Yet once I reached the set of semicircular stone steps leading to the house from the lawn, I could see that the conveyance wasn’t nearly grand enough to carry Sir Edward Scott, baronet, of Great Barr Hall. William and Mary must have an unexpected visitor.
I diverted my path regardless, intending to satisfy my curiosity by entering through the front door. The guest, no doubt some ghastly businessman, must already be inside.
I stepped into the hallway.
Empty.
Yet here was something else to rescue me from the monotony. Perched on the occasional table was a letter, addressed to me and (this I saw only when I lifted it) bearing the Scott seal. My face reddened with a fresh rush of shame at the diatribe I had written and to whom.
“No, William!” cried Bessy from somewhere upstairs, before I could open the letter. Her voice was shrill and anguished. “You cannot leave me so!”
William? She had never addressed her uncle by his forename alone.
There was the pounding of heavy boots on sandstone. A young man hurtled into view above me. He was large and, dare I say it, fat, even. And he must have been wearing riding boots, from the terrible clanging his shoes’ metal heels made against the steps. The banister rattled as he raced down the stairs.
I stepped into his path to slow him.
“Will Milner?” I ventured, hardly believing that he was here and that he had grown still more since that sad, sorry dance I’d last seen him at—the celebration of Harry Thompson’s marriage.
“Mrs. Robinson.” Young Milner came to a staggering halt three feet from me. “Good day, ma’am.” He ducked his head and went to dodge around me, but I thrust out my hand to stop him.
His shirt brushed against my forearm. It was damp with fresh sweat. “Why, you can’t be leaving already?” I said, laughing and adopting the style of lighthearted flirtation that I defaulted to in moments of doubt.
“I’m afraid I must, madam,” he said, not meeting my eye. “Good evening.”
“William!” Bessy’s face, very red, appeared above us, her dark hair hanging over the stairwell like leafy tendrils. “I am sorry. Do not blame me.”
Will Milner didn’t look up at her, but blinked, pushed my arm aside, and marched from the house.
Bessy had disappeared, but I hurried up the stairs anyway, with my precious letter pressed against my chest.
How dare she send that poor boy away? Didn’t she know how rare it was to find a man who would chase after you? And all the way to Derbyshire? Imagine.
But it was my sister, Mary, who met me when I reached the landing. “This way,” she said, her voice curt.
She steered me into her parlor. Nonplussed, I let her guide me. Could she be interfering again? I didn’t need her help in scolding Bessy. This was my lecture to deliver.
Bessy wasn’t in her aunt’s parlor. Instead, William Evans was waiting for us by the window, with his back to the door, gazing out across his grounds. The trees were only just visible now through the gloom.
“Bessy has just rejected an offer of marriage from Mr. Milner,” said my sister, still hanging on to my arm as if she were afraid to free me.
The pair of them would have me in handcuffs next.
“She was always a silly, unthinking girl,” I said, but I didn’t pull away. I would show them both that I could be calm, that I still had it in me to be rational. “Will Milner shouldn’t mind what she says.”
“And she did so on my advice,” William Evans said, turning.
“On your advice? But I—” It was better to invoke my dead husband’s name than to try to convince my brother-in-law with my own opinions. “Edmund thought an alliance with the Milners most suitable.”
I escaped my sister’s grip. My arm had stiffened, held viselike by hers. I shook it hard to dispel the numbness.
“Your horizons are limited, Lydia,” said William, ignoring the reference to Edmund. “Bessy can do better.”
“Better?” I repeated. “Why, how many young men do you think my daughter knows? And have you seen how she conducts herself? She’d be lucky to have another such offer.”
“We can help you there, Lyddy.” My sister nodded with her eyes stretched wide, as if she were afraid to blink. “William has so many connections in politics and in business. The Jessops, for instance, have a son.”
“I don’t know any Jessops.”
“They own an ironworks,” said William. “It does a fine trade.”
“And they are very well regarded socially,” Mary said, as if in contradiction to this first statement, although she still started her sentence with an “and.”
How dare they? We’d been here barely a month, and here they were auctioning off my daughter to the most convenient bidder, using her for their own mercantile and political ends.
“It was not your place to advise my daughter, William,” I said, ignoring my sister and holding his gaze. “I am grateful, of course, for all you have given us. But this. There is precious little else I can do for her—for them—now. For God’s sake give me this.”
I was shaking, although I didn’t know why. It had always been difficult for me to distinguish between anger and sadness. The man was unbearable. How had I come to be the one beseeching, rather than admonishing, him?
“Lydia, your judgment is impaired.” William Evans strode back to the window and tugged the curtains shut, hemming us in.
“Impaired by what?”
He didn’t reply.
“And what do you two know of raising girls or marrying them off?” I pressed on.
Mary flinched beside me. She’d always wanted a daughter but had only had the one son, Thomas, in the end. And birthing him had almost killed her.
“Edmund wanted Bessy to—” I started.
“Edmund asked me to use my discretion when it came to his children,” said my brother-in-law. “He knew that you could not be trusted.”
“Please, William!” Mary interjected. There was fear in her voice. She didn’t want him to say whatever it was that was coming next.
“Go on,” I said, not shying away from him. “And why exactly did he say I could not be trusted?”
“You know why,” he said, without inflection. His eyes roamed across the letter I held, but my fingers obscured the seal.
“I have no idea—” I started.
“Oh, Lyddy, William, please,” Mary cried. She rang the tasseled bell cord as if tea would fix this, or at least as if the presence of another person would delay the fatal blow.
“Edmund left a letter for us,” William said. His wife’s protests wouldn’t halt him now.
“Us?” It was as if I yearned for the pain of hearing the explanation.
“A letter addressed to Charles Thorp and to me.”
The pounding of my heart was too loud, drowning out my thoughts. But I held a weapon neither of them knew: a letter from a great, powerful, and titled man. There was still a chance. Maybe, just maybe, Sir Edward Scott was going to save me.
“I didn’t believe what he wrote at first,” William Evans said. “A tutor? The man was practically your servant and young enough to be your son. But I questioned your staff, and that woman Sewell confirmed it. You have lost all right to be your daughters’ compass. You should be grateful we let you set foot in our home. I only did so for Mary and for my nieces’ sake.”