Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Shall I summon the doctor?”

  “No, don’t bother anyone.” He tried to sit up, but he fell back upon the cushions, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with anger and reproach. “Marriage was to be my salvation. You don’t know what you’ve done. You don’t know.”

  “I haven’t done anything. We’re still engaged, if that’s truly what you want.” When he only shook his head, she clasped his hand and held it to her heart. “I only meant to release you, if you wished to be released. Please, forgive me.”

  She yearned for him to assure her that he wanted with all his heart to marry her, but he merely nodded.

  Afterward, he made no attempt to explain his alarming collapse, nor did he apologize for his odd behavior. Instead he cut his visit short by several days. On the morning of his departure he bade her parents a curt farewell and offered no kind words or assurances to his bewildered fiancée. Annabella followed him outside to his carriage wringing her hands, afraid to speak rather than say something that would make the dreadful parting even worse.

  At the last moment, he turned about on his good leg and glowered at her. “I have grave doubts about our marriage,” he said brusquely. He took her hand, bowed stiffly over it, and climbed aboard the carriage, leaving Annabella breathless from shock and confusion. She mulled over his words as the carriage disappeared down the drive behind a stand of trees, but she could make no sense of them. Were they still engaged? Had he broken it off? She hardly knew what to think, and she always knew what to think.

  Her renowned confidence shaken, she sent letters after him to London, apologies, explanations, declarations of love. “I would rather share distress with you than escape it without you,” she confessed in one last, desperate plea for reconciliation.

  He broke his silence with a letter sent from Boroughbridge. “My heart,” he addressed her, raising her hopes only to dash them immediately after. “We are thus far separated—but after all one mile is as bad as a thousand—which is a great consolation to one who must travel six hundred before he meets you again. If it will give you any satisfaction—I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes—and as cold as Charity—Chastity or any other Virtue.”

  The thought of his suffering comforted her only very little.

  “I expect to reach Newstead tomorrow and Augusta the day after,” he continued. “Present to our parents as much of my love as you like to part with—& dispose with the rest as you please.”

  His tone was wearily acerbic as he spoke of her disposing of his love—but his reference to her mother and father as “our parents” surely meant he intended to marry her.

  Their correspondence resumed its former regularity, their letters increasingly warm and affectionate, as by unspoken agreement they said nothing of the calamitous weeks at Seaham.

  As the year drew to a close, Annabella became increasingly worried about Byron’s reluctance to set a date for their nuptials. “It would be very difficult under these circumstances to fix a precise date for my return,” he insisted, reminding her of his determination to sell his ancestral estate and clear his debts before taking a wife.

  “We need not delay until you sell Newstead Abbey,” she replied. “We will have my marriage settlement, and we can get by on a very small income, making do with only one horse and one carriage, and receiving only that quiet society which I think we both prefer.” She meant that he ought to prefer it, as she did. She knew he loved revelry, the theatre, drinking parties, flirtations, but she hoped to teach him better habits. “I will be content, darling, as long as we live within our means, for as you know I abhor debt.”

  She refuted every argument for delay, and so at last the date of the wedding was set for the second of January 1815. Impatiently Annabella awaited Byron’s return to Seaham, knowing from his last letter that he had set out from London on 24 December accompanied by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, his best man and closest friend since his years at Trinity College. Five days later the gentlemen still had not arrived, compelling Annabella to refer to Byron’s letter several times to verify the date, and provoking an anxious Lady Judith to again take to her bed.

  At last, late in the evening of 30 December, a coach pulled up the drive and surrendered its passengers at the front door. Annabella had already retired to her bedchamber when a maid announced their arrival, but she hastily dressed and hurried downstairs to meet them. Turning swiftly down the hallway, she nearly crashed into Byron, standing alone in the foyer, pale and unsmiling, as if he had forgotten the errand that had brought him there.

  “Byron, at last,” she cried, flinging her arms around him.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, patting her on the back, frowning in bemusement. “You almost make me wish I’d stayed in the carriage.”

  Quickly she composed herself and escorted him to the drawing room, where they interrupted her father affably querying another man about how a simple journey from London in decent weather should have taken nearly a week.

  “Darling,” said Byron, indicating the gentleman, “allow me to introduce my great friend, Sir John Hobhouse, without whom I would not be standing before you tonight, but rather drinking my cares away in some tavern along the Great North Road. Damn you,” he added to Hobhouse affectionately.

  His friend grinned back, but one glance at Annabella and his smile quickly faded. He was not as handsome as Byron, his brown hair thinner, his cheeks fuller, his features less regular. He had a Roman nose and a small, pursed mouth, and as they quickly sized each other up, she detected puzzlement in the slight furrow of his brow. She could only guess what Byron had told his friend about her, but evidently she was not what he had expected.

  She invited them to sit and offered tea but called for brandy when Byron requested it. They chatted politely while the men drank, but not even her father’s genial remarks could dispel the tension in the room. Annabella said little rather than risk blurting the question she most wanted answered: If Hobhouse deserved the credit for delivering Byron to Seaham, did he also merit censure for their absurdly leisurely pace?

  Perhaps sensing her indignation, Hobhouse downed the last of his brandy and rose. “I beg you to excuse me,” he said, bowing to her and to her father, “but I’m exhausted from the journey, and I must retire.”

  “Of course, of course.” Stiff from the late hour and the cold, Sir Ralph hauled himself up from his armchair. “I’ll show you to your room.”

  “Good night, Sir John,” Annabella added, managing a thin smile.

  As Sir Ralph led Hobhouse from the room, Byron suddenly bolted from his chair and wrapped his friend in a fierce embrace. Annabella looked away, muffling a sigh and pretending to ignore Hobhouse’s murmurs, which had a tone of steeling a comrade for battle.

  Reluctantly Byron released his friend and watched him go. “Well, my dear,” he said when they were alone, offering Annabella a crooked smile, “now it is only we two.”

  His words would have evoked a thrill of anticipation if they had not been weighed down with resignation.

  Annabella badly wanted an explanation and an apology, but she refused to nag Byron for them, so when it became apparent that none was forthcoming, she bade him good night, hoping that a good night’s sleep would improve his mood. To her relief, the next morning she found that some of the tension had indeed eased overnight, and thanks to the jovial Sir Ralph, breakfast was a cheerful affair. As her father regaled their guests with amusing stories, Annabella felt the muscles of her neck and shoulders relaxing, the dull headache that had plagued her for days easing. She laughed aloud at a joke Byron made, and after breakfast, she and Hobhouse shared a pleasant, unaffected conversation as she escorted him on a tour of Seaham.

  That evening the wedding party rehearsed the ceremony in the drawing room, with a few friends and family providing an affectionate audience. A mischievous impulse inspired Annabella and Hob
house to switch places, so that Byron pledged his troth to his best friend, who wore a lace shawl over his head in place of a veil, and simpered and feigned reluctance until the room echoed with laughter. At midnight, they all wished one another a happy New Year, drank toasts, sang fond old tunes, and agreed that the holiday was an auspicious occasion indeed to embark upon the seas of matrimony.

  But the following day, the eve of the wedding, all frivolity vanished and apprehension descended upon the household like a heavy fog, chill and obscuring. At dinner, conversation was forced and abrupt, and when they retired for the night, Byron embraced Hobhouse and clung to him as he had on the night of his arrival, and when he finally tore himself away, he bade his friend such a mournful good night, it was as if he never expected to see him again.

  The following morning, Annabella woke at dawn to the sound of distant gunshots. “Were there poachers in the woods this morning?” she asked Mrs. Clermont when she bustled in to help her wash and dress.

  “Not that I know of, dear,” she replied, shaking out Annabella’s chemise and avoiding her gaze.

  “I heard a pistol fire, not once but several times.” Annabella threw her former governess a quizzical look as she went to the basin to wash her face. “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Mrs. Clermont replied, which didn’t mean that she didn’t know.

  Annabella pried the story out of her mother at breakfast. When she asked why Byron and Hobhouse had not joined them at the table, she learned that Byron had risen before dawn and had gone out to stalk around the grounds, and at the sound of gunshots Hobhouse had gone after him. He had found Byron wandering idly about, setting his glove upon stumps, fence posts, and tree branches and firing his pistol at the makeshift target.

  “They’re taking breakfast in Lord Byron’s room,” her mother said, “after which they’ll dress for the wedding.”

  “I see,” said Annabella, although she was still trying to make sense of it.

  “My dear,” her father said, peering at her from the head of the table, “you do realize that you don’t have to go through with this?”

  “Ralph,” Lady Judith exclaimed.

  “You don’t, Annabella.”

  “Of course I must go through with it.” She inhaled deeply, glanced at her plate, and pushed it away, her appetite fled. “Think of the scandal. I offered to release him once, but he was overcome with distress and made it clear that I should not suggest it again. And I want to marry Byron. I love him. Everything will be fine once we’re married and he learns to conform to my wishes, as he has promised.”

  Her parents exchanged a long, wordless glance, her mother sighed, and they went on with breakfast as if the disconcerting suggestion had never been made.

  Soon thereafter she and her mother and Mrs. Clermont withdrew to her bedchamber, where they arranged her hair and dressed her in a simple lace-trimmed gown with a white muslin jacket. “You look lovely, my darling girl,” her mother proclaimed, her voice trembling. Dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, she took Annabella by the hand and steadily told her what she might expect from her husband that night in the marriage bed. Annabella listened carefully, for it was all quite astonishing and she had much to learn if she did not want to disappoint him.

  “Lord Byron is a man of the world,” Lady Judith concluded. “He won’t expect you to know what to do, and he’ll take pleasure in instructing you.”

  Annabella nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. Her mother gave her one last, lingering embrace and hurried off to take her place in the drawing room.

  “Let’s give them another quarter of an hour,” Mrs. Clermont proposed, and Annabella nodded again. She dared not sit and wrinkle her gown, so she went to the window, her heart thudding hollowly in her chest. A thin layer of icy snow shrouded the lawn, and a fine carriage waited in the drive to whisk the newlyweds off on their honeymoon, which they would spend at Halnaby Hall, her father’s country house near Darlington in North Yorkshire. Secluded and comfortable, far from the prying eyes of curious folk craving glimpses of the famous couple, Halnaby would offer them a private sanctuary in which to begin their married life in happiness, harmony, and peace.

  Just then a pair of footmen emerged from the house carrying her trunk to the carriage, and suddenly their resemblance to undertakers carrying a coffin to a hearse struck her with such force that her throat constricted until she almost could not breathe. “Water, please,” she rasped, shaken, and Mrs. Clermont hastened to bring her a glass.

  At the appointed time, Mrs. Clermont escorted Annabella downstairs to the drawing room, where a small circle of close friends and family had gathered for the ceremony. Annabella’s gaze fell first upon her parents, who smiled back with shining eyes, and then upon the Reverend Thomas Noel, nodding encouragingly at the far end of the room, and lastly upon her bridegroom, breathtakingly handsome and elegantly attired in a morning suit of charcoal gray and a white silk cravat. He was not looking in her direction when she entered, his head bowed close to Hobhouse’s ear until Hobhouse spotted her and gave Byron a little nudge. He turned his head her way, straightened, and offered her something between a fond smile and a rueful grimace.

  Two kneeling mats had been placed upon the floor before Reverend Noel, and remembering the comical rehearsal, Annabella half expected Hobhouse to take her place upon one of them. But he stepped back as Mrs. Clermont led her forward, and before Annabella knew it, she was reciting her vows in a clear, steady voice, her eyes locked on Byron’s. He spoke in his turn, more hesitantly.

  By eleven o’clock, it was done. They exchanged a chaste kiss, and outside, just within the front gate, a six-gun salute announced the news to the world.

  As tears of relief and joy filled Annabella’s eyes, Byron squeezed her hands and gave her a look that she had seen once before, in the eyes of a bear pacing in its cage. “You have me now,” the look said, “but you had better pray these iron bars hold.”

  Overcome, she fled the room, only to remember with a start that she must return to sign the register. Byron wordlessly passed her the pen, and miraculously her hand did not tremble as she wrote her name. She was Lady Byron now, she thought distantly, and it seemed she could feel the blood draining from her face.

  After a subdued wedding luncheon, where the toasts rang hollow and the carefully prepared delicacies tasted like sawdust in her mouth, Mrs. Clermont accompanied her upstairs to change into her traveling clothes—a warm dove-gray dress of fine wool and a slate-gray cape. When she descended, her father escorted her outside to the carriage, too heartily proclaiming her the loveliest bride he had ever seen and declaring that her future was certain to be joyful and prosperous. Thick flakes of snow had begun to fall, so her parents quickly returned inside, leaving her alone in the carriage to examine the wedding gift Hobhouse had left on the seat, a volume of Byron’s poems bound in yellow morocco leather.

  The carriage rocked as Byron climbed in, and after seating himself across from her, he put his hand out the window to seize Hobhouse’s. With a lurch the carriage set off, but Byron would not release his friend’s hand, so Hobhouse ran alongside the carriage as it moved down the drive. Just as Annabella was about to urge Byron to let go, their grasp was broken, and Byron sank back into his seat, disconsolate.

  Mortified by his profound lack of joy, Annabella turned her gaze to the window, where heavy flakes were falling thick and fast, obscuring the landscape. As they passed through the town of Durham, a few miles west of home, the rich, glorious bells of the Durham Cathedral rang out in celebration and greeting.

  “Ringing for our happiness, I suppose?” said Byron, his voice acid. They were the first words he had spoken since he had climbed into the carriage.

  “They surely are,” said Annabella. “The people know which carriage to watch for.”

  He fixed her with a malignant stare. “You do understand that I married you only because I must marry someone,
and you have a fortune?”

  Her heart thudded, but she kept her voice even. “I hope my fortune was only one of many appealing virtues.”

  “Ah! Virtue! Yes, you are the very Viceroy of Virtue, the Princess of Parallelograms.” He peeled off his gloves, clenched them in a fist, and slapped them against his knee. “If you had married me when I first asked, two years ago, you might have saved me. You could have molded me into a paragon of righteousness in your own image. But now—” He shook his head, frowning. “Those two years have ruined me.”

  “Ruined you?” she exclaimed, shocked. “How so? You’ve never been more successful or, I daresay, more beloved.”

  “It is enough that they have, and it is all your fault, for refusing me.”

  “I didn’t believe your first proposal was in earnest, and . . . I felt differently then.” She could not bring herself to mention Lady Caroline Lamb or her dire warnings, for after they were engaged Byron had confessed, or perhaps boasted was a better word for it, that he and her cousin’s wife had been lovers—explaining, too late, William’s reluctance to introduce her to Byron. “What does that matter now? I did accept, we are now married, we love each other—”

  “We most assuredly do not.”

  For a moment she could not breathe. “Don’t be unkind, not today. Don’t fall into one of your dark moods.”

  “All of my moods are dark.” He fixed her with a look of bleak despair. “I’m afraid you’ll soon discover that you’ve married a devil.”

  She clasped her hands together beneath her cape and held herself as still as marble. “I don’t believe it, despite your devilish behavior now, which I blame on the excitement of the day and shall forgive. Surely you haven’t forgotten that I did offer to release you from our engagement. You have no one but yourself to blame for your current predicament.”

  He barked out a laugh, and for the rest of the forty-mile journey, he shifted between brooding in silence, muttering caustic remarks, and wildly singing Albanian folk songs he had learned on his travels. She replied with cool, reproachful glances, knowing that anything she said would only inflame his temper.