Fall from Trace

by Rebecca Connolly

  Stanton hesitated, which was unlike him, and it drew Poppy’s attention with more interest.

  “Stanton?”

  He made a face but met her look frankly. “Rumors, Miss Edgewood.”

  Poppy’s brows shot up. “Rumors? About what?”

  “About whom, you mean.”

  Her body stilled, and she swallowed the bite of porridge she’d taken. “About whom, then.”

  “You, naturally,” he said with a nod. “And your Mr. Turner.”

  “My who?” Poppy asked, her head feeling as though it were in a fog and everything seemed to tingle within and without. Then it cleared just enough for her mind to process the words properly and understanding dawned. “Oh… Alex.”

  Stanton nodded again. “I’ve just seen Mrs. Brown, who came to fetch the basket she packed for you and Trace yesterday, and she told me it’s all over the village. Mrs. Blaine, no doubt, had something to do with the information, as her spies have had far too much interest in our fields and workers of late.”

  “What are they saying?” Poppy whispered, glancing out of the window as though she could see a village spy there.

  Stanton growled a sigh, which was never a good sign, and tugged at his collar, though there was no cravat there to irritate him.

  “That he is not your cousin, but your lover. That he is living here with you out of wedlock and engaging in all manner of sin, while he continues to work the farm at his leisure. That the men who had been here helping with the harvest that have now departed might also have been…” He trailed off, hesitating.

  “Have been what?” Poppy demanded, gripping her spoon so tightly it cut into her skin. “More lovers?”

  “Possibly,” Stanton admitted. “Though that seems to be rather farfetched for everyone to take in. But these rumors are bringing on more rumors and more rumors… Mrs. Brown says it’s rather reminding her of what things were like nearly five years ago for you, and most of that speculation is being brought up again.”

  Poppy gasped in disbelief, letting her eyes fall closed.

  These were people who knew her, worked with her, worked for her, and saw her regularly. They smiled at her, greeted her, gave her reduced prices on their wares, asked her about her farm and her day… They danced with her only days ago at the assembly rooms, praising her with warmth and goodness, making her smile and laugh.

  And to be brought back to this.

  To be reminded that none of them knew her, liked her, or cared about her. That she was still a fixture for gossip and would always be the fallen daughter of one of their most respected men, though he had chosen to remove himself from them. Because of her.

  An outcast.

  A subject more than a person, and hardly one worth investigating properly. Why bother with anything beyond speculation? The truth would either be less exciting or more scandalous, and neither of those options could be borne.

  “Did they see anything yesterday?” she whispered weakly. “Did she say?”

  “She didn’t say specifically,” Stanton told her, shaking his head slowly. “But you know Mrs. Brown. She isn’t likely to say much that’s unfavorable of anybody.”

  Poppy turned in her chair to stare at Stanton for a moment. “But?” she prodded gently.

  His expression didn’t change. “But what?”

  “I sensed a ‘but’.” She waved a hand for him to go on, though he was clearly reluctant to do so.

  Stanton frowned a little, then exhaled heavily.

  “She did mention that a person claimed to have seen you swimming with someone in the pond at one time, though it was not specified as to when.”

  Poppy cursed and dropped her head to the table, covering her head with her arms.

  “No,” she moaned, gripping at her hair. “Must they take everything from me?”

  “It will pass, madam,” Stanton assured her. “It will.”

  She lifted her head to look at him in disbelief.

  “It will pass? Like it has passed already? Like the manner in which my reputation has passed into memory? It will pass, just as everything else has passed, and they will move on to someone else, or something else?”

  “I…”

  “There is nothing else!” she cried, her hands fisting. “There has never been anything else. They will always talk about me in some way or another.” She exhaled slowly, looked down at her porridge, and straightened in her chair, extending her fingers to their fullest ability. “Right. That’s enough getting excited over it.”

  Stanton made a noncommittal sound, but she didn’t look at him.

  “We’ll weather this.” Poppy nodded slowly to herself, her mind whirling. “It might not pass, but there is no saying that we can’t bear it. We’ll just move on from it and keep our heads high. And be a little more discreet in things, knowing now that the entire neighborhood is apparently watching everything that goes on here.”

  “Apparently, Miss Edgewood.”

  Now she looked at him, eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t they have farms? Or livelihoods? Anything else that requires their attention besides my farm and my life?”

  “You would think so, and yet…”

  “Right.” Poppy pushed aside her porridge and rose, clearing her throat. “We are not telling Alex any of this.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It would destroy him,” Poppy said firmly, eyeing her large friend with utter severity.

  He frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that? I know Trace perfectly well enough to know not to tell him something like this when he is in this state.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how deep that vein of loyalty lies within you lot.” Poppy pushed away from the table and started pacing. “What if he asks you about it? What if he wants to know what we were talking about for so long in here? Surely, he knows you’ve come in, as you are not out there with him.”

  “I’d lie to him,” Stanton said simply. “Easily and freely.”

  Poppy snorted once. “Lies? Really?”

  He shrugged without concern. “I am a spy, as is he.”

  “Then your loyalty cannot be so very great.”

  Stanton tilted his head, eyes suddenly hard.

  “Were you a man, I would call you out for that.”

  Poppy folded her arms and stared at Stanton.

  “I meant no offense, and you know it. But how can you be loyal to someone you lie to?”

  “Some lies protect us, or others,” he replied, returning more to his natural self. “In this case, it would be in his best interest to have a lie rather than truth. He’s a protective man, and there is no telling what he might do in the state he is in if he knew the truth. So, I will lie, because I am loyal to him, and to you.”

  The fierceness in his words made her smile, and softened her heart, though she hadn’t known it to be particularly hard.

  “I’ll accept that, thank you.”

  Stanton nodded and pushed away from the door, moved to the fire, and turned a log within it.

  “We’ll have to come up with something to tell him, of course, and inform Rogue and Weaver, should they hear of it.”

  “Perhaps he should sleep in the barn for a time, as you do,” Poppy suggested, picking at the skirt of her faded calico. “It would not be such a scandal if he did.”

  “True, but what would we tell him?”

  Poppy ground her teeth together and groaned, hating convention, her situation, and the fact that she no more wanted Alex to go to the barn than she wanted him to go anywhere else.

  She wanted him here.

  With her.

  Suddenly, the door of the cottage burst open, and Alex himself stormed in, looking furious and somehow panicked.

  “Alex?” Poppy asked, worried by the expression he bore.

  He gave her a dark look. “What is this I hear about rumors?”

  How could he have been so blind and so foolish? He should have known that he couldn’t behave as he had been and have things go unnoticed. He
should never have let himself open up and revert back to the habits of his former years when he and Poppy had been free.

  When he’d had something to offer.

  When there were no shadows.

  Now, he’d ruined everything by staying as long as he had. He should have gone on, taken up residence in the boarding house or at Branbury, or even the barn. Any of those places would have done while he recovered, and he still could have helped Poppy with the harvest and repairs and all else as he had been doing.

  He couldn’t stay anymore, and he couldn’t help anymore. He needed to leave and keep his distance for her sake, and undoubtedly for his, as well. He’d begun to hope again, and he’d learned long ago that he could not afford to hope.

  Stanton had attempted to lie to him about the rumors, but even if he’d managed to do so convincingly, Alex had heard everything he needed to from John Barry just now. Poppy had said nothing during the exchange while Stanton tried to explain the rumors in more detail, but the slight creases in her brow told him she was not unmoved by them either.

  That alone would have convinced him to leave, but his honor and his guilt were also in the mix, and they reigned supreme. There was nothing to pack but the sparse items he’d come in, which would have been better served as kindling for a fire than clothing for a man.

  Rather like him.

  He looked around the small room he’d come to know as his own, and the only one he’d known in four and a half years. He grunted as a bit of emotion began to rise within him.

  That was quite enough of that. This wasn’t his home, and it never would be. He turned on his heel and strode for the door, heading into the kitchen.

  Where Poppy waited.

  He barely looked at her as he moved into the room, noticeably dimmer than before, thanks to the cloud cover of the day. It would rain later, but for now it was only gloomy and sullen, as it ought to have been at the moment.

  Cheshire’s beauties were somehow enhanced on such days.

  He’d forgotten that.

  Alex glanced at Poppy briefly where she sat at the table, watching him, but there was nothing more to be said. After Stanton had related the truth of the rumors, Alex had said he had to leave, and left the room.

  Poppy had said nothing then, and she said nothing now.

  All the better.

  He nodded in her direction and moved to the door, his hand gripping the handle tightly.

  “Why?” Poppy said softly.

  Her voice caught him somewhere in the middle of his chest, even as it made his stomach drop.

  “You know why,” he murmured.

  “I need to hear you say it,” she ground out, the words catching in a way that pained him as much as it must have her.

  Alex sighed and slowly released the handle, keeping his face to the door.

  “Because you are a young woman living alone.”

  She scoffed loudly. “Not that young.”

  He ignored the outburst.

  “And I am a wreck of a man who refuses to ruin your reputation,” he continued in the same tone. “By staying here a moment longer, I risk that.”

  “My reputation?” Poppy repeated, her tone suddenly shrill, her chair scraping against the floor. “My reputation, Alex?”

  He turned in surprise, wishing he didn’t have to look at her. It would only make leaving all the more painful.

  Poppy stood by the table, her frame shaking, her eyes red rimmed, but strangely absent of tears.

  “Shall I tell you what has become of my reputation?”

  As if to completely contrast Poppy’s visible tremor, Alex stilled so completely he wondered if he was breathing at all. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t do more than blink as dread began to fill every inch of him.

  “Do you think,” Poppy began in a tight voice, “that I live in this cottage and on this farm because I desired it? That I decided to give up Society and all I was brought up to love and appreciate on a whim? All of this, my financial difficulty, my having to work the land, my complete lack of family and servants and friends is due to one thing and one thing only. You.”

  A faint pant of air rushed past his lips, and he felt as though he ought to lean against the door for balance, though he didn’t dare move one inch. How was he to blame? It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be possible. He’d been gone for so long, and there wasn’t anything that could have…

  “When I was told that you were dead,” Poppy went on, her eyes cold on him, “my world came crumbling down around my ears. I was inconsolable for days, and perfectly numb afterwards. My parents gave me the solitude I required, as they knew about our attachment, but they never fully grasped the severity of it. My sisters told me I was being silly and ridiculous, and begged me to think of how it would look, but I didn’t care how it looked. I cared about how it felt.”

  Her jaw trembled, and she clenched down hard, her face tensing, and the faintest sheen of tears began to form.

  “I wore black,” she whispered shakily. “I insisted upon properly mourning you. I couldn’t believe that you were dead, and I refused to believe it, but I had to mourn you all the same.”

  Oh Lord, but that would have brought comment… Her parents would have hated the attention it would have drawn, and it would have given them cause to hate him more.

  Poppy smirked then, though he doubted it was at him.

  “My parents were furious, and my siblings appalled. I put myself into mourning with all the restrictions and sacrifices that brought. I refused social engagements and callers, ate in my room whenever I was permitted, and spent my time going for long walks, often to Parkerton or our bench.”

  It was all Alex could do not to stiffen at the mention of her doing such things. The League and other offices had sent men to tear the house apart and find whatever they could to aid in their investigations and in avenging him. She could have seen them at any time, and who knows what might have occurred if that had happened. Their bench had held all of the answers that those very men had been searching for, not that Poppy should have known any of it. He’d made that blasted thing on a whim, as a desperate attempt to combine his need for seeing Poppy as often as possible with the need to have a place of safety for his notes and reports that he could visit without suspicion.

  The flower he’d carved on it had been the only sentimental thing about the bench at all, really.

  Practicality, not sentimentality.

  “I even slept on the bench one night,” Poppy murmured. “Thinking of you, wondering if I really was being as foolish as everybody said.”

  Alex swallowed hard, wishing he had some strength to speak.

  She cleared her throat and tossed her hair a little.

  “The village, as you might imagine, began to talk, as did my friends. Why was I going to such extremes for a man to whom I was not bound? It was clear to them that I had somehow behaved shamefully, and the rumors began to swirl and take root. Some said we had gone off to Gretna, and I was actually your wife. Some thought I might have forgotten myself and was carrying your child.”

  With a faint hiss, Alex closed his eyes and looked away, revulsion becoming a roaring tide within him. Not at the thought of marrying her, or the thought of a child between them, but at the damage such rumors could inflict on a girl and her family. At the injustice of such behavior towards a woman who was only disappointed by the loss of someone she cared for.

  “Everybody had been expecting an engagement between us,” Poppy said faintly. “Everyone. It didn’t come, and they talked. Then, they saw me mourning, and they talked. All they have ever done is talk and talk and talk. My reputation, as you called it, has been nothing but ruins and tatters since that day the men came to tell me you were dead. My family began to wonder at the rumors themselves. My sisters watched my stomach, waiting for my waistline to expand, giving me sidelong looks of disapproval they didn’t bother to hide.”

  Alex tried to say her name, tried to comfort her in some way for the pains sh
e had suffered at his expense, but there was no sound.

  She sighed and moved to the window, which was closer to him than she had been, and he felt the change in distance with a sweet agony.

  “They told me I had to give you up and stop the nonsense. I refused.” She smiled a small, tight smile. “Henceforth, I was no longer a member of the family. The rumors had become too much, and they refused to be dragged down with me. My father kindly loaned me enough upfront to purchase the cottage and farm, and I have repaid him already, but there was to be nothing else. I’m not even sure I will inherit anything on his death.”

  It was worse than he could have imagined, and he had imagined a good deal since being back around her. Her situation had worried him, haunted him in a way, and there had been no opportunity for him to properly inquire about it. And there had been some consolation in not knowing. He had his secrets, she had hers.

  Now she had no secrets, and he had too many, though whose had been more painful was unclear.

  Poppy turned to look at Alex again, tears now evident.

  “I have no reputation to speak of, Alex. None. Our night at the dance was the first night I have been out socially in months because it’s too painful and embarrassing to do so. My reputation has been ruined for almost five years because I refused to pretend that I felt nothing for you. That you meant nothing to me. Everything I knew is gone because of you. And I hated you for it.”

  Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and Alex reached out to gently wipe them away, cupping her cheek as his heart seemed to shatter within him. He knew better than to believe she hated him now with the intensity she once did, but even that could not have matched the hatred he felt for himself, especially at this moment.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  She didn’t bother hiding her tears or fighting them now. She let them fall onto his hand, covering it with her own.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered. “I don’t blame you for any of this.”

  “How can you not?” he asked. “I ruined your life, and then came back into it and ruined it again.”

  “I never minded having you here,” Poppy insisted, pressing her hand against his. She swallowed hard and shook her head. “Because having you back made everything else worth it.”