Rena stepped down from the chapel steps amid the usual chatter of morning parishioners. As a rule, she and Nell rarely lingered long after services. Rena was too reserved, and Nell too proud, for either of them to long endure the probing glances of those who mingled in the yard.
They bid their usual good mornings to the parson as they stepped onto the sunlit path that skirted the cemetery. Though the sun was a welcome change, there was still a bite in the air. Winter was hanging to them all by its claws.
As they walked, Rena spent their silence as she had, regrettably, spent much of the service—toiling over Sir Alistair’s will. Nell had not mentioned the will or its terms since the night they had fought, but neither woman had forgotten its implications. Like the winter air, it hovered. It followed. It whispered.
On a whim of utmost fatigue, Rena had considered confiding all in Lord Barric. She no longer had Alice as a confidant, and she had kept her distance even from William after their last exchange. Still, she could not bear to tell Barric of the will. She knew—or at least thought—she could trust him, but she also could not erase the image of him standing with Samson beneath Hawthorn Glen’s front gate, as if he were already master of its halls.
No, she could not tell him. She was too afraid of what he might say. Or of what he might not say.
Nell hummed a reprisal of one of the morning hymns, oblivious to Rena’s toiling, or perhaps trying to soothe it. Over this soft din, Rena heard the sound of shuffling footsteps close behind them. Her fingers tightening on Nell’s arm, Rena turned at the hip to see who was following.
Alice froze midstep. Lowering her eyes, she fiddled briefly with the front of her blue pelisse, as if trying to smooth out a crease Rena could not see.
Rena was not sure what to expect from this encounter, and so she deferred, a bit defensively, back to a standard greeting. “Good morning, Miss Wilmot.”
“Mrs. Hawley,” Alice murmured. Her gaze flicked from Rena to Nell and back again. “I wonder if I might walk with you.”
Rena looked uneasily at Nell, but the older woman had already disentangled her arm from Rena’s and stepped back. “You two go on without me. I just remembered I need to ask the parson about donations for the spring festival.”
Rena highly doubted Nell had any such questions about any such festival, but she allowed the woman her kindly bluff. With a farewell smile, Nell lifted her skirt off her shoes and swept away, leaving Rena and Alice to avoid each other’s eyes and reimagine past conversations. When Alice did not speak at once, Rena gestured to the road. “You said you wished to walk?” she asked, trying to help them along.
“Oh yes,” Alice breathed, and fell in step beside her. It did not take long for Alice to find her voice. “I was a wretch to you on Christmas,” she blurted almost at once. “I wonder that you do not hate me.”
“You spoke truly enough,” Rena said. “I should have expected no less than what I encountered at Lord Barric’s party.”
“No.” Alice shook her head. “What I said to you was unforgivable. I have hated myself a thousand times for every word I spoke to you in anger. Lord Barric cares for you. Everyone can see it. He looks at you in a way I have always hoped he might look at me, but it isn’t to be so.”
Rena knew those words were not as unfounded as she once might have thought. She remembered the feel of Barric’s fingers as they’d wrapped around her ribs to hoist her up in Samson’s saddle, the warmth of his breath against her hair as he rode her all the way to Hawthorn just because she had needed him to. She remembered the way he had looked at her, so concerned as she’d drifted about the property. Perhaps it was foolish to deny his regard. Or perhaps more foolish to hope on it. “I am sorry for causing you pain,” Rena said in a smaller voice than before. “I promise there is nothing between Lord Barric and myself.”
Alice winced. “But should there ever be…”
Rena tried to interject that such would never be the case, but Alice grabbed ahold of her hand and gave it a silencing squeeze. “No, listen. Please. I will marry someone someday. It won’t be Lord Barric or any other earl. But someday there will be a kindly and handsome man who thinks I am kind as well, who thinks I am pretty and looks at me the way Barric looks at you. And I will make our home, and we will have a family, and by then Lord Barric will have faded.” She paused, bit her lip. “But, listen to me, Rena. If Lord Barric makes you an offer, you must accept it.”
Rena closed her eyes and fought off a grimace. “Alice,” she said in gentle reprimand.
Alice smiled sheepishly at Rena’s slip, evidently delighted to be called again by her Christian name. “Promise me you will consider it,” she implored. “That you will consider him, if it comes to that. For what will happen to you five years from now? Or ten?”
“I do not wish to entangle myself with an earl just because of what will happen five years from now.”
They came to a bend in the road, and Alice slowed as the road steepened slightly. “You have nothing,” she said softly. “Is it so wrong to wish for something? To wish for everything?”
Alice knew more than most about the cost of wishing for everything.
“Your brother gave me contrary advice,” Rena noted dryly.
Alice pulled a face. “That’s because my brother is contrary. Told you to stay away from him for your own good, did he? Yes, well, I’ve tried that for years, and it’s never done me any good.”
Rena fought the urge to bury her face in her hands. Sir Alistair’s will had once filled her with horror. She had been reminded, unpleasantly, of the girls who worked at the Gilded Crown, how desperation whispered at them to reach into rich men’s pockets.
Yet again, Sir Alistair’s intentions had been well-meaning. He had sought to fix an age-old rift between two families, to ensure his mother’s good name, once tarnished, was joined at long last with those of her own relations. He wanted Nell and Rena to be welcomed back into his family and had made it possible for them both to be taken care of. But if she married under the terms of the will, could she ever know for sure her husband loved her, or cared for her as a person? Could she ever know she wasn’t merely money in his pocket, or he in hers? When Lord Barric had stood in front of Hawthorn Glen, she hadn’t missed the way his eyes had shrewdly surveyed the estate as any titled man might, silently assessing its worth and merit with a calculating expression. She could not bear for him to look at her like that, could not stand for him to weigh her against such a property, and what if she was shown to be lacking?
Alice touched her arm. Rena startled, realizing her thoughts had again turned to Lord Barric. As Alice searched her eyes, Rena considered divulging the entire business of the will, but she drew up short within herself. There was no need to worry Alice needlessly over a legal proviso which might never come into effect.
“I am afraid my husband is fading,” she confided instead, a startlingly honest admission. “I used to think of him at every moment, and then every few hours. Now I reach for him sometimes in the night, inwardly, but I cannot find him.”
Alice’s eyes widened. “But that is because he is not here.”
He is with God, Rena finished silently, and while it made her feel better, it also made her feel worse. Rena no longer knew how to grieve. It had been several months since Prince Albert had died, and Queen Victoria had removed herself entirely from society, mourning in a way some feared was madness. Too grieved to attend the funeral, she was now rumored to keep the prince consort’s room entirely unchanged, ordering servants to bring fresh water, daily, to her husband’s chamber, as if he had never died and still needed to shave each morning.
Rena had felt like that once, grieving beyond her own reason. She had fasted and bowed low on her bedroom floor in her parents’ home, begging for release from her own pain. She had crawled through icy rain and mud to find Edric’s lost ring, risking death of the cold and striking at Lord Barric when he’d pulled her from her task. Was it disloyal to Edric’s memory for her not to grieve so deeply
now? Was he fading or was she healing? Would Edric hate her, she wondered, if he knew she had found comfort in the warmth of another man’s arms?
Rena ran a hand over her face. “I wish I could know what he would have me do.”
She knew, of course, Edric would have bellowed at his father had he known what he intended with the new will. But what of sleeping in alleys? What of Rena’s nightmares? What of being a beggar to an earl instead of a wife to a husband? Edric would have bellowed over those things too; nor would he have wanted her to carry on her days in the wildness of uncontrollable grief.
Alice spoke carefully. “I did not know your husband, but I think I know what he’d want. He’d want you to live, Rena.”
Rena swallowed the truth of that statement as they came at last to the final stretch of road that led to the Wilmots’ cottage. As Rena fiddled with the gate, she paused with her hand on the latch. “The book you gave me for Christmas,” she said in a tucked-away voice, “I never did thank you for it.”
Alice studied her hands again, twisted her knuckles lightly around each other. “I have hoped it might be enough for you to forgive me.”
At the questioning lilt in her dear friend’s voice, Rena swept forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
Rena was awakened by a swarm of disconnected voices passing by her window. She lay there for a moment, eyes open, holding her breath until the voices were met by others in the distance, then echoed by loud shouts and urgent hollers. Careful not to disturb Nell, Rena slid out of bed, catching up her shawl and slinging it about her shoulders as she jerked open the door.
Three men were tearing past the fence as she stepped outside, their torches lit and held high above them.
“What is it?” Rena cried out, running along the fence so they wouldn’t have to slow their steps to answer. “What’s happened?”
“Fire!” one of the men shouted, stumbling to a halt long enough to heave out the words. “One of the houses on the other side of Barric’s property. If we don’t stop it, it could burn the house beside.”
The men didn’t dare dally a moment longer but went pelting off into the darkness. Rena squinted her eyes toward the horizon, where an orange, writhing glow cast an eerie halo over the farthest tree line. Sleep was no longer an option, nor was waiting for further news.
Rushing back into the house, Rena shook Nell awake. “There’s a fire,” she explained, pulling on her shoes as Nell rubbed at her bleary eyes. “You stay here. I’m going to see if I might be able to help.”
The church bells began tolling in the distance, summoning villagers to rise and assist. Nell sat up straight in bed and grabbed for Rena’s hand. “Oh, but you must stay here,” she protested. “Stay here where it is safe.”
“No.” Rena kissed Nell quickly on the forehead. “I must go where I am needed.”
And so, clad in nothing but her nightdress, shoes, and shawl, Rena raced out into the midnight chill, her breath catching in her chest as it tasted the sharp air. She followed the voices and torches across the barren fields, toward the trees. Barric’s manor still perched like a watchful beast above her, its dreary spires and slanted roof cast almost entirely in shadow.
She allowed the sounds of urgency to direct her steps through the woods until the faint glow was replaced with actual flames and the inferno became visible. Its heavy heat forced its way down her throat as a scattering of workers raced to battle the flames ahead of her, many of them hauling buckets from the creek that stretched behind the property. A little ways off, in a clearing, stood a young woman not much older than Rena, with two small children burrowed against her skirt. The woman’s tears fell silently as she watched the walls of her home char and crumble.
Rena knew how it felt to watch her own world burn, to stare in horror, able to do nothing but stand. The flames still licked at Rena’s skin sometimes if she let them. The memory of her husband as his emaciated form was lowered beneath a stone of gray, or the feeling of her father’s hand as he begged her not to board the ship to England—she observed a similar helplessness in the way this woman ran her hand through her daughter’s curls to soothe her. Even though the mother’s eyes were flames themselves, she endured.
The people had now formed two lines, from the creek to the fire, passing buckets back and forth.
Rena sprang into action, racing toward the nearest line. “Let me help!” she pleaded. Several men were already in the water up to their thighs, filling buckets and tossing them to the line of workers. A bearded man whom she had seen many times in Barric’s field nodded and made room, heaving a bucket into her arms.
The pail was frigid, with water tipping over the rusty rim and soaking her all the way down her belly, but she passed it to the lady beside her and turned for the next. Another pail was hurled at her, accompanied by a barely audible order to hurry. The air crackled around them, thick with heat, clouding Rena’s head. Still, she obeyed, twisting back on her ankle as she took the next bucket and the next and the next. All the workers had melded, somehow, as part of the same apparatus. Rena did not mark any of the silhouetted workers at her side, not until a hand clamped tightly around her arm and pulled her out of the line.
“Mrs. Hawley,” Lord Barric said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Rena pulled back from his touch and accidentally sloshed water down her front. Like the other workers, Lord Barric had clearly sprung from bed to battle the flames. His jacket was gone, his waistcoat disheveled, only halfway buttoned. She stared for a moment at his shirtsleeves, the first reminder that she herself was still dressed for bed.
“But I wish to help,” she argued, and handed her bucket, now half-empty, back into the line of workers beside her.
Sweat ran hard lines down the edge of Barric’s face. “It’s freezing out here. We have no need of you.”
The dismissal stung, but only briefly. Though stiff with cold and trembling, she forced herself to speak rationally. “If everyone else is risking their death in the cold, my lord, why shouldn’t I?”
“If you really wish to help,” he urged in a lower voice, drawing slightly nearer. “Go home and pray for rain.”
The line of workers continued its relentless course beside them. Shouts were hurtled from person to person as they sought to salvage the ruin, but Rena felt useless, stagnant. She needed to help. She needed to move back in line.
That was when she heard it. An older woman in the other line hissed, rather indiscreetly, “Barric’s too busy talking to his whore…”
Rena prayed that in the chaos Lord Barric hadn’t heard, but then he closed his eyes and stepped back from her. “Damn,” he said, then turned and stalked away. At a greater distance, Rena heard him bark a string of angry orders at the men in the creek.
Forcing herself to forget the taste of that familiar, nasty word—whore—Rena pushed her way back in line, taking the first bucket passed to her from her left and handing it off to the outstretched hands already waiting to her right.
The rest of the night was a grueling race, and despite their best efforts, they faced the slow agony of a losing battle. Rena’s limbs ached from the cold and exertion, her ears hollow drums in the wake of constant, pounding shouting. Still, the blaze leaped out of reach, arching back like a tempest of flame, now twisting dangerously close to the house beside.
The lines began to falter, to disperse. The pail dropped from Rena’s exhausted hand and struck the ground with a clatter. She struggled to catch her breath, but her throat felt frozen shut, and the tears in her eyes fell tight on her skin. This time the hand that touched her was tentative, calming. When she looked up, William looked down at her.
“We did our best,” he said, his pulse leaping wildly against his throat.
Fresh shouts signaled a jump in danger. Turning, Rena saw Lord Barric, his waistcoat now strewn aside as he clambered up a ladder—up, up toward the roof of the other house.
William let loose a ragged breath, shaking his head. “Ruddy fool’s lost his mind.”
>
With hardly a moment’s pause, Barric leaped onto the sloped roof, finding his footing quickly as he reached back down toward the ladder. Seeing what Barric intended, William swore, sprinting toward the ladder to help support it. Sparks rained down onto Barric from the blaze next door, and he angled his arm over his head as if to ward them off. Then, suddenly, someone from the top of the ladder handed him a bucket.
Not just someone—Charlie—who hollered at his brother as if they were invading hell itself. Flinching against the sparks as they hit his skin, Barric emptied the bucket his brother had tossed him, splashing a line of water halfway across the roof. Another bucket was handed to him, and another, all while the sparks fell like fiery starlight onto his skin.
Rena no longer knew what to do, how to help. Some of the other women were clustered tightly around her, their hands dug into the fronts of their gowns as they watched Barric rush to soak the roof. At moments, the sparks that landed seemed like they would surely catch, but he raced to drown them before they could jump to life. She heard a whole host of oaths from the ground, where men and women still scrambled to help in any way, however small.
At last William jumped up onto the roof beside Barric, then Charlie, the three of them lit by otherworldly red as they dashed about to prevent the worst from happening.
Rena’s stomach lurched as the other house’s roof finally caved, hurling a wall of flames closer to Barric’s roof. Before Rena could hear another scream, she covered her eyes with her hands and prayed to God for mercy.
Over time the fire danced lower in the sky, then lower, bowing an arrogant farewell as Barric scrambled like a peasant to subdue it. With William and Charlie’s help, he managed to save the roof of the second house, but the first one burned until all that was left was a mountain of smoking rubble.
Shadow among Sheaves Page 26