by Susanna Ives
“Sara is here now. And Mrs. Gordon is always willing to assist.”
“They’re not my family!” Megan shouted. “They don’t care like—”
“Megan,” Emily interrupted.
The girl froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. Emily stood just inside the door, her thin body drawn up, her hand resting on the knob. Her quiet gaze took in her daughter, Helena, the picture frame, and the glass shards.
“Helena is going to leave,” Megan said as though Helena were committing a crime.
Emily said nothing, but approached Megan and drew her into her arms. Megan broke down and hid her face on Emily’s shoulder. The girl’s tears made Helena’s eyes water again.
“I know, I know.” Emily combed Megan’s hair and spoke to her in hushed tones. “Everything will be well.”
Helena knew these were words to comfort a distraught girl. Nothing would be well.
Emily released Megan, came to sit on the edge of the bed beside Helena, and embraced her as she had her own daughter. “If you must leave us, then you must.” She spoke with a soothing quietness. “You may always return. We will miss you and shall be waiting for you. But tell me, where will you go?”
The ugly letter burned on Helena’s chest where she held it. “A friend.”
“A man,” Megan clarified. “He wrote her a letter.”
“May I see?” asked Emily.
Helen knew she shouldn’t let Emily see the letter, but she didn’t stop Emily when she drew the correspondence from her fingers and began to read.
“It is from the gentlemen who called.” She expected Emily to be shocked. Appalled. Disappointed in Helena. Maybe it would be easier to leave if Emily saw the horrid truth, saw the real Helena, the woman she had tried to leave behind in London. But Helena couldn’t shed her old life like an insect sheds its constraining skin, leaving behind a dried shell. She couldn’t escape herself or everything that had happened to her.
“Oh, Helena, no.” Emily rested the letter on the bedspread. “Don’t do this. Don’t let your hurt and anger drive you to this desperation. I can’t explain Theo’s reason, but this I know—and perhaps it’s not the best explanation—if he lied to you, he did it because he loves you.”
“Lying is not how you love someone,” Helena cried. “Do you know how much pain he has caused? To have your friends cut you? To have your belongings and home taken away? To be afraid to leave your own home?” Helena’s voice broke.
Emily looked on with tender sympathy. “I’m sorry for you.”
Helena wished sorry was enough. She wished the word had the power to wash away and heal.
“And he knew. He knew all along. When he kissed me. When he asked me to marry him. What kind of monster does that? Jonathan was the gentleman who called the day Theo journeyed to Bangor. You thought him a mere suitor. I couldn’t confess to you the truth. Say what you will of Jonathan’s offer, but it’s honest. There is no pretense.”
“I know you are angry and hurt. But I also know Theo. He wouldn’t want to hurt you. Surely he had his reasons.”
Emily’s reasoned response only agitated Helena. Her cousin couldn’t understand the enormity of the problem. “We made love as a married couple would.” The words burst from Helena. “And he never told me. How could… how could…”
Emily blinked, shock wiping away her motherly calm. “Megan, pardon us.”
“What?” Megan cried.
“Give us a moment.”
“I’m old enough—”
“A moment, please!”
Megan stomped away, visibly frustrated to be excluded.
Emily gripped Helena’s hands. “Do you think you might be carrying his child?”
“I don’t know. How can I know?”
“Sometimes you just do.” Emily rose and walked to the window. The light illuminated the outer strands of her hair, bringing out the fire in her auburn tones. She fingered the blue embroidered threads on a white curtain, glanced back at the room and then out the window again.
“I know why you desire to run to this Jonathan.” She began so quietly Helena had to strain to listen. “I know the allure of feeling nothing. Of thinking you don’t have the strength to go another day, yet you must, because people depend on you.”
Emily strolled back to the bed. She rested her palm on the post. “I remember the night Eustace died in this chamber.” She nodded at the empty pillow behind Helena. “He lay here, placid, as if his body had already died, except for his eyes—how he looked at me, as though he were pleading for something. I was… there aren’t words to describe how I was, trying hard to be strong for him. I wasn’t going to let my boy go. I had to fight for him.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed, peering deep into a memory. “I remember Theo’s hands. It’s silly what you remember. They were gentle for being so roughened. He would lift Eustace, asking him to drink. But the water…” She trailed off, pressing her lips together. Tears spurted on her lashes. “The water would pour from the sides of his mouth or into his windpipe, causing him to cough. Ragged coughs that looked like they were breaking his tiny ribs.” She made a rolling gesture with her hand, as if trying to coax out words that preferred to remain locked inside. “I couldn’t let him die. Not my little, beautiful boy. It was Theo who told him… told him… how he would meet his father again. Not to be afraid. I wanted to crawl into the grave with Eustace and Stephen, but I had to keep on living for Megan’s sake.” She paused, her eyes lifting to Helena. “We must accept both the sorrow and the love. They dwell side by side. You cannot push one away without pushing away the other.”
Helena shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not as strong or good as you. I can’t accept what he has done. I can’t live with lies or marry someone I can’t trust.”
Emily flung up her arms. “He gave you the truest part of himself! He gave you his heart, gardens, and home. It’s all yours, if you can find the strength to forgive him.”
“I can’t!” Helena cried.
Emily’s lips curved in a rueful smile. “No more than you can forgive your father or the girl you were in London.” She pointed to the letter that waited, half opened, on the bed. “Don’t go to that man, not when everything is here for you.” Emily walked to Helena, taking her hands and squeezing them. “Oh, Helena, forgive Theo. Forgive him.”
Helena gazed at Emily’s earnest, beseeching eyes.
“I don’t know how to forgive,” Helena admitted. “I don’t know how. Tell me how. I desire to know so badly.”
“Theo loved you so much that he—”
The door opened. Megan slipped inside.
Emily bestowed a patient smile. “My dear, please give us another moment. Then we can—”
“Mrs. Gordon says that Betry’s water has discharged. She says her pains are hard and fast.”
∞∞∞
Theo’s bare hands gripping the hoe trembled; he raised the tool and slammed it the earth, ripping away nettles and weeds to reveal the black earth beneath. He couldn’t stop the onslaught of his thoughts—tangles of memories and words. She had said he should have died in Crimea—hadn’t he wished the same thing every day for years?
But he would make this beautiful garden for her, so when he was gone, either by death or disappearing into some comfortable asylum where the flow of opium numbed his mind, she would know how much he loved her. He hit the ground again, smashing apart a rock.
In his periphery, he saw Gordon still squatting beside a tree, drawing from his cigarette. Theo had asked him to leave twice, but the man stayed. The pity in Gordon’s good eye further incensed Theo. He didn’t need to be watched over like an errant school boy.
“I said go the hell away,” Theo growled at him.
Gordon blew out a plume of smoke. “Put down the hoe and come inside. Then I’ll leave you.”
“Goddammit, Gordon, I…” He trailed off. His father was staggering and grabbing onto tree trunks as he dragged his gouty leg up the hill. The folds of his sagging face wer
e ruddy and sheened with sweat.
“Son,” his father began; even though his voice choked from exertion, that maddening paternal, knowing tone broke through. “Calm yourself. Your feelings for her will recede in time.”
“I don’t give a damn about my feelings!” Theo snatched his decanter from the ground and downed the last of his brandy. He rolled the spirit about in his mouth, letting it burn his tongue. “Go to hell, all of you.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what her father did,” the earl continued, oblivious and useless as ever. “Now, you could give her some money. She’ll be set up better than before. What you’ve done is honorable.”
“Honorable?” Theo bitterly laughed and threw the decanter on a stone. The glass burst around him.
“Now control yourself!” his father barked at his wayward son.
“Honorable, you say?” Theo hiked a brow. “I wrote letters home to widows and fathers and mothers, telling them that their husbands and sons had died of dysentery for the honor of this country. I shot poor Russians boys who were no more than fifteen or sixteen. I didn’t even think, but pulled the trigger and watched them fall. And when I got home, I was supposed to be well. But I wasn’t, so you tried to hide me away for the sake of my family’s honor.”
“We were trying to help you.”
“I told her I would marry her! I made love to her. She could be carrying my child. Is what I did honorable? Do I deserve a Victoria Cross for it?”
Theo’s skin itched as though flies were crawling on him, crawling into his ears and on his white rotting lips—like the ones on the thousands of dead or dying Russian soldiers abandoned in Sevastopol. His blade crunched on the rock, and he felt the reverberation down his arm.
Memories shifted in his mind, broken from their time and tangling together. The rotting corpses of soldiers who died of dysentery, lying in the graves, still reeking of shit. The moonlight on her face the night he asked her to marry him. The eerie silent guns that blew the soldiers off their horses, falling silently back to the earth. The whimpers of her climax.
Theo raised his hoe and was about to let it fall with he saw the trickle of blood oozing from the ground. He swallowed down the searing bile rising up his throat and ripped away the dirt with his hoe, uncovering the white, bloated faces of dead Russian soldiers, their mouths opened, their bulging, glassy eyes staring at him.
Theo cried out. They couldn’t be real.
He felt someone grab at his weapon. Theo jerked back his elbow and slammed the man in the face. Then he turned and swung at the Russian with the butt of his gun.
“Good God, man,” the soldier cried, his arms crossed over his face. “Put down the hoe.”
One of our own, Theo thought and turned back to his work. Men moaned to be shot, their dying bodies twisted in the blood-soaked earth. Theo slammed the hoe down, and their blood splashed in his trousers. He tore into their flesh, trying to dig them away. They couldn’t be in Helena’s garden. With the blade high in the air, he was pushed from behind. Theo fell, his cheek slamming the ground.
He scraped the dirt with his fingernails. Where was his rifle? He felt the Russian soldier on his back.
Theo spun, ramming the man in the gut with his knee. The soldier grunted with the blow and then pressed harder against Theo, pinning him to the moist ground. Something long and wooden was held against Theo’s throat.
“Dammit, Theo. You’re not in Crimea. You’re here. At Castell Bach yr Anwylyd.”
The Welsh words broke through the buzz in Theo’s mind. His senses focused as cold awareness flooded in—the hoe across his throat, his spine flat on the moist and broken earth, Gordon’s scarred face staring down at him. A corona of sunlight glowed around the brim of the man’s hat. Beyond Gordon, the tangled tree branches were like lacework against the sky.
“Damn.” Theo closed his eyes. “Damn me.”
Gordon withdrew the hoe and edged away. Theo sat up, coming to his haunches. He stared at the ground, his back heaving.
His father gazed on, the deeply etched crescents under his eyes drooping low, his chest caved in. The powerful earl whose shadow had covered Theo his entire life appeared a broken, feeble man.
Theo couldn’t hide his shame any longer. For years, he had skirted near the edge of a frightening darkness, always bringing himself back when he had leaned too close to the precipice. He created lies to tell himself and others to conceal his mental lapses. But he couldn’t lie any longer.
Silent, Theo rose to his feet and walked to his home. He saw no point in talking. Gordon and his father had seen all they needed to understand. Much would happen in the next few hours—letters to be written to his bank and stockbroker, an asylum to be arranged. He had lost whatever battle he had fought up in these mountains. The peace which this land had afforded him was dishonestly gained. He couldn’t mentally delve further into what that meant, else he might lose his fragile control again. The only thoughts in his mind were of the pain in her pale eyes, those eyes that had arrested him from the first moments of their acquaintance, her words echoing over and over, Your body should be rotting deep in the dirt of Crimea
Twenty-One
Emily had squeezed Helena’s hands. “Please don’t make this decision now. For my sake. Just rest,” she had urged Helena before she hurried to see to Betry.
Now Helena, stripped down to her chemise and corset, lay on her side in bed, her knees drawn to her chest, but rest didn’t come. It couldn’t. Inside she was a storm of emotion—wrath, anger, hurt, sadness, love, and self-loathing. She could barely hold a thought long enough to examine it before pain crashed over her. And the horrible thing she told Theo, that she wished he had died in Crimea—words spoken merely to hurt—she could not take them back. She loathed herself all the more for uttering them.
Emily may have spoken of forgiveness, but Helena knew the extent of the damage was too far-reaching and deep. Helena would live with this hurt as she had done with her father’s death and its aftermath for the last six months. Maybe she would find a few moments of relief when she focused on some small task, like a new embroidery pattern or the sound of a lovely song, but then the memories would flood in again. Theo, the man she once thought could give her sanctuary from this pain, now embodied it. She couldn’t forgive, no more than she could grow a new heart and toss out the old one.
Jonathan’s letter waited beside her.
She shouldn’t go to Jonathan, but what choice did she have? If she stayed, her presence would force a wedge into this small family. She rubbed the letter, thinking of the price she would pay for allowing Jonathan to hide her. Tears welled up again at the idea of another man holding her.
“No more, no more,” she whispered.
She forced herself to sit up. She perched on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slumped. She wanted to be alone, yet not alone with her thoughts. Carefully, she eased one foot into its boot and then the other. She pulled her gown over her head and fastened the buttons she could easily reach. Glass shards still littered the floor; her father’s picture remained face down on the planks. She would clean it all up later.
She met Megan in the corridor outside the door. Megan was leaving the adjoining chamber, which was used to store old trunks and unused furniture. Infant gowns that had begun to yellow with age hung over her arm.
Megan kept her gaze directed at the floor and mumbled. “Mother wanted me to fetch Eustace’s and my baby frocks.”
“Megan, please understand…” Helena trailed off. Megan had headed down the stairs, refusing to listen. Helena drew a breath and followed her cousin to the kitchen.
∞∞∞
The heat radiating from the oven warmed Helena’s skin. A stockpot of water simmered on the range. Betry wore only stockings and a shift that was streaked with a pale pink bloodstain. She pressed one hand on the curve of her lower back and lumbered about on swollen feet. Her lips were pulled under her teeth, her brow creased in a perpetual wince.
Her bedchamber was a tiny
room off the side of the kitchen, big enough for a bed, chair, oaken trunk, and table. The door was ajar, and a lamp lit the room in rich orange and red tones. Mrs. Gordon stood at the foot of the bed, folding and then folding again a blanket over what looked like a leather apron covering the lower part of the mattress.
“I’m sorry, miss,” Betry cried when she spied Helena. “I’m terribly sorry. My infant coming on such a day.”
“It is nothing, Betry,” Helena tried to sound casual. “Nothing to be concerned about.” In fact, she was thankful something would salvage this day for Emily and Megan, and force her mind to think beyond her pain. “Allow me,” she said, taking Betry’s elbow.
“That is good, miss,” Mrs. Gordon said. “Keep her walking.”
So together they started to pace.
Helena had always been envious of Betry’s pregnancy. And now, in Helena's emotional confusion, that irrational jealously was even stronger. She wanted Theo’s baby to be growing inside her belly. She wanted someone she must love with all her strength and without condition. Never mind she might be making a home with another man and had no monetary means to raise this romanticized child.
“Ah, look, Betry.” Emily set down her work of cutting muslin into strips and took the clothes from Megan, who settled in the chair beside her mother. Emily held one of the creations by the shoulders. A dainty, embroidered gown with gathered sleeves and a scalloped edge, all adorned with Emily’s delicate embroidery. Faint yellow stains dotted the fabric. “There now, isn’t it lovely? I remember when you wore it, Megan.”
Emily leaned over and kissed her daughter on the top of her head. “So tiny you were. I was terrified to hold you those first days, afraid you might break in my arms. Oh, but you were a determined, fierce little thing.”
Helena remembered Officer Wilson’s detailed inventory of her home. She and her father had amassed so many useless, beautiful baubles, but she didn’t recall any childhood clothes or artifacts from her infancy. Her youth was a parade of different nannies pushing her around parks. How delightful to have something passed down to tie people and their memories together.
