“Lyddy, no!” Mary called out as I retreated to the door (I could no longer face them). “William only lost his temper. He didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, but he did, Mary,” I said, holding up my hand to signal that she should not touch me. “And he is right. We won’t stay longer than a few more days. Only let me make alternative arrangements. Once we are gone, I have no intention of coming back to this Godforsaken place again.”
I strode out of her rooms and slammed the door.
“Mama, are you angry?” Bessy had emerged onto the landing.
“Not now, Bessy,” I said.
I had to open Sir Edward’s letter. It was our only hope.
“Oh, but Mama, I couldn’t marry Will Milner.” My daughter took a tentative step toward me—her dimpled arm outstretched. “I didn’t love him as I should.”
“Loving your husband is overrated.”
I inched my finger under the crisp corner of the page. My body was craving an answer, his answer; the wax was melting under my nail. But I couldn’t open it in front of my daughter. I couldn’t have her see my agony if Sir Edward too rebuffed me.
“You think it’s enough, then? That Will Milner loves me even if I don’t him?” Doubt had crept back into Bessy’s voice. Her eyes flitted toward the stairwell.
Yes. I would have said “yes” before—before Branwell, before I’d felt the cracks that marble your body when you’re daubed in plaster and set upon a shaking pedestal.
I didn’t reply.
“Only I want both, Mama,” Bessy said. “I want a love that is even, as Lydia has with Henry—”
“Your sister will die a pauper, and now you may well too.”
Bessy’s face crumpled. She flew into the room where the girls had been sleeping to sob out her heart on her younger sister’s shoulder.
Still no noise from the parlor behind me. Maybe my sister didn’t need words to converse with her husband. Maybe she enjoyed what I’d only ever dreamed of—the perfectly matched duet, like those flutists in Scarborough, albeit one that was born of shared smugness and superiority. Maybe that, or perhaps they were both silent, listening for what I would do.
I pulled myself along by the banister and sat on the cold top step. There was dust in the corner where the stair met the wall. I would never have allowed that in my house.
My fingers were shaking so much that in my speed, I tore the paper as I opened it. The ragged scar ran right through Sir Edward’s letter.
8th April 1847
Great Barr Hall
My dear Mrs. Robinson (or may I address you as “Cousin Lydia”?),
Pray forgive me for ignoring the instructions in your second letter and for my slow reply to your first. Business kept me from Great Barr Hall for some days.
If you will allow me to make such a presumptive statement, your present situation appears to be intolerable. And I should very much like to provide a solution to your dilemma.
In the strongest terms, I beg you and your daughters to come and visit us, for as long as is convenient for you. My wife shares my wishes, although she is confined to the sickroom. You need only name the day of your arrival.
Come, cousin. We will not “unwoman” you (a curious turn of phrase but a good one, I think).
Yours truly,
Edward Scott
Freedom and with it the sweet salve of flirtation. For that was there, wasn’t it, imbuing each word Sir Edward had written with the fizz of a newly lit match?
I would be magnanimous with my sister once we’d been catapulted into a world above hers. I would write her letters, just as before, trading gossip and pleasantries, but without the pretense that there was anything of that childish love left in our hearts. The girls and I would go from Allestree to Great Barr Hall.
And when I arrived there—
But no. Flirtation was one thing but, what with Edmund and Branwell, I might as well have lived through a hundred loves, each more painful than the last. Sir Edward might be saving me, but I would not abdicate my power. I could not allow myself to make the same mistakes again.
* * *
NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN a greater contrast to our arrival at Allestree Hall than our departure. Sir Edward had sent (imagine it!) his very own carriage to collect us. Maids peeked from behind curtains to stare at the livery. The Evanses’ grooms inspected every inch of the horses, nodding to each other.
I floated from the house and bid my sister and her husband good-bye with only a perfunctory kiss on her cheek and a pat of his shoulder. “I will do what I can to win you an invitation to Great Barr Hall,” I told them. “But I wouldn’t want to petition such dear, generous friends so soon.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said William Evans, turning to go back inside.
My sister held her jaw so rigid she could not speak.
“I will miss you, Auntie!”
“We will write.”
The girls clung to Aunt Mary and said their good-byes with a predictable show of cloying emotion. They had been complaining and weeping for days at the prospect of leaving “Auntie and Uncle.”
Yet all that stopped when they saw the plush seats and sheer size of the carriage’s interior.
“Sir Edward must be so rich,” said Bessy with the low whistle she had learned from her years frequenting the stables.
Little Mary even blushed when William Allison, a man she had known since her infancy, handed her up.
It was easy to be taken aback by the coachman’s transformation. His hair was combed, and he wore a fine uniform now he was in the Scotts’ employ. He’d given up his wooden pipe for one that might even have been ivory, and his gold buttons winked in the sun as he closed the door behind us.
The amazement on my daughters’ faces, as they sat opposite me, acted as a mirror to my own. I, a woman of forty-six, indulged in the daydreams of a girl of sixteen as we sped through the undulating English countryside. This was my pumpkin coach. I was being whisked away to the ball. But when midnight fell, the dream wouldn’t evaporate. I would have another day and another and another to enjoy this luxury. This must be the delicious freedom men feel when they enter adulthood.
And Great Barr Hall? At the sight of it, my spirit soared even higher. It was everything I had dreamed about when I was a child, acting as my cousin’s bridesmaid, and more. It didn’t appear to be a house so much as a castle, complete with turrets and lancet windows. The Gothic, sanitized; the romantic, made practical. The estate would be the perfect setting for my happy ending, which felt so close now. Except, of course, for the wife upstairs.
* * *
OUR ROOMS WERE LARGE and well appointed, and scores of servants bobbed to me at every turn. Within a week, Sir Edward hosted a dinner so rich it put to shame all other meals I had tasted for years—a dinner held in honor of our arrival.
“You have the appearance of a woman who is looking for something, cousin.” Sir Edward brought his cigar to his mouth and puffed. “I hope we don’t disappoint you.”
He and the other gentlemen, a handful of middle-aged local dignitaries, had just rejoined us in the drawing room. The ladies were few—Bessy, Mary, and me, along with one of the men’s wives, who was snoozing in an armchair.