Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

At the head of the central table was the man of the hour, Harry Thompson. He was handsome, well dressed, and roaring with laughter at something Reverend Lascelles had said. This was strange, as the Reverend wasn’t known for his humor, but the Thompson heir was one of those men who lived for pleasure, unracked by spiritual or artistic dilemmas, never looking any deeper, just the opposite of Bran—Mr. Brontë.

  Beside the cackling bridegroom was, presumably, his bride. I’d already forgotten her name. She was small and unassuming, and her complexion was a little green. She was probably pregnant already, poor thing. That was the way of things once men decided the time had come to secure their inheritance.

  “Any money on old Thompson spending half his speech talking of his mother?” Dr. Crosby muttered, as the tables filled with a flock of brightly colored dresses, occasionally broken by a pillar of black.

  “You are terrible, Doctor, as is your wager.” I laughed and hit him with my fan, but with a slight delay. I was fretting that Frederick, the younger, plainer, and more stuttering Thompson son, was trapped between two Miss Milners, while my Lydia languished like an unplucked lily between Mary Ann and Amelia Thompson.

  There was still no sign of Edmund.

  “Mr. Brontë is quite the specimen, my dear Mrs. Robinson,” Dr. Crosby said.

  I jumped at the sudden change of topic. It must have been at that.

  “Just what one would want in their son’s tutor,” I replied, trying to mimic his dry, sardonic tone.

  “Ha!”

  A servant leaned in with a silver platter of steaming vegetables, dividing us for a second.

  “I, for once, am being serious,” he said, reappearing through the fog. “What we need around here are new ideas. However did you conjure up such a novelty?”

  “I have my ways, Dr. Crosby,” I said, inhaling my champagne too hard and before anyone had thought to give a toast.

  “You do indeed.” The doctor clinked his glass with mine as I struggled not to cough. “All of us at the Lodge thank you.”

  “Oh, the Lodge.” I’d recovered my composure and was back on steady ground. “I wonder what you men think to speak of there without the fairer, and wittier, sex to entertain you.”

  So Branwell was a Freemason. No wonder he and Dr. Crosby had struck up such a fast rapport. Men often joined the order when they shared their home with a gaggle of women. My husband was also a member, although he hardly ever attended the meetings now. The ride to York was exhausting and the Lodge (in truth, a room above an inn) too smoky and crowded. That was Edmund’s excuse, anyway. He avoided company more and more and had nearly entirely withdrawn from the circle of friends we’d once reigned over.

  “Ah, I thought you were a worldlier woman than that, Mrs. Robinson.” The doctor twinkled at me, looking more like an indulgent and eccentric uncle than a man my own age. “In the most respectful sense, I assure you. But you should know that it is when you are absent that gentlemen most wish to speak of you.”

  The blood flew to my face as it hadn’t since I was a girl. Had Branwell really spoken about me? Could he have been so indiscreet? My hand reached, before I could stop it, to touch the curl he had stolen two weeks before.

  But before I could open my mouth to speak, our host had risen to his feet. “Ladies—I say, ladies and gentlemen!”

  A hundred conversations were cut off mid-sentence, mid-thought, even mid-word, as Richard Thompson tottered to his feet. A host of family portraits, including his own, were to serve as backdrop to his soliloquy and we as the unwilling crowd.

  “There are many, my own dear mother included, who would have longed to be here on such a joyous occasion.”

  Dr. Crosby elbowed me in the side. I gave him an appreciative nod.

  “My darling mother was taken from us, too soon, this April.” Old Mr. Thompson wiped away a tear, but then, with age, eyes were prone to watering.

  I snorted, and the bubbles raced up my nose. Too soon? He was on the edge of the grave himself. For his mother to have lived as long as she had was ridiculous.

  But his lip was tremoring, his grief was real, and my own mother’s face flashed before me. I drank long so that she might fade, and no sooner had I replaced the glass on the thick ivory tablecloth than it was refilled as if by magic.

  “But now we welcome Elizabeth—”

  Ah yes, another Elizabeth. I couldn’t stand the name, as it was Edmund’s mother’s name. That’s why our Bessy was “Bessy.”

  “—into our family and into our home. In some months Harry— where is my Harry?—will carry her off to Moat Hall, but for now she is ours.”

  There was a smattering of applause. I drank again, doing another scan for Edmund. He hadn’t reappeared.

  “Moat Hall? That rundown old place?” Dr. Crosby hissed in my ear, clapping loudly and with obvious relish. “Couldn’t they have put the old maids out to pasture there?”

  “Give them time,” I said darkly.

  Was Moat Hall really such a step down in the world? The property was a little too close to the village, it was true, but it must have been the same size as Thorp Green Hall.

  “So eat, drink, be merry!” With every word, Mr. Thompson forestalled our enjoyment. “And join me in toasting to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Thompson!”

  “To Mr. and Mrs. Henry Thompson!”

  My glass was nearly empty when I raised it, but I drained the dregs anyway.

  A clatter. The guests set upon their meals like animals.

  There was gravy on Bessy’s chin, but she was leagues away from me, and besides, young Milner was too afraid to look at or talk to her.

  The room was rotating a little before me, but only by an inch or so. It halted when I watched it too closely, like the music box I’d had when I was a child. The dancer always did one final pirouette if you looked away from her, and the last doleful note never sang out in tempo.

  I couldn’t eat much. My corset was laced too tight. But I’d had enough food to bring me back to myself if I remembered to stop reaching, reaching for another sip and another.

  The party was diving into dessert, and Dr. Crosby and I were laughing at how the new Mrs. Thompson’s head was obscured by a decorative pineapple, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

  I turned. Edmund. He was pale, almost gray.

  “Wherever have you been? Are you ill?” I asked, trying to stand, although the space was tight and my gown was cumbersome.

  “You needn’t worry yourself, Lydia.” His fingers rested on my bare upper arm as he forced me into my seat and a faint, incongruous thrill rippled through me, exacerbated by drink. “I came for the doctor. I’ll send William Allison and the carriage back for you and the girls. Enjoy the party.”

  Dr. Crosby nodded and dabbed his mouth with his napkin, preparing to leave.

  “But how can I enjoy myself if you’re ill?” I asked.

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Edmund said, withdrawing his hand and then turning to my companion.

  They exchanged a few hushed, indistinguishable words and then left me—stranded, unable to converse with those on my right whom I had ignored for so long.

  And what was there to look forward to? Only dancing, or rather, standing at the edge of the room, watching Bessy and Will Milner stumbling into each other, while Lydia sulked at my side. Whereas, with Dr. Crosby, we could have spoken further of “Mr. Brontë.”

  * * *

  FOR ONCE, WE’D ALL retired to the anteroom together after dinner. It was warmest in here. Besides, the rest of the Hall felt curiously empty since many of the servants had departed for the holidays. The Brontës were in Haworth, the Sewells Durham, and even Marshall had abandoned me for two days to visit her sister in Aldborough.

  “I’ve eaten so much I could burst,” said Ned, lying in front of the hearth like a pig volunteering to be roasted.

  “That’s hardly something to be proud of, Ned,” said Lydia, with a sniff, from the window seat.

  “It don’t matter for boys!” cried Ned, rol
ling onto his rounded stomach and propping his chin on his hands. “Only girls like Bessy need to eat less.”

  Bessy, cross-legged in front of Mary, who was braiding her hair, stuck out her tongue at her brother but didn’t otherwise retaliate. The children were always on their best behavior when Edmund was there. And so he never understood the trouble I had with them.

  “ ‘Doesn’t’ matter. Not ‘don’t,’ ” I said, mildly, pulling the curtain across the window unblocked by Lydia. Better to do it myself than wait for Ellis, who’d been fulfilling all the female servants’ duties with a sour face and varying levels of incompetence.

  “Could you read to us, Papa?” ventured Mary, nearly dropping Bessy’s hair mid–intricate knot as she twisted toward Edmund’s chair.

  I wasn’t even sure he was awake. Our Yuletide festivities, tame though they’d been, had been enough to exhaust him. He was sitting in one of the shell-back chairs, with his eyes closed, moving now and then to change the crossing of his ankles.

  “Hmm?” he grunted by way of reply. “I’m tired, Bessy dear.”

  “I’m Mary,” said Mary, pivoting again.

  “Ouch,” called Bessy. “You’re pulling my hair.”

  “Lydia, will you play something?” Edmund said, through a yawn.

  “I won’t,” said Lydia, staring out at the black.

  “No, not you.” He waved his hand. “Your mama.”

  I did as he asked, nearly falling over the chess table in my haste to reach the pianoforte. My fingers sought out the ivories even as I slipped onto the stool in front of it.

  Edmund hadn’t asked me to play in so long, although there’d been a time when he’d delighted in hearing me. The Robinsons weren’t in general a musical race, but Edmund had appreciated my talents and turned the pages for me at countless gatherings, before and after our betrothal. It was too bad that the children had inherited his ear. Lydia was a fair player at best. And Bessy and Mary had no conception of rhythm.

  I tinkered until I found the chords of a carol—one of Wesley’s, I think—but I’d had more than enough Christmas for one year and soon strayed into singing popular ballads, enjoying how the room fell quiet, even if the audience wasn’t as admiring as in my youth.

  My heart ached for Kathleen Mavourneen as I sang the good-byes of her departing lover and for the girl in “The Old Arm-Chair,” although I’d never understood how she could give up her man to another without so much as a word of protest.

  With Branwell away for a few weeks, all of it—our whispered conversations, the lock of hair he had stolen from me, the way my stomach dropped at the sound of his name—seemed very foolish. He was young, yes; attractive and attentive, certainly. But he was a boy compared to my husband, and sometimes I couldn’t tell where my interest in him ended and my fascination with his family—with Charlotte—began.

  Besides, it was a woman’s nature to be constant. Maybe there was still a way to bring Edmund back to me. Maybe he was watching, each note adding a drop to the shallow cup of affection my husband could offer me, and convincing him that, twenty years and five children later, I was still his Lydia.

  I started to play snatches of a tune from memory before realizing it was a duet. The soprano line sounded lonely without the accompanying bass but I persisted, imagining Edmund’s voice mingling with mine.

  “The last link is broken that bound me to thee, and the words thou hast spoken have rendered me free,” I sang.

  Bessy and Ned struck up a whispered argument.

  I increased my volume, drowning them out. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the music and in the unfairness of it all. How was it that love—not a girlish love, but a love that was true and deep—could be one-sided?

  “I have not loved lightly, I’ll think on thee yet, I’ll pray for thee nightly till life’s sun is set—”

  “Lydia—” Edmund said, cutting across my reverie.

  “The heart thou hast broken once doted on—”

  “Lydia.”

  My hands clunked down on the keys. “Yes?”

  He was still lounging back, not looking at me. “A little quieter,” he said, patting the air with his hand.

  A shock of tears overwhelmed me, raining down in torrents. I rested my elbows on the piano with a clash and leaned my head against the cool, hard wood.

  “Lydia!” and “Mama!” cried Edmund and Mary at once.

  “Oh, please,” said Lydia. Her skirts swished as she, presumably, quit the room.

  “Ned, Bessy, Mary—follow your sister. To bed,” said Edmund, his voice matter-of-fact. His chair made a creak as he stood. “Run along with you.”

  The door closed behind them.

  I wanted him to wrap me in his arms, but of course he kept his distance. He’d never reward me for such a display.

  “You should learn to better regulate your emotions, Lydia,” he said, without much inflection. “Does Dr. Crosby need to prescribe a sedative?”

  “Dr. Crosby?” I said, incredulous, starting up and not caring in that moment that my face was puffy and red. It didn’t matter how I looked. There’d been a time when Edmund had told me every morning that I was beautiful, from my crusted eyes to my ever-expanding or deflating belly. But he never wanted me anymore, even when I was at my most alluring. “I don’t need Dr. Crosby.”

  “Then what do you need?” He jerked the curtain across the window where Lydia had been sitting.

  Why was he doing that now? He must be worried that someone could see us.

  “You, Edmund. I need you.” I rushed toward him, but he rebuffed me, gripping both my wrists in one hand and keeping me at arm’s length.

  “I am your husband, Lydia. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” I whispered, the thought inflaming me. I didn’t want the conventional, the everyday. I wanted the excitement that even a boy as inexperienced as Branwell could choreograph. “No, it is not enough. I want you to need me—to kiss me and hold me.” I went up on the tips of my toes and pressed my wet face against his dry one, but his mouth was impenetrable.

  “Lydia, you are unwell,” he said, guiding me toward a chair, where I collapsed, defeated by his coldness.

  I shook my head.

  “And your behavior is unladylike. I don’t say you mean anything by it—you were always naive—but you spend too much time with the tutor. You look to your own pleasure, keep up flirtations, when you should be setting an example to our daughters and our son.”

  “It is you who are unwell,” I countered. He had not even given Branwell the dignity of a name. But he had noticed. And that meant jealousy could still seep, if not course, through him. That meant he still cared. “You are always tired. Your complexion is unhealthy and—” I didn’t know how to word this but I wanted to provoke him. “And, at night, in our bed, you neglect your wife. How can you still think yourself a man when you fail in a husband’s duties?”

  He did not engage. He was moving away from me. “Good night, Lydia,” he said.

  “Wait!” I cried, in one last-ditch attempt to keep him. There was still one source of power that wasn’t lost to me. “Edmund, please. Give me another child.”

  This had worked before, with Georgiana. Her birth had brought my husband back to me. Though perhaps her death had lost him to me forever.

  “Another child?” he repeated, slowly, looking down at me with distaste. “Is that really what you want?”

  “It is, it is,” I said, although the thought had not come to me until a moment ago. But wouldn’t that be magical? Months of my body blossoming with the surest sign of my youth and my husband’s love for me, and then another unspoiled, loving child, one who, like Georgiana, would gaze up at me as onto a god. “Please, Edmund. For me.” A nail in the floorboards was digging through the carpet and into my knee. A draft was flooding into the room from underneath the door, sending a shiver through me.

  “Lydia, you are too old,” Edmund said, a softer note entering his voice.

  “No,” I mouthed,
shaking my head. “Edmund, please. I can’t bear it.” I had to force the tears from my eyes now. The real ones had stemmed as soon as he’d turned back to talk to me. “Without Georgie—”

  This was a misstep. We never spoke of her.

  A bolt of amber passed through Edmund’s deep brown eyes. “Do not talk of Georgiana. Do not say another word.”

  I stayed on the floor that night, unmoving but unsleeping for a long time as the candles burned low, and staring into the heart of the ceiling rose. And I woke to a clatter and an exclamation of surprise as Ann Ellis dropped the coal scuttle on seeing me there the next morning.

  5th March 1844

  Allestree Hall

  My dearest Lydia,

  I am just this hour returned from Staffordshire. And it is with a heavy heart that I must relate the sad condition I found Father in there.

  Oh, Lyddy, I fear he is much changed since you saw him last.

  Our brothers had written to me—and to you, I’m sure—indicating that there was no cause for alarm and that Father was taking Mother’s death as was to be expected. But I found his mood melancholy and his behavior erratic.

  At times he seemed hardly to know me and once he spoke to me in such language, that I, a married woman, blushed. I confess I was quite shocked.

  I spoke to faithful Rowley and gave him express instructions to write to us should his master change again for the worse.

  As for myself, I returned to an empty house when I arrived home in Derbyshire. Like you, William is in Yorkshire. He is there to meet with another family in the paper mill business. Their name is “Clapham” and they live in the neighborhood of Keighley. Doesn’t your governess come from a town near there? I wonder if she knows of them. My darling Thomas accompanied his father and Allestree Hall feels quite desolate without them.

  How lucky you are to have four children and that you have years still when at least some of them will be near you. But you are a young woman, Lyddy, at least when compared to me. I tell my Thomas any time he’ll listen that I ache for grandchildren, but he resists matrimony for now. I’ll have William join my crusade on their return.