“He’s in a bad way.”
“Yes. But do you know, he has but to look at someone, and that someone will spill his innards to Samuel. My father thinks it’s amazing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She just laughed, took his hand, and pulled him toward the vicarage door. They heard Mary Rose yelling at Rory, who had, evidently, climbed the trellis, because she was telling him that she was going to swat him but good when she got him down from that great height. Goodness, he’d climbed at least eighteen inches and he deserved a good swat.
“That,” Meggie said, “makes you wonder about the nature of deception, doesn’t it?”
Jeremy’s visit the following Wednesday was unannounced, thank God, or Meggie would have been an incoherent bundle of nerves. As it was, all she felt was longing and an immense pain at what couldn’t be.
Jeremy Stanton-Greville was so happy. So incredibly, blessedly happy. He gushed; he grinned like a fool. He oozed contentment and smugness. He rubbed his hands together, so proud of himself, so pleased with life, so uncaring, so blind, to the one person who would have gladly played Sir Walter Raleigh to his Queen Elizabeth and thrown every cloak she owned at his feet. Thus, just seeing him, knowing he wasn’t ever to belong to her, made her want to hide under the stairs and weep, but naturally, she couldn’t. She was stoic. She endured, even managed, when a jest nearly
punched her in the nose, to dutifully smile.
After an hour, however, Meggie was feeling less and less like bursting into tears when she looked at him. Actually, she wanted less and less for him to stare at her, just her, with regret and nameless hunger in his beautiful eyes. She wanted less and less for him to realize his tragic mistake that would keep them apart forever.
No, after an hour, Meggie was ready to smash him. She began to drum her fingers against the arm of her chair as he talked on and on about his dearest Charlotte, his beautiful, elegant Charlotte, so sweet, so clever—the embodiment of perfection, a flawless example of womanhood. Then he went on to his stud at Fowey. After a while, both the stud and Charlotte sported the same attributes.
Jeremy never stopped talking about either Charlotte and the stud, even after dinner when the adults were finally having tea in the drawing room.
Hour upon hour of his braying went on. Meggie knew it would never end unless someone shot him. She was ready.
His endless braying had become the fifth circle of Hell. He was still beautiful, of course, no change there, and he still made her heart sigh and ache, but enough was enough. To keep her mouth shut, Meggie moved to the piano and played vigorously, to drown out his endless praise of himself and what he himself had found and fashioned. But he just didn’t stop. Her father looked mildly amused, and to Meggie’s eye a bit distracted, and she knew he was likely composing next Sunday’s sermon while he was the perfect host. Mary Rose was constantly patting Jeremy’s hand, as if to congratulate him on his brilliance, perhaps to keep herself from slapping him silly.
Meggie’s limber fingers ran the last Scarlatti arpeggio, hit the last cord, perhaps too forte, since she used quite a bit of muscle, but it didn’t matter. She waited just a moment to see if perhaps the conversation had shifted to someone besides perfect Charlotte or the perfect stud.
It hadn’t.
Meggie said finally, in a very loud voice as she rose from the piano stool, “How are Uncle Ryder and Aunt Sophie?”
Jeremy, who been detailing every improvement he’d made on the stud—in only three months, mind you—and the plans he had for Leo, said, startled, “What? Oh, they are just fine, Meggie.” He grinned, and Meggie felt her heart lurch. Well, blessed hell. “Yes, Ryder tells me the Sherbrooke boys have quite taken over Oxford. He says that when a letter arrives from Grayson, he’s loathe to open it, fearing the worst.” Now his grin turned fatuous. “I know you love to ride, Meggie. Did I tell you how much Charlotte adores this one mare I bought for her, a beautiful bay mare with a white blaze on her nose and white fetlocks. She is as lovely a mare as Charlotte is a woman. I will breed her, naturally. Her name is Dido, so fitting, don’t you think?”
“No,” Meggie said. “To escape her husband, Dido built a funeral pyre, stabbed herself, and threw herself on it.”
He paused a moment, frowning. “I thought she founded Carthage, something both the mare and Charlotte will do, that is, they will both found a dynasty.”
“She did, then she stabbed herself.”
“Hmm,” said Jeremy, “now that I think about it, I’m not certain that I should allow Charlotte to ride all that much now, since she is carrying my child.”
“It is her child too,” Meggie said, her voice rising an octave. “She’s the one doing all the work.”
“Well, yes, but she tells me over and over that she is having this child for me and that it will be a boy because that is what I want.” He gave her a brainless self-satisfied grin.
This was nauseating. Her heart wasn’t lurching in pain and regret now. Meggie said, her fingers tapping on the lovely cherrywood piano case, “I would only care if my child were healthy and that it managed to survive its first year on this blessed earth. I wouldn’t care whether or not it was a boy or girl.” She added, her voice even louder now, “Perhaps Charlotte can decide for herself when she should stop riding her beautiful mare that you bought her, whose namesake stabbed herself.”
Jeremy gave her what she’d thought only four hours before was the most seductive smile in all of Christendom. Now it looked superior and smug. He said, all patient and condescending, “Meggie, as is proper, since I am Charlotte’s husband, she looks to me to guide her, to tell her what is best for her.”
“What a wonderful parent you will be, Jeremy,” Meggie said, her own smile as false as Mr. McCardle’s leg, “just look at all the practice you’re gaining since you married Charlotte. But you know, I simply can’t imagine what is proper about treating your wife like a child and a nitwit.”
“Charlotte a nitwit? A child? That is absurd, Meggie. Oh, I see, you’re jesting.”
To keep the nausea at bay, Meggie played another song. She was quite aware that Mary Rose had cocked her head to one side, sending her glorious mass of curly red hair halfway down her arm, no doubt wondering why Meggie had lost her manners.
Meggie stopped playing in time to hear Jeremy say to her father, ignoring both her and Mary Rose, “Since you have approved, Uncle Tysen, Leo will be coming to me at the end of his term at Oxford. He is a natural with horses. He and I will do very well together. He writes me with new ideas. He is studying the science of horse breeding, he tells me.” This was said with an indulgent grin.
“Leo knows more about horses than you do,” Meggie said.