The Lady of the Lakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Neither do I,” Mr. Grimm said, smiling so that the ends of his push-broom mustache lifted slightly. “Attraction, perhaps. Curiosity, maybe. Even lust. But love? Love is more than what someone can look upon or learn of in a single meeting.”

  Walter shook his head, determined to hold his ground. He knew what he felt, and no one—not Miss Carpenter or Mr. Grimm—could talk him out of it. “Love comes from the connection of souls, and that is what happened when I first saw Mina. Our connection was more than this world, more than eye-to-eye and face-to-face. It was ethereal, celestial . . . divine.”

  Saying it aloud hurt him all over again. He missed her. He missed loving Mina so much that he ached inside. He missed looking forward to seeing her next, missed planning a future they would share. His whole life had been tied to her and so his whole life had crumbled when her love failed him. Without her his life was hell indeed.

  And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair . . .

  Mr. Grimm continued. “So you believe your soul connected to a woman who, in the end, would not have you? That sounds like something far less than divine to me. Tell me you did not tell this young woman, the one you had supper with last week, about your heartache.”

  Walter paused, but he would not lie to this man. “I did tell her.”

  Mr. Grimm laughed. “It’s no wonder, then, why she told you not to come for her. It would be difficult to beat out such an experience.”

  Walter pondered that. Miss Carpenter had said his heart belonged to another when she told him not to come to Carlisle. Had he put her off without understanding what he’d done?

  Mr. Grimm pointed his cane toward the dance floor. “You see my daughter, Louisa.”

  Walter followed the invisible line to a girl in a blue dress. Sixteen years old if she were a day, fair and blonde—a typical English rose.

  “Her mother was a beauty, the most beautiful girl in the village, and we knew one another since we were children. When I first started coming around to court her, she would not have me. She wanted another man from our town, a richer and more handsome man than I. She nearly married him, was days from the wedding in fact when she learned that he’d never love only her, if you understand me.”

  Walter nodded. Not every man believed in fidelity. And then some men, like Walter, seemed to believe it to a fault—that there could be only one woman for him. Mina had left his heart empty, never to be filled again. And yet, had not Miss Carpenter entered in? Just a wee bit, perhaps, but entered all the same. Or was he a fool to imagine feelings that were not real. How could he trust any bit of it?

  “Broke her heart, he did,” Mr. Grimm said. “And I don’t know that it ever fully healed for my Margaret, but she made room for me in time and we were happy. She told me once that she believed she had to lose that first love in order to appreciate the life we shared.”

  “But you say she was always burdened with that loss,” Walter said. “She was never whole.” As I shall never be, he added in his mind.

  “Ah, but she was whole—wholly aware of what she had in me and the family we shared. She understood through her loss that adoration alone was not enough for a happy union, and she applied herself to being a fine wife while I applied myself to being a fine husband.”

  Walter looked at the floor, humbled by the reverence of this discussion.

  “She died six months ago, and Louisa and I are trying to find the light in our lives again. I’ve missed her every day since she’s been gone, but I take great comfort in knowing that I loved her, and she me, every day that she was here. It was not a fairy tale, it was life—real and raw and grating sometimes—but tangible, deep, and divine through our efforts, not some ethereal vagary.”

  The words seeped into Walter’s chest, true and sharp and, ultimately, hopeful.

  Mr. Grimm patted Walter’s knee. “Life does not last forever, young man, and it is, ultimately, what we make of it. If this woman has captured your heart, even a little bit, I think she deserves as much attention as your wounds do. I wonder if she isn’t your chance to find another way to love.”

  Another way to love.

  And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

  The connection Walter felt to Miss Carpenter was not the same as what he had felt with Mina. But both Miss Carpenter and Mr. Grimm did not believe that love could strike in a moment, rather they believed in a love that grew and developed and changed over time. Yet Walter knew he loved Mina. Knew it. And he did not know what he felt for Miss Carpenter.

  Maybe all he felt was friendship. Maybe she was nothing more than a distraction, just as John and Adam had wanted her to be in the beginning. She was certainly unlike any other woman Walter had known. She was not melted by his poetry nor swept away with his compliments. Yet she seemed to have enjoyed his company as much as he enjoyed hers.

  Walter thought back to the last encounters he’d had with Mina during those trips to Fettercairn. The awkwardness of his father’s letter to Sir John before he arrived for a visit in the spring, and Mina’s odd reception of the translation Miss Cranston had sent as a surprise for them both; it was his first literary pursuit and she’d been embarrassed by it. The time they spent together, while enjoyable, had not strengthened them as he had expected. In fact, he’d left that first visit in the spring feeling increasingly insecure. And then there had been the dreadful moment in the fall when he realized that while he had given his heart to Mina, she had never fully released hers to him. She had led him to believe something that wasn’t. Yet he continued to feel they’d had a heart match. A soul connection. Why?

  Other incongruities rose up in his mind. She did not love theater while he adored it. She did not care much for riding, while he felt more at ease in the saddle than he did on ground. She had chosen comfort he could not offer her, but those same comforts meant little to Walter. For an instant, he pictured her as she’d been in his home on George Street, looking around the simple rooms. Suddenly he could not picture her living in such a way—making do without a maid, serving her own tea trays, and laying her children’s plaids by the fire to warm them before they went to bed. Until this moment Walter had felt they were so well-suited and she’d chosen against it, but now he wondered how he had never seen how ill-suited they truly were. She had enjoyed his poetry and, he believed, his company, but beyond that there were far more things that did not fit together than there were things that did.

  The realization felt like a thunderclap in his mind, breaking apart the mortar between the stones of disappointment and grief he had carried around for so long and causing them to crumble like the remains of Hadrian’s Wall. Mina had not been his soul connection—otherwise they would be connected. She had not been the woman God and Heaven intended for him—otherwise she’d have felt as strongly as he did.

  “Mr. Scott?”

  Walter turned, blinking, to look at Mr. Grimm.

  “Are you well?” Mr. Grimm asked with concern.

  “Y-yes,” Walter said. “Only, I realized something and it has quite shaken me.”

  Mr. Grimm raised his eyebrows expectantly, but Walter was not prepared to share his discovery. It was his to make and his to ponder. He wanted no one else’s advice to interfere. Mr. Grimm turned his attention back to the dancers while Walter stared at the floor and allowed the realization to play out over and over in his mind.

  Mina was not the sunshine of my soul, he said in his mind. And therefore she could not take that sunshine with her when she left me. How he wished he had a pen in hand so he might write the words, increasing their reality. The thought cycled and spun and then moved aside to let new thoughts in, fresh and hopeful thoughts about a woman who was not wooed by his poetic heart but who had brought the sun with her all the same.

  “If I am not mistaken, Mr. Grimm,” Walter said after several minutes of silence had passed. “You believe a more prosaic course toward love to be a wiser path to take.”


  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Stop waiting for moonbeams and rapture and instead look for equanimity of mind, values, hopes, and expectations. Focus on what you can bring to her as much as what you ask her to bring to you and see if, in fact, you can find a love that lasts in ways the peaks of passion seldom do.”

  “You are daft,” John said after the dance that night when Walter announced his decision to go to Carlisle. Prosaic or not, Walter had no idea how long Miss Carpenter would be staying in Carlisle, and he dared not procrastinate. He had already pulled his trunk from beneath his bed. Walter had known his idea would not be readily accepted and had prepared himself for the argument.

  “I have considered this with a great deal of energy, and I feel it the right course.” He did not look at his brother.

  “Considered it with a great deal of energy?” John repeated in disbelief. “Miss Carpenter left for Carlisle this morning! You have had less than a day to consider anything with great energy.”

  “I did not ask for your consent.” Walter crossed to the wardrobe. He would have the trunk delivered to an inn in Carlisle, then take the longer route by horseback. Alone if he had to. Adam had yet to share his opinion, but Walter doubted his varied much from John’s. How ironic that they had tried to play matchmaker for him and Miss Carpenter, but now he found such little support.

  “Walter,” John said in a calmer tone, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You must think clearly upon this. What is your intent?”

  “To know if what I feel is worth pursuing.”

  “And if it is, then what?” Irritation was working back into John’s words. “You will bring her back to Edinburgh and try to pass her off as a Scotswoman?”

  Walter looked at his brother for the first time, holding his eyes. “I will not try to pass her off as anything other than what she is—a gentlewoman of sound character and stature.”

  “She is French,” John said. “How are you to know if what she says can be trusted, if she will be true to you?”

  Walter swallowed the ball of temper that quickly rose in his throat. He reminded himself of his last outburst and how poorly it had shown him. He would not repeat such actions even if his brother said such offensive things. “The French are no more immoral than the Scottish are barbarians. If she is a woman who can make me happy, and if I am a man who can make her equally so, then I should care nothing for where she was born.”

  John looked past Walter to Adam, who was lounging on his narrow bed. “Make him understand, Adam. This is insanity.”

  “I quite like Miss Carpenter,” Adam said. “If not for Walter’s fancy, I may have pursued her myself.”

  Walter gave his friend a grateful look over his shoulder.

  “And married her?” John said, raising his eyebrows as though in alarm. “Taken her home to your mother and sisters and asked them to embrace her as their own family? Walter is not pursuing a flirtation, Adam. He is talking about marriage, a life’s vow to this woman, if she’ll have him.”

  “And if I’ll have her,” Walter added. “I have not made up my mind, nor will I do so lightly.”

  “But it is your hope,” John accused. He turned back to Adam. “Would you pursue Miss Carpenter for marriage, Ferguson?”

  “Well, perhaps not,” Adam said, capitulating to the same bigotry infecting John.

  Walter turned to face the two men suddenly against him together. “I canna believe that after all the time we have spent in Miss Carpenter’s company you can reduce her to the nationality of her birth.”

  “You know nothing about her,” John reminded him, his neck turning red. “And the prejudice against her people does not come from nothing. The French have proved themselves insincere and disloyal time and time again.”

  “Scotland did not think so when they made an allegiance with them—an allegiance of centuries.”

  “And they did not come to our aid when we needed them last, now did they?” John said. “How many Jacobite men died because France would not involve themselves in our dispute?”

  Walter took a breath, not wanting this to dissolve into the tireless debate of whether or not Bonny Prince Charlie truly had the good of Scotland in mind when he led the final uprising. “The French could also take credit for our having maintained as much independence from England as we have,” Walter said, placing his second pair of trousers into the trunk. “But that is neither here or there. I am not talking about times of war or military campaigns. I am talking about one woman who has proven herself respectable, who has helped me forget the one thing I thought I would never forget, and who has sparked in me new hope for the future. I will not turn my back on that possibility. I canna.”

  John shook his head and clenched his jaw. “Charlotte Carpenter is no Williamina Stuart.”

  Heat rushed through Walter at the sound of Mina’s name, and he forced himself to breathe. Would her name ever cease to cut through him? It was true that they were not as right for one another as he’d always believed, but the pain she’d caused was not forgotten. “I think you mean Lady Forbes,” Walter said as calmly as he could. “And the fact that Charlotte Carpenter is a different kind of woman is one of the things I find most intriguing.” He returned to his packing. He had anticipated their surprise, but not their vehemence against his choice.

  “Let us think in more practical ways,” Adam said, sitting up on his bed. He looked between both men, but settled his gaze on Walter. “Can you afford to go on to Carlisle if we do not attend you to share the expenses?”

  Walter hesitated, but nodded. “It is not ideal, I give you, but I can afford it.” He had hoped they might consider coming with him and sharing in the expense of room and board, but now that he knew their feelings, it might be better for him to go alone.

  “And are you truly prepared to bring an immigrant bride back to George Street, should things go as you hope? Do you believe your family will accept her?”

  Walter sat on the edge of his bed, a shirt in his hands. After several seconds, he spoke. “I am prepared to make her my wife if all goes well between us. As to the acceptance of my family . . . I canna speak for them.” He was tempted to glare at his brother but did not.

  “Then you shall have to prepare yourself for the fact that they might not embrace her,” Adam said. “How will that affect your career? Your future? Your ability to provide for her? And have you considered the difficulty for her living in a foreign land that may not welcome her? Her accent will make it impossible to hide where she’s from.”

  Walter’s impulse was to say that love could overcome any ­obstacle, but he knew that Adam spoke wisdom and that his own romantic nature could be a detriment to his goal if he did not keep it in check. As much as Walter wanted to believe love alone would sustain them, he knew from hard experience that was not the case.

  “I believe my work speaks well enough of itself that I can expect continued employment, though I will admit it might not be in Edinburgh if my family is set against her.” He paused. What if his family did reject her? Was he prepared to live a life without the connections he held so dear to his parents and siblings, even his clan? Then again, was he willing to allow bigotry to shape his future? Surely the people he loved best would not stand against him or his choice if they believed that such a choice would make him truly happy.

  “I have great faith in the hearts of my family and my people,” he said. “Perhaps Miss Carpenter is not the choice they would have for me, but I do believe they will support me if I ask them to. And, we must not forget that she might not have me.”

  Adam smiled, lightening the mood. “That is true,” he said, but then his smile fell. “And should that happen, how will you carry the rejection? Mina took so much with her when she moved her affections to Forbes. Can you risk losing your heart a second time?”

  Walter had thought about little else. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That I feel ready to vent
ure at all is invigorating, and I do believe that should my efforts fail, I will be no worse off than I am already.” He looked at John, who was not glaring quite so severely as he had been before but was still far from appeased. “I am not carried away in fantasy this time. I plan to take a cautious and practical course, but I must see Miss Carpenter again. I must pursue her a while longer so that I will not always wonder what might have been if fear had not kept me away. I would appreciate your support.”

  John said nothing as he left the room; answer enough.

  Walter felt the sting of his brother’s rejection keenly.

  Adam, however, stood and put his hand on Walter’s back. “God speed to you, Walter. I wish you well and will talk to John, but you must face the possibility that your friends and family will see things the same way he does. If you are sure of this course, you may need to follow it on your own.”

  Carlisle, England

  Jane and Charlotte arrived at the house of Jane’s aunt, Madeline Nicholson, at the gloaming, when everything was cast in the soft shadows of a day reaching its end. Introductions were made and the carriage was sent round the back of the house while Mrs. Nicholson ushered them inside where supper had been held for their arrival. Additional introductions to Jane’s three cousins—all of them young adults—were made around the dinner table. Jane’s family was kind and accommodating to Charlotte, but it was obvious they were most interested in conversing with Jane.

  Already Charlotte could feel herself retreating into her “guest” persona, where she did not assert herself. She allowed conversations to move around and through her, participating at request, but not making a nuisance of herself. Despite it being a familiar role she had played all of her life, it no longer felt so comfortable.

  It was not difficult to determine why. Over the last several months, as Charlotte had moved toward greater independence, she had become less reserved, less hesitant, and more willing to take responsibility for herself. Her time in Gilsland was a stark representation of just how different she was. She’d never spent so much time in men’s company, never danced so many dances, never made a point of fending for herself, and never asserted herself as much as she had there. She had liked that version of Charlotte—liked her very much. Returning to this Charlotte, who smiled politely and nodded whether she truly agreed or not, was uncomfortable. Shallow. Less.