“I—”
She waved my unvoiced protest aside. “These eccentricities, these flights of fancy, might have been charming in a bride, Lydia, but at your age, you should know better.”
“Edmund, girls, we’re leaving.” I rose, steadying myself by grasping the table.
“Lydia, sit down,” said Edmund, without an ounce of passion.
The Reverend coughed and sneezed at once, breaking the silence.
“Well, I’m leaving,” I said.
My husband didn’t repeat his objection.
I practically ran from the room and from the house, back toward the carriage.
William Allison was leaning against one of the old poplars, smoking. When he saw me, he stood up straight and clasped his pipe behind him as if to hide it. The plumes of smoke radiated around him before vanishing into the air.
“Is owt the matter, ma’am?” he asked, cautious, scared to address me, as if I were a small child mid-tantrum.
“Oh, William!” I cried. “I wish I were dead.”
A shadow of panic passed over his face.
But I laughed one of those laughs that’s on the edge of tears and held out my hand.
“Ma’am?” he said slowly.
“Your pipe, William.”
I could tell he didn’t want to, but he handed it to me.
There was a pleasing weight to it. The wood was smooth where William had circled his thumb, caressing the bowl for years. He was younger than me. Perhaps it had been his father’s before.
I inhaled, closing my eyes as the smoke clouded my insides, then exhaled with the world still dark, although I could feel that Allison was still watching me.
“Thank you,” I breathed, as the grounds of Green Hammerton Hall came back into focus—row after row of regimented and labeled rosebushes, with the dark shadow of the house behind.
Once I’d returned his pipe, Allison handed me into the carriage. As soon as he shut the door, I began to cry.
Two hours Edmund and the girls tarried while I waited there. And they all avoided my gaze when we finally wended our way back to the Hall through the shadowy dusk.
The night was drawing in, making the fields, us, and me, most of all, invisible. The unbearable monotony of my life pressed heavier on my chest as we rounded the corners before Thorp Green Hall. How funny it is that men and women struggle as they die, but few of us kick or scream as we are lowered alive into our tombs.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST TIME in recent memory, Lydia and Bessy trod the stairs to their bedrooms unbidden. When both doors had closed and the creaks of their floorboards above us stopped, Edmund and I walked into the drawing room.
“Go on. Tell me how I embarrassed you in front of your mother,” I said, too weary to argue, wishing this Godforsaken day were over.
But he would not give me an escape.
“Mother can be blunt—difficult—but she was only trying to help, Lydia. She raised three children herself. And she raised us well.” Edmund was not looking at me but at the chimney glass, which reflected his expression, tired and pained.
“Raised? Rather, tyrannized,” I spat, the anger surging again inside me.
“Quiet,” he said, pacing even farther away. “The servants and the children will hear us.”
I imagined the girls stealing to their doors, Ned hiding beneath the covers, and Marshall at my dressing table, ready to take down my hair, pretend the day was uneventful, and guide me, like a frail and senile woman, to bed.
“You are all afraid of her,” I said. “You, Charles and Mary Thorp, John Eade. You all do exactly as she says.”
He did not answer.
“I daresay it was the shock of being free from that woman that killed Jane rather than her condition,” I went on, taking a different tack and watching for any response from him. “She didn’t know, at more than forty, what it was to be her own mistress.”
Edmund stiffened, but that was the only change perceptible in him. I flailed about as if drowning, clutching at anyone, even if it meant dragging him down with me.
“How can you live with yourself?” I cried, even louder. “How can you think yourself a man, still clinging to your mother’s petticoats?”
“Lydia.” It had worked. Edmund said my name, turned, reached out his hand, and took a step toward me. But tonight I could not stop. My anger burst from me, like the sparks from the fireworks I had seen many years before one Guy Fawkes Night.
“I have had enough.” My tears streamed now, undermining each word and underscoring my volatility. “I will not have her speak to me like that or hold the Thorps up as a paragon. She must not come to Scarborough this summer. I will not have her ruin my life in the last days of hers.”
“Were we speaking of Scarborough?” Edmund raised his voice for the first time. He hated how, with me, one fight became all fights, forming and re-forming like different configurations of dancers at a ball.
Why was it that when I wanted love, I took anger as a worthy consolation?
“I need some air,” I said, starting for the door. “Do not follow me.” And although we had been married nearly twenty years and I knew he would take me at my word, somehow I still hoped that he’d ignore me.
* * *
I WALKED UNTIL I reached the Monk’s House, which was shrouded in darkness. The Sewells, like most of the other servants, had not yet returned. Only one light burned in one of the upper rooms—Mr. Brontë’s room.
Would he be preparing Ned’s lessons or reading a letter from Charlotte or Emily? There was a chance he was tinkering with his poetry. Whatever the pattern of his solitary hours, he would set everything aside were I to come to him, were I to let him see me with my face red and tears in my eyes. And it wouldn’t just be for manners’ sake. He would understand.
But I couldn’t go in, could I?
Just about visible through the gloom was the white statuette of the monk himself. The figure, hood worn so low it covered his face, had watched over the entrance to the Monk’s Lodge for centuries from his niche above the door. One of his hands was raised, making the drapery of his robes uneven. I hadn’t thought it before, but perhaps his hidden gesture was a warning or a threat, not a blessing.
The front door opened at my touch. I stepped inside.
It looked the same: narrow, uncarpeted, with low, dark beams and an uneven central staircase. The hallway was empty except for a stand, which held a broken umbrella and a pair of Tom Sewell’s discarded boots.
I had not been in the Monk’s House above a handful of times since the morning after our honeymoon. Edmund had led me by the hand from building to building and from room to room of my new home.
“You are mistress here, and here, and also here,” he’d said. “The bells of Holy Trinity have been ringing out your arrival. They will fête you in the villages.” He twirled me so hard I nearly fell, but then caught me just in time and pushed me up against the wall to kiss me.
I gave the place little notice then, for all it was a fine house, beautifully preserved and unmistakably English, with its sloping roofs and lattice windows. I’d cared only for the Hall. I would drape curtains fit for the stage in my dressing room just to see Mother gasp at the expense. I’d take inspiration from the Venetian frescoes I’d just seen for our dining room. I thought then they’d never fade from my memory. And I’d commission a great fountain to make a feature of the stew pond.
“It’s allegorical,” I would say with a wave of my hand, when my unmarried friends came to marvel at my good fortune. “Edmund, my husband, can explain the mythological subject.”
But a month later, I was pregnant, sick to my stomach, and fretful when I slept. My grand schemes evaporated faster than Edmund’s ardor and sounded as distant as Italy’s opera houses. Soon I was unable to either sit or stand with ease, and the doctor prescribed rest. My own mother came to nurse me, and Edmund’s mother extended the time she was to live with us, reclaiming her dominion over the household. She, just as domineering th
en as she’d been tonight, hung floral chintz curtains in my dressing room, in the very same material she now had in her own.
“Mr. Brontë?” I called from the bottom of the stairs, hanging on to the wooden banister, but afraid to venture any farther, get any closer.
He didn’t answer.
I climbed the first step with my left foot, as always. The habit brought me some comfort, but a lump was rising in my throat.
The second. The house gave a great groan. It knew I was here.
This was foolish.
The third, taking two steps this time, regardless of the pattern.
I would go to him. And then?
I paused. Something had caught on my hand. A splinter.
He would understand if only I could find the words with which to confide in him.
I climbed again.
Other young men might think it improper, my coming here, but he would not care for such niceties. Our conversation in “the woods” had confirmed this. And what was it the Reverend Brontë had said? Mr. Brontë and his sisters were children raised by the moors.
I cupped my eyes with my hand to protect them from the light that streamed across the landing. His door was ajar.
Maybe when he saw me, he would take me in his arms, and I would have no choice but to melt into him. His kisses would be fevered like my bridegroom Edmund’s, drinking deep of me, his hand guiding me by the waist, drawing me down.
“Mr. Brontë,” I stuttered, rounding the door.
But it wasn’t Mr. Brontë, or at least not the strong, willful, sure version of him I had conjured up.
The tutor was lying on a low and threadbare couch. His head was thrown back, his shirt open at the neck and stained with something yellow, and an empty bottle was discarded by his side.
“Mr. Brontë!” I repeated, catching onto the doorframe to support myself.
He was drunk.
Mr. Brontë raised his head, looking the wrong way, to the side, at first, before seeing me. “Lydia!” he cried, flinging his arms wide in welcome.
I froze. How dare he?
“Lydia Gisborne,” he said, hissing out the “s.”
Which of the servants had told him my maiden name?
“Join me!” he cried. He grabbed the bottle and offered it to me, upside down.
“Mr. Brontë, I’ll ask you to address me only by my married name,” I said, feeling myself turning as red as he was, ashamed that all it had taken was a petty argument with Edmund to send me running to him.
“Lydia, you are beautiful,” Brontë said, attempting to rise but giving up when his legs did not cooperate. “I thought you’d be old, but you’re not. Or at least not to me.”
I didn’t stay to hear more. I turned and closed the door, although Mr. Brontë was in no state to follow me. Taking my dress in my hand, I raced down the stairs, skidded across the hall, and nearly hurtled into the housekeeper, Miss Sewell, as she stepped through the front door.
She let out a yelp of surprise. “Mrs. Robinson?” she said, hesitating, as if distrusting her eyes.
I was frozen, like some statue of a fleeing nymph, my weight on my front foot, my free hand reaching for the knob.
“What was that, Liz?” Her brother appeared behind her but stopped in his tracks at the sight of me. “I hope nothing is the matter, madam,” he said, removing his hat slowly, eyes exploring the darkness behind me.
His question brought me back to myself.
“The matter?” I dropped my skirts, brought my feet together, and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear that had been plastered to my face by nervous sweat. “No, yes—That is to say, nothing serious. Mr. Brontë has taken ill. A bad cold.”
“Ill?” said Miss Sewell, her morbid curiosity awakened. “Should Tom ride out for the doctor? I’ll bring him some sage and honey and take care of the boy.”
“That won’t be necessary, Miss Sewell,” I told her. “I won’t have Dr. Crosby called at every sneeze, or ‘the boy’—who, might I remind you, is a man nearly as old as yourself—bothered when all he needs is a day’s rest.”
“As you think best, madam.” She pursed her lips together and glanced at her brother.
“I just brought him some brandy to see him through the night,” I continued, hoping I was not protesting too much. “He is not to be disturbed until tomorrow luncheon at least.” I gave them each a sharp nod.
“Very good, madam,” said Sewell, stepping to the side to make room for me to leave.
“You brought him brandy?” parroted his more suspicious sibling, her confusion returning.
“Is that worthy of commentary, Miss Sewell?” I asked.
“I only meant to say that was very kind of you, ma’am.”
What else could she say? She lowered her head as I floated past her, wishing the pair a happy Easter.
Tonight, before the housekeeper returned to the Hall, they would discuss the lady of the house tending to the strange young tutor.
“I always knew she was a hypocrite,” Miss Sewell would say, her viperish eyes flashing as she kissed her brother good night. “She’s never let me have a man. How many years do you think she has on him?”
CHAPTER FIVE
SALT IN MY NOSE, sun in my eyes, and the wind whistling past my ears, loosening my hair and carving out sharp valleys in the sand. I had to fight against the thick folds of my dress to walk, as they flew back—black, billowing, warning of disaster as surely as the sails of Theseus’s ship.
There was a time when summering in Scarborough had been an escape. And now? In the week since we’d arrived, it had proved as bad as home. Worse, for here Mr. Brontë was with us at much closer quarters, and my mother-in-law was next door rather than at the safe distance provided by Green Hammerton Hall.
“Mama!” Mary cried, ahead of me, dancing sideways to avoid an incoming wave.
I squinted to make out her newly freckled face.
“It is Ned and Mr. Brontë,” she called. “I can see them.”
I could not. I had always struggled with my sight but was too vain to use eyeglasses to correct it. What’s more, with age, the sliver of world that was clear to me was narrowing. The foreground was now hazy too—the pages of my novels and the neat lines of my sister Mary’s letters as much of a blur as the muddled blue of the horizon.
“Go to them,” I told the daughter I’d named for my Mary, pausing to catch my breath. “And use your parasol. You will lose your complexion.”
Mary ran up the beach, without heeding how she looked. The lace-trimmed parasol bobbed uselessly behind her, as she dodged stray children, invalids, and a man leading a donkey. The beast’s head hung low. His gait was slow. I imagined staring into his tragic eyes.
“Pomfret cakes, madam, a halfpenny a bag.” I waved a seller aside, and he trundled on with his cart.
There was a sad lack of people worth knowing here this year, for all that the South Bay beach was so crowded. None of the Thompsons had traveled from Kirby Hall, out of respect to the grandmother who had finally quit this world not long after my mother-in-law’s predictions. And many of the other regulars had delayed their trips until August, although Edmund’s mother had insisted on July.
Yet Lydia and Bessy had still found a pair of girls their own age and station to giggle with, who provided the double advantages of plain faces and a fashionable married sister to play chaperone. Ned kept at his lessons and spent hours in the Rotunda Museum talking geology with Mr. Brontë. Miss Brontë used her moments of freedom to play with Flossy, a black-and-white terrier the girls had given her a month or so ago, or to visit St. Mary’s, the church in the old town, although on Sundays we attended services at Christ Church. And Edmund played escort to his mother, excusing me from sharing most of these duties.
So today I was alone, or as good as alone, with only Mary—the leftover child—who moped around, awkward to a fault as girls are when on the cusp of womanhood, although she seemed to have more energy today.
I couldn’t fight against
the wind any longer so strode away from the water and sat where the sand was soft, fine, and dry. I didn’t bother to lay out my plaid but burrowed my hands deep and inspected how the light shone through the tiny crystals that gathered under my fingernails.
I didn’t look after Mary, afraid of meeting Mr. Brontë’s eyes as they walked toward me. I gazed instead at the Woods’ Lodgings on the Cliff, our home here for the next month.
I had hardly spoken to Mr. Brontë since that night in the Monk’s House three months ago, although I had studied the scene a thousand times, second-guessing my intentions, and his, and not knowing what I regretted more—going to his room, or the state I had found him in there.
For a week I’d been convinced that he would seek me out, apologize, and explain away what I had seen so that we could continue as before. Instead, he avoided speaking to me, or even looking at me, until I felt like a stranger at my own table. Miss Brontë and I both watched her brother raise his wineglass to his lips, again and again, as if competing over who could tally each sip.
“Edmund, darling,” I’d said one night, raking my fingers across his scalp on a rare occasion when he let me touch him. “I wonder if Mr. and Miss Brontë have become a little too accustomed to joining us for dinner?”
“Oh?” he said. “I thought they amused you.”
“Miss Brontë barely speaks, and Mr. Brontë may be losing his novelty,” I quipped. “But of course if you want them there…” I trailed off.
Edmund moved my hand to the other side of his head. “No, no. Whatever makes you happy, Lydia. Tell Miss Sewell we’ll dine with them once a fortnight.”
A laugh—Lydia’s most affected laugh—floated on the breeze. I couldn’t help but swivel to the cluster of clouds moving along the beach toward me. I’d let the children set aside their mourning, and so the girls and their friends were a riot of colorful ribbons, as uncoordinated as a circus tent.
I scrambled to my feet and shook off the sand. Lydia was framed by those silly and uncomely girls, while Mr. Brontë was walking between Bessy and the married sister, Mrs. Whatever-she-was-called. And Ned and Mary were running this way, racing to arrive first.
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