Shadow among Sheaves

by Naomi Stephens

  Barric stiffened as Sir Ellis made his farewells and headed in their direction. As soon as Sir Ellis eyed Barric down the road, his swagger stiffened, and he seemed at once to be a smaller man, less studied. He was exactly the kind of schoolfellow who might have weaseled up to Barric too had he made it to Oxford. Barric recalled the evening Sir Ellis had held Rena still for Thomas to strike and cursed the man for a coward.

  “Good morning, Fairfax.” Sir Ellis forced a chipper grin as he came to stand beside Thomas, touching his hat in greeting. “And good morning to you as well, Lord Barric.”

  Barric did not bother dismounting from Samson. “I’ve forgotten your name,” he lied with a downward glance.

  The man colored at Barric’s greeting. “Sir Ellis Andrews, my lord.”

  Before Barric could say anything in reply, Thomas turned Sir Ellis at the shoulder to steer him away, perhaps fearing what Barric might actually say to his friend in public if provoked.

  “I think we should leave my stodgy cousin to his pleasure,” Thomas suggested as they stepped away, eyeing the red door with a knavish grin. Before they had walked out of earshot, he added, with a bit more relish, “Perhaps you and I might take dinner together at the Gilded Crown this evening, Sir Ellis.”

  As soon as they were gone, Barric dismounted so hard the balls of his feet stung. He hated that Thomas’s practiced taunts still successfully peeved him, even after so many years. Barric imagined Thomas and Sir Ellis sitting at the Gilded Crown’s bar with those smarmy smiles. They would watch Rena return home from Barric’s own fields, her cheeks marred with dirt. They would mock her. They might even follow her to her door—

  Bristling at the image, Barric led Samson to the other side of the road and tied him up outside the mercantile. He felt the Gilded Crown’s door waiting behind him, but he busied himself with securing his gun to Samson’s saddle and did not turn around.

  He reminded himself of what William had said. The girl would survive. It needn’t matter to him what she did with her own time, in her own home, if it was what she’d chosen. He had already done more for her than anyone else of his station would. What did it matter to him where she lived or how she sustained herself?

  But it must have mattered.

  He had already offered his fields to her, against his better judgment, in part to protect her from men of his class who might exploit her—men like his very own cousin. And while he doubted she had actually taken up work at the Gilded Crown, as Thomas had suggested, the insinuation still bothered him.

  All he had to do was go into the Gilded Crown, and he could have his answers. Making up his mind to go in, Barric turned toward the inn, tugging off his riding gloves as he strode across the street.

  Then he came to his senses. Three steps from the door, he halted. How would it look for a respectable man like himself to be found in such a place, inquiring after a vagrant who for all he knew worked as a prostitute at that very inn? No. He would not go in. Clenching his teeth at the indignity of it, he turned back to Samson.

  After her interlude with Miss Wilmot, Rena left the fields early, well before lunch, without speaking to anyone else. She’d taken the long way home, ambling at a slogging pace, which matched the slow churn of her thoughts. Was Miss Wilmot right to be suspicious of her and her place in Lord Barric’s field? Like his workers, Lord Barric often watched Rena when he thought she wasn’t looking, but she suspected it was because, like everyone else, he did not fully trust her yet.

  She pulled open the door to the Gilded Crown and passed through a small cluster of revelers. Though she had already steeled herself for Mrs. Bagley’s newest round of insults, Mrs. Bagley had no interest in speaking with her because she was already deep in conversation—with Lord Barric.

  Rena stumbled to a halt when she spied him standing at the bar, his hat resting on the chair beside him. What could he mean by coming there? Had he been looking for her? Had he come to retract his offer, perhaps, or had he come with new terms that demanded payment for access to his lands?

  Ignoring the drink in front of him, Lord Barric stared at the wall with a flinty expression as Mrs. Bagley hissed to him about something or another in her waspish voice. One of the working women, her face heavily painted, leaned next to him, whispering in his ear. As the woman touched his arm, Lord Barric stiffened.

  Avoiding his eyes, Rena ducked her head and walked by as quickly and as quietly as possible. She crossed close enough to the bar to overhear Mrs. Bagley complaining, “A bleedin’ thorn in my side, and you’d think she’d be more grateful!”

  As Rena rushed for the back hall, a man emerging from the staircase bumped against her. She stumbled back as the man grabbed her arm to steady her. Rena knew exactly why he had been upstairs, could read the truth in his muddied eyes. He smelled stale, like alcohol and sweat, and his hand lingered even after she had pulled back from him.

  “Pretty thing like you,” he murmured, “could do good business in a place like this.”

  This wasn’t the first time Rena had been sought out in such a way. Her first night at the inn, she’d been mistaken by a drunkard for a “new girl” and tugged toward the staircase until she had found her voice and hissed at him to let her go. For the most part, the innkeeper stepped in whenever someone made advances on her, but there was also much he did not see. And as Miss Wilmot had astutely said, some found the prospect of conquest, no matter how sad, alluring.

  “Release my arm,” Rena ordered in a tight voice.

  “Some business might put some meat on those bones of yours. I know a lot of men have said they might pay more money for something a little…different. Surely you aren’t a stranger to such things.”

  In Jaipur there were similar theories among the soldiers, that the Indian women had darker appetites than their British female counterparts, that their veils and separate quarters left them repressed and full of wanton desire. These women either needed to be saved, as the missionaries believed—or else they were available to those men who could purchase them. Many in Edric’s own regiment had whispered that such had been Edric’s motivation for marrying Rena, and had looked at her as if she were a member of a harem rather than a loyal wife to a loving husband. This was the way the men at the Gilded Crown looked at her now, and it made her tremble with rage.

  Tightening her jaw, Rena glared up at the man who held her arm until he released her and stalked the other way. Still shaking from the man’s touch, Rena refused to look in Lord Barric’s direction. Would he think she served as the other women there served? Though she had done nothing to feel ashamed of, she still felt disgusting.

  Somehow she made it to her room without catching anyone else’s eye and closed the door carefully behind her, checking the hall first to make sure she had not been followed. Setting her bag on the table, Rena searched the room for any sign of Nell but found none. Nell often walked during the afternoons while Rena was out picking, or visited with the parson, who had sent them small baskets of vegetables from his garden whenever he was able. Lowering herself onto the bench, she pressed her head lightly against the wall behind her and closed her eyes.

  A firm triple knock at the door scattered her completely.

  Rena stood so fast the bench banged back against the wall. Her eyes darted frantically about the room, and she fought off a moan of misery at the idea of admitting anyone into the space. The dusty shelves still held some of Mrs. Bagley’s rotting produce, and a bunch of threadbare blankets were piled messily beside the bench. Her eyes traced the cracked walls and the fractured window frame, which admitted a harsh English draft on cooler nights.

  Another knock. Firmer this time. Demanding. Nell would never dream of knocking, and Mrs. Bagley usually just burst in whenever she was looking to pick a fight.

  Resetting her gaze, Rena stared down the door in a silent challenge. She was not opening the door.

  The last two knocks were short, as if the person on the other side had finally given up. Thinking they had gone, she crossed on
silent feet to lock the door. As her fingers brushed the latch, however, the door swooshed open, and Lord Barric ducked through the low casement, hat in hand and eyes immediately trained on her.

  Rena reeled back several steps, far too stunned to speak straightaway. When he closed the door behind him, her mind splintered into a million different pieces. Shock wore off, and anger rose up in its place.

  “You cannot barge into rooms when you have not been welcomed, sahib.” The Indian word flew out before she could stop it, the deferential title for a white man, one with wealth and influence.

  Lord Barric shuffled back a step, eyes creasing slightly. “Mrs. Hawley.” He bowed stiffly. “Forgive my intrusion.”

  Rena did not return his greeting with a curtsy. “You should not have entered. Open the door at once, sir.”

  His mouth tipped into a frown at her forceful tone, but he had to know exactly how it would look to anyone who had seen him shut himself in there. Rena’s reputation was already ruined, and now he had compromised his own, tangled it up with hers. But to what purpose?

  Barric’s hand closed on the handle as if to obey her command, but then he seemed to remember where he was, and his eyes raked briefly over the room. From the bench to the table to the window with the cracked frame—his expression was unreadable as he took a quick but thorough assessment of her lodgings.

  His hand dropped from the handle. “You live here?”

  She couldn’t quite place his tone. She heard no pity, not even disgust, but what other response could there be to such a dismal dwelling? Her toes curled as she studied Lord Barric’s meticulous fashion: high boots, black morning coat, and a slate-gray cravat. He moved his riding gloves from one hand to the other as he eyed the stack of threadbare blankets by the wall, which Rena used to build her nightly nest on the floor while Nell slept on the bench. Lord Barric was much too tall for the space, she decided, his clothes far too fine for a world of dust and cobwebs.

  Rena searched his features for any hint of his intentions. She hadn’t observed him this closely since the night he had saved her from his cousin, but he was as tall as she remembered, his red hair an unpleasant shock of color against the closet’s drab walls. Rena folded her arms in front of her chest.

  “This is a house of prostitution,” she said, her uneasiness making her bold. “I trust that is not why you are here.”

  He sighed at her challenge, pulling his eyes from the room to rest on her. They were green, she realized, brighter than jade and striking. “No, Mrs. Hawley. That is not why I am here.”

  She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. Noticing something on the far wall, Lord Barric crossed the tiny space, stepping up to the family portrait still hanging from the rusty nail. His eyes panned the picture, eventually coming to rest on Edric.

  Wanting to end the taut silence, Rena kept her voice flippant. “So. What did Mrs. Bagley have to say to you?”

  “Nothing which does her any credit.”

  Rena could easily fill in the rest. “Wicked,” the innkeeper’s wife called her. “Useless.” Back in India, Rena had often passed the untouchables in the street—the poor wretches who worked in filth, who were beneath the caste system and therefore trampled underfoot. As a Brahmin, she had not given them much thought.

  But then she had become a widow.

  In the Indian state of Punjab, the term for widow—randi—was synonymous with the word for prostitute. Rena had faced similar scorn in Jaipur, where it was widely considered a curse to be touched by a widow’s shadow. Rena looked at her hands, still dusty from the day, and imagined she could see the touch of this shadow curse on herself, with wrists and fingers crawling with unseen filth.

  Yes, she thought with a sigh. Now she knew exactly how it felt to be untouchable.

  When she glanced up, Lord Barric was watching her. She dropped her hands to her sides as he stepped back from the portrait.

  “I should not have come.” His mouth tightened as he seemed to consider saying something else. But then, to Rena’s bewilderment, he tipped his head in a thoughtless bow and moved to leave without another word. The door opened before he even touched the handle, and he and Nell nearly collided in the entrance.

  Quick and cool, Nell’s gaze swept from Rena to Barric, who straightened and met the older woman’s eyes straight on.

  “Lord Barric,” Nell greeted, dropping a quick curtsy. A basket was hooked beneath her arm, their evening loaf of bread nestled inside with a small cluster of flowers. “I did not realize Rena was to be called upon today. Had I known, I would have ensured I would be home to help her greet you.”

  There was a stabbing silence.

  “I beg your pardon.” Lord Barric tipped his head again in formal greeting. “I merely came to call on you, Lady Hawley. Our families have not been close for some time, but I wanted to extend a formal hand of friendship to you both.”

  Nell’s eyes maintained their shrewdness as she stared him down. Though the older woman was in more than reduced circumstances, she still managed to angle her chin indolently and smile at the lord, as if she was privy to some unspoken joke. Or else was wise to his falsehood.

  “How kind you are,” she said. “It has been many years since our families have spoken on such friendly terms.”

  Barric’s eyes swept over to Rena one last time, his voice lowering slightly. “Pardon me. I do not wish to take up any more of your time.” Then he calmly strode out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Nell followed his retreat with an unsettled expression, her lips pulling a thin line. She plopped their usual order of bread on the table, then at last rounded on Rena. “What on earth was he doing in here? Why was the door not left open?”

  Rena stood stiffly and crossed to the table, leaning her weight on her elbows.

  “It was as he said,” she said, following his story. “He was merely making a social call.”

  “And this is the man who has supposedly saved us,” Nell grumbled. “To use you so carelessly in this place.”

  “Lord Barric is not a careless man,” Rena disagreed. Though Lord Barric had surprised her twice now, he did not seem the type of man who did anything by accident or carried on thoughtlessly. He had come there with a reason, but she still wasn’t sure what his reason was.

  “You must be careful,” Nell cautioned, arranging the flowers she’d picked in a chipped glass between them. The colorful petals seemed amiss in the drab space, which was cold and unreasonably drafty, even for September. Rena knew they would take only hours to wilt, as if choked at the throat. “Not all men are as kind as Edric.”

  Nell handed Rena a bread knife and a plate, a clear order in her eyes. Obeying, Rena began slicing into the loaf, dividing it into equal slabs. “You think Lord Barric is unkind?”

  “I know very little of Lord Barric.” Nell eased into her usual chair. “But I overheard in town that his brother has taken three mistresses in France and has ruined as many here in England. You must guard yourself well against a man with such relations.”

  Rena blinked, her knife hand hovering over the bread as she sorted through this new information. If Nell was right, then Lord Barric’s family was indeed of a dangerous stock, especially with a cousin like Thomas keeping him company.

  Realizing that Nell was still watching her, Rena set down the knife and tried to sound offhand. “Surely, you don’t think I’m in any danger—”

  Nell took up a piece of bread. “I think you ought to be careful. Allowing you to pick from his fields could be kindness—and you should never turn your back from true kindness—but keep both eyes open with him. Guard yourself.”

  Though Rena felt uneasy, Nell’s warning still felt out of place. Lord Barric had been nothing but kind to Rena, offering her food and protection. And though the man’s gaze was direct and often severe, though many of his words were stern, his workers still respected him, listened to him, and they always obeyed his orders. Such was the man who had told his workers Rena was to be left a
lone.

  Taking her first bite of bread, Rena finally relaxed her anxious shoulders. She would trust Lord Barric, she decided. For now.

  His cousin called her Edric’s Indian whore. His workers whispered that she had married her husband entirely for his money, perhaps even killed him herself before she realized nothing from his will could pass to her. Mrs. Bagley called the girl an ungrateful, useless beggar. A leech.

  Barric had thought of Rena as a shadow the first time he’d seen her crouched beneath the grain. Now it was as if her shadow had brushed shoulders with him in the field and followed him home, and it had a peculiar habit of gathering around his shoulders when he ought to be thinking of other things.

  Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, Barric ran a hand through his hair, the horrible names and rumors banging around inside of him as he pretended to review the month’s expenditures. He kept thinking of William’s spare cottage, turning it over and over in his mind like a coin he couldn’t bring himself to spend.

  As she’d entered the inn that day, she had lowered her eyes from him and hurried past, obviously trying to avoid him. As if she could go unseen with her black hair and copper skin. And then that man, who had clearly come from upstairs from the arms of another woman. The drunken fool had grabbed her arm and looked at her in a way that made Barric unaccountably nervous—looked at her as if she belonged there the same as any of the other women did. As if he wanted her. Did it bother Rena to be regarded in such a way?

  Or did she encourage it for the sake of survival?

  Barric had followed her to her room because he wanted an answer to that particular question. He had tested her against the gossips, to see what she would do if she found herself alone with a wealthy man. But as soon as he’d caught her open expression, so startled and angry, he’d known everyone else was wrong about her. There was no deceit in her expression, no drop of cunning in her eyes, and not once had she smiled or begged him for anything.