by Bianca Bloom
With a great sigh, I turned to him, refusing to discuss intimate matters at the breakfast table. “Very well. You may.”
He kissed the top of my nose. “Why has that cost you so much, dear Marion? If anything, your days will be easier now that I am occupied. Without anything to do, I cannot be pried from your side.”
I gave a little laugh. “Well, yes. I suppose it’s that Frannie is leaving, and I wanted to be more busy. I don’t particularly like too much leisure.”
“Well then, perhaps my taking on this responsibility will leave you more free to do other things, darling.”
I sighed. “Yes. Perhaps.”
He turned to leave, and I burst out, “But could I not go over today to check on them? I will give you a full report, and I’ll tell our tenants they are to report to you, too.”
This provoked only a hearty laugh from my husband. “Yes, sweet Marion, if you wish it. But after today, don’t go sneaking back to them.”
I turned red when he said it. “No, of course not.”
50
Sneaking back would have been a rather perfect description. For as I was walking over the hills, looking for the first farm where I would be able to see any sheep, I ran straight into Adam Taylor.
“My darling,” he said, drawing me to him. “I thought you would never come! I have been waiting for an hour, and have already sinned with the apprehension.”
I stood still. “You are returned from London, then?”
He laughed. “Oh little Lady Bell, there is nobody about and you need not pretend that you had forgotten. You promised me when we were with those disgusting snuff boxes that you would meet me today, and I knew you would keep your promise.”
Indeed, I had forgotten all about the words I threw at Adam to keep him away from me.
“I must leave,” I told him. “I am to meet my tenant farmers. Indeed, I quite forgot about our meeting.”
He scoffed. “And you do not intend to please yourself? That is not the Marion Bell I know.”
“Well, you no longer know me very well, Mr. Taylor,” I told him. “Perhaps it is time that we parted ways.”
His mouth fell open. “Indeed, it is not,” he told me. “You may have spurned me for that Bell idiot, but I had no choice in the matter. And it was easy for me to see that you did not marry him for love.”
I twisted out of his arms, but he continued to hold both my hands.
“And if we had married, it would have been for love?” I asked him, wondering for a moment what he might say.
I recalled his reaction when Gilbert had died. He had been panicked, not at all willing to move forward with an engagement, all too ready to throw me over if he could have only found himself another rich prospect.
“Of course it would have been for love,” he wheedled. “Marion, I must say, today you look even more beautiful than I have ever seen you, and I am quite enraptured. How many times have I declared my love for you? Surely you have not forgotten.”
“Then prove it,” I hissed at him. “Tell me that there was once a time when you meant to marry me. Tell me that you’ve come up with the money with which you shall repay me.”
He was silent for a moment, but then he laughed. “You’ve got me there, my Marion. But you must admit that you still desire me.”
And with that, he pulled me down to the ground, where he covered my face and neck and kisses. “Stop,” I hissed at him, and I had said it so many times before when I was not serious that he did not seem to believe me.
Either that, or he simply did not care, which scared me. “Stop,” I told him, and then heard it from another’s mouth. “Stop.”
Hamilton Bell was standing above both of us, glowering down at the sight of his wife and her lover in the grass.
51
If I ever had any doubt about Adam Taylor’s true character, that afternoon would have been enough to assure me that my more recent judgements had been absolutely correct. He was up and running down the hill before my husband could say a word to him, leaving me there alone to deal with the consequences of both our actions.
I felt as if I were being pilloried, forced to stand on the spot where I had so often met Adam Taylor when I was married. At that time, I had convinced myself that it was simply a way to punish Gilbert for going off to India and abandoning me. But now I felt how wrong it was. For in giving so much of my heart to Adam, I had not only betrayed my husband.
I had cast pearls before swine. I had betrayed myself.
At first there were no words from either of us. Tears of shock started to flow immediately for me, but before I could speak, Hamilton held up a hand to silence me.
“I would like a divorce.”
They were shocking words, and something I had never imagined hearing from any husband, not even in that moment. A divorce was unthinkable. The shame and expense would follow both of us, not to mention my daughters, for all our lives.
What was more, I knew that Hamilton loved me.
“You must not,” I pleaded with him. “Listen, please!”
But he would not let me speak. “You can arrange the carriage. Have Esther tell me when we leave for Glasgow. You can keep all the property, even the house. I care not. I’ll see it as the price for the idiocy of trusting my whole life to a woman again.”
He ran down the hill far too quickly for me to follow.
52
When first I threw up my own breakfast, I thought it must be from the shock. After all, it wasn’t every day that I was threatened with divorce. All of a sudden, my family’s position was even worse than it had been when Gilbert had died. At least then we had respectability. After a divorce, we would have nothing.
When I went into the house, I avoided all of my daughters. I would have to put on a brave face for them, and was determined to say nothing before I obtained the divorce itself. With Frances thinking that she could afford to go to London and Flora finally recovering from the way that Peter Taylor jilted her, a family tragedy was not something that would be well received in the household.
I went to my husband’s door. Surely now everyone in the household knew that things had cooled between us. If anything, my daughters would likely be the last to know. I had always marveled at that aspect of living in a great house. With so many servants, the owner had a great deal of power but very little privacy. Every family quarrel was open for public consumption, every horrid secret ripe for discovery.
When his door did not open, I sought out my own room, where I lost the breakfast. It was amazing how heartsickness took less than an hour to provoke real, bodily consequences. I asked Esther to deal with the mess, hoping that after a day of rest I might feel well able to face Hamilton again. Even though I did not leave my room for the rest of the day, I knew I should not be able to hide there forever.
But a day passed and I felt worse. I did not need a doctor to finally recognize the feeling. I had not experienced it since I carried Grace, and I was sickened by the knowledge that I was old and soon to be unwed. Once I had married in order to avoid of the scandal of having fatherless children as a young, unmarried girl. Soon I was going to bear a child as an old woman abandoned by her latest husband.
I was not sure which pregnancy had inspired more panic in me. In fact, it was probably the new one, as at least in the first instance Sean had been more than willing to marry me, even if my parents disapproved of the match.
The travel to Glasgow was arranged quickly, and I contrived to be busy in the meantime. I walked over all of the farmland we owned, quite going back on my promise to let Hamilton deal with the sheep. It seemed like he was doing a great bit of walking himself, but it must have been aimless.
Still, the night before we were to leave, I realized that I had to speak to the father of my child. Given the way that I felt, and the comparatively normal state of my belly, I knew that the babe must have been recently conceived. There was only one possible father, and he was currently in his bedroom, reading by candlelight.
Or
perhaps sleeping my candlelight. Indeed, at first I thought he was even more tired than I, as he did not respond to any of my knocks. I thought that must mean that he was not in his room.
But then I saw shadows shifting beneath the door, and heard his footsteps begin and stop.
He was within, he was simply not paying me any mind.
There was nothing for it but to go to bed myself. Perhaps, before we reached Glasgow, I would find a way of telling him what should have been happy news.
53
We traveled to Glasgow together. As it turned out, traveling separately would not only be expensive but unreliable as well. As it was, the divorce was to be excessively expensive.
Every glimpse I caught of my husband’s frown, however, ensured me that it was still the only possible alternative. To him, I was perhaps even worse than Sonia. She was the one who had taken his innocence, but I was the woman who had dealt his heart a death blow. And just as he looked as if he might soon be well again - a cruel fate, to be sure.
The first break in the horrid carriage ride came when we had nearly reached the top of a hill. There were some bushes on the other side, and the coachmen told me that it would the right spot for an interval, meaning that we should all try and relieve ourselves. I climbed up to the top of the ridge and went over, coming back only when I thought enough time had elapsed for the men to be ready for me. Ever since I had realized that I was carrying Hamilton’s child, I had been in need of relief nearly always, and I had to smile for a moment when I thought about how silly I would look. At my age, my own mother was a grandmother, and yet I was about to get just as plump and uncomfortable as any new bride.
When I reached the top of the ridge, I nearly ran into Hamilton. Or Lord Bell, as I would surely have to call him in court the next day. Before I could run down to the carriage, he looked at me, and I nodded to him.
“May I speak to you?”
I balked at his politeness. “Yes, of course.”
Sitting next to him, I waited to hear what he had to say. It didn’t seem like a wise time to point out that we had just passed several hours in a carriage together in complete silence. Silence that was about ten times as poisonous as the awkward lack of words that passed between us during our honeymoon.
“I may as well say it now,” he told me, his voice gruff. Perhaps, now that we were outside the carriage, he had gotten his nerve up. After all, we could hardly yell at each other, not with the coachman and his boy so nearby.
“I still have my friend at Covent Garden,” he said, his voice measured. “I shall write out his address and have you give it to Frances.”
“That is very good of you,” I told him, my heart nearly ripped from me by the coldness of his words.
“After all, why should Fran suffer, just because,” he said, his voice breaking before he finished the sentence.
And at that moment, I felt exactly what he must have thought of me. That I was a wicked woman, thinking only of money. That I had used him mercilessly, that I had seen Adam even after I fell in love with my new husband. And though it would not make any difference in the divorce settlement, I found that I wanted Hamilton to leave the Isle of Skye knowing the truth.
“He wanted only money from me,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I wanted love, but he wanted only money. And I was so lonely, with Gilbert gone and nobody else on the isle wanting even to speak with me, that I paid him.”
When Hamilton was silent, I tried to smile. “He was a kept man, really, tarting himself out. He never wished to marry, and pretended to be angry with me for taking you as my husband. But I believed him. For years, I believed.”
“He is a liar,” said Hamilton, breaking the silence with his gruff voice. “We only had him over the once, and I could see as much.”
Then, I knew not how, the two of us ended up holding each other, and I began to cry, the coarse material of Hamilton’s coat rough on my cheek.
“I was trying to leave him,” was all I could say, repeating it into Hamilton’s breast as I shivered in the high wind. “He forced himself on me, just when I was trying to leave him.”
When finally he pulled me back, looking into my eyes, his voice was calm. “Well,” he asked, “Have you left him now?”
For a moment, my tears stopped. “Why, yes,” I told him. “Though I don’t think I’ll ever get my investment back.”
Everything had gone. All of the time, energy, hopes, and cash that I handed over to Adam Taylor without so much as a second thought. And it had left me bereft of a loving marriage with my second husband, any sort of marriage with my third, and the home that I had hoped to keep for my girls.
Hamilton Bell pulled me to my feet, only to fall down again. Kneeling before me, he held my hand. “My darling,” he told me, “I let you marry me without allowing myself to be a husband, not the one you deserved.”
The force of divorce hit me once again, and I wanted to keep crying. If only he would not make such a moment of it! I wished that I could forget the man, and say no more about it. Surely an English manner would be the best one to adopt at this time.
With a start, I saw that Hamilton was speaking again. “Marion,” he said, “I was out of my mind when I saw you with that man. I did not think of you, only of my own distrustful heart. Will you give me another chance?”
The words meant nothing to me at first, and Hamilton kissed my hand. “Marion,” he said, “Will you stay my wife? Could we stay married always?”
It was as if I had stepped into an entirely different life. The wind blew harder, and the sun sparkled on the ocean, and I nodded. Only nodded, because I could not speak, but when Hamilton rose up and kissed me I found that my lips, though they could not speak, could meet his with all of the fire that they had once held.
It felt as if we kissed for an age, quite shamelessly, and we only broke apart when we were nearly knocked over by a great gust of wind.
Laughing, Hamilton pulled me down until we were sitting on the hillside, sheltered at least a bit from the winds blowing on the ridge. When I had settled into his lap, and he had waved away our rather confused coachman, Hamilton heaved a great sigh. “You are the very best of women, Marion, but I confess that not getting to see your daughters grow up would have been almost as awful a mistake as leaving you would have been. I knew not how I would tell your girls that I was going off forever. They are all such wonderful children, Marion.”
A smile lit my features, one that Hamilton could not quite read. “What? Have I said something funny, then?”
I pulled his arm about me, suddenly shy. “No. It’s only that we are to expect another wonderful child.”
54
We did have a second honeymoon, of sorts, though it was with such a crowd that I was not sure whether it could possibly be romantic. It took place almost exactly one year after Hamilton’s ardent, though redundant, proposal of marriage.
The year was a good one for all of the Bell and Sutherland women. Flora soon found another beau, but she decided to put off the wedding long enough to see Fran onstage. Due to my condition, I had not gotten to take Frances to London, though I felt safe when Hamilton went with her. As soon as the baby was old enough, I decided that we should all go together and see Fran perform as Viola in The Tempest. And so as soon as the babe was about six months old, we embarked on the long but rewarding journey.
I thought Gracie might tire of the city, as she was often so wild, but instead she was fascinated. Though she was already growing into a handsome young lady, she seemed quite a child in the streets of London, and was always tugging at my arm to show me something new.
Flora loved shopping, but she liked attending parties even better. I could nearly see the patterns for pretty new dresses coming together in her head. She and her twin, at long last, seemed to be getting along famously Frances was our guide, smartly dressed and quite happy, though her accent had changed so that I could hardly recognize it.
Hamilton had not missed London, but he liked the trip, p
rimarily because he got to introduce his friends to me and to little Isabella. When we met the Farringtons, distant cousins on his mother’s side, I was afraid they would rip the baby from his arms, so enraptured were they with our little girl.
“They must think me terribly old,” I said to Hamilton, my voice low. “Really, I feel like one of those men who has five wives and keeps fathering children into his dotage. You know, who lives until he’s seventy and has a child every year.”
Hamilton feigned shock. “You mean for us to have a child every year, then?”
I laughed at him. “No. But it is odd that I could be mistaken for Bella’s grandmother.”
“Quite a beautiful granny, then.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Do not your friends find it strange, though? They probably expected you to return to London with a young bride. Instead, you come back after some years, and you have a passel of grown stepdaughters and a baby.”
“Well, I have found happiness in an extraordinary way, that is all.”
“How?”
“It is a bit like finding a fortune in the street, under a bucket of slop.”
I made a face at him. “I was under some slop? Did I smell, then?”
He winked at me. “No, my love. It’s only that I am so very rich. My life did not turn out at all as I’d imagined it, and I did not find my family in the way that I once expected to, but does that matter?”
“Not at all, I should say,” I told him, looking over at Isabella, who was bouncing quite happily on the youngest Miss Farrington’s knee.
“I would say that it does,” said Hamilton. “The most common way of having a family is really rather dull. For now that I have known you, Marion, I would never be able to find happiness with anyone else.”
Also by Bianca Bloom
