I pushed the door and stepped into the near-blinding light.
But there was no Branwell.
A night mist was descending on our lodgings, obscuring the stars. My skin tingled, although it was not cold.
Being locked out would be disastrous. I wedged the door in place with two large stones, before stepping into the shadows and inching toward the servants’ quarters.
Black.
“Branwell,” I breathed every few yards, but there was nothing except the low hum of my pulse in my ears. It had been at least ten minutes, hadn’t it? Where was he?
My slippers slid noiseless through the grass. Thank God it hadn’t rained in weeks, and there was no mud to sketch telltale trails of green and brown across the ivory silk.
Was Branwell holding back to watch me approach through the fog, a spectral figure in white? Could he anticipate my breath and scent and the incongruous warmth of my skin?
My foot met only air, and I stumbled. I reached out to save myself and scraped my palms on the rough brick of the outbuilding. Ah yes, a manicured flower bed skirted the perimeter. It would be disordered now by a patch of trampled sunflowers.
The humming grew more insistent.
That stupid, ungrateful boy. He was late. I should go back and hide under my sheets, resolve to set aside my foolish cravings, and not condescend to speak to Branwell again. But then the weight of my loneliness would suffocate me as it had before I’d known him. I’d be buried deeper, unable to reach Georgiana although she was beside me, clod after clod of earth piled higher above me, and Edmund farther away—above—than ever.
Maybe Branwell had also thought to go to the stables and was ahead of me? Was he stacking the bales to fashion a rustic bridal bed?
I hurried in that direction, seized again by the euphoria I’d felt at the concert.
There, beyond the carriage house, a feeble light was just visible through the crack of the stable door.
Inside was comfort, salvation, love.
I flew in as fast as I could without hitting the door off the wall, ready to throw myself into Branwell’s arms and tell him anything that he’d wish to hear. Even that I loved him.
A scramble, a shout, a flurry of ringlets and petticoats.
“Lydia?” I gasped. My look of horror must have mirrored my daughter’s.
She stood mute.
“I can explain,” said a man, a boy, to my Lydia’s right whom I’d hardly registered.
He was wearing an old-fashioned military jacket, unbuttoned at the front, but was otherwise clothed. Lydia was dressed only in her chemise, corset, and petticoat.
I was more naked than either of them. I drew my hands to my chest, conscious of the shape of my breasts, and glanced over my shoulder. If Branwell were to appear now—
Lydia’s expression metamorphosed from terror to surprise at my silence. “Mama?” she whispered. “I am sorry. We were only talking.”
I laughed and slumped onto the mounting block, my body shaken by something between mirth and agony.
The scene, lit by a solitary candle, was ridiculous. The virgin begging forgiveness from her whorish mother, the strangely familiar boy acting the part of a cowardly soldier, and old Patroclus lifting and replacing his hooves and looking from each of us to the next, as if shaking his head in disbelief, shocked at this unprecedented disturbance to his slumber.
“Henry, say something,” said Lydia, running her hands through her hair to dislodge a stalk of hay.
“Henry Roxby, Mrs. Robinson,” the boy stuttered, extending his hand, although we were too far apart to touch. “A pleasure to meet you again.”
Again?
A vision came to me, his face but even smoother and younger, his muscular legs hugged by tights. This was the actor Harry Beverley’s boy. He was just in a different costume.
“Lydia, come!” I said, standing and holding my hand out toward her, although I kept the other clamped across my chest.
“Mrs. Robinson, I love your daughter,” shouted Roxby, the words bursting out of him. “We have been writing to each other for a year, and we wish to be married.”
“To be married?” I repeated, staring at Lydia to see if this struck her as absurd. “Lydia, you have not lost—?”
“Oh no, Mama.” Lydia clasped my hand, tears pooling in her brilliant azurite eyes. “I would never be so foolish.”
I could have slapped her. At eighteen, she had more sense than me. She knew her body wasn’t to be given away, that she’d been bred only to be valued, bargained for, then bought.
“Mr. Roxby,” I said, trapping Lydia’s hand beneath my arm. “You will leave and never speak to my daughter, my family, or me again. Do you understand?”
“Lydia?” The boy turned to my daughter, his eyes as watery as hers. “Will you be so cruel?”
Her peony mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I held her hand tighter against me, trying to remember the grasp of her baby fist, but I hadn’t tended to her then. Marshall had. I could only recall Georgiana’s fading grip and the salty, sweet taste of her fingers when I’d nibbled her nails to protect her from herself in her delirium.
“Mrs. Robinson?” Branwell appeared on the threshold. He was fully clothed. Thank God. And his formal manner made me think he’d been listening to our dramatics for some time. “Is anything the matter? I stepped outside to smoke my pipe and heard voices.”
“Mr. Roxby was just leaving,” I said.
Henry surveyed the newcomer, weighing up his own advantage in terms of height against Branwell’s broader shoulders and the fiery Irish temperament suggested by his hair.
When Branwell took a step forward, this seemed to decide the boy.
“Write to me!” Roxby called in Lydia’s direction, before scurrying past all three of us. Soon he was absorbed by the mist and the dark.
“Mr. Brontë,” I said, my voice cold and my expression fierce, hoping to convey the double import of my words. “Your discretion is required and appreciated. Lydia made a mistake tonight but, thankfully, not a fatal one.”
Branwell looked as if he might cry too.
Just as well Lydia had not noticed. She, deceitful girl, was contrite and weeping into my shoulder.
“My husband must never, ever know what transpired tonight,” I pressed on. “And, in time, we will forgive Lydia. Do you understand?”
Branwell dropped his chin to his chest. “I understand, Mrs. Robinson,” he said, his voice hollow.
CHAPTER NINE
NED, THE LAST IN line for our nightly ritual, kissed my cheek and then followed his siblings and Miss Brontë from the anteroom at Thorp Green.
“Lydia,” said Edmund, as the door closed behind them.
“Edmund?” I flashed back with a half laugh, trying to be flirtatious.
In the two months since we’d returned from Scarborough, I had avoided Mr. Brontë and increased the affection I showed my husband. I never pushed too hard or bothered him while he was busy, but performed small acts of service, folding his papers and tidying his study since he wouldn’t let Ellis, who couldn’t read, do so. And when I saw him, I would kiss his fingers, shoulder, cheek—any part of him made available to me, without expecting more.
It was a thankless task, as Edmund didn’t appear to have registered my efforts. But it salved my occasional flare-ups of conscience at what I had nearly done and what I had kept from him—Lydia’s indiscretion, which he would not understand.