“You brought him brandy?” parroted his more suspicious sibling, her confusion returning.
“Is that worthy of commentary, Miss Sewell?” I asked.
“I only meant to say that was very kind of you, ma’am.”
What else could she say? She lowered her head as I floated past her, wishing the pair a happy Easter.
Tonight, before the housekeeper returned to the Hall, they would discuss the lady of the house tending to the strange young tutor.
“I always knew she was a hypocrite,” Miss Sewell would say, her viperish eyes flashing as she kissed her brother good night. “She’s never let me have a man. How many years do you think she has on him?”
CHAPTER FIVE
SALT IN MY NOSE, sun in my eyes, and the wind whistling past my ears, loosening my hair and carving out sharp valleys in the sand. I had to fight against the thick folds of my dress to walk, as they flew back—black, billowing, warning of disaster as surely as the sails of Theseus’s ship.
There was a time when summering in Scarborough had been an escape. And now? In the week since we’d arrived, it had proved as bad as home. Worse, for here Mr. Brontë was with us at much closer quarters, and my mother-in-law was next door rather than at the safe distance provided by Green Hammerton Hall.
“Mama!” Mary cried, ahead of me, dancing sideways to avoid an incoming wave.
I squinted to make out her newly freckled face.
“It is Ned and Mr. Brontë,” she called. “I can see them.”
I could not. I had always struggled with my sight but was too vain to use eyeglasses to correct it. What’s more, with age, the sliver of world that was clear to me was narrowing. The foreground was now hazy too—the pages of my novels and the neat lines of my sister Mary’s letters as much of a blur as the muddled blue of the horizon.
“Go to them,” I told the daughter I’d named for my Mary, pausing to catch my breath. “And use your parasol. You will lose your complexion.”
Mary ran up the beach, without heeding how she looked. The lace-trimmed parasol bobbed uselessly behind her, as she dodged stray children, invalids, and a man leading a donkey. The beast’s head hung low. His gait was slow. I imagined staring into his tragic eyes.
“Pomfret cakes, madam, a halfpenny a bag.” I waved a seller aside, and he trundled on with his cart.
There was a sad lack of people worth knowing here this year, for all that the South Bay beach was so crowded. None of the Thompsons had traveled from Kirby Hall, out of respect to the grandmother who had finally quit this world not long after my mother-in-law’s predictions. And many of the other regulars had delayed their trips until August, although Edmund’s mother had insisted on July.
Yet Lydia and Bessy had still found a pair of girls their own age and station to giggle with, who provided the double advantages of plain faces and a fashionable married sister to play chaperone. Ned kept at his lessons and spent hours in the Rotunda Museum talking geology with Mr. Brontë. Miss Brontë used her moments of freedom to play with Flossy, a black-and-white terrier the girls had given her a month or so ago, or to visit St. Mary’s, the church in the old town, although on Sundays we attended services at Christ Church. And Edmund played escort to his mother, excusing me from sharing most of these duties.
So today I was alone, or as good as alone, with only Mary—the leftover child—who moped around, awkward to a fault as girls are when on the cusp of womanhood, although she seemed to have more energy today.
I couldn’t fight against the wind any longer so strode away from the water and sat where the sand was soft, fine, and dry. I didn’t bother to lay out my plaid but burrowed my hands deep and inspected how the light shone through the tiny crystals that gathered under my fingernails.
I didn’t look after Mary, afraid of meeting Mr. Brontë’s eyes as they walked toward me. I gazed instead at the Woods’ Lodgings on the Cliff, our home here for the next month.
I had hardly spoken to Mr. Brontë since that night in the Monk’s House three months ago, although I had studied the scene a thousand times, second-guessing my intentions, and his, and not knowing what I regretted more—going to his room, or the state I had found him in there.
For a week I’d been convinced that he would seek me out, apologize, and explain away what I had seen so that we could continue as before. Instead, he avoided speaking to me, or even looking at me, until I felt like a stranger at my own table. Miss Brontë and I both watched her brother raise his wineglass to his lips, again and again, as if competing over who could tally each sip.
“Edmund, darling,” I’d said one night, raking my fingers across his scalp on a rare occasion when he let me touch him. “I wonder if Mr. and Miss Brontë have become a little too accustomed to joining us for dinner?”
“Oh?” he said. “I thought they amused you.”
“Miss Brontë barely speaks, and Mr. Brontë may be losing his novelty,” I quipped. “But of course if you want them there…” I trailed off.
Edmund moved my hand to the other side of his head. “No, no. Whatever makes you happy, Lydia. Tell Miss Sewell we’ll dine with them once a fortnight.”
A laugh—Lydia’s most affected laugh—floated on the breeze. I couldn’t help but swivel to the cluster of clouds moving along the beach toward me. I’d let the children set aside their mourning, and so the girls and their friends were a riot of colorful ribbons, as uncoordinated as a circus tent.
I scrambled to my feet and shook off the sand. Lydia was framed by those silly and uncomely girls, while Mr. Brontë was walking between Bessy and the married sister, Mrs. Whatever-she-was-called. And Ned and Mary were running this way, racing to arrive first.
“There is a play tonight!” yelled Ned, coming within shouting distance. “With sword fights and a hunchback!”
“You mustn’t listen to Ned go on so. It is by Mr. Shakespeare,” said Mary with authority, when they stood almost breathless in front of me. She appeared to have lost her parasol during her short absence. “And it’s at the Theatre Royal.”
“I see,” I said, trying not to laugh at them.
“And Mrs.… Mrs.… Agnes’s and Bella’s sister has tickets and we must all go!” Ned ended on a flourish. “Oh, can we?”
I calculated. Edmund was accompanying his “dear Mama” to one of the Spa Saloon concerts tonight and, with the children and their keepers gone, I would be able to enjoy the Lodgings in solitude.
“Mr. Shakespeare, did you say, darlings?” I said, taking both children by the hands and walking them away from the others. “In that case, I have no objections.”
* * *
“OH, MARSHALL, I SHOULD have gone with them!” My desire to be alone forgotten, I paced the library, which was small and ill furnished compared to ours at home. I pressed my nose against the cold glass and struggled to see anything of the world beyond the window. The fabled view of the beach far below had faded.
“To the concert, madam?” Marshall said, still concentrating on the hem she was letting down on one of Mary’s petticoats.
“No, no, to the theater.” Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me to spend time with Edmund’s mother tonight.