Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  “It is so wonderful to see you, Lyddy.” Mary hugged me tighter, although her servants, a few of whom were lined up to greet me, must be staring at us. She was shorter than me, and her hair, which had grayed since the last time I’d seen her, at Mother’s funeral, was coarse against my neck.

  I breathed deeper. Nobody had touched any part of me other than my hand since the day Marshall had left us for Aldborough, and now I would never feel her calming caress again.

  “Welcome, welcome to Allestree Hall.” My sister released me.

  I turned to learn the servants’ names, but they hadn’t been lining up to greet me at all and were already scuttling off with my many trunks and boxes. Of course, I was only a guest here. Introductions were hardly necessary.

  “William is at the mill, one of our mills. He is always working,” Mary said as she ushered me toward the house.

  Allestree Hall was larger than Thorp Green, although not so charming. The building was three stories high with unflinchingly symmetrical windows, and the exterior was a gray ashlar, which was unwelcoming compared to our warm red brick. The only flights of fancy were some Romanesque entablatures and columns (Ionic, if my half-remembered history lessons served me well) and an ornate central porch, which my sister had rhapsodized about when she was first married. William’s father added it, you know. I thought it out of place.

  “Your bedroom is to the rear, overlooking the grounds,” she told me as we entered the hallway. “It’s a little small, but the view is considered rather beautiful. Tea in my parlor, Jane, at once, and see that Cook doesn’t overboil the mutton.” Mary switched between addressing me and addressing her servants without pausing, every inch the older sister. “Would you like to change? But of course you have no maid, and mine is busy running errands. No matter. Perhaps she’ll have time to attend to you later.”

  Changing wasn’t necessary, I assured her with a smile. After all, I now lived in a wardrobe of black, black, and more black.

  We climbed the grand main staircase, double the width of ours, with stone steps and an ornate metal balustrade.

  Being here, seeing Mary, was strange. It was like visiting my parents’ friends’ houses when I was a child and unsure what I could touch and where I might go. Mary had always been with the grown-ups then, while I’d been banished to the foreign nurseries on the occasions I’d accompanied my family on such visits at all. The dark, maze-like houses were only slightly less terrible than our hosts’ children—unfriendly and annoyed to find I was invading their territories. Once some boy, no doubt a peer of the realm or respectable clergyman by now, had bitten me.

  I followed my sister, as lost as I had been then, until she turned into a room on our left. “There, isn’t it perfect?” She surveyed her parlor with satisfaction.

  We sat as yet another maid smoothed a lace tablecloth over the round table between us.

  “Go on. Tell me everything,” said Mary.

  “I—” I cast around for the easy gossip that came to me when I wrote her letters, but it was difficult to reconcile the silver-haired and plump woman who sat before me with the slender girl, with hair as raven as mine even if she had never been so handsome, whom I’d written to throughout the years. “Well, the Thompsons hired a painter,” I said.

  Mary’s brow creased.

  “To paint the family’s portraits,” I clarified.

  “A painter?”

  “Yes. ‘Say’—that’s his surname. Francis Say, or was it Frederick?” I said, as if more details would make this more interesting. What was it I had said to confuse her?

  “Lyddy!” Mary laughed, reaching out her hand toward me across the table. “I mean tell me everything about you.”

  This I had not expected. Mary had never been privy to my personal dramas even before we were both married. And now? I doubted whether I’d even told her Ned’s tutor’s name.

  “Why, you first, Mary,” I said. “After all, I am the one occupying your home, and besides, I am rather fatigued from my journey.”

  This was a good way out of my difficulty. Soon she was rattling on about improvements to the gardens and some insolent groundskeeper who had a penchant for uprooting the wrong shrubs, gesturing so wildly that she nearly knocked over the rose-printed teapot the maid had set down between us.

  I hardly listened, judging the room instead. It could have been my dressing room at Thorp Green Hall. Mary too had neat piles of letters, half-finished embroidery projects, and a near-identical stack of novels. But the color scheme here was a blue bordering on teal, not pink, and the country visible through the window was unlike ours. Thorp Green rose organically, if unexpectedly, from the fertile Yorkshire landscape, surrounded as it was by trees, but Allestree Hall subjugated its surroundings. A luscious, well-manicured, impossible lawn rolled from the house toward distant and uniform trees. It was all a blur of green and brown to me, but Mary had said something about silver birch and fine English elm.

  “And what’s more,” Mary added, pausing to breathe or for dramatic relief, “nothing is certain yet, but I hope soon to become a grandmother.”

  This revelation revived me. “Oh,” I said, delighted to have found something, anything, in common. “Why, my Lydia’s first baby should also arrive before the summer.”

  “With the actor?” Mary asked, dropping her voice and righting the teapot mid-pour. “Is that cause for celebration?”

  I stiffened. “Yes, with her husband,” I said. “Surely I couldn’t hope for anything else?”

  We were silent for a beat, except for the sound of the brew tinkling into her cup. Mary’s smile looked as painted as the teapot. “And what of my other nieces?” she asked at last, stirring until the silver spoon sang against the china. “Bessy and my dear little namesake? Have they any prospects?”

  “Mary is too young. And Bessy? We had hopes, for a time, of her and the Milners’ eldest son, but the deaths of both their fathers delayed anything definitive being done about that.”

  Perhaps I ought to have bid the tedious Mrs. Milner a farewell visit and sought an excuse to leave her son and Bessy alone. But I had not been active here. Part of me did not want to lose another daughter, for all that Bessy and Mary were poor company. And part of me found it hard to comprehend that my Bessy was twenty and, for all her faults, undeniably a woman now.

  “Mary is hardly too young,” my sister said, draining her tea in two gulps. “But let us talk of that later. I must go to the kitchens and see what headway Cook is making with dinner.” She stood. “I only hope you will have something to do with yourself, Lyddy. I can’t imagine how I should spend my time without a house to run.”

  * * *

  FOR THE NEXT TWO weeks we—all three of us, once the girls arrived—were my sister’s “project” and subject to her near-constant commentary.

  My hair was unnaturally dark for my age. Was I sure I didn’t dye it? Young Mary was too shy. Bessy’s table manners left a lot to be desired. Such a pity that I hadn’t taken time to bestow my musical talents on the girls. Gentlemen did find dueting such a pleasant pastime.

  I braced myself, laughed when my sister’s advice could be taken as a poor attempt at humor, and inclined my head in agreement when it could not.

  At times I’d glance toward my children, hopeful that one of them would feel as I did and share a look of understanding with me, as my Lydia would have, a fleeting rebellion against our shared shackles. But Bessy and Mary’s senses were too blunt to feel their aunt’s jibes, and besides, the pair of them flourished when being clipped, corrected, and pruned. They’d been too long without an instructor.

  “That was a beautiful rendition,” my sister told her “little namesake” once the latter had recited the final lines of some verses by Mr. Wordsworth one night after dinner. “Wherever did you learn it?”

  “Miss Brontë taught us,” said my daughter Mary. “She is very fond of poetry.”

  “The governess?” asked our hostess, with an eye on the door.

  There w
as no sign of William or Thomas, the Evanses’ son, who had joined us for dinner and, unprompted, educated us about the operation of paper mills throughout the entire meal. The men must, thankfully, still be sitting over their port.

  “Yes,” I said, answering for the girls. If only there was some way to change the subject, but we’d exhausted all topics of conversation some days before.

  “I miss Miss Brontë,” said Bessy, who was constructing a pyramid from a set of playing cards. She’d been terribly fidgety since her aunt had scared her out of gnawing on her fingernails.

  “So do I,” said her sister. “And Flossy too. Flossy was the best dog in the world,” she added to her aunt by way of explanation.

  The girls hadn’t mentioned Miss Brontë in a long time, not since those weeks between Branwell’s dismissal and Lydia’s elopement, those weeks when I’d wished for death and thrust the children from me, relying instead only on Marshall. My poor Marshall.

  “Mightn’t we write to her, Mama? Could we?” young Mary asked in a rush, glancing at Bessy.

  Was it possible my daughters had planned this? Chosen to ask me in front of my sister when my power was at its lowest ebb?

  “No,” I said, so firmly that Bessy’s tower of cards came tumbling down. “If Miss Brontë missed you, she would have written herself, as I’ve told you before. And if she’d cared about you at all, for that matter, she would not have resigned. Nobody made her do so.”

  “But now she won’t know where to write to us,” Bessy ventured. “What if we miss her letter?”

  “Enough.” I clicked my fingers before her face. “Enough from both of you, do you hear me?”

  My sister had been twisting her head this way and that, as if following a game of tennis. “These Brontës live near Keighley in Yorkshire, I think?” she asked.

  These Brontës? We hadn’t been speaking of them in the plural.

  “Yes.”

  “No, in Haworth.”

  “The towns are close to each other, silly.”

  The girls argued back and forth. There was such a roaring in my ears that I didn’t register who was saying what.

  “We—William and I—have connections in the area,” my sister said. “Their name is Clapham. They are another family in the paper business. Perhaps, girls, the next time your uncle William travels there, he can bring you with him? That way you can visit your dear Miss Brontë. And see Flossy too.”

  No. Not now.

  “He could?”

  “Oh, would he?”

  Little Mary bobbed up and down in her seat. Bessy let the cards rain down on the table in celebration.

  “Mary!” I said, jumping to my feet.

  My younger daughter flinched, but I hadn’t been addressing her.

  “My daughters will not be visiting the Brontës,” I said, staring down at my sister and conquering my desire to scream. “Do you hear me?”

  This time it was the girls’ heads that turned. How would their aunt react to this challenge?

  “Sit down, Lyddy,” my sister said, half suppressing a yawn.

  I did not.

  Hadn’t Edmund’s mother told me the same that Easter night? The first night that sent me running to the Monk’s House and to Branwell?

  “I hardly think your daughters need suffer for your mistakes,” she added. My sister’s eyes had turned as icy as my blood ran now.

  What did she know, and how? Nobody knew about Mr. Brontë except—not Marshall, no. And Bob Pottage was long gone. William Allison owed me for his recent good fortune. But surely Dr. Crosby, the only friend I had left, would never have betrayed me?

  From ice to fire, ravaging my veins and daring me to rage against this latest injustice. But my sister was our hostess, and we had no home. And thanks to Edmund, we had little money.

  “My head begins to ache a little. Excuse me if I retire,” I said, my voice wobbling.

  My sister nodded.

  I left the three of them to their evening of poetry reading and card games, crept from the room, and ran up the stairs.

  By the light of the solitary candle in my room I wrote a desperate letter, unable to soothe myself without appealing to the affections of another. Sir Edward was my only hope, the only one who could now save me.

  Oh, if only Marshall were holding me here in the dark. If only my love alone could bring the flesh back to her bones and the light back to her eyes, swell her lungs with sweet, refreshing air.

  19th March 1847

  Allestree Hall

  My dear Sir Edward,

  When glancing at the postmark of this letter, you must have assumed I was asking you for another favor, but fear not. I ask for nothing except your indulgence in reading the next few sorry lines. If they are foolish, you may throw the pages into the flames of the fire. Even if they are not, it is best you forget them.

  I write because I find myself in sore need of a friend and your last letters brought me such comfort. A widow is like a rudderless ship, and, as a sort of cousin to me, I hoped you could give me some advice and direction.

  My younger daughters and I are all very comfortable at Allestree Hall. My sister and her husband are, as you know, good Christian people. I want for nothing physically and yet— there is an expression when a man suffers defeat. He feels he is “unmanned.” Well, I, Sir Edward, if you can believe it, feel “unwomaned” by the loss of my home, my servants, and my husband.

  If my life was idle before, now it is no life at all. I choose nothing for myself. Food is selected for me, certain rooms are forbidden to me, my bedtime is set. I stalk the corridors of Allestree Hall like a shadow and watch over my daughters like a ghost. For if I had died alongside their father, wouldn’t they be here just the same? And my sister would be, as she is now, mothering them in my place.

  Is such a feeling inevitable? Should I school myself to be grateful only and to deny those parts of me which are self-interested and self-serving, as ridiculous in a widow as they are undesirable in a maid?

  I remain, dear sir, yours very truly,

  Lydia Robinson

  20th March 1847

  Allestree Hall

  My dear Sir Edward,

  Please disregard the letter I sent by yesterday’s post—unread if you have yet to break the seal. I dispatched it in error.

  I remain yours very truly and ever grateful,

  Lydia Robinson

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ALLESTREE PARK WAS A fine piece of land. There was no denying that.

  Today the April air had been crisp and cool, but the sun warmed you when you stood unshaded for long enough. And now, in the gathering twilight, the swaying trees were as graceful as the chorus at the ballet. A falcon circled overhead, seeking its last meal of the day. Rabbits hopped over the great expanse of grass, careless of the danger above them, their scuts bobbing as they ran and leapt and played.

  I had taken to walking alone a lot in the past few weeks—to escape the house, clear my head, and stretch my languid limbs. And it had worked. Out here, my wounds didn’t sting as sharply. In nature, I could breathe.

  Sir Edward still hadn’t written, but, perhaps, as instructed, he’d simply thrown my first, melodramatic letter away. That was the best interpretation of his silence, anyway.

  There’d been no more talk of Keighley or the Brontës, and on reflection, my sister, Mary, could have meant anything by what she had said. A letter had arrived from Dr. Crosby a handful of days after the “incident,” which had assured me of his friendship. I should have more faith and measure my responses, learn to curb my adolescent temper. Edmund would have said so had he been here.

  Strange. As I drew nearer to the Hall from the side, a carriage parked before the main entrance came into view. It wasn’t the Evanses’; I could tell that even from this distance. And for an intense, wild, beautiful moment, I was convinced it was Sir Edward’s and that he had come like an errant knight to spirit me away.

  Yet once I reached the set of semicircular stone steps leading
to the house from the lawn, I could see that the conveyance wasn’t nearly grand enough to carry Sir Edward Scott, baronet, of Great Barr Hall. William and Mary must have an unexpected visitor.

  I diverted my path regardless, intending to satisfy my curiosity by entering through the front door. The guest, no doubt some ghastly businessman, must already be inside.

  I stepped into the hallway.

  Empty.

  Yet here was something else to rescue me from the monotony. Perched on the occasional table was a letter, addressed to me and (this I saw only when I lifted it) bearing the Scott seal. My face reddened with a fresh rush of shame at the diatribe I had written and to whom.

  “No, William!” cried Bessy from somewhere upstairs, before I could open the letter. Her voice was shrill and anguished. “You cannot leave me so!”

  William? She had never addressed her uncle by his forename alone.

  There was the pounding of heavy boots on sandstone. A young man hurtled into view above me. He was large and, dare I say it, fat, even. And he must have been wearing riding boots, from the terrible clanging his shoes’ metal heels made against the steps. The banister rattled as he raced down the stairs.

  I stepped into his path to slow him.

  “Will Milner?” I ventured, hardly believing that he was here and that he had grown still more since that sad, sorry dance I’d last seen him at—the celebration of Harry Thompson’s marriage.

  “Mrs. Robinson.” Young Milner came to a staggering halt three feet from me. “Good day, ma’am.” He ducked his head and went to dodge around me, but I thrust out my hand to stop him.

  His shirt brushed against my forearm. It was damp with fresh sweat. “Why, you can’t be leaving already?” I said, laughing and adopting the style of lighthearted flirtation that I defaulted to in moments of doubt.

  “I’m afraid I must, madam,” he said, not meeting my eye. “Good evening.”

  “William!” Bessy’s face, very red, appeared above us, her dark hair hanging over the stairwell like leafy tendrils. “I am sorry. Do not blame me.”