Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  I dropped my chin, closed my eyes, and focused on my breathing, drinking in the beautiful confusion now that it was impossible to know whose was the first line and whose the second. Would they—could they—reach the end of the piece and divide? Shake hands at the close of the concert and walk home alone? Or would that be an insult, a denial of what they had shared, as it was each time I dismissed Branwell Brontë, ignoring, as he would put it, the “cues of our nature”?

  A tug on my hand, a tether binding me to earth, lest I floated away and never came back. Branwell. His face flickered into focus between my lashes.

  “Are you well?” he whispered, our closeness going unnoticed in the crush. “Lydia, are you faint?”

  “Tonight,” I said, smiling at his concern and clasping and unclasping his hand.

  Music. This was my religion, a faith distinct from that of John Eade or Edmund’s mother. The sermon on Sunday had only confirmed it. Their hell didn’t hold as much fear for me as their heaven, for it was cold and sexless, sanitized and chaste.

  Branwell’s brow furrowed. He could not read me.

  “I will come to you,” I said, just under my breath, pulling him closer. “It would be a sin not to. To resist.” I inhaled him.

  His lips parted. He was trembling.

  “Do not ask me if I am certain,” I said. In his desire for affirmation, he might make me retreat.

  I dropped Branwell’s hand and turned toward the stage, then ran my fingers through Ned’s soft hair.

  The music washed over us in wave after cleansing wave. I knew—hoped—that Branwell heard in the music what I heard, that his soul was vibrating at the same frequency as mine. The thought stilled the ache in my back and left me dripping with happiness.

  At the final applause, the crowd pulsated and swirled like boiling broth. Our party was among the first to emerge into the balmy air, although Mary and Ned weighed me down, clinging on to each of my arms as if they’d been years younger.

  The children were tired, and I should have been too, but my feet hardly seemed to carry me. Mary whined and Ned stomped, but I floated, not glancing at Branwell but staring straight ahead. The notes inside me soared even higher, sustaining me through the slow, tedious walk home.

  * * *

  PARTING WITH BRANWELL DID not hurt tonight. Rather, it was a relief.

  I couldn’t meet his eye as we waited before the door of Number 7 at the Cliff Lodgings for the man to admit us, so stared instead at the sky. The servants had forgotten to light the lamps around the door, and there was barely a moon. But the stars shone back at me, constant, unmoved by our human dramas.

  Branwell played the jester, shaking Ned’s hand and making Mary an elaborate bow. He even managed to draw a giggle from her after an evening when she’d been more sullen than grateful.

  “Good night, Mr. Brontë,” I said.

  “Good night,” he repeated, flashing ten fingers.

  Ten minutes.

  I nodded and sailed past the footman, not glancing back.

  Inside I was spinning, like a spider descending from her web. In moments, Branwell and I would be in each other’s arms. We had come close before, snatching at each other, engaged in an elaborate and futile tug-of-war, without quite crossing into the territory that would damn us. But it would be different now. Tonight our actions would be slow, deliberate. We would be prostrate, exposed, vulnerable to attack.

  The excitement of it dried my mouth and turned my arms to goose-flesh, but still, something inside me twisted in rebellion as the children kissed my cheek good night. I pulled Mary closer and tried to embrace her (it wasn’t her fault, after all, that she was at a miserable age) but she was hard and angular. I kissed her hair, released her, and shooed her away.

  Marshall brought a jug of water to my room, and I splashed my face, more to remove the lingering sensation of Ned and Mary’s lips than to prepare myself for Branwell.

  “Mr. Robinson and my elder daughters?” I asked, not bothering to complete the sentence, as Marshall unlaced me.

  “They went to bed an hour ago, madam,” she said. “Will that be all?”

  “Yes, Marshall. Good night.”

  There was no need for any special preparation. I’d done enough of that for Edmund, arranging and plucking myself before bed like a fowl being readied for the oven.

  Tonight, for the first time, I would go to a man as I was—without caring what he thought of me—and go to him as a lover rather than a wife.

  I could not risk bringing a candle into the hallway, and it was difficult to navigate in the dark. How much easier would it have been at Thorp Green Hall, where I knew the outline of every piece of furniture, the pitch of every creaking floorboard. But then again, there would have been an even deeper depravity in that, in going to Branwell in the place I had entered as a triumphant bride.

  My hip, unprotected by my flimsy summer nightgown, struck a table and I cursed. I froze and listened hard for any movement. I couldn’t be caught sneaking out dressed like this. But there was silence. I rubbed my side so the stinging would subside, following the edges of the bone and wishing the lines of my body were softer and more curved, as they had been in my youth, pillowed by plump and malleable flesh. My body seemed alien without my crinoline. For so long its outline might as well have been the shape of me. I had become as useless as a doll or a puppet without legs.

  Our plan hadn’t been precise, but Branwell should have the sense to linger outside. I didn’t wish to be out there alone. And then—well, we had nowhere to go. Branwell’s room shared a wall with the one where William Allison and Bob Pottage were sleeping, and smuggling him into the family’s apartments was unthinkable. I’d have to lie down in the stables like a dairymaid, with my shift around my waist and hay clinging to my hair.

  A beam of light. The front door was open?

  I smiled. Branwell. Silly, impatient. He would grab me the second I stepped outside, push me against the wall, and burrow his face in my neck and hair, not caring that the newly lit lamps by the doorway illuminated us, in plain line of sight from the other apartments. Seeing Elizabeth Robinson’s horrified face pushed up against the glass, with John Eade aghast beside her, would almost be worth it.

  I pushed the door and stepped into the near-blinding light.

  But there was no Branwell.

  A night mist was descending on our lodgings, obscuring the stars. My skin tingled, although it was not cold.

  Being locked out would be disastrous. I wedged the door in place with two large stones, before stepping into the shadows and inching toward the servants’ quarters.

  Black.

  “Branwell,” I breathed every few yards, but there was nothing except the low hum of my pulse in my ears. It had been at least ten minutes, hadn’t it? Where was he?

  My slippers slid noiseless through the grass. Thank God it hadn’t rained in weeks, and there was no mud to sketch telltale trails of green and brown across the ivory silk.

  Was Branwell holding back to watch me approach through the fog, a spectral figure in white? Could he anticipate my breath and scent and the incongruous warmth of my skin?

  My foot met only air, and I stumbled. I reached out to save myself and scraped my palms on the rough brick of the outbuilding. Ah yes, a manicured flower bed skirted the perimeter. It would be disordered now by a patch of trampled sunflowers.

  The humming grew more insistent.

  That stupid, ungrateful boy. He was late. I should go back and hide under my sheets, resolve to set aside my foolish cravings, and not condescend to speak to Branwell again. But then the weight of my loneliness would suffocate me as it had before I’d known him. I’d be buried deeper, unable to reach Georgiana although she was beside me, clod after clod of earth piled higher above me, and Edmund farther away—above—than ever.

  Maybe Branwell had also thought to go to the stables and was ahead of me? Was he stacking the bales to fashion a rustic bridal bed?

  I hurried in that direction, seized ag
ain by the euphoria I’d felt at the concert.

  There, beyond the carriage house, a feeble light was just visible through the crack of the stable door.

  Inside was comfort, salvation, love.

  I flew in as fast as I could without hitting the door off the wall, ready to throw myself into Branwell’s arms and tell him anything that he’d wish to hear. Even that I loved him.

  A scramble, a shout, a flurry of ringlets and petticoats.

  “Lydia?” I gasped. My look of horror must have mirrored my daughter’s.

  She stood mute.

  “I can explain,” said a man, a boy, to my Lydia’s right whom I’d hardly registered.

  He was wearing an old-fashioned military jacket, unbuttoned at the front, but was otherwise clothed. Lydia was dressed only in her chemise, corset, and petticoat.

  I was more naked than either of them. I drew my hands to my chest, conscious of the shape of my breasts, and glanced over my shoulder. If Branwell were to appear now—

  Lydia’s expression metamorphosed from terror to surprise at my silence. “Mama?” she whispered. “I am sorry. We were only talking.”

  I laughed and slumped onto the mounting block, my body shaken by something between mirth and agony.

  The scene, lit by a solitary candle, was ridiculous. The virgin begging forgiveness from her whorish mother, the strangely familiar boy acting the part of a cowardly soldier, and old Patroclus lifting and replacing his hooves and looking from each of us to the next, as if shaking his head in disbelief, shocked at this unprecedented disturbance to his slumber.

  “Henry, say something,” said Lydia, running her hands through her hair to dislodge a stalk of hay.

  “Henry Roxby, Mrs. Robinson,” the boy stuttered, extending his hand, although we were too far apart to touch. “A pleasure to meet you again.”

  Again?

  A vision came to me, his face but even smoother and younger, his muscular legs hugged by tights. This was the actor Harry Beverley’s boy. He was just in a different costume.

  “Lydia, come!” I said, standing and holding my hand out toward her, although I kept the other clamped across my chest.

  “Mrs. Robinson, I love your daughter,” shouted Roxby, the words bursting out of him. “We have been writing to each other for a year, and we wish to be married.”

  “To be married?” I repeated, staring at Lydia to see if this struck her as absurd. “Lydia, you have not lost—?”

  “Oh no, Mama.” Lydia clasped my hand, tears pooling in her brilliant azurite eyes. “I would never be so foolish.”

  I could have slapped her. At eighteen, she had more sense than me. She knew her body wasn’t to be given away, that she’d been bred only to be valued, bargained for, then bought.

  “Mr. Roxby,” I said, trapping Lydia’s hand beneath my arm. “You will leave and never speak to my daughter, my family, or me again. Do you understand?”

  “Lydia?” The boy turned to my daughter, his eyes as watery as hers. “Will you be so cruel?”

  Her peony mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  I held her hand tighter against me, trying to remember the grasp of her baby fist, but I hadn’t tended to her then. Marshall had. I could only recall Georgiana’s fading grip and the salty, sweet taste of her fingers when I’d nibbled her nails to protect her from herself in her delirium.

  “Mrs. Robinson?” Branwell appeared on the threshold. He was fully clothed. Thank God. And his formal manner made me think he’d been listening to our dramatics for some time. “Is anything the matter? I stepped outside to smoke my pipe and heard voices.”

  “Mr. Roxby was just leaving,” I said.

  Henry surveyed the newcomer, weighing up his own advantage in terms of height against Branwell’s broader shoulders and the fiery Irish temperament suggested by his hair.

  When Branwell took a step forward, this seemed to decide the boy.

  “Write to me!” Roxby called in Lydia’s direction, before scurrying past all three of us. Soon he was absorbed by the mist and the dark.

  “Mr. Brontë,” I said, my voice cold and my expression fierce, hoping to convey the double import of my words. “Your discretion is required and appreciated. Lydia made a mistake tonight but, thankfully, not a fatal one.”

  Branwell looked as if he might cry too.

  Just as well Lydia had not noticed. She, deceitful girl, was contrite and weeping into my shoulder.

  “My husband must never, ever know what transpired tonight,” I pressed on. “And, in time, we will forgive Lydia. Do you understand?”

  Branwell dropped his chin to his chest. “I understand, Mrs. Robinson,” he said, his voice hollow.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NED, THE LAST IN line for our nightly ritual, kissed my cheek and then followed his siblings and Miss Brontë from the anteroom at Thorp Green.

  “Lydia,” said Edmund, as the door closed behind them.

  “Edmund?” I flashed back with a half laugh, trying to be flirtatious.

  In the two months since we’d returned from Scarborough, I had avoided Mr. Brontë and increased the affection I showed my husband. I never pushed too hard or bothered him while he was busy, but performed small acts of service, folding his papers and tidying his study since he wouldn’t let Ellis, who couldn’t read, do so. And when I saw him, I would kiss his fingers, shoulder, cheek—any part of him made available to me, without expecting more.

  It was a thankless task, as Edmund didn’t appear to have registered my efforts. But it salved my occasional flare-ups of conscience at what I had nearly done and what I had kept from him—Lydia’s indiscretion, which he would not understand.

  I sidled up to him now and tried to hold his hand.

  “I need to speak with you in my study.” Edmund shook me off. “It’s important.”

  “Couldn’t we speak in bed?” I asked. I hadn’t ventured there yet lest my affections be taken for lust. Perhaps one day things would be as they should and he would come to me.

  “No.”

  “Very well.” I quit the room and hurried up the stairs ahead of him to show willing.

  It was only when I reached the top that I realized Edmund was far behind and pausing between steps, using the banister for support.

  “Do you need me to help?”

  “Go into my study and clear a seat for yourself, Lydia,” he said. “Do not mother me so.”

  Despite my efforts a few days previously, his study had returned to a state of disarray. The chair opposite Edmund’s was hidden under papers. Torn-out pages from sporting journals covered the desk. I didn’t disturb the pile on the chair but perched on a clear corner of the table. That way Edmund and I could be closer.

  He sighed when he saw me up there, my legs swinging like a girl’s, but did not scold me. Instead he sat and, once he’d recovered his breath, reached with deliberation to grasp one paper. How he distinguished between them was beyond me. He drew it to him with the air of a lawyer. “Lydia, yesterday you may have noticed that I was gone for some hours—”

  “Yes, you were surveying the estate with Tom Sewell and some of the laboring men in preparation for the harvest. You told me so,” I said. Did he think I’d forgotten?

  “No, Lydia, I was not,” said Edmund, putting on his spectacles and examining the paper. Whatever it said was more interesting to him than I was.

  I stilled my legs. “You were not?”

  A few moments ago, I’d been full to bursting, suffering the uncomfortable tightness that accompanied the hour before Marshall removed my corset at the end of the day, but now my stomach felt empty, like it was folding back on itself, hollowing me out.

  “I took advantage of the mild weather to ride to Thirsk,” he said, without raising his head.

  I flicked through a mental catalog of the people we knew, trying to identify whom Edmund might have visited in the town of Thirsk, but failed to find a likely candidate. It was typical for him to keep things from me, but yesterday’s outright dec
eption was something new. I’d thought him to be on the property when he was miles away and on an errand that was as yet opaque to me.

  “What if something had happened to you?” I asked, because I could not voice my real objection. My voice was quavering, balanced on a knife edge between anger and tears.

  “I can ride a horse, Lydia,” said Edmund, looking up from the paper and raising his voice too.

  We both knew that while this was true, he couldn’t ride as he once had, with energy and confidence and power. That was how Ned and Bessy had developed their own love of horses, by clinging on to their father as he jumped hedge after hedge. I couldn’t bear to watch back then, certain they would fall.

  “I went to Thirsk to consult with a Dr. William Ryott, a physician. Dr. Crosby knows him well.”

  Ryott. The name stirred some memory, but I could not place it.

  “But Dr. Crosby is our physician,” I said, my tone flat now.

  “I wanted a second opinion,” Edmund said, with a shrug. “Crosby is hardly the territorial sort, and Mother had recommended Ryott especially.”

  “Your mother?” I interrupted him. “I might have known she was behind this.”

  “My mother is not part of this conversation.”

  “But she is, isn’t she?” I said, sliding off the desk. A few pages tumbled to the floor in my wake. I didn’t retrieve them. He shouldn’t live in such chaos. “She always is. There is no escaping her.”

  “One’s family is not something to be escaped, Lydia, but—” Edmund paused and studied my face as if searching for something. “But perhaps that is what you think?” he said slowly, as if this was a revelation to him. “You wish to be free of us? Of me?”

  “No, Edmund, no,” I said, anger giving way to a rush of fear that turned to tenderness. How to tell him that without a husband, without him, I’d be a leaf caught up in a storm, a ship without anchor?

  “No matter.” His voice was small and sad. His eyes were fixed again on the paper. “Dr. Ryott was most helpful. He listened to my history, let my blood, and recommended a tonic to improve my constitution.”