by Rose Lerner
“It was kind of you to come and be with your brother at Christmas.”
His eyes searched her face. “Not particularly,” he said at last, cheerfully. “I don’t much care where I am for Christmas.”
“Do you like seeing new customs and ways of celebrating, like your brother?”
He nodded. “But I like the spring holidays better, May Day and the beginning of mackerel season. Holidays that happen outdoors when everything feels new.” He flicked a glance at the soggy, bare landscape.
Lydia felt a surge of protectiveness. She loved Wheatcroft at every time of the year. She had always loved the naked branches curling and catching at the sky, the wet sheen on every stone, the gleaming green of the yew trees, and how everything felt secretive and full of possibility. Looking around, she saw that again, and not her own sadness. It was an intense relief.
“I like winter,” she said. “I like…you can feel the world waiting, and not minding the wait. People say things die in winter, but it isn’t true, mostly. They just gather their strength.” That had been a strange thing to say, she realized. She wished she hadn’t said it. “Anyway, everything does feel new at Christmas,” she said hastily. “What’s more hopeful than the birth of a child?” She would have gone rambling on about the season of charity and giving, but he stopped her, his hands tightening on hers.
“Do you hope to have children?” He watched her closely, as if her answer mattered.
“I don’t think so.” She knew it was almost always the wrong answer for a woman to give, and was glad of it for once. She didn’t want him to get ideas. Smiling to soften it, she said, “I already brought up my brother. It was lovely, but I think once was enough. I’d like to be an aunt, though.”
His hands didn’t relax. “Was it difficult? When you were so young too?”
Oh dear, she had said exactly the wrong thing. “Everything worth doing is difficult. I wouldn’t exchange it for anything.”
He looked relieved and let her go. She felt a pang, because what she had said was true, but it was a lie, too. She would have answered the same question from Mr. Cahill differently.
“Did Ash really tell you I wanted to settle down?”
“Perhaps I misunderstood him,” she said hastily, hoping she hadn’t hit on a sore point of some kind. Ash. The nickname suited him.
Mr. Ralph smiled at her attempt to shield his brother. “Perhaps. Ash—” He sighed. “It’s hard to explain things to him sometimes.” He gazed out over the wet garden as if he wasn’t seeing it at all. Even in the gray light, his eyes were bright, piercing blue. “We’ve been together all our lives. I owe him everything. But he can be—he wants me to be happy. I’m grateful for that. I am. But no one can be happy all the time.”
He wanted to leave Mr. Cahill because his brother wanted him to be happy? Was it such a burden, to have someone care for one’s happiness?
Mr. Ralph glanced down and read her incomprehension on her face. “He has a strong personality. Growing up in his shadow has been…I love him, but I need…” He sighed again, searching for words.
She gazed up, up, up at his face. “Not in his shadow, surely.” Unassuming Mr. Cahill, a strong personality? That was either the voice of deep affection, or Mr. Ralph himself could not have very much ballast.
But she was drawn to Mr. Cahill, wasn’t she, without knowing why? Maybe he did have a strong personality.
Mr. Ralph’s mouth tightened. “You’re right, I’m tall,” he said flatly. He shook his head, giving up his explanation as a bad job. “I’m thinking of taking up a commission.”
Mr. Cahill hadn’t mentioned that. Perhaps he disliked the idea. “Which regiment?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Oh, but you must look into it first.” For Mr. Cahill’s sake she prompted Mr. Ralph in the direction of the safest regiments, lingering particularly on the 1st Dragoon Guards, still on home service. “If you need any help getting your letter of recommendation, you must let me know. I correspond with General Beresford’s sister-in-law.”
He didn’t answer right away. “May we talk privately for a moment?”
She was taken aback, but it was far too early in their acquaintance for him to make any overtures of love to her. He must want to tell her something about his financial circumstances. It would be awkward, but she was curious, and she could already feel the instinct to help uncurling inside of her and reaching out, like a hungry baby squid. She was a busybody, and that was that. “Of course. Tom, can you fall back a little while we walk? But keep us in sight, please.”
“I want to deal plainly with you,” Mr. Ralph said when Tom was at a safe distance. “You’re a woman of character, and I—I think we can help each other.” His blue eyes glinted seriously. Now that he had given up on describing his own emotions, he seemed again a man to be reckoned with.
She turned away from him to feed her mare a piece of apple, so as to seem a little distant. She had an uneasy feeling that this would be a proposal that was unladylike merely to hear. “What do you mean?”
He looked at his boots, mouth twisting. “I can’t afford that commission. Ash told me you’re having money troubles too.”
He had shared her confidences with his little brother.
Well, of course he had. He’d known her a few days, and he’d known Mr. Ralph nearly all his life. That was nothing to condemn him for. “Yes,” she said cautiously.
“If you married me,” he said soberly, meeting her eyes, “I’d sign over your dowry to you. All but the few thousand pounds I’d need to set me up in the army. You’d have your money, and no husband to get in the way.” His gaze slid warmly over her. “I wouldn’t ask you for anything you didn’t offer first. I swear.” She flushed hotly. I’d take it if you offered, though, was the clear message.
It was shocking. A mariage de convenance was one thing, but to come right out and say it, to her face—as she thought the words, she knew them for the worst sort of hypocrisy, as if cloaking the thing in polite courtship and flattery and negotiations between fathers and lawyers and men of business made it any different.
This still felt naked and brazen.
“You can trust me,” he said, trying to take her hand.
She took it back politely and smiled at him, her heart pounding. “I believe you. But it’s a very big decision.” She ought to say no. If he ever told anyone she’d even considered a bargain like this—with a stranger, no less—her reputation would be ruined. But she needed that money. “I have to think on it.”
He nodded, accepting it without demur. “When should I come back?”
She tried to think. It wasn’t easy, with him looming like a Greek god and I wouldn’t ask you for anything you didn’t offer first in her ears. “I’m going to the workhouse in town tomorrow. Meet me there at one o’clock. I can’t promise to have an answer, but I’ll have thought about it.”
“Very well. Have you any questions for me?”
She shook her head. “Let’s go back to the house.”
Tom came forward to help her onto her horse. Mr. Ralph made a move as if to do it himself, then looked at the mud on her boots and hem and stood aside, laughing. She really did like him when he laughed.
She wondered what she would have said, if his brother had made her the same offer.
Ash tried to be patient. He tried not to let his annoyance show. “Do you not like her?” he asked his brother. “Admittedly, she’s a bit of a mouse.” She wasn’t, but if you wanted Rafe to like someone, criticizing her helped. Rafe liked to protect people.
“What has that to do with anything?” Rafe demanded, not trying to hide his own annoyance at all.
“Rafe, if you’d wanted her to say yes, she would have. You sprang the offer on her out of nowhere after a discussion of your commission, of all things. You didn’t trouble to remind her of how badly she needs this. You didn�
�t try to persuade her. You barely flirted with her. You couldn’t even agree with her about the wonder of Christmas. So I think asking if you don’t like her is a fair—”
Rafe flopped heavily back onto their bed. “I’m sick of Christmas.”
Ash breathed in and out and looked at Rafe, at the furrows in his honest brow, at one big hand outstretched on the bed, at the clumsy straggling tie of his queue. Rafe was impossible and stubborn but Ash loved him. He wasn’t angry. There was a knot in his chest but—it was as if his heart grew smaller while the rest of him expanded away from it, almost aching with affection. “Why?”
Rafe sat up, frowning. He’d always had those thick eyebrows; his face had grown into them now, but as a child it had made him look like a tiny disgruntled rabbi when he frowned. “Aren’t you tired of celebrating other people’s holidays? Don’t you ever want a holiday of our own? A family tradition of our own?”
“No,” Ash said honestly. He loved celebrating other people’s holidays. Moments were as satisfying to steal as money, and besides, sharing things with strangers made him feel as if the whole world was really one family.
Ever since they’d left London and struck out on their own, he’d tried to make sure Rafe had a happy home—someone’s happy home—to spend holidays in, and when he couldn’t, he’d made sure they had enough for a room to themselves. He’d loved those Christmases and Easters too, he and Rafe lying on their bed talking all day, sharing cold goose and mince pies, or hot cross buns and a bowl of richly dyed eggs. Just the two of them, still and warm while the world bustled on around them. He’d never realized Rafe minded.
We could start a tradition if you wanted was on the tip of his tongue, before he remembered that Rafe was leaving.
“You said this was a deal, not a swindle,” Rafe said. “So I dealt honestly with her.”
“Honest men swindle too. Everybody swindles, only they don’t call it that. What’s so wonderful about honesty, anyway? What’s so wonderful about honest folk? Honest folk never helped us when we were starving, unless we swindled them into it.”
Rafe wanted to be an honest man, now. He wanted to feel as if he deserved what he had. But no one deserved anything. Ash thought of Lydia Reeve in her fine house, thinking it was hers by right. He didn’t envy her that terrible blindness. He didn’t understand why Rafe—
But that wasn’t really true, was it? Ash did understand. That was what he did, why he was so good at his profession: he always understood, and he always accepted.
I don’t understand myself, he thought. Why, with Rafe, the one person he loved more than anything in the world, did understanding not lead to acceptance?
He’d have to force it to.
Rafe watched him, quiet and assessing, and Ash wanted him to be happy so intensely it was like something crawling out of his stomach and up his throat. Which was disgusting, so he swallowed it and smiled at his brother.
“Do you lie to me?” Rafe asked.
Only once. But that wasn’t even the truth. He didn’t answer.
“I thought brothers didn’t lie to each other.” Rafe didn’t sound angry, or surprised, only sad.
The moths were at it in Ash’s chest. He’d repeated that maxim to Rafe a thousand times—and tried to live by it, mostly. But he had really said it because he didn’t want Rafe to lie to him. No secret a child was asked to keep from his family was an innocent one, and he’d meant for Rafe to know that he should always come to Ash with everything. “I don’t lie to you. I’ve—” But he couldn’t make his tongue form the word never.
“I want to know. I want to know what you’ve lied about. Even if it isn’t anything important. I can’t bear it that you treat me like a flat.”
Ash’s heart stopped. “Like a flat—Rafe, I’ve never thought of you as a flat!”
Rafe simply looked at him, and it seemed to Ash that there was too much sadness in his eyes for only twenty-six years of life.
He had failed as a brother. If he could repair it somehow, would Rafe stay? What could he say that would make Rafe stay?
But he couldn’t—he couldn’t swindle Rafe, and he couldn’t ask Rafe to stay, and he couldn’t hope. He couldn’t stand to hope. “Can we not do this now? I’ll tell you everything before you go. Let’s not spoil these last days.”
“You always do this. You always insist on pretending that everything is fine.”
“Everything is fine.”
“Ash…” It struck Ash that Rafe was trying to be patient now, that he was breathing in and out and trying to sound as if he weren’t angry, and that it wasn’t working at all. “I know you’re angry with me—”
“I’m not angry with you,” Ash said gently. “I want you to be happy. If you’re doing what will make you happy, then we share a common goal. Why should I be angry?”
“So I’m selfish for not staying and cheating old women?”
We’ve only cheated a few old women. Even Ash knew that wouldn’t sound good spoken aloud. “That isn’t what I said.” Somehow, now that Rafe was losing his composure, Ash found it easy to keep his voice steady. “What’s so bad about being selfish, anyway? Everybody’s selfish. I selfishly want you to stay, you selfishly want to go, Miss Reeve selfishly wants her little brother to come home and sit on the throne she’s been at such pains to carve for him. Selfishness is as natural as breathing. Unlike you, I don’t blame people for how they’re made. Next you’ll be talking about original sin like a goy.”
Rafe pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket and crumpled it in his hand. “You aren’t selfish, not really.” He didn’t look at Ash. “You have such a big heart—if you could open it a little farther. The sacrifices you’ve made for me—”
Ash tried to imagine opening his heart farther than he already did. All he could think was how much it would hurt, to have people with their boots and pointy little heels and squirming toes walking on the soft wet linings of his insides. “There’s no such thing as a sacrifice,” he said. “Only swaps. I suppose I’ve made some swaps for you. I think they were all good ones, for what I got in exchange.”
You have no idea how selfish I’ve been.
Rafe worried his handkerchief. Embroidered in one corner was a Hebrew L that had once been red and was now a faded mulberry color. Ash knew the letter was there, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it.
He couldn’t remember his mother Leah’s face, except that he’d thought she was pretty. Gainsborough probably wouldn’t have agreed. He would have seen a greasy Jew.
What would she say, if she knew what he’d done? Would he have been better, if she’d brought him up? Or—would he have been worse? She’d found him his first job, after all.
Well, she was dead, and what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
There was a long silence, and then Rafe sighed. “You’ll tell me everything before I go?”
Before I go. Ash shut his heart tight to keep the words from hurting too badly. “I promise.”
Rafe began reluctantly to describe the Wheatcroft dower house, a house big enough for half a dozen families just lying fallow. Soon enough the conversation moved on, comfortably and with much laughter, as if everything was fine.
Later, Ash lay in bed, the pressure of unsaid words building in his throat. He didn’t even know what they were, what they would become if he let them out. He couldn’t predict a single one.
Chapter Six
“Jack Sparks is agreeable to taking on Christopher Tobill as an apprentice, if we can pay the fee,” Mrs. Bridger said when they were closeted together in the master’s office. Mr. Bridger was out helping move a recent workhouse inmate’s furniture.
Lydia’s heart sank. “How much?” Mr. Sparks was the only printer in Lively St. Lemeston. He was also a devoted Whig, which meant that all Tory pamphlets and handbills and the monthly Tory journal had to be printed elsewhere at Wheatcroft expense.
Oh, and it’s almost time for the December edition! Perhaps the printer in Lewes would extend her credit.
Her head did not quite ache, but there was a pressure at her temples as it debated with itself whether to begin. Printing apprenticeships weren’t cheap.
“Seventy-five pounds, ma’am. I believe he’s making alterations to his home to accommodate his new wife and her wheelchair, and the cash would be most welcome. Some of it can come from William Turner’s will, and Mrs. Dromgoole has pledged something as well, but that still leaves fifty pounds.”
Only a few weeks ago, Lydia could have promised the money on the spot. Then perhaps in time there would be a Tory printer in Lively St. Lemeston—nothing was certain, of course, but it was a great favor to do a poor child. That would be a triumph. “Will he take five pounds a week?” It was a sixth of her own income, but she could do it.
Mrs. Bridger shook her head, looking surprised at Lydia’s haggling. “He’d like to have the matter settled by Christmas. I beg your pardon, I hadn’t ought to have presumed. I’ll go to Martha Honeysett, and ask if the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor can help. And Lady Tassell will be in town next week. I can—”
“No.” Lydia ought to tell the house-mistress how matters lay. But she shrank from it. When Jamie changed his mind and wanted to be these people’s patron again, how little confidence they would have in him! “Please don’t. My brother is from home, but I’ll write him and see what can be done.”
“That would be wonderful.” Mrs. Bridger straightened the ledgers on the desk, hesitating. “I’m sorry to press you, ma’am, but the sooner the better. Mr. Sparks can take an apprentice anywheres, while we won’t find another printer so easy.”
They wouldn’t find another printer at all, and they both knew it. Christopher Tobill was clever and likable, but he would need months of lessons, if not years, before he could read and write as well as the children Sparks could have sold the apprenticeship to. “Of course. I’ll write directly I get home.”
