What Happened at Midnight

by Courtney Milan

  “Sunset is quite late,” Sir Walter said.

  “I don’t believe in wasting good daylight. The sooner I can get my people away from your boundaries, the happier I think we shall all be.”

  “Indeed,” Sir Walter said. “And really—you are a good fellow. Better than I gave you credit for at first. My apologies.”

  “How could you know?” came the reply. “I might have been anyone. One can never be too careful these days. I must take myself off—I’ve still a good bit left to be done today.”

  John took a step away—so that Sir Walter stopped occluding him—and Mary got her first good look at him. He looked…tired. His hair was rumpled, and the ends of his cravat had come untucked. But when he met her eyes, they didn’t seem implacable, as they had yesterday. They’d softened. “Ladies,” he said, “I trust the morning finds you well?”

  Mary froze, unsure whether a response would be allowed. Whether she should look away from him. But even over this distance, even though she couldn’t really see the expression in his eyes, she felt caught up in the net of his gaze. She looked down swiftly.

  “Lady Patsworth?” Sir Walter asked. “Do speak.”

  “Tolerable,” the lady returned. “It is dreadfully hot, but the fashion pages are a comfort to me.”

  John nodded as if that response made sense. “And you, Miss Chartley?”

  Mary’s lungs burned. She focused her gaze on the teaspoon that she had not stolen, clenched in her fist.

  “Go ahead,” Sir Walter said, his eyes flat on her. “You may address him.”

  John didn’t flicker an eyelash at that. But his very lack of reaction gave him away.

  You need his permission to speak to me?

  She did. It was one of the first rules she’d learned. She wasn’t to communicate with anyone outside the household unless she had his explicit approval. For her safety, he said. Always for her safety. He would know who might use her badly. She’d been naked on top of John last night, but today, in the dim light of morning, with him seeing the poor, helpless thing that Sir Walter had made of her, she felt truly exposed. She couldn’t win. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t even draw breath to ask for help.

  And now John, of all people, knew.

  “As you can see,” Mary said to her teaspoon, “I am perfectly well. Sir Walter would never allow anything to happen to me.”

  Maybe, if she didn’t acknowledge the obvious, it wouldn’t exist.

  But John tipped his hat at Lady Patsworth. “I wish you all continued health,” he said. “Sir Walter. Lady Patsworth.”

  He didn’t say her name in farewell. But he caught her eye—just for a second—and he gifted her with a glimmer of a smile.

  Her heart came to a halt. For one moment, she felt like the naive, foolish girl she’d once been, giddy simply because a handsome man grinned at her. She felt the weight of all her worries lift, buoyed away temporarily by the curve of his lips.

  She hadn’t realized how much she’d come to dread everything about her life until she forgot to fear for one second. But then he turned away, and she was left to stare after him, blinking, uncertain of what had just transpired between them.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS TEN IN THE EVENING when John finally saw Mary’s slim figure separate itself from the back garden gate.

  From there, she picked her way across the meadow, toward the place where he waited in the shadow of the trees. The windbreak wasn’t a proper wood—just a section of steep, rocky soil that followed the slope of the hill, one that would have been almost impossible to cultivate.

  Maybe that’s why nobody had bothered to cut down the little coppice of oaks. It was a wild, stony stretch of land, not quite an acre in size. The trees were stunted by the soil; their lowest branches scarcely topped John’s head. The ground underneath his boots was rough with assorted pebbles and carpeted with a thick blanket of granny’s nightcap.

  Mary looked one way and then the other as she approached where he stood.

  “Mary,” he said softly as she came to the trees.

  Her eyes swiveled in his direction; she frowned until she made him out.

  “Is this going to cause trouble if Sir Walter discovers your absence?”

  She paused. Too long, as if she’d heard the question he hadn’t asked.

  “He doesn’t look in on me at night,” she said. “He’s too busy watching his wife.”

  There was something ugly there. He’d seen it the first day, even if he hadn’t untangled it. Even when all looked well on the surface, something about Sir Walter simply smelled wrong. But she held her head high and met his gaze, challenging him to ask for particulars.

  “Come,” he said, holding out his arm. “Walk with me.”

  She balked.

  “We mustn’t be seen from the house. Or anywhere else.”

  “We’ll walk amongst the trees,” he said. “It’s not a lot of space, but we could stroll back and forth.”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t take his arm. But when he took a tentative step, she matched his pace.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Ask your questions. I suppose you deserve answers, if nothing else.”

  He wanted answers. He didn’t think he was going to get them, though. Even if she’d wanted to explain everything, he could see the slight tremor in her shoulders. He could hear the uneasiness in her voice. Last night, he’d asked and she’d choked, unable to even get the words out.

  There were, as he saw it, two possibilities. First, she’d been badly hurt—so badly that she could scarcely bring herself to speak about it. Second, she was lying to him with such brazen deceit that he could trust nothing out of her mouth. In either case, interrogation would get him nothing useful.

  “The money is gone,” he said slowly. “Spent.”

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps it was not so. Perhaps she lied still. But if she did, he was willing to bet that she lied out of fear, not greed. If he wanted the truth, more threats would only heighten her fear.

  He shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “Then I don’t see the point of asking any further questions.”

  He’d get his answers by a more indirect route.

  A slice of moonlight drifted through the tree limbs, touching her lips with silver. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Opened it again, then shut it once more. “Then why did you insist on seeing me tonight?”

  “Today, when I came by, Sir Walter said something that made me think.”

  “Oh?” Her tone was flat.

  “It made me think,” he said, “that you might be in need of a friend.”

  “A friend,” she repeated.

  “Yes, a friend. You had a good number of them once—you were always with the other young ladies, talking and laughing.”

  She turned away and strode deeper into the windbreak. “Friends gossip and swap stories,” she tossed over her shoulder. “They don’t claim friendship just to get the other person to answer questions. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we not pretend.”

  He felt a stab of guilt at that, but pressed on.

  “We were friends once.”

  “We were betrothed.”

  “We were friends,” he snapped. “We talked of music and books and—” And a future that some part of him still wished they had together. “—And my ambitions,” he finished lamely. “Do you want me to beg? I’ve missed you.”

  He had only thought to put her at ease, but those words came too easily to be entirely false. “I missed you,” he repeated, “and of all the things that most enraged me about your departure, that was the worst—all those moments when I made a note of something I had to tell you, only to remember seconds later that I couldn’t any longer.”

  She looked up at him. “Oh, John,” she said, her voice weary. “I am sorry.”

  Maybe she didn’t mean it. Maybe she was just trying to put him off. But no matter how he tried, he wanted to believe she’d meant those three simple words. Her apology
caught at his heart.

  Stupid, bloody heart.

  This wasn’t about his feelings. It was about the truth—about convincing her to trust him with the full story. So that if her father had taken everything and abandoned her, John would know where to find his nephew’s money. This was about nothing more than that—letting her feel safe enough to finally tell him everything.

  “So pretend,” he said, more gently than he felt, “that I’m one of your old girlfriends. What would we talk about? Novels? Horses?”

  “In Vienna,” Mary said, “I would have complained about my piano master. He was a harsh, impossible man. I never could please him; he was constantly heaping abuse on my head. Obviously, that’s not a possibility now.”

  He glanced over at her. “I thought you were happy in Vienna.”

  “I was. It wasn’t…it wasn’t that kind of abuse, if you catch my meaning. His regular lamentations were more along the lines of ‘Why did God see fit to give you perfect phrasing and yet not give you the will to practice regularly?’ He accepted no excuses, tolerated no errors.”

  “He sounds difficult.” He sounded like John’s own father.

  “Yes and no. He was furious when I—” Her gaze slid to him and then returned to center. “When I told him I wasn’t coming back,” she finished.

  Because she’d been caught up in her father’s schemes?

  The answer came a beat later. No. Because she’d agreed to marry him. He turned and looked at her. Her body was tense, her steps taken gingerly. He’d heard her play before. He knew precisely how good she was. But he’d never asked himself what it would mean for her to marry a farmer from Southampton. She’d tasted greatness…and she’d chosen him instead.

  More lies, or something else?

  I don’t love you.

  He didn’t understand anything. He swallowed and looked away. “And in Southampton? What did you talk of with your friends there?”

  She snorted. “You. Much of the time.”

  “Me?” The night was warm, the air thick around them. He took a deep breath. “You didn’t really.”

  “Oh, but we did. Even before I met you that first time, I’d heard all about you.”

  “Yes.” He looked away. “I suppose. I was rather different from the other fellows. I know that. I was shy around the ladies, and I always had my head in some project or other. Also, my nose isn’t straight—”

  “We didn’t talk about any of that,” Mary said, and for the first time since he’d encountered her, a note of humor crept into her voice. “Good heavens, John. Are you blushing?”

  “No. Trick of the moonlight.” He scrubbed his heated cheeks. “What…uh, what else might there be to talk about?”

  “How you saved Mr. Iver’s mare when she was foaling twins. Your proposal to improve the roads at the edge of the city using sawdust and india rubber. The way you kept badgering all the other farmers to send off for a soil analysis.”

  “Was that too annoying?”

  “The consensus was that you were quite the catch. All the young ladies agreed that in twenty years, you’d be running everything.”

  Impossible. They’d all giggled at him.

  “Are you sure you didn’t spend all your time talking about how I set the grain silo on fire?”

  “Oh, yes. I heard about that all the time.”

  “Good. I’d hate to think that everyone represented me as some kind of—”

  She actually let out a little laugh. “That’s not why we talked about it. Do you happen to recall that while you were working on the firebreak, you removed your shirt?”

  “Gah.” He set his hand against a tree. “I’ll never be able to look any of them in the eye again.”

  “You look well enough without a shirt.” She shook her head. “How odd, that you would see yourself like that. Is that what you think? That you’re a little shy with the ladies?”

  “Mary, when I first met you, I walked up to you at the end of a brilliant performance and browbeat you about your selection of music.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” she said.

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I just thought that…”

  “That what?”

  “That I didn’t want to let you disappear,” he whispered. “Not without saying something. Anything.” The night took in his words, swallowed them up. Crickets called to one another; an owl hooted softly.

  “We’ve come a long road since then,” she whispered.

  We.

  There hadn’t been a we in months. He wasn’t sure there could be again.

  “You were right.” She swallowed. “I…I do need a friend. Someone to talk to about just this—about people we once knew in common, about things that don’t exist for any reason except to lighten my heart. It has been so long.”

  He should have felt triumphant at that.

  “Please,” she said, “please, don’t tell me that this is friendship if all you want is to hear my answers. I can bear a great many things, but not that. Don’t treat me like a real person if you don’t really believe it.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her the truth.

  And then he thought of his nephew, of the thousands of pounds that had gone missing. He thought of that moment when she’d handed back his ring and said she didn’t love him. He thought of the laugh in her voice just moments before. He didn’t know what the truth was. He only knew what he wished it could be.

  “God’s honest truth,” he told her. “I missed you. The money was just an excuse to find you.”

  And maybe that would be the truth—that he’d loved her and hurt when she left. That he could put aside his hurt and they might take up matters where they’d left off. Maybe it could be the truth.

  In all likelihood, it couldn’t.

  “I must get back soon.” But she didn’t move away from him.

  “Will I see you again here tomorrow?”

  “For…for friendship?”

  He nodded. Not quite the truth. Not quite a lie. She’d hurt him, and he couldn’t let himself forget it, no matter what she smelled like. He couldn’t forget the role she’d played in her father’s scheme—whatever that had been. But she smiled, and when she did, some tense, hard center deep inside his soul seemed to ease.

  “Then yes,” she said. “I’d like that. Good-bye, then, for now.” She turned to go. But she took only a few steps before she turned around and paced back to him, stopping square in front of him. She lifted her hand to his face, touching his nose ever so lightly. Her fingers brushed his cheek, his lips, as if she were committing the feel of him to memory. He stood in place, not daring to move.

  Her touch made full-truth of his half-lies. It made him want to gather her up and pull her close, to forget what she’d done and forgive what she had said. His skin sang with her nearness.

  She smiled, a little sadly. “I missed you, too,” she whispered.

  And then she turned and fled.

  MARY’S BREAKFASTS OVER THE NEXT MORNINGS became an increasingly strange affair.

  The experience put her in mind of a book she’d read as a small child—her very favorite book, one that her nurse had read to her twice daily until Mary had been able to recite it alongside her. She’d loved that book so much. But when she read it again at fifteen, she’d been utterly unable to understand the fascination that it had held. The words were still the same; it was she who had altered beyond recognition.

  The breakfasts did not change, either, but Mary felt herself shifting, day by day, evening meeting by evening meeting. Sir Walter always read his paper; his wife always perused the fashion page. Tea, crumpets, and preserves were present at all times alongside the rotating fare of kippers and liver. And yet, somehow, over the course of the week, the tableau altered.

  Sir Walter seemed smaller. His wife’s discussion of fashion stopped irritating her. The world became less stark, more forgiving.

  When Mary was eight, she’d attempted one of her father’s books of poetry—
dry, dull, inexplicable stuff, she had thought. But at nineteen, the words had captivated her.

  That was the difference having a friend made. It didn’t change any of the underlying facts. Sir Walter was still a monster. He still held her salary; his wife still retreated into fashion. But Mary no longer dreaded waking on the mornings and that made everything better.

  Today, a few scudding clouds overhead saved her from having to move the screen. Today, she noticed that the roses in the garden, almost past the prime of their bloom, still imparted a faint fragrance to the air. Today she could bear the endless monotony of Lady Patsworth’s lengthy commentary…

  “An overskirt of black lace,” she was saying. “And underneath, pink satin. Black and pink.” She frowned. “That seems an unusual combination of color. But appealing, don’t you think?”

  “It sounds a lovely mix of feminine and strong,” Mary agreed.

  “What!?”

  That shriek of outrage hadn’t come from Lady Patsworth. It had come from Sir Walter, who was slamming the paper down in a fury.

  Lady Patsworth froze, her eyes wide with terror.

  “Not black and pink,” she said hastily. “If it’s so objectionable. Surely I meant—”

  “Is nothing sacred anymore?” Sir Walter ripped his section of newsprint in half and then reached across the table and yanked his wife’s section from her hands. He tore that in two as well.

  “—I meant pink and white,” she was saying. “Feminine and virtuous, not feminine and strong. If that will make it better. Please. Don’t.”

  Sir Walter stared wildly at her and then looked about him. His fists were full of paper; a maid had rushed from the house at his tirade. She drew up a few feet distant, as if unsure how to proceed.

  He took a deep breath and made a ball of the shreds. “That’s it,” he announced crisply. “We are done with the paper in the mornings. I am canceling the subscription this very afternoon.”