I was in bed for four days. Once or twice every day Spinner asked whether I wanted a doctor; always I said no. Mrs. Fitzwilliam, too, came to see me, frowning when she saw I was not feverish. She asked whether she should send a servant to the apothecary to purchase some medicine for my relief. Relief from what, she did not say; indeed, perhaps she did not know, herself. But my drops were cures for every imaginable ailment, and so I supposed there was little wonder she thought of them now.
Almost, almost I said yes.
On the fifth morning since Mrs. King’s wedding, I rose and went to the window. London was still there. For some reason, I was mildly surprised to see it.
I would not—could not—think of Eliza. Instead, I thought of Miss Hall, whose specter waited around every street corner. For all that I looked for her so many times since arriving in London, our eyes never met, giddy with surprise, over a display of fans or lace. We never encountered one another in the reading room at the Temple of the Muses, despite my having pictured such a meeting many times. I imagined slipping into the chair beside hers, smiling to myself, a thick novel in my hands, or perhaps a volume of love poems, while I waited for her to notice me. Her incredulity at finding me in such a place, well and whole and strong as she urged me to be, would be sweeter than lemon creams.
But even now, after being in Town for so long, I had not done all she wished me to do. I looked down at my hands, which were still so stupid with the needle; at the blank sheets of paper on the writing desk before which I stood, which lay unfilled. Even after my discussion with John, I still had not summoned the courage to write to Mr. Colt.
I meant to leave my old life behind, my old self behind, when I came to London—she should still be sleeping softly on a window seat in Kent, her neck uncomfortably crooked, her knees drawn up so her legs form a gentle curl. She was never meant to rise from there; was too weak, in both body and spirit. I thought that I had changed entirely, that released from my drops I would be a completely different creature to the one I used to be. But I was not different at all. The last few months were a rush of newness, and I was borne along. Only here and there, in pockets of time like secrets hidden within a treasure box, did I willfully make my own choices. Otherwise—for all that my mind was clear and my lungs breathed freely even of the gray-tinged air, for all that I had seen such marvels as I only dreamed of as a child—I may as well have been at Rosings Park, following my mother’s word as law, no matter how it chafed, and enduring Mrs. Jenkinson’s hollow echo.
But oh dear God, how I longed suddenly to be home again.
I searched the corners of my room for . . . something. But they were empty. This house never spoke to me; and perhaps Rosings Park never did, either. I might return there and discover that without my drops’ inspiring attendance, my home was nothing more than dumb stone blocks and trees cut and carved. The brooks might only sound like water, the wind like wind. There might be no whispers among the grasses.
Or perhaps I would put palm to tree trunk and feel the sap running under the bark like blood. Perhaps the earth would press up against me in greeting, the walls would exhale their welcome, the attics would hum with gladness.
I blew out a breath, so gradually that I was able to track the gentle descent of my chest as it emptied. Then I sat at the writing desk and dipped my pen.
Part Three
Back Again
Chapter Thirty-One
Rosings Park came into view as we rounded the bend in the lane. At this time of year, with the trees dressed in their abundant summer finery, only the very tip of the rooftop was visible. I knew that returning home would likely be strange after being away for the first time since Brighton; but I was unprepared for this, for the sight of a rooftop to turn me at once thick as an oak trunk with longing and thin as a rootling with fear. Quite suddenly, there were two Annes approaching the house—one who would lean outside the carriage window if she could, the better to smell, and hear, and see; and another who would scramble back to the far side of the carriage, away from the place where she once lay dormant. In reality, of course, I did neither of those things, but sat still and outwardly serene, eyes on the high hedgerows and the approaching tall iron gate. Spinner showed no sign of noticing that I was being rent in two.
A footman helped me down from the carriage at the steps to Rosings’s front door, and I stretched my shoulders and arched my back. The air was thick with moisture, and I looked up, up, up at the house, which returned my look with such blankness that I had the unsettling feeling I was gazing at a corpse. The house was silent with a silence that is louder than screams.
I tipped my head and closed my eyes and listened, waiting for the thrumming voices of the estate to greet me, but though the leaves of the trees that lined the drive whispered secrets to one another, I could not make them out.
What I heard, instead, was the murmuring of my own body. My breath swelled easily within my lungs; my legs stood, firm and substantial, upon the drive. I could hear the thud-thud-thud of my heart inside my breast, reminding me that I was stronger now, and equal to Rosings’s vastness.
Spinner came to stand beside me, moving a bit stiffly after our journey. “It is good to be back, is it not?” she said, and I opened my eyes.
Mamma, conspicuously, was nowhere in sight, though I wrote both her and Mr. Colt to tell them when to expect my return. I fancied I could feel her watching me from an upstairs window.
“Yes,” I said, for somehow, despite Rosings’s cold silence, despite the thumping of my heart, it truly was.
The drawing room looked exactly as I remembered it, from the gleam of dark wood to the angle of the late afternoon sunlight through the windows. I supposed it was rather silly to have expected otherwise; I was only gone a few months, after all. But it felt as if I had been away for a hundred years, and returned to find the house suspended in time, deep in an enchanted sleep.
I prepared myself as best I could for this moment, but standing before my mother while she looked at me—chin lifted, eyes narrowed, mouth thin as a thread—I had the disorienting sensation that I was a child again, small and trembling before her parent’s anger; and like a child, I had lost my words, they had gone skittering away from me and were cowering in the corners of the room. I was acutely aware that I was standing in front of Mamma like a chastened servant while she sat her chair as a queen would her throne. I cleared my throat, looked down at my hands, and tried to call my words back to me.
Mrs. Jenkinson sat beside my mother, and I was, unaccountably, relieved. I had treated her poorly when I left, and had no reason to think Mamma would keep her on with me gone. I thought far less about my companion than I should have since I went away; to my shame, if not for Eliza, I might not be so relieved to see her here now. But I could not forget Eliza’s words about the precariousness of a companion’s situation: her dependence, her lack of respect from society. Though I had never warmed to Mrs. Jenkinson—though, in truth, I simply wanted to be away from her—I was glad she did not suffer for my thoughtlessness.
Mrs. Jenkinson said nothing, but her bland, watery gaze felt, incongruously, supportive as a corset, straightening my spine and keeping me from bending to my mother’s will. I moved deliberately to the chair across from Mamma’s and sat down, drawing in a breath. If only some clever person could distill the bits of my medicine that made me not care so very much—just for a time, just for now!—and remove the crippling lethargy. I was never so frightened in my life.
“Mamma,” I said.
“I am glad you have returned,” Mamma said. “Your room is aired and I’ve ordered a bath prepared. No doubt you will wish to rest.”
“No, indeed,” I said. “I am—not tired at all, Mamma.”
“We are having guests tonight, for supper and cards. The Boltons and the Cliftons. I expect you have something appropriate to wear? Mr. Colt kept me apprised of the bills from modistes in Town.”
I flushed. “I do not need to rest,” I said again. “I am not tired.”
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“Not tired?” Her eyes sharpened, slicing like knives as they looked me up and down. She sat, if possible, even straighter in her chair. “Hmmph. Well. You do have a bloom about you. You are feeling well, still, I suppose?”
“Yes. As I said in my letters.” I realized I was twisting my fingers together, and forced myself to stop. “I no longer take laudanum. I will not have it in the house.”
Her mouth opened, and I put up a hand; to my complete surprise, her mouth closed again.
“I am the better for being without it; so much better that I—that I am prepared to take my proper place as mistress of Rosings.” Again, her open mouth; again, my hand forestalled her words, and now my own words, the ones I spoke again and again inside my head during the drive from London, unspooled themselves. “You have done so much—I am forever grateful. But it is time for me to take up the duties I should have taken up long ago.”
She was silent for a moment, and I could not guess her thoughts. Then, “Nonsense,” she said. “Dr. Grant must evaluate your health before we even consider allowing you to do something so arduous. If he agrees that you are ready—”
“There is no need to call for Dr. Grant—”
“He has treated you since you were an infant, Anne, who knows your health better, except myself? In the meantime, you really must rest before this evening—in health or not, such a long journey will have tired you.”
She nodded at Mrs. Jenkinson. “Take Miss de Bourgh upstairs, and instruct her maid that she must be dressed for company this evening.”
I was a walker, scrambling to get out of the way of an oncoming cart. Mrs. Jenkinson seemed to feel much the same; she looked between myself and my mother, no doubt uncertain whose instructions she ought to follow. Almost, I retreated to my room to regroup; but if I were to do so now, I might forever be a quivering, fearful thing, my time in Town just a brief interlude in a life of controlled uniformity.
“No,” I said, a satisfying snap to the word. “I do not want—I will not allow Dr. Grant to be called for on my behalf. I know my health better than anyone, Dr. Grant especially. If it were left to him, I would still be a slave to my medicine, good for nothing—”
“You malign the name of a good man and a good doctor, who has always done his best by you!” she cried. “Such ingratitude—such repulsive pride, I could never have imagined! I hope you will show contrition after you have thought about your circumstances—”
Her voice was rising; but for once mine rose higher, like a wind that blows so fiercely it overwhelms all other sounds. My wind blew the words from my mother’s lips and left her shocked and ruffled.
“Did you not read my letters?” I said. “I have been in London for weeks upon weeks, and the foul air has not killed me. Indeed, I walked farther and felt better while I was there than I ever have in the country—not because of the air, but because I was not suffering the effects of a medicine that was more curse than cure.” I was standing—how was it that I was standing?—and I spread my arms wide. “And you—you allowed, you encouraged me to stay in a state of—of incapacitation! Look at me now!” I struck my breast with one hand. “I am well, Mamma. Well and whole and quite capable of being a proper mistress to Rosings.”
My voice soared to a pitch just short of shouting, and I dropped my arms and consciously breathed in and out. I was flushed from hairline to toe-tips.
“I am appreciative of all that you have done for the estate,” I said, more temperately. “And I . . . am appreciative of all that you tried to do for me.”
Her throat worked and worked, as if there was something caught there. Her eyes stared.
I swallowed; and then the words I had rehearsed all the long drive from London came forth like a sprung leak. “I wish—I wish us to live peacefully, but that cannot happen if we are ever at odds. I think the best solution is separate households. Mr. Colt and I will go tomorrow to look at the dower house and decide what must be done to make it habitable again. You may take—almost—anything you would like from the great house to furnish it; or I will gladly provide funds for any furnishings you need.”
She was shivering. “That house,” she said, tight, furious, “is meant to be used after the heir marries. Am I to wish you joy?”
I shook my head. “No. I am not—I will never marry.”
“I see.” Mamma rose, too, forcing me to look up at her; but still she trembled, and somehow I did not feel the disadvantage of my height compared to hers as I used to. “You are a foolish girl,” she said. “What will happen to Rosings Park if you produce no heir? Do you truly want some distant de Bourgh cousin—”
I had thought about this, but I was not willing, just yet, to share these thoughts with her. I met her eyes.
“That is my worry now, not yours,” I said.
I escaped to the stables, dashing across the drive, though in the distance thunder growled like an animal warning. Inside, a stable boy, leaning against the wall oiling a harness in a desultory manner, jumped when he saw me, stumbling over his own feet in his haste to bow. I nodded to him and assured him I needed no assistance; I was merely there to see my ponies.
The surprise on his face made my heart seize within its cage. But then he pointed to the stalls near the far end of the building, and my heart beat again, and my feet followed the direction of his pointing finger.
The stables smelled of hay and manure, warm and dusty with an underlying musk of animal. The carriage and plough horses were shut away in their stalls, and one or two flicked their ears as I passed. But, oh, my ponies knew me—I feared they would not, that, abandoned so suddenly, they would have forgotten me. But they came forward to the doors of their stalls, pressed their soft noses against my outstretched palms, huffed their warm moist breath in welcome. My temples tingled, and I rolled my eyes upward to keep the sudden tears from falling.
I told Spinner to dress me well for supper and cards, armoring myself in silk and net lace, with heavy pearls at my ears and throat. When I descended the stairs and Mamma saw my gown, she raised one brow at the filaments of lace about the low neckline and the pale green color of the silk, so different to the reds and yellows she preferred for me; but said nothing.
Mr. and Mrs. Clifton, who had known me from infancy, expressed delight at my looks. “I never thought I’d see the day,” Mrs. Clifton said. “Your return to health is a miracle, Miss de Bourgh; it truly is.”
I managed to thank her without stammering. And when Peters announced that the meal was served, I drew in a breath and held it, and took my place at the top of the table.
There was utter silence, for far too long. And then the scraping of chairs as the others took their seats. Mamma’s face, when I finally looked at her, was pale as paper.
Once the first shock passed, Mamma did not consent to relinquish her grip quietly, and I found I must prise her fingers away from each aspect of life at Rosings Park, one by one by one. The key to the book room I had to demand, for she did not offer it; when she tried to instruct Mrs. Barrister about what food my stomach could best tolerate, I was overcome with a rage that rose as swift and as deadly as floodwaters, and had to clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Anything I left her she used to her advantage, her lined face desperate in a way that made me want to cry; yet still I took everything from her, everything except dominion over her own person and bedchamber, for I could not go back to being quiet and controlled, I could not. The servants, unaccustomed to answering to me, were very much caught between us like shuttlecocks batted back and forth; it was this that told me my decision that we must live apart was a sound one.
The dower house, situated near the village, had stood empty since Grandmother de Bourgh died before my birth. It was shut up, and smelled of dust; Mr. Colt and I sneezed and sneezed as we explored its rooms, laughing into our elbows as we covered our noses and mouths with our sleeves. In the end, he said that aside from the obvious need for a thorough cleaning, he thought repairing the roof, sweeping out the chimneys,
and replacing a few windowsills that had succumbed to wood rot should be all that was necessary to accomplish before Mamma could take residence, and that he would set some men from Hunsford to the task immediately.
I looked around the rooms—fine rooms, well appointed, with good light—and tried not to think about how small they were compared to the rooms at Rosings; tried not to feel as if I were packing my mother away in a box. I would encourage her to choose new paint and paper hangings; and perhaps she would consent to venture into London for new carpets.
My days were spent mostly in Mr. Colt’s company. He was a pleasant and patient man; and a competent one, which was a relief. I did not want, in addition to everything else, to have to find a new steward. We went over the accounts, the neat columns of numbers oddly soothing, this one thing, once more, coming quickly and naturally to me, the unexpected talent I had discovered at the age of twelve suddenly vitally useful. We discussed the home farm and the tenant farms—crop rotations, livestock, the prices of wool and grain and so many other things that my mind sloshed within my skull at the end of each day.
When we ventured out onto the estate, I found myself tucking my elbows in and bending my neck, making myself even smaller. Mr. Colt greeted the tenants naturally, and they greeted him with respect, but I feared they would find me strange, Sir Lewis’s sickly daughter, who had never taken an interest in them before; and I was at once that girl again, dumb and witless, braced for laughter.
But they were deferential when they saw me; and if there was curiosity in their eyes, there was at least no ill will. It took nearly as much courage to face them as it took to face down Mamma; but with an effort like heaving boulders from my back, I straightened my shoulders and began to know them.
Most nights I was too tired to do anything but sleep, and for the first time since I stopped taking my drops, I toppled each night into a state of heavy insensibility so quickly that I rarely remembered Spinner putting out the candle. Mr. Colt assured me that I needn’t exert myself so much in the actual, physical going-over of the estate, but until I had a true understanding of all its particulars, I felt I must. Soon enough, however, I confess I knew I would be more than happy to hand over the bulk of the running-about to him; but just now, when I still sometimes feared that Rosings Park was going to close around me—that I might not be able to live here without the familiar dampening solace of my drops—I was glad to go manic with work.
The Heiress Page 23
