I’d liked that at the beginning—how Edmund challenged me and how he had a steady confidence that belied his true age (he was, in fact, a year my junior). But his critiques took on a sharper edge when they were no longer followed by caresses, when they came to outnumber his compliments and I could do nothing right.
“We all had childhood games, Mr. Brontë,” I said, tracing my finger along the ridged equator of one of the globes that stood near the paneled window. “But most of us outgrow them.”
“A tragedy, Mrs. Robinson!” Mr. Brontë cried, his humor matching mine. He caught on to the other side of the globe, halting its slow rotation and leaning toward me.
We must have looked as if we were carving up the world between us.
“What is the object of our existence unless creation?” he said with that intensity of his that was at odds with our age’s ever-fashionable nonchalance. “And while many of us create—I will not say replicas—but only pale imitations of ourselves, how much more incredible is it to craft a world, another reality that you can share and invite others into, as Charlotte and I have with Angria and Emily and Anne have with their Gondal? Another country, just around the corner, wherever you are and however you are trapped. Imagination is the only passport required for entry there.”
“Hence why you call yourself ‘Northangerland,’ ” I said, pulling back, away from his face and away from the window, although it was like moving through treacle.
“Yes,” he said, his excitement subsiding and a new hollowness entering his voice as if, in removing myself, I had reminded him of the realities between us, the fact that our very presence here, alone, was an insurrection. “Northangerland is the dark hero of Angria, a man led by his passions, who acts ever on ambition. I envy him, Lydia.”
A shiver passed through me. Was it at hearing him say my first name or merely at the sound of it being used with affection and not as a reprimand?
“What do you en—?” I could not complete the question. My breathy voice trailed into nothingness as I retreated. I came in contact with one of the fitted, glass-doored bookcases, solid, immovable, clearing me of all responsibility were he to come closer.
“He is free,” Mr. Brontë said, his confidence growing as he stepped forward, narrowing the gap between us. “Free to do what he wants, take what he wants.” He stopped, raised his hand, and ran his thumb down the spine of a book to the right of my cheek.
“And what do you want?” I asked, pausing between each word, unsure if I wanted an answer, terrified that the magic would be ruined by one false move on his part. We couldn’t sustain this bizarre, romantic, almost spiritual communion were our words and actions to descend into baseness.
“A lock of your hair, Lydia,” he whispered. “Something to remember you by.”
Perfect. Intimate but still deferential, physical without fording the Rubicon, venturing to the place from which there could be no return.
I nodded.
Mr. Brontë drew a small knife from his waistcoat pocket with one hand and, with the other, tugged at the silver comb that secured my hair. The teeth scraped against my scalp. The trinket clattered to the floor. My mass of curls hovered for a second, unsecured, before tumbling over my shoulders.
Just as well I had never required hairpieces.
Now his fingers were running through the thick, real, loosened tresses and skirting up my neck and I couldn’t think of hairpieces anymore, could I? Or how my hair would look when he was finished? I wasn’t meant to be thinking of such trivial things when my life, my marriage, my virtue were hanging in the balance.
“Take the lock, Mr. Brontë,” I said, struggling not to gasp as his fingertips moved across my face, tracing their way to my lips.
Too much.
Too far.
The interview was careening out of my control.
“Branwell,” he said, correcting me and gazing at my bottom lip, which his thumb was toying with, his expression hungry.
“Go,” I said, closing my eyes, not to drink it in but because I could no longer bear to see him.
My scalp tautened.
A low, rough sawing sound.
Release.
Branwell drew back, but I kept my eyes closed.
“Go,” I repeated.
A click of the door and he did.
I walked to the fireplace.
My face stared at me in the looking glass above the mantel just the same.
It was like the morning after my wedding night, when I had been alone, shivering in my shift, before a maid had come to dress me.
“No one can see it, Lydia,” I’d whispered to myself, giddy and sore and angry at being lied to. “It is not such a change. You are just the same.”
But, now, on closer examination, there was a difference. One of the curls that framed my face was shorter than the other. How arrogant, how like a man, to go for a strand that was so visible. Marshall would fix it, without a word of reproof. And only she would have noticed anyway.
I stooped to retrieve the comb and inhaled hard.
A momentary aberration only. I was still mistress here.
* * *
“YOU ARE TOO KIND, Doctor,” I said.
I wasn’t looking at Dr. Crosby but beyond him at my own reflection in one of the full-length mirrors that lined the passage to the ballroom at Kirby Hall. Thanks to their matriarch’s long illness and subsequent demise, it had been some months since we’d been in the Thompsons’ Palladian mansion, the finest house in the area, grander even than ours.
Edmund had been talking to Reverend Lascelles only moments ago. Yet, infuriating as ever, he’d proven missing at the very moment we’d all been summoned from the anterooms to enjoy Harry Thompson’s long-anticipated wedding feast. Just as well the doctor had stepped up in his absence.
Dr. Crosby was the perfect partner. He complimented me on my appearance as we made our way up the corridor, slowed by trailing dresses and a strict adherence to etiquette, and entertained me with a flurry of gossip from Great Ouseburn, a ten-minute stroll from Little Ouseburn yet a separate parish, which meant it might as well have been a world away.
I did look beautiful tonight. I’d ordered a new dress from Miss Harvey in York. Black, of course, but with gold trim at the cuffs and along the scooping neckline. I’d thought that Mr. Brontë and Ned might come to wave us off and that the tutor would admire me with his words or his eyes. But there had only been Miss Brontë, her expression alternating between intrigued, disinterested, and judgmental; Marshall, happy and proud, eyes glittering at what she had helped create; and Mary, tearing up that she, unlike the other girls, was excluded.
I stole a glance at my eldest daughters and smiled. Bessy was on Will Milner’s arm. They were a good match, although it was unclear who was guiding whom. I wondered if the boy had sent her any more notes since Valentine’s Day. He was an awkward young man, whose hands and feet still looked too big for him, and he held himself stiff and unspeaking. Bessy was silent and had turned the color of her dress, which had formerly been Lydia’s and was far too pink for her florid complexion.
Lydia, meanwhile, was paired with the youngest girl of the house, Amelia. I’d placated her and overspent on a new periwinkle gown that brought out her eyes, but her face was as downcast as it had been the day she’d first heard of Harry Thompson’s marriage.