She could not bring herself to ask, but she could hint, in the hopes that he would volunteer. The subject at hand was a convenient one, and she went on with it.
“If Dr. Besant were a bachelor, we would all be swooning over the romance of it,” she said casually.
“Swooning, eh?” He lifted a brow. “I’ve always wondered . . . how exactly does one do that?”
“I’m not sure.” She smiled and busied herself with refilling their cups. The last drop dimpled the surface of hers, a half inch below the rim. Mrs. Fry or her maid had apparently felt that two each were enough and so measured precisely. Handing him his, she looked up again. “But he has a wife and children.”
His blue eyes studied her over the rim as he took a sip. He lowered cup to saucer again with a sharp click. “Indeed?”
“Yes. That’s why it’s so disturbing.”
A tense silence stretched between them. She could no longer meet his eyes, but felt their stare as she pretended to study the flaw in her saucer.
At length he said, “Just why are you telling me this, Catherine?”
“No reason,” she lied, running her finger along the flaw. “I thought I should ask your opinion of what Milly should do about it.”
“Have your friend report him to the headmistress, if it gives her that much discomfort.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.” She bit her lip, glanced up at him and down again. “I think it’s wrong—a married person behaving that way. Don’t you?”
“Obviously.” Another pause, then, “Is there something else you wish to ask me, Catherine?”
The sharpness of his tone frightened her. Not that she feared violence from him, but that he would become annoyed at her prying and decide not to see her again. She couldn’t live with that. He said he regrets his past. “Past” meant everything that happened before this day.
And he honors his promise to his father to support his aunt, she reminded herself. Proof that he had a noble heart. She smoothed the anxiety from her expression and looked up at him. “Yes. Would Mrs. Fry take offense if I sent her a tin of tea? For her hospitality?”
He studied her for a second longer, then the tension began leaving his face. “No doubt she would appreciate it. But why don’t you just bring it next week?”
Next week. Were there ever two such sweet words? Just to be certain, she said, “You’ll be here?”
He smiled and took her hand. “But of course. Did you think I was suggesting you spend your Sundays with the old crosspatch upstairs?”
Catherine smiled, almost giddy with joy. And relief, that she had not said anything to damage their courtship! For this was indeed what it was, a courtship.
That fact was emphasized to her when he set his cup and saucer on the table, did the same with hers, and gathered her into his arms. “I never thought I would be holding you again, Catherine.”
“Nor I,” she murmured against his shoulder.
He put a finger beneath her chin and raised it, and then kissed her until she was drunk with lightheadedness.
She could have spent the rest of her life in his arms, but when a long-case clock against the wall struck four, he drew back and said with a reluctance gratifying to Catherine’s ears, “We’ll have to leave now. My train.”
“We?”
He got to his feet and helped her to hers. “I didn’t want to risk raising eyebrows this first time. But it’ll not happen as long as Irene is along. That’s why I hired a coach instead of hansom.”
Voices drifted in from the other side of the door. But before opening it, Sidney smiled and drew her into his arms again. “One more?”
Gladly she obliged. When their lips drew apart, his arms were still around her waist. He raised an eyebrow. “They’re feeding you well at Girton, aren’t they?”
The spell was broken. Catherine had to fight a rush of threatening tears. Your fault for not answering my wire! She could not tell him this, though. Admitting her fear over never seeing him again was one thing, but it was quite another to admit that she had been so frantic that she filled her stomach as often as possible in an effort to dull the ache inside. He would think her a hysterical woman and be frightened off.
Lightly she replied, “Too well, I fear. I’m going to have to watch my portions.”
There was another stab of pain when he simply smiled and opened the door.
****
“All these lovely treats, and you’re simply giving them away?” Peggy asked in the reading room on the twenty-ninth of November. “They won’t last the morning in here.”
“Good.” As Catherine placed the tray borrowed from the kitchen onto the wall table, she tried not to breathe in too deeply, for the combined aroma of chocolate biscuits and macaroons was enticing. “I can’t very well send them back and hurt Aunt Naomi’s feelings. And you’re welcome to take more.”
Her friend shook her head. “We’ve enough to last us until Christmas.” By we Peggy included Milly, for the pair were allowed first claim on the package when the post delivered it yesterday. “But I’m worried over how you’re—”
Voices came from the doorway as a group of students entered, sparing Catherine Peggy’s usual lecture over “not eating enough to keep a gnat alive.”
“What have we here?” Helene Coates asked with raised brows.
“Father Christmas came early?” said Susan Martin. “Yours, Catherine?”
“Yes. Please, help yourselves.”
They did not wait for a second invitation. Catherine nudged Peggy on their way out of the room. “Oh, stop scowling. It is more blessed to give than receive, remember?”
Peggy made a face. “Let’s study in my apartment. You’ve nothing to eat in yours.”
But Sidney says I look lovely, Catherine thought. Her clothes were loose again, in fact even more so. That was better than any biscuit in the world, and surely worth the occasional hunger pang, or the embarrassment of her stomach sending off sounds like a rusty spring during Latin yesterday.
At least she was eating, not starving herself completely as she had during the first week of November, after Sidney’s crushing comment. Fainting during tennis practice and spending the rest of the day in the infirmary had warned her she was carrying it too far. A week later and over Milly’s protests, she resigned from the Tennis Club. She was having difficulty concentrating on her studies again and did not need the extra distraction. She could always rejoin next term, with a clean academic slate and not the heart-racing worries of lagging so far behind.
She sat at her study table to read a letter from her mother the following day.
Your father and I are sorely distressed! Aunt Phyllis writes that you attended an opera with a young lord of her acquaintance.
Unchaperoned!
You were not brought up that way, Catherine, no matter if he is the fine gentleman your aunt claims him to be, and no matter how many books his mother writes.
“Aunt Phyllis . . .” Catherine moaned, hammering the table with her fist.
Please explain what possessed you to do such a thing, and why you did not think it notable enough to mention in your last letter.
I am seriously considering catching the next steamer to London.
She reached for pen, ink, and stationery, in such a hurry to put down words that would appease her parents and ward off any action, that it did not matter that the letter would not reach them for at least two weeks.
Dearest Mother and Father,
This thoughtless daughter begs your forgiveness! Of truth, I did not think you would mind, as Aunt Phyllis granted permission and attested to Lord Holt’s upstanding character.
She paused to consider what should follow. It was a single occasion, he was a perfect gentleman, and I have not seen him since.
But that would not work, she realized. Mother also wrote Uncle Daniel and Aunt Naomi. She could not be certain that Mother would not mention her distress over the single theatre outing. If word somehow got around to Sarah, Sarah would know she h
ad lied to her parents, and feel compelled to involve herself in the situation again.
After some thought she ended up writing:
While he was a perfect gentleman, there is no reason for me to see him again, as my studies are of paramount importance.
It was still a careful fabrication, but one which Sarah could not refute if it came to that, for Sarah had no evidence that she was still seeing Sidney. She closed the subject by begging forgiveness a second time, then moved on to tell of school events, lest her letter give Sidney too much weight and thus arouse suspicion.
When finished, she stared at the sealed envelope on the tabletop. Her previous falsehoods were spoken ones. They faded into the air as all sounds did. But now she had put a lie to ink and signed her name to it. God, forgive me, she prayed, tears blurring the address on the envelope.
But again, repentance required action. Her action would be to send the envelope a quarter of the way across the globe, to the two people who had taught her to always tell the truth.
****
The fourth of December was her sixth Sunday to meet Sidney in Chesterton. He had her remove her hat and sit on a stool with hands folded in her lap, so that he could sit in a facing chair and sketch her portrait. He would not allow her to speak while he worked on the face, but did not mind chatting himself, and told her of the five pounds he had donated during a collection at the Club to benefit Saint Thomas’ Hospital.
“I must confess that my only reason for extending charity to my aunt has been because of my promise to my father,” he said as his pencil moved across the pad propped upon his knees. He had opened the curtains for more light, and so the ring upon his finger caught the reflection and flickered its range of colors. “This is the first time I’ve ever done so outside the family. I feel like the changed Ebenezer Scrooge, and I credit you for it.”
“Me?”
“Don’t speak, Catherine.” He looked appraisingly at her chin and down at the pad again. “Yes. A happy man is a charitable one.”
Catherine’s smile, which had grown stiff from maintaining it for an hour, became effortless again. He could be so endearing, and make her so happy that she desired nothing else from life but to be in his company.
And yet sometimes he said things—little things—that made her feel inferior to him and filled her with fear that his affection might be waning.
Such as a half hour later. “I’m sketching your hair now,” he said. “So you may speak if you’ll hold your face still.”
Now that she was allowed, she wasn’t sure what to say. When she confessed as much, he glanced up at her while tilting his pencil to make little shading motions. “That will not do, Miss Rayborn. I’ve carried the burden of the conversation over the past hour—”
“Because you ordered me to keep silent.”
He clucked his tongue. “Excuses, excuses. You’ll simply have to come up with something amusing, or I shall be forced to explain the stock market to you again.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. And after a little thought, she decided upon the account of the train ride to Girton, when the two St. John’s students played the King Lear prank. Just as she was opening her mouth, Sidney stopped penciling and raised a hand.
“Sh-h-h.”
“What is it?” she whispered, but he shook his head. She held her breath and listened. Sounds drifted from the corridor. Apparently Louisa the maid was entertaining herself while sweeping or some such chore.
“. . . smile from the bar on the people below
And one night he smiled on my love,
She wink’d back at him and she shouted ‘Bravo!’ ”
Catherine and Sidney traded smiles. “What’s she singing?” he said softly.
“It’s ‘The Man on the Flying Trapeze,’ ” Catherine replied.
He leaned his head to listen for a second, then nodded. “But how did you know that?”
“I’ve heard it at school. We sing in the evenings sometimes, just for a lark. Why?”
His face changed as if a veil had been drawn across it. With a tone of strained patience he replied, “That song is the sort of tripe the lower classes thrive upon, Catherine. People who would give you a blank look if you mentioned Schubert or Mozart. Not fitting for a young lady of refinement even to have heard of, much less admit to singing.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize . . .”
“Doesn’t the fact that a servant would know it give you a clue?”
His pencil started moving again, making sharp little motions. He’s going to make me look like Medusa, she thought, appalled that she could have a humorous thought at such a time.
She had developed the habit of weighing her words before sending them to his ear, so that he would not think her unrefined and reconsider his affection for her. But she had stumbled headlong into this slip of the tongue simply because of her sheltered upbringing, and did not think the magnitude of her crime merited the chide she had just been given.
“Every servant in Britain knows ‘God Save the Queen’ too,” she said quietly. “Should I not sing that as well?”
The pencil moved even faster. “That’s a ridiculous analogy, Catherine.”
This whole argument is ridiculous popped into her mind, shocking her. She pushed the thought away. The tension in the room was too much. She had to smooth the irritation from his face, the dent from between his brows. And what do you know? she asked herself. You’re nine years younger than he is.
“Sidney, I’m sorry,” she said.
She heard his sigh as he sat back and moved the pencil from the pad. “I can’t fault you for hearing it at school, Catherine. You have people there from all sorts of backgrounds. But I have to say you’ve an appalling lack of interest in cultural things. You can’t help having been raised middle-class, but one would think a woman pursuing an education would desire to rise above the limitations of her upbringing.”
They stared across at each other.
Catherine’s lip began trembling. “My upbringing was fine, thank you.”
“Catherine . . .”
Hearing him speak her name broke down all restraint. She covered her face and broke into sobs. Presently she heard his footsteps, felt his arms about her.
“Now, now,” he soothed into her hair.
She tried to shrug from his embrace. “Go away!”
“My precious Catherine . . .”
“Away!”
But his arms tightened about her. Finally she stopped struggling and allowed him to press her head against his shoulder. “Handkerchief,” she rasped. His shoulder raised as he went for his pocket, and one was pressed into her hand.
****
Must you be so cruel? Sidney asked himself. Her sobs had quieted, but her shoulders still convulsed every few seconds. “I would cut off my right arm before knowingly hurting you.”
Yet knowingly, deliberately, he had. But he took no pleasure from it, and in fact had to blink away tears from his own eyes. If only he could make her understand that his encouraging her to strive for perfection was for her sake. It did not matter that perfection was unattainable. He was a firm believer in a person’s reach exceeding his grasp.
It wasn’t yet time to say, As the wife of a lord, you’ll be under the scrutiny of every set of aristocratic eyes in London. They’ll constantly be looking for any evidence of your family’s inferior social status, any faux pas for which to amuse each other over tea the next day. Leave the common pleasures to the common folk.
To counsel her thus before he had formally proposed would ruin his plans to surprise her at Christmas with the ring.
“It was unfair of me to criticize your family,” he admitted. “They deserve an enormous amount of credit for raising such a lovely daughter.”
“They’re educated, and well-read,” she sniffed.
“But of course they are,” he said, rubbing her shoulder.
“And moral and generous.”
“I shouldn’t expect them to be any other way.”
Once she was his wife and away from the Girton environment, he could tutor her in the finer elements of life. Take her to operas and concerts, school her in poetry and fine art, so that she could move among the bon ton without embarrassing herself. Or him.
They would have a short engagement, he had decided. He had never kept company with any woman this length of time without regarding his own physical needs, and it was beginning to take its toll upon him.
Twenty-Seven
What a joy to feel normal again! Sarah thought on Tuesday afternoon, the twentieth of December. She wiped condensation from a section of the coach window with her handkerchief. People scurried about with topcoat collars raised and scarves about their necks. Traffic was slower, the fog thick from thousands of coal fires, but the Christmas spirit was clearly present in London. And as if to underscore that thought, a fivesome of bundled Salvation Army workers stood at the corner of York Way and Euston Road, playing instruments and singing with vapory breath.
“Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cru-el
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fu-el.”
She swiped her handkerchief across a larger area and turned to her father. “Can you see them?”
He sat on the edge of his seat and looked. “Very nice.”
Seconds later Stanley was reining Comet and Daisy to a stop in front of King’s Cross Station. Some of the old anxiety gripped Sarah. Though Catherine had kept up a correspondence with Father and Naomi, she and her cousin had not exchanged letters. Would she be bitter? She had sent up many a prayer that their friendship would be reestablished, and even more prayers that Catherine’s infatuation with Lord Holt was a thing of the past.
“Wouldn’t you rather wait?” Father said as she raised the hood of her cloak.
“I’m fine, Father.” Inside the train shed she turned down his offer to find her a vacant bench. They spotted Mr. Somerset and joined him.
“How’s the suit wearing, Mr. Rayborn?” the man asked after an exchange of pleasantries.
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