With love, your sister,
Bessy
Lydia, do not heed your sister’s complaints. She was always prone to sulking. Great Barr Hall is as good a home as any of us could wish for.
Your mother,
Lydia Robinson
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“THERE IS SOMETHING ON your mind today, Lydia,” said Sir Edward as we took our accustomed turn about the grounds.
He had given up the “Cousin” months before. We were something else—something better though less certain—to each other now.
“Yes. Edmund’s mother,” I said. “She has written.”
The sky was the color of amber, and with the sun playing peekaboo above the horizon, I had to shield my eyes to look at him. The occasional browned leaf had already fallen, plotting our course across the grass (there were no paths here) like litter from an old parade.
“And what does she say?” Sir Edward asked. I could feel his confusion that I hadn’t volunteered this information sooner.
Usually during our walks, I played the role of entertainer. I’d retell the plots of novels he didn’t have the time or inclination to read, teach him about music (he had a good ear but had never studied with a master), and ask for explanations of the latest speeches in the Lords and Commons. These I read to him from the newspaper each morning in his study. By the time this ritual was finished, it was sometimes past noon.
“Where have you been, Mama? Reading to Sir Edward all this time?” Bessy would ask, her expression skeptical.
She was getting impertinent, as was Mary, for that matter.
It was true that Sir Edward did wish to have me near him more and more. But perhaps that was because he missed his wife rather than because he found me charming. I tried not to hope, imagine, dream, that he or the house or any of it could be mine, and fixed my mind instead on the image of Lady Scott as she had been the one time that I had seen her.
She’d been pale, yes, with yellowed cheeks and palsy in her hands, but she was still heartier and more solid than most invalids I’d seen in my time. She didn’t have the look of one standing at death’s threshold. And it horrified me that I wished she did.
Sometimes I dreamed that she stood beside my bed, glaring down at me and angry at my secret desires. Once she was joined by another figure—short, shadowy, and slight. I understood, although we had never met, that this was Charlotte Brontë. The figures flanked my bed on either side. Each grabbed one of my hands so I could not escape. And then, with a smirk, Charlotte touched a flickering candle to the curtain of my bed, enveloping me with fire. I awoke screaming and screaming that they’d come to kill me, but Great Barr Hall was large and no one heard my cries. That was probably just as well.
I hadn’t yet risked much with Sir Edward. I hadn’t shown him anything of my true self or spoken with him on those subjects that mattered most. And neither had I, as I had over the course of months with Branwell, talked of nothing at all, luxuriating in discussions that begged no firm conclusion. It was tiring, always calculating how I might appear best, but what other options were open to me? If I had to tie myself to a mast—and I had to—it might as well be to the one on the grandest, proudest ship.
“Edmund’s mother says she misses her granddaughters,” I answered. This was part of the truth, at least. “She accuses me of keeping them from her.”
Sir Edward’s brow furrowed. A strong, steady, principled man like him couldn’t resist coming to the aid of the mistreated or weak. “Was Edmund’s family unfair to you?” he asked at last.
We had stopped. He took a step closer to me.
I shrugged one shoulder and dropped my chin to my chest, but I couldn’t even summon a single tear. Had the stream run dry? Had I shed them all? For Marshall, Edmund, Father, Mother, Georgie?
“Lydia?” He was used to having his own way.
“There are many wives who have been happier,” I said, after a pause. I mustn’t overstate my case, overplay my hand. Sir Edward was such a solid, unemotional man that in doing so, I might lose him.
“Because,” he spoke on, “if you are fond of her and she so wishes to see the children, you know Edmund’s mother would be more than welcome here.”
“No!” I cried.
That startled him.
“No,” I repeated more softly, correcting myself. “She cannot. Please.”
My vehemence had taken him by surprise. His face had a hardness about it I hadn’t seen before. There was a small bead of doubt glimmering in his eye. “Show me,” he said.
“Show you what?” I asked. But I knew what he wanted. I took a step away from him.
“Show me her letter,” he said, holding out his hand.
I twisted over my shoulder toward Great Barr Hall, whose turreted towers were gleaming in the final fiery flood of light.
Could I say I had left it in my room? No, I had been with Sir Edward since the afternoon post had arrived, and we’d each read our respective correspondence in silence. He would know I was being untruthful.
“Lydia,” he said. From his tone, he might have been my father, although he wasn’t that much older than me.
I could refuse, but then all intimacy between us would be over. He would not trust my word again.
I retrieved the paper from inside my pelisse and nearly dropped it as I handed it to him.
That witch and her bitter accusations. It was just like that woman to blight my last chance of happiness, even from leagues away.
Sir Edward read and reread the letter for a long time, and I studied him for as long, but his face was unmoving, like the bust of an inscrutable Roman senator. “Lydia,” he said at last. “What does Mrs. Robinson mean by this?”
He held the page toward me, but I could not see without my reading glasses, which I’d left in his study.
“I cannot—” I stuttered. “What does she say?”
He pivoted into the last of the light.
“She talks of ‘Bessy and Mary learning from your shameful behavior’ and says—” He swallowed. “She says ‘you are running after a married man now, as you did a serving man before’?” He turned this last charge into a question. His proud face was the color of the reddening sky behind him.
“I am not running after you,” I said quickly.
Worst of all accusations! It was the place of a woman to be pursued, hunted, felled, not to throw herself at any man, especially not her host as his wife lay dying.
“Never mind that.” He flapped the page for emphasis. “A servant? A—” He took a step toward me. His voice dropped in pitch. “Not the coachman, Allison? Don’t tell me I’ve played the part of an unwitting fool in keeping the two of you together.”
“William Allison?” I repeated, horrified, before he finished his sentence. “No, Edward, no.”
I hadn’t called him just Edward before. My hand was on his shoulder.
He glanced at it as if he might cast me off.
“May I explain?” I asked.
“Yes.” He broke from me and massaged his forehead as he walked away. “I thought— Please explain.”
His distress was confirmation of what I had only hoped before. My performance had been virtuosic and my arrows had found their mark. Sir Edward would believe me no matter what story I concocted and would accept any explanation that preserved the place I had held in his thoughts before now. And this meant that I would be acting always—not just until Catherine died, until Sir Edward confessed his love, until we were married. I wouldn’t be a woman at all but a mannequin, forever holding a convoluted pose in the tableau of his home, his castle.