Indiscretion by Morgan Jude

Author:Morgan, Jude [Morgan, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0312374372
Amazon: B003O86IAG
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 2005-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIII

Now: let me see. Caroline, wakeful, unrefreshed, and dressed, after a night of dragging torment interrupted only by a doze in which the same harrying thoughts visited her as dreams: Caroline, sitting at her window, solaced only by the novelty of watching the sun rise (for she is such an habitual late sleeper that the dawn to her is a sort of exotic phenomenon like an erupting volcano): Caroline, aching, strives to extract some conclusions from the night’s long inward debate.

Memory, revived memory, is the unhappiest part. She has forced herself to go over every moment of her association with Richard Leabrook in order to make sure — to make doubly sure — that her own conduct was not at fault in that dismal episode. Of course she has long settled this in her mind; but the new light in which she must see the man — the loved, trusted, and respected fiance of Isabella — has caused her to review it. But painful as the process of recollection was, it has not modified her first assessment, not at all.

Yes: I flirted with him and was flattered by him. But I can confidently say that I was not such a wily, irresistible siren and temptress that I provoked a virtuous man into a completely uncharacteristic lapse of morals.

Nor can she accept that her own judgement in this is hopelessly naïve. Caroline has not lived in her father’s rakish world without learning all about the ways of men and maids. She knows what gentlemen feel quite free to get up to, before marriage, and even after: things that would destroy a woman’s reputation utterly, but which, if discreetly managed, are regarded as little more than a natural consequence of masculinity. Still the fact is not altered. The adventure Mr Leabrook proposed to her in Brighton cannot be excused as a youthful folly, when he is a mature man who plainly knew what he was doing. Nor can it be argued that he might suppose himself free to stray, according to the tenets of a worldly society: for the girl he is engaged to is Isabella, and she is not worldly, and it is a love-match; and she could only think of her fiance behaving in such a manner with bewilderment, dismay, and wretchedness.

Still, what troubles Caroline the most is what angered her the most, that night at the Brighton ball: the fact that Mr Leabrook so little valued her as to treat her like a piece of disposable goods. Philandering is regrettable, but that cold and calculating unconcern was detestable. And that, she realizes, is why she cannot rest with the idea of Isabella marrying Richard Leabrook. A man so insensible to the feelings of others must, as a husband, be the dealer of misery at last.

Of course, not all her uneasiness is for Isabella. She is not saint enough to disregard her own plight — the awkwardness and unpleasantness of meeting Mr Leabrook again, the difficulties in which it may place her, and indeed the not knowing just how he will react in turn.

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