A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  At a certain juncture their paths crossed. A bit outside the fray they both stood, catching their breath and considering where they were needed next. “I think it’s gone well so far,” she said in an undertone. Her cap-strings had loosened, and the roots of her hair, uncharacteristically, framed her face. “What do you think?”

  That was new. The earnest appeal to his opinion. He nodded, arms folded, eyes on the maid and groom nearest them. “They’re quick learners, the women of Seton Park.”

  “And game, for the most part. I count only three maids I cannot persuade to try.”

  “You’ll have them by the afternoon’s end.”

  “Do you think so?” He could hear how she’d like to believe it herself.

  “I haven’t a doubt.” He angled his face a few degrees toward her. “You’re a leader of women, Mrs. Russell. I’ve known that for some time.” With a brief bow he moved off to make himself useful again.

  THREE DAYS later he stood in the window of one of Seton Park’s closed-up sitting rooms, watching a coach-and-four pull up the drive. “Didn’t spare any expense on those horses, did he?” he muttered. At his right shoulder Mr. Perry, one of the stablemen, craned for a better look. “Has he got a fortune of his own?”

  “I’ve heard he married into money.” That was one of the more senior housemaids, a Miss Morehouse, standing at the next window.

  “Married, is he? Contemptible dog. I wonder if his wife knows.”

  “Look at Mrs. Russell.” Miss Sheridan, just to his left, went up on her toes. “Don’t she look just like a queen getting set to play host to an enemy.”

  “And have him beheaded in his sleep, one hopes.” He felt the familiar small wrench—really, not so bad as it had been—as he watched her slight black figure, erect and resolute on the walkway from doors to drive. The day had dawned cool and she wore a shawl over her shoulders, her hands drawing it round her like a royal mantle.

  “There come the steps,” said Perry, and they all put noses to the glass, keen for a first look at Mr. James Russell.

  From this height he appeared a nondescript sort of man, middling in size and with no notable style to his dress. “Is that all he is?” Miss Sheridan’s voice sprang up an octave from where it had been. “I’d expected some hulking monster.”

  “You’ll thrash him, if he gets hold of you.” A pity he couldn’t do it himself.

  “That I will.” She tapped her fist to a diamond-shaped pane. “Provided Mrs. Russell don’t do it first.”

  She looked capable, the widow did. She didn’t advance to meet the man but stood, regal and forbidding, just where she was on the walkway. I know what you are, said everything in her aspect, even from this distance.

  “Here’s the wife,” Miss Morehouse spoke up. A stout, richly dressed woman stepped out of the coach. Then a plain thin one. A governess, this second woman must be, because two boys followed, perhaps ten and eight years old.

  He saw Mrs. Russell give a tiny start. Apprehension slithered up his spine. “She didn’t know he had children.” He swiveled to face Miss Sheridan.

  She spoke simultaneous with him. “She didn’t know he had sons.”

  HE HAD sons. How had it never occurred to her that he might? She dropped her eyes to her own hands, on pretext of making some adjustment to her shawl, and then forced herself to look again.

  They were bright-eyed boys, both of them, the younger with his mother’s fair coloring and the elder—the one she would rob of his rightful expectations—dark-haired and ruddy-cheeked like his father. They stood straight as little soldiers beside their governess, who had no doubt spent a deal of time training them in posture. Perhaps she favored the use of a board, as Miss York had done.

  No. Any such sympathetic reflections would be detrimental to her resolve. That she must disinherit these children was unfortunate, but could not be helped. The sins of the fathers, and so forth.

  The father himself was a surprisingly unimpressive figure. Shorter in stature than his brother had been, with a smirking sort of countenance and an insinuating posture. He would not have loomed terribly, the way she’d pictured, in a poor housemaid’s bedroom doorway, his malign silhouette dimming the hallway’s light. At most he might have come in weasel-like, shutting the door softly behind him, the click of its latch conveying all the menace his person did not.

  Would that be worse? Violation at the hands of so insignificant a man? Her stomach performed some slight undulations as he approached. The business had been bad enough on a wedding night to which she’d consented. To compound that pain, that astonishment, that awful sense of exposure with such powerless terror as Mrs. Weaver and the other maid must have felt, was an outrage almost past imagining.

  “Mrs. Russell.” Neither did his voice bear any stamp of villainy. One might easily ignore it, in fact, and rest all one’s attention on his wife while he droned on with his transparent false pleasantries.

  Mrs. James Russell was plump and might once have been pretty. She wore a blue woolen gown abundantly trimmed with ribbon, and stood halfway between the carriage and her husband, hands folded before her and eyes lifted to consider the house. As though she’d felt Martha’s gaze, she suddenly dropped her chin and appeared to consider the walkway’s paving-stones.

  Something in the action prodded at her heart, as did the way the woman stood, apart from both her husband, who had not brought her forward for an introduction, and from the children, who lingered by their governess, apparently waiting for her next instruction. What a dreadful thing, to know such isolation in the midst of one’s own family.

  For Heaven’s sake no more sympathy! “I shall be glad to see what Richard managed in the way of improvements,” Mr. James Russell was saying. He was, it developed, one of those men who directed half his remarks to her bosom instead of her face. She must make an effort to converse often with him during his stay, that this vulgarity could remind her of her purpose and shore up her resolve.

  “Most recently he devoted his attention to the tenant cottages, rather than the house and grounds. I’m sure you’ll be as gratified as I was by the results. But you must all be weary from your journey.” She pushed past him, contemptible bosom-addresser that he was, and spoke to his wife. “Do come in and have some tea while I see to readying a few more rooms. To have you all with me is such a delightful surprise.”

  BY THE time she retired for bed that night she was exhausted. To entertain even benign company for half a day—one must not succumb to gloomy speculation over how many such days stretched out ahead—should have taxed her resources considerably. But to be always watchful of Mr. James Russell, exchanging glances with any maid who happened to be in the room; striving to read him for signs of perfidious thought or intention, depleted her beyond anything she could have imagined.

  If he’d reformed at all in the past sixteen years, he had not come so far as to be a good man. He paid little notice to his wife, and indeed had spent the whole of an awkward supper swilling Mr. Russell’s best claret and regaling Martha with increasingly voluble tales of his Sussex boyhood, while Mrs. James Russell consumed her jugged hare with such steadiness as did not permit for conversation. He walked about the rooms, too, with a presumptuous step that suggested he already counted them as his. Though of course that was not beyond understanding. He’d grown up here, and inhabited the rooms much longer than she had. An objective observer, knowing nothing of his crimes, might even say he had the greater claim to Seton Park.

  And an observer, indeed, would know nothing of the crimes. If only men wore the marks of such deeds in their faces, or gave off some appropriate stench! If only they did not have wives and children to share in the punishment for their wrongs. How much simpler this had all been when he remained at a distance, the unambiguous monster of her imagination rather than this perfectly ordinary-looking husband and father. Nothing in his appearance suggested him capable of the threat against which the whole household had mobilized.

  Yet when she was awakened, hour
s later, by a hand over her mouth, her whole body convulsed in panic. “Don’t be afraid,” said a voice at her ear. “It’s Mr. Mirkwood. It’s Theo. There’s no danger.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?” she said as soon as he lifted away his palm. Her heart thundered like a runaway horse. She couldn’t see a thing.

  “Nothing. Shhh.” His fingers pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, something he’d often done when he shared her bed, and she fought an impulse to grab his wrist and hold on. “I’m sorry to wake you like that, but I didn’t want you to wake on your own, later, and be alarmed by my presence here.”

  “I don’t understand.” Panic was subsiding, but confusion whirled all the harder. She sat up, away from his hand. “How did you get in?”

  “You gave me a key, remember?” The source of his voice moved; he must be getting to his feet. “And just as I suspected, you’ve put bolts on everyone’s door but yours.” Now she could hear him lifting something. “I’m going to sit in this armchair, just inside your door, until morning. Tonight, and every night until your husband’s brother has gone away.”

  She rubbed at her face with the heel of one hand. Gradually his words were coming clear. “You don’t owe me that service.”

  “No. Probably not.” He sounded so very far away, though no more than a dozen feet divided them.

  “I wonder if you oughtn’t to be guarding the stairway to the maids’ rooms instead, that we might catch him if he even attempts anything.”

  “Hawkins and Perry have that in hand.” She could hear him stretching, making himself comfortable in the chair.

  “Who?”

  “Henry Hawkins. Second footman. Jack Perry. Groom.” At some point he’d apparently made bosom friends of men who were mere nameless servants to her. “If Mr. Russell goes anywhere near that stairway, he’ll be caught and brought to justice. If he attempts to enter here, worse than that will befall him.”

  “I really can’t imagine I’m in any danger.” Yes, she was thinking clearly again. “He hasn’t a history of—”

  “Martha.” He could be addressing her from the moon, his tone was so distant. “I’ve no interest in arguing this, and you waste your time by doing so. You will not dislodge me from this chair without you raise an alarm and bring the whole household to your bedroom. Everything considered, I doubt you want that.”

  She lay back down. If she held her own breath, she could hear his. He didn’t make any other sound.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a minute or two.

  “You needn’t be. You’re trying to do me a favor and I’ve been ungracious.” For the sixty-eighth time.

  “Not for that.” His voice was almost too low to hear. “There are things I wish I hadn’t said.”

  An odd thought struck: maybe I love you was one of those things. “Never mind about it. You’ve done me so much more kindness than unkindness. And it had to end one way or another, didn’t it? Just as well in anger as any other way, I suppose.”

  “Mrs. Russell.” His soft laughter carried across the room. “Are you drunk?”

  “What?” She came up on one elbow. “Hasn’t anyone ever forgiven you before?”

  “Countless times.” She could hear his face was turned toward her. “Only I never expected it from you.”

  Without question she deserved that. She lay flat again. “You’re an excellent man, on balance.” A yawn mounted up and she stifled it. “You were very good to think of putting those men on the maids’ staircase.”

  “I didn’t, though.” He’d faced away and sounded as though he were pushing back a yawn himself. “It was their own idea.” Some creaking came as he settled deeper into the chair. “You have more allies than you know, if you would only learn to trust them. Now go back to sleep. I’ll wake you if there’s any need.”

  HE LEFT a bit after daybreak. He slept four or five hours before rising to work with Granville. And when night enfolded all of Sussex in its dark embrace, he was back in the armchair by her bedroom door.

  “He has sons.” Without sight of her, he couldn’t be sure whether she was talking to him or to herself. He’d arrived, this second night of his vigil, to find she’d left a single candle burning, but he’d long since put it out. Its smoke still faintly flavored the air.

  “I saw them. I was in the house yesterday, watching out a window with some servants when he arrived.” He felt absently for his watch, though of course he wouldn’t be able to read it. The time must be somewhere near one.

  “I didn’t know there were sons.” Her words drifted out into the room, subdued as the lingering scent of that candle she’d left to light his way.

  “Would you have done anything differently, if you’d known?”

  “I don’t see how I could.”

  “You’re sorry, though.” In the pauses, he could hear the soft whistle of wind drawn into the chimney.

  “I can’t change my plans now. Everyone is depending on me.” Her voice had a desperate undertone, as though she’d been arguing this with herself for some time.

  “To be sure. But you can be resolute and remorseful both. You can hold fast to your mission, and still grieve what it will cost those boys.”

  “I do.” Her hand did something to the sheet, linen whispering over linen. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Even though he couldn’t see her, he turned that way.

  “You know how to say things I don’t know how to say.”

  Undeniably. I love you, for instance.

  He struck that unworthy thought. “What of the wife? Have you been able to form any impression?”

  “Scarcely. I’m sure she’s not happy. She talks very little, and eats a great deal.”

  “Yes, she looks as if she did.”

  “That’s impolite.” The terrible judge recumbent.

  “I don’t mean it to be.” He stretched his legs, crossing one booted ankle over the other. “I’ve enjoyed ladies of similar proportion more than once. Enjoyed them thoroughly.” In time he might do so again.

  He’d go back to London. He’d find his next lover. And the widow would be, whether he wished it or not, just one more woman in his past. The first woman he’d ever loved, eventually, instead of the only one. That truth rolled round the room like a marble on a ramshackle floor.

  The sheet whispered again. She was clutching it, perhaps, in her fist. “I won’t forget you,” she said.

  “Of course not. You’ll have a little reminder, won’t you?” At least one of them would.

  “Little, and then not so little. If we’re blessed with good health.” Her hair rustled on the pillow as she turned over. “But I shouldn’t have forgot you anyway.”

  Four strides would take him from this chair to the bed. He could lie beside her one last time, breathing in her lilac perfume for remembrance.

  He sank deeper into the chair. “How is your health of late? Do you suffer any indisposition?” If he made her blush, he wouldn’t know.

  “A bit, midmorning. It’s not too bad.”

  “Ah. Good.” Even a husband and wife might be shy and halting in speaking of these matters. He’d marry one day, and when his wife was with child, he’d find that out. He’d have that child to think of, then. To take his thoughts away from the other child, the little being manufactured out of love and determination, who would never know him.

  Christ. He tipped his head back, blinking against the dark. “You’ll love him, won’t you? Or her?” He sounded like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. And of course he was.

  A pause, as she absorbed his question. “I know why you ask. I’m not affectionate by nature, and I conceived the child in service to a scheme, rather than for his own sake. Or hers.” She took in a breath. “But I’ve always liked babies, and this one …” Another pause. Another breath. “He’s mine. Or she is. I’ll love this child as I’ve never loved anyone in my life.”

  “Well, then.” His throat worked mutely for a second or two. “Very good.” There was nothing els
e, really, to say.

  MR. JAMES Russell did not rise in time for church, which fact might be taken as a sign of Providential approval. The longer she could keep him from meeting Mr. Atkins, the longer she would postpone her final plummet from the curate’s favor. In the front pew, beside Mrs. James Russell, the governess, and the two boys, she sat through a lengthy but rather heartening sermon on that adulteress against whom no one dared to cast the first stone. From time to time she closed her eyes and took deep breaths to propitiate her stomach.

  From time to time also, she battled the urge to turn for a glimpse of Mr. Mirkwood, who sat in his usual place three rows back. She’d half-expected him to miss the service as well, after two sleepless nights. But there he’d been, looking a bit bedraggled even in fresh clothes as she passed him on her way up the aisle. And there was his voice—a fine, true one, she must allow—interlacing with the others on every hymn, proof he hadn’t dozed off in his pew.

  He’d sleep after church, perhaps. Collapse on his bed fully clothed. Or he might change into a nightshirt. Or he might wear nothing at all. To shuck his clothes would be all he could manage before he crawled under the covers, cool sheets caressing every turn of his rough-hewn frame.

  She missed the sight of his body. Nothing could be done about that. Circumstances estranged them more decisively than any quarrel could do.

  “That was a thoughtful sermon,” said Mrs. James Russell on the walk home. “A bit long, perhaps, for the children, but well considered.” It was the first opinion the woman had ventured in her presence.

  “Not too long for your sons, to judge by their conduct.” The boys trailed their governess in single file, a little way ahead. “They attended like perfect gentlemen.”

  “Thank you.” The words came softly, as though she were unused to compliments of any kind. “Miss Grey does very well with them.” She lowered her gaze to the ground. “You feel better, I hope, now you’re walking and in fresh air?”

  “Indeed. Forgive me if I distracted you in church. I fear I may have to give up going, sooner than I expected.”