could he?
“I have to think of myself now—don’t you see that? And of you too, sister, although you do not seem to appreciate that fact. Catholics cannot inherit land. Would you rather see all that is ours and has been ours for generations pass to the English Crown? Someone has to be sensible!”
And she tried not to dwell on the fact that Conal took to going up to Dublin Castle, the seat of the English Government in Ireland, spending far too much time with the English officers who were their age-old enemies and oppressors. She hated the English! They were cold, cruel and arrogant, and they acted as if they owned even the lush green Irish earth they walked on. Conal’s mother had been English, which perhaps accounted for his predilection for that hated race, but her mother had been French—a pretty, small, dark-haired woman who had always smelled faintly of lavender or verbena water.
Peggy had been thinking of her mother that afternoon when Conal surprised her crossing the brook barefoot, her faded skirts kilted up around her calves.
Why couldn’t maman have lived? It was lonely, sometimes , without another woman to talk to, with only the sound of the chill to keep her company at night. If only—
Conal’s harsh, angry voice had cut rudely across her thoughts then.
“It seems I must forever be apologizing for my little sister! You see, my lord, she lacks not only discipline but also the care of a gently bred woman to instruct her in the manners and deportment of a lady.”
And looking up, with her face flushed with embarrassment, she had encountered those pale blue eyes for the first time. Eyes set deeply under blond brows in a face of chiseled perfection that was almost too beautiful to belong to a man.
“No use trying to run off like some startled wood-nymph, sister. We’ve caught you.”
The young Englishman’s arm, thrown in comradely fashion about her brother’s broad shoulders, dropped as he stared at her measuringly.
“Leo, may I present my sister, Lady Margaret Galvan? Lord Leofric Sinclair.”
Two months later, she and Leo had been married. And within three months, she had left Ireland, never to return to it again.
Her shallow breathing quickened as the shell of the woman who had once been “Pretty Peggy” moved one thin, bloodless hand as if to ward off memories that now came thick and fast, flooding her tired mind with scenes that, like watercolors, ran one into the other: Conal’s loud, blustering voice, shouting at her, threatening her; the feel of his heavy hands as he beat her into shivering, resigned submission; Leo’s white, soft hands, the heavy rings glinting on long fingers—his voice thick with the liquor he had consumed so heavily before he could bring himself to come to her; she herself lying trembling in bed, her thin lawn nightshift feeling clammy against her perspiring, shrinking flesh.
How long—how many months (or had it been years?)—before she was woman enough to understand that their relationship was not a normal one?
Fashionable husbands and wives did not seek each other’s company too much. And if she slept alone more often than not, this, too, was nothing out of the ordinary.
She had no one to talk to—no older woman to warn her or give her advice as to what she should expect from marriage. All Conal had said, gruffly, was, “You remember your promise to obey your husband and to submit to him in everything. That’s all you need to know, little sister.” And he and Leo had exchanged a look over her head that she hadn’t understood—not then.
After they had left Ireland, Peggy’s life was too full of new things, and far too confusing, for her to want to think too closely about her sudden marriage and the cold, remote man who was her husband.
There was the big house in the country near Cornwall where Leo took her first, to meet his family. His father, the duke of Royse, was an ailing, irascible old man, who had merely raised one bushy eyebrow as he nodded and growled, “That’s right—and high time, too! Told you marriage was the only thing.”
Leo’s older brother, the Viscount Stanbury, was off in Europe somewhere, but his younger brother, Anthony, was kind to her, shaking her hand vigorously as he stammered his good wishes.
After Cornwall, they traveled about a great deal so that she was always tired. Visits to relatives and friends and Leo leaving her alone with them most of the time. Finally, the months in London—a giddy whirl of fittings for dazzling new gowns and one activity after another until she felt that she never got enough sleep and was relieved that Leo left her alone so much. Leo’s sister, Lady Hester Beaumont, took her everywhere and saw that she met everyone and wore exactly the right clothes and jewels for every occasion. They had the use of the duke’s magnificent house in London, and Peggy learned to keep household accounts and manage a large staff of servants.
But she had barely had time to become used to the routine of life in London when they were on the move again, this time a journey that meant crossing the ocean, for Leo’s father had deeded him a large plantation in the colony of North Carolina, in America.
Leo was handsomer than ever in those days despite the faint lines of dissipation that were beginning to show in his face. Peggy had grown used to the fact that he was always cold and punctiliously formal to her. She was aware that there were other women who looked at her enviously and whispered that she had one of the few faithful husbands in town. But they could not know that her husband found her so unattractive that he seldom came to her, and then only when he was very drunk; or that he had never once undressed her completely, but fumbled clumsily and hurtfully for her body in the dark as if he could not bear to look upon her face or her nakedness. She had no idea what was supposed to take place between a man and a woman; and when he cursed and swore and hurt her with his groping fumblings, she blamed herself for being inexperienced. Leo was such a perfect, beautiful specimen of a man that the fault had to lie with her. The fact that he preferred the company of his cronies she also accepted passively. It was not until much, much later that she really understood what kind of devils drove her husband and the kind of debauchery his twisted nature craved….
In Carolina, Leo had his duties with the army that kept him away for weeks and months at a time. There was an overseer to tend the crops, and slaves to perform every task that needed doing, even to the brushing of Peggy’s long dark hair. She began to read, from sheer loneliness and boredom at first, choosing books at random and with a kind of diffidence (how limited her formal education had been) from the enormous library. And then, caught up and taken beyond herself by the sudden treasure-trove of knowledge that lay at her fingertips, she began to read quite avidly. Books on art, on history, on philosophy and even music opened a whole new world to her starved, seeking mind. She was never lonely now, with her secret world to retire to; and with some of her earlier agonizing shyness and anxiety disappearing, she began to make friends with the families of neighboring plantation owners, finding that making conversation was not so difficult after all if one had something to talk about.
Leo, when he was home, expressed himself pleased at her emergence from her “dull little shell,” and Peggy herself, as she became used to the lazy, leisurely life, was almost content.
Until…
She was to agonize over it later. To ask herself over and over if it had been worth it, being brought to sudden awareness of her womanhood and deeply hidden passions only to have everything taken away from her again. She could never even regain that fleeting sense of contentment that had come with her very ignorance of what living meant.
But at first, when it happened, she felt only stark, unreasoning terror, and a sense of unreality that kept her alive for she did not
