Mist of Midnight

by Sandra Byrd

  The speech given was rousing and interesting, and all present seemed glad to have been in attendance. My parents had not neglected to educate me in the natural sciences, though it had been unusual for girls. I was glad, once again, that they had undertaken to teach me rather than send me back to England, where my hours might have been more art and less astronomy. I quietly looked around for Captain Whitfield. I was certain that he caught my eye from several rows away. I cheered, immediately, and smiled and waved. He waved briefly, but coldly, and did not smile. Then he turned away without further acknowledgment, back to the elegant woman claiming his attention.

  What had happened? I sank into my chair, distressed, confused, disheartened.

  For the second time that day I felt cut, once by Delia, now by Luke. Why was he suddenly cold toward me? Perhaps I had misinterpreted his turning away just now. Or . . . had Delia said something? Before they’d gone riding he had been increasing in his attention, affection, and, though he hadn’t said it, love for me. After their meeting he was a changed man. A pang of pain ran from my heart down my left arm.

  “He puts me in mind of a snake,” Lord Ashby said, noticing the focus of my gaze. “You’ll be well rid of him.” He tucked my arm closer to him, possessively, and I gently unwound it. “I understand he’ll be moving to his new home soon?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “To India.”

  “I’d heard India, too. I’m extremely surprised that he hasn’t insisted on continuing at your guesthouse, but”—he seemed to offer a begrudging compliment—“he is a gentleman born in spite of it all. You’ll do right by ensuring he takes all of his personal effects with him. There is a phrase, Miss Ravenshaw: When a snake sheds its skin you know it’s been there even though you no longer see the serpent itself. ”

  I smiled politely but honestly couldn’t turn away fast enough. Luke had said that perhaps I could save him. What did he mean? Could I prove him to be the man I thought he was, no matter what others believed? I did not know what to make of his sudden coldness to me, but it wounded me more than Delia’s sharp words. Maybe this was the true man, and not the one I had, perhaps, overimagined.

  After the speech, everyone mingled and I tried to make my way over to Luke. He looked up at me, and I smiled, but he did not smile back. Instead, he turned his back to me.

  I had not imagined it and I hadn’t misinterpreted it. He was avoiding me altogether. Baron Ashby saw me safely to our carriage, but we waited for quite some time, to the consternation of the other drivers, for Captain Whitfield to arrive; he had not traveled out with us but we would return to Headbourne together. When Whitfield did arrive he was accompanied by another soldier.

  “Miss Ravenshaw,” he said. “Allow me to introduce a fellow officer from my regiment, Captain William Chapman, of the Eleventh Hussars.”

  Captain Chapman took my hand in his and gestured a kiss on the back of the glove. He met my eyes with a slightly flirtatious look, and I smiled warmly, but impersonally, toward him. Captain Whitfield, to my surprise, did not make any personal conversation or eye contact with me but for a moment. In that moment, his eyes seemed guarded and hurting. I wanted to reach out and touch his cheek and chase that sorrow away.

  “Chapman is in town for a visit and I’ve offered him use of my accommodations, in the guesthouse, if that is acceptable to you?” His tone was even and friendly but impersonal.

  “It’s yours to do with as you wish while you remain, Captain Whitfield,” I said. Perfectly polite. Perfectly gentle. Perfectly awful. Why were we talking like this? It was clear by his posture and tone he did not care for Chapman and yet he was offering hospitality.

  A gentleman born.

  The carriage jostled and I lost my balance, momentarily. Whitfield instinctively reached out to steady me. He held my hand a moment longer than required, and love, truly, frissoned through our hands, but he said nothing and would not meet my eye again. We made painfully superficial conversation all the way home, which made me want to cry. Apparently I was not the only person who had decided to be guarded. Either that, or Luke had had a change of heart. If he’d ever really intended his heart for me.

  Soon we arrived at Headbourne House. Captain Chapman pointed to the two stone lions. “You know what they say, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to Luke, but I answered, to be polite. “I’m not aware of any colloquialism involving lions.”

  “Captain Whitfield has passed through them, I presume?” He fairly bubbled with mirth.

  I nodded.

  “The saying is, Miss Ravenshaw, that when a Hussar who is able to be faithful to one woman passes between two stone lions, they shall spring to life and run away.” He began to laugh, and I wondered if he’d had one too many sherries at the theater. “You’ll note that this has not yet transpired.”

  Whitfield looked as though he was about to speak, but I retorted more quickly.

  “Perhaps you should walk through them, then, Captain Chapman,” I said, “and we’ll all have the chance to see them in flight.” He again burst out laughing, and, for a moment, I saw a hint of a smile on Luke’s face. I did not smile back. It seemed an appropriate response for his recent coldness toward me.

  “Whitfield has kindly agreed to host some small parties and social gatherings while I’m in residence,” Captain Chapman began. “To reacquaint myself with people I don’t see often, and it should be a merry time. Perhaps you’d like to attend?”

  This time, Whitfield stepped in. “I don’t think they are the kinds of occasions that Miss Ravenshaw would find to her taste,” he said.

  “Thank you for the invitation,” I said to Chapman. “I have a great deal to attend to, so I shall have to regretfully decline.” A memory of our summer picnic floated forward.

  “It is good manners to respond to every invitation, Captain Whitfield, although the answer need not always be in the positive.”

  He laughed aloud and squeezed my hand for a moment. “You are delightful, you really are. It gives me great comfort, happiness, and peace to know you live so nearby. . . .”

  Daniel helped Mrs. Ross and me down from the carriage and I made my way up the stairs and into my room. I’d dismissed Michelene earlier that evening, preferring to prepare myself for bed instead. I watched as two carriages arrived, and several men and ladies, including older chaperones, arrived at the guesthouse. The presence of chaperones meant that at least one of the young women was unmarried. I lay down on the bed, curled on my side, and let tears slip from my eye, roll over my cheek, and slide onto the pillow where they pooled before I fell asleep. After some time I awoke and realized I had not undressed, though it was well past midnight.

  I reached into the drawer in the small bureau next to my bed, feeling for the small packet of Mother’s letters, which I’d placed there to be near me. I undid the thin ribbon holding the letters together. I wondered why they hadn’t been sent. They looked to have been written shortly after her marriage, well before Peter or I was born.

  Dearest Mother,

  Things are lovely here at Headbourne, only I miss you so. It has been a difficult adjustment, but Charles is constantly attentive and charming; I have only to mention the desire for something and he’ll see it done for me. He’s been speaking to me about attending the nonconforming church, and I readily admit it is a strange new thought. But I trust his judgment implicitly. I have no reason to question him, for anything, at any time. He is straightforward and true so I believe he will properly lead our little family in this way as well.

  Do give my love to Papa, and tell him that I am happy and that he has chosen well for me. I shall write again soon when I am feeling better. I’ve been unwell of late . . . ????

  Yours,

  Constance

  I read the other three letters; by the end, it was clear that she knew that she was expecting a child, my brother, Peter. I closed my eyes and
let the tears slide down my face again at the sweet voice of my mother. I could hear it, in the words on the page, in my heart and mind. I felt her hands on my little arms as a girl and kissing my cheeks as a young woman. I recalled her crying out in melancholy during our first years in India, her hair falling out. I remembered how it grew back, lush and thick and beautiful, only to turn stark gray in the year following Peter’s death.

  I opened my eyes, wiped them with the edge of my sleeve, and whispered, “Dearest Mummy. Things are not lovely here at Headbourne any longer, and I do miss you so.”

  I folded up the letters, running my hands over each one before tying the ribbon back around them, and thinking how she trusted Father implicitly, even when she could not understand. I stood to prepare for bed, but as I did, wandered over to the window. I wondered if I should see Captain Whitfield and Captain Chapman, but I did not. The additional carriages were still there, but there were many rooms on offer in the guesthouse, and perhaps Chapman’s friends were staying for a night or two.

  Whitfield’s business is his own, I thought, and not mine. Though I’d wished it would be, had hoped it would be. It did not make sense. I could not have so mixed up his intentions, nor the way we’d felt when we were together. Could I have? Perhaps this was yet another skill I’d missed whilst growing up in India.

  It was, for once, a night in which no mist rose from the ground, which was equally cold with the air. The late-September moon was full, and I could see, clearly, all the way to the graveyard.

  Wait. There was a man in the graveyard!

  I blew out my lamp so I could get closer to the window without being seen, and so that the light from my room would not blur my vision.

  It was Luke. Without a doubt. I had studied him, I knew him from afar. He had moved so that he faced the only perfectly straight grave in the graveyard; the others were leaning a bit to left or right, as graves did, when the ground heaved with age.

  It was her grave. The woman who had claimed to be me! Luke knelt before it, head resting on it. He pulled his head back to look at it from farther away, and then rested his head against it again. After two minutes or so, he began to turn around and I quickly drew my curtains so he would have no idea, I hoped, that I had been watching him.

  I undressed and slid beneath the bed linens. In earlier days, when I’d thought we were affectionate and close, I might have gone to him and asked. But not now. Things, after Delia’s ride with him, had somehow changed. I wasn’t sure what he intended for me, for us.

  What had he been doing out there?

  The next morning at breakfast, I asked Mrs. Blackwood, “Do Captain Chapman’s guests remain at the guesthouse?”

  “Yes, I believe so, for another day or so.” She looked at me pointedly. “Perhaps he’s catching up with acquaintances before leaving for foreign shores. Like Captain Whitfield.”

  After breakfast, I walked upstairs, where Michelene finished my hair. “I shall need some steady walking shoes,” I said. “I am going to visit Headbourne Chapel today.”

  Michelene dropped a pin. “Why is that, chérie? So sad, non?”

  “It is sad,” I agreed. “But it’s time.”

  She removed some of my clothing from the wardrobe. “To alter, in my room, and sponge press,” she said. Before she left, she replaced, in my chest of drawers, some gloves she had already mended and cleaned, including the beloved yellow pair from Matthew. I’d wear them, for courage.

  The autumn air was chill and I drew my shawl around me as I made my way down the steps and between the two stone lions. Had Chapman’s comment about the lions, and Luke, been but a jest? Dry leaves swirled around my feet as I passed the coach house, where Daniel laughed with some of the younger grooms. I should miss them, all of them, when they left. Perhaps they would want to stay on. I did not know how many I could afford to keep. It was probably high time I began to look into hiring my own small household. I’d send for Mr. Highmore and ask for his recommendations, and also for an accounting of my father’s investments. I needed to know what I had to live on.

  Several minutes later I arrived at the edge of the graveyard, which preceded the church, itself built of chalky stone. I was on the precipice of discovery, and, I somehow knew, at the point of no return.

  I moved forward, and touched a gravestone. I ran my finger over the name and date; it startled me to see my father’s name on a grave, Charles Ravenshaw. But of course it was not his, but that of a long-dead relative, perhaps his great-grandfather.

  I touched a few other stones and was relieved that I did not feel horror and darkness, but connection. They were my people. I was theirs. They belonged here. As did I.

  One did not.

  I walked just a little farther and finally faced the straight grave, not old enough yet to be subject to the freeze and thaw of the ground. The grass grew sparsely over it; it had had but one season, after all. The ground was flat and someone had planted a few small flowers to the side of it. I found that touching, someone had cared enough to see it was light and pretty. Cook, perhaps.

  But nothing could have prepared me to see the stone itself.

  REBECCA RAVENSHAW, 1834–1857

  DAUGHTER OF GOD, DAUGHTER OF INDIA,

  DAUGHTER OF HAMPSHIRE

  REST IN PEACE

  I ran my fingers over the name. Who had this woman been? Why had she died?

  For Headbourne, came a sharp whisper inside. She died for Headbourne. I knew that was right, fully believed it was truth with a certainty I could not shake.

  Below the name, I found something truly startling. The headstone had been somehow defaced. Something just below it had been scraped out. What had it said? Why had it been scraped out? Defacing a grave, even the grave of a suicide, was most unusual and strange. The back of my neck prickled.

  I walked into the church. The side door had swung open to the elements; leaves had blown in, to gather and clot and rot together. The stone crumbled here and there, leaving a chalky residue on the floor. The altar bowed with neglect. I should repair this, I thought, even if I continue to attend church in Winchester. I owe it to my family. Luke, who had done so much to complete the house renovations, had done nothing to the church. Call me Thomas, he’d said.

  I sat down on a pew. “Thomas, Thomas . . . Luke!” I whispered. “I loved you. I love you. Let me see your goodness with my own eyes.

  “His welcome when I first arrived, that was good,” I answered myself in the hush of the chapel. Or, perhaps he’d meant to trap me. Time and again, in actuality.

  “The sitar, that was goodness.” Ordered early on, as a test to prove you could not play.

  “The statue. The new carriage so I might attend church.” Both of which you might as well pay for, came the voice from the mazy fold.

  “The flowers, the blossoms, the hard kisses, our sign.” Charm is deceitful, Scripture was quoted.

  The laughter, the dance, the touch of his hand against me, the taking of my hair in his hand, gently.

  What about the glove? The tincture? The evil proverb written in henna? I turned my thoughts heavenward into a silent prayer. If it’s there, then, Lord, let me see, without a doubt, his dark, troubling character to which so many allude. Open my eyes so I may clearly see.

  Outside, I paused at her gravestone once more, reaching out to touch and trace. Dust came off on my finger. It had been defaced recently or the rain or mists would have washed it away.

  Last night, the night Luke had knelt before her gravestone, had been unusually dry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I sent a note to Mr. Highmore asking if he could come soon to meet with me, and his secretary replied that he was on holiday but could visit in a week’s time or thereabouts. I had slept restlessly since visiting the graveyard, I told Michelene a few nights on.

  “That’s to be expected, poupée,” Michelene cooed. “It’s very tr
oubling to see one’s name on a grave. To then know that someone was . . . left life too early. Well”—she snapped her fingers—“that would cause ill rest for anyone.”

  I nodded, unwilling to share with her the true nature of my unease. Did anyone else visit the graveyard? Unlikely, with the exception of, perhaps, Cook. So no one else would have noticed the scratchings. Had Captain Whitfield’s guests seen him leave for the chapel yard, so very, very late at night? Surely Thornton had noticed.

  Chapman’s guests were back again tonight; I’d seen two carriages arrive and Cook had sent over supper baskets.

  “Perhaps a little laudanum?” Michelene poured the golden cup nearly to the brim and handed it to me, waiting, it seemed, for me to drink it in front of her. “As I shall leave for my day off as soon as you are settled.”

  I set it down on the bureau and stared at it. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ll consider it later.”

  “I think it would be best.” Her voice was gentle and motherly, and she picked the cup up and handed it to me. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

  “I’ll take it in an hour’s time.” I had no intention whatsoever of taking the laudanum, in fact; in spite of its beguiling soporific charms, my mother’s warnings about not overusing laudanum had come back to me, and I felt the pull to drink it perhaps too often. I must push away now or begin to be ruled by it.

  “All right, then,” she said, brushing out my hair. “Make certain you do. And then soon, very soon, we shall return to Winchester together to pick up your fancy outfit for the ball, n’est-ce pas?”

  I nodded. Attending the Ledburys’ ball was much less enticing now that things had cooled between Luke and me. He had not dined in the house since his ride with Delia. There had been no socializing at Headbourne, no invitations extended to me. He’d had guests, and was busy preparing to depart. He had, in the main, kept out of my way. I would do likewise.