“So you did not trust me,” Joanna said. “I am sorry for that. As the eldest I have always felt a responsibility for both you and Tess but until now I had not realized quite how badly I had failed.” She made a slight dismissive gesture with her hands. “We shall leave that discussion for now. I think there are more urgent issues.”
She got up and walked across to the window. The autumn sun burnished her hair to copper and chestnut and gold.
“Garrick Farne has made you an offer,” she said, over her shoulder. “Alex is speaking to him. He is downstairs. He awaits your answer.”
“No!” Merryn felt quick, suffocating panic. “It is impossible!”
“To marry him?” Joanna half turned toward her. Her expression was blank. “And yet you seem to have found it easy enough to sleep with him.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Merryn said. Her voice broke a little. She felt the tears swell in her eyes. “It is difficult to explain.” Even her vaunted facility with language failed when she tried to explain to Joanna what had happened between herself and Garrick. “I was very scared,” she said hesitatingly, “of the dark and of being trapped and Garrick saved my life, and the beer fumes were very strong—”
“So you were drunk,” Joanna said impassively, after a moment.
“Yes … No!” Merryn said. “I’m not making excuses for myself. I will not. I cannot explain it, Jo. I was terrified and Garrick protected me and I was so grateful and relieved to be alive and he …” Her voice trailed off.
There was a long silence.
“It was a most generous way to show your gratitude,” Joanna said, very understatedly.
Merryn made a little hiccupping sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I wanted him,” she said. She closed her eyes. “I had no idea I could feel like that, Jo. I was desperate to have him and it was so exciting and unbelievably pleasurable. I had no notion! But then—” a tear squeezed past her closed lids “—afterward I could not believe what I had done, and I felt cheapened and sick and I despise myself for it. Such weakness—”
“You are too hard on yourself.” Merryn heard a rustle of silk and then Joanna had come back to sit beside her. She felt her sister put her arms about her. Merryn could not believe it, could not believe that Joanna could forgive her when she was unable to forgive herself. It felt such an enormous comfort. She leaned in to Joanna’s arms and sobbed.
“Extreme fear and indeed extreme relief can cause us all to do strange things,” Joanna continued. She was stroking Merryn’s hair now, cradling her like a child. “And you are not to be blamed if you have discovered something you enjoy more than academic study.” There was a thread of laughter in Joanna’s voice now. “Physical pleasure can indeed sweep you away.”
“And yet I cannot bear to feel that for Garrick Farne,” Merryn said wretchedly. She pulled away, sat up. “Farne, Joanna!” She sniffed, rubbing her wet, sore eyes. “He ruined all our lives! How could I do such a thing? How can I bear it? I hate him! And yet—” She stopped. “I also care for him,” she said forlornly. “I cannot deny it. There is something between us that I do not understand …” She shivered. “I am so confused, Jo.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “I understand you might feel like that.” She paused. “I suspect that you are right. You do not hate Farne, Merryn. You may hate what he did to Stephen, but you do not necessarily hate Garrick Farne himself. Quite the contrary, I suspect.”
Merryn rubbed her brow. Her forehead felt hot and her head ached. Her eyes were stinging and prickled with unshed tears.
“I don’t understand the difference,” she said. “All I know is that it feels wrong. I feel as though it is pulling me apart.”
“Maybe you will see it clearly in time,” Joanna said.
“I understand that you might hate me for it,” Merryn said bitterly.
Joanna shook her head swiftly. “Merryn dearest.” There was a little catch in her voice. “We all make mistakes.”
“Not ones of such monstrous proportions,” Merryn sniffed.
“Once again you see things too starkly,” Joanna corrected. “You met a man who roused a passionate response from you. The fact that it is Garrick Farne is—” She stopped, shrugged. “Complicated, perhaps. One might even say unfortunate. It is like fate playing a trick on you.”
“I cannot marry him, Jo,” Merryn said wretchedly. “It feels like a most appalling betrayal of everything I have believed for the past twelve years.”
Joanna was silent for a moment. “I won’t seek to persuade you,” she said. “If you feel you cannot wed Garrick then I will give you all the support that you require.”
“But what if there is a child?” Merryn clutched Joanna’s hands convulsively, at last giving voice to the deepest fear that had stalked her through the night. She had told herself that there would not be a child, that it would not happen, but the truth was that she did not know. Oh, she understood the principles; she had read all about procreation in many different books, fiction and nonfiction, but when it came to the reality she had only just started to understand how woefully ignorant she was. She felt afraid. The fear started as a tiny pattering in her stomach and swelled to a huge panic that threatened to swallow her whole.
“I’m afraid, Joanna,” she burst out. “When will I know if I am pregnant?”
She saw a shadow touch Joanna’s eyes and castigated herself for her insensitivity. Joanna had spent years and years of her first marriage desperately hoping for a child and believing she was barren. Merryn had seen—but not understood then—the anguish that her infertility had caused her. Yet here she was now asking for her sister’s love and support when she might have carelessly, wantonly conceived a child out of wedlock under such appalling circumstances. And yet still, it seemed, Joanna had the strength and the love to be there for her.
“It depends,” her sister was saying carefully, “on where you are with your courses.”
Merryn had never paid much attention to them. She struggled to remember. “I think … I believe about the middle of the second week,” she ventured.
She saw Joanna pull a face. “Then that might be dangerous. It is impossible to tell. You will know in a few weeks, perhaps, or maybe a little more.”
Merryn felt frighteningly adrift, as though there were suddenly no certainty left in the world. “Then I could perhaps wait and see—” She started to say, and once again saw the shadow in Joanna’s eyes, and thought of all the months Joanna must have waited and been desperately disappointed. It seemed vicious and cruel that Joanna had been disillusioned each month when she had failed to conceive whereas she would be desperately waiting and hoping that there would be no child.
“I’m sorry, Jo,” she said brokenly. “So sorry.”
Joanna shook her head. “Do not be. I have Shuna now, and Alex and I have the prospect of more children if we are fortunate. And if we are not so blessed, well … It is enough to have their love.” She loosed her sister. “I cannot tell you what to do, Merryn. You must try to make the right decision yourself. But I am always here if you need me.”
“I have been so stupid, Jo,” Merryn said. “I thought that I was clever—far cleverer than you—but you are wise and kind and far more generous than I.”
Joanna smiled and squeezed her hands before letting her go and standing. “If you are to refuse Farne,” she said, “at least do him the courtesy of telling him to his face. You owe him that, Merryn. I will send your maid to help you dress.”
“I