Over the course of the next few weeks, the two of them had become friends. Unlike most of the artists she knew, he was not in need of financial help. But as she had gotten to know him better, she had realized that he was nevertheless in great need. His health was obviously precarious, for he was wracked by fits of coughing that left him weak and suggested to Eleanor that he was likely consumptive. The damp climate of England could not be good for his health, she thought, but when she had suggested that he travel to sunnier climes, he had only smiled wistfully and told her that he could not.
The reason he could not move, Eleanor soon learned, was his mother, a grasping, demanding, domineering woman who both leaned upon and dominated her only son. Whenever Sir Edmund left his home in the Kentish countryside to live on his own in London, he was soon bombarded with notes from his mother, all filled with problems that only he could solve or accounts of her loneliness without him. This servant or that was stealing from her; the estate manager would not give her enough money to run the house; his younger sister cried into her pillow at night, missing her dearest brother. The result was that Sir Edmund would go rushing home every week or two, abandoning the opera upon which he was working. Worse still, Lady Scarbrough would come to London to visit, and when she was there, she demanded that her son accompany her to balls and soirees, escort her to Almack’s and meet a number of marriageable women, all handpicked by Lady Scarbrough herself.
Sir Edmund invariably did as his mother bid, again neglecting his music to perform a number of chores that could have been done by any ninny, in Eleanor’s opinion. To make up for the lost time, once she left he would then work late into the night on his music, free at last of his mother’s presence. As often as not he forgot to eat, which did little to improve his health.
His servants were sloppy, his household poorly run, and he seemed to have only the vaguest idea about his income, whether from the estate that came with his title or from the money that had been left to him by his maternal grandfather. Such inattentiveness to the necessary details of his life did not surprise Eleanor; she was accustomed to artists and the way they often muddled through the practicalities of life.
She wished that she could simply take charge of his life. It was difficult for her to stand aside and watch people’s lives run off course, and taking hold of a situation and making it work right was something she was extraordinarily good at. There were those, she knew, who termed her bossy and difficult. But she was also quite aware that the people who called her these things were never the ones whom she had stepped in to help, but rather those who were benefiting from the muddle.
Eleanor had been certain that she could put Sir Edmund’s life in better order. The problem, of course, was that she had no right to do any such thing. Edmund was a grown man, not some poor orphan or servant at the mercy of others. She could advise him what to do, of course—and generally did, if the opportunity presented itself—but Sir Edmund’s abhorrence of any sort of conflict, along with his artist’s lack of concern over mundane matters, generally kept him going in his usual rut.
Finally, one afternoon Edmund had come to her, looking drawn and gaunt, wracked by coughs and worried because his mother had written him, describing her loneliness in heart-wrenching words and adding a long list of things she needed to have done for her. Eleanor, alarmed at the state of his health and furious at Lady Scarbrough’s selfishness, had been struck at last by the solution to the problem.
She had decided to marry Sir Edmund. As his wife, she could whip the household and his finances into shape, and see to it that he slept and ate properly. Most of all, she could shield him from his mother.
Of course, she did not love him in the way that a woman loved a man. Theirs would be, truly, a marriage of convenience. But Eleanor did not care about that. She had long ago decided that the sort of marriage other girls dreamed about was not for her. The men who had pursued her were generally only interested in her fortune, and she was too clever and realistic to be fooled by their honeyed words. And the sort of men who were not interested in her wealth did not court her. They might be drawn by her beauty, but she had found that they quickly abandoned the chase.
She was too headstrong, her stepmother Lydia had told her, too stubborn and too capable. A man wanted a more willing wife, a softer woman, the sort who turned to him to solve problems for her instead of charging in herself to solve not only her own problems, but those of everyone else, as well.
Eleanor, frankly, had had no interest in marrying the sort of man who wanted that sort of woman for a wife. She had found most of the men who pursued her to be foolish or greedy or entirely too domineering—sometimes all three. She had no desire to become a wife who was subject to her husband’s decisions, giving up control of her money and her life to him. At twenty-six, she considered herself a confirmed spinster and did not regard the prospect with dismay. She had come to believe that the romantic love other women swooned over was something they simply made up in their heads.
Marrying Sir Edmund had suited her perfectly. She would be able to take care of him and nurture his tremendous talent. She would make it possible for the world to be blessed by his music. And she would take great enjoyment in once again setting a life in order.
Edmund had been equally willing. He admired Eleanor’s strength and determination, and loved her as much as he was capable of loving anything besides his music. He was a passive creature, his strongest passions reserved for his art, and he was delighted to have Eleanor shoulder the burdens that had plagued him and kept him from his primary love.
Everything had worked out as she had planned. Edmund had moved into her well-ordered and smoothly-running household, and devoted himself to composing. Eleanor had seen to it that his finances and his health were both improved, and she had taken on his mother. The result, of course, was that Lady Scarbrough despised her, but Eleanor did not care for that. They had moved to Naples, and in the warm climate there, Sir Edmund had grown better daily. Eleanor had been quite pleased with what she had done.
And then Sir Edmund had died.
Tears sprang into Eleanor’s eyes, and she ran her hand lovingly over the shining wood of the piano. It seemed too cruel a twist of fate that she had made such strides with Edmund’s health, only to have him fall prey to a foolish boating accident.
She turned and went to the carved wooden box where her husband’s ashes lay. Unconsciously, she smoothed her forefinger over the intricately carved patterns. She had spent the past six months making sure that Edmund’s last work, the glorious opera he had written, had been produced with all the care and dignity it deserved. But now that it was over, now that she had made sure Edmund’s memory would be preserved in the music he had written, she felt empty and at loose ends.
The sadness she had helped to keep at bay with work had seeped in, and on the long voyage back to England, often alone in her cabin to avoid the company of the ubiquitous Colton-Smythes, she had had to face the fact that, despite the children and her friends and the people who worked for her, she was lonely. There was an emptiness in her life, she thought, one she had never even realized was there. And while she might have become aware of it since her husband’s death, she knew it had been there long before that.
Eleanor caught the direction of her thoughts and gave herself a mental shake. She was not going to dwell on such things. There were still things to be done for Edmund. She must take his ashes to his estate in the country and see that they were interred in his family’s mausoleum. And she must meet with his mother and sister, and explain in more detail the provisions of Sir Edmund’s will.
She could imagine how Honoria Scarbrough had reacted to the news that Eleanor would be the guardian of her daughter’s estate until she reached the age of twenty-one. It would be a difficult visit, followed by six more years of difficulty in dealing with the woman. It was not a duty she looked forward to, but she would do it. It was the last thing that Edmund had asked of her, and she would follow it through.
With a sigh, Eleanor turned and left the music room, going upstairs to her bedroom. The footmen were in the process of bringing in her trunks, and two maids were bustling around, putting her things away. She moved out of their way, going to the window and looking out at the street scene below.