I nodded, although he wasn’t looking at me.
“When I die, you may do as you wish. Marry whom you like.”
“Marry again? I don’t inten—”
“No, Lydia.” He raised his hand to stop me as if he were saluting the far wall. “I would not have you tell a falsehood. We both know that should the time come, you will remarry before the grass has even cloaked my grave. You have too much life in you to be loyal to the dead. But, Lydia, today I ask you to choose wisely.” He turned, his eyes as earnest as they were in prayer, and took a step toward me. “If not of me, think of our families and of the children—the example you must set for them, the chances that might be denied them if—”
“I reject the notion that I would not think of them,” I said, just above a whisper.
Give up your body for years to birth them, stand quiet when they reject, deceive, abuse you, and, if you are a mother, you will still be called selfish, probably by the very man who gave your children nothing but his name.
“I see how you look at the tutor, Mr. Brontë,” he said.
I flinched. Not speaking of Branwell directly had been an unspoken rule between us.
But Edmund’s voice was oddly calm, as if he were reciting a psalm. “I see the stream of intelligence that flows between your eyes. You look at him as you once did me, now that I can no longer please you. You look at him as if he carried your heart in his hand.”
“I… I,” I stuttered. “Edmund, I do not.”
How dare he bring it back to what did or didn’t happen between our sheets at night? How dare he suggest that everything was so simple? Yes, I longed to wrap my arms round Branwell’s neck and feel the warmth of his body against me at night, but not just because he was young and beautiful, broadening into a man while Edmund weakened with each passing day. Branwell had spoken to me, listened to me, made me whole again.
“You slander your wife, Edmund Robinson,” I said. “I’ve never given you reason to doubt me.”
“Lydia,” he said, so softly he might have been speaking to an invalid. “I am not angry.”
“But you should be angry.” I was shaking. “You should drag Brontë out of bed and horsewhip him outside the Monk’s House if you think he is taking your money and eating your food, while all the time attempting to seduce your wife.”
“Mr. Brontë seduce you?” Edmund laughed. “I should think it’s the other way around. The boy is a painter, a poet, an innocent. I doubt the thought has even occurred to him. You are much older than him, after all. He is practically the same age as our children.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Do not be ashamed, Lydia. God is merciful.” Edmund was close now. He stroked my arm, his touch alien. “But should my time come soon, do not marry one so far beneath you.”
“Marry?” I thrust his hand aside. “You think I would marry into his family of sickly paupers?”
“You are impulsive.”
He was slicing me apart with a blunt knife, or lacing the strings around me even tighter, cleaving me in two. And I could only lash back at him, like the crushed bee who stings with his final breath.
“I married a man who was not worthy of me once before,” I said. “Believe me, I will not make the same mistake again.”
* * *
I PRESSED THE GRAVEL into my hand as I trudged the path to the Monk’s House, but however hard I tried, I could not break my skin.
It didn’t matter that Edmund had heard me leave the house, after I’d paused, panting, in the hallway for some minutes, testing to see if he would follow me. Why not go to Branwell if my husband already suspected us? Or, rather, suspected me of ruining the “innocent” boy, tempting him into sin?
Standing on the lawn to the left of the cottage, I went to throw the jagged and irregular stones at Branwell’s window, but they clung to my sweaty palm. I tried again, but I was unskilled at throwing. The gravel didn’t reach, not even close, but rained around me onto the grass, like early hailstones.
“Branwell,” I hissed, but there was no way he could hear me, and if I spoke louder, I was sure to wake Tom Sewell.
I sank down on a fallen tree trunk and contemplated summoning the energy to cry, but it was harder when I was by myself. What was the point if Edmund saw only the swollen, ugly aftermath or if nobody saw me at all?
Maybe I should go inside. I didn’t even have a shawl, and in the Hall, there were fires and blankets. Marshall could even undress me if she wasn’t already in bed.
Just then, Branwell’s window swung open, and there he was, the kind of hero Byron would have created—his arms bare to the elbows, his hair tousled and falling over his eyes. He leaned on the sill and puffed on his pipe.
“Mr. Brontë!” I nearly fell as I stood. “Branwell!”
He straightened up so quickly that he struck his head.
“Be careful,” I said, but he had already disappeared, without bothering to close the window.
Before I’d had time to worry about Tom Sewell hearing him, Branwell was beside me, pipeless and dressed only in a long nightshirt.
“Oh Lydia,” he said, tracing his fingers down the sides of my face. “Did he, your husband, upset you?”
I nodded.
“That brute.”
“We mustn’t be seen,” I said, eying Sewell’s darkened bedroom window. “Follow me. I know where we can go.”
I pulled him by the hand away from the lawn and into “the woods,” my body singing when his skin met mine. We walked along what had once been a path but was now only a channel of slightly sparser brush, snaking between the trees. It was too dark to see, but I knew the way.
I’d come to this building in those early years, when I’d been treasured and loved, and yet—I’d forgotten why now—still yearned for moments alone. There was no door, but the night felt milder now that I had company. Branwell procured a stub of candle, as if by magic, and lit it, making us feel even warmer.
“What is this place?” he asked as the light danced, illuminating only a few of the hundreds of nooks that lined the curving stone walls.
“A dovecote,” I said.
It had been years since it had been used as such. When I’d discovered it, not long after my honeymoon, there’d been a handful of pigeons that still haunted it, slaves to their homing instincts, although the servants no longer tended to them and gave them food. Over the next months and years, they had all disappeared—died, I guessed—until only one, a dirty, limping, silent bird, had remained.
He and I were the only creatures to come here for a time, but one morning, I’d found his body bent at angles on the ground. I’d picked him up, felt, even through my glove, that his body was cold and his tiny heart was still, and thrown him aside into the shrubs.
I must have been pregnant with Georgiana then and unable to comprehend death. It was impossible to do so when new life was pulsing into being inside me. So I stopped walking here altogether and tried to be satisfied with the sterile and picturesque nature surrounding the artificial pond and the company of the children. Oh, how Lydia had tortured me with her never-ending questions! I loved to be with her and Bessy and Ned for an hour or so. But they always demanded more of me. I never had any time to myself. Years had gone by, and I hadn’t even commissioned that water feature I’d wanted.