by Rose Lerner
Every minute of the play was a torment. Penelope longed for it to end, and yet she could not bear to think that it would end, and she and Nev would go back to their room and not speak and not make love, and Nev would be silently longing for Miss Wray. Then, as if Hell felt it necessary to devise yet another torment for her, Miss Wray opened her mouth and a pure, lovely soprano came forth. Penelope thought she would cry. Penelope had told Nev she had got over wanting to be a soprano; it had been a lie.
After a moment, Penelope admitted that Miss Wray’s voice was not well trained, nor powerful enough to fill the house. The girl had an unfortunate tendency to embellish the melody, and she did it without real taste. In fact, Penelope noted with mean satisfaction, as the song went on, the actress’s voice lost body and she began to pause awkwardly to draw breath.
Penelope started forward-this was more than poor singing. The actress’s voice trilled high on the last line-and cut off abruptly. Miss Wray fell to the ground in a dead faint.
Nev shot to his feet, leaning over the balcony and craning his head out to try to see closer. Fortunately, people all over the theater were doing the same thing. Penelope hoped her mother had not heard him cry “Amy!” in tones of shock and fear as he rose.
“Can you see anything?” She was sorry for how cold she sounded-the result of trying too hard not to sound jealous.
He struggled gamely for nonchalance. “They’re carrying her offstage. I don’t think she’s woken up.”
“Then it should be a while before the performance starts again. Do you think you might fetch me some lemonade?”
His gaze shot to hers. Penelope nodded once. Gratitude flooded Nev’s face. She pressed her lips together. She would not cry. She blinked, and he was gone.
Mrs. Brown turned to her. “Well? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.” Penelope tried to sound surprised. Onstage, someone was announcing an intermission.
“What are you and he quarreling about? You’ve barely spoken a word to each other all evening, and just now you took the first opportunity to send him away. Lord knows he looked happy enough to take it.”
“How do you know I didn’t just want lemonade?” Thank God her mother had no idea Nev had rushed off to his mistress’s side.
“Because I’m your mother. You can’t fake a smile and expect me to think everything’s roses, even if that works on that boy you married. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Penelope could not talk about Nev and Miss Wray, and she did not want to talk about Mr. Garrett, so she began to tell her mother about Loweston. When she had got to the end of it all, had tried to explain about the Poor Authority and enclosures and Agnes Cusher and What Happened In ’16, she watched her mother, hoping that Mrs. Brown could tell her what to do.
“Oh, Penelope.” Her mother looked aghast. “I wish we could do something. I’m sure your father and I could pay to start a school for those poor children, if you’d like.”
Penelope stared. It seemed like such a tiny answer to such an enormous problem. “Mama, they cannot afford to send their children to school. They need the money the children earn.”
“But surely they could not be so selfish as to value a few pence a day over their children’s welfare!”
Penelope was not even sure anymore that a school would be in the children’s best interests. Would education bring them more than learning young how to bind wheat into sheaves or find the best grass seed? Their people needed jobs, not a school. But Penelope knew without saying it that her mother would never believe or understand that. Mrs. Brown’s greatest regret was that she had never been to school.
Being a landowner, Penelope realized, was different from being rich in the city. True, her mother felt herself in some way responsible for Mr. Brown’s employees; she was well-known at the brewery for her soft heart and willingness to help if one of the workers had family trouble or an expensive illness. But in London, Mrs. Brown could found a free day at the British Museum and trust that someone else would found a pauper’s kitchen, that if Mr. Brown did not give someone a job, they could find one elsewhere-and if they couldn’t, it was not her fault.
At Loweston, if a man who had lived there all his life could not find work, it was because Nev had not hired him. If a child starved it was because Nev and Penelope had not given her food. At Loweston, they were answerable for all those people.
Her mother didn’t understand, and Penelope would have to work things out on her own. She was a grown-up now.
Then Nev walked back in, and Penelope forgot all about Loweston. He looked pale and unhappy, but he had remembered to bring her a lemonade.
She wanted to ask after Miss Wray but was afraid she could not do it with sufficient nonchalance to fool her mother. Fortunately, it was the obvious question, so Mrs. Brown asked it for her. “Did you hear anything about that poor girl? How is she? Is she going to come back on?”
“She said-I heard that she told the manager she is fine.” Nev didn’t look at Penelope. “It was just the heat of the limelights, and she hadn’t eaten dinner, is the story that’s going about. They should recommence the play in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Brown clucked in concern. “Poor girl. She ought to take better care of herself. She looks familiar-where have I seen her before?”
Nev blinked, looking cornered and guilty. Penelope knew he was thinking the same thing she was-had her mother seen Miss Wray with Nev, that evening in Vauxhall?
“She was in that production of Twelfth Night we went to, Mama, you remember,” Penelope said.
“Oh, yes, of course. I do hope I’m not entering my dotage. It’s funny, though-I remember thinking at the time that I’d seen her somewhere before.”
The curtain went up and the play continued, but Penelope did not enjoy a moment of it. She could do nothing but watch Miss Wray for signs of a relapse and speculate as if by compulsion on what the actress had said to Nev, and what he had said to her.
They were silent on the carriage ride to the hotel, and though Nev wished it were a more comfortable silence he was glad of it.
He was sure that Amy was not fine. She hadn’t wanted him backstage, that much had been plain. He thought the only reason he had not been barred the door was because it had never occurred to her he might turn up. “I’m fine, Nev, truly.” She had frowned at herself in the mirror, repairing her thick stage makeup. “I didn’t eat dinner, that’s all, and the lights were hot. Please, go back to your father-in-law’s box. You wouldn’t want Lady Bedlow to think you’re breaking your promise.”
Despite his worry, the unfairness of that smote him. “Penelope said I might come and see how you did. And you shouldn’t have fainted just from missing dinner.”
“That was very generous of Penelope,” Amy had said viciously. “If you must know, I have a hangover. I was up late last night with my new protector.”
It wasn’t like Amy to drink the night before a performance. Nev had been opening his mouth to say so when some rakehell had burst in, a man Nev recognized as one of Percy’s pigeons in piquet. Amy had turned to him with a warm, reassuring smile-“Lord Bedlow was just leaving, Jack. I promise you, I’m quite all right”-and Nev had had no choice but to go.
She had talked to Jack just as she had always talked to Nev; he saw now that it was false. She had not felt warm or reassuring. He realized he had not seen Amy out of temper above once or twice, in the whole year he had kept her. She had never let him see anything she thought he might find unattractive. Probably she had not dared, for fear he would tire of her and stop paying her rent. And now something was wrong, very wrong, and he had not the slightest idea what it could be.
Instead of staying and shaking her and insisting on the truth, he’d had to go back to the Browns’ box and pretend that everything was fine, because to do anything else would have been scandalous and awkward, and humiliating for Penelope, and besides they needed to borrow money from the Browns.
He was still worrying as they pulled up at
the hotel and went silently up the stairs.
He turned around to put down his gloves and his hat, and when he turned back Penelope was standing with her back to him. She was hugging herself, and her shoulders were shaking.
He knew what he would see even before he walked around to look at her face. She was crying-silent little heaves that she was trying desperately to control. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her eyes were screwed shut, but tears were leaking down her face nevertheless.
It shocked Nev deeply. He knew Penelope disliked displays of strong emotion, and it was so evident that she hated doing it that she must be miserable indeed to succumb.
“Penelope, what’s the matter?” He didn’t know if he should go to her. She hated that he was seeing her like this, he was sure of it.
Her eyes were dark and wet when she opened them. “I’m so sorry, Nev.” Her voice was rough with tears. “I’m all right-just tired. I tried not to-I didn’t want you to have to deal with a hysterical wife on top of everything.”
He thought of Amy saying she was all right and him not knowing how to tell if she were lying, and panic shot through him. “Penelope, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’ll be fine, truly.” Her tears were slowing now. “I’m just being foolish.” She sniffled and began searching her reticule for a handkerchief.
He gave her his, and thought about what to say while she was blowing her nose.
She spoke before he could, however. “Nev, I’m so sorry about this morning. I don’t know what came over me.”
Nev found that he wasn’t angry about it anymore. He didn’t understand what had happened, but it wasn’t important just then. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.” She reached up and began taking her hair down, as if she were just tired of the whole evening and wanted it to be over. He reached out idly and pulled out a pin, and she jerked away. “Don’t.”
Nev was appalled. She didn’t want him to touch her? “Penelope?”
She turned her face away. “I’m sorry. Just-not tonight. I’ll feel better tomorrow, but-not tonight. Just help me get my things off and let’s go to sleep. Please, Nev.”
He wanted to insist on an explanation, but he was terrified that she would say it was nothing to do with him. “Of course. Only-” He did not know how to say what he wanted to. “You know I want you to be happy, don’t you? You know that if you needed me to do anything, I would?”
She gave him a tired smile and nodded. “Thank you, Nev.”
So he changed into his night things while she unpinned her hair and took off her jewelry and her slippers and stockings. He unbuttoned her dress and unlaced her corset and didn’t let his hands stray even an inch, as much as he wanted to. They got into bed, and Penelope blew out the candle, and then she turned away from him and pulled the covers up to her chin.
Nev lay there in the dark. He didn’t wish Penelope were gone, and that he had his old life back. He just wished he knew why she was unhappy and that he could fix it.
It took Penelope a long time to fall asleep. She hated how unreasonable she was being. She hated that she had hurt Nev’s feelings-because they had been hurt, when she had asked him not to touch her. She wanted him to touch her. But she had found she couldn’t bear it, not then, not after he had been talking to Miss Wray, not when he was thinking about his former mistress.
It would have been the height of melodrama for Penelope to suppose herself the forsaken lover; she was still his wife, after all, and she had no reason to suppose he had been madly in love with Miss Wray. But that, somehow, was what stung; that probably Miss Wray had meant to Nev exactly what Penelope did. Nev had desired Miss Wray, and liked her. He was kind and did not want anyone to be unhappy. That was very likely all.
It would have been irrational to expect him to feel more for her after a fortnight of marriage, and Penelope knew it. It was irrational to ever expect him to feel more; she was hardly the sort to inspire a grand passion in anyone. She was ordinary-common. She had known it from the start. She thought grand passions were ridiculous, anyway. She hated that she wanted him to feel more, that she could not help wanting to be special.
And yet when he touched her, it felt so-affectionate. It felt like it meant something. And tonight she could not bear that it didn’t, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Twelve
The next morning she let him touch her again, and Nev seemed to feel as relieved and happy about that as she did. But relations between them, instead of easing, became more and more strained. To Penelope, traveling back to Loweston resembled nothing so much as returning to Miss Mardling’s boarding school after vacation. There was the same feeling of putting back on a heavy cloak of dullness and misery. She did not know whether Nev felt the same or if his silence was due to worry about something else-Miss Wray’s health, for example.
Neither of them spoke of Mr. Garrett, but as the days passed, Penelope sensed a growing unease in Nev. Their one substantive conversation (on how best to help Jack Bailey, a laborer who had gone to help his mother rethatch her roof the week before and returned with a broken leg) quickly disintegrated into bickering about which was better for invalids, chicken broth or French onion soup. Finally, on Thursday, Penelope looked out the window and saw a solitary figure trudging up the drive carrying a valise.
Nev was nowhere to be found, so when Mr. Garrett arrived there was only herself to greet him. “Welcome back to Loweston, Mr. Garrett,” Penelope said, remembering how badly she had conducted herself at their last meeting and ashamed for herself and her husband. “I know I had to bribe you shamelessly, but allow me to tell you anyway how glad I am that you agreed to come and work for us.”
He bowed. “Thank you, Lady Bedlow.”
“Martin will be here shortly to conduct you to your room. Take this evening to settle in. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, I should like you to meet me in your office so that I may show you the work I have done on the books and ask you a number of questions about the estate that I have been unable to find the answers to.”
He bowed again. “Certainly, my lady. I hope I can answer them to your satisfaction. My experience here is all years old. I did, however, take the liberty of purchasing several books and journals on the latest farming techniques, especially those popularized in Norfolk by Coke.” Halfway through this speech Penelope heard the door behind her open. It would have been rude to turn round, and so she saw Mr. Garrett’s eyes fly to the door and saw his shoulders sag a little in disappointment. Evidently it was not Nev who had walked in.
She glanced at his valise. If there were a number of farming books in there, there was not room for much else. “That was very thoughtful of you. I meant to do as much when we were in London, but somehow I did not find the time. If you will let me know how much you were obliged to spend, I should be happy to reimburse you.”
He inclined his head. “Your ladyship is very kind.”
She looked round to see one of the footman waiting by the door. “Martin will escort you to your room. Will you be joining us for supper? You are welcome, if you’d like…” She did not know how to continue.
He smiled ironically. “Thank you, but I am quite content to take my meals in the steward’s room.” Her distress must have shown on her face because his smile grew a little warmer, and he said, quietly enough that Martin would not hear, “It will be a deal kinder to Lord Bedlow and to myself.”
She nodded, but her heart sank. What on earth was the point of going to all this trouble to reconcile them if they were both going to be so wretchedly stubborn?
“Now, if your ladyship will excuse me,” Mr. Garrett said, “I should be glad to rid myself of the dirt of the road.”
“Oh, certainly!”
He followed Martin out. She heard their voices in the hall a moment, talking familiarly together. It surprised her, though it should not have.
She had not forgotten that he had grown up at th
e Grange; it was more that she had never considered what that meant. How would he be treated in the steward’s room? Would he be welcomed by the upper servants as one of their own? He must have dined with the family on his most recent visits to the Grange; would he be resented? Would he be taunted for his fall from grace?
The first thing Nev heard from the butler Hathick when he returned to the house was, “Good afternoon, my lord. Mr. Garrett has arrived safely.”
He did not know what to say. Soon enough it would be clear to everyone how matters stood between himself and Percy. “I am glad to hear it,” he said at last, awkwardly. “Will he be joining myself and Lady Bedlow for supper?” He didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.
“I believe he will be taking his meals in the steward’s room, my lord.” Not by a flicker of an eyelid did Hathick indicate that he remembered the dozens of times Percy had eaten at the master’s table. But perhaps it had not been so very often; when they were boys they ate in the nursery, and when they were home from school Percy had generally dined with his own family-which must have meant, Nev realized, in the steward’s room. It was only since Mr. Garrett’s death that Percy had eaten in the dining room with Thirkell and the Ambreys. Nev had always suspected that Percy was uncomfortable there-he barely spoke, and Lady Bedlow would roll her eyes at what she termed his excessive politeness to the servants. Perhaps Percy would be happier in the steward’s room, after all.
Nev had almost succeeded in banishing the matter from his mind by the time he sat down to supper. But Penelope seemed preoccupied and excused herself directly after the plates were carried away.
When he went to her room that night, she was sitting on her bed brushing her hair. Each stroke was very slow, as if she could not quite remember what she was doing. When she saw him she put the brush down and smiled with an effort.
