After he’d completed the estate business outside the manor at the end of September, she had asked him on two separate occasions if he would like to join her for a walk around the grounds. He declined. Half the time he looked as if there was something he wished to say, the other half he acted like a fugitive. Not once since their love-making had he entered a room she was in unless Maman or the children were there with her.
This, she told herself, is why unmarried women do not live under the same roof as an unrelated male. She had fallen into the oldest trap of womanhood, seduction. Beautiful, breathtaking seduction. She had fallen in love with D’Avenant, shown him so with her body, and now, conquest made, he was cutting her.
Even the Edgemere women seemed embarrassed for her, casting glances at him, then her, as if they all knew. The whole household seemed tense.
Thank fortune they hadn’t had full amorous congress—and God help her, that night she would have allowed it, so lost had she been to him. Imagine if she had become pregnant! That would have been colossal folly, her ruination. What shame that would have brought her, not to mention the risk of death that carrying another child represented for her.
She’d thought herself so sensible. She’d come so near to risking her life and the well-being of her children for a few minutes of passion. Was this the result of seeking independence? Of defying rules put in place for very good reasons? Was this the example she wished to set for her daughters?
Maryam closed the book on her lap and set it on the table. She wasn’t reading, she was stewing. She was going for a walk. She had to clear her mind.
The day was dark and blustery. D’Avenant, walking beside the turbulent waters of the Edgemere river that ran near the manor, turned up his collar against the cutting wind. The river was a dark and roiling mess. Swollen by recent rains, its banks were caving in from the strength of the rushing water, the mud and earth being swept along in a churning mess of underbrush, tree branches, and planks torn loose from upstream piers.
He kept his distance from the edge, walking southward, parallel to the water, lost in thought. Maman was right, he had made a mess of things. He hadn’t meant to, of course, but a mess was a mess and he didn’t know how to fix it.
When Lady Maryam had burst into tears that night in the library, his heart had gone out to her. He had gone from spending every day with her, of forging a deep friendship, to suddenly disappearing from her view. For weeks, he had left her to struggle with a task that was stressful even when one knew what to do. He had intentionally sequestered himself, asking Maman, Sophie, and the others to keep Maryam away from him. Maryam, at his behest, had been firmly but politely placed at arm’s length and she had felt it.
Lèse majesté, he thought ruefully. An attack against her dignity. Just like Grenville did to her at the Abercrombies. He cringed.
He hadn’t lied to her that night in the library. He had missed her too, terribly. Their intimacy that night had been a reparation of the distance between them, a reconnection at depths of feeling previously undeclared. He had kissed her. He had called her by name. He had brought her to ecstasy. He’d wanted to be joined with her because he loved her. Nothing less.
Beneath his feet, a tangle of broken branches blocked the path. He stepped around them continuing south toward the confluence of the Edgemere and its western tributary. The two waters met there in a Y shaped junction, in what the family grimly called the D’Avenant Pit.
He walked on, wondering: At what point in that night’s encounter could he have stopped? She had reached out to him, her long sequestration having caught up with her. Should he have stopped her when she took his face in her hands to kiss him? To reject her when she offered such enormous vulnerability would have been just as cutting as what he was doing now—avoiding her until he could figure out a way to tell her the truth.
What could he have said that night? Oh. You should know: I’m a woman. The deceit of being a woman passing as her brother, shocking as it would be, could have been forgiven—had he told her before their intimacy. Now, the required statement was Not only am I not a man, I’m a woman who loves other women—and you just had intimate relations with me. It could be seen as nothing less than betrayal at the basest level. Entrapment. Seduction under false pretenses.
He knew that the distance he had kept from her since that night was distressing her. Twice she had invited him to private conversation. Twice he had refused. He didn’t know what to say. The risk of losing Edgemere was grave. But losing her was what drove him mad. He was just putting off the inevitable rejection.
Elizabeth, Edward, and Megan—tired of being indoors after a long series of rainy days—needed to be released outdoors the way wildlife needed to be released from cages. Brigid bundled them up and took them outside to the southern end of the formal gardens where she set them loose in the boxwood hedge maze to blow off some steam. The maze kept the two oldest children corralled while still giving them a sense of liberty while she traversed it more slowly with Megan and met them in the centre.
Running ahead, well into the maze, hearing Brigid and Megan on the other side of them, Edward spied an opening at the base of the hedge wall. He dove for it, calling Elizabeth to follow. Then they saw a second tunnel at the bases of the boxwoods, and a third, and squirmed through them as well, thinking they were taking a shortcut to the centre.
They emerged outside the maze on the river side.
“What’s that noise?” Elizabeth asked. “It’s so loud.”
“Let’s go see!” Edward said.
13. Drowning
The rush of water at the Pit was as powerful as D’Avenant had ever seen it. He stood at the side of the path, looking at the confluence of the two waters, awed by its sheer power.
“My Lord.”
He looked left. Maryam. Coming northward on the path toward him.
D’Avenant dipped his head in acknowledgement.
Maryam walked up to him and turned to him, her back to the water, the wind pricking tears in her eyes.
D’Avenant looked up and his expression froze.
A small green punt, trailing a long rope connected to a rotten timber, came down the western tributary, gathering speed as it pitched and rolled toward the guzzling confluence of the two branches of the river. “Oh, my God,” D’Avenant whispered.
Edward—a look of sheer panic on his face—was standing in it, bent over, clinging to its shin-high edges.
Following D’Avenant’s gaze, Maryam turned and looked at the river. A horrified sound caught in her throat.
“Mama! Mama!” Elizabeth ran toward them on the other side of the river, from the direction of the mansion, trying to stay alongside Edward: “It was on the shore! Edward jumped on, but it got loose!”
On the water, the punt raced toward the vortex where the two waters mixed.
D’Avenant ran to the water’s edge and shouted: “Edward! Sit down! Sit, Edward! Sit down!” The boy was gripped by terror, concentrating on holding on. The punt accelerated, dropping between two boulders right into the whirling waters of the D’Avenant Pit.
“Edward sit down!!” Maryam screamed frantically.
The log trailing the punt broke the surface as it raced to the opening between the boulders, leaned sideways, and jammed across the passageway. The rope from the log to the punt came out of the water and pulled taut. The punt was yanked hard and Edward lost his grip. He flipped backwards. His head hit the punt loudly enough to be heard on shore, and he was tossed into the icy current.
“Edward!?” Maryam screamed, running along the shore looking for him to resurface. “Edward!”
“Elizabeth!” D’Avenant shouted. “Elizabeth!”
She was transfixed by the tragedy unfolding before her disbelieving eyes.
“Elizabeth!” D’Avenant roared.
She looked at him, in shock.
“Run! Run to the house and tell them what’s happened! Get help! Run, sweetheart! As fast as you can
!”
Elizabeth took a last look at the river, turned and started running, her skinny legs pounding the ground.
Maryam screamed, frantically, helplessly watching while Edward submerged and reappeared in the whirlpool. She ran along the edge, looking for a long branch, something to retrieve him with.
D’Avenant peeled off his great coat.
Edward went under the surface. He was unconscious.
“No!!” Maryam screamed, walking toward the raging water.
D’Avenant grabbed her.
Maryam keened. “Edward!”
D’Avenant shook her. “Help me undress!” He yanked at his waistcoat, ripping off the buttons. “I’ll need my breath!” He pulled at his shirt, freeing it from the waistband of his trousers.
Maryam scanned the surface of the water. “I can’t see him!”
“Unbind me!” Julianne shook Maryam, trying to penetrate her shock. The shirt was off. Only the corset remained. “Take this thing off! Untie it! I’ll need my breath!”
“Your br –?” Maryam was dumbfounded.
Julianne grabbed her hands. “Untie the stays! Hurry! He mustn’t touch the bottom!” If Edward got caught where the water fell into the Pit, he would be caught in the roiling waters and be pinned there.
Maryam pulled blindly at the corset ties, freeing her.
“Maryam!” Julianne said, pointing further downstream. “See that white water down there? See it?” She turned Maryam’s face to the shallows downriver from where they now stood. “Go there and catch us!” That’s where we wash up.
She yanked the corset off, took one deep breath, then another, trying to expand her lungs. Then she ran into the frigid river on feet that were already numb, to where the shallow ledge gave sudden way to the water hole that claimed at least one D’Avenant every generation.
Julianne dove in.
The shelf fell off and she went into the black water pulling with her arms, kicking. She submerged into the dark and swirling pit. She opened her eyes, and felt the cold drill painfully further into her skull. Below–way below–she thought she saw something light. She could not see anything else, so she pursued it, kicking and stroking with every ounce of strength she could retrieve, unsure whether she was making any progress against the bruising force of the water.
The deeper she went, the easier it became to move in a chosen direction, but also, the colder it became, and the darker, and the more the pressure against her lungs. She kicked fiercely, stroked with her arms, and collided painfully with the bottom of the pit. Her head buzzed. Her lungs begged for breath. Even if I could find him, I won’t make it back up. I’m too deep and out of air.
She collided again with something yielding—in a sheepskin coat. Edward! She grabbed the boy and started upwards. She kicked desperately, pulling against the water with her free hand, Edward’s dead weight dragging against her. Julianne kept looking up–looking up for the liquid light, feeling the pressure against her chest, rushing toward the air, fighting the urge to inhale.
She started to black out. The light moved further away. The water became darker. Air! Air! Don’t inhale. Just a little more. Just a little further. She kicked, unable to feel her feet. She went through the motions by rote, hoping they weren’t just dangling uselessly, like Edward. She tried to remember how it felt to kick, to pull herself through the water. She tried to remember how it felt to breathe. The tunnel of light got bigger. She must be getting closer.
Ten feet below the surface, Julianne gasped for air.
And suffocated.
Damn it! Just damn it! I wanted a life! MY life!! She sobbed for air, sobbed for life, for what wasn’t to be hers. A scream–a primal scream–came out of her, up from her toes, past her heart, and through a tunnel of light that was all she could see. Mother! Father! Julien Alexandre! Julien Michel! She wept, happy to see them again. And she wept to leave Maryam and the children. I wanted my life! I wanted my life and didn’t know how to live it. I wanted to love them.
Then kick! her mother said. Kick, Julianne!
And then she was squeezed hard, so hard, back into the water and her thrashing body. Slowly she felt herself lifted. She broke the surface, just with the top of her face, her mouth agape, water rushing in, the great D’Avenant nose rising into the frigid air.
A lifeless form in a sheepskin coat floated face down in the water beside her. Her knuckles were white, her fingers frozen stiff, imbedded in Edward’s collar. She tugged, got him face up and lost consciousness.
Blackness came and went, came and went, and distant voices called her name. She was caught in the shallows, had come to rest where all the D’Avenant bodies came to rest, at the bend, tossed upon the rocks in the shallows where the river spread out and lost its deathly grip. She felt herself be dragged ashore, her hands pried open. She was shaking violently. Her pants were stripped off, and she felt herself enfolded by two warm women’s bodies. Sophie and Sarena were gifting her with their own body heat, one front, one back. The twins threw blankets over all three of them.
The last thing she heard was the air flapping past Edward's flaccid lips, and the voice of the dark gypsy Romelle: “Breathe, child, breathe!”
14. Julianne
The walls of the nursery were sky blue. The sunlight coming through the windows stretched across the floor and touched Edward’s bed. The gypsy Romelle came in every few hours and examined him. Brigid, deeply relieved she wasn’t being deemed untrustworthy because of the children’s escape from the maze, was taking care of Elizabeth and Megan. These were facts Lady Maryam thought she could rely upon.
She sat beside Edward’s bed holding his hands, stroking his hot forehead, rubbing his arms and legs, praying, praying, praying for his recovery. He’d been so purple when he’d been dragged out of the water, his lips so black she had thought he was beyond recall. But Romelle had pumped his chest, blown her air into his mouth, stimulated the blood flow to his limbs again, and he had gasped. Vomited, retched, sucked in air between paroxysms.
He was alive but unconscious. No one knew if the injury to Edward’s head and his being under water so long would cause permanent brain damage. I know he may be broken, God, but I want him anyway.
Everything had an air of unreality. Her beloved Edward, her laughing boy, her heart of hearts had nearly died. The nightmare revisited her mind over and over. When exhaustion overtook her, and in the instant before sleep when her guard was down, the horror reappeared again in her mind. She re-experienced it as if it were occurring anew: The terror on Edward’s face as he was carried down the raging torrent. Elizabeth’s panic as she ran alongside. D’Avenant’s disbelief as he looked over Maryam’s shoulder. Her own devastating feeling of powerlessness. She felt it over and over again each time as if for real.
And then. ‘D’Avenant’ was a woman. Maryam had seen her nude. Seen her breasts, her torso, her intimate areas. That much seemed true. But who was she?
Truth and illusion had become indistinguishable.
Julianne woke in her bed in the middle of the night, coughing. She was upright, propped up on pillows. Each breath required effort. Her head was pounding. She felt her hands trembling on the feather quilt.
Maman, sitting beside her, jerked awake. “Chère!”
“Water,” she whispered.
There was a glass already poured on the bedside table. Maman lifted it to Julianne’s lips, and held it, tipping it gently as Julianne slowly drank between laboured breaths. She leaned back. “Ed-ward?” She had so little air she could not speak even a single word without taking a second breath.
“Unconscious.”
Julianne’s brows furrowed.
“Romelle cannot tell if he is unconscious because he has a high fever like you from getting river water in your lungs, or if it is from his head injury.”
Julianne inhaled, the air stuttering into her lungs. “Mary-am?”
“At his side. Terrified.”
Julianne closed her
eyes. Tears crept out beneath her eyelids and slid down her cheeks. Don’t cry, she told herself. It makes breathing harder.
At daybreak two days later, Maryam was asleep on her side in Edward’s little bed, face to face with him, her hand on his hip. She felt a scratchy fingertip tracing her eyelashes. She opened her eyes.
Edward was looking at her, smiling. “Hello, Mama,” he said. “Did you fall asleep while you were reading me a bedtime story?”
That afternoon, while Romelle and Elizabeth were sitting with Edward in the nursery, Maryam excused herself. She felt like she had a bag of snakes inside her body. For nearly a week, her emotions had been writhing inside her, twisting against each other, pressing for release. She had to get out. Get out of this house. The snakes had to be released.
She ran downstairs, grabbed her wrap and fled outdoors, into the cold. Her feelings were being squeezed out of her against her will. She ran, stumbling, as far as she could from the manor toward the forest. In the woods she dropped to her knees, bent over and wailed. It was all crawling inside her—the dread and relief over Edward, D’Avenant’s betrayal, the humiliation of having been played the fool by everyone at Edgemere. She rocked, overcome, wailing.
She was an ass, a dupe, she keened. A mother, alone, with three young children, thinking she could find her way, but just making stupid, stupid mistakes.
“Milady.”
Maryam raised her head and saw Sophie’s black shoes beside her.
Sophie bent over her. “It is over,” she said gently. “The worst is over.”
Maryam looked up, angry at the intrusion, her eyes flashing. “You lied to me. You all lied to me.”
Everything was contrivance—like theatre where actors play roles to convince an audience that mirage is reality. Everyone had known except her that D’Avenant was a woman. Everyone had conspired to deceive her. She had walked onstage believing the scenario and played honestly while everyone else around her lied. She was an idiot. Why hadn’t she realized that D’Avenant wasn’t a man? She’d been married for years. She’d had intimate relations with a man. She knew what a man’s body looked like and felt like and sounded like. And yet, she had been deceived. The actors had played their roles to perfection. The fool had been taken in.
Lie With Me Page 13