncertain future, had begun to brighten and fasten on his with awakening hope. She looked up at him searchingly. Could it be that her judgement had been so at fault? Her wretched fortune, the subtleties of her father’s will had conspired to make her suspicious and mistrustful, and she had ignored the evidence of her own heart. She studied his face intently, reading there nothing but love and concern. She could scarcely believe that her situation, which had only minutes ago seemed without remedy, was so transformed. The hopes she had stifled for the past weeks were suddenly blossoming all about her, the yearnings she had fought down were springing up as strong as ever. He was here with her now, was he not? He was saying that he loved her, and his eyes were clear and direct and, at last, telling her no lie.
Suddenly, the effort of keeping up her pretence before the world—her barriers, her fragile concealment—was too much, and her forces crumbled. Her knees gave way, her head drooped, and she fell in a swoon against his chest.
In alarm and murmuring her name, he gathered her up and carried her to the little bed, sinking down and holding her close on his knee, cradling her face in one large hand, uncertain what to do. When she opened her eyes and smiled at him, he said, “You are not well, Elinor. I thought you greatly changed when I saw you at the ball. Is it…can it be unhappiness that has so affected you? Have you been missing me? I dare to ask this because—God knows—I have missed you! I must admit that was the first thought that gave me hope that perhaps you were not so indifferent to me. Shall I summon your maid? Shall I fetch Lucy?”
