Lie With Me

by Patricia Spencer

“Say it.”

  “I got their daughter killed.” A growl rolled in his chest.

  Maryam’s breath caught, a shocked inhalation. But she tightened her grip. “Put down the bottle,” she said.

  He took a ragged breath. He hadn’t realized he’d actually picked it up. He just wanted to take it, to leave, to run and go hide in it. He shifted his balance.

  “D’Avenant, put it down or I shall have to overpower you.”

  He laughed, one deep sound, released the bottle, and covered his face, head bent in a spasm of grief.

  Lady Maryam placed a hand on his arm.

  He straightened, uncovering his face, looking away, toward the door, not daring to look at her.

  “When a wild thing pursues you, D’Avenant, it will chase you until it kills you. The longer you run without looking at it, the more fearsome it becomes.” She touched his chin with her fingertips, applying gentle pressure, asking without words that he look at her. “There is only one way to prevail: stop running. Turn and face it.”

  He glanced at her. He felt so much emotion for her, so much yearning to meet her goodness with some of his own that he could scarcely stand the sight of her beautiful face, lest his own fall to pieces under her scrutiny.

  “Weeks have passed since our return from London,” she said. “Every night after dinner, there is music in this house, children’s laughter, good company. The children and Brigid want to put on a play. Elizabeth wants to draw portraits. Edward wants to learn how to fence, a skill I am told you possess. Megan would love her D’Av to read her Higgy Pop. Every night we invite you. Every night you decline. You hide in here alone trying to fight some terrible beast on your own.” She tipped her face back, her green eyes probing his. “Whatever do you think you have done to deserve such exile?”

  “I… I am working.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, D’Avenant. You’re not the only person in this house who knows how to add and subtract. I know enough now to help you. You’ve laid out a brilliant accounting plan that even a lowly Countess can follow. We can do the work together in half the time and you can join the family.”

  Family. The idea hit him in the gut. “Edgemere is not your responsibility, but mine.”

  “Edgemere and Skylark are both well in hand. The crops are doing well. The roof is being framed in at Skylark, and Tate’s carpenters are starting to make the doors and windows. We have six weeks until Michaelmas Quarter at the end of September, so no urgent banking. You have spent your working hours teaching me what is to be my responsibility, at the cost of your own day. Do my children and I not benefit from what you have built? May we not contribute to it in our own ways?” She smiled. “Because I see a dire need in you to Laugh and Lie Down, and my children are experts. Why are you not taking advantage of their tutelage? I have uncovered your pianoforte and Sarena and I are playing music together in the Great Room. Why have you not joined Maman and the others to listen and dance? The sun is shining gloriously and the gardens are blooming. Why are you not having afternoon teas on the terrace with us?”

  Maryam reached across the table and set the cognac bottle on a shelf behind it. “There is so much sweet life for you, right here in the present.”

  Later that night, Lady Maryam turned down the wick on the bedside lamp until it guttered and the room was cast into darkness. Lifting her feet into the bed, she slid between the covers and lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling even though she could not see it. She felt physically tired but her mind was spinning, wide awake.

  What in heaven’s name had she done, challenging D’Avenant and his drinking? Giving him advice about fighting his demons? Restraining his hand. Taking his bottle from him. Lord, what liberties she had taken! Touching him as if he were a man she had leave to touch.

  She groaned softly, thinking how difficult it had been these past weeks, working so near to him at that big table, looking into his beautiful blue eyes while he instructed her, watching his shapely hand draw boxes and circles and arrows on his charts, enjoying his smile and his laughter as they talked, so easily, and increasingly about topics not related to Skylark or Edgemere or making an enterprise profitable.

  When he’d given her The Universal Penman, George Bickham’s manual for ‘Forming the Man of Business,’ she’d chosen to study it in the library with him. She could have taken the book out to the terrace. But he drew her. She felt him moving through her like a tide, lifting her, pulling her along, washing her up on his shore.

  Sometimes, learning together, poring over papers, heads bent over documents, their elbows brushed against each other, or their fingers touched as they handed each other ledgers or pencils. She missed sensual touch and D’Avenant’s proximity made her ache for it. She was not a girl, tossed by every ripple of desire that coursed through her. She was a mature, disciplined woman. She could still her hands. Practice restraint. But when his heart broke open in front of her— Oh, that she could not abide. She could not witness suffering and do nothing to alleviate it. It had taken all her self-control not to draw him against her and envelop him.

  Down the hall, she heard the quiet click of Maman’s bedroom door. She turned her head and listened. D’Avenant visited her last thing every night without fail, sometimes just for two or three minutes before tiptoeing back out, down the hall to his own room. Quietly. Very quietly.

  There. He was out. And now… she waited... the second click, of his own door.

  Maryam looked out the window. The moonlight was weak but she could make out the outlines of the trees against the sky. What was it that Maman had said about D’Avenant that morning on the terrace? D’Avenant is a complicated human being with a difficult history.

  His anguish over the Huntingdons and their daughter was proof enough of that. Clearly, whatever had happened, D’Avenant blamed himself: I got their daughter killed. But the Huntingdons, based on how they had embraced him at Clarissa’s ball, did not blame him. What had his relationship to their daughter been? How had she died? When? Was there a connection between the daughter’s death and the loss of his family?

  D’Avenant, Julianne, in her room, tugged off the loosened corset, finished undressing, and got into bed. She felt fragile, as if she had been flung across the room by something powerful, and barely escaped alive. She got under the covers, drew them around her, and curled into a ball. She started shaking uncontrollably. She felt so cold. So horrified by what she had nearly done.

  She could have taken that bottle and poured it down her throat. Hah. She chuckled, a self-deprecating sound in a dark room late at night. If Lady Maryam hadn’t threatened to ‘overpower’ her, she would have broken her big record of eight weeks without alcohol, mid-June to mid-August. It seemed like an eternity of staring at those bottles that Maman had had set right in front of her just as promised. Nothing stopped her but herself—and, this evening, Lady Maryam’s steel will.

  All she’d done was ask one question, and Julianne had shattered. What was happening to her that she couldn’t field one simple question?

  Julianne felt ashamed to have come so close to failure in front of Maryam. Maman had urged Julianne to honesty, and she had done that by admitting that she was trying not to drink—Maryam had noticed anyway—but she had also damned near failed tonight. Having Maryam witness that would have been humiliating. Maryam already knew Julianne was an exemplary drunk. God forbid she should discover Julianne was also an exemplary failure at remaining sober. Because Julianne knew: If she so much as took one sip of that cognac, she would take the whole bottle. Now that she had denied it to herself, she knew that if she surrendered to it, she would not practice restraint.

  She was, indeed, at a crossroads.

  These past weeks had been eye-opening. For so long she had told herself she could stop any time she wanted. But now she knew that was a lie. Alcohol had insinuated itself into her life and she had become dependent on it because… because I can’t stand my feelings. She couldn’t stand what had happen
ed. She couldn’t bear what she had seen. And she despised herself for the part she had played in it. There was too much trapped inside her. It would rip her open if it broke loose.

  Lady Maryam was right. Something wild was pursuing Julianne and it meant to devour her. Ten years had passed—ten years next month—and she had not once dared to turn on that beast and look it in the eye. She had run. And she had hidden. In many, many bottles.

  She felt a sob building in her. She pressed her knuckles against her lips, crushing the urge to cry out. She didn’t know how to fix this. Maman said she had to find Julianne again. But the last time Julianne knew herself as such, she was insufferable arrogant self-centred and selfish. Recovering Julianne didn’t seem like much of a goal.

  Breakfast was a surprise to Lady Maryam. There was a table and chairs set up on the terrace just outside the breakfast room, and the french doors were wide open, held with doorstops. The day smelled of sunshine and warm earth and the sky was cloudless.

  “The family,” Sophie announced, “once everyone is gathered, that is, are to fill their plates inside at the sideboard as usual, and bring them outside to eat in the fresh air, like an at-home picnic.”

  “What a lovely idea,” Maryam said. “Thank you.”

  “Thank Lord D’Avenant, Milady. It was his idea. He seems to have awakened with new resolve.” Sophie stopped and met her eyes squarely. “He said he was advised last night that Edgemere has much sweet life that he has been missing.”

  Maryam blinked, her eyes suddenly watery. She scanned the lawns. “Is he joining us?”

  “He’ll be up presently with young Edward. They’ve been down at the stables, fencing. More like D’Avenant trying to not get his eye poked out, my wager. But the boy is over the moon to have an activity ‘just for him.’”

  “Well—” Maryam’s voice came out unexpectedly husky. She stopped.

  “D’Avenant has heart, Milady. Generosity. Kindness. All good things to remember if he should make mistakes.”

  Maryam nodded, feeling oddly as if Sophie had just spoken to her in code.

  Maman walked out, steadied by Minnie. Mo, with them, was carrying her bowl of café crème for her. The twins helped her settle, and offered to bring her some eggs or meats. “Non, non, merci.” Maman said. “Après le café. Later.”

  Right behind them, Brigid appeared with the girls. Elizabeth ran ahead to hug her mother. Megan came second and threw her arms around Maryam’s hips.

  Maryam hugged the girls. “Elizabeth,” she said, tucking a stray bit of hair behind her daughter’s ear, “do you think you can serve yourself, or will you need help from one of the twins?”

  “I can do it, Mama.”

  “Bring a few nibbles for Megan, would you love?”

  “Like eggs?”

  “Berries,” Megan said. There were fresh ones from the garden now, not just preserves.

  “Eggs and berries, please Elizabeth.”

  Coming from the direction of the stables, D’Avenant strode across the lawn with Edward running ahead of him.

  At the base of the hill up to the terrace, Edward squatted oddly, one hand behind his back, the other out front holding an imaginary sword. “En garde!” he cried. He froze for a moment, his face very fierce, then turned sideways and scrabbled forward, his right foot leading. “Attack!” he shouted. But the steepness of the rise got the better of him, and he started scrabbling backwards. “Retreat!” he shouted, and lost his balance and rolled down the hill to fall flat on his back at D’Avenant’s feet.

  All the women on the terrace burst out laughing.

  D’Avenant bent over him and started tickling Edward’s sides. “Parry!” Edward rolled into a ball, laughing so hard he could hardly squeak: “Parry! Parry!”

  Down below her Maryam saw D’Avenant laughing too.

  Later, when breakfast had ended and the children and Maman had gone off to their activities, D’Avenant remained beside Maryam at the cleared table. “I thought,” he said, “that maybe I’d take you up on your offer of help with the Edgemere books. I am given to understand there is music in the Great Room in the evening, and I would like to attend.”

  That night after dinner he appeared at the doorway of the Great Room and leaned against the frame. The others had arrived before him. Lady Maryam was at the pianoforte, Sarena stood beside her with the violin, tuning up. The children were chasing each other around the dancing pit, three steps down from the main floor, while Maman, Sophie, Brigid, and the twins sat in a row of chairs, watching them. Romelle had come up from the medicine garden, and Estelle and Normand from the stables, and Leonard from the gatehouse, too.

  The house was full. There was an air of celebration in the room.

  “Lord D’Av!” Edward shouted, spying him at the door. “Lord D’Av!” Elizabeth echoed. They ran to him and took his hands, guiding him back to what had become their play area.

  At the musician’s corner, Maryam looked up from the keyboard at him and smiled. Sarena played a happy trill for him as her greeting.

  He let himself be led to the dance floor by the children, and sat cross-legged on it with them. Megan, who was playing with some small wooden toys from the nursery, scootched over to him with two of them in her hands, and climbed into his lap. He loosely circled her with his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head.

  Maryam and Sarena played for nearly an hour. The twins got up and danced to the merrier tunes. Estelle and Normand, and Brigid and Leonard stepped to the more sedate numbers, all the while Elizabeth and Edward chased each other between the dancers. Maman, Romelle, and Sophie sat at the sidelines, murmuring to each other, or clapping their hands in time to the music on the livelier numbers.

  Through it all, D’Avenant sat contentedly in the middle of the floor, with Megan now asleep in his arms.

  At eight, Lady Maryam finished her last tune with a flourish and closed the piano lid. “Alright, my bandits. Bedtime.”

  “Aw, Mum,” they moaned.

  “No. None of that,” she said. “Time for bed.”

  Brigid rounded them up, handing them their toys to take back upstairs to the toy box, while adults dispersed, saying their goodnights to the elders, and their thank yous to Lady Maryam and Sarena for playing.

  Maryam left the piano and came over to D’Avenant. Standing at his feet, she looked down at him and Megan and smiled. “Bedtime, D’Avenant.”

  “Aw, Mum,” he said.

  Maryam held out her arms for Megan.

  “Shall I just carry her up?” he asked.

  “All right,” she said. “But you do know you’ll have to give her back some time?”

  He pursed his lips. “I’ll take what I can get.” He leaned forward to get up, but Megan’s weight counterbalanced him and he rocked back. He chuckled. “You may have to carry us both up.” He rocked forward again, and this time, Maryam caught his elbow with both her hands and gave him the needed impetus to make it to his feet.

  “Next time, we’ll get Maman to hook me with her cane.”

  “Come, you. This is a ruse to hold my little one a bit longer.”

  D’Avenant resettled Megan in his arms and paused, looking down on her. “Why do you think it’s so comforting to hold them?”

  Maryam lifted her face from Megan’s to his. “They trust us, D’Avenant. They know not our shortcomings.” She smiled ruefully. “It allows us to imagine ourselves as worthy as they believe us to be, and as capable of holding back the world for them.”

  10. Unravelling

  “Lord D’Av.” Elizabeth had accompanied him to the stables to pet the horses while he talked to Estelle, and now they were on the way back to the house, walking side by side across the lawn. She looked up at him, the little gap of a second missing tooth now visible as she spoke. “I was wondering…”

  He took two more steps, but she had slowed down and lost ground. He turned back. She had stopped, her eyes wide and blinking. He squatted in fro
nt of her so they could see eye to eye. “You were wondering?”

  “I was wondering if, sometimes… maybe…”

  He waited, not hurrying her.

  “My father used to hold my hand sometimes when we walked,” she blurted.

  “Oh. I see. Is that one of the things that you remember doing with him?”

  She nodded.

  “You must miss him.”

  She sniffled. “I can’t remember anything else about him. Just walking and holding hands.”

  D’Avenant nodded. “Hmm. Do you think if—maybe when you and I walk together we could hold hands sometimes and that way it would remind you and you wouldn’t forget how much he loved you.”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  “Well, then. I think we should do that.” He started to get up, then squatted again. “The other thing… What if I gave you a hug, right now? Maybe you’d remember that he used to hug you, too. Surely he hugged you, a wonderful little girl like you?”

  Elizabeth leaned into D’Avenant’s shoulder, resting her cheek against his shoulder, circling his shoulders with her arms, hugging him with all her little-girl strength. He rubbed her back gently, settling her.

  “Good,” he said. “Are you remembering now?”

  She nodded.

  He waited another moment until she released him.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She collected herself with her seven year old’s version of her mother’s composure and stepped back, her hand out for his.

  He took it and together they walked back to the house.

  Upstairs, Lady Maryam was standing at the nursery room window. She’d just put Megan down for a nap when she caught sight of Elizabeth and D’Avenant crossing the lawn. What was that about? she wondered. Whatever had caused Elizabeth’s upset, D’Avenant had handled it smoothly. He had a way with the children, a natural gift, a genuine interest in them.

  So many men—fathers, even—seemed unable to see children as dignified individuals, deserving of respect in their own right. They saw them as heirs, inheritors of property and titles and filial obligations. They saw them as vassals. How would Chichester Dumaresq have treated Elizabeth had he been the one crossing the lawn with her? Told her to stop her fussing? Told her to run along where she could be seen but not heard? He surely wouldn’t have embraced her or held her hand.