SHE’D DONE it. No, they had. Allies beyond her imagining had rallied round her and now, with any luck, Mr. James Russell would go away. Corrupt he might be, but he was surely not so bold—not so stupid—as to stay in the face of Mrs. Weaver’s threat.
Martha caught the loose end of her shawl to stop it flapping in the breeze, and wound it more tightly about her. All the kind callers had gone on their way except for Mr. Atkins who was, presumably, somewhere in the house attempting to set Mr. James Russell on the path to rehabilitation. One wished him luck, and left it at that.
Laughter came to her from somewhere in the garden ahead. She rounded the corner of a hedge to find the two young Russell boys throwing sticks for the same sheepdog she’d watched Mr. Farris training, the day the will was read. Their mother and the governess sat on a bench to one side.
She paused for a fortifying breath. Nothing could be done. She should not have disinherited them if she could possibly have avoided it, but there had simply been no other way.
Mrs. James Russell saw her and came to her feet. “I hope you don’t mind the boys playing here. We’ve been careful to keep them away from any of the planted beds.”
“Not at all. Most of those beds are done for the season, anyway.” An awkward silence came. What on earth was she to say to this woman? “Do your boys have a dog at home?”
Mrs. Russell shook her head. “Mr. Russell has gun dogs, but he prefers they not be played with, or treated as pets. He finds it spoils their temperament.”
“Ah. This one is a worker as well, though he seems to forget the fact easily enough.” The smile with which she punctuated this remark felt taut as an ill-fitted glove. “Please do sit down. You may stay here as long as you like.” Here, of course, meaning this garden, on this day, even while with all her might she schemed to make the woman’s husband bundle up his whole family and be gone.
“Will you sit, too? I hope you’ve been warned against overexertion.” Her cheeks colored prettily as she made the shy admonition. The governess removed herself to be nearer the boys, and Martha must sit beside Mrs. Russell’s fruitless generosity.
They sat in silence, watching the Russell sons. A minute or so of observation and she should not have had to ask whether they owned a dog. They chased it, and ran from it, and scratched behind its ears with the tirelessness that could only belong to someone for whom a dog was novelty itself. Such unbounded, artless enjoyment, their every merry shout causing her to feel more like some ogress in a fairy-story. Plotting to make a meal of innocent children who came to the wrong house.
“May I ask you something, Mrs. Russell?” And then there was their mother, a timid shadow of a woman half-apologizing for everything she dared to say. Her pale blue eyes didn’t meet Martha’s but stayed steady on the boys. “You spoke to my husband this morning, I think. Was anything the matter?”
Gravity gathered in the pit of her stomach, tugging mercilessly at her heart. She pressed her lips together. “Nothing of consequence. Only I wished to make him known to some neighbors.”
“I see. Thank you.” Mrs. James Russell asked no further questions.
The woman would be no better off for knowing the truth. One must push pity aside, and forge ahead. Perhaps Mr. Atkins was even now convincing Mr. James Russell to reform. She would think of that, and surely it would ease the sense of poison creeping through her veins and corrupting her flesh.
THE CURATE met her on her return to the house, with such a look of priestly satisfaction that she could guess at his news. “You’ve talked him into leaving.”
“It was Mrs. Weaver did that.” He smiled, all generous modesty, as he pulled on his coat. “But I helped him, I hope, to conceive of the move as a principled withdrawal rather than a cowardly retreat.”
“He listened to you, then?”
“I flatter myself he may have done. I don’t expect him to take orders any time soon. But a sympathetic ear can work wonders for a man in such a state.” He started down the hall and she walked with him. She still had her shawl; she could accompany him a bit of the way outside. “We’ve all done our wrongs, on whatever scale, and to be faced with them, when you may think you’ve left them behind, is a severe trial for any man.”
“You’ll pardon me if I save my sympathy for the women against whom the wrongs were done.”
“No one can fault you for that.” He inclined his head as they passed through the front door.
A thought came uninvited: what if she faced a tribunal, some sixteen years hence, like that Mr. James Russell had undergone today? Not with neighbors round the table but with the two Russell sons calling her out for fraud, lying, and adultery? I had good reasons, she would say. It was all for the benefit of someone else. But her reasons might be nothing to the wronged parties.
And would she convince anyone with the bit about someone else’s benefit? Heaven help her if they chose to cross-examine. If they brought in Mr. Mirkwood to testify to the truth.
“At all events he says he’ll leave tomorrow. Send for me if you suspect he’s going back on his word.” He put his hands in his coat pockets as a breeze swept in. “Truly, though, I don’t expect you’ll need to. I do believe you’ve come to the end of this business.”
“Yes.” She wrapped her fingers in the folds of her shawl. “I suppose I’ve finally reached the end indeed.”
THEO CAME in that night to find five candles burning, and Mrs. Russell sitting up. She’d waited for him.
“I’d say that meeting was a resounding success, wouldn’t you?” He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on the armchair before going to sit at the foot of her bed. Likely she’d want to relive this morning in all its glory.
She nodded, her hair gleaming in the soft light and shifting about her muslin-clothed shoulders. “The Russells are leaving tomorrow.” She didn’t smile.
No mystery in this subdued manner. She never had entirely reconciled herself to cheating those boys, and her heart still grieved for their mother.
He shifted higher up the bed and picked up her hands to clasp in his own. “Don’t doubt yourself. Think of the servants you’ve kept safe. The ones you’ve avenged. Think of the neighborhood’s general good.”
Again she nodded. But she’d have to work this out largely for herself, and he would give her room to do so. He loosed his grip on her hands and made to rise.
Her fingers clutched at his, arresting him. “Theo, stay. Please.”
“You’ve nothing to fear. If he means to leave tomorrow, then I’ll sit by your door tonight.”
“I don’t mean that.” Her mouth compressed miserably. Her eyes glimmered with desperate intent. And just as he was piecing together the meaning of that look, of her disquiet, of the fact she’d waited up for him, she leaned across twelve inches of air and brought her mouth to his.
Oh, God. Didn’t she know how hard he’d worked to not want this? He let her finish the kiss before he took her face in his hands and gently put it away from his. Then his hands sank, bereft, and he sat, suspended between one desolation and another.
OH, GOD. He didn’t want to. She’d taken his ready desire for granted and now it was gone.
Mortified heat washed through her. His eyes flickered to her cheeks, witnessing her blush and causing it to deepen. So be it. Pride would get her nowhere now. “Please,” she said again, craven and past caring.
He glanced away from her, to the candles. Glanced back. Infinite weariness sat on his brow; sorrow and resignation darkened his eyes. His hands half rose, hesitated, and came to his cravat. His gaze sad and steady on her, he started in on the knots.
I love you would be cruel in this circumstance. I love you yet I will not marry you. Cruel to them both. Perhaps she could make him feel the better part of it, though. Her hands came up and laid themselves on his, then trailed down to his waistcoat buttons. With a wife’s tender care she helped him undress. As though he’d spent a taxing day in duty and now looked to her for respite. She might have given him that, if some v
ery many things had been different.
His shirt came over his head. The hairs on his chest showed gold in the candlelight. His upper-arm muscles flexed as he reached for the ribbon at the neck of her nightrail.
They didn’t speak. Their careful breaths, and the rustle of fabric against fabric, fabric against skin, were the only sounds in the room. “Should I put out the candles?” he finally said, barely loud enough to hear, when he’d stripped off the last of his clothes and stood ready to crawl in with her. She only shook her head.
He did not propose to be her stablehand this time, or demand any exotic attentions, or attempt to shock her with coarse words. He set his hands under her, her shoulder blades fitting into his palms, and he looked in her eyes. Probably—these thoughts would come stabbing through her consciousness—probably relations were like this more often than not between a loving husband and wife. Not the leaping blaze of a new-laid fire but the steady warm glow of embers that abided even when that blaze sank low. Probably. She would never know.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t cry.” More than once he said so, kissing where her tears ran down, and each time she’d only know she’d begun again when she heard those words. He never asked what was the matter. He must be able to guess.
Pleasure came in sweet and bitter waves, too soon and for the last time. She clung to him through the crest of it, arms round his back, legs round his hips, as much of her body as possible in contact with his. He shook with his own release, stifling all sounds but his breath, in and out through clenched teeth. And it was done. They’d come to the end of the end.
Afterward he lay against her, chest to her back, spread hand settling and resettling on her lower belly. “There’s nothing to feel yet,” she said. He would break her heart.
“You’re wrong.” His fingertips swept an arc from hip bone to hip bone. “You curve here a bit more than you used to do.”
He was imagining. Her body wouldn’t have changed so soon. And somehow this broke her heart even more. “I’m sorry,” she said through a throat thick with tears.
“I know.” He sighed, and bent his knees in behind hers. “But regardless what course you chose, you should have had regrets. And you’ve done just what you set out to do. Surely there must be consolation in that.”
She would have thought so, once. But now, wrapped in his embrace and looking to a future devoid of him, she could not perceive where consolation was to be found.
THE NEXT morning she woke with one last idea. One brilliant hopeful idea that could only have come through the machinations of love, the indefatigable industry of her own heart while she’d slept in Mr. Mirkwood’s arms.
He’d gone without waking her. He wouldn’t come tonight, so she must call at Pencarragh and tell him if her idea bore fruit. Then, too, she’d be able to tell him everything circumspection had kept her from telling last night.
She found Mrs. James Russell in the breakfast parlor, a forlorn figure facing a plate of herring, alone but for the footman. Without taking even toast from the sideboard Martha sat opposite her. The woman greeted her with understandable wariness, and she drew a deep breath. “I hope to do you a service, Mrs. Russell. I have a plan that I believe will benefit you. Of course you know best what you do and don’t wish for.” Under the table her hands were kneading anxiously together. That could be permitted, as long as the visible parts of her remained calm. “I’ve given you little reason to trust me heretofore, I know. Nevertheless I ask for your candor. I hope you will address me as Martha. And I’ll begin by telling you I know what it is to be unhappy in marriage, with no prospect of escape.”
AN HOUR later Mr. James Russell sat across from her at that same table, scowling into his coffee. The footman, bless his heart, had drifted over to stand directly behind the man. “Proposal.” He swilled some coffee. “Why would you bring me any proposal? You’ve already arranged it so I can’t set foot in this neighborhood whether or not you produce an heir.”
At some inmost layer of his being he was ashamed, Mr. Atkins had assured her, and he’d wrapped that shame in anger to blunt its irritation, the way an oyster fashioned a pearl. She’d never yet heard of anyone unpeeling a pearl to reach that central irritant, but surely Mr. Atkins knew best.
“I thought it right to apprise you of what your reception would be, if you came to settle here.” Her folded hands lay calmly on the tabletop now. Odd how much more unsettling the wife had been, compared to the husband. “But I recognize that your interest in Seton Park has never been so much for your own sake as for the sake of your eldest son.” She recognized no such thing. Flattery, though, could sometimes prevail where plain honesty could not.
“It’s natural for a man to protect his sons’ interests.”
“Natural and honorable. We have no quarrel there. In fact, I’m prepared to stand aside and let the estate pass to you, for your sons’ benefit, regardless the issue eight months hence.”
He choked on a swallow of coffee and put down his cup. “That’s not in your power, to undo the terms of the will.”
“Not strictly. However I could tell Mr. Keene and others that I’d lost the baby, and if I then removed to some distant place, no one would ever know otherwise.”
His eyes narrowed with calculation. “You want something in return.”
“No more than you yourself wanted.” She unclasped her fingers, flexed them, and clasped them again. “You were planning, I know, to set up a separate household from your wife.”
Whatever surprise he felt at her knowing this, whatever offense he took at the subject being broached, he managed to stifle for the sake of gaining the estate. “Perhaps.” He lifted and dropped a shoulder. Then understanding broke across his face. “Ah. You think she, too, needs rescuing from me.”
“I’m only proposing a variation of the arrangement you already had in mind.” She leaned a degree or two toward him. Her barrister brother must feel like this, making arguments in court. “Install her here with your sons. You can continue to live on her fortune and what income you have in Derbyshire. You’ll have control of the Russell fortune as well.”
“And what of the income from this property?” Greedy, contemptible man.
“A share of it makes up my dower. I’ve no way to undo that. The rest can go to Mrs. Russell’s support, with any surplus put aside for your boys. I’m sure Mr. Keene would be delighted to act as your proxy in drawing up a plan.”
His gaze danced about the tabletop as though he thought to find some better option there. “If you don’t have a son it shall all be mine anyway.”
“Indeed. But if I do, you’ll have nothing. And you’ll know, every time you look at your heir, that you had a chance to guarantee him the estate and you let it fall through your fingers.” She turned over her teacup and reached for the pot. “I know what I would do in your place. But the decision is yours.”
THE KNIFE-SHARP pleasure of sacrifice pierced her as she struck out across the lawn. This land she loved, these hills and house for which she’d so long schemed, would not be hers. She’d given them up to someone with a better claim, and preserved the servants’ safety into the bargain.
She would come here sometimes. They would. Even if they settled primarily in Lincolnshire, they’d want to revisit this country where they’d found one another. They’d show their children, too, certain paths they’d walked or the church they’d both attended, though of course they would have to concoct some more seemly story to tell of how they came together. Well, they’d have time for that.
On the steps at Pencarragh she got out her card and had it ready, held between finger and thumb, when the footman came to answer the bell.
He bowed without taking the card. “I’m afraid Mr. Mirkwood isn’t here anymore, ma’am. He left for London just this morning.”
“London?” She put a hand to her chest, where a panicked hummingbird had suddenly taken the place of her heart. The other hand still offered her card. “I had no idea he meant to go.”
/> “No, he’s always meant to go back. His stay here was only temporary.”
“Of course. Only I didn’t realize—” She stopped her tongue. Nothing would be gained by letting this servant guess just how close was her acquaintance with Mr. Mirkwood. “He and a number of other neighbors met with me yesterday. I should have wished him a good journey, if I’d known. I don’t suppose he gave any indication of when he might return to this neighborhood?”
“Didn’t say a thing. Just packed up and left early this morning.”
“I see. Thank you. You’ll give him my regards, I hope, if he should come into Sussex again.” Finally the footman took her card and she retreated down the stairs. On the last step she set a foot wrong and went sprawling onto the drive, all the breath knocked out of her lungs.
For a moment she just lay still. The frantic hummingbird grew to something like a barn owl, its wings beating mercilessly against her ribs. No one came—the footman had already closed the door—and no one would. Mr. Mirkwood should have come running to help her up, if he were here. But he’d gone away without even saying good-bye. She shut her eyes. She’d made a plan that depended on a husband, and she’d neglected to secure the husband first.
Bit by bit her breath came back, and her heart subsided to hummingbird size. She opened her eyes to the vast Sussex sky. Then she got to her feet and began the long walk back to Seton Park.
Chapter Eighteen
IT WASN’T that he’d lost his enjoyment of London. The Bond Street shops, the billiards and card games at White’s, the seedy bustle of Covent Garden after dark, all delighted him as much as they ever had. His lodgings welcomed him home with elegiac autumn sunlight, just fashioned to coax a man gently and gradually out of bed in the morning. And the opera transported him, mysteriously as it ever had, raising gooseflesh and making him blink even as he scanned the audience below to see what notable characters were in attendance tonight.
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