by Mia Vincy
Mama stood in the doorway. Her expression remained bland as she looked them over, first one, then the other. Her gaze came to rest on the workbasket sprawled sideways on the floor. An unfamiliar heat flooded Arabella’s cheeks and throat.
Guy’s laughter shattered the fragile air.
“You’re blushing,” he said. Gloated, the fiend. “Arabella Larke is actually blushing.”
Mama ignored them both, her eyes on the fallen basket. “There is enough time for you two to clean up before Sir Gordon speaks to you,” she said mildly. “And Lord Hardbury?” She faced him with such scolding serenity that he straightened. “It might be advisable for you to remove yourself from Vindale Court until the wedding, for the sake of…appearances. I am sure Sir Gordon and Lady Bell will have a room for you at the Grange.”
“Of course, my lady.”
He sketched a bow. Mama stood aside that he might exit, but once past her, he turned and caught Arabella’s eye.
“Blushing,” he mouthed over Mama’s head, winked, and left.
Arabella stared into the empty hallway, then darted after him, brushing past her mother.
“Guy!” she called.
He pivoted, waited, as she reached his side.
“I agree,” she said quietly. “You are not quite the worst thing that could happen to me.”
He grinned. “It is just as well your seduction technique has improved, because you are still dreadful at flirting.”
Whistling, he sauntered off.
Mama raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, Mama,” Arabella said, and with as much dignity as she could muster, headed to her room.
Chapter 25
Carrying the portfolio containing the manuscript, Arabella knocked on the door to her father’s study. Behind it, she heard Queenie cry, “What a day! What a day!” and then Papa’s voice, inviting her in.
Inside, she ignored Oliver. He ignored her.
“’Tis a lovely day, you beautiful bird,” Arabella said to the parrot, who nodded sagely and said, “Yes, yes, indeed.”
“Good timing,” Papa said from behind his desk. He stood, waving the page in his hand. “One of my colleagues recommends a former student to take over your work editing the journals. Have a read.”
Arabella exchanged the letter for the portfolio.
“That’s the final manuscript for the guide to your aviaries. It wants only your foreword,” she said. “If you could complete it before the wedding, I can take the whole thing to London when Hardbury and I go.”
That they would go first to London was one of the few details Guy and Arabella had decided on so far. It was not for want of trying. Every time he had called in the days since he left Vindale Court to stay with Sir Gordon Bell, they had not managed a minute alone.
No sooner would he enter the house than someone would intrude: a dressmaker insisting Arabella attend an unnecessary last-minute fitting; Ramsay asking questions on matters he had dealt with for years; and, on the third day, Ursula, bursting into the room out of nowhere, toddling along with a stream of urgent chatter.
“This is a bloody conspiracy,” Guy had said, scooping his laughing sister into his arms. “Isn’t it, Little Bear? Lady Belinda will not give us a minute alone.” He had lowered Ursula to the floor and shaken his head at Arabella. “There are things I wish to say to you.”
“I daresay even Mama will leave us in peace on our wedding night.”
Under this persistent surveillance, they managed only practical, sensible conversations.
“We’ll go straight to London, if you don’t mind,” Guy had said. “Then on to Roth Hall once this matter in Chancery is settled. Sir Walter has agreed that Freddie and Ursula can come with me in the meantime, with their maids and nanny, if you approve of her. An instant household for you to manage, which you’ll do easily. You’ll be a brilliant marchioness, you know. Society will be shocked and the lawmakers will be scared.”
Then he had announced an impromptu trip to Birmingham, to keep him busy until their wedding, muttering something cryptic about jewelry makers and diamonds.
Arabella had plenty to keep her busy during his absence, as she prepared to leave her childhood home. Cassandra and Juno called several times, eager to discuss the inquest into Sculthorpe’s death.
Evidence indicated that many people in the household had known Sculthorpe was in the far stables, and the grooms testified that the baron had been conscious and active after his fight with Guy. Yet still Sir Walter grumbled that no one had yet confirmed whence Sculthorpe procured the flame.
Juno had laughed over her teacup. “Yesterday, Sir Walter called on Uncle Gordon to insist that Lady Belinda could have lit the fire. Apparently, Lady Treadgold’s maid claimed to have seen her heading for the stables at the pertinent time.”
“No!” Cassandra said. “I refuse to believe it.”
“As did Uncle Gordon. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay immediately said they were with Lady Belinda, so the maid must have been mistaken. You should have heard Uncle Gordon saying, in that lawyerly way of his, ‘We are dealing with evidence, Sir Walter. We do not randomly accuse people of murder without evidence.’”
In the meantime, the dressmakers had finished Arabella’s gown for her wedding and the rest of her trousseau. Her trunks were packed and nearly ready, and she had written to Hadrian Bell about her marriage.
Finalizing the manuscript was the last item on her list of tasks.
Papa opened the folio on his desk and turned over a page. “I hear Hardbury has gone to Birmingham.”
“Yes.”
“He had better come back.”
Arabella unfolded the letter and stared unseeingly at the words. Of course Guy would come back. Unless he didn’t. Unless he fell back on their old scheme, wrote letters full of detailed, regretful excuses, stayed away until the banns were no longer valid.
Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. He had days, yet, to get back before their wedding. He would not have made love to her like that if he didn’t intend to marry her.
But perhaps he had changed his mind.
She pressed a palm to the familiar dull ache in her abdomen. Their passion in the drawing room would not lead to any babies; the signs had come that morning. If Guy didn’t return, there would be no consequences. He could run free if he pleased.
She would be ruined, but he would be free.
“He will come back,” she said firmly.
“You see, my girl, I chose the right husband for you decades ago.” Papa’s hands faltered. When he looked back up, his expression was sincere. “I am sorry about Sculthorpe. I never imagined… I was impatient, after my illness. You understand.”
“All I wanted was to choose my own husband.” She paused. “I had considered Hadrian Bell as an option. I tried to tell you.”
Papa cocked his head, considering. “That would have worked, actually. But you’ve done even better, and we agree on this one too.”
Arabella let it drop. It didn’t matter anymore. She scanned the letter about the potential new journal editor. Papa had wasted no time in replacing her.
“These illustrations are good,” he said, nodding at the peacock. “Quite talented, that Bell girl. Not bad for a woman. Not bad at all.”
“A woman can have as much talent as a man, Papa.”
“You were never one for drawing. Adequate, of course, but your lines were too straight. I say, take a look at these.”
His tone was suddenly jaunty. Bright-eyed, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a thin folio, tied with a yellow ribbon. Arabella came to his side as he opened it, letting a dozen drawings spill out. They were done by a child, clumsy and out of proportion, but already they captured an impressive level of careful detail. The feathers on an owl. The veins in a leaf. The name on every page: Oliver.
Not one of these drawings was hers. But, as Papa had said, she never had been one for drawing.
She curled the corner of one page between her fingers. “You kept these,
all these years.”
Papa traced the owl’s lumpy head. “This house will have children again. Your boys will love it here.”
Helplessly, Arabella found her brother’s portrait, looked away, to Pirate the falcon with his single, knowing eye.
“You don’t have to name the boy Oliver, of course. Name him whatever you please, but he’ll come here and learn everything there is to know.” Papa gathered up the drawings, neatly, reverently. Closed the folio on them. Tied that little yellow ribbon. “That’s how my interest grew, you know. When my book lessons were finished, my father used to take me around, teach me things. He found my fascination with birds amusing, given our name, but that was only ever a coincidence. I liked it when my father took me around, just as I did with you two. It’ll be wonderful to do that again.”
“With us two,” Arabella repeated.
Yes, Papa had always been there, when they were two. But when there was only one…
“I came to tell you about a nest I had found,” she said. “You scolded me for the dirt on my gown. I brought you a butterfly I had caught. You complained that my hair was a mess. I tried to learn about farming. You sent me away to help Mama plan the menu.”
Papa busied himself with replacing the folio. “Yes, I remember you barging in here, all of twelve, lecturing me about drainage or timber or something else you’d read in some outdated book. Telling me this would be your estate as you had no brothers and demanding I teach you.” He looked up, his knuckles on the desk. “It’ll be your son’s estate, not yours. That’s the natural order of things.”
Arabella caught herself crumpling the letter and dropped it as if scalded. She had to speak. Guy had taught her that. He had shown her it was safe to say what she felt, to ask and not demand.
“I only wanted to spend time with you again. As we used to. I wanted a home. I wanted…”
She had wanted her home to go back to how it had been before Oliver died. Fifteen years had passed, and still she wanted that.
“If you wanted a home, you should have married years ago. But no matter now. You’ll marry, have children, and your second boy will live here with us.”
“So I exist only to bear children, which you will take away.”
“Don’t turn it into a drama, girl. You know what I mean. This estate is your son’s birthright. Don’t deny him that. Don’t deny me that.”
Swallowing away the bitterness in her throat, Arabella let her eyes wander over the pages on his desk: the text and illustrations she had commissioned to make this book. A silly little guidebook! And those journals, bound and lined up in a neat matching row on Papa’s bookshelf. How enterprising she had fancied herself, at the age of sixteen. It had been during one of the ornithology conventions, not long after Guy’s departure. She had overheard Papa saying that his daughter should have been getting married, but her bridegroom had run away. But she had distracted him, all of them, with her brilliant idea of turning the conference papers into a regular journal.
What a waste of her time. What a waste of her talent! What else might she have been doing, all these years?
Their quarrel must have upset Queenie, for suddenly she flapped her wings and again cried, “What a day! What a day!”
Immediately Papa went to soothe her. Of course he did. He spent more time with that parrot than he did with his daughter. He spent more time with two dozen dead birds.
Do you even like birds? Guy had asked her. She had never thought to query it, because it had never been about the birds, or the journals, or the books, or even her inheritance. It had only ever been about getting her family back.
Truth was, she didn’t like birds, much.
She looked at Papa. “If you could have had a choice, you would not have chosen me, would you?”
He needed no explanation. His eyes went straight to the portrait and back to Queenie. “You know that’s not it,” he said, his hand resting on the parrot. “I would have chosen you both.”
“But you lost only one, not two. Yet you could not be pleased with the child that remained.”
He said nothing.
“I loved him too,” she said. “He was part of me, my twin. Always at my side.”
Silence filled the room, so dense even the parrot dared not break it.
Finally, Papa dropped his hands and took a deep breath.
“He still is,” he said quietly. “Every time I look at you, I see him. Right there.”
Now she knew why Papa could hardly bear to look at her.
“Maybe if you had not been twins, maybe it would have been different. I know it was not your fault, it was never your fault. But… When I look at you, I see what I could have had. What could have been and never was.”
The jury of dead birds stared at her, their glass eyes as cold and judgmental as ever.
“So you found fault with me,” she said. “I would never have pleased you. I worked hard to excel, and the world sang my praises, but not you. Never you. It wasn’t about whether my hair was messy or my dress was flawed, or my fingers were stained from blackberries or my tongue too sharp. It was because I was a living reminder of your loss. I didn’t only lose my twin brother. I lost my father too.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’ll be different now. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”
All these years she had been fighting, and the whole time it had been in vain. She had lost before she’d even understood what the battle was about.
“You are not taking my children from me, Papa. Any child I have, I will keep with me for as long as I am fortunate to have them. You have taken too much from me already.”
The wind sliced Arabella’s cheeks as her horse galloped along with bone-jolting speed, but the effort to keep her seat meant she could not think, not until she reached the abbey ruins and toppled out of the saddle onto unsteady legs.
But even up here, even a good hour since her quarrel with her father, she found no peace, no escape from the eruption of messy, hot, stinking emotions. In the dull light, these abbey walls, too, were haunted by memories. Here she had played at knights with Oliver. There, they had picked blackberries. And that wall there—that was where Guy had walked, traipsing along carelessly on a sunlit day.
Curse him for going to Birmingham. She needed him. She needed his arms, his comfort.
She needed to grow up.
Yes, Oliver was always by her side, the little boy who never grew up. And here stood proud, arrogant Arabella Larke: the little girl who never grew up, still eight years old, trying to bend the world to her will, waiting for her life to go back to how it was, when their family was happy and she was always welcome, Oliver’s sister and protector.
What a tragic pair they made, she and Papa, so terribly alike, both trying and failing to fill the hollow left behind, in their own pointless, useless ways.
Thus had begun her struggle with her father. Poor Mama, caught in the middle. Even Sculthorpe had been a casualty of it. And now Guy was swept up in it too.
If it wasn’t for this futile fifteen-year struggle with Papa, she would never have become engaged to Sculthorpe, never have devised her scheme, never have chosen Guy, never have gone to his house that night in London.
And she and Guy would never have ended up here: due to be married in a few days. Instead, she would likely have married someone else years ago, and Guy would have been free to choose the life he wanted after all, with the amiable, pleasant wife of his dreams.
In the end, they had wanted the same thing, she and Guy: a warm, safe, loving home.
He wouldn’t get what he wanted, not with her.
“No,” she said out loud, to the stone, to the blackberries, to the cluster of Michaelmas daisies by the wall. “No. He will come back from Birmingham. He will marry me.”
Papa might not have wanted her, but Guy did. Papa had resented her all these years, but Guy had chosen her.
In a way.
He was happy to be marrying her. For now.
He enjoyed their arguments. He looked past her flaws and mistakes. He indulged her prideful nature and her foibles.
For now.
But marriage was not just for now. It was for years. Decades, if they were lucky. Guy’s reality would not meet his dreams: the pleasant, amiable bride, the peaceful home. Arabella was not his first choice.
Every time I look at you, I see what I could have had. What could have been and never was.
Guy got himself into these situations and then he made the most of them. He didn’t waste time and energy considering future possibilities, not the way she did. He was spared the curse of seeing seventeen moves ahead. Seventeen years ahead. Would he still be content with his decision a decade from now? Or would she start one quarrel too many? Issue one too many commands? Devise one too many insupportable schemes? Offend the wrong person one too many times?
Until the day came when Guy did not see her, but instead saw what he could have had. What could have been and never was.
Arabella climbed onto a low section of wall and hauled herself back into the saddle. On she rode, her thoughts and feelings swirling into a fierce, tangled mess.
Never again. She could not bear to feel like this again. She could not bear to see Guy turn remote, find interests that separated him from her, hide his resentment under smiles and false cheer.
Arabella kept riding, across her father’s estate to the neighboring estate of Sunne Park, with the old Tudor pile that was Cassandra’s home. By the time she dismounted, her roiling emotions had settled. She had a plan. Arabella liked having plans. Having plans gave her the illusion of having control.
Cassandra was in her garden, singing to herself as she tended a flowerbed, an old bonnet sitting lopsided on her head.
“Arabella?” Her smile faded. “Whatever brings you here? You look distressed. What is the matter?”
“You said if I ever needed help, I should come to you.”
“Of course. What is it?”
