Lady Julia Grey Bundle

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  "Oh, Portia, please. Not that cushion. He's flatulent."

  "Don't be horrid, Julia. Puggy is nothing of the sort."

  I put my head back down on my desk. "Why did you come?"

  "Because I knew you would be contemplating suicide in some highly uncreative fashion and I wanted to help."

  I raised my head just enough to see her. "No, not yet. But I will confess to being completely anguished. Portia, what am I to do?"

  She leaned forward, her March-green eyes sparkling. Portia had always been the most beautiful of my sisters, and she knew just how to use her charms to greatest effect.

  "You can begin by leaving off the self-pity. It is unbecoming," she said, her tone faintly reproving. "And don't pout, either. I tell you these things because someone must. You have had a chance to accustom yourself to Edward's loss. It is time you admitted it is not a crushing blow."

  I sighed and rested my chin in my hands. "I know. It just feels so awful, so disloyal to admit that I actually feel rather liberated by it."

  "Not at all. How do you think I felt when Bettiscombe died?"

  "A bit of a different situation, I think," I put in, remembering her aging, infirm husband. "It was a merciful release when Bettiscombe passed away. He'd been malingering for years."

  "So had Edward," she said, a trifle acidly. "We both married sickly men, my darling. The only difference was that we all thought Bettiscombe was hypochondriacal."

  He had been, poor thing. Always taking his temperature and palpating his pulse. He had been forty-five when Portia married him, and he had seemed robust enough at the time. We all thought his throat drops and chest plasters a charming affectation. But during their first winter together at his home in Norfolk, he had taken a chill and promptly died, leaving Portia a rich widow of twenty.

  Of course, Portia was not quite as distraught as she might have been. In London, Bettiscombe had been charming and waggish, ready for any jape, so long as he was well wrapped against draughts. In the country, he was a perfect mouse, rising at six and retiring by eight. He fretted over everything without the whirl of London distraction, and had left Portia too often in the company of his spinster cousin and poor relation, Jane. He died before the true nature of their relationship became apparent, and Portia lost no time in returning to London and bringing dear Jane with her to set up house together in the elegant town house Bettiscombe had left her. I knew my widowhood should not prove half so interesting to my family as Portia's had.

  "But you must have felt a tiny prickle of guilt," I prodded her. Portia frowned. She never liked to be reminded of things she had tucked neatly away.

  "Not guilt, not precisely," she said slowly. "It was rather more complicated than that. But I had my sweet Jane for compensation. And I think you would do rather better if you counted your own advantages rather than mooning about trying to convince yourself that you have lost your one true love."

  "Portia, that is unspeakably cruel."

  Her eyes were sympathetic, but her manner was brisk. "I know that you wish to mourn Edward. He was a lovely person and we were all quite fond of him. But the man you buried was not the child you played with. Do not make the mistake of climbing into his grave and forgetting to live the rest of your life."

  My fingers were cramping and I realized that my hands were clenched. I rose. "Portia, I do not wish to speak of this now. Not to you, not to anyone. I shall conduct myself as I see fit, not to please you or Father or anyone else," I finished grandly. I swept to the door.

  "Hoorah," she said softly, still not moving from Mother's chair. "The little mouse is beginning to roar."

  I slammed the door behind me.

  I spent the rest of the day in a high sulk, pouting about the evil treatment I had received at my sister's hands and trying not to think about the possibility that she might have been correct. Edward had been my friend and companion when we were children together in Sussex. Our fathers' estates had marched together, and Edward and his young cousin, Simon, had often joined in our games and theatricals and expeditions about the countryside. Like all of my sisters, I had come out into society, but I alone had held myself aloof from the few timid advances that had come my way. I suppose, having been raised on stories of knightly adventures and chivalric endeavors, I had been waiting for my very own storybook hero. But it seemed rather heroic when Edward left off of squiring some lissome beauty about the dance floor and came to sip punch with me where I sat by the potted palms. I was not like the other girls; I had no frivolous conversation or pretty tricks to win suitors. I had forthrightness and plainspoken manners. I had a good mind and a sharp tongue, and I was cruel enough to use them as weapons to keep the cads and rogues at bay. As for the young men I might have liked to partner me, I was far better at repelling than attracting. I did not swoon or carry a vinaigrette or turn squeamish at the mention of spiders. Father had raised us to scorn such feminine deceptions. Like my brothers, I wanted to talk about good books and urgent politics, new ideas and foreign places. But the young men I met did not like that. They wanted pretty dolls with silvery giggles and empty heads.

  All except Edward. He always seemed perfectly content to sit with me, or even dance with me at considerable risk to his toes. We talked for hours of things other young men would never discuss. People began to talk, linking our names in gossip, and finally, during one particularly painful waltz, Edward smiled down at me and asked me to marry him.

  I thought about it for a week. I considered hard whether or not I even wanted to marry. Father said little, but pointed me to the shelf in his library where he housed John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and even, shockingly, some Annie Besant. It was highly discouraging. There were few advantages to marriage for a woman. But there were fewer advantages to spinsterhood. I had already grown tired of the careful whispers behind the fans and the avid eyes that followed me. I was certain that they were saying that I was not the beauty my sisters were, that I would not marry as well as they. Those whispers and glances would follow me the rest of my life if I did not marry, speculating on what frightfulness of mine had driven away any potential suitors. I could not bear that. I was already conscious of how much we were talked about, of how amusing we were to society and how closely to the pale of respectability we walked. Only Father's close association with the queen and the very ancientness of our lineage preserved us from becoming a complete joke. What I longed for most was normalcy—a quiet, average marriage in an unremarkable home where I could raise my perfectly normal children. That notion was more seductive to me than diamonds. And as a married woman I could travel more easily, have male friends without exciting suspicion, have my own home away from a family that was as maddening as they were delightful. A bit of quiet space to call my own, that is what marriage represented to me.

  So I accepted Edward on a chilly night early in spring. Father gave his blessing with the proviso that I spend the summer accompanying Aunt Cressida on her travels. It was the only thing he asked of me, and Edward agreed readily enough. He spent the summer with friends in Sussex while I toured the Lake District with a cranky old woman and her assorted cats. Edward and I were married that December in London. I think I was a happy bride. All I could ever remember afterward were the terrible nerves. I dropped things—my bouquet, the pen for the register—and as I came out of the church, I heard a rooster crow, very bad luck for a bride on her wedding day. For a moment I wondered if it was indeed an omen. But then I looked up into Edward's smiling face and I realized how foolish I was. Edward was my friend, my childhood companion. He was no stranger to me. How could I fear marriage to him?

  In the end, there was nothing to fear. No great tragedies. Just the small troubles, the little tragedies that can dull a marriage and cause it to fray. We had no child, Edward's health began to fail, we began to follow our own pursuits and spent less and less time together. Edward was pernickety, something I had noted before, but never considered in the context of our life together. It meant that things must be just so
for him to be happy. The decoration of the house, the cut of my clothes, the folding of the towels, the laying of the table. I laughed at first and tried to jolly him out of it, but he grew stubborn, and after a while I realized it was easier to let him have his way. The house was kept the way he liked it, my clothes were ordered from his dead mother's dressmaker, in colours he favored that I knew suited me not at all. But it made him happy, and I cared so little. It was easy to convince myself that these things did not matter. We had been married a few years by the time I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass and realized I did not know my own reflection. I was losing myself a bit at a time, and I did not know how to get it back. My only refuge was my study, where I kept my favorite books and furniture discarded from my father's homes. In that room I wore an old dressing gown that Edward detested. He learned not to come there, and I learned to lock myself in when I needed to feel like Julia March again, if only for a little while. It was my little den, my nest of comforts for when I felt unruly and savage and found myself itching to rebel against the normality I had thought I wanted. I went there and calmed myself and found peace in letting him have his way yet again. I was always afraid that if I stood my ground, if I argued for scarlet gowns or purple velvet draperies, I would slip too far down the path toward the very thing I was trying to avoid. There was too much colour in being a March, and Edward, with my willing assistance, did all that he could to paint my life beige.

  I think, too, that perhaps I gave way so often because I knew that he would not live long. There was always a sense of waiting in our house, watching for the final attack, for a worsening of his symptoms, for the time when the doctor must be called and preparations made. It had made for an uneasy life, and I dreaded the idea that I should have to live it all again with Simon. True, he was not my husband, but I did love him dearly, like another brother, and to know that his time would be so short was almost more than I could bear. A year at most, the doctor had said. And so little to be done for him in the meanwhile.

  But what of afterward? I wondered as I sat in my study, contemplating my mourning. What would become of me then? The life I had fashioned for myself as Edward's wife seemed intolerably small now. And in spite of its size, Grey House suffocated me. The air was dead as a tomb, and the rooms full of memories that I did not wish to preserve. How then to break free of them?

  The Ghoul could be persuaded to leave in search of more intimately connected bereavements. Val could simply be told to take rooms for himself or return to Father's. Grey House would be empty, those enormous rooms echoing coldly. It was big, far too big for a childless widow. I could sell it and purchase a much smaller house, something still near to the park, but on a quieter street. Something elegant and discreet, with a tiny staff, perhaps only Aquinas and Morag, with Cook and a pair of maids and Diggory, the coachman. The battalion of maids that it took to run Grey House could be gotten new places. The footmen were a useless extravagance, they too could be given good characters and let go.

  The more I considered the idea, the more excited I became. I found myself walking the rooms of Grey House mentally cataloging what pieces I would take with me and which I would send to the auction house, or perhaps sell with the house itself. There was little I wanted. Almost every painting or piece of furniture carried Edward's stamp. I wanted to start afresh, with new things I had chosen for myself. It would take a while to settle matters, I realized. Grey House had so many rooms, all fitted with costly furnishings. To arrange for it all to be sold and to fit out a new house could take months. Months I might spend more profitably abroad, I decided. I could shop for new pieces in Paris and Italy, taking a leisurely tour of the Continent as I went. I had been to Paris before, but never beyond, and the notion of Europe tantalized me. So many shops and museums, so much culture and beauty. Opera, paintings, books, concerts, the ideas spun me around and dizzied me. I could take as long as I liked. And to make matters simpler, my brothers Ly and Plum were still traveling in Italy, having discovered that two could live as cheaply there as one could in London. They were artists, one a poet and composer, the other a painter. They would provide me with companionship, sympathy, laughter. And when I needed to be alone, I could simply move on—Perugia, Rome, Capri, Florence—the possibilities were endless. I need not even plan my return, but simply take things as they came, wandering idly from city to city as my fancy took me. The very idea was more intoxicating than any spirit I had ever drunk.

  Stealthily, I raided Edward's library for every book I could find on Italy. I pored over maps, plotting out a dozen different itineraries. I read lives of saints and politicians and princesses and made endless lists of verbs to memorize and temples to visit. Within a few days, I was drunk with Italy and starting to recover quite nicely from the shock of Edward's death. I knew that I had not come to terms with the vastness of it yet, but I also knew that grief takes its own time. I would distract myself with plans and projects, and would pass my first year of mourning with purposeful occupation. And at the end of it, I believed I would be able to think of Edward with something like fondness, perhaps even nostalgia.

  Of course, nothing like that happened, but I do not entirely blame myself. I think I might have pottered along quite civilly had Nicholas Brisbane not come to call. It was a week after the funeral and I was in my study, valiantly trying to twist my tongue and pen around an irregular verb, when Aquinas scratched at the door.

  I bade him enter and he did, bearing a salver with a caller's card. I glanced at it and felt myself flush with guilt. I had meant to write to Mr. Brisbane and thank him for his prompt resourcefulness during Edward's collapse. At first I simply put it off, dreading the task. After that I had forgotten, enchanted as I was with my paper Italy.

  I told Aquinas to show him in at once. I dashed the pen into its holder and thrust my untidy papers into the book of Italian grammar. I was just scrabbling the last stray lock of hair into my snood when Aquinas reappeared with Mr. Brisbane.

  I rose, moving around the desk to bid him welcome. I was conscious then of the plainness of the room, its tattered edges that seemed even shabbier when compared to his impeccable tailoring. He was dressed in a town suit that had been cut by a master's hand; his black leather boots were highly polished, and in his hand he carried an ebony cane, its silver head resting in the hollow of his hand.

  "Mr. Brisbane—" I began, but he raised a gloved hand.

  "You must permit me to apologize before anything else," he said, his expression inscrutable. "I know full well the indelicacy of calling upon so new a widow, and you must believe that I would not intrude upon your grief were the matter not one of extreme importance."

  My eyes flew to the desk, stacked high with traveling books, and I felt myself grow warm. "Of course, Mr. Brisbane. I must apologize for my own incivility." I waved him to the chair and perched myself on the edge of the sofa. He seated himself as a cat will, lightly, with an air of suspended motion that seemed to indicate wariness and an ability to move quite quickly if circumstances demanded. His hat and gloves rested in his lap. He kept the walking stick in his hand, rolling the head in his palm.

  I rushed to speak. "I neglected to write to you, to thank you for your dispatch and your resourcefulness the night my husband—" I paused, searching for a word that was neither too vague nor too indelicate "—collapsed," I finished. It was a weak sort of word, one I would not have chosen had I been speaking to anyone else.

  But something about Nicholas Brisbane intimidated me. It was ridiculous that this man, about whom I knew nothing, whose birth and circumstances were likely inferior to my own, should cause me to be so unsettled. Without thinking, I smoothed my skirts over my lap, conscious of the careless creases. He was watching me, coolly, as if looking through a microscope at a mildly distasteful specimen. I lifted my chin, attempting aloofness, but I am certain I did not manage it.

  "Do not think of it, I beg you," he said finally, settling back more comfortably in his chair. "I was gratified to have been of some smal
l service to Sir Edward in his time of need."

  I could hear Aquinas, thumping things about in the hall. Like all good butlers, he was usually cat-footed about his work. His noises were a signal to me that he was within earshot if I needed him.

  "Would you care for some refreshment, Mr. Brisbane? Tea?"

  He waved a lazy hand. His gestures were indolent ones, but affectedly so. He might wear the mantle of the idle London gentleman, but I had seen with my own eyes that he could move quickly enough if the situation warranted action. I found it curious, though, that he adopted a pose of sorts.

  Without the prospect of tea to look forward to, I was at a loss. I knew it was my responsibility to introduce a topic of respectable conversation, but in that interminable moment, my breeding failed me. The only event we had in common was the one of which we had already spoken and could not possibly speak of again. Mr. Brisbane seemed comfortable with the silence, but I was not. It reminded me of the endless chess games I used to play with my father when one or the other of us invariably forgot it was our turn and we sat, ossifying, until we realized that we were actually supposed to move.

  In fact, the more I studied Mr. Brisbane, the more he resembled a chess king. Polished and hard, with a certain implacable dignity. He was darker than any man I knew, with storm-black eyes and a head of thick, waving hair to match that would have made Byron prickle with jealousy.

  But my scrutiny did not amuse him. He arched a brow at me, imperious as an emperor. I was mightily impressed. He did it much better than Aunt Hermia.

  "My lady, are you quite well?"

  "Quite," I managed feebly, trying to think of a convincing lie. "I have not been sleeping very well."

  "Understandable, I am sure," he offered. He paused, then sat forward in his chair with the air of a man who has just made up his mind to do something unpleasant, but necessary.