A Curse Dark as Gold

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  Sparrow—by God, where are you? I have been up and down the countryside looking for you—to the Flats, to Stowemouth—even Yellowly! If you think this fox-and-hound game amusing, I assure you I take no such pleasure in it! I told you I would come back for you—your brother couldn’t keep me away from you forever. But perhaps you’ve forgotten me. Perhaps you’ve foresworn our love. Perhaps I was only a springtime amusement after all. When I left Ward—

  It stopped, as if the writer had been interrupted. My heart lurched guiltily—I was trespassing on something private here—but I could not draw my gaze away. Was it possible that this note had been written by my own Uncle Wheeler? That last was smudged out, in a great angry blot like a bruise, but eventually I made out the word: Wardensgate.

  “I don’t know, sir, I think she’ll surprise us all,” Randall said—a bit too loudly. My eyes flew toward him, and I saw that my uncle was turning. I had only time to slide the page back into the desk and lift the lid closed once more.

  As we adjourned for dinner, Randall drew me aside. “I say, what was all that business in there?” He sounded merely curious, amused. I managed to smile.

  “What would you say if I told you I was reading my uncle’s love letters?”

  His eyes flew wide and he suppressed a laugh. “I’d say you’re starved for romantic correspondence of your own, Miss Miller, and I must remedy that.” He swept his arm round my waist and kissed me briefly.

  “Have you ever heard of a town called Wardensgate?” I said when he let me go. “I think my uncle may have lived there for a while, before he came here.”

  He frowned. “I’ve heard of it—but, Charlotte, it’s not a town. It’s the debtors’ prison.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  My wedding day dawned bright and chill, a fairy-frost dusting the hills and woods and turning the village road to silver. In my suit of cornflower blue plush, and clutching my nosegay of orange blossom, I was escorted through the village by a gay procession of my neighbors, determined to subject me to the full battery of Gold Valley superstitions: a sprig of ivy in my hair, sixpence in my shoe, a layer of linen gauze veiling my face, ushered round the church three times sunwise before being allowed at last to enter (left foot first). I was breathless and half-frozen by the time I wrestled the veil from my bonnet and collapsed into the pew beside Randall.

  The ceremony was brief and tender. We rose between the benediction and the sermon to declare ourselves. I had a moment’s panic when I uttered the words, “and all my worldly goods I thee endow,” but Randall, while promising to love and cherish me, encircled my waist with his arms, and I felt a strange sort of easy peace, as if the Valley had given a great restful sigh. I sank back down into the pew, Randall’s hand warm in my gloved one, and marvelled that my life could be so altered in no more than ten minutes’ time.

  Afterward we adjourned to the Millhouse for as lavish a wedding breakfast as Uncle Wheeler could arrange. Randall’s eldest sister, Rebecca, a cheerful, matronly woman who trailed her daughters behind her like ducklings, directed the affair with a brisk and competent air that even my uncle was forced to respect. Randall’s nieces were sweet, stair-step girls who smiled shyly and called me “Aunt Charlotte” from the start.

  I was torn away from my new family by the tidal force of my neighbors, laughing, kissing, and offering me their congratulations. I embraced Mercy Fuller and three young Fullers, all bedecked in their Sunday finery, and was seized in a massive bear hug by Jack Townley, who lifted me bodily from the floor.

  As I shifted my hat back into position, I turned and came face to face with my uncle, who was dressed to fit the morning in ivory damask and an abundance of lace. “Well, Charlotte,” he said in his lazy voice, “I trust you’ll forget all about us here, now that you’ve caught yourself your banker husband.”

  I blinked, unable to tell if he was joking. But I just smiled and said, “Oh, trust me, Uncle, I shall never forget you.” Impulsively, I embraced him. “Thank you, for all of this. It’s lovely, truly.”

  I drew back and he smoothed out his coat and sleeves. “It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s only my duty, after all.”

  As he slipped away into the crowd I wondered again about the letter I had read. Had Uncle Wheeler been in debtors’ prison? The image I had—of drafty dungeons populated by beggars in rags and ill-fed vermin—did not reconcile with this powdered gentleman of refined manners and scornful disdain for modest living. Randall had me half-convinced I must have read it wrong. Surely it had said Warfield, or Woolston, or any of half a dozen things. And if it had said Wardensgate, that did not mean Uncle Wheeler had been an inmate there. Rosie, suspicions aroused, had gone back to check one night when our uncle was absent from the Millhouse, but had found nothing at all in Mam’s desk but an empty ink pot.

  As I was pondering these matters, Randall crept up behind me and caught me round the waist. I gave a squeak of surprise as he spun me in his arms and kissed me, in a fashion not at all seemly for a married couple in public. I felt my head swim, and pulled back, breathless. He was looking very much the country gentleman this morning, in a coat of dove grey, the selfsame ivy-and-orange pinned to his collar. I reached up to straighten the posy, and he regarded me solemnly.

  “Charlotte,” he said, his eyes searching my face for something. “Are you happy?”

  I caught a glimpse of my uncle in the corner of the parlor, holding a glass of wine before him like a shield, and felt my face crack with the strain of smiling all morning. I clasped my new husband round his neck. “Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.”

  After much disentangling of ourselves from embraces and congratulations, we finally managed to quit town near sunset. Randall’s father had sent an extravagant wedding gift: a glossy black carriage and two equally glossy black carriage horses, christened Blithe and Bonny by one of Randall’s nieces. The thing had Uncle Wheeler positively in raptures. He examined every inch of the trap, extolling the virtues of the perfectly matched horses, the finely balanced axle.

  “I say, you do know your way about a carriage,” Randall said, giving Blithe’s (or perhaps Bonny’s) neck a friendly thump.

  Uncle Wheeler slipped out from beneath the trap’s polished undercarriage. His coat sleeves were shoved back, his wig askew, and he was almost smiling. “Yes, well.” He took a moment to brush down his cuffs and melt back into his statuesque self. “Harness racing. The sport of kings.”

  Whatever Randall said in response to that was obscured by Rosie grabbing me and hugging fiercely, as if afraid to let go. She pulled back at last, beaming. Suddenly, urgently, I wanted the world to share what I was feeling.

  “I’m going to make Harte foreman,” I said, although it fell well short of all I really wished at that moment. But Rosie’s smile grew even wider, so it was enough.

  At last, our luggage loaded aboard the trap and our well-wishers growing weary, Uncle Wheeler took my hand and helped me alight beside Randall. “My dear.” He nodded slightly. “Woodstone, I wish you well of her. Good day.”

  We took our honeymoon in Delight, a spa town in a part of the Valley known for its mineral waters. Alternatives were suggested—Harrowgate, the coast, even overseas—but Randall would have none of it.

  “What?” he cried, scandalized. “Be the only man in Shearing who didn’t take his bride for a honeymoon in Delight? No, madam. I have my pride.”

  So it was Delight or nowhere, and I must admit that I was not sorry to share the little pleasures of that lovely village with my worldly husband. Although I did point out that even the innumerable charms of Delight would be long exhausted by the end of our fortnight, he merely laughed and said I didn’t understand the purpose of a honeymoon.

  And, indeed, he was quite convincing about that; and all I shall record here is that we missed both breakfast and the luncheon buffet at the hotel our first day, and that I came to understand why so many young wives produce children three-quarters of a year after their weddings.

  There are three thing
s to do in Delight in winter: take the waters, sit in the Gallery at the Baths after having taken the waters, and shop. Even despite my looming mortgage payment, I let Randall convince me to release my tight grasp on a few pennies, here and there: the mantua-maker’s shop, where I was measured for what seemed a whole new wardrobe; the staymaker’s, where I was laced into my first new corset in years. I told myself I was spending household money now, and that I had a right to a share of it, but even so, it was a strain. Still, there is something to be said for shoes whose soles are still unpatched, skirts whose hems have not yet been stepped on or splashed with wool wash.

  One afternoon we stopped in a fancy-goods shop to buy needlework supplies for Randall’s sisters, and as Randall bent over a case of pretty little sewing tools, I drifted away to the display of threads on the far wall of the shop. Fine-spun crewel wool hung in a rainbow of hanks beside a row of silk floss in every hue. I put my fingers up to brush a skein of mazareen blue, but my hand stilled in midair.

  There near the window, in obvious pride of place, wound about with their yellow monogrammed House of Parmenter labels, were a dozen or more glittering skeins of golden thread. I didn’t need to look to appreciate their depth of color, their perfect sheen. I did not need to touch to know the weight and feel of that gleaming thread. I remembered Nathan Smith’s reluctance last summer to touch the charmed gold. I understood it, now.

  “My, that’s pretty,” Randall said, coming up behind me. “Emily will love this, Charlotte; don’t you think?”

  And what could I possibly do then but smile as my husband bought a dozen skeins?

  Later that evening, Randall drew me aside before dinner and slipped an arm round my waist.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  Randall stroked the blue plush collar of my wedding ensemble, which I had been wearing almost every night to dinner, it being my finest gown by unquantifiable yardage.

  “Close your eyes.” I felt him fasten something to my bodice, and when he lifted my fingers to his lips and bade me open my eyes—I gasped. Pinned to my collar, just above my heart, was a lovely brooch of shining red enamel, hanging from a bar of gold like a jewelled cherry. My fingers trembled as I touched the gold scrollwork border, the engraved forget-me-nots, the glitter of a garnet at each floral heart. “But why?”

  He cocked his head at me, changing-color eyes gone blue in the dusky light. “Why not? The man in the shop told me garnets are good luck. Besides, I’m still trying to make up for the engagement ring.” Randall took my hand and kissed it again, and then my lips. “But look—it’s not just a brooch.”

  He turned the pendant over in his fingers, revealing an elegant timepiece, each numeral marked out in gold, with tiny filigree hands pointing to the hour.

  “See, it’s a perfect Charlotte gift. It looks lovely and delicate, but inside, it’s completely practical.”

  Something fluttered in me at that, a little thrill through all my bones. “I don’t need you to buy me jewelry.” My voice was scarce a whisper.

  “And I promise never to do it again.” He drew me close to him, brushed his lips against the hair at my temple. “Truly, Charlotte, it’s only money.”

  Only money. I laid my head against his shoulder and held my hand to the watch until the metal was as warm as blood.

  One chill grey morning at the end of our first week in Delight, I was taking a turn about the Gallery at the Spring Rooms. The long, colonnaded porch overlooked the baths and fountains, its tall arched windows pulled tight against the winter. A few hopeful snowflakes struggled through the clouds and died on the warm glass. Wives did not mix with their husbands in the Gallery, so I was squeezed together with a twittering family from Harrowgate, as we sipped our silverbound cups of spring water and tried to pretend it was not quite so vile. Truly, what made anyone think we should like to drink the same hot water we’d all been sitting in?

  The steam from the springs kept the Gallery toasty, even in snowfall, and my neighbor at the window fanned herself as if it were the height of summer. Thinking I should die of boredom before the afternoon was out, I took a peek at the pendant-watch to check the hour.

  “My, my,” the woman said, swiftly exchanging her fan for a lorgnette. The glass pressed to her face, she greatly resembled a bird of prey—perhaps an owl. “A little wedding gift?”

  “You’re Mrs. Woodstone, aren’t you?” said one of her daughters, a pretty girl younger even than Rosie. Before I could respond, her mother swept her scrutinizing gaze over me and my unfashionable flannel dress.

  “Woodstones. Hmph. A good old Harrowgate family,” she said, as if I was to be reassured in my selection by her approval. “They don’t mix much in society, of course—but that just means they’re not getting themselves involved in scandals. But I don’t know you,” she added pointedly.

  “No, ma’am. I’m from Shearing.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, settling back into her silk plumage. But she added charitably, “Well, everyone must come from somewhere, I suppose.” She looked suddenly thoughtful and tapped her daughter with the fan. “That reminds, me, Jane, you’ll never guess who I saw leaving the Empress Dining Room this morning. Virginia Byrd!”

  Jane gasped daintily. “But I thought she was out of the country. I haven’t seen her since Kitty Darling’s house party that spring.”

  “Nursing a broken heart, I heard,” her mother agreed, with less sympathy than one might have hoped. “Whatever became of that beau of hers, anyway? Such a dreadful scandal! You won’t remember this, of course, Mrs. Woodstone, but they were the couple, about two seasons ago. Everyone was sure he was going to offer for her, and then all of a sudden—” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture.

  “But wasn’t it too mysterious,” piped her daughter, “how he just disappeared? Broke the hearts of half the girls in town.” She sank back into her chair with a sigh that was half-swoon.

  “You know it had to have been that brother of hers,” argued the other girl. “The man Virginia loved would never have played her false! And the way Richard just whisked her off afterward—”

  “Well, I heard he ran afoul of some of his friends and took a holiday—” The mother dropped her lorgnette dramatically. “—in Wardensgate!”

  I sat up abruptly. “Wardensgate! Debtors’ prison?”

  The owl nodded solemnly.

  “Well, I can believe it,” her daughter said. “The way he went through wig powder alone—half the perukiers in Harrowgate must have had a claim on him!”

  Oh, had she really said that? I gazed into my glass of foul water with dismay, beginning to wish I hadn’t drunk any. But, oh, they went on.

  “Well,” the sister stressed, “if he ever shows his face in Society again, I’d like to give him a piece of my mind for how he treated poor Miss Byrd!”

  “You may have to queue up,” the mother said. “Arthur may be wondering what’s happened to that fifteen hundred Mr. Wheeler owes him! My dear Mrs. Woodstone, whatever is the matter? Here, Cora, give her a clap on the back. That spring water is enough to make anyone choke!”

  I was grateful when the time came for Randall to fetch me away from there.

  “Darling, you look a little flushed. What say we get some fresh air?”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. It had suddenly become far too close in the Spring Rooms. I took his arm and we walked out into the night. “What have you been doing all this time?” I asked him.

  He stifled a yawn. “Looking at the snow, out the downstairs window, with a man called Treacher.”

  “I see. And was he very interesting?”

  “I shouldn’t think so—he hadn’t any teeth and was deaf as a post. Charlotte—” he turned to me suddenly, a certain desperate urgency in his now-grey eyes. “Are you as bored as I am?”

  I met his gaze solemnly. “Worse.”

  He grabbed my elbows. “Wonderful! Let’s get out of here, shall we? Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  We set off deep
in the heart of morning, after one last sumptuous Delight breakfast, the shining black trap from Mr. Woodstone fitted out with runners now instead of wheels. The flurries of the previous afternoon had turned into one of the Gold Valley’s rare snowfalls, blanketing the roadway in white. Beneath my new travelling cloak I wore my garnet timepiece, pinned close to my breast.

  Randall’s eyes shone in the glittering sunlight, his collar pulled up firm against that broad jaw, his bronze hair lightly frosted from a brief fall of snow when we first stepped out of the hotel. Smiling at the thought that I could, I reached a hand out of my muff and brushed the snow away. He looked at me and caught my hand, giving it a quick, warm squeeze before lifting it to his lips.

  “Mrs. Woodstone,” he said formally, and though I’d been hearing it all week, off Randall’s lips the name sounded bold and lyrical…and permanent. It sent an odd, quick flutter to my belly, as though we’d hit a dip with the carriage.

  “Mr. Miller,” I answered impishly.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” he sighed, and before I knew what happened, he bent low, brought up a handful of snow from the roadway, and dumped it over my head.

  “That silenced you, didn’t it?” he gloated as I sputtered and gasped. I gave him a little shove that caused the horses to wander a bit in their path, but we rode the rest of the way in companionable silence, bundled together beneath the sheepskin wraps. The warmth from his body next to mine chased away the strange feeling in my stomach, and I tried to forget the odd moments that had marred the perfection of our first days together.

  We came into Shearing at last, chilled and red-cheeked, and it was as though we had driven the carriage out of one world and into another entirely. Here, upon the banks of the river, the winter had wrought not snow, but ice—half an inch at least, coating every rooftop and bending trees to the earth. Branches shuddered in the wind, sending icy shrapnel down upon the roadway. The road was a bed of glass-sharp chops and furrows, treacherous footing for the horses and rough going for the trap.