“I’ve done what I deemed right and proper for me,” I said, and nothing more. I
waited. There were usually after explosions, smaller outbursts, after the great
initial one or two. But not this time. This time Peter pointed to a lovely
brocade wing chair. “Sit and listen to me.”
I sat.
“I’ve come from Grandfather’s advocate, Craigsdale. I’d been putting it off. You
are a very rich young lady, but you already know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Very rich, that’s me.”
“I went to see Craigsdale before coming to see you because I needed time to
think about all this. Naturally he brought it up, so I guess it’s the truth,
even though I’m praying that you’ve broken it off. Don’t do it, Andy. Don’t.”
“I will do it,” I said. “I’m sorry that you disapprove, Peter, but when you peel
things right down to the core of the apple, it’s my life, my choice, not yours,
not anyone else’s. You may be my guardian, but you are not my jailer. I shall do
what I believe is best for me. Do you think I am so stupid, so unthinking, that
I would agree to something that could harm me?”
“Andrea,” Peter said, and his use of my full name nearly brought me to my knees.
He hadn’t called me Andrea since I had been fifteen and crammed my mare over a
fence too high for my abilities and nearly broke both my legs. He’d been furious,
which at the time I hadn’t understood, since I was hurting so badly I wanted to
die. But then I did understand, later. Now I was Andrea again. He was very upset
with me.
He said, “I happen to know that the Earl of Devbridge is in his fifties, if not
older, a widower, and has two nephews, one of whom is my age, who is his heir.
In short, he is an old man, much too old a man to wed a girl who is barely
twenty-one years old. Tell me that Henchly’s wife and Craigsdale are wrong. Tell
me you have retracted this, or that it was all malicious gossip in the first
place, or tell me you have come to your senses and sent the earl about his
damned business.” He paused a moment, and eyed me. “Dammit, you’re white as my
cravat. What the hell is wrong with you? You did it, didn’t you? Damnation, you’ve
said you would marry this wretched old man.”
I had the horrible urge to beg his forgiveness in the face of his absolute
disgust and disbelief, but I didn’t. I just sat there, watching my cousin,
realizing fully now the depths of his shock, of his incredulity. But it wasn’t
ridiculous. There were many spring-winter marriages, and no one said anything
about those decisions. Surely Lawrence wasn’t beyond autumn in his years. He
still had all his own teeth. He wasn’t stooped over or didn’t need to keep his
foot swathed in covers and propped up on a stool because of the gout.
“I would have informed you,” I said. “I would have written you a letter. I didn’t
intend for you to come to the ceremony, for it will be a very small one, and you
didn’t come to Grandfather’s funeral, did you? And so why would you come to my
wedding? Yes, I would have written to you tomorrow.”
He jumped up from the settee and paced the long narrow room. Then he came up to
me, leaned over, and cupped my chin in his hand. He forced my face up. “Damn you,
look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“Yes, you are, but are you seeing? See me, Andy, see your cousin who loves you,
who thinks of you as he would a beloved sister. All right, I’ve yelled enough.
Yelling never does anything except to another man. With another man, yelling
unplugs the sink and lets everything erupt, mainly curses to blue the air and a
fist here or there, ending up with reasonable words.
“With women, it brings either tears or mutiny. But it doesn’t bring wisdom or
reason. No, listen to me, now, as well as look at me. I won’t yell at you