Page 88 of A Treacherous Treasure

“What? What has gone on? Has the clock had to be rewound? Or perhaps you missed a stitch in your knitting.”

“You don’t deserve to hear it, but I shall tell you that you missed Gilbert Heywood coming here after he went to Rebecca’s home and accosted her, bruising her wrist. Can you imagine? Thomas—”

“I hope you beat him with a stick.” Benjamin looked at Thomas. “I hope you broke his jaw and his nose.”

“His punishment is coming,” Thomas said calmly.

Benjamin stared at him with his mouth hanging open.

“The man is a mouse. He cowered so before me that I couldn’t hit him. I could only send him on his way, knowing that he would probably be apprehended as soon as he arrived home and would be held behind locks and bars.”

Benjamin shook his head. “At any rate, I should have liked to have seen you threaten him, and him cowering before you.”

“Such talk,” Mrs. Westbrook said quietly.

“Forgive me, Mother.”

She only waved a hand at him.

Soon they retired to dine, then to play and sing for an hour, everyone so sufficiently cheered that they were all laughing by the time they parted to retire to bed. And all the while Rebecca could not stop thinking about how she wished she could further explain to Thomas that she was sorry for what she had said at the ball.

But when Caroline showed her to her bedroom, she’d not had a moment alone with him.

Caroline went in with her. “If you need anything, you can ring the bell.”

“Of course. Thank you for being so kind as to ask me to stay. I know it is silly, but I was dreading going home.”

“Not silly at all. I am so glad you stayed. You know you always make us, all of us Westbrooks, very happy.”

“I am not at all sure that is true.”

“You told me you and Thomas quarreled at the ball, but all seems well now.”

“Yes, I think all is well.”

“I confess, Mother and I hoped that you and Thomas would form an attachment, that we would be blessed to have you as a sister and daughter.”

“Well, I do not know if that will ever happen. And perhaps it is for the best. I thought marriage would bring me happiness, but . . . I was so miserable, Caroline.”

Thankfully, it was dark in the room, with no light except from the fire in the grate, for Rebecca could feel the tears welling up. Her heart ached just as it had when she’d heard, for the first time, that Arthur was spending his nights with a paramour, hidden away in London for a week. How deeply it hurt! Like a knife in her heart, knowing he was with another woman, knowing he did not love Rebecca enough to stay with her, that he had broken his vows to her.

The tears flowed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable.”

“You can talk to me, dear Rebecca. What is it you are thinking about?”

“I was remembering the pain of Arthur’s betrayals and rejection. Marriage did not make me happy at all. After a year or so, I realized the best I could hope for was a child. I thought if I had a child, I could find a measure of happiness as a mother. I could give all my love to my child and forget my pain. But as you know, I had no child.” The tears flowed afresh.

“Oh, Rebecca, I’m so sorry.” Caroline took her hand and squeezed it.

“I think I just needed to realize that neither marriage nor motherhood, indeed, no other person, can make me happy. I must be happy on my own. I was wrong to put my hope in a husband or a child. Does not the Bible say that God should be our everything, that we should not have any other gods before him?”

“Yes, but it also says that it is not good for man to be alone, which is why God made us male and female, so we could help each other, or something like that.”

“Yes.” She had read that before.

“And there’s that passage that I’ve heard at weddings, that two are better than one because they have someone to help them up if they fall, and a threefold cord is not easily broken. It isn’t bad to love someone or to marry, or to wish to marry. Marriage is not supposed to bring you pain and misery. It isn’t meant to be that way, and it won’t be, when you marry a good man.”

She’d berated herself for her feelings for Thomas Westbrook, and especially for kissing him. She’d called herself foolish and impulsive, and perhaps she was, a bit. But should she be thinking of it another way? Perhaps she should see herself as a woman with natural feelings, a woman whose husband had betrayed her so thoroughly that she was afraid to trust again.