Blackmoore

by Julianne Donaldson

  I could not deny how close we stood—how the water from his hair dripped onto my cheek. But I was terrified. We had never crossed this line. And then his other hand touched my waist. It burned there, through the fabric of my gown. I pressed my palms against the wall at my back, trying to slow my breathing. It was unnaturally fast. So was my pulse. And I worried that Henry would hear it and know that he did this to me. I pressed my hands harder against the wall, fighting the urge to grab him.

  “I was very serious,” he whispered. His hand tightened on my waist. My hands left the wall and found the lapels of his coat. I did not mean to grab him—not like that—but my hands did not consult me. They bunched the fabric of his coat and dragged him closer. And the time for thinking was gone. We had balanced on this precipice for far too long. And now we were going to fall. I knew it, with a breathless certainty I could not deny.

  His hand slid from the wall and curved around my neck, softly, surely, as if he had imagined this a thousand times, and—

  A sudden light pierced the darkness of the hall. I started with surprise, and so did Henry. I pushed him away and looked toward the source of the light. Someone was carrying a candle and walking toward us from the other end of the hall. I peered harder at the figure. The flickering candlelight illuminated Maria’s face. I swore under my breath.

  My position suddenly became shockingly clear to me. I was standing outside my bedchamber in the middle of the night with a man, both of us dripping wet, and I had almost just kissed him. The fact that it was Henry only made it worse. I could have been Eleanor, and this could have been Brighton all over again.

  I reached for the door handle and dread fell through me. My bedroom door was wide open. “You should go,” I whispered. “Before she sees us.”

  He hesitated, but I was already hurrying inside my bedroom. I collided with something soft not two paces inside the room.

  I heard a muffled oof and then I was sprawled on the floor and Mama was whispering for me to get off her. Then Maria was standing there with her candle, looking down at us.

  “What is going on?” she asked. She held her candle toward us, and her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you all wet, Kitty? And why are you on top of Mama?”

  I struggled to get up but my wet skirts wrapped around my legs, tripping me and making me fall again. Mama shoved me off her and stood, grabbing the candle from Maria’s hand. She stepped over me and lit the other candles in the room, and by the time I was on my feet, there was plenty of light by which to see the happy look of triumph on Mama’s face.

  “He must marry you. He must!” She cackled with delight and paced in front of me where I sat in acute misery on my bed, getting everything wet but not caring.

  “No, he mustn’t. Nothing happened between us. He didn’t even kiss me.”

  “It hardly matters, my dear, whether your lips touched or not. I saw you two.” She laughed again. My face burned with embarrassment. “You were caught sneaking around with him, alone, at night, and you were seen in an embrace.” She laughed again and clapped her hand like a little girl. “Oh, won’t his mother throw a fit! But, Kitty, this is wonderful news! Wonderful! Why, you will be better matched than Eleanor, and I can lord it over his mother that you will be mistress of this place.”

  I groaned. “No, Mama. It will not be like that. He was just—he was just teasing me, saying that I owed him a kiss for the proposal, but nothing happened.”

  She stopped pacing and looked at me sharply. “What proposal?”

  I fell back on her bed and covered my eyes with both hands. “He is the one who proposed to me, Mama. He did it as a favor, so that I could go to India. But nothing inappropriate happened between us. I swear! He was a perfect gentleman every other time.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You mean to tell me that you have sneaked around with him alone at night more than once since you arrived?”

  I shook my head, hating myself for what I had just revealed. “Yes,” I muttered miserably.

  She grinned and clapped her hands and laughed with raucous triumph. “You are more cunning than Eleanor. I declare, I never expected this from you, Kitty. He will be forced to marry you.”

  I sat up, panicked, and tears poured from me. “No, Mama. That cannot happen. I cannot force Henry to marry me. I cannot do this!”

  She waved away my words with a dismissive motion. “A young lady has to use every advantage at her disposal to secure a good future for herself.”

  “I won’t do it!” I yelled, getting off the bed. She jumped, startled. “I won’t entrap him, I won’t have him hate me for the rest of my life, I won’t watch his respect for me die, and I won’t turn my attention to other men! I won’t, Mama! I will not become like you and watch Henry become like Papa! I can’t stand the thought.” I sobbed and then yelled, “I would rather marry that disgusting Mr. Cooper than be forced to marry Henry Delafield!”

  My voice rang in the sudden silence. Maria’s eyes had gone huge. She stared at something over my shoulder. I turned my head and saw Henry standing outside the open door of my bedroom.

  He held my gaze for a long moment before turning and walking away.

  “Oh, dear,” Maria said. “I think he heard you.”

  I sat down heavily on the bed. It was done, then. It was finally done. We had fallen off a precipice, and there was no way to climb back up.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mama said, shutting the door firmly. “We will still force him to marry you.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t work, Mama. He will lose Blackmoore if he marries me. Mrs. Delafield had it written in her father’s will. He will be penniless.”

  She did not so much as pause at my announcement. “Nonsense. Wills can always be changed, and the grandfather is still alive. We’ll take care of everything tomorrow. You will go and speak to his grandfather and convince him to change the will.”

  “No,” I whimpered, but the fight had left me when I saw the look on Henry’s face.

  “Oh, I cannot wait to visit you here once you are mistress of Blackmoore! How she will hate it! To have me here, in her own childhood home, and able to do as I like. And she will not be able to do anything to stop me! Ha ha! I should like to see her try, once you are married. Will she be able to snub me then? No! No one will snub me once you are Mrs. Henry Delafield. Ha ha! This is the ultimate victory, Kitty! I cannot believe you have pulled this off!” She leaned toward me, grasped my face in her hand, and planted a kiss on my wet hair. “How I have misjudged you!”

  I shook my head, over and over. “No, Mama. I will not do this. I will not.” I said it over and over until she finally stopped laughing and looked at me clearly.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, as if to erase the kiss she had bestowed. “You will not?”

  Maria lay back on the pillow. “Don’t be a dolt, Kitty. Of course you must see it through. You have gone too far to turn back now.”

  “No.” My voice was weak. “I can undo this. I can ...”

  Mama grabbed my face again, but there was nothing gentle in her touch. She stared into my eyes, her own the color of that rusted trap I had found in the woods with the wounded rabbit caught in its teeth. “Answer me this, Kitty: did you fulfill your part of our bargain? Did you receive three proposals?”

  I realized that Henry had not proposed tonight. The rain had kept us from finishing our bargain. “No,” I whispered.

  “Then, according to the bargain we made, you have to do whatever I want. Do you remember that, my dear?”

  I fell back on the bed and covered my streaming eyes with my hands. “I won’t. I won’t do it, Mama.”

  “You made the bargain, Kitty. And now you must live with the consequences. Remember—remember what we agreed upon. Remember what you told me. You told me you never changed your mind.”

  I did remember saying that. I had thought it was true at the time. But now I was convinced that I had never been as wrong about anything as I had been about myself.
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br />   “You will speak to his grandfather tomorrow.” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at me. She was powerful and manipulative, and I was trapped, trapped, trapped. “What do you think of that plan, Kitty?”

  “Kate,” I whispered. “My name is Kate.”

  Chapter 34

  a Year and a Half Before

  I was sitting on the whispering bench on the south lawn. I had not gone to the clearing, where I might easily have been found. I had not stayed in my room, with the fine splinters of wood trapped in the rug. I had stolen out of the house at dawn and stayed out here despite a little morning rain. Cora was my companion, and I listened for birds in the trees around me. The woodlark’s song played over and over—those falling, melting notes of heartache. I wanted to plug my ears and hear it no more. At the same time, I wanted to hear it endlessly. Caught in this battle between mind and heart, I did not hear the footsteps on the grass. Bending down to stroke Cora’s soft fur, I did not see Henry approach until his shadow fell over me.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” The words were spoken with softness and a hint of accusation.

  My heart beat fast. Cora’s fur was warm from the sunshine. I could not look up at him. I did not know how to act or what to say.

  “Kate?”

  I continued to look down. “Hmm?”

  Henry crouched down, bringing his face to my level, but I kept my gaze stubbornly fixed on Cora.

  “You left the ball early last night,” he said, his voice too quiet, too intimate. “I looked for you ... I saw you leaving, and I called your name, but you didn’t turn back.”

  I stood abruptly and moved away from him. “Did Sylvia come with you?” I asked, my voice too loud.

  “Sylvia?” Henry’s voice sounded confused. I saw him move toward me out of the corner of my eye. “What about—”

  “Oh, look! There she is now!” I had never been so relieved to see her in my life. She came walking toward us from the house. She carried something in her arms. I still had not really looked at Henry. I could not.

  But then he moved in front of me and leaned down, putting his face directly in my line of sight, so that I could not help but see him. His eyes were a dark charcoal today, and his hair looked as if he had spent all morning raking his fingers through it.

  “Is something wrong, Kate? What happened last night? Why did you leave so early?” I stepped away from him again, and I saw the surprise in his face when I did.

  I chewed on my lip. I knew what I had to do. My heart raced with nervousness. “I have decided something. I want to tell you. You and Sylvia. Both of you.” I craned my neck to watch her approach us and wished she walked faster. I could feel Henry’s gaze on my face.

  “Sylvia!” I called.

  She frowned at me.

  “I must say something to you!” She kept frowning, and when she reached me I saw that her gaze held a hint of anger.

  “What is it, Kitty?”

  I did not even bother correcting her, for once. I brushed a trembling hand over my brow, taking a deep breath and trying to drag some courage up into my heart.

  “I think I ought to tell you both that ... that ...” I stopped, taking in their severe expressions, and my courage almost failed me. It was ridiculous to say it like this. But it had to be said, and the sooner the better.

  But before I could force the words through my lips, Sylvia said, “What happened to the model of Blackmoore?”

  Henry’s head whipped toward me. I stared at Sylvia as dread pooled in my stomach.

  “I went to your room looking for you,” she said. “What happened to the model?”

  I swallowed. “A ... vase fell on it.” I glanced at Henry. “It is only a small ... a very small ... hole.” I took a deep breath and looked away from him. I could not bear seeing the look in his eyes. “But I have to tell you something I have decided recently. It is this: I do not intend ever to marry. I have no desire for it. I will never desire it. I will stay single, like my aunt Charlotte, and be an adventurer, and I shall never, ever marry.”

  My neck was hot. I twisted my fingers together.

  “Well, that is news.” Sylvia sounded happy. I could not look at Henry. “Here. I brought you these flowers from the ball. Peonies. They’re your favorite, are they not?”

  The scent of the dying flowers filled my head, even sweeter and more cloying than last night when I stood in their shadow. Sylvia was right. I had loved them before last night. But now their smell turned my stomach. They smelled like humiliation. Like rejection. Like crushings and blows and clawings and stranglings. I turned my face away, reaching out a hand toward them, to push away their limp, curling petals, their withered leaves, their shrinking forms, their violent scents.

  “Please, take them away.”

  “What is wrong?”

  I took one deep breath through my mouth, trying to clear my head. Only now I could taste the scent of the flowers. It sat heavy on my tongue. I swallowed and felt it slide down my throat. It lodged halfway down, midway from mouth to stomach, and sat there, heavy, despairing, cutting.

  “I am unwell. It’s why I left the ball early last night. I am unwell.” My lips trembled, and I touched my fingertips to them, trying to quiet the shaking within me. “I am sorry. Please excuse me.”

  I turned then and saw in a blur the white of Henry’s shirt, the dark length of his long legs, the bruised and broken flowers at his feet, the hem of Sylvia’s light blue dress, and then the grass. Grass, grass, grass, grass, faster, a blur of green, now gravel, stone walkway, and one, two, three steps to the back door. It stuck. Every summer. I pushed hard with my shoulder until it gave way to burgundy curtains brushing my face, blurred paintings, swimming door, looming banister catching me hard in the ribs, and slick wooden stairs. Fourteen steps, then three rooms side by side. The last room was mine. The door stood open. The ruined model of Blackmoore sat, like a dark, deformed thing, on the chest at the end of my bed. The hole in the roof looked like an angry, open mouth.

  It had been our daily routine for years. Sylvia and I spent the afternoon in the library with Henry. She usually engaged in some show of reading until our attention was taken by our studies, and then she slipped into her afternoon “doze,” as she liked to call it. And nobody interrupted us. Mrs. Delafield did not bother us. George was away on his Grand Tour. And Sylvia had outgrown her governess. We had been in this habit for so many years that I had never had reason to question it.

  But today—four days after the ball—I lingered at the threshold of the library and tried to quiet my pounding heart. Henry was already at the large table, his books and papers scattered around him. He glanced up briefly as Sylvia threw herself down on the settee with a sigh.

  “Has the day been that hard for you already, Sylvia?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice that I had rarely heard.

  “No. I am just that happy to see you, dear brother.” Sylvia smiled sunnily at him, but he did not return it. His gaze cut to me, standing in the doorway, and he lifted one eyebrow.

  “Are you coming or going?”

  The challenge in that raised eyebrow and the curt tone of his voice helped me make my decision. I stepped forward into the room. “Coming.”

  He slid his books to the side, clearing the space at the table that was usually mine, and I sat down at my usual chair. There was nothing comfortable here, but I was determined to be here anyway. I was determined to reclaim my place. I felt, deep within, that if I did not claim it now, I would lose it forever. Certainly Mrs. Delafield would want me to leave and never give her cause to worry again about her son’s future. But Mrs. Delafield was not in this room, and she might be able to stop me from ever marrying Henry, but that did not mean she could stop me from being his friend.

  “What are you reading?” I asked as I sat at the table.

  He held up a leather-bound book. “Dr. Faustus. By Goethe.”

  “In German?”

  “Naturlich.” His curt tone grated on me.

&
nbsp; “Oh. Naturlich,” I repeated with a sarcastic bite to my voice.

  He lowered the book and looked at me. “What is wrong with that?”

  “You have everything given to you, Henry. You have your tutor teaching you German and French and Latin, and you can study things I might never be able to. So don’t pretend it is ‘natural’ at all.”

  Henry held my gaze, his grey eyes reflecting a battle within himself. He seemed about to argue with me. I was sure I could see building in his eyes some fire that he would unleash on me—a fire of indignation, of pent-up arguments, of impassioned feelings. The space between us grew taut with my anger and his, and I saw a muscle leap in his clenched jaw, and his lips pressed together so that a line creased his cheek. I stared at that crease, and in a flare of longing wished that I could simply reach for him and touch his face.

  I looked down. I took a deep breath and tamped my feelings down deep, until I no longer felt the ache of longing. And then I said in a quiet voice, “I am sorry. I did not mean to be angry with you, after all your kindnesses toward me.”

  He reached out and grabbed my wrist. I looked up in surprise. “Don’t make me out to be some sort of angelic character,” he whispered fiercely. “I have done nothing out of kindness, Kate. Do you understand?”

  I stared at him in surprise.

  He released me and leaned back, raking his hand through his hair. Then he shook his head and muttered, “I am sorry.”

  There was so much between us. So much we were not saying to each other. But I could say that. So I did. “I am sorry as well.”

  And I was. I was sorry for everything. I was sorry for my embarrassment of a mother and my scandalous sister and the fact that I had fallen in love with a boy who could never be mine.