She had lived long enough by the rules and wishes of others. No more! "I am well past my majority. I can make up my own mind in this."
"Have you forgotten the engagement Mr. Brent broke in the past? Do you not think that other young woman felt as passionately as you do now?"
"I am sure there must have been a good reason behind that." And she was.
"How can you know?" Mrs. Twitchen asked. "You have known Mr. Brent little more than a week. I have been with the captain nigh on two decades, and still do not know him entirely. Anyone can be charming for a week, my dear. Let his history speak to you of who he truly is."
Vivian shook her head and stood. "It is his very history that tells me he is a man worthy of love. You cannot dissuade me from what my heart knows is true." She marched to the door and laid her hand upon the knob.
"Vivian, darling." Mrs. Twitchen rose and came toward her, hands fluttering. "Can you at least give us this one night? Can you at least sleep upon it, and let us know that you have considered fully?"
Vivian took in Mrs. Twitchen's frantic concern, her distress, and wavered. She let her hand fall from the knob. If waiting one night was all that the Twitchens required of her, she would be heartless not to give it. Such was not so much to ask. The bond she felt with Richard would not suffer for a handful of hours apart.
"I will sleep upon it."
Mrs. Twitchen nodded and opened the door herself to go. She was through it and pulling it closed when she paused and turned, her face in the narrow space between door and jamb.
"Forgive me, child. I do this for your own good."
Vivian lunged for the knob, but was too late. The door slammed, and the key turned in the lock from the other side.
She was a prisoner once again, to another's idea of how she should live.
Chapter Eight
Twelfth Night
The few bits of Christmas greenery in her room had been taken down and were waiting now in a dried-out pile to be fed into the fire. Her hopes of a marriage to Richard Brent might as well burn along with it.
Vivian had been locked in her room for five days now, allowed to send no letters nor receive them, and even Penelope was forbidden from visiting. Vivian saw Mrs. Twitchen daily, and suffered through her lectures and, more dangerously, the growth of the seeds of doubt that the woman planted and watered so carefully.
Richard wanted her. She knew he did. He had offered for her, she was sure of it. Did he love her enough to continue to fight for her, whatever the obstacles?
He had never said he loved her. But he must, he surely must! He had given her every indication. She could count her own love for him as nothing, if she could not trust that he would hold steady to his purpose and free her.
The isolation was making her mind play tricks, and she had no biscuits or tarts with which to soothe herself. They were cold meals that were brought to her by Mrs. Twitchen, with nothing of pleasure to be found in them.
As the days passed, her mind turned in upon itself, reluctantly treading garden rows of doubt. She pulled each plant that showed signs of green, whacked them with her hoe, scuffed them over with her shoe, but Mrs. Twitchen always came back to nurse them to health.
Richard Brent was an honest man. He was an honorable man. He would not abandon her. She must hold tight to that truth.
From her window she had twice seen him come to the house, and leave shortly thereafter, always pausing to gaze up at her window, where she stood with her fingers against the glass, as if she could reach through and touch him. But then Captain Twitchen would emerge from the manor and shoo Richard away, preventing any exchange of words between them.
She had not seen him for two days now. Was he himself beginning to doubt the wisdom of pursuing this course? Had the captain convinced him that it would be better for her to marry another, that she would be happier with a man with an unsoiled reputation?
She would not be able to bear it if it were so.
She wished she had lain with him as a wife, there upon the library table, for all to see. There would have been no question then of what their future would be. If she ever saw him again, she knew precisely what she'd do.
He had tried reason. He had tried patience. He had put to use all his powers of persuasion, and all to no effect. He had run out of gentle options, a realization that had come to him upon receipt early yesterday of Penelope's letter:
Dearest Mr. Brent,
Forgive me for writing to you so, but I feel you must be told: my cousin is being fed only crusts of bread. She has no coal to keep her warm, and is threatened with beatings if she does not give up her insistence that she be allowed to wed you. My father has threatened to send her to a Catholic convent in France, where you would never see her again. I fear for her health-nay! I fear for her very life. She will be dead of grief within a fortnight if she is not saved. I have heard many things about you, but I trust they are not true. Here is your chance to prove yourself.
Yours Faithfully,
P.
Of course he knew she was exaggerating-he doubted very much that Vivian would be sent to a French convent, no matter the provocation-and he was somewhat annoyed by Penelope's allusion to his past, but Vivian was confined to her room, that he knew. And he very much doubted that pastries and cakes would be part of the meals sent up to one suffering such a punishment.
His Vivian, without a pudding. What misery must she be suffering! He smiled sadly at the odd thought.
And what might she begin to think, as the days passed and he left her languishing, the only words she heard those painting him as the darkest blackguard. His smile vanished. Might she not begin to think that he had abandoned her? Might she not begin to wonder if the Twitchens were right and if their reasons were ones to which she should listen? Especially since they were so intent upon protecting her that they would lock her up?
That sweet passion she had given him in the library might even now be dying.
He could not let that happen. The time for diplomacy had passed, and it was now time for action. That was the reason he was now creeping toward Copley Grange in the dead of night with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a rope around the other. In a vest pocket he carried a special license to marry, which he had ridden all the way to Dorchester to obtain.
The windows were dark at the grange, as he hoped they would be. He took a handful of gravel from the drive; such stones were the time-honored choice of swains for waking maidens in their bowers. He stood beneath Vivian's window and tossed them at the glass, one by one, wincing at each plink of sound.
He was only on his third stone when she appeared, a pale wraith behind the glass. She must have been awake. A moment later she opened the window.
"Richard!" she whispered.
"Shhh! Stand back. I'm going to toss up the end of a rope." He wasn't going to give her the chance to tell him to go away. He was going to rush up, sweep her off her feet, and carry her to safety. This was something he'd always wanted, and he'd finally found someone who was worth his affection. He wasn't going to let her escape-no matter what happened.
He coiled several lengths of his line into a loop heavy enough to throw, and when she had moved away he gave it a heave.
And missed. The rope fell down the side of the house and into the shrubberies.
"Damn!"
"Where's the rope?"
"Shh!" He scrounged around in the bushes, untangling the line, hoping no one in the house heard him thrashing through the branches like a deranged animal.