A Haven on Orchard Lane

by Lawana Blackwell

  “Yes. Black, and on a tray that I can carry upstairs.”

  “With a sandwich?” His surprise was almost comical. “Biscuits?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She had to flee these aromas from whichever delights waited under covered platters.

  With tray in hands and head held higher, she again passed the stares of Fosberry ancestors. No food had ever tasted sweeter than this victory!

  Two hours later, Charlotte found her husband in the conservatory, fussing over his beloved pink, red, and white camellias.

  “Roger?”

  “I’m occupied,” he said.

  “Something important requires your attention.”

  “Are there no hams in the larder that require your attention?” He chuckled at his own witticism and waved a hand with a flourish. “No cakes in the breadbox, no tarts in the window?”

  He can’t hurt you anymore, she said to herself yet felt the sting.

  Roger Fosberry, Viscount of Spilsby, was a mildly handsome man for his sixty years, a trim six feet tall, with fading auburn hair as thick as a young man’s. He had been widowed two years when Charlotte met him at the wedding of his niece once removed, actress Lillie Langtry.

  “You’ll adore Uncle Roger,” Lillie had enthused those five years ago. “He was so tender with Aunt Helen when she was struck with a cancer.”

  After years of resisting matchmaking attempts from friends, and direct flirtations from men, Charlotte found herself charmed by Roger’s devotion to his late wife and his talk of his life on an estate in Lincolnshire.

  She could imagine reading in the garden. Picnicking on the riverbank. Gathering berries in the woods. Breakfasting in the conservatory. Strolling through golden fields. Going to village fairs. Wholesome activities she had read of in novels but never had time to pursue.

  After decades of pretending, what would it be like to be simply herself? After two marriages to actors whose moods were tied to the volume of the applause they received, how would it be to have a companion with nothing to prove?

  The newspapers made much of the wedding, quiet affair though it was. The caption in the Times read Charlotte Ward Becomes Lady Fosberry of Spilsby. Third Time Lucky? During those first halcyon months, Roger taught her to play chess, to ride, to tell the difference between a larkspur and a delphinium. He brushed her hair evenings and asked to hear her theatre experiences. They shared a hymnal during services at St. James.

  He encouraged trust so much that she allowed herself to cry on his shoulder over the losses she had experienced. He knew of loss as well, and the comfort they gave each other strengthened their bond.

  She had not minded his disinterest in entertaining. They were lovers cocooned by polished walls and pampered by servants. The times he was away seeing to tenants and farms, she simply read, took walks, played piano.

  It was the beginning of their second year, when she was as besotted as a young maiden, that he came to her in tears. “I so wanted to spare you this, Charlotte, but I’m on the verge of bankruptcy. I’ve become a cliché—land rich, capital poor.”

  None of his doing, he assured her. The price of wheat had fallen. If he did not lower rents, he would lose farmers to rising factory wages in Norfolk. He could not sell off some of his land because the estate was entailed.

  She was glad he had come to her. Having paid her own way most of her life, she was beginning to feel like a kept woman. The estate was her life too.

  Ignoring a little warning voice in her head, she cleaned out her account, over six hundred pounds. She commissioned the sale of her London townhome, bringing in another hundred pounds. To do otherwise would have been to admit she had sold her birthright for bad pottage.

  Yet again.

  Perhaps Roger had not married her for money, she thought, watching him inspect a leaf for who knows what. Perhaps self-loathing lay at the root of his increasing coldness, humiliation for having had to ask for help.

  Or it could be that he had grown resentful that she was not Helen, the love of his youth. Whatever his reason, he had chosen not to share it. Silence was cruelest for the monsters it bred.

  As intimacy waned, food became more than sustenance; it became her solace. He mocked her lack of restraint and the bloating of her body, complained at having to pay a dressmaker to alter gowns and, eventually, sew new ones. He undermined her confidence piecemeal, so by the time she realized she would never see her money again, she could not think of returning to London.

  Until today.

  “I’ve been offered a part in Hamlet,” she said. As if he had not read the telegrams.

  He straightened, and his brown eyes mocked her. “As what, dearest? The castle?”

  “You will not take this away, Roger,” she said over the bile in her throat.

  He plucked a white camellia, twirling it in his fingers. “Out of the question, Charlotte. I’ll not have my family name subjected to ridicule.”

  “I would use Ward, as I have from the beginning. My family name.”

  “Everyone knows I’m your husband. You’ll not make a fool of me.”

  She swallowed and forced breath into her lungs. “That would be the utmost irony, wouldn’t it?”

  Snorting a bitter laugh, he dropped the bloom to his feet. “It was The Era that made fools of the both of us.”

  “The theatre paper?” She blinked. “What does—”

  “I never read such rubbish, but Helen subscribed to follow Lillie’s career. She read an article to me about how the Shah of Persia was so moved by a performance that he gifted you a ruby . . .”

  “A ruby . . .”

  “. . . stored in a vault in the Bank of London and insured by Lloyd’s of London for fifteen thousand pounds.”

  A sharp laugh left Charlotte’s throat. “You believed this?”

  He shrugged. “I never read where you denied it.”

  “I would have had no time for my career if I had tracked down and denied every falsehood. It would have been futile in any case. Most people want to believe the sensational. Why did you not ask about it before we married?”

  His silence spoke volumes. Any questions about her finances would have aroused suspicions. She had prided herself on her ability to spot fortune hunters.

  Pride truly did go before a fall, as Scripture warned.

  “Were no wealthy widows pursuing you?” Charlotte asked. “You’re a handsome man but for the coldness in your eyes when your true nature reveals itself.”

  “There were some.” He shrugged. “Lady Blake.”

  “Lady Blake? Who wore a different stuffed bird on her hat every Sunday?”

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. “So she’s fond of birds.”

  “I expect the birds would dispute that.” Charlotte sighed. “Then why me?”

  Another silence, but the fictitious ruby had taken on a life of its own and stood between them.

  “I’m grateful your little gift helped me keep the estate, mind you,” Roger said at length. “I have but to wait out the price of wheat, and this place will be restored to its former glory.”

  She felt no remnant of love, but that he could be so blasé about taking her savings stung more than any insult he had ever thrown her way.

  “What I cannot understand,” he went on, head leaned thoughtfully, “is why you had so little, in light of your successful career. The ruby notwithstanding.”

  “I have a successful career,” she corrected. “I’m going to London.”

  “You neither drink nor gamble,” he went on, “and your house was modest, all things considered. You own few baubles . . .”

  What had she done with the bulk of her money? Had he but asked, she would have explained. If he had really known her, he would have figured it out long ago. For such a self-congratulatory man, he could be quite obtuse.

  “I’m going to London, Roger,” Charlotte repeated. “In the morning.”

  “Hmm . . . well, there’s the rub. How will you get to the station?”
/>
  “The landau, of course.”

  He shook his head. “Allow me to disabuse you of that notion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My landau. My driver. My horses.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Utterly serious. You’re free to walk. Twelve miles would do you some good.”

  “You can’t keep me prisoner, Roger.”

  His brown eyes narrowed. “By the by, I sent my own message to your prankster, Mr. Perry, that you’ve changed your mind . . .”

  Charlotte felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. Mrs. Trinder must have listened at the door.

  “. . . and that I shall have him arrested if he trespasses again. Chief Constable Bickerton and I were boyhood schoolmates. Have I never mentioned that?”

  I will not allow him to see me cry, she thought even as tears stung her eyes, blurring his face.

  “Why?” she said thickly. “You don’t even like me.”

  “Nonsense. You’re my wife.” He could have commented on the weather for all the affection in his tone. “But in due time, if you choose to leave, I’ll not prevent it.”

  Due time . . . meaning when Hamlet’s run was over.

  He nodded as if reading her mind. “I forbid you to make a laughingstock of me. London papers are sold in Lincolnshire too, as you’re well aware.”

  “Roger . . .” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m begging you.”

  “Enough, Charlotte.” He returned to inspecting his camellias. “You’ll thank me one day when you’ve returned to your senses.”

  The sound of soft rapping penetrated Charlotte’s mind. She opened her eyes; they burned as if rubbed with sand. It was incredible that she had managed to fall asleep across the cluttered bed.

  “Your Ladyship?” came from the door.

  Charlotte lifted her head. Her neck ached from using her arm for a pillow. Beyond the open curtains, the frigid winter had sunk into early dusk. “Go away please, Alma.”

  Yet the knob turned, and the door eased open. Alma entered, carrying tray and candle. Closing the door with her foot, she said, “I brought supper.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Charlotte said, raising herself to sit.

  “Yes, Your Ladyship.”

  Alma set the tray upon the dressing table bench, lit the bedside table lamp, turned, and smiled. She was twenty-six, tall and thin, with a light brown topknot and unfailingly equable disposition.

  “Alma, I have no appetite.” Charlotte’s throat, however, was parched. “Just some water.”

  The maid filled a beaker from the carafe. As Charlotte drank, Alma said, louder than necessary, “Now then, see what lovely trout with Dutch sauce Mrs. Fenn made? And some nice artichokes with poached eggs.”

  Charlotte saw no such thing, only Alma’s face looming close.

  “Oswald will take you to the railway station,” she whispered. “If you wish to go.”

  “But how?” Charlotte whispered when she could speak.

  “He’ll be waiting at the verandah at four in the morning.”

  “Why would he?”

  Stableboy Oswald Green was an affable young man, but her interactions with him were limited, especially since Roger had stopped taking her riding.

  “Lord Fosberry sent him to town with a message, and the man he brought it to offered him a job. He’s to send a coach. What shall I say to Oswald, yes or no? You can’t bring a trunk.”

  A trunk meant nothing, compared to freedom. But there was another factor to consider. She would be burning bridges. Roger would never allow her to return.

  What, then, if Henry Irving deemed her too large? She had but six pounds sterling and some loose coins.

  The knot in her stomach grew. As unpleasant as the now was, the future’s pitfalls were shrouded in fog. Show me what to do, Father!

  No voice spoke from a burning bush, no heavenly vision appeared, but in her mind’s eye, she envisioned herself on her knees in the sitting room that morning, gushing a prayer of thanks. If she believed this opportunity to be a gift from God, she must not balk because it was not wrapped in layers of certainty.

  She took Alma’s rough hands. “Yes.”

  Alma smiled. “Shall I help you pack?”

  “No. The less time you spend with me, the better. And if this causes you any trouble, write to me in care of the Lyceum Theatre.”

  “I shall be fine.” Withdrawing her hands, Alma stood straight again and said in a louder-than-necessary tone, “Will you not eat, Lady Fosberry?”

  “I have no appetite.” She adored trout, but her insides were so wracked that there could have been an anthill on the dish for all the appetite it induced. Which was fortunate, for the quest to shed some weight was renewed.

  Alma took the tray and sent her another smile from the doorway.

  Charlotte stared at the closed door and fought temptation to call her back. Fear rattled its bones at her like a gruesome skeleton.

  She was limited to what she could carry. She rose, lit another lamp, and opened the door to her wardrobe. Standing upon tiptoe, she latched onto the handle of her French Morocco-leather traveling bag and tugged, catching it in her arms. It would be her only luggage, with space for hair and tooth brushes, underclothing, a nightgown.

  But first . . .

  Moving over to the belongings spread upon the bed, she opened the lid to a flat rosewood box and moved aside papers stiff with age. The oval frame was tarnished, but she had been warned long ago that to take it apart for polishing would damage the sepia photograph. She held it to her cheek for a moment and then packed it into her bag through a haze of fresh tears.

  3

  Charlotte did not return to bed, lest she not wake. Her mind was beset with doubts and fears in any case. Bag packed, she sat at her writing table and read the playscript.

  The lines came back to her.

  Your mercy overwhelms me, Father.

  From two until three o’clock, she glanced often at the mantelpiece clock, wishing the hands would hurry. At three, she padded to the bathroom. She cleaned her teeth, bathed with facecloth, and fastened her hair into a fresh chignon.

  Back in her bedchamber, she pulled on a sea-green poplin gown that would travel well, a gray wool coat with hood, and calfskin gloves. She wondered, then, which shoes to wear. The clock struck a quarter of four. You should have thought of this hours ago.

  She would have to move through the house in stocking feet. There would be no time to button her warmest boots on the verandah. She decided upon the worn low-cut balmoral boots with the elastic side gussets. They would fit more easily into the top of her open bag as well.

  Taking up holder and candle, she eased open the door, moved the bag through it, stepped out, and closed it just as quietly. Years of having to be silent offstage paid off, for she knew to place her weight upon the pads of her feet.

  Darkness magnified the silence, as well as the thumping of her heart. The hall clock chimed four as she started downstairs. Without a free hand to grasp the banister, she resisted the temptation to hurry. She crept into the silence of the entry hall and opened the door.

  Frigid air assaulted her and blew out the candle. Charlotte had no choice but to carry on in the dark, setting bag upon verandah to close the door. The stone below felt like ice through her wool stockings. She knelt to feel for the boots in the top of her bag and pulled them on.

  There was no sign of Oswald in the velvety blackness. She could not be more than five minutes late. Had he assumed she had changed her mind?

  Or had he changed his? He was surely as anxious as she was.

  Please, Father, he has to come, she prayed even as her eyes caught sight of a flickering in the distance, past the row of windows at the east corner of the house. As still as held breath, she watched lamplight sway slightly to and fro. She recognized Oswald’s lanky form when he was some forty feet away, though a hat covered his carrot-red hair. She felt her way down the three low steps and met him
. With her free hand, she gathered up as much of her coat and gown as she could manage.

  He held a bag as well. They slogged though six-inch snow, past the carriage drive into the lane, where bare linden branches loomed. She was full of questions but held her tongue.

  At length, he whispered in a cloud of vapor, “I’m sorry I cannot carry your bag, Your Ladyship. Can you walk a mite longer?”

  “Yes,” she whispered back, though the cold tormented her feet.

  They continued on for what seemed an hour, shivering and panting, but what was more than likely ten to fifteen minutes. She looked over her shoulder. No windows were illuminated in the mass of blackness.

  “Not much longer,” he whispered. “They cannot come too close to the house.”

  Finally, they reached Ashby Road. They turned to the west, toward Spilsby, walking in the middle between hedgerows. She saw light ahead, heard the soft whinny of horses. Several paces more, and a coach appeared. A dark form hopped down from the lamplit driver’s seat. As a man entered the light from Oswald’s lantern, Charlotte recognized him from having delivered Mr. Perry yesterday.

  “Lady Fosberry? I’m Guy Heaton.”

  He helped her into the dark coach. “My apologies, but the road is too unsteady to attach a lamp in here.”

  True to northern dialect, he pronounced road as ro-ad.

  “But there are rugs to warm yourself,” he went on.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said, voice shivering.

  Inside the coach, she unfolded a wool rug and burrowed herself to the neck. Oswald leaned his head in to set the bags upon the floor. “I’ll sit with the driver.”

  “Must you? I’d rather not be alone.”

  “Of course, Your Ladyship.”

  He spoke to Mr. Heaton and then came inside and wrapped himself in a rug. With creaks of wood, the wheels began a slow trundle. About a mile up the road, the team picked up speed to a trot.

  “It’s too dark to run them,” Oswald said. “But we’ve plenty of time.”

  “It’s a wonder they can see at all,” Charlotte said, relieved at not having to whisper yet struck by the strangeness of her voice, as if she had not spoken for days.