It wasn’t until I had pinned my hair and was lacing up my boots that I noticed the door to the wardrobe, sticking out just a bit farther than its fellow. I went to the door slowly, and tugged once on the latch. It swung open, silent on its hinges, showing me the empty space behind. I threw open the lid of my trunk and tossed out the gray silk, some handkerchiefs, and a bit of needlework I’d forgotten before I found the chemise, rolled up like a scroll beneath some stockings. I shook it loose, and the key to the wardrobe fell with a soft thud onto a rose in Marianna’s carpet.
But I had no time to consider Davy’s nighttime habits; there was too much to be done during the day. How did they manage it, I wondered, those women like Mrs. Hardcastle, holding regular gatherings for hundreds at a time? I was expecting a grand total of five, and every moment was taken, seeing to the last of the cooking and the fires, my uncle’s striped cups, cutting flowers, and patching up a stray bit of wallpaper that had not taken to Mary’s glue. But I delighted in the minutiae, gloried in every menial task. I wanted them to go on and on, and then the party could not happen, and the next day would never come.
And yet each task was accomplished in turn, and by half past six in the evening the library fire was cheerful, the biscuits and scones, jellies, sweetmeats, tarts, my dilled cucumbers, and a bowl of punch were arranged on a table along the wall, and every surface held a vase of daisies, hyacinth, and roses. The blue dress and matching slippers had been donned, and Mary was arranging my hair while rain, finally making good on its day-long threat, drove like daggers at the windowpanes. I fidgeted on the cushioned bench, nervous, every inch of me aching with remorse in my choice of clothing. Mary rapped me once on the head with her knuckle.
“Be still, Miss, or I’ll have to be starting all over again!”
I just fidgeted more. The blue dress was so light and free. I had the uncomfortable feeling I was about to go to a party in my nightgown. “Mary, perhaps I should …”
“No!” Mary said, rolling her eyes. She shoved in one last hairpin and handed me a small mirror. “There now. Tell me what you think of that.”
I turned away from the larger mirror over the dresser and looked into the small one, gazing over my shoulder at the back of my head. Mary had brought the front pieces of my hair into a loose knot just above my neck, strips of the matching blue ribbon twined all through, leaving the rest of my curls to fall free. Hanging from the many ribbon ends were bits of sparkle, glints of candlelight that radiated in the red-brown. I reached back to touch one. They were crystal pendants.
“Oh, Mary,” I said. I’d never dreamed of having such a beautiful thing in my hair. “Wherever did you get it?”
“I made it, of course.”
I touched one of the sparkling pendants again, and then dropped the mirror to my lap. “Mary. You didn’t get these off a chandelier?”
Mary’s eyes widened with innocence. “A chandelier! Of course I didn’t, Miss! How could I be doing such a thing?” She busied herself with putting away the hair things, then saw me still watching from the mirror. “Well, they were coming off a lamp, Miss, if you must know. But I say they’re looking right prettier where they are now.”
I sat still in my chair while thunder rumbled softly, then caught up Mary’s hand and squeezed it against my cheek.
“Good Lord, Miss,” she said, pulling away. “I never saw a young lady needing so many lessons in how to behave.” But I could see from the way her freckles stretched that she was pleased. “And anyway, ’tis your birthday.”
She was right. It was my eighteenth birthday, an occasion that for many reasons would never come again. I was going to enjoy it, and never once think about tomorrow. I smiled at her, and went to check the fire before my guests arrived.
But when I came into the library, Lane was there already, standing at the hearth in a clean white shirt, frowning hard into the flames, no soot or paint or sweat stains on him. But I could tell from his stance that something was wrong. He was coiled again, pent up. He looked up at my entrance, as if he had intended to say something, but instead we did not speak. We merely stared, and I knew in that moment that the fullness of time had caught up with me. It was the twenty-ninth day, and our little game of pretense was over. I understood this just as clearly as if the words had been said, and the cold, empty void now spreading through my chest felt very much the way I had always imagined death. He took me in for a long moment, my dress, my bare throat, the pendants in my hair. Then he looked back to the fire, his jaw working in and out.
Finally he said, “I’ll bring Mr. Tully up, but then I’m going to go. Until you’ve gone.”
I nodded, and he met my eyes again.
“You aren’t angry?”
I shook my head. How could I be angry? I wished he had waited until tomorrow to stop our pretending. Just one more day, for my birthday. But I could not blame him. I never had.
“Here,” he said. He raised his arm, and in his hand was a small package wrapped in paper. I came to the chimneypiece and took it, pulling numbly at the knotted string, and when the paper fell away I saw the gleam of silver in the firelight. It was a swan, feathers shining dully from its perch on my palm. The wings were upraised, outstretched in sudden flight, and in my mind I could see the disturbance of water on a pond, a smooth, silent ripple flowing outward to the shore.
“You shouldn’t give me this,” I said, eyes on the swan.
“Why?”
“Because it’s too lovely to waste.”
“Waste?” Now he was frowning again. I could not see it, but I could feel it.
“On … nothing.”
There was silence for a time, until the low voice said, “Do you really call it nothing, Katharine?”
I had heard him say my name once before, in the ballroom, and the sound of it had speared me then, too. And just as last time, my eyes were drawn upward almost against my will. I stared back into the gray gaze, surrounded by it, and as surely as I had understood not five minutes earlier that our game was over, I now knew with just as much certainty that Lane had never been playing a game at all. He had not been pretending, and God help me, neither had I. The room was still with only the sounds of fire and breath, while the entirety of my world shifted beneath my feet. And then he turned and left me, and was gone.
I spent ten minutes alone in the library, ten bitter minutes in which my indulgent games and self-delusions were stripped away, and I saw myself clearly, perhaps for the first time since my trunk had been dumped onto Stranwyne’s weed-ridden drive. I closed my eyes, calm in despair, and held tight to the silver swan, feeling it radiate the heat of my own hands back to me. I was losing everything I held most dear, down to what I hadn’t even known I possessed. I had thought to save myself, but of all the ridiculous lies, that had somehow been the true one. Leaving Stranwyne, destroying Stranwyne, was going to destroy me instead. There would be no saving of anyone at all.
When the first knock came at the library door, I stood, set the swan carefully on the center of the chimneypiece, and straightened my back. I could at least make this night happy for my uncle, no matter what sort of nightmare it had become for myself. But when I opened the door it was not Lane or Uncle Tully, it was Ben Aldridge, pleasant as always, bearing a bouquet and a bottle. I put on my smile. Pretending had become rather easy for me.
“Miss Tulman,” Ben said, “a happy birthday to you. And may I say that you are looking very beautiful this evening.”
Earlier I would have been relieved beyond measure at his compliment, mostly because he did not seem to find my choice of apparel shocking or odd; the comment on beauty I would have skimmed over as meaningless. But somehow Ben finding me beautiful was a concept much easier to believe now. I gave him a small curtsy, as if I were one of my uncle’s toys.
“Thank you, indeed, Mr. Aldridge,” I said. “Won’t you come in?”
He came past me, removing a hat still dotted with rain, and I saw that Davy was standing in the dark of the hallway, his eyes on t
he floor, head resting on the rabbit that was clutched in his arms. Here was someone else I could make happy, even if it was only in a small way. I held out my hand.
“Come inside, Davy. Come on. Nothing to worry about. I have something for you.”
He came reluctantly, and I led him around one of the settees to show him the rocking horse that Mary and I, at the last minute and with considerable trouble, had dragged through the wardrobe, cleaned, and pulled into the library. I bent down to his ear, my dress so unrestricted that the movement was easy.
“And you can play with it in here anytime you wish,” I told him, “no need to come through my room at night. And it can be our little secret, if you like, like the book, and the hollow.”
I straightened up again, frowning a little. I had thought he would be pleased, had so wanted him to be pleased. But the child’s body was rigid, his hand stiff.
“Don’t be frightened, Davy. Truly. I’m not angry….” Then I looked at the hand in mine more closely. A patch of angry red showed on the area just below his cuff, little blisters in the darkened skin. “You’ve been burned,” I said, bending down again to look at it. “Did you get too close to the stove? Did you show Mrs. Jefferies?”
But the blank look was back on his face, as if he were an empty mold.
“What a great deal of trouble you must have endured to make this corner of the house so comfortable, Miss Tulman,” Ben said loudly. He was examining a watercolor of the moorland in the candlelight, the bottle and flowers still in his hand.
“Forgive me, Mr. Aldridge, I’ve forgotten to take your things.” I left Davy staring at the rocking horse and hurried around the settee to take Ben’s hat. Ben held out the flowers to me, and I recognized the wild beauty of his cottage garden.
“These are for you, of course, though I see I’ve only managed to bring you something you’ve plenty of.” He smiled at the vase beside him, overflowing with Mary’s decorative arrangements. “But this is something I dare say you don’t have.” He held out the bottle. “Claret, from the year 1802.”
“It’s French,” I said, examining the label. “Wherever did it come from?”
Ben’s grin broadened. “I found it, hiding in a sheltered recess of my dear old aunt’s cottage. Put there for medicinal emergencies, I am sure.” He winked. “Shall we open it? I can think of no better occasion….”
A knock on the door stopped my reply. I set the flowers on the table, the blue satin swishing as I crossed the room. At the first crack of the door Uncle Tully shoved his way inside, jerking the latch from my hands, nearly knocking me down in his rush for the safety of the familiar room. Lane filled the rest of the doorway then, and I could not meet his eyes. He had done exactly as he said he would. And now he would leave, and I would never see him again. I wondered if my uncle could hear my broken parts inside, as he had with my father; I wished he could fix them.
“Lane, Lane!” my uncle was calling. He turned around and around in his own footsteps, clockwise, of course, looking at the library. “Come and look! Isn’t it splendid, is it not right? Look at the …” Then, for the first time his bright eyes focused fully on me. He went still, and then he began to walk, his pace uncharacteristically slow across the rose-covered carpet, until he stood right before me, just a little too close. He leaned to the side, took a deep breath, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss my cheek.
“Lane!” he yelled suddenly, very close to my ear. I jumped. “She smells just as she ought! Not like engine oil, but just as she ought!”
Ben chuckled and my uncle beamed, and then Mrs. Jefferies pushed past Lane and came huffing into the room, wet and obviously upset, but I had eyes only for her nephew. The tension was back in his stance, the sense of readiness to spring, his gaze leveled at the bottle of wine still in Ben’s hands.
“God in heaven,” Mrs. Jefferies was saying. “What do you think you’re playing at?”
I tore my attention from Lane to see her small eyes narrowed at me, hands on hips, her lace cap lying limp and damp on her head. She was not just wet, I realized; she was soaking. Then her head turned straight to the settee, as if she’d heard a call, and whatever annoyance might have been on her face dissolved into instant relief. She barreled across the room to crush poor Davy into her dripping body, and my uncle charged with just as much purpose to the trunk in the corner of the room, where he threw back the lid on the box of toys. I stood where I was, bemused, until Lane’s low voice came from just behind my shoulder.
“Let me explain,” he said. “Aunt Bit has been running about the garden in a right state because she couldn’t find Davy. She says Davy has stopped talking to her, and she’s going to peck like an angry hen at anything that comes near her for the rest of the evening because of it. And you look so much like your grandmother standing in this room that I think it’s enough to give anyone who knew her a start. And, I gather, that you have somehow managed to smell like her as well, a scent that is in no way like engine oil.”
“It’s the dress,” I said quickly. “And how do you know what my grandmother looked like?” I was afraid if I let him stop talking he would go.
“Because I carved her face, remember? I know every curve of it. She was a child, but it’s not that different.”
I looked away again, wondering if that meant he knew every curve of my face as well. Uncle Tully had the toy boat out of the box and was doing something to it with a screwdriver, bright eyes eager as he chattered on about various combinations of the number eighteen. Ben squatted beside him, drawn like a moth to his flame, while Mrs. Jefferies was looking into Davy’s unresponsive eyes, saying things to him I could not hear. I turned to the hearth, my breath coming short. There were many things to say, and perhaps only an instant to say them. The silver swan sat on the chimneypiece, wings raised, as if it were attempting to fly away. I raised a finger to the ridge of shining feathers.
“You must have worked for a long time to make this,” I said. I felt him coil up again. He could not have known I would recognize the little statue to be of his own creation, and I could not explain why I did know it. But it was very important to me that before he left, he knew I understood. “When I look at it, I can feel it trying to fly.”
“You would like to fly, I think. That is why it’s yours.”
Mrs. Jefferies’s voice chopped through the room like a dull axe. “When are we getting to eat some of this? It’s all stone cold, I’ll warrant. And your fire needs tending. And can’t you see this child is famished?”
I turned away from the swan, too numb even to be annoyed. It would be later that I would cry. “It’s all meant to be cold, Mrs. Jefferies, and of course Davy may have something, and you as well.”
Davy truly did look miserable. I came to the table and picked up a plate for him, but Mrs. Jefferies snatched it from my hand. “I’ll be doing that,” she snapped.
“Shall we open the wine?” said Ben, coming across the carpet. My uncle was still absorbed in the workings of the boat. I smiled, grateful for the interference.
“Yes, Mr. Aldridge. That would very nice.” I turned to Davy. “Where is Bertram?”
Davy looked quickly around him, but his pet was only a few feet away, calmly gnawing out a hunk of chair leg. I lifted a napkin that had been draped over a plate of lettuce and greens and gave it to Davy, who favored me with the first, slight show of a dimple as he bent down to set the plate on the floor.
“Can I offer you a glass?” Ben said to Mrs. Jefferies as he pulled the cork.
“Never touch the stuff,” she muttered, heaping her plate.
“Mr. Moreau?” he inquired over his shoulder.
“No,” the low voice said.
Ben turned his back to the rest of the room. “Then it’s just the two of us, isn’t it, Miss Tulman?”
I looked at him curiously as the red-purple wine poured, with his brown suit and his boyish face with the side whiskers. Ben Aldridge was quite the gentleman. The gentleman that had walked me to the village an
d back and forth to the workshop, and had been jealous — yes, jealous, I decided — when I spent my time with another young man. I shook my head. How absurd to have only just opened my eyes. Properly encouraged, Ben might have rescued me from Aunt Alice. And I might not have even minded. Not that much. But I had ruined that as well. Now his saving would only be another kind of servitude; he could never compare with what I could not have. I stole a look at the long dark figure watching us from the hearth, still and tense, like a cat ready to spring as Ben handed me the wineglass.
If I were Ben Aldridge’s wife, I could lie to Aunt Alice without fear of repercussions. There would be no danger of starvation on a London street. But surely even I could not be so selfish as to saddle a man with a wife that was not in control of her wits. Or could I? If I could lie to my aunt, then Lane and Uncle Tully might not have to leave their home, not for a very long time. Or ever, if Mr. Babcock was correct. What would I sacrifice for that? Quite a lot, I decided.
“To your very happy future, Miss Tulman,” Ben said, lifting his glass.
I smiled at him from beneath my lashes, feeling slightly ill as I did it. “Thank you, Mr. Aldridge.” The expression coming at me from the hearth was disapproving, but I was careful not to look at him again as I sipped the wine. I’d never had claret, and could not say that I had acquired an appreciation for its taste, but Ben need not know that. I took another large sip. “May I help you to a plate, Mr. Aldridge?”
Eating took away some of the room’s tension, I noticed; it gave both hands and mouths something to do. When I came back from taking my uncle his customary tea and toast, Ben handed me a dish of my cucumbers and we sat close together on the settee. I gave him my best false smile and ate every cucumber while I listened to him talk, feigning interest in his new position in London, and the house he hoped to acquire there.
I finished the wine, little pendant crystals tinkling as I tipped back my head, while Ben went to sit on the floor with my uncle again, observing with enthusiasm as Uncle Tully played with the boat. The room was very warm, stuffy even, but I smiled as I dabbed my temple with a napkin. My uncle was so happy; the sight of it made contentment ooze all through me. Lane still stood at the fireplace, not eating or drinking, and not leaving, either, just watching me like a statue of some gray-eyed Spanish god while wind and rain battered the windows.
The Dark Unwinding Page 18