A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  “So I did with my first child.” Her eyes, as she glanced at Martha, were pale blue and framed with thick lashes. She would be pretty indeed if her face were not so careworn. “I was sorry for it. Church is a great comfort.” She blushed as if confiding something, and angled her glance away.

  Her soft plump hand might as well have reached into one’s chest and wrung one’s guilty heart. She was worse than unhappy, Mrs. James Russell was. Disconsolate, forsaken, and entrusting her slight confidence to someone who would cheat her sons of their birthright. “You must miss your church in Derbyshire, then. I’m sure you’ll be glad to go back.”

  Ruthlessness muscled those words out—ruthlessness might be all that remained of her, one day—and the other Mrs. Russell did not again attempt fellowship for the rest of their walk.

  HE HOPES to set up here with a mistress, and leave her behind in Derbyshire.” Miss Sheridan sat forward in the blue-and-silver striped armchair, hands clasped before her. “Her maid says he’s even brought a mistress into their house sometimes.”

  “But a wife can divorce for that, can’t she?” Mrs. Russell, on the sofa beside him, gripped its far arm with pale knuckles. Any observer would think she was the one who’d gone two nights without sleep, so drawn was her countenance. “For a mistress under her own roof?”

  “She’s got nowhere to go.” Such an impressive compendium of knowledge, a lady’s maid. “Her father won’t have her back again and she hasn’t any brothers to take her in.”

  Theo leaned back into the sofa’s corner. He missed this sitting room, site of so much profitable study and of a few other things as well. From this very sofa she’d risen in that pink dressing gown, on the day he’d most needed such a gesture.

  “I knew she was unhappy.” Poor Mrs. Russell. Discovering she wasn’t so heartless as she’d counted on being. “But I didn’t know how dreadful were her circumstances.”

  Without thought he lifted a hand and settled it on her back, where it made slight comforting circles. Miss Sheridan averted her eyes as though by reflex. She knew what had been between them. A companionable touch could hardly shock her in the face of that.

  “Miss Gilliam says he’s always had one mistress or another.” The maid brought her eyes back to Mrs. Russell. “She says he’s never touched his wife since the second son was born.”

  He could feel the widow’s spine sag farther. He sat straighter himself. “That’s her good fortune, I should think. Does the maid say whether he’s given any trouble to the servants?”

  “Nobody likes the way he looks at them. But she doesn’t know of his taking any liberties.”

  Mrs. Russell dropped her face into her hands. “I’d almost rather he had,” she said through her fingers. “If he poses no threat to the servants, then I cheat those children without good cause. And if he were to inherit, and move here with his mistress, who is to say his wife and sons wouldn’t be better off for his absence?”

  “Martha.” What had become of his iron-willed mistress? “You cannot be sure he poses no threat, and you cannot gamble on that uncertainty. So you told me yourself, I remember. You’ve pledged your allegiance to the women of Seton Park. You must do what you think best serves them, regardless the effect on anyone else.”

  “I know. Only I expected to feel grand and righteous, doing so. I had no thought of its all feeling so mixed-up and awful.”

  Miss Sheridan gave a small cough, as though to remind them of her presence in the room. He nodded to her. “Did you learn anything else?”

  “Only that he suspected Mrs. Russell was counterfeiting her condition. But his wife is convinced she’s not.”

  The widow’s backbone came away from his hand as she brushed off her skirts and stood. “Thank you, Sheridan. Very well done. I hope you’ll summon us both again if you have further intelligence to report.” She paused, and half-turned to him. “You’ll be back later tonight, I expect?”

  “Indeed I don’t plan to leave.” He leaned over and grasped his right boot. “I remember this sofa as a fine spot for napping. Miss Sheridan, you’ll send someone to roust me if I sleep past Mrs. Russell’s bedtime?”

  The maid rose and bobbed a curtsey. “Mrs. Ware says you may come to the kitchen if you’re here through supper. She’ll put something aside for you.”

  “Mrs. Ware. Splendid.” He shed the second boot and brought both feet onto the sofa. The widow was staring at him, no doubt astonished he should know her cook by name. “Will you leave a candle for me again? That was quite helpful last night.” She nodded, and both ladies left.

  MR. MIRKWOOD must have come during the night—the candle was put out—but he was gone, as he’d been the first two mornings, by the time she woke.

  A pity, because she woke with an idea, and he was the one who’d planted it. You have more allies than you know, he’d said. What if she called on their aid? Other people, if given a chance, might take an interest in the fate of Seton Park. Or the safety of honest women. Other people might have a care for justice. They might step in, when her purpose wavered, and take up the cause on her behalf. An alliance of such people, with herself among their number, might after all accomplish more than she could manage alone.

  She would finish, by whatever means necessary, what she’d set out to do. And if she wronged the sons, well … Well, there was no if in the matter. She would wrong the sons. Time enough for self-recrimination when Seton Park was secure.

  She sat down at the library desk that morning, and she wrote. To stately Mr. Rivers and his wife she wrote, and convivial Mr. and Mrs. Tavistock. To conscientious Mr. Keene, and generous Mr. Granville, and to the three sensible ladies in town. The words, so very awkward at first—I need your help and Forgive my opening such a subject as this—came more easily with practice, one found.

  And when the letters were all sent, she made some visits.

  “I had no idea of this.” Mr. Atkins had just dismissed his school, and sat on the edge of his desk, half-crumpling a paper he’d had in hand when she’d begun to speak. “No idea in the world. Had you?”

  “Only recently. We were both left ignorant.” She faced him from a desk in the front row. They’d been equal in ignorance. Natural allies. Why hadn’t she called on his help long ago? “I believe such secrecy only abets that kind of man in his crimes, and shields him from the censure he deserves. I mean to end it.”

  “To be sure. You may depend on my assistance.” His brows canted. “But Mrs. Weaver won’t be named, I hope. For the sake of her children, particularly Christine, I think ignorance may be the kinder path.” How quickly he’d taken on this protective concern for his pupils, even those who never came to his church.

  “My instinct is the same as yours.” She folded her hands before her. “But I shall leave that decision to Mrs. Weaver herself.”

  WELL, THIS sitting-up-all-night business would get him back in practice for London hours, at least. Though if Mr. James Russell stayed much longer, he’d have to make some account to Granville of why he slept so late in the mornings, or was nowhere to be found of an evening.

  Theo glanced at his dressing-room clock. Half past two. A respectable hour for most pursuits. He’d just finished arranging his cravat and was entertaining thoughts of breakfast when a footman appeared with a card he’d first seen six weeks ago to the day. Plain black lettering on white; no border. No hint of the owner beyond her name.

  He found her in his parlor, seated on the least comfortable chair, her gloved hands folded one over the other in her lap. Her gaze, staunch and decided, swung to him as soon as he crossed the threshold. “I have a plan,” she said, “and I need your help.”

  “Of course. Tell me what I may do.” Somehow, clearly, she’d found her resolve again, and he would help her hold tight to it.

  A quick, grateful smile lit her face before she restored the air of purpose he knew so well. “First, I’d like your company for a visit to the Weavers.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  TELL ME what I may
do, Mr. Mirkwood had said. You may depend on my assistance had been Mr. Atkins’s words. These were friends, and perhaps bound to answer her summons.

  What, though, could account for the beneficence of the other fifteen people ranged down the length of her dining-room table?

  Not one person had refused her entreaty. There sat Mrs. Canning, Mrs. Kendall, and Miss Leigh, glancing about at the imposing portraits of Russells gone by. There were Mr. Rivers and his wife, respectable bulwarks against delinquency of any kind. There were Mr. Lawrence and Mrs. Kearney, longest-tenured of the household servants, looking quite the equal of the gentry among whom they sat. Everyone had risen to the occasion, almost as though they’d only been waiting for an occasion to which they might rise.

  Mr. Mirkwood, halfway down the table on her left, caught her eye and vouchsafed her a private slight nod. He was responsible for making her known to all these neighbors, and he might have sat beside any of them. But he’d chosen a chair by Mr. Atkins, and now the two of them conversed in low tones, probably about the school. The sight put a bothersome prickling at the back of her eyes.

  She needn’t be overset now. She must make an example of steadiness for others. She turned to the place at her right. “Are you ready?” she said, and Mrs. Weaver nodded once as her husband, beside her, put a coarse knuckly hand over hers. “Mr. Lawrence.” Martha pitched her voice to reach the rest of the table as well as the butler. “Will you have a footman fetch Mr. James Russell to us, please?”

  THEO’S SEAT faced away from the door, but even had he been deaf, he could not have mistaken the moment of Mr. James Russell’s entrance. Mrs. Canning’s eyes and those of her two friends all narrowed in unison, as though it were some maneuver the three ladies had practiced. Attention sharpened all up and down that side of the table. He saw a rolling flex in Mr. Weaver’s prodigious shoulder. Mrs. Russell’s right arm went under the table at an odd angle, and he realized she was grasping Mrs. Weaver’s unseen hand. Mrs. Weaver herself was red in the face.

  “Have a seat, please, Mr. Russell.” The widow had never sounded more regal. Doubtless she could dispense justice singlehandedly, if she had to. But she didn’t have to. Seventeen comrades stood ready to do their share. No, eighteen. The footman Pinnock took up a position behind the end of the table, where Mr. James Russell was sinking into a seat.

  Astonishing how a man could be guilty of such monstrosity and still go about looking like any other man. A bit weak in the chin, with a florid complexion and deep-set eyes, and teeth just begging to be knocked out by a good punch or two.

  “These are your neighbors.” Mrs. Russell let go Mrs. Weaver’s hand and wove her fingers before her on the table. “You may or may not know them, but make no mistake, they are thoroughly acquainted with you.”

  “What the deuce is this about?” The man’s eyes shifted left and right, taking in the grim stares that surrounded him on either side.

  The magistrate Mr. Rivers, with the air of one long accustomed to authority, inclined slightly forward. “Do you deny you committed vile indecencies against women who had no power of redress, when you used to live in this house?”

  For a full second Mr. Russell looked startled. Then his face settled into a cloaked expression. “I won’t sit and be subjected to this,” he said, beginning to rise from his chair.

  Theo was on his feet in an instant and Pinnock, too, closed in on the man. “I suggest you sit down.” Was that his voice? Good Lord. He almost frightened himself. “These people have been at great inconvenience to come here, and you shall hear what they have to say.” One day he must learn Rivers’s brand of understated power. Today, this tone of barely reined-in violence would have to do. He waited for Russell to take his seat before returning to his own.

  “There are things we will not tolerate.” Rivers resumed almost as though there’d been no interruption. “This is a decent neighborhood. Those of us who have servants take an interest in their well-being. To let such abomination as that with which you are charged pass unremarked, is a stain on all our good names.”

  “I don’t see that what happened in this house so many years ago, if it did happen at all, is any of your concern.” Russell’s truculent gaze swept round the table.

  “It concerns me, to begin with.” That was a balding, bespectacled man Theo had not met before, sitting at Mrs. Russell’s left hand. “You’ve disgraced a house with which I’d had a long and proud association. And your presence now, when you did not trouble to attend Mr. Russell’s wedding or funeral, suggests exactly the sort of grasping suspicions you have already made plain to me. I fear I will be unable to continue as Seton Park’s solicitor, if you become resident here.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to make the Sunday sermons as well.” Sly devil, that Atkins. As though he weren’t already planning to give up the curacy. So he’d said not fifteen minutes prior.

  “I’m troubled by this talk of suspicions.” Mrs. Landers, at his left, had a magnificent fastidious way of speaking, handling each word like a jeweler hefting uncut stones. “Does he dare to imply an aspersion on the character of the late Mr. Russell’s widow?”

  “No one can deny a gentleman’s right to safeguard his interests.” The man’s gall was astounding. He was pushed back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, his posture a blunt defiance to the judgment of everyone in the room. “Widows will defraud a rightful heir sometimes. We’ve all heard of it.”

  “The time to think of a gentleman’s rights was surely sixteen years since.” Again the solicitor spoke, his spectacles glinting as he leaned into sunlight. “Before you chose to commit such grievous wrongs as have rendered you unfit to ever be called gentleman again. As to your insinuations regarding Mrs. Russell, I shall not dignify those with any response.”

  One must glance, naturally, at the widow to see in what spirit she took this defense. She rather resembled one of those martyr pictures that turned up in illustrated prayer books. Her arms made a graceful circle, fingers laced in the middle, and her downcast eyes evoked divine patience even while her uplifted chin suggested righteous pride. If he should announce, to the table at large, that he’d been to bed with that woman, not one person was likely to believe him.

  He cleared his throat and grasped for as much innocence as he could contrive in his turn. “Am I to understand you mean to impose yourself here, hovering about and making an honest woman uneasy, until the event that will determine the property’s succession?”

  “It’s my right.” He’d gone a bit back on his heels, Russell had, like an overmatched pugilist. His fingers were twitching where they gripped the opposite elbows. “This isn’t her house. She can’t bar me from it.”

  “None of us can.” Theo sent a glance to Rivers, to Mrs. Rivers, to Granville, to Mrs. Canning and her friends. “But we can make things uncomfortable for you here as long as you choose to remain. Regardless what your conduct is now, this neighborhood will regard you, and treat you, like a man who violated innocent young women and escaped justice. You cannot expect ever to be a gentleman of standing here.”

  “Nor in town.” Mrs. Canning angled her baleful attention to the foot of the table. “You may depend on us to make everyone within ten miles aware of what you are.”

  “And if that were all you had to fear, you might say devil take it and stay on here all the same.” Mr. Weaver’s soft voice broke in. He’d kept his eyes to the tablecloth most of the meeting, and so he did now, even while speaking. “So let me put it plain: you’ve more than that to fear from me.” He might not have been here, Mr. Weaver. Yesterday he’d said he would not come if Mrs. Weaver didn’t wish it. But obviously she’d decided she did. “You brought shame on my wife that she’ll never be free of. It was none of her own making, but she’s borne it ever since, while you went about living a gentleman’s life with never a look back. Don’t expect me to let that stand.”

  “I’ll put it plainer still.” Mrs. Weaver lifted a gaze that could give a man nightmares.
Her voice shook with sentiments too dark to have names. “If you stay in this country I’ll stick a knife in your foul throat. Though I go to the gallows for it and leave my children orphans, I promise you I will.”

  Mr. Russell shifted, ducking from her basilisk stare. If he recognized her, he gave no sign. “They threaten me. You’ve all witnessed it.” He sought for sympathy from one face after another. “Does nobody mean to do anything?”

  It certainly sounds as though Mrs. Weaver means to do something. He bit his tongue, though the temptation was strong.

  The solicitor bowed. “If you should after all inherit and decide, everything considered, that you’d rather not take up residence, I shall be glad to draw up a lease and help you find a suitable tenant.”

  No one else had anything to say. The widow gave a quick nod. “Very good, then. Mr. Russell, I thank you for your time and attention. We won’t detain you further.”

  Without meeting anyone’s eyes the man pushed up from his chair and went out of the room. Atkins exchanged a look with Mrs. Russell and got up as well.

  “Are you going after him?” Good Lord. To what purpose?

  “I’m a clergyman. I must believe no one is beyond redemption.” He flashed a smile. “And if I can make him believe it too, I may serve Mrs. Russell’s cause.” With a bow to the company he left.

  Other people got up as well. The solicitor fell into conversation with the three ladies from town. The Seton Park housekeeper approached Mrs. Weaver, one tentative hand held out, and said a few words. Mr. Weaver nodded, looking embarrassed, as Mr. Rivers spoke to him. He stayed at Mrs. Weaver’s side.

  Such tricky business, being a husband. Knowing when to be your wife’s champion, and when to stand back that she might be her own. So many large and small skills to master beyond simply pleasing a woman in bed. Yet one more unexpected lesson from his time in Sussex.

  Over Mrs. Tavistock’s shoulder he caught the widow’s eye and she smiled a thin smile. She looked exhausted. Likely her composure had tried her beyond her expectations, and likely she’d be asleep by the time he came tonight. Well enough. Not so very many things remained for them to say.