by Rose Lerner
“I want my little girls to get to know each other,” he cajoled. “Julia’s talked of nothing else since we got your letter.”
Sukey had lied to her mother to come here. She wished she hadn’t come. She at once envied Julia bitterly and pitied her for the blow that was bound to fall sometime.
But maybe it would never fall. Maybe Mr. Grimes’s new family was better than his old one.
He tipped up her chin. “My blue-eyed Susan, all grown up.”
Sukey stepped back sharply. John placed himself ever so slightly between them.
“You look just like I did at your age. Prettier, of course—”
Sukey trembled. She didn’t look like him. “I’m going to be sick.”
Her father tried to block the door again, but somehow he was brushed aside by the unstoppable progress of John’s shoulder. They were in the street. Sukey walked faster, ran around a corner and felt safe.
Funny, to be afeared he’d chase after her, when all these years… “I’m sorry I made a scene. I’m sorry I wasted your time coming here in the first place. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”
John gathered her in his arms, shaking his head. “Shh, don’t be sorry. Time’s never wasted when I’m with you.”
It was too sweet. She sobbed wholeheartedly into his coat. “I should go back. I’ll regret it if I don’t. We came all this way.”
She knew she could go in and act as if none of it bothered her. If she kicked up a shindy, would that happy girl guess her parents were liars, that she was a bastard? Would she be afraid Mr. Grimes could leave her?
“If you want to go back, we will,” he said. “But we needn’t. What can happen in the next two hours that will make such a difference to you? What’s he going to say that’s so vital for you to hear, after so many years of silence?”
“I want him to say he loves me,” she wept angrily. “I want him to say it was a mistake to leave me, that he regrets it every day, that he’s proud of the woman I’ve become.”
“If he did say that, how would you feel?”
She imagined it and recoiled from the memory of his face. “No different,” she mumbled. But she wanted to feel different. People said forgiveness was wonderful. She wanted to know what it felt like, wanted to know how other people felt. She wanted their confidence and grace, and their generosity.
She’d wanted to be somewhere where folks were generous with each other, but she was the stingiest person she knew.
“You’re remarkable,” John said, arms tight around her. “You’re extraordinary and splendid. You always have been and you always will be, no matter who does or doesn’t love you.”
And she recoiled from that, feeling all at once as if he were a stranger too.
If he’d told her she was unbearable sometimes, that her father had left because nobody wanted to be bothered with a mouthy little girl, she’d have felt closer to him. She’d have felt as if he knew her. She couldn’t forgive her father for making her this way.
Other people forgave. They sat down to dinner and laughed and talked with men who’d done much worse things than leaving.
Not your mother, she thought. She never forgave or forgot. She never looked at a man again.
Sukey desperately didn’t want to be like her mother.
“I don’t know what I want.” She wiped her frozen tears away fiercely with her glove, wool and ice scraping her skin. “What did you think of him?”
“I think in other circumstances, I might have liked him,” he said carefully. “In these, I very much did not.”
She felt a roar of relief. John didn’t think she was being a shrew. “Do you think I look like him?”
He considered the question solemnly. “There is a certain family resemblance. When you smile, your cheeks turn into little circles, here.” He traced a circle below her eye with his finger. “You both have a mischievous air to you. But I don’t think the similarity is as striking as he made it out to be.” He sighed. “I’m afraid the same may not be true for my father and myself.”
“Handsome old codger, is he?” Sukey didn’t understand how John’s face went from grave to smiling with almost no movement. A bit of softening about the mouth and crinkling about the eyes, and he might as well have been grinning ear to ear. But it was better than grinning, because it was just for her. “I’ll regret it if I don’t go back. I don’t want to be a coward.”
“Then we’ll go back.”
* * *
Speaking strictly for himself, John had sat through worse dinners. But he thought Sukey had not. She talked amiably with the second Mrs. Grimes, laughed and joked with her adolescent sister, played with the children, and shared reminiscences with her father. But at John’s lightest touch, she twanged like a spinet wire. She ate ravenously, as if her ordinary demeanor was a great feat of strength that demanded fuel.
“Red is my favorite color too!” the oldest girl said—Julia, her name was—eyes shining at the marvelous coincidence.
Sukey smiled. “It’s our coloring, that’s all. We Grimes girls know what suits us.”
Julia’s eyes shone brighter.
He had wanted to say to her, when she’d wept in his arms, I love you, and I will never leave you, and I’m proud of you. It had leapt to his tongue. He was glad he hadn’t said it. It wasn’t relevant. She would have been equally perfect if she’d never met him. And if he’d said it then, she wouldn’t have believed him.
He looked at her father, beaming with pleasure at his two little girls getting to know each other. His brown hair had only a few threads of gray at the temples. It was true: in other circumstances John would have liked Mr. Grimes. But what disturbed him most was that in other circumstances, he’d have thought of Mr. Grimes as a man of about his own age. John couldn’t be his junior by more than five or six years.
She’d been so afraid to see her father’s face in the mirror. But did she see him when she looked at John?
* * *
“Are you sure you want to go in?” John asked. “We could go back to the inn and talk. I’ll get us a private room if you like.”
Sukey didn’t want to talk. She’d been talking for what felt like hours. She’d wanted to go to a real theater for as long as she could remember. They were doing a version of John’s Shakespeare play with fairies. She’d put on her best dress and she wasn’t going to let her father ruin it for her, even if she kept thinking of her sister saying, Can I write you letters? and hearing her own unconvincing Things are so unsettled, I don’t know where you’d ought to send them. The girl had looked crushed.
Her father had smiled at her as they left, Julia leaning her head trustingly on his shoulder. He’d said he was sorry to see her go, but he wasn’t really. She didn’t matter.
“I thought you were famous for tactfully ignoring it when someone was unhappy.” The joke came out sour.
John frowned. “If you mean Nick Dymond, he was my employer and I followed his wishes. And yes, I do try not to pry unnecessarily into others’ private griefs. But, Sukey, you’re my wife.”
“What does that mean, then?” she said rashly. “That my wishes don’t matter? That I haven’t got anything private of my own?” What did he want? For her to rip out her heart and put it in his hand? Well, she only had so much kindness in her and she’d already wasted it on strangers.
John’s eyes flashed. She waited, trembling, for the storm to break. It would be a relief.
But after a moment he shrugged, mouth tightening. “I apologize. If you’d prefer tactful silence, I can oblige you.”
The knowledge that she was in the wrong squirmed in her stomach like a snake. But she didn’t apologize, because then he’d talk to her again and she didn’t want that. She’d opened herself up so she could be cheerful for her sister, and now she needed to shut herself off before she bled to death—or maybe she’d closed herself off and now she
couldn’t get herself open again, she didn’t know.
She’d feel better after the play, and they could go back to the inn and talk about what everyone had been wearing.
The theater was a neat brick building, not especially pretty. John held the door with a courtly air, not quite meeting her eyes. “Two tickets for the pit, if you please,” he said, and led her into…
The theater.
Sukey’s breath caught. Everything was red and pale blue and gilt, finer even than the Assembly Rooms in Lively St. Lemeston. The ceiling was painted to look as if it opened onto a summer sky, while the boxes curved and swooped about the edges of the room, with two more tiers of seats above them.
Ahead was the stage. They could see a few feet of bare planking, with a plain door to either side flanked by flat, painted columns. Everything beyond was hidden by a great red curtain that fired Sukey with curiosity.
Rows of benches filled the sloping pit. She and John were early, and took the one closest to the stage. Before them, in a strange little box set into the floor, seven men tuned two fiddles, a cello and oboe-like instruments in various sizes. The fiddle players seemed to be quarreling, continually poking each other with their bows and elbows and wincing at the sounds from each other’s instruments. Sukey watched them, and for half an hour the tightness in her chest felt like eagerness.
She didn’t look at John, but now and again, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his face turn towards her.
At last the overture began, the curtain rising grandly on a Greek sort of palace, all painted columns and marble. A string of actors and actresses came through the doors in a peculiar assortment of tunics, sandals, headdresses and fluffily draped white dresses. A craggy fellow in ermine robe and coronet—he must be the Duke of Athens—began rather pompously,
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace: four happy days bring in
Another moon; but O! methinks how slow
This old moon wanes; she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
Well, that’s rude! thought Sukey. You don’t look poor to me, I should think you could afford to support your mother. That was dukes for you, she supposed.
She remembered from John’s account of the play that one of the girls eloped with her lover to escape the match her father made for her. This must be the father now, making a speech about the pretty gifts his daughter’s lover gave her. Sukey was thinking that really, they did sound cheap, when he said,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her;
Which shall be either to this gentleman,
Or to her death, according to our law.
Sukey’s entire body went stiff. He wanted his daughter killed if she didn’t marry the man he liked? John hadn’t mentioned that. And the duke didn’t even blink, just knabbled on to poor Hermia about how she was nothing but a form her father had stamped in wax, while the girl trembled with fear. This was supposed to be a comedy.
After a dozen or so scraps of song so formal and fussy they’d be no fun to sing, the curtain came down on the first scene. “What do you think?” John asked.
“That jealous sneak,” Sukey said furiously. “Why would Helena tell Demetrius about her friend’s elopement? If he brings her back, they’ll kill her.”
He looked surprised. Hadn’t they been watching the same play? “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “No one dies.”
The second scene was in a cottage—a neater, airier one than Sukey had ever seen, but the actors wore smocks and soft country hats. A sturdy fellow with a hammer stuck through the ties of his leather apron said, “Is all our company here?” in a thick Sussex burr, and the audience exploded into laughter.
A cocky, tall young man strutted to the center of the stage, and he spoke in a Sussex burr. Gales more laughter, and there hadn’t even been a joke yet.
John laughed too.
Sukey had heard people put on burrs before to be funny. She’d been hearing it all her life. Mrs. Humphrey’s boarders did it sometimes, and laughed fit to split their seams. It had never troubled her overmuch. Sometimes she thickened her burr a little herself to tell a ghost story.
But tonight, with gentlefolk in satin gowns and silk stockings guffawing in the boxes, she seethed. She was sure some of those actors weren’t even from Sussex. One of them had on a hat just like Larry’s when he was helping the gardener, and you could tell it was supposed to be funny. The hat was a joke all of its own.
John was laughing, his face alight. Did he think how she spoke was funny?
He’s seen the play before, she reminded herself. He likes the jokes. But somehow she couldn’t laugh at a single one. Her heart was small and hard as a cherry stone, and every time John laughed, she felt further away from him.
The curtain fell again. John turned to her, clearly expecting enthusiasm.
“What’s so funny about artisans trying to act, anyway?” she burst out. “Obed Wickens from the Carpenters’ Guild plays St. George every Boxing Day, and he’s splendid. But of course actors think what they do is so important, you’d better be a gentleman before you try it.”
“We should leave,” John said. “If you’re not enjoying it, let’s leave.”
The awful, terrible truth was that she wanted to leave without him. She looked at him, handsome and familiar, and she could imagine not loving him. She could imagine looking at his face and feeling nothing. As if he were a stranger.
That girl had smiled at her as if they were sisters, and she hadn’t felt a thing, when she knew she’d ought to. What if her heart just stopped working?
She’d never felt so frightened. She nodded hurriedly, clutching at his sleeve. “Let’s go,” she said, fingers tight on the twill. “I’m so sorry, you were having fun but I want to go home.” Nothing here was home, though, and tomorrow they had to go on to Tassell Hall.
John helped her on with her pelisse while a fairy sang, the silk moth-wings tied about her head fluttering foolishly. He pushed their way to the aisle, murmuring polite apologies with as much calm self-assurance as if he cleared a path for a duchess. Sukey’s head hurt.
He asked for the private room at the inn. She pulled him down on top of her in the bed, straining to get as close as she could, to be swept away by passion. She wanted him in her, on her. But he kept saying, “You’re not ready, Sukey, I’ll hurt you. Easy, sweetheart. Relax, it’s just me.” He kissed her cheekbones beneath her closed eyes, and her jaw. His hands knew what she liked, and he did finally arouse her, make her want him. She even spent while he was inside her.
But it wasn’t like it always had been before. He was so close, his eyes on her face and his body warming hers, his cock inside her, but the more she tried to open her heart up, the more she felt as if she might as well have picked up a stranger in the taproom and let him fuck her.
He held her afterwards. She barely breathed; she’d forgotten how to do it in a natural way. If she tried, he’d notice there was something wrong with her, that she couldn’t even take in air like other people.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’m sorry I did.”
“I wanted you to,” she insisted.
“I know,” he said slowly. “And earlier, you wanted me to be tactfully silent. But you’re my wife, and I’d like— Please talk to me, Sukey.”
But she couldn’t. She hated the idea. She knew instinctively that it wouldn’t make her feel better, that trying to make him understand would only make him seem further away than ever. This grief was hers and she wanted, perversely, to hoard it. It’s nothing to do with you, she thought. You don’t even know if you mean to keep living with me.
He stroked her hair away from her head. She held herself perfectly still so she wouldn’t jerk away. “Tell me what you’re feeling,” he said softly. “Y
ou never talk to me.”
“What do you mean? I chatter like a magpie.”
He rolled away to look up at the ceiling. “Not about yourself. I look back on the talks we’ve had, and I told you far more about myself than you ever told me.”
She knew it was true. When he’d told her all that about the Dymond boys, and getting coddled when he was ill, the best she could manage was I had the measles once. “I don’t feel anything,” she said. “So he’s my father. What of it? Half my friends at home don’t even know he’s alive. He’s nothing to do with me anymore.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted.”
Nothing is what I wanted, she thought.
Chapter Seventeen
“The countryside does look pretty in the snow,” Sukey said. “What a darling windmill.”
She wasn’t talking to John, however. She was talking to Abe Tomkin, the groom who’d been sent to fetch them in the wagon. She’d barely spoken to John all morning, and then with constraint.
Not that she was precisely easy with Abe. John knew her well enough by now to know when she was making polite conversation and when she was really interested. But Sukey enjoyed even polite conversation more than he did. She seemed glad to have a stranger to talk to, so as to avoid looking at John.
He didn’t understand what he’d done. He’d tried so hard to say everything right, and yet everything he said was wrong, and everything he did. Silence felt like abandoning her, but she’d said it was what she wanted. This morning while they waited for the cart, she’d even snapped at him, Stop watching me!
When Mr. Dymond was miserable, he’d only ever wanted his valet to be silent. But he’d chosen a wife he could talk to. John had thought…hoped…he’d wanted to be someone Sukey could talk to, instead of who he’d always been: someone whose presence, while a necessary evil, was at least unobtrusive.
They had reached Tassell land, though they weren’t quite in the park. The winter landscape was pretty, now Sukey called his attention to it—canopies of bare branches giving way to snowy fields, and every so often a half-frozen millpond—but it was so familiar that John saw it without seeing it. He’d traveled this road countless times, first as a little boy helping with the parcels on market day, then as a liveried footman clinging to the back of the Tassell coach, and still later accompanying one of the Dymond boys on a trip home.