Shadow among Sheaves

by Naomi Stephens

  It was Rena’s turn to feel ill. “I don’t understand,” she stammered, shaking her head.

  The solicitor placed his finger on a line of text and read, “That my mother’s family might finally be reconciled.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “As soon as your marriage license is received,” he went on, speaking directly to Rena, “your mother-in-law will inherit all of Sir Alistair’s money. And your new husband will inherit Hawthorn Glen.”

  This time Nell grabbed Rena’s hand and squeezed, and Rena was stunned to remember her father’s letter was still crumpled within her fisted palm, now beneath Nell’s touch. Not even an hour had passed since she’d rushed to the creek, joyous to have found his letter. Now she felt oddly small—just a quick little proviso dropped in the middle of a dead man’s will.

  She had to marry a Fairfax.

  Unthinkable.

  She heard Nell saying her name, but all she could think of was the moment she’d told Lord Barric she would never marry again. She had meant those words. They had not been spoken cheaply. But now? If she remarried, Nell would have a comfortable living. Food forever. And if Rena refused? There was a good chance destitution would follow like a clawlike creature wherever they went.

  The solicitor fanned out a few more documents in front of Nell. “These are for you to review.” He pointed. “This is my address in London should you need to contact me for further details.”

  His job now finished, the solicitor removed his spectacles and glanced uneasily between the two widows. “Is there…anything else I can do for you?”

  “No,” Nell answered for both of them as she once again pressed Rena’s fingers. “Thank you for coming all this way to see us. We just need some…some time.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Finley with a slight, awkward bow. Rena hardly heard him leave, but his words spiraled through her mind until Nell came and knelt beside her chair, angling Rena’s chin so she could see her eyes.

  “Which relative am I to marry?”

  “Rena.”

  “Charlie, perhaps? He is a Fairfax. So is Thomas.”

  Yes, her heart whispered. So is Lord Barric…

  She stomped down the thought, remembering how William had barred her entry to Misthold. “You must be joyous,” she went on instead. “You stand to inherit a fortune. Your husband has remembered you.”

  “Don’t talk like this,” Nell pleaded, dropping her hand from Rena’s face. “Tell me your thoughts.”

  Rena stood in a rush. She couldn’t speak. There were too many thoughts, all of them beating like wings inside her mind. “So, this is how it’s to be?” Her voice was uncommonly vacant. “From the grave, he sells me off to the highest bidder.”

  Nell’s eyes went wide as she clambered to her feet. “No. It wouldn’t have been like that. Alistair loved his family. He loved you.”

  Rena hated that she was already beginning to doubt that. “Who would marry me except to get the property?” she challenged with a derisive laugh. “Do you think he would be a good man, who would ignore my position to inherit a fortune?”

  “And do you think Alistair would have married you off to a bad man?” Nell touched her cheek, a careful gesture. “Do you think I would?”

  “I do not wish to be married off at all!” Rena had never yelled at Nell, but her voice bounced off the walls. Hearing the sound of her own ire, Rena broke her eyes from Nell’s and shrunk away, feeling smaller by the moment.

  When Nell spoke again, she somehow managed to speak reasonably. “Has it not occurred to you that he wanted to make sure you were provided for? Edric was already dead. Alistair knew if you followed me to England, as you said you might, there would be nothing for you here. He wanted to make sure we were both taken care of. He made that possible as best he could.”

  “Did you miss the fine print?” Rena challenged. “A Fairfax.”

  “Alistair was very close to his mother.” Nell’s voice was turning more defensive. “It never set well with him that her family had written her off. He is trying to make that right.”

  “So you want me to remarry.” Though Rena’s words were quieter, she still spoke through clenched teeth. “Like the will says. Don’t you?”

  Nell shook her head. “I don’t want you to remember Alistair like this.”

  Nell hadn’t answered Rena’s question. Still, Rena considered the few memories she had of her father-in-law. He’d cut in once while Edric was trying to teach her a particular dance, after teasing his son for fumbling feet and an awkward rhythm, although Edric certainly had neither. He had taught her chess and bought her books so she might feel more at home.

  He had always called her daughter.

  But he was also a politician, a man with enough reach and influence to secure a comfortable position in India. He had collected Indian artifacts, positioned them throughout his home as if tangling his world with the broader strokes of another. He was a self-proclaimed nationalist who perked up in his chair whenever he saw his son’s imperial red coat. He had always been kind to Rena, true, but he also spoke of the “savages” behind the mutiny. Rena had thought he despised the men for killing women and children, as anyone might, but what if he meant savages because of their skin?

  “He loved you,” Nell said again, more gently, and Rena wanted to believe her. But what if it wasn’t love? What if Rena had been nothing more than a curious artifact scooped out of the sand by his son?

  “He loved chess,” Rena remembered out loud. “And he was always better at it than most. Am I to be his final chess piece?”

  “Rena, please. Slow down for a minute. Let’s think.”

  Rena closed her eyes and remembered standing on her father’s terrace, watching the red-clad soldiers pass through town. They’d had their orders, always taking, taking, taking.

  Her people’s land. Their art. Their customs.

  Soldiers had already reordered her family’s life, pressed her people beneath the imperial thumb, and now she was to be bartered off in exchange for a British fortune. Edric would have shouted at his father before allowing him to pen such a will. Edric had always been different, though. He had married Rena for love, but she realized it was not to be so again.

  She shook her head, bitterness forcing its way up her throat like bile. “There is nothing to think about,” she answered tautly, then nearly laughed with the wildness of despair. “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Rena wasn’t sure where she was going as she left the cottage, but she moved quickly, passing through town without once meeting anyone’s eyes. Twice that day she’d been swept aside by men who called her daughter, but she still couldn’t decide which strike hurt the most. Past town, she followed the main road, which curved northward, toward the shoals, pressing onward for nearly thirty minutes.

  As soon as she had arrived in England, Rena vowed to take care of Nell, and she’d meant those words. She had not so soon forgotten what it was like to watch Nell starve in the back closet of the Gilded Crown, sleeping amid the mold and rotting produce. The woman’s hands had turned knobby and somehow older during those weeks, and Rena promised she would never watch the woman starve again.

  Still, she imagined Thomas finding out about the estate, how it would be for her if such a man brought her into his house, into his bed, just to get his hands on Alistair’s estate, and her stomach turned.

  She quickened her steps, breathing heavily through the threat of tears. What wouldn’t she give, she wondered, if only to enter her father’s house again, to walk over the smooth tiled floor, to see her airy chamber as it had been when she was still a simpler version of herself? Everything felt simpler in India. But then her thoughts turned again toward Nell and nearly gentled—there was an extraordinary dress, she remembered, still folded in a box beneath their bed, purchased with Nell’s wedding ring. It was a piece of Rena’s home, her life in India, bought at a startling cost. What would Rena give to do the same for Nell, if not more?

 
; Part of Rena already knew the answer.

  “Careful!” Stunned by the harsh command, Rena came to a jarring stop and gaped up at Lord Barric, who sat astride his horse, hands tight on the reins as he halted the beast two short paces before her. Slushy gravel ground beneath Samson’s thumping hooves, spattering her skirts with dappled flecks like paint. Still, Rena could not bring herself to move aside or feel the least bit afraid of being trampled.

  As soon as Barric looked at her, he sensed something wrong in her eyes and dismounted. “Mrs. Hawley?”

  She wanted to tell him everything. She wanted to bury her face in his coat, to be held. She wanted someone to know her father had cast her off, just so she wouldn’t have to sit in this emptiness alone. Barric placed a hand on her arm as if he could sense she needed steadying.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She almost told him there was an entire fortune bearing down on her shoulders, and if someone stole her away, they could have it or else she would surely drown beneath its weight. The words were there, on her tongue. But then their last conversation whispered in the back of her mind, and she could not hear her own thoughts above it:

  “She’s nothing,” his uncle had said.

  “Beneath me,” Barric had agreed, “a wretched beggar.”

  Finally, she looked at him. “I need you to take me somewhere.”

  He shuffled back as if surprised by her sudden request. “Of course. Where is it you are needing to go?”

  “Hawthorn Glen,” she told him, and was impressed when Lord Barric didn’t so much as flinch at the demand. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, what she hoped to accomplish by this. Her wish to see the estate was probably unsurprising, in its own way, perhaps inevitable. If she was to be married off as a transaction—if she really was nothing more than a chess piece—then she might as well see the estate at least once while she was still a free woman.

  But she was confused as to why she had asked Lord Barric to take her there. It hadn’t escaped her mind, of course, that he was a Fairfax, and perhaps the only one she could trust not to use her if he found out about the will. She was either punishing him, she realized, for what happened at the party, or else she was torturing herself. He was likely the one man in Abbotsville who would never lose his senses enough to do the honorable thing by marrying her; he was also the only one she might consider if she didn’t already know it was impossible.

  Stay away, William had told her. It was a simple warning, and fair, so why couldn’t she listen?

  Dropping her gaze, Rena waited for Lord Barric to refuse her request, for surely he would. To carry her off, alone, to an abandoned estate was at the height of impropriety.

  But he didn’t refuse.

  He swept forward, grabbed her about the waist, and hoisted her at once into the saddle. Rena gasped as Samson whinnied and stomped beneath her foreign weight, but then Barric vaulted up behind her and muttered at Samson to hush.

  Rena took a moment to straighten the folds of her cloak, covering her legs as best she could to brace herself against the wind. Without warning, one of Barric’s arms circled her waist, holding her tightly against him as his other hand took hold of the reins. “You’ll want to hold on,” he murmured against her hair. “Wouldn’t want you unsaddled again, now would we?”

  Curling forward, she closed her eyes and clenched the saddle just as Samson took off at a sprint.

  Though vacant, Hawthorn Glen was somehow less gloomy than Misthold Manor, with wide blue shutters spanning the length of the building and a swooping balcony up top. Along the edge of the building was an overgrown garden, filled with briars. Someday spring would breathe the brush ablaze with color in a way only Edric, Alistair, and Nell had seen.

  Barric pulled back hard on the reins, bringing Samson to a clattering stop along the gravel drive. For a moment, neither of them moved. Barric’s hands were still on the reins, unnervingly close to her stomach. Rena angled her head back to read his expression, but he withdrew his arms from her at once, slid down from Samson, and reached up to help her dismount.

  Rena felt slightly dizzy even after she gained her footing, as if she was still racing across the heath on Samson’s back. Not yet ready to meet Lord Barric’s gaze, she turned from him and stepped beyond the reach of his hands.

  She studied every detail that made up Hawthorn Glen. There were massive stone steps and imposing statues, mazelike hedgerows, and a sprawling terrace ornamented with a fountain that had been several years dry. Rena craned her neck as she studied each stone, shuttered window, and overgrown vine.

  Would someone really take her, she wondered, if it meant inheriting such a property?

  Barric cleared his throat behind her. She turned, strangely startled by the sight of him standing in Edric’s gravel drive. He still loosely held Samson’s reins in his hand as he looked over her shoulder, silently assessing the building. Was he impressed?

  “Thank you for bringing me here.” She knew she ought to ask him to leave. She’d been unfair to them both by bringing him here. But might he be willing to marry her if it meant securing another estate? She didn’t want to know the answer. She didn’t want to see the derision in his eyes when she told him of Alistair’s will, or, worse, repulsion.

  And what if he did accept? Could she ever know for sure that he didn’t despise her, that he hadn’t married a pauper just to secure a prize like the Hawthorn Glen estate?

  Barric misread her anxiety and stepped closer. “Do you wish for me to come with you?”

  “No,” she said and dropped her eyes in shame. She could not tell him about the will, could not guarantee he would not use it against her. “I would rather go on alone from here.”

  He nodded but didn’t move. Then he winced and met her eyes. “I don’t want to leave you here on your own.”

  She was oddly touched by the concern in his voice, the uncharacteristic loss as he shifted Samson’s reins from one hand into the other. “Will you wait for me, then?” She attempted a reassuring smile. “I won’t be long.”

  His expression eased at the question, and he bowed slightly to signify he would wait.

  Leaving Lord Barric behind her, Rena wandered around the front of the building, her eyes flitting from window to window, attempting to see the halls inside and guess which window might have led to Edric’s room.

  As she turned a corner, circling toward the back of the building, she found it. Or at least she thought she did. A wide oak tree had grown alongside the stone wall, its jutting boughs nearly reaching a second-story window. In India, Edric coaxed Rena from her own window, and she followed him, her pulse high in her throat. Now she could so clearly picture her mischievous husband, a younger Edric, lifting that windowpane with practiced care. She could imagine him crawling out onto a tree limb and lowering himself, effortlessly, to the ground. It made sense to her. It fit.

  She wandered the property, inspecting each detail, trying to puzzle out who Edric had been here. She flexed her fingers as if willing them to be something that could cling.

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” From the warm stone chapel, the parson’s words drifted back to her, carried on the steady wind of many mornings ago.

  Rena swayed, lowering herself to a bench. She did not want to remember. She did not want to care. “Blessed are they that mourn,” the parson had said, “for they shall be comforted.” Comforted. Rena bent at the waist and pressed her hands tightly against her eyes. She wanted to shrink from the memory, but the words blew over her like dust. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled…. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

  She dropped her hands and stared at them as she thought through everything, piecing together all the words and prayers she’d heard despite herself. “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” The parson had spoken thos
e words just that Sunday. For Rena, the reading had been an eerie echo of Edric’s missionary friend, who had risked a great deal to marry them in secret—their hands, their very lives, were joined together by the same heavy words spoken from the same thick black book.

  But those words meant something, didn’t they? They’d followed her all this time, returned to her, unbidden, in moments of distress. They mattered.

  God dwelled within her. Could that really be true? How could she ever know for certain that such a God loved her?

  Rena stood from the bench and circled back to the front of the house, realizing the air had turned colder in the few hours since she’d left the cottage. Barric must have seen her coming from a ways off, for he was already sitting astride Samson, ambling up the drive to meet her halfway. When at last she came near enough, his eyes searched hers.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and lowered a gloved hand to help her up.

  She nodded and placed her hand in his. His grip was tight as he hoisted her up in front of him. He must have felt her trembling, for he banded both arms around her from behind, pulling her back snugly against the warmth of his chest.

  “Shall I take you home?” The words rumbled against her from behind.

  “No,” she said, still staring down at her hands. “Please, take me to the church.”

  He was silent a moment, and his arms settled more loosely against her. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I don’t know what I was looking for.” But she was suddenly afraid this wasn’t true. Maybe she only feared finding what she couldn’t bear to seek. The warmth of Barric’s arms around her was beginning to feel too familiar.

  Barric clicked his teeth to cue Samson, then rode at a rapid pace the whole way back. Rena closed her eyes as they passed the bit of road where his horse had nearly trampled her just a few hours before. Had something changed since then? She knew something had, but she feared it was only within herself.

  He steered Samson around the edge of his property, then cut up along the back of town. He was not yet to the main road when Rena set her fingers on his arm. He slowed the beast, leaning his head down closer to accommodate her question over the rhythmic thump of Samson’s hooves. “Perhaps I ought to walk from here?” she suggested, craning her neck so her voice would reach his ear. “In case people see.”