by L. K. Rigel
The estrangement seemed so trivial now. Lizzie would be nineteen, maybe married. Perhaps Susan and Morgan could visit Lizzie and her husband on their wedding trip and establish a friendship.
She listed her father’s achievements and assured her grandfather that John Gray was admired in the county and loved by all who knew him. She hoped in some small way it would mitigate the pain he must feel, knowing he’d forever lost the ability to reconcile with his son.
Perhaps that would make him more eager to see Susan’s brother, young John, now his heir. John and Mama would go to live at Grayside, and Susan’s uncle by marriage would have to accept it. That, at least, Susan could be glad of. John spent far too much time with the tenant farmers of Millam. Their grandfather would send him to a proper school and have him turned out as a proper gentleman.
She closed up the ink with a twinge of guilt. It was disloyal to Papa’s memory to second-guess his distrust of boarding schools. He’d educated her himself well enough, but she felt a boy needed more from education than the stuff found in books, the opportunity to meet other young fellows of his class. John would be a gentleman. He should learn how to act like one.
It was strange to be thinking of wedding trips, of renewing an acquaintance with her cousin, and now of John going to school and Mama comfortable at Grayside. In a way, Papa’s death had set Susan free.
***
Morgan didn’t come to the cottage that evening or the next day, and he didn’t answer her note. She saw him three days later at her father’s graveside. During the rector’s brief remarks, Morgan acknowledged her with an emotionless nod.
Afterwards, he tipped his hat to Mama and turned away from them.
“Mr. Baker.” Susan curtsied. Morgan’s curls fell forward, and she very nearly reached up to brush them out of his eyes. His coolness stopped her and sent a jolt of pain through her heart.
“Miss Gray.” He looked through her, as if his gaze found no purchase, as if he had never looked into her soul. As if they were strangers to each other. He nodded to her brother. “John. My condolences on your tragic loss.”
“Morgan.” Susan felt her face burn. But didn’t she have the right to speak his Christian name? “We’ve missed you the last few days.”
“Couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. There is much to do at the locks.” He replaced his hat and nodded. “Well. Goodbye.” He walked away.
It made no sense. “Morgan!” She followed him, ignoring the stares and whispers from the gathered mourners. At the last gravestone, Morgan stopped. His impatience made her sick to her stomach. What was happening?
“Miss Gray.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Is there some service I can render your poor family?”
“What’s wrong, Morgan? Why did you not come to see me?”
She followed his nervous glance to the navvies bunched together at the fresh grave, hats crushed in their work-worn hands and tears streaming down their faces. Mr. Davies from the bookshop not far from them with the rector. They quickly looked away, embarrassed.
Susan’s stomach turned again. They were embarrassed for her.
“Mr. Baker.” She couldn’t stop herself. “You were going to speak to my father.”
“But that’s all changed now, isn’t it? You have no father.”
“What…Morgan, what are you saying?”
“Nothing. We can have nothing to say to each other.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I’ve considered my position carefully. I was bewitched by your strange gray eyes. But now I’ve come to my senses. I’ll not degrade myself with a…”
She steadied herself against the headstone.
“I wish you no harm,” he said. “I mean to say nothing about what passed between us. But neither will I be dragged into the gutter.”
With a lift in his step as if he’d survived battle with a dragon, he jumped into the curricle from Millam Hall, Papa’s curricle, and drove away toward the mansion.
The next afternoon a reply arrived to Susan’s letter to her grandfather, not written by the old gentleman but by her uncle. He sent no condolences, no words of comfort, no welcome to the new heir.
My Dear Miss Gray,
I can only imagine what your father must have told you, but let me assure you your assumptions are quite misplaced. If there was ever a legal union between John Gray and your unfortunate mother, I invite you to produce the proof.
You will not find it.
In short, as a bastard, your brother is heir to nothing.
Furthermore, on the very day your letter arrived, a Mr. Morgan Baker of Carleson Peak called at Grayside to introduce himself. When he apprised me of our impending relationship through marriage, I was obliged to make him aware of the circumstances of your own birth, thus saving him from a most injurious connection.
If you insist upon passing yourself off as a respectable member of this family, I must continue to expose the wretched truth. Do not write to me again, nor to any of the inhabitants of Grayside.
Mortimer Caversham
Mama was of no use. She couldn’t remember the town where she and Papa were married or name the church where the banns were read.
Susan’s pitiful little family, like cast-out angels, had fallen far from heaven.
He said out of respect for John Gray—though Susan suspected it was because of his innate goodness—Millie, now Duke of Gohrum, found a woman in Bath to let Mama a room and a place for John with one of his tenants at Millam. John would learn farming and land management. If he did well, he could hope one day to be land agent for the Gohrum properties.
The duke offered to find Susan a governess position which she refused. She imagined her uncle finding her out and exposing her as a bastard. She couldn’t bear the humiliation.
“I’ll think of something.”
“There is a position at Gohrum House in London, first assistant housekeeper,” the duke said. “It would ease my mind to know you were in a secure place.”
Her pride screamed against it, but she forced herself to consider. Gohrum House was in St. James Square. London would be fascinating. She’d be a member of the upper staff, respected. In many grand houses, the housekeeper was related to the family.
“Thank you, your grace.” It was the only logical answer. “I would be most grateful.”
The day after their mother left for Bath, John drove Susan down to Carleson Peak in the dogcart and left her to wait at the Leopard & Grape for the mail coach to London. Squire Carleson was waiting there for someone arriving on the coach, and he offered Susan his condolences. He was a vulgar old man who reeked of tobacco. He meant to be kind, but it was a physical relief when the coach arrived and he hurried away to greet his guest.
While the driver loaded Susan’s trunk, she found a place inside between a tiny bespectacled older gentleman and a fat young cleric wearing a nuisance of a hat. She had a clear view of the inn door not six feet away when Morgan Baker stepped out into the street.
“Good morning, Mr. Baker.” Susan recognized the bookseller’s voice. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Yes, Mr. Davies,” Morgan said. “The new Duke of Gohrum has asked me to take on the duties of poor Mr. Gray.”
“And will you be leaving the Leopard & Grape?”
“I will indeed, Mr. Davies. His grace has invited me to take Millam Cottage.”
The horses startled and the coach lurched forward, drawing Morgan’s attention. His eyes met Susan’s, but he looked straight through her as if she wasn’t there. As if she had never been there.
Hair Grows
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Elizabeth Caversham held out a handful of her straight black hair and picked up the shears from her dressing table. In another part of the house, her spaniel Huldah barked with glee as Papa yelled at the footmen taking a trunk to the carriage. Huldah yelped, and Elizabeth knew the poor creature had come too close to Papa’s boot.
She put the shears to work.
She’d chopped o
ff her hair once before, years ago during the Terror in France. The newspaper had carried a ghastly account of a minor aristocratic family sent to the guillotine all together. As the tumbrel wound through the jeering crowds, the two little daughters cried and hid their faces in their hands—not in fear, the journalist reported, but because their hair had been shorn. They didn’t understand where the cart was taking them.
Elizabeth had thrown the newspaper into the fire and cut her own hair to the nape of her neck. It wasn’t rebellion or defiance—Papa understood nothing. It was a desperate grab at control over the chaos.
Papa had sent this glass to her room. He ordered Elizabeth to contemplate her repulsive features each day before going down to breakfast. He taunted her and pulled her hair in front of the servants.
“It grows,” he’d say, sneering.
She was almost free of him. Today she and Pitman were to take the mail coach to her new home. She’d replace Papa’s certain brutality with the unknown quantity of a husband she’d never met—in Carleson Peak, of all places. If only Uncle John hadn’t been murdered, she would have had friends to greet her.
She wondered what her odd cousin Susan was like now. Were her eyes the same light gray? Did she still believe in fairies?
“What an opinionated little girl you were,” Elizabeth said to her image in the glass. “You may have believed in fairies, but you never did approve of them.”
Sadly, Susan wouldn’t be her companion in Carleson Peak. With the news of the murder, Papa had also disclosed the shocking fact that Uncle John had never married his lover. The disgraced family would be gone from Carleson Peak before Elizabeth arrived.
She put down the shears. Her husband-to-be would not find her handsome, and that gave her some satisfaction. Her features were as angular as ever, and her eyes had darkened to a jewel-like sapphire blue. Her straight black hair stuck out in odd places, now a mere inch or two in its longer patches. Her freckles had long faded, a few still scattered across her nose.
The man she was to marry, Squire Carleson of Laurelwood, was forty-five years old and had no heir. She was almost twenty, with no hope of any local marriage that would suit papa’s grand self-image, so it had been decided she would do to breed the squire a son. The Banns had been properly read in both Carleson Peak and in Grayside Chapel, and that was that.
Elizabeth’s maid Pitman came to announce that the carriage was ready. “Oh, Miss Elizabeth. What have you done?” She brushed the remaining hair off Elizabeth’s shoulders, shaking her head.
“It is done, Pitman.” Elizabeth stood up. She didn’t give the room a last look.
In the courtyard mama sobbed quietly as usual, the pathetic creature. Papa complained about the cost of the coach for two women and their belongings.
“Papa, as Squire Carleson has borne the expense and it is nothing to you, I don’t know why you complain.”
Papa glared. He seemed ready to strike her one last time. She smiled, ready to provoke him. She’d developed a perverse sense of satisfaction when he struck her. It meant he’d lost self-control. It meant she was the one with the power.
Do it. I want you to.
But Pitman stepped between them. The footman opened the carriage door and pulled down the steps. Pitman shoved Elizabeth inside, stumbling over both their skirts as she followed. The carriage pulled away, but Papa had to have the last word. He ran along beside the open window.
“Hair grows.” Papa’s impotent snarl hung on the air.
Elizabeth gasped. She hadn’t looked at him—really looked at him—in years. Gray coursed through his black hair. The lines on his face were deep and relentless. He was out of breath. Sometime soon, Papa would die. The world would go on, and he would not be in it.
The thought provoked such sublime joy in Elizabeth’s heart that she burst out laughing. Papa stopped in his tracks with a confounded expression.
The uneventful half-hour drive to the coach house was punctuated by distant thunder. “Let’s have a pot of chocolate while we wait,” Elizabeth said.
She took a table near the window while Pitman put in their order. Outside, the Grayside carriage disappeared around a corner, and with a shock Elizabeth realized she might never see her home again.
“I wish I could have brought Huldah,” she told Pitman. “I will miss nothing else.”
They traveled for three days, stopping to eat and change horses. Twice they had to get out and walk while the coach navigated steep or soggy patches in the road. Carleson Peak—oddly named—was in a lovely little valley. The coach left them at a public house called the Leopard and Grape where Squire Carleson waited.
He was heavy and smelled of sweat and tobacco. There was no intelligence in his face, but Elizabeth saw no cruelty there either. He took her directly to the church, though her eyes were crossing with exhaustion.
If Carleson was old, the rector was ancient. The cleric collected his book with plodding deliberation and began a slow march through the ceremony. His teeth did not fit; a bit of drool slid out the corner of his mouth. Elizabeth couldn’t hear the words. She was too occupied by the drool rolling down the rector’s chin.
She didn’t realize she’d been bound by God to her lord and master until the church bells rang—a strangely beautiful sound in the nightmarish scene. They walked out of the church into the day’s fading light. It felt like a perversion of a fairy tale. Such a lovely world, and she was suddenly married to the goblin.
A gaggle of children descended upon the happy couple, but the squire had nothing for them. “Bad luck,” he grumbled, genuinely embarrassed to have forgotten to put a few coins in his pocket.
“Perhaps not.” Elizabeth was seized by the idea it truly would be bad luck to emerge from the ceremony empty-handed. “Pitman, my stocking purse.”
Her maid removed a tubular bag made of knitted blue silk and decorated with tiny pearls from her blouse sleeve. She’d carried the purse during their journey, as the less likely object of pickpockets and scoundrels. Elizabeth handed over to her new husband the little fortune she’d saved for the last two years. She’d meant to keep it hidden, insurance against his miserliness, but something told her that would be the least of her worries.
“Good girl,” Squire Carleson muttered. He spoke kindly, and he tossed the coins to the children with real joy. But oh, he smelled bad.
Laurelwood Church was on Squire Carleson’s estate southeast of Carleson Peak. A quarter mile past the church rectory an open carriage carrying the squire, Pitman, and Elizabeth, arrived at the courtyard of Laurelwood’s great house. It was twilight. Early stars twinkled overhead, and torches blazed to welcome them.
“Oh, this is much larger than Grayside,” Pitman said with approval and, Elizabeth thought, not a little relief.
In the fading light it was difficult to assess the house’s condition, but it appeared very old and not at all clean. Inside plentiful lamps and candles burned—no scrimping on that score. The paneled walls were stained dark, and the carpets were brownish gray, either by design or from accumulated dust and age.
The squire led Elizabeth on a partial tour of the house. The great room’s fireplace took up most of one wall, the fire lit and roaring. A large dining hall looked unused. A smaller room was furnished for more intimate dining, the table set for two and wiped clean of dust.
A room on the far end of the house had a desk in the corner and two comfortable-looking chairs in front of a charming, crackling fire. “My son will have an education.” Carleson waved at the leather volumes that covered one wall. “I’ll send him to Oxford when the time comes.”
More interesting than books was the view through the picture window, a lake visible in the dwindling light. A crescent moon hung above a silhouetted oak at the lake’s edge. Elizabeth nearly retched at the smell when Carleson put his hand on her waist and stood close behind her. The moon disappeared, covered by a cloud.
“This is your room,” he said. “You can sit by the fire and sew pretties and keep the house
hold accounts at the desk here.”
“It’s very fine, Squire.” She didn’t know if she should call him Squire or Mr. Carleson. He didn’t seem to have a preference.
They returned to the small dining room. Carleson rushed through the meal while Elizabeth pushed tasteless boiled potatoes around her plate, too tired to eat. She let her mind wander over details of the household. How large was the staff? How much trouble would the housekeeper be after so much time running things her own way? Pitman would be an ally there. No doubt the two were having a frank discussion at this very moment.
Carleson’s hair, riddled with gray, must have once been dark chocolate brown. He had the look of fading vitality, but she couldn’t imagine he’d ever been handsome. He was overly heavy, fat upon muscle. His skin was wrinkled and weather-beaten. Either he worked his land with his own hands, or he spent a good deal of time on other outdoor pursuits.
He dropped his fork with a clatter and pushed back his chair. Without ceremony, he took her hand and led her to his room. Again she forced down a gag reflex. The air was heavy with tobacco and who knew what else.
“Might we have the window open?” It sounded so formal, so impersonal. So out of place with what was about to happen. But she needed to breathe, and not just fresh air. She wanted to put some space between them, to delay what was coming if only a few seconds longer.
As Carleson reached the window, a flash of light illuminated the grounds outside and a crack of thunder rattled the window panes followed by the sound of a heavy downpour. He looked at Elizabeth apologetically. There would be no fresh air. There was kindness in him, and she was glad of it, but it wasn’t in her to pretend enthusiasm.
Another flash of lightning lit the room. “You’re like a boy.” He ran his hand over her hair. And then his other hand was on her breast. He smiled. “But not quite.”
