A Wicked Kind of Husband

by Mia Vincy

  “That’s from Heraclitus,” Cassandra said.

  The name stirred a memory from schoolbooks at Eton. One of those Greek fellows, the sort who had nothing to do all day but sit around and state the bleeding obvious, for no apparent purpose other than the torture of English schoolboys two thousand years later.

  “Fellow couldn’t spell ‘sun’,” he said. “It’s inefficient, to have all those extra letters.”

  “It was built in Tudor times. They didn’t have spelling back then. Come on.”

  He allowed himself to be led inside, to greet the butler and housekeeper, the sense of unreality growing stronger as his boot heels rang out on the flagstones. He half-listened to Cassandra and Mrs. Greenway discuss Lady Charles and housekeeping matters, as he let his eyes bounce over the paintings and paneling to the staircase with its glossy bannister.

  Bannister. Children. Cassandra saying: I can imagine them now, our children, running through Sunne Park, sliding down the bannisters, dashing through the roses. Dark-haired, bright-eyed children, and he could imagine them now too. He blinked away the images and took to making inane comments to keep them at bay, as she led him through the great hall, a formal dining room, a stylish drawing room, and into a large, book-lined room.

  He should not have come. He should never, ever have come.

  “This is Papa’s study,” Cassandra said.

  Yet it had the air of a room in use.

  “Your father’s study?”

  “I’ve been using it. That is, it was convenient. When I started looking after the estate. But it’s yours, really. I mean, it’s your house. And we must discuss the bedrooms. Mama still uses the suite connected to the master suite, so you—”

  “Mercy, no. I cannot sleep connected to her. Where do you sleep?”

  “In the room I always used. If you don’t want Papa’s room, where…?”

  “You choose. I won’t be here long before I go to Birmingham.”

  “Of course.” They stood looking at the study and not at each other. “How long do you think you’ll stay?” she finally asked, trailing a finger down the doorjamb.

  Ah, he knew that question. When he showed up at a gentleman’s country house, his host’s wife would ask it, and later he’d hear them arguing. Polite-speak for “I don’t want you here.” He never minded. He always had somewhere else to be anyway.

  But this was Cassandra, and she did not seem averse to having him around. Maybe she actually meant “I want you to stay,” or maybe she merely needed to know his plans so she could manage the housekeeping, and how did it happen that they spoke daily and he still didn’t know what she was saying and still didn’t know how to ask?

  It was a simple enough question. He wasn’t usually too stupid to answer simple questions but all he managed was silence.

  So she answered it for him. “You said that you would stay until I…conceived. That was the agreement.”

  “Right. Well. If that was the agreement.” It came out brusquely, loudly, despite the wood paneling and thick carpets. “Still too soon to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Well. What else have you to show me?”

  She guided him through the rest of the house, but she skipped the upper floors, and since upper floors contained things like nurseries and schoolrooms, he was happy with the omission.

  When the tour of the house was done, Cassandra offered to show him the garden.

  “I mean, not all of it today,” she added hastily. “But perhaps you’d like to see my private garden…”

  Joshua was about to make a bawdy joke about her private garden, but she looked very shy all of a sudden, and so instead he said, “Why not?”

  Still looking shy, she rushed him through the main flower garden without comment, even though the crowded beds were spectacular to his city eyes. They bloomed in a profusion of colors, and chattered and buzzed with bees, butterflies, and birds.

  The breeze ruffled his hair and his shirt—he had, of course, shucked off his coat and cravat, enjoying Cassandra’s teasing about his difficulty in keeping his clothes on—and he sneezed only three or four times.

  “This is all your doing?” he asked.

  “It was begun more than a century ago,” she said. “I merely add to it, and I have a small army of gardeners to follow my every command. Oh, look, the Goat’s Beard is in bloom!”

  “The what?”

  She pointed out a purple flower with long, spiky petals. “Goat’s Beard.”

  “What kind of name for a flower is that?”

  “A perfectly good name,” she said stoutly, walking on. “Lots of flowers have names like that. There is Goosefoot, Fat Hen, Busy Lizzie. Ah, Devil’s Shoestring, Sneezewort, Nipplewort—”

  He burst out laughing. “You’re just making these up now.”

  But she wasn’t laughing. She led him around a hedge and into a secluded garden the size of a spacious parlor, and she stood nervously with her fingers tangled together.

  This mattered, he realized. So he strolled into the middle and looked around properly. The garden was hidden by high hedges, and a stone path wound through islands of colorful flowerbeds to a small folly with an embroidered seat. Another path led to a fountain: It featured a statue of a curvy, mostly naked woman, standing in a large shell and pouring water from a jug.

  “I mean,” she rushed on, “it’s only a little garden and it’s not much compared to the rest, but…”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “Mama gave us all a garden plot when we were children, but I was the only one who took to it,” she said. “So over time I annexed them all and turned it into my private garden. I started when I was about ten, I think, and I kept adding to it.”

  He wandered along the path, letting his hand trail over the flowers as he passed, soaking up the chatter of the birds and the gurgling of the fountain. The beds were generously planted, and carefully nurtured, and were so full of variety and color and life that he could look at them all day. The hedges kept out the world, even kept out time, and teased him with the idea that they were alone in the world.

  “Is this meant to be you?” he asked, studying the statue. “She’s rather indecent, don’t you think?”

  She whacked his belly. “Stop being puerile. She’s lovely.” A distant look entered her eyes as she wiggled her fingers under the flow of the water. “She’s inspired by Arethusa, the waterer. Mama bought it for me in Leamington Spa. I complained that I never got any attention, and so Mama took me on a special trip, just her and me, and when she bought this, she told me that love was like an endless spring, where the water flowed and flowed and flowed. It will never run out, she said, and no matter how much love you need, there will always be more.”

  Suddenly, Joshua understood.

  Cassandra’s sisters were so beautiful and lively that she felt plain and dull in comparison, for all that she was pretty and witty and well-liked. So she had carved out her own space in the garden, where she did not have to compete. Even now, when she was de facto head of the household, she did not claim what was hers. Here, and here alone, she felt fully herself.

  The dream-like sensation faded. His thoughts were as sharp and clear as ever, and he was fiercely, ferociously, glad he had come.

  “Do you like it?” she asked shyly.

  He pulled her into his arms. “Very much. It is just like you.”

  “And the house? Do you like your house?”

  He ignored the “your,” looking at the garden with new eyes. “I suppose we must see someone in their own home to understand them,” he said.

  “Perhaps if I saw your home in Birmingham, I’d understand you. Your devotion to your work, your love of metal.”

  She would not see a home. She would see an empty house, the place where he slept and changed his clothes. His real home was the space in his head where he kept his work, the one thing no one could ever take from him.

  She had shown him an important piece of her; he owed her something
in return.

  “I never had a particular love of metal,” he said. “That is simply where I landed. But I came to admire the alchemy of the blacksmith, the way a man can bend iron to his will. With heat and pressure, one can transform the very nature of things. A lump of ore or a piece of scrap can be forged into something powerful or useful or beautiful. Something strong, solid, lasting. I like the idea of that.”

  “And that is Birmingham,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She pulled away from him and went into the folly and leaned back on the seat. She took off her bonnet and placed it beside her, then closed her eyes and turned up her face. The afternoon light caressed her soft complexion and the hint of red in her hair, and he wished he could hold the sight forever.

  Then she opened her eyes and smiled, and he joined her on the seat.

  “It’s your house,” he said.

  “It’s yours.”

  “Forget what the law says. You earned this house.” Sudden fury at her family coursed through him. “You love it. You run it. You make it work. Your family are too stupid to see it, but they need you. And you do not see it either. Your sisters followed you to London.”

  “They went to London to be naughty.”

  “No. They went because they do not know how to live without you. You are at the center of this family. You hold them together. You are the head of this family and its heart, and this house is yours. Claim it. Stop giving up your space. Fight for what is yours. Kick your mother out of that room and claim that study as your own.”

  She stared at him, eyes startled, lost and searching. She looked distressed, and he never meant to cause her distress. He brushed his hand over her cheek and had barely said her name when she cried, “Kiss me.”

  He kissed her. Sweetly and sensuously, they explored each other, and yes, she still tasted like flowers, but he could not taste her well enough like that, so he tugged at her greedily. She clambered astride him and proceeded to twist his hair and rain soft kisses over his face and throat. He would never know which of them it was who hoisted up her skirts and opened his falls, but soon he was inside her again. The birds chattered, the fountain flowed, his wife tugged his bottom lip between her teeth, and then said, “I bet you can’t do this in Birmingham.”

  He had no breath to laugh, still less to talk, so he took his breath from her, and drove deeper inside her as she fell harder on him, until she sank her teeth into his shoulder, and they came.

  Afterward, he felt the moment when her awareness returned, for she shifted and buried her face in his neck.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “It’s all the birds and the bees. Don’t apologize to me. I enjoy a good ravishing in the garden.”

  “I used to be so well behaved and now, I…It’s your fault.”

  He grinned. “And I am very proud of myself.”

  Even after they tidied themselves up, he felt lazily warm and content, so he encouraged her to lie back against him and he closed his eyes.

  “We should go,” she said. She didn’t move. “We have things to do.”

  “Not yet. It’s still warm enough and it’s peaceful here with you. Let’s stay a little bit longer.”

  He did have things to do. Lots. But the sun was warm, and the bees were buzzing, and her weight was comforting, and his limbs and eyes were heavy. He was suddenly more weary than he had ever been in his life, and it wouldn’t do any harm, if for a moment, for the first time in fourteen years, he stopped and took a rest.

  Chapter 29

  For a man who claimed to have a lot of work, Cassandra thought several times over the following days, Joshua did not seem to do much, although he still bounded about with more than the usual amount of energy, firing off ideas and getting excited at the slightest thing. Every day he had some part of the household in an uproar, and they all adored him anyway.

  He barged into the dairy and frightened the dairy maids, until they realized he simply wanted to know what they were doing and how it all worked, this business of turning milk into butter and cheese. On laundry day, too, he interrogated the laundry maids; the poor things blushed and giggled as they stammered out answers, for the whole time they were holding his drawers. He spent a day fascinated by the pigs, strode out to meet tenants, quizzing them until they were dizzy, and hatched a scheme with Mr. Ridley at End Farm to rebuild a rickety bridge using a new design. He even invaded Mama’s distillery and delighted her by rating her wines. Messengers and letters came from Birmingham every day, and Mr. Das sent a new secretary too, but Joshua grumbled that he could not concentrate, though Cassandra didn’t know what he meant, for surely he was seeking the distractions; the distractions did not seek him.

  Days passed. One week. Two. He joined the family for dinner, and after dinner too, and passed each night with her. They made love and chatted quietly, and she went to sleep with hope in her heart.

  Only to wake up alone.

  The sunne is new each day: Oh, how those words mocked her! She used to consider the inscription to be a message of optimism—a reminder that at any moment one could start anew—but now she understood it as a message in futility. As each day stretched on, her husband drew closer, yet when the new sun came, it started all over again, and she was no closer to keeping him than she had been the day before.

  Because he was always leaving.

  When she dared to comment that he worked less than before, he waved a hand and said, “Das is coping. I’ll get back to it in Birmingham.” When she mentioned the midsummer festival, he said, “Yes, but by then I’ll be back in Birmingham.” And when she suggested he get a pair of dogs to accompany him on his long walks, he looked interested and then said, “What’s the point? I can’t take them with me to Birmingham.”

  Birmingham, Birmingham, Birmingham. How she hated it, that noisy, dirty, fast-paced city that called to her husband. She hated it even though she understood now: Birmingham was where he had forged his life and himself. It was where he had transformed himself from an unwanted illegitimate boy to a wealthy, powerful industrialist. To become a country gentleman would be a betrayal of himself. Birmingham was not a place: It was his identity, his heart and mind.

  Trying to make him stay with her would be like trying to stop the sun from rising.

  And so she lied to him.

  She said nothing about her missing monthly courses, or the nausea, fatigue, and sore breasts, and he did not seem to notice. She told herself it was not a lie, not really: It was too soon to be sure. Even after she spoke of it to Mama and to the midwife and to a friend, she did not mention it to him. To think she had once believed that if she had a child, she could dispense with the husband! Now guilt mixed with dread, and her tongue was tied, for as soon as she uttered the words, he would leap to his feet and say, “Excellent. My work here is done.”

  Yet he had made her a promise, and she had to tell him. How cruel this was: To have the child she longed for meant losing the husband she loved. She had never felt so torn in her life.

  But maybe, just maybe, if she asked him to stay with her, maybe, just maybe, he would. Maybe this child would hold them together.

  If we have a child, it is your child, not mine. I want nothing to do with any of it.

  Or maybe not.

  In her darker moments, she thought it would be better once he was gone. At least then she would be free of this dread, which was worse than nausea and fatigue, for the dread fought with hope and their tussles clawed at her. At least then her heart would be broken all at once, rather than breaking a little more each day.

  On a sunny morning, nearly a week after her conversation with the midwife, Cassandra was sitting in the bay window of her ground-floor parlor, sewing her secret and arguing with herself, when she glanced up to see Joshua striding through the garden toward her window, his coat hooked over one shoulder.

  Every part of her stilled, except her pounding heart and shaking hands. Today, she resolved. Today.
>
  Of course, she had made that resolution every morning for several days, and each evening when she saw him, the words did not come.

  But I must, she thought, her eyes eating up the sight of him, fearful it would be the last. If I cannot hold him, then I shall hold this: His face tilted up to the sun, a smile playing over his lips, a whirlwind of energy as he moved in easy, powerful strides.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t bear it, but before she could hide, he spotted her sitting at the huge, open window, merely feet above him.

  “Ah, fair princess!” he called, stopping and doffing his hat. “Are you occupied?”

  “Nothing important.”

  Clumsily, she shoved her sewing into her workbasket and forced a smile.

  “Stay there, I’ll come in,” he said, turning away.

  “I don’t see why you should waste time going around to the door,” she called back. “It would be more efficient simply to climb through the window.”

  He grinned. This might be the last time she saw him grin. “Mrs. DeWitt, you are a genius.”

  In a single bound, he leaped onto the sill, and balanced there, framed by daylight. An image of virility and strength to hold onto, to remember once he was gone.

  “Oh my,” she said.

  “Did I impress you? Do say I impressed you. I adore impressing you.”

  “I am immensely impressed.”

  She slid off the window seat, her mind on her workbasket and the papers on the table, watching as he leaped down and tossed his coat onto a chair.

  “I have had the most exciting conversation with Mr. Ridley,” he said, spinning back to face her. “Together, we have been utterly brilliant. Our bridge is going to be stronger and more durable than any bridge in the history of Warwickshire. Oh, and I met Mrs. King—do you know her?”

  “She’s the midwife.”

  “That’s the one. I told her about that chap we met in London who thinks disease is carried by water and she says it sounds right to her, whatever the fancy doctors say. Indeed, she says she’s sick of fancy doctors telling her about things they know nothing about, like women’s bodies—I tell you, I blushed so hard.”