Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

  She had breakfast with her husband. He didn’t speak to her. She told him she might spend some time in the garden today. He shrugged, and said nothing about the clouds and the weak sunlight and the cold wind.

  He went upstairs, as he always did after breakfast, with the post. She went to her own bedroom. There was no way she could pack a trunk and take it fully laden downstairs. He might emerge at any moment and see her. She opened her wardrobe and chose the small, leather trunk she had brought with her. The large one would have to stay here. She pulled the sheets from her bed and wrapped them around the trunk. Her heart was beating so fast it made her feel mildly nauseated. She swallowed hard and went to the door. Crept along the corridor. If he caught her, she would simply say she was taking sheets to Mrs. Rivard to wash. But he didn’t emerge. She sneaked through the kitchen door and out into the garden, made it to the garden shed, left the trunk there, then returned to the house.

  Mrs. Rivard caught her at the kitchen door with the ball of sheets in her arms.

  She tried not to show she was startled. “Oh, there you are, Mrs. Rivard,” Tilly said. “I’ve been looking for you to give you these.” She dumped the sheets at the servant’s feet. “May I have fresh sheets, please?”

  Mrs. Rivard narrowed her eyes, looked at the ball of sheets at her feet. “Mr. Dellafore doesn’t pay me enough to wash sheets.”

  “Then I’ll do it. And in the meantime, I’ll get my own fresh ones from the linen cupboard.” Tilly turned on her heel, pulse thudding. Mrs. Rivard said nothing.

  The next things to smuggle out were her clothes. This she achieved by undressing, putting on all her chemises at once, then a housedress over the top. In the garden shed, she peeled it all off, folding and packing the underwear by the dim light through the grimy window and cracks in the wood. Her body remained on high alert; she jumped at the slightest sound. Her dresses next. Back and forth between bedroom and garden, wearing a different dress under her housedress each time. She tried to walk confidently, not to tiptoe and draw attention to the fact she was doing something surreptitious.

  Jasper emerged on one of her trips, frowning at her disapprovingly. This time, she was wearing two corsets under her clothes, both loosely fastened. She crossed her arms over her ribs so he wouldn’t see her odd shape. “You are moving around a lot today. I thought you were going to the garden.”

  “It’s quite cold out there,” she said. “I’ve been up and back to get my scarf and gloves.”

  “I’m trying to concentrate. Can you perhaps not do it with the feet of an elephant?”

  “I apologize.”

  His door slammed behind him. She breathed again.

  Next, the few other possessions she had left. Hairbrush and hand mirror, her writing box. In small light loads she smuggled them out to the garden shed, hidden in clothes or in a folded coat. Now her trunk was full to overflowing. It only remained to slide the cigar box out of its hiding place and push it down on top of the clothes, close and lock the trunk. She hid it under a low shelf, then placed empty pots all around it so it couldn’t be seen.

  Tilly went out to the garden and took one last walk around it. She would never see these roses bloom, she would never live in that fantasy of love and children she had imagined.

  I am not afraid. She found that being angry made her less afraid, so she cultivated it. How dare Jasper treat her so cruelly? How dare Godfrey make it clear she wasn’t welcome? How dare Grandpa arrange such an idiotic marriage for her? There, that was better. The hollow fright turned to hard determination.

  Perhaps her temper could be an asset after all.

  •

  Tilly descended the stairs for dinner, knowing she was leaving the bedroom behind her for the last time. Good. It had become like a prison. Every step she took, every movement she made, was laden with solemn purpose. Her shoulders felt heavy. She could hear her own blood and breath in her skull.

  “Good evening, Jasper,” she said to him.

  To her astonishment, he smiled. “Good evening, Tilly.”

  Mrs. Rivard moved about, laying their food in front of them. Tilly had no appetite for the muddy-looking fish on her plate. She poked it with her fork, every ounce of her energy bent on seeming as normal as possible. Just because he was being nice to her didn’t mean she should forgive him.

  “That is all, Mrs. Rivard,” he said.

  This was new. Tilly’s heart hammered. Things weren’t meant to be different tonight. They were meant to be the same as always.

  Hold your nerve, hold your nerve.

  “How did you enjoy your gardening today?” he asked as he buttered his bread.

  “I . . . ah.” She cleared her throat, reached for water. Admonished herself for appearing anything but natural and smoothly spoken. “I very much enjoy time in the outdoors.”

  “You’d best be careful with your complexion,” he said, and it was kind concern. It wasn’t a cruel poke.

  Deep down, something stirred. She wanted very much for this to be a new Jasper; or a renewed Jasper. He was speaking to her as he had spoken to her at the start. She tried to recollect the last few weeks of poor treatment to stop that stirring. But had she overreacted? She had always been too quick to anger. She was so busy adding up his sins in her head that she missed his next question.

  “I’m sorry?” she said, then forced a smile. “I was away with the fairies.”

  “I said that all the rest has clearly done you a world of good.”

  And she reminded herself: at the start, he had treated her kindly because he wanted something from her. If he was being kind to her now, he wanted something. There could be no more self-doubt. The man sitting across from her was a charmer, a liar, an adulterer. Tilly Kirkland would not be taken in by him. She made her guts steely, but her voice smooth.

  “I believe you are right. I feel quite differently now about many things. I am sorry if I troubled you.”

  It was his turn now to look nervous. How had she not noticed his darting eyes when she sat down? Perhaps because she had been too busy protecting her own anxiety. She wondered what it was he was going to ask her to do. If he asked for dresses to sell, she would be exposed. There were only a few drab ones left in the back of her wardrobe.

  But he asked for nothing. He continued to make small talk as if the last days of stony silence had never happened. They would visit the Morningtons soon, he said. Money was coming in the next few weeks and she could help him choose new furniture for some of the empty rooms. She nodded and smiled and laughed where she should, aware that they were both playing a game. Only she hoped he didn’t know that she was playing too.

  Dinner finished, he pushed back his chair. “Well,” he said. “Good night.” And he came around the corner of the table and he kissed her, full on the lips. She remembered the first time he had kissed her: how her body had responded with warm spreading sensations and giddy delight. But now, she no more wanted to be kissed by him than kissed by the undercooked fish on her plate. It was all she could do not to shudder. Instead, she infused her lips with warmth and, when he stood back, gave him her brightest smile.

  “Good night, Jasper,” she said and left the room.

  Behind her, she heard him go into the parlor and shut the door. This was it, one foot in front of the other, straight down the corridor and to the front door. She had the handle in her hand. She had the door open.

  “Tilly? What are you doing?” His voice was sharp.

  She turned. He was advancing slowly down the hall, his face a mask of suspicion and disdain. He had a glass of brandy in his hand. Heat spread through her chest. “I . . . I’m . . .”

  But he was shaking his head. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You are not leaving. You cannot leave me.”

  “I am going for a little walk.”

  “No, you are going upstairs to bed and I am going to bring you an evening brandy and you are going to sleep.”

  Her skin crawled. Why was he bringing her brandy? It had been over a week since he had d
one that. She remembered their conversation about ridding themselves of her. “I am not tired. There will be few evenings left in the year that are—”

  “Do you think me a fool?” he roared. He was nearly on top of her, reaching across her to bar her way. “You cannot simply leave your husband. We are married. You are mine.”

  “No, sir. I am my own.” She inched away from him, back into the house. Her eye caught on a coat hung along the wall. Her coat. Her sable-trimmed coat. She snatched it down, held it in front of her. “You see? The coat. You lied. You said I had imagined seeing it, yet here it is. Not sold. Your lover left it here last night, didn’t she? Did you think the storm outside drowned out the sounds of your adultery? It did not. I heard it all. And I will not stay where I am treated so monstrously.”

  “Come with me,” he said, grabbing her arm with his free hand.

  She twisted away from him, shaking him off roughly. The brandy spilled all over the coat. Jasper lunged and picked her up wriggling and shouting, and bodily carried her to the parlor. He threw her down on the sofa. She hit her head on the hard endboard and cried out.

  “Weakling,” he laughed.

  “You cannot treat me this way.”

  “You will do as you’re told,” he said, looming over her. “Your grandfather made me certain promises . . .”

  “My grandfather had no idea what kind of marriage he had made for me. I assure you if he were alive, he would break every promise he made.” She balled the coat in front of her defensively. “You care nothing for me, so let me go.”

  “No. If I let you go I have to pay Godfrey back the money. I have enough debts.”

  His confirmation of her true worth to him, his lack of love now or in the past only made her more determined. “Is that so? Then perhaps you had best stop spending money on your lover. How long would I have to stay? I will not stay a day.” She stood, he pushed her down, pinned her down. She struggled against him, brought up her foot and kicked him as hard as she could between his legs.

  He went over, pulling the brandy-soaked coat with him, knocking over the lantern.

  At once the coat was ablaze. Jasper screamed and threw it away from him. It landed on one of the piles of old documents he had stacked on the floor. Tilly was closest to the door and she ran. The flames had already caught on the rug where the lamp oil had spilled. She pulled the door closed behind her, saw a dining room chair, and seized it to bar the door, the way he had barred her door so often.

  Then Tilly ran. Ran for her life. She took her flight down the west side of the house, knowing he would climb out the parlor window on the east. Into the garden shed, slamming the door, locking it, and clutching the key in a sweating palm.

  Then hunching down in the dark, heart thundering. She crawled across the dirt floor to a crack in the wood and peered through, too fearful to put her face at the window, watching for Jasper. He would go after her in the woods, she knew. Any second she would see his dark figure running down the front path.

  But that was not what she saw. Instead she saw orange-bright flame against the dark night sky. Thick smoke. The house was going up. Fire surged out of the windows on the lower floor. Oh, God, she had burned their house down. Whooshing, thundering fire. Now smoke was pouring out of the second-floor windows. She watched in horror, thinking of all the books in the library. Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. All burning to ashes in their tidy rows. The smoke stung her eyes. The house was two hundred feet away, but the blustering wind blew the smoke and embers away from her. Tilly was frozen in that position; her stinging eye against the crack between the boards. Watching for Jasper, not seeing him. The sound of vast flames echoed in her ears, crunching boards and beams collapsing. Where was Jasper? Why hadn’t he run?

  And then the light of realization flickered to life. The coat. It hadn’t been left there the night before. Chantelle had worn it to their home tonight. When Jasper was charming Tilly in the living room, his eyes shifting nervously, it wasn’t so that she would drink a poisoned brandy. It was so she wouldn’t realize Chantelle was already in the house. So Jasper hadn’t gone into the woods to find Tilly because he had gone upstairs to rescue Chantelle.

  And neither of them had come out.

  TEN

  A New Woman

  Tilly did not sleep in the musty garden shed. She watched until the fire burned itself out. Nobody came. They were far enough from town that nobody would have seen the flames. Tilly hadn’t run down to report it because what was she to say? That she had barred her husband inside with a fire and left him to burn to death? That she had unwittingly caused the deaths of two people? By the time help came, it would be too late: it had already been too late by the time she realized Chantelle was in there with him.

  Why had she locked him in? Why? If only . . .

  Instead, she had curled herself into a ball on the dirt floor and rocked herself slowly from side to side. The guilt that flooded her stomach was immense: an ocean. She feared that it would inhabit her for the rest of her days. Here was proof of what Grandpa had always said to her, that her temper was a thing to be controlled and regretted. Look what her anger had done. It had burned them to death. Her imagination conjured the morbid details of flames and fear and shrieks. No matter how much she had come to despise Jasper, how much rage she had for Chantelle, she would not wish such a death upon them. Upon anybody. The punishment was immeasurably out of equivalence with the crime. Certainly they had sought to trick her, to make her docile enough to put up with their adultery while they waited out the period set down by Grandpa for the money to be repaid. No doubt, Grandpa had thought there would be a child in the first year, cementing Jasper’s obligations to her. And no doubt, that was one of the reasons Jasper wouldn’t have her in his bed.

  Jasper was dead now, his bed burned to cold embers.

  As dawn’s first light glimmered thin on the horizon, she got up. She changed into clean clothes and proper shoes, pinned her hair with practiced fingers. Focused on little details—buttoning gloves, pinning on her hat—so she wouldn’t think about the big bad thing that had happened.

  The big bad thing she had caused.

  No, she couldn’t think that way. It would undo her and she would be a screaming heap on the floor. She had to move now, she had to walk down to St. Peter Port and take the early service across to St. Malo.

  But what if they aren’t dead? The thought came to her sudden and unbidden, and already she could feel knots untying all down her spine. Jasper paid for Chantelle to have her own room at the Morningtons’ house. Perhaps he had gone out the east window and bolted behind cover, going straight to his lover’s arms.

  If Tilly left now, she would never know. She would curse herself for a lifetime for her role in their deaths, when perhaps they were safe and well at the Morningtons’.

  It was early. Nobody would see her.

  Tilly took her trunk and left, turning a shoulder against the sight of the still-smoking house, its white stone scorched, its roof fallen in, its conservatory a heap of glass and burned wood. Down the path and through the woods, hoping and hoping that she would press her face against Chantelle’s window and see them there sleeping, curled together like lovers.

  On this awful morning, St. Peter Port had a hollow, emptied-out feeling. Without the noise of carriages and people, without the movement at the harbor, it seemed a grim labyrinthine town carved out of unforgiving rock. The cold wind rattled the hanging signs on the bow-windowed inns and chilled her cheeks as she rounded the corner of the Morningtons’ block, and into the gully-like street behind it. Vines tickled her shoulders as she walked along, looking for the Morningtons’ garden gate. When she found it, she realized it was too high to climb, but she could just slip her fingers through the gap between two bars to unlatch it from the inside. She closed it quietly behind her.

  The grass was wet with cold dew. She was outside Chantelle’s window before she realized that if Jasper saw her, he would stop her from leaving. He might eve
n want to press criminal charges: she had locked him in a burning room.

  Oh, dear Lord, she had locked him in a burning room.

  She stood, sick with fear and self-loathing, not knowing what to do. Then stood her trunk up against the window and put a toe on it. Fingers on the windowsill, peering through the glass. Found herself looking at an empty room, a bed unslept in. Her heart fell all the way to her toes.

  The window was open a crack. She pushed it up and it slid open easily. She didn’t know what she was doing, what she was looking for, but she hoisted herself up and climbed through the window.

  The room was small and dingy. A chipped dresser that leaned to one side, with a mirror so tarnished Tilly could see only a flash of her own hair and little else in it. Chantelle’s bed was a narrow mattress on the floor, with a rough gray blanket. Her circumstances were grim, so much grimmer than Tilly’s, and she swallowed a bolt of shame that she had begrudged Chantelle the small comfort of a sable-trimmed coat. Weren’t all of God’s children created equal? A photograph of Jasper was pinned behind the wardrobe door. He wore a boater hat, a white jacket. He smiled at her; a smile of genuine affection. A smile that Tilly had never received.

  Inside the wardrobe were Chantelle’s dresses. Chantelle’s jewelery . . . Tilly recognized her own mother’s pearls but couldn’t bring herself to take them back, now Chantelle was dead. Here was Chantelle’s little suitcase, little more than a box with a lid and a clasp. She flipped it open, saw papers. Unfolded one. A love letter from Jasper. All of the love letters that he didn’t send to Tilly, he sent to Chantelle instead, one every two or three days. She sat on the floor for a few moments and skimmed some. Last night was beautiful. I love you more than I can say, ma chère. Nothing will change when she comes, but I will lose the house without her money. On and on, every letter a condemnation of him. He had duped Grandpa, undermined Tilly—gleefully, according to the letters—and intended to put her aside the moment two years were up. She didn’t have Chantelle’s letters here to read, to see how complicit the other woman was, but she supposed from Jasper’s loving phrases that they were in as deep as each other.