I stared at her, trying to compare her to the figure who’d haunted my dreams and daydreams, and detect any trace of Branwell in the woman he thought of as his twin.
Branwell wasn’t a tall man, but Charlotte was tiny. She must have been less than five feet. Her brown hair was fine and parted down the middle. When she took off her glasses to wipe away the rain, I saw that her eyes were dark, beady, and rimmed with red. As his had been, the first day.
“Anne wrote,” I said, nervous around her, though she was even less imposing than her youngest sister. “I came to see Branwell.”
“My brother was taken from us this morning,” Charlotte said, meeting my gaze steadily.
“No!” I cried. “How?”
She tilted her head to survey me. “His body and soul could struggle no longer under the ravages that he and others had caused them, and he went to our Maker.”
She looked surprised when my body convulsed, still more so when I slumped onto a nearby fallen tablet. It was edged with lichen. Each letter was a rivulet of rain and mud.
“He spoke of you to the last,” she said, her voice strained. “But be assured that all writings and sketches from his hand which could be said to impugn your character are destroyed. All that I could uncover, at least.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, wishing she were close enough that I might catch her hand. “I am sorry that we are meeting only now and that you must think so ill of me. It seemed to me sometimes, from speaking with your brother, that you and I must be alike.”
Her expression hardened. “We were both loved by my brother, Mrs. Robinson. There all resemblance ends.”
Branwell had told me many stories about Charlotte. There was one that came to me now. She had been a small and sickly schoolgirl, decidedly plain, dressed in hand-me-downs and already wearing the eyeglasses that I had needed too but disdained for vanity’s sake. For hours she had stood on a chair as punishment, surrounded by students and teachers too scared to help her, defiant in the face of one of those injustices that stay with us always if they happen when we’re young. And she hadn’t flinched, she hadn’t cried, she hadn’t faltered. She was more the boy than her younger brother. She was always the hero, Wellington to his Bonaparte.
I wanted to reveal my soul to Charlotte, ask about her schoolmaster and force her to see the parallels between us that she rejected, but I had come to help, not to argue. I swallowed my pride. “Can I go to him?” I asked. “I would like to see him one last time.”
Her eyes flashed lightning. “Anne might have bid you come when he was living, but there is no need of that now. I cannot ask you to come inside—you whom my family speaks of as his murderer.”
Murderer?
“Anne, along with our other sister, Emily, is prostrate from this shock. My father is a broken man. I must be their strength. As always. There is little joy in life for me now, except that which I take in my sisters’ health and happiness.”
“I never meant him harm, Charlotte,” I whispered.
But had I meant Branwell any good? Had I thought of him at all? Even now, part of me was longing for Charlotte, not for him. I wanted her to accept me, embrace me—Emily too and even Anne. I longed for a place at their table, beside the three of them, creating new worlds, writing their own stories, yearning for more.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Robinson.” Charlotte turned and walked back to the house.
The tears I was choking on now seemed less for Branwell than for his sisters, for the fact that they would always hate me. Charlotte would stand steadfast in the grief for her brother that I would be denied. She could wear the mantle of her pain with virgin dignity, while I was shrouded with shame.
The rain soaked through my hair and beat down on me. The invisible moors were howling, telling me I should have stayed away. My teeth were chattering by the time William Allison found me and hauled me up, as easily as if I’d been one of his children.
“There, ma’am, there,” he said, holding my shaking shoulders. “We have to get you dry and then home. You’ve been through too much to throw away your reward.”
* * *
LADIES IN GAY SKIRTS promenaded down the wide streets of Bath, picture-perfect against the limestone townhouses. Invalids, wrapped in blankets to protect against the cold, juddered over the cobbles in wheeled chairs pushed by nurses. Everyone was on their daily pilgrimage to take the waters at the spa.
And I was a bride, playing at gaiety for all of a few hours, less nervous than I’d been the first time, although, in the soft light of this city, at least, as fair.
A short, brisk walk before the ceremony.
The customary vows.
Sir Edward and I didn’t linger over the “Death” part. That was the only way this could end—we both knew that now—with one of us outliving the other.
Then, as if by metamorphosis, I was “Lady Scott.” In a few words, I’d assumed my dead cousin’s name and set aside Edmund’s, with all the relief that had come with putting away my mourning.
Lady Bateman had organized a gathering of men and women I did not know. They were kind and decorous and didn’t dwell on my or Sir Edward’s widowed states or the manner of our meeting. But there wasn’t, as there had ever been at the weddings I had been to before, that hushed veneration at the part of the ceremony that was yet to come.
I was used to the wry smiles of men patting the groom on the back, the sorrow of the father as he bids his daughter good-bye, and the at times abject and visceral fear of the bride, who clings onto her mother as if her life depends on it, as if she were being set upon by pirates intent on stealing her away.
Tonight no one seemed to feel any need to hurry. Perhaps none believed that we had really waited. Maybe they imagined that Sir Edward and I were too old and so beyond such foolishness. Or maybe that they were sparing me—a woman who might have been free from “all that” had she only been richer, but was now bearing the yoke once more, so she could wear fine dresses and throw lavish parties at Great Barr Hall.
But at last the evening was over and I was in my room—or rather, Sir Edward’s room, now ours to share.
My husband, dangerous, delicious bigamy to say the word, was still bidding Lady Bateman good night on the stairs.
“Edward!” I cried as soon as he was safe within and the door had clicked closed behind him. I flew across the chamber and kissed him with every ounce of passion in me, although his lips were dry and, up close, his skin was lined and sallow.
“What are you doing?” he asked, when I at last came up for air.
“Why, kissing you!” I laughed and leaned in again.
My fingers were working at the buttons down the front of my gown, which was ivory. How Edmund’s mother would have shuddered at the horror of it. The idea that I might undress Sir Edward Scott was too fresh, too new, for me to attempt it and, besides, Lady Bateman’s maid had laced me so tightly that I was gasping for freedom.
“But Lydia—” This time Sir Edward pushed me off, but at least he was gentle. “There are still lights.”
There were still… Oh.
I scurried around the room, extinguishing each candle and turning the oil lamp low. Sir Edward couldn’t make out that I was smiling at his silliness in the dark.