“What a deficit of young men we have, Mrs. Robinson!” said the doctor, tracking the direction of my gaze and thoughts. “When a daughter of a beauty such as yourself goes unaccompanied.”
I gave his arm a squeeze. How good of him to dwell on my looks rather than hers.
“But—” He paused and leaned in so close I could see the silvering hair on the side of his dark head. “But it’s somehow appropriate, isn’t it?”
“How so, Dr. Crosby?” I asked, keeping up the whispering and hoping others thought us in on secrets of the party that they were not.
“I mean that this is a house of unmarried women. What is it? Six in all? A house that’s hungered for a wedding for years and then, not only does the son wed first, but Mr. Harry must go and marry elsewhere.”
I stifled a giggle. It was true that this was largely a gathering of spinsters. There were the Thompsons, from Henrietta, a fast-fading beauty who must have been five and thirty, all the way to Amelia, who was already too old to be bosom friends with a teenager like my Lydia. Five of the seven Milner girls were also here tonight, imagine! But no, my girls would never suffer their fate.
Whatever my governess had written of my showiness, I would ensure my daughters married, and married well. I knew what it took. Beauty, reputation, accomplishments. Another year had all but slipped by, but soon I would take action and defend them from a woman’s worst fate—to be extraneous and unneeded. Or no, that was not quite the worst—the worst was to be forced to make your own living, like the Miss Brontës.
Dr. Crosby pulled back my chair, which was toward the upper end of the leftmost of three long, glittering tables.
At the head of the central table was the man of the hour, Harry Thompson. He was handsome, well dressed, and roaring with laughter at something Reverend Lascelles had said. This was strange, as the Reverend wasn’t known for his humor, but the Thompson heir was one of those men who lived for pleasure, unracked by spiritual or artistic dilemmas, never looking any deeper, just the opposite of Bran—Mr. Brontë.
Beside the cackling bridegroom was, presumably, his bride. I’d already forgotten her name. She was small and unassuming, and her complexion was a little green. She was probably pregnant already, poor thing. That was the way of things once men decided the time had come to secure their inheritance.
“Any money on old Thompson spending half his speech talking of his mother?” Dr. Crosby muttered, as the tables filled with a flock of brightly colored dresses, occasionally broken by a pillar of black.
“You are terrible, Doctor, as is your wager.” I laughed and hit him with my fan, but with a slight delay. I was fretting that Frederick, the younger, plainer, and more stuttering Thompson son, was trapped between two Miss Milners, while my Lydia languished like an unplucked lily between Mary Ann and Amelia Thompson.
There was still no sign of Edmund.
“Mr. Brontë is quite the specimen, my dear Mrs. Robinson,” Dr. Crosby said.
I jumped at the sudden change of topic. It must have been at that.
“Just what one would want in their son’s tutor,” I replied, trying to mimic his dry, sardonic tone.
“Ha!”
A servant leaned in with a silver platter of steaming vegetables, dividing us for a second.
“I, for once, am being serious,” he said, reappearing through the fog. “What we need around here are new ideas. However did you conjure up such a novelty?”
“I have my ways, Dr. Crosby,” I said, inhaling my champagne too hard and before anyone had thought to give a toast.
“You do indeed.” The doctor clinked his glass with mine as I struggled not to cough. “All of us at the Lodge thank you.”
“Oh, the Lodge.” I’d recovered my composure and was back on steady ground. “I wonder what you men think to speak of there without the fairer, and wittier, sex to entertain you.”
So Branwell was a Freemason. No wonder he and Dr. Crosby had struck up such a fast rapport. Men often joined the order when they shared their home with a gaggle of women. My husband was also a member, although he hardly ever attended the meetings now. The ride to York was exhausting and the Lodge (in truth, a room above an inn) too smoky and crowded. That was Edmund’s excuse, anyway. He avoided company more and more and had nearly entirely withdrawn from the circle of friends we’d once reigned over.
“Ah, I thought you were a worldlier woman than that, Mrs. Robinson.” The doctor twinkled at me, looking more like an indulgent and eccentric uncle than a man my own age. “In the most respectful sense, I assure you. But you should know that it is when you are absent that gentlemen most wish to speak of you.”
The blood flew to my face as it hadn’t since I was a girl. Had Branwell really spoken about me? Could he have been so indiscreet? My hand reached, before I could stop it, to touch the curl he had stolen two weeks before.
But before I could open my mouth to speak, our host had risen to his feet. “Ladies—I say, ladies and gentlemen!”
A hundred conversations were cut off mid-sentence, mid-thought, even mid-word, as Richard Thompson tottered to his feet. A host of family portraits, including his own, were to serve as backdrop to his soliloquy and we as the unwilling crowd.
“There are many, my own dear mother included, who would have longed to be here on such a joyous occasion.”
Dr. Crosby elbowed me in the side. I gave him an appreciative nod.
“My darling mother was taken from us, too soon, this April.” Old Mr. Thompson wiped away a tear, but then, with age, eyes were prone to watering.
I snorted, and the bubbles raced up my nose. Too soon? He was on the edge of the grave himself. For his mother to have lived as long as she had was ridiculous.
But his lip was tremoring, his grief was real, and my own mother’s face flashed before me. I drank long so that she might fade, and no sooner had I replaced the glass on the thick ivory tablecloth than it was refilled as if by magic.
“But now we welcome Elizabeth—”
Ah yes, another Elizabeth. I couldn’t stand the name, as it was Edmund’s mother’s name. That’s why our Bessy was “Bessy.”
“—into our family and into our home. In some months Harry— where is my Harry?—will carry her off to Moat Hall, but for now she is ours.”
There was a smattering of applause. I drank again, doing another scan for Edmund. He hadn’t reappeared.
“Moat Hall? That rundown old place?” Dr. Crosby hissed in my ear, clapping loudly and with obvious relish. “Couldn’t they have put the old maids out to pasture there?”
“Give them time,” I said darkly.
Was Moat Hall really such a step down in the world? The property was a little too close to the village, it was true, but it must have been the same size as Thorp Green Hall.
“So eat, drink, be merry!” With every word, Mr. Thompson forestalled our enjoyment. “And join me in toasting to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Thompson!”
“To Mr. and Mrs. Henry Thompson!”
My glass was nearly empty when I raised it, but I drained the dregs anyway.
A clatter. The guests set upon their meals like animals.
There was gravy on Bessy’s chin, but she was leagues away from me, and besides, young Milner was too afraid to look at or talk to her.