Nonsense; he wasn’t her guardian. And what a foolish precedent he would set by such an attention. Begin as you mean to go on was sound advice; he meant to go on using Mrs. Wade for his convenience, not the other way around. If her pariah status had increased today, it was by his own doing, and it was a little too late for guilt or second thoughts.
“Good day to you, then.” He touched his hat and walked off toward the mayor’s house, leaving her alone in the street.
Rachel watched him stride away, swinging his walking stick in the loose, arrogant way that seemed natural to him, not affected. He must be feeling quite satisfied with his morning’s work: he had not only shocked two of Wyckerley’s most respectable ladies, he’d also shamed her in front of them for his personal amusement. What she didn’t understand was why. What perverse pleasure did he take in tormenting, her? It wasn’t anything as simple as cruelty, she was sure of that, because his mind was too subtle, his depravities too complex. Whatever his motive, she told herself it didn’t matter, that the joke was on him because she had no pride or public honor left to humiliate. But even as she thought it, she could feel the icy stares of Miss Vanstone and Miss Carter, like a cold breeze on the back of her neck. When she turned around, she saw them in the window, eyes narrowed, mouths moving, contempt and dislike distorting their faces. Now they had two things to hate her for: she was a murderess, and she was Lord D’Aubrey’s whore.
She started up the street, moving blindly in the opposite direction from the route he had taken. The sun was high, the air mild and gentle, but the pleasure she’d taken in the day only an hour ago was gone. The street made a sharp turn at the top of the square, adjacent to the vicarage and the blocky Norman edifice that was All Saints Church. She didn’t know if it was fatigue or a reluctance to brave the gauntlet of staring townsfolk again so soon—or something else entirely—but instead of turning around and starting for Lynton Hall, she walked through the arch of two enormous sycamore trees and passed into the shadowy churchyard.
As soon as the rusty lych-gate clicked shut behind her, she knew why she’d come here. She had almost come last Sunday, after the church service, but too many people had been milling about and she hadn’t wanted anyone to see her. Now she was alone, and she could accomplish her mission without witnesses.
They’d arrested her early on the morning after Randolph’s murder, and later she hadn’t been allowed out of gaol to attend his funeral. As a consequence, she’d never seen his grave. But she found it easily enough today, because his stone was taller than anyone else’s, and grander, and an enormous wreath of fresh flowers lay at its base. She read his name, Randolph Charles Wade, and the dates of his birth and death, but when she started to go closer to read the smaller, ornately lettered inscription, she found she couldn’t move. She stood twelve feet away, her back pressed against the rough granite of a neighboring monument, rooted to the spot and unable to go a step closer.
What was this fear, and why would it come over her now? Randolph was dead, he couldn’t hurt her again. But even his marker upset her, the stony straightness of it, the cold, phallic implacability. All at once, memories she thought she’d buried years ago burst in violent pictures before her tightly closed eyes. She had to turn away and drop her face in her hands. But it wouldn’t stop, and she could still see herself as if from a distance—exactly as she had seen herself when it was happening to her—and suddenly she was his victim again. She knew the same bewilderment, and then the same enveloping horror. The precise design of the floral carpet in his bedchamber filled her mind’s eye, giant cabbage roses on a sky-blue background. She saw herself kneeling on it, in front of the low, broad, obscene ottoman, her hands behind her back. Waiting. She heard his quiet voice, always patient, always merciless, instructing and explaining, never angry, not even when he hurt her, not even when—
She broke away, pressing her fists against her mouth. Opening her eyes, she saw the ash-colored bark of a copper beech, and she put her hands on it, pressed her forehead against it and held on, feeling the cool, hard reality of it under her palms. God! Why had she come here? What if the dreams started again, and the sleeplessness and the paralyzing fear? “She’d thought she was strong enough to come and look at his grave, bear the sordid memories, acknowledge all the ugliness, but she wasn’t. Maybe he would always, always win.
No. No. No. She let go of the tree, but she couldn’t turn around. To the thin gray bark of the copper beech she said out loud, “You can’t touch me. I’m not afraid of you. You’re rotting in the ground, you can’t hurt me. Somebody . . . killed you and you got—you got—what you deserve. Dead, you’re dead, Randolph. If you’re burning in hell, I don’t care. I hope you are.”
Her heart was racing. It took a minute to overcome a superstitious dread that he would rise up and punish her somehow for that profane exorcism. But nothing happened. The birds overhead kept singing; the wind continued to flutter the new leaves in the beech tree. Nothing happened. She put her hands on her cheeks, taking slow, deep breaths to calm herself, and she thought, It’s over. I’m glad I came, because now it’s really finished.
But she was even gladder to leave. She wiped her damp palms on her skirt and hurried toward the gate. She almost collided with someone coming through it.
It was a woman. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” That was no wonder; a huge armload of cut flowers almost obscured her face. Lowering them, she came to a full stop and regarded Rachel curiously.
She felt called upon to identify herself, explain her presence, especially since the woman appeared to belong here; she wore no hat or coat, not even a shawl, and even though she was young, she had an air of proprietariness about her. “Excuse me,” Rachel faltered. “I’ve been—I was looking at the graves.” She made a mental face; what else would she be doing in the churchyard?
“Oh, yes, it’s beautiful this time of the year, isn’t it? I’m quite fond of graveyards myself.” When Rachel didn’t respond, she said, “I’m Anne Morrell. My husband’s the vicar, you know.”
No help for it. “I’m Rachel Wade,” she said, and waited to see what that would bring.
The woman’s interesting face showed no disapproval, but her attention narrowed subtly, focused on Rachel more closely. “How do you do, Mrs. Wade. Christy told me he’d made your acquaintance, and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Rachel very much doubted that, but she returned Mrs. Morrell’s friendly smile as best she could.
“These are altar flowers,” she went on, explaining the burden of lilies and sweet peas in her arms. “We have ladies in the village who replace them from their gardens twice a week. I can’t bear to throw the old ones out, because they’re never really dead enough, you know, and so I end up putting them on the graves.”
Rachel nodded politely.
“Do you know the Weedies?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mrs. and Miss Weedie, two parish ladies who do most of the flowers for the church—well, Miss Weedie mostly, now that her mother’s so ill.”
“No, I—I don’t know them. I don’t really know anyone.”
Mrs. Morrell’s astute gray eyes were examining her, sizing her up in a way that, for some reason, didn’t give offense. “Well,” she said lightly, “you really ought to make Miss Weedie’s acquaintance, because she knows everything there is to know about flowers. And unless a miracle has occurred at Lynton since last fall, when I lived there, I expect the terraced gardens behind the house are still a shambles. It’s quite a shameful ruin, I could never persuade the gardener to do a thing about it.”
“I had forgotten that you used to live there.” Rachel said.
Mrs. Morrell’s wry smile widened. “What a terrible housekeeper you must think I am.”
“Oh, not at—”
“But it simply defeated me, Mrs. Wade. All those rooms, the drafts, the leaks, everything crum
bling—I found it much easier to hide away in a little sitting room in the attic and ignore everything that was falling apart on the two floors below me.”
Rachel couldn’t help smiling back, in sympathy with that sentiment. “It is a lot of work,” she admitted. “We’re trying to tackle one room at a time, beginning on the first floor with the drawing rooms. But it’s a struggle, even with four of us working every day.”
“How wonderfully enterprising of you.” She used the back of her wrist to push a strand of reddish hair out of her eyes. “Tell me, is Violet Cocker still at Lynton? I see Susan and some of the others in church, but never Violet.”
“Yes,” Rachel answered neutrally, “Violet’s there.”
“Then I admire you for more than your enterprise. Also your tolerance and saintly patience.”
Rachel almost laughed. Something close to delight welled up in her; she hadn’t spoken to another woman in this easy, good-humored way since her school days.
They continued to talk about Lynton Hall and its eccentricities and compensations, agreeing with each other on everything, until the church bell in the tower behind them chimed a quarter to one. “Oh, heavens, I’d forgotten the time,” Mrs. Morrell fretted with sincere-sounding regret. “I’ve got the churchwarden’s wife coming for lunch in fifteen minutes, and I’m not even dressed yet.”
Rachel thought she looked beautiful in a gauzy, loose-fitting gown of flowered blue gingham, but perhaps it wasn’t formal enough for the churchwarden’s wife. “Please don’t let me keep you any longer,” she said hurriedly, moving around her to the gate. “I’m—I’m very glad we met, Mrs. Morrell.”
“I am, too,” she answered, and this time Rachel believed her. “I expect we’ll see each other all the time now, so won’t you call me Anne?”
She paused, her hand on the gate latch. “Thank you,” she managed to say in a normal voice, but her emotions were dangerously close to the surface. “I’m Rachel.”
Anne smiled. With a little nod instead of a wave—her arms were still full of flowers—she went off to lay her offerings on the graves.
All the way home, Rachel felt breathless. She might have met a friend, and the possibility thrilled her. But uncertainty still plagued her, and she worried that Mrs. Morrell didn’t really know who she was. What if, out of charity or discretion, Reverend Morrell had neglected to tell his wife about her past? And what if, through some bizarre oversight, village gossip hadn’t reached her yet?
But no—when Rachel had said her name, there had been something in Anne’s eyes that indicated she knew exactly who Mrs. Wade was. But, incredibly, she hadn’t been any more censorious than her husband had the day Rachel had met him in the lane. The Christian virtues of tolerance and forgiveness hadn’t been much in evidence at Dartmoor Prison, even among the chaplains who had preached daily sermons on sin, guilt, and redemption. But apparently those virtues did exist in Wyckerley, at least in the persons of the vicar and his wife. A friend. Her euphoria lasted all the way home.
She was taking her bonnet off, still smiling to herself, when she noticed Susan bustling down the hall toward her. “Mrs. Wade,” she announced with a worried frown, “you’ve got a visitor.”
She was certain she’d misheard. “I have a visitor?”
“Yes, ma’am. I wasn’t sure where to put ’er, in yer room or one o’ the drawing rooms, so I put ’er in the green parlor. I hope that was right—I didn’t know what else t’ do.”
“Who is it, Susan?”
“Why, ma’am, it’s Miss Lydia Wade.”
VIII
THROUGH THE GAP in the sliding doors to the drawing room, Rachel saw her. She was seated on the couch with her head bowed, hands busily knitting on a black square of cloth, so large it covered her lap and half the sofa. She’d grown stout. Her pretty yellow hair had darkened, but she wore it in the same long, careful side-ringlets that had been the envy of every girl at Mrs. Merton’s Academy. In spite of her almost total ignorance of modern fashions, Rachel knew Lydia’s flowered pink and white frock was outdated; in fact, it looked exactly like the kind of dress she’d worn at school eleven years ago.
The unlikely thought crossed her mind that she and Lydia might have something in common—that the aftermath of Randolph’s death might have had the same stunting effect on his daughter’s emotional growth as it had on his widow’s. If so, was there a chance for any kind of rapprochement between them now? Probably not; it was probably folly even to speculate on such a thing. Still, something in Lydia’s posture, the angle of her bent head, so strange and at the same time so familiar, reminded Rachel of herself.
At the murder trial, Lydia had stood in the witness box and testified that her father was a kind, gentle man, that Rachel has seduced him, that on the last night of his life he’d confided to his daughter that his new wife wasn’t the sweet-natured, biddable girl he thought he had married. If it were so, if he had really said that, then he’d been speaking no more than the truth—for by the end of that hellish first and final week of their marriage, Rachel had indeed changed. But Lydia must have changed as well, because in a way she, too, had had her innocence stolen. Wasn’t that a beginning, something on which they could try to build a semblance of understanding?
Sliding the heavy doors apart, Rachel said in a quiet voice, “Hello, Lydia.”
The fast-moving hands stilled. She lifted her head—and Rachel saw at once that her hopes for a reconciliation were pathetic, absurd. In Lydia’s round brown eyes there was only one emotion, and it was hatred.
She stood up slowly. “I’ve heard cats always land on their feet,” she said in an unsteady voice, eyes wide, measuring her from head to toe. “Now I know snakes do, too.”
Rachel released a long, hopeless breath. “What do you want?”
“Look at you. Oh, my God, look at you.” Her peeling laugh sounded horribly false. She came nearer, still scrutinizing her. “Did you really think you could disguise yourself?”
“What do you—”
“Did you think that black gown could fool anyone? That there’s a soul here who doesn’t know exactly what you are?”
“Lydia, what’s the point of this?” she asked tiredly. “Why did you come here?”
“Why did you come here?” she snapped back, voice rising, eyes flashing. “Here of all places?”
“You know why I came—it wasn’t my choice. I was sent away from Dorset when I couldn’t find work.”
“You should have been transported. A woman like you, you should have been put on a ship and sent to hell.”
She closed her eyes. “There’s no point to this conversation.”
“Did you see me at the trial? I was praying every minute that they would hang you. Did you see me?”
“I saw you.”
“When the sentence came down and it was penal servitude, I lost my faith in a righteous God. But then I changed my mind! Because hanging wouldn’t have been enough!”
“Lydia, for God’s sake.” She had to step back, away from the loathing that seemed to come from her old friend in hot waves.
“You were always the one with the chums, all of them hanging on you, fawning over you—‘Rachel’s so pretty, oh, Rachel’s so smart.’” Her voice and the curl of her lips were ugly and disturbing. “Do you know what’s made me happy all these years? Thinking about you being locked up in a cell. Day in and day out, month after month and year after year. All by yourself.”
“I want you to go now.” She moved away from the door.
“I fell asleep every night picturing you in your little cell. Sometimes I’d pretend I was you, lying on a cot instead of in my bed. I found out what it’s like at Dartmoor—I know everything about the silence and the punishments. I even know what you wore, what you ate.”
Although she understood the utter futility of a denial, she heard herself say, “Listen to me,” in a low, inte
nse voice, “I did not kill your father.”
Lydia bared her teeth and came closer. “You murdered him in cold blood.”
“No, I found his body—that morning—we were to go away that day on our honeymoon, but he was dead, he was already dead—”
“Don’t you touch me!” She smacked at the hand Rachel had lifted toward her. “First you enticed him, corrupted him, and then you killed him!” Her shrill voice broke. “And he was a good man, kind and gentle, and because of you—”
“No, he was—not kind, he—”
“Liar!” She drew her hand back; before Rachel could dodge, she slapped her across the face.
She held her stinging cheek, blinking one watering eye and trying not to tremble. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know! I know! You slandered him once—I’ll see you dead before I’ll let you do it again!”
Over Lydia’s shoulder, Rachel saw Sebastian in the doorway. For a second he stood still, transfixed. Then Lydia lunged, shoving her hard in the chest with the heels of both hands. She stumbled backward, threw her arms up for a shield. With a desperate cry, Lydia came at her again, her fingers curled into claws.
Before she could strike, Sebastian’s forearm streaked around her waist and jerked her completely off her feet. She fought him, cursing, shrieking like a furious child, twisting from side to side. But his grip was unbreakable, and suddenly she went limp, hanging over his arm like a cloth doll.
He set her on her feet warily. Rachel couldn’t talk; when he looked at her, she shook her head, to tell him she wasn’t hurt.
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