Bear No Malice

by Clarissa Harwood

  When the maid arrived with the tea things and the two women began to eat, Miranda asked Lady Carrington if she’d tell her about her youth. Sometimes the key to solving a problem with a painting was getting to know one’s subject better.

  “My family wasn’t as wealthy as you might expect,” the peeress began. “Although my father was an earl, he was always in debt, and there was never enough money for the things I wanted. I dreamed of marrying a wealthy man and having beautiful dresses and giving lavish parties. I think I was happiest when I was dreaming about those things. When I actually did marry and received everything I thought I wanted, though, the reality fell far short of my dreams.”

  Miranda had suspected for a while that the Carringtons’ marriage was unhappy. Though she had met Lord Carrington a couple of times and found him pleasant and amiable, Miranda noticed the tension between him and his wife even in the few minutes she’d seen them together.

  “Reality always does fall short, though, doesn’t it?” Miranda couldn’t resist saying. “One can’t expect too much.”

  “Is that how you live your life? It’s hard to believe that an artist with a vision like yours could have such meager dreams.”

  “I have wild dreams sometimes, but I don’t expect them to come true.”

  “Poor Cinderella,” Lady Carrington said, but she spoke too kindly for Miranda to take offense.

  The peeress set her teacup aside and leaned forward. “Don’t you ever want more? Don’t you weary of keeping your hopes small?”

  “I’ve been disappointed before,” Miranda said slowly. “Keeping my hopes . . . reasonable is better for my peace of mind.”

  “Spoken like a truly good, modest woman. Perhaps your paintings give you enough freedom so that you have no other longings. Your art is anything but modest and small. But I don’t have a talent like that. Everyone expects me to be happy with my lot—after all, what do I have to complain about? But after getting everything I thought I wanted, I was unhappy. I felt empty, unsatisfied.”

  “What did you do when you realized this?” Miranda put down her own teacup and reached for her sketchbook. There was something in Lady Carrington’s face that intrigued her, and she wanted to see if she could reproduce it on paper.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I tried not to think about it. I tried to be a good wife and mother. I threw myself into charity work. And I discovered that the admiration of men was as effective an opiate as it had been before my marriage. It gave me moments that were almost like real happiness. I saw nothing wrong with it. I never allowed any man but my husband to touch me. Not for a long time, anyway.”

  Miranda found that listening too closely to Lady Carrington interfered with seeing her—seeing that spark of truth in her face that eluded words.

  “Eventually, other men’s admiration wasn’t enough. I took a lover. He made me happy for a while, but of course, the effects wore off, as they always do.” She looked closely at Miranda. “Have I shocked you?”

  “No,” said Miranda, concentrating on her sketch. Then she looked up and said, “Didn’t you feel guilty about your husband?”

  “Yes, at first. But my need to feel that false happiness was more important than anything else. I know how selfish that sounds.”

  “Sometimes people are compelled to do things that make them forget how empty they feel,” Miranda said quietly. “It may be selfish, but it’s also human.”

  “True.” Lady Carrington turned her head to gaze out the window that faced the front lawn.

  “I know you believe in God,” Miranda said after a moment. “Has your faith been no comfort to you?”

  “Not after this man and I became lovers. I felt I had forfeited any divine mercy at that point. But now . . . I wish I could find comfort in God, but He seems distant. I’m trying to do what’s right. Yet I still struggle—”

  They were interrupted by Lady Carrington’s youngest daughter, a round-faced, golden-haired cherub of about five, who opened the door and peeped around it.

  “Rosie, what have I told you about knocking before you enter a room?” Lady Carrington admonished the child, but with no real severity in her voice. Miranda fancied that the firm tone was assumed for her benefit.

  Rosie seemed to make the same assumption, for she ran into the room and flung herself into her mother’s arms. Miranda had formed a general impression that Lady Carrington wasn’t a maternal sort of woman, but the way she wrapped her arms around Rosie and gazed into the child’s eyes suggested otherwise.

  Miranda turned to a blank page in her sketchbook and made a new drawing as Rosie babbled happily to her mother, who continued to smile into her child’s face as if the two of them were alone. The total absorption of mother and child with each other allowed Miranda to work unhindered for several minutes. When she was finished, she looked at the new sketches she had made, realizing exactly what she needed to do next. The old painting of Lady Carrington that Miranda was unhappy with would be discarded, and a new one would take its place.

  “You look like the proverbial cat that ate the canary,” Lady Carrington said. The little girl had fallen asleep, her curly head nestled against her mother’s breast.

  “I have an idea,” Miranda said. “I’m not certain it will work, but I’d like to start over with the painting, if you don’t mind.”

  “I know better than to interfere with an artist who has such a determined look in her eyes. You may do as you like.”

  Lady Carrington insisted on sending Miranda home in her Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, despite Miranda’s preference for a less ostentatious mode of transportation. She sat in the back seat, which was luxuriously padded and smelled of shoe polish and leather. The motorcar was quieter than she expected, too: the loudest sound she heard from her vantage point was the clock mounted near the driver’s controls.

  As soon as she relaxed enough to sit back and think, she burst into tears. The driver was discreet enough to pretend not to notice. Try as she might to blame her tears on her excitement about the painting, she knew perfectly well that her heightened emotional state had several causes. One of them was seeing Lady Carrington with her daughter. The scene had affected Miranda first as an artist, but now it affected her as a mother. It was painful to see another mother who was free to spend as much time with her child as she wished when such an experience of tender maternal care was lost to Miranda forever.

  And then there was Jack, who was sorely in need of such care. Once he settled in at the Carringtons’, Miranda intended to visit him, worried that he’d be lonely in the unfamiliar environment. She’d hoped that Gwen and Simon might be willing to take him in, but Gwen’s resistance could not be overcome. For all Miranda’s criticism of Tom’s overprotectiveness, her own past colored the way she viewed Jack. She, too, cared too much about what happened to him.

  Neither of these children were like Sam, but they reminded her of what she had lost. How ironic that Lady Carrington thought Miranda had no longings apart from her art!

  This brought her to another cause of her current emotional state—her relationship with Tom. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since that night at the studio nearly a week ago. Deciding what to do about his father must have consumed much of his time. Besides, the old dean had died a few days earlier, so she could only imagine how hard Tom must be working to try to salvage his reputation at the cathedral.

  Although Miranda hadn’t confessed her misdeeds to Tom as he had to her, telling him she loved him qualified as a confession, and it made her feel vulnerable. She had loved him for so long without revealing her feelings that it had shocked her to hear herself say the words aloud. She didn’t expect him to return her feelings, but he hadn’t responded to her declaration, hadn’t even seemed to hear it. Until that day she’d been fairly successful in channeling her feelings into her art or pushing them out of her mind. But now she was all too aware of her desires and of the hopelessness of the situation.

  No longings, indeed! The problem was she had too many compe
ting longings.

  As for what Tom had confessed to her, she was surprised by some, but not all, of his misdeeds. She felt only sympathy for his actions as a youth—even leaving his family was understandable, given the abuse he had suffered. But what he had said about his behavior with women was sobering. She realized she was probably fortunate that he didn’t return her feelings. It was also gratifying to know she was the only person he trusted with his secrets. Still, she was a woman, too, and she couldn’t help wondering why she seemed to inspire no passion in him when other women could.

  It had been a relief to Miranda that Lady Carrington hadn’t referred to the scene at the cathedral, although now that she thought about it, it was an odd omission. Everyone else who was acquainted with Tom or who was at the service that day had talked of nothing else since. As a friend of his, Lady Carrington would naturally be concerned about him—or perhaps angry that he had lied about his father. Surely she had some reaction. Perhaps she was merely being discreet and avoiding gossip.

  When Miranda arrived home, the household was in an uproar, as she had expected. It was this way every time they had dinner guests whom Gwen or Simon considered worth impressing. This time the visitors were Simon’s employer Mr. Keating, along with his wife and son. Miranda steeled herself to enter the fray and quietly carried out Gwen’s orders, thinking wryly of Lady Carrington calling her “poor Cinderella.” She certainly felt like Cinderella as she helped Jane fetch and carry and clean for Gwen until her back was stiff and her arms aching. By the time the Keatings arrived, Miranda was in no mood to entertain them, wishing only for the quiet solitude of her bedroom.

  Mr. Keating was a rotund man in his middle years with narrow, shifty eyes that gave him a perpetually guilty look. Mrs. Keating was pleasant enough, but she talked too much for Miranda’s taste. Her loquaciousness was a blessing in disguise, though, for she and Gwen bore the burden of conversation. James Keating, the son, was in his late teens and had the unfortunate tendency of staring too intently at whichever woman was nearest him, as if he were trying to compensate for his father’s opposite tendency. Because Miranda sat across the table from him at dinner, she was the younger Mr. Keating’s victim for most of the evening. She tried giving him an icy stare in return, but it made no difference—it was like trying to pierce through a stone wall. The worst of James Keating’s rudeness was that his staring wasn’t confined to his object’s face. Any part of her person was fair game for his scrutiny, and it didn’t take long for Miranda to wish she had worn additional layers of clothing. Deciding that her only recourse was to ignore him, Miranda tried to focus on the conversation.

  “It’s been quite a dramatic week at the cathedral,” Mrs. Keating said to Gwen. “Were you there when that horrible man interrupted the service?”

  “Yes,” Gwen said.

  “I wasn’t,” Mr. Keating put in. “Was he really in his cups?”

  “It was awful,” Gwen said. “I don’t know why nobody threw him out sooner.”

  “Can you imagine the embarrassment of having a father like that?” Mrs. Keating said. “I wasn’t surprised when Canon Cross left the pulpit and walked out.”

  Miranda remembered how white Tom’s face had been and how he had clutched the side of the pulpit when his father first stood and started to speak. She wished Gwen and the Keatings would stop talking about him. Simon looked as uneasy as Miranda felt.

  “And the old dean died just a few days ago, did you hear?” Mrs. Keating said. “I know Canon Cross was being considered for the deanship of the cathedral, but this incident is bound to hurt his chances.”

  “He certainly won’t be dean now,” said her husband, who couldn’t possibly be certain. “The cathedral clergy are the aristocracy of the church. If Cross became dean, it would be like a navvy becoming king!” He snorted with laughter.

  “I never trusted him,” Mrs. Keating said. “I always thought there was something common about him.”

  Miranda felt sick. The conversation had spun out of control, but she couldn’t think fast enough to figure out how to stop it. She tried to catch Simon’s eye, but he was staring silently into his bowl of soup. Surely he wasn’t so afraid of his employer that he wouldn’t defend Tom.

  Gwen set down her spoon and cleared her throat. In a clear, authoritative tone, she said, “Canon Cross is our friend, and he’s a good man. Please don’t speak of him that way in our house.”

  Mrs. Keating stared, openmouthed. Mr. Keating’s spoon fell into his soup. “Will you allow your wife to speak to your guests in such a way?” Mr. Keating demanded of Simon.

  Miranda held her breath.

  Simon wiped his mouth with his napkin, then said slowly, “I agree with her.”

  There was a tense silence that seemed to Miranda to last forever, but was probably only a few seconds.

  Gwen turned to Mrs. Keating as if nothing unusual had happened and asked brightly, “Have you seen the new summer hats? They’re even bigger than last year and worn at quite a precipitous angle. You could wear them, though: you have such a wonderful sense of style. They’d look lovely on you.”

  Mrs. Keating hesitated, glancing at her husband, but Gwen’s flattery had hit its mark as the two women began a lively discussion of headgear. Miranda started breathing again. She could have hugged her sister-in-law with genuine affection.

  Simon and Mr. Keating began to speak of other things, too: politics, social problems, the future of the law firm. James Keating continued to stare at Miranda, taking away what little appetite she had. To Miranda’s relief, the Keatings left shortly after dinner.

  As she was about to escape to her room, an unexpected visitor rushed into the drawing room, ahead of a flustered Jane. It was Ann Goode, though she didn’t look like the same Ann who had been reunited with Jack in this very room. This version of Ann was better dressed, though ostentatiously so, in a gold silk day dress trimmed with lace and a matching hat so laden with feathers and flowers that a bird might be forgiven for swooping down to make a home in it. There was something artificial and hectic about the red of her lips and cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Thorne,” Jane said to Simon. “When I opened the door, she pushed me out of the way.”

  “Where’s Jack?” Ann demanded by way of greeting, looking from Simon to Miranda. “Is ’e ’ere?”

  Gwen recovered first. Rising from her seat and drawing herself up to her full height, she said, “Who is this person, Simon?”

  “This is Jack’s sister,” Simon said.

  “I’m done with lies,” Ann said. “I’m his mother.”

  Miranda felt her stomach lurch. It wasn’t possible. Jack was at least ten years old, and Ann was . . .

  Simon was apparently doing the arithmetic in his head, as well. “Aren’t you eighteen?” he said. “That’s what Jack told us. And he says he’s thirteen.”

  “I’m four-and-twenty. Jack’s ten. We’ve always lied about our ages. An’ I’ve pretended to be Jack’s sister since ’e was born. It’s not only gentlefolks like you as cares about appearances. But now it’s your turn to tell the truth. Where is ’e?”

  “I don’t know who you think you are,” Gwen said sharply, “but you have no right to rush into our drawing room and make demands.”

  Undeterred, Ann took a step towards Miranda, sitting in shocked silence in the armchair nearest the door. “You’ll ’elp me, won’t you?” Ann said. “You know Jack loves me. If you just tell me where ’e is, I’ll take ’im an’ leave an’ never trouble any of you again.”

  Miranda was struggling to reconcile this frowsy, demanding woman with the girl who had seemed to care so much about Jack, and she felt an instinctive desire to hide the boy’s whereabouts until she knew more. She also thought that Tom ought to be the one to decide how much to tell Ann about Jack’s whereabouts.

  “You ought to talk to Canon Cross about Jack,” she said. “He arranged—”

  “Canon Cross!” The girl spat his name like a curse. “’E’s the last person I’ll
talk to. ’E’s the reason I need to take Jack and get away from ’ere.”

  “What do you mean?” Miranda asked.

  “’E’s Jack’s natural father.”

  Miranda shot to her feet. “How dare you say such a thing!” she cried, raising her hand as if to slap Ann, despite never having slapped anyone in her life. “After everything he’s done for you and Jack—”

  “Why d’ye think ’e did so much? Guilty conscience, that’s why.”

  “You’ve said quite enough,” Simon said, advancing towards Ann. “If you don’t leave now, I’ll throw you out.”

  Gwen and Jane joined Simon to form a sort of human barrier, and together they managed to herd Ann out of the room, though not without loud protests on her part. The last proclamation Miranda heard was, “You’ll see the truth in the papers tomorrow. Then you’ll be sorry!”

  Miranda collapsed onto the chair she’d been sitting in, trembling from head to toe. Her mind whirled with fragments of words and images that began to form an unpleasant pattern of meaning. Tom’s particular interest in Jack. His agitation on the day Ann and Jack were reunited. His judgmental attitude towards Ann. His admitting to Miranda that he couldn’t be objective about Jack. His confession that he’d had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a woman.

  Miranda used the last bit of strength she had left to take refuge in her bedroom before anyone could see her crying for the second time that day.

  21

  Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  —William Shakespeare, King Lear

  Tom stared at the books in front of him without seeing them. He was in the chapter house at the cathedral, sorting through his belongings. It was hard to believe his time at the cathedral was over, at least temporarily.

  That morning the bishop had summoned Tom to the palace and said, “I want you to take some time away to sort yourself out, Canon Cross. A month at least. Perhaps two.”