With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense

by DeWees, Amanda

  “You approve, then?” I asked. I was far more nervous than I had expected to be. In his morning suit and high silk hat my soon-to-be husband looked both familiar and alarmingly alien. His likeness to Richard was a constant distraction rather than a reassurance; each time I saw him my heart would lift for one delighted instant before being cast down again as memory took hold. I was full of dread that I would say “I take thee, Richard” instead of “I take thee, Atticus.” Or even “Atlas.” I was still finding it difficult to stop thinking of him by that old nickname.

  Unaware of my turmoil, or else tactful enough to ignore it, he said, “The dress is lovely, but it merely underscores what I already knew, which is that my bride is a most handsome woman.”

  I did not know what to say to that. “I hope dove gray is appropriate,” I finally replied. “It may be a trifle young, and goodness knows with this weather we hardly need more gray. I look like a cloudbank settling over the Thames.”

  “Clara,” he said gently, and waited until I stopped fussing with my gloves and gave him my attention. He was watching me gravely. His voice was very quiet when he said, “If you wish to change your mind, now is the time to say so.”

  Yes, I’ve changed my mind. Part of me wanted to say this—wanted it desperately. But what would happen then? I had seen what life in the factory—and out of it—had done to Martha. I could never become like her and the others like her, women who had grown old in that life, turning to laudanum or gin to make their existence bearable, sometimes to the extent that their habit had to be funded by gentleman “admirers.” Anything rather than that.

  Yet when I met that icily pale blue gaze, with its mysteriously pensive quality, I was not certain I could take this course either. At Gravesend I would have no allies save this man, and I did not even know to what extent I could trust him. I would be cut off from the world, surrounded by strangers, and living in the constant fear that someone would reveal my true identity.

  Mother would not have run, I thought suddenly. She had taken that position at Gravesend to support us, believing all the while in the curse. Trying to keep me on my guard against it. Had she lived in dread? Or had she, having lost my father, felt that the curse had nothing more to use against her—except me?

  “I haven’t changed my mind,” I said through dry lips.

  His taut, listening posture relaxed, and he smiled. The same mobile, expressive lips, but so different a smile from Richard’s: understanding and kind instead of knowing and devilish. A pale shadow of the man I had lost, but he was doing me a good turn—an extraordinarily good turn—and I owed him a debt of gratitude for that.

  All the more chafing that I hated to be in anyone’s debt.

  The ceremony itself proceeded with a kind of hazy unreality, as if I were watching it through a fogged-over windowpane. The vows I spoke sounded muffled in my own ears, and with my thoughts full of Miss Ingram’s portents, I half expected Atticus to say “With this curse I thee wed.” Even the ring my new husband placed on my finger—an heirloom of rose gold set with opals—did not make the event any more real to me.

  This would not do. Once we were settled in the railway carriage and hurtling away from London, I asked, “What is our story?”

  Atticus, fortunately, did not need me to explain the question. That was pleasant to see: he was more intelligent than I had expected, given my impressions of him from our younger days.

  “I think it would be convenient for us to have met through a mutual acquaintance of your late husband’s,” he suggested. “An American businessman, let’s say, interested in expanding his reach to our shores.” He seemed thoroughly at ease now with the wedding behind us, his arms crossed over his chest, the ankle of his good leg propped on the opposite knee. I, in contrast, was sitting primly straight in the seat across from him, not yet accustomed to the rattling, shaking rhythm of our passage; it had been months since I had last been on a train.

  “And you met him how?”

  “Through a… charitable institution that I’m developing. A genuine one,” he added, seeing the question in my eyes. “That work will occasionally take me away from Gravesend, I should mention.”

  “Oh?” Uncertain though I was at how enjoyable married life would be with my new husband, the prospect of being left alone at Gravesend was perhaps even less appealing. “Will you be gone for long periods?”

  “Not at first, no. And I won’t be traveling to France as often as I used to, certainly. Now that you and I are married, my ward can come to live with us.”

  “Your ward,” I repeated blankly. This was the first time he had mentioned such a person.

  In his enthusiasm he seemed handsomer somehow, younger; closer to my memory of Richard. “Her name is Genevieve Rowe. She’s of English parentage but has lived in France since before she learned to speak, and she’s far more French than English now. Sometimes I almost forget that she isn’t French by birth.”

  I myself had perhaps a dozen words of French, no more. “How old is she?” I asked, picturing a child of nine or ten years. If she was no older than that, we might get on well enough.

  “A month or so shy of eighteen,” he said cheerfully. “I want her to debut this Season, so it will be important for her to become acclimated to England before then. You’ll adore her, Clara. And she can learn so much from you.”

  “From me? If you mean to restrict her education to sewing and housekeeping, perhaps.” The words emerged tartly; I’d spoken the truth when I had told Atlas that I disliked surprises. The domestic arrangement I had begun to come to grips with in my mind was now being unsettled by a stranger—an unknown quantity. How would she affect the fragile accord that Atlas and I were building?

  Seeing my discomfiture, he moved the conversation back to a less controversial channel.

  “We can discuss the matter further at a later time. Just now we have our own history to decide upon. I suspect that my circle of acquaintance won’t be conversant with American lineage, so let’s say that you are descended from sturdy American stock on one side—moneyed, I think—and hearty British yeomanry on the other, but of sufficiently modest name that you prefer not to discuss it. You and your late husband shared a fascination with the theater that served as your introduction. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

  “It does,” I said, impressed that he had woven in an important element of my past that would doubtless emerge in conversation no matter how much I might try to suppress it. Having been so thoroughly immersed in the theater for the past ten years, I couldn’t be certain that I would not blurt out some recollection or experience connected to that part of my life. Tact was an unexpected gift to find in this man, and I was pleased to observe it. Atticus was proving to be far from the dull, gawping boy I remembered. In those days Richard had had all of the charm and quickness of tongue, whereas his brother seemed always tongue-tied.

  Thinking of Richard prompted my next question. “Now, as to your own story: how much do I know of it, and of Gravesend? My impressions of you from our shared past may not be what you would have told the woman you were wooing.”

  “I suppose you have a point. I would definitely have made myself out to be far more dashing and accomplished.” His smile was rueful. “I spent so much of my youth trying to catch up with Richard, it seems to me now. Both physically and in less tangible ways, I think. When I was a child I looked up to him so—and fell so far short of the kind of brother he could have felt a bond with.” He mused for a moment, and his fingers drummed on the handle of the walking stick that was now the most visible sign of his handicap. “We were so unlike, though.”

  There was no doubt of that. Abruptly grief for Richard rose up in my breast like a scalding tide, choking speech off in my throat.

  As if for the first time I felt the searing injustice of it, that someone so fully alive should have been struck down—and when he was so young. What might he have made of himself had he lived? Would he have had a brilliant military career, perhaps? Revived tin mining
or other industries near Gravesend and built that quiet corner of Cornwall into a thriving, well-to-do community? Married and fathered a brood of many children? If he had wedded me and been disowned, his life might have been more obscure, but who was to say it would have been less happy than if he had lived to bring glory to the Blackwood line?

  “I’m afraid to someone as lighthearted as Richard I must have seemed pretty joyless,” Atticus said now, unaware of the direction my thoughts had taken. “When he gambled and won, he enjoyed his victory; I worried about whether those he had fleeced would be able to pay their bills. Competing with him was out of the question, but so was trying to force him to behave more responsibly. Of course, as the elder by some half an hour I was born to more responsibilities. Richard, as the younger, had no need of questioning the ramifications of his every move as I did. It was a long time before I could accept that I’d never be like him. That infectious charm and reckless energy—no, I was his opposite in every way.”

  Against my will I felt a grudging sympathy for him. With Richard’s natural gifts, any man might have felt at a disadvantage next to him; add the misfortune of a club foot, and it must have stung far more cruelly. “What a pity that the two of you didn’t have the chance to become better friends, Atlas.”

  His gaze returned from the far distance to find my eyes, and I felt the heat of a blush rise in my face as I realized what I had said. “I’m so sorry,” I exclaimed.

  “It is a long time since anyone has called me by that,” he said—mildly enough, but I knew he was not pleased. “It’s only natural that you should use Richard’s name for me, I suppose.”

  “I do beg your pardon, truly.”

  “Of course it would come to mind. Richard always warned me against being Atlas, taking the weight of the world upon my shoulders.” His tone was light enough, but there was a wry twist to his mouth. He shook his head ruefully, suddenly looking far older, as if the subject had drained his energy and resilience. “What he did not realize was that elder sons have little choice in the matter. At an estate like Gravesend, the fate of far too many people rests on the owner’s shoulders, and then on those of his heir. It isn’t something one takes on for enjoyment, certainly.”

  “Perhaps you should tell me other things about yourself,” I said quickly. “Your schooling, your travels. Favorites and dislikes that I should know about when I order the menus. That kind of thing—the things that wives are supposed to know about their husbands.”

  This struck him as a good suggestion, and the rest of the journey passed relatively quickly as he told me of the part of his life I had not observed. He gained in interest through the telling, as I began to see him as a man whose education and travels had enhanced a native intellectual curiosity and philanthropic bent. When we arrived at the station nearest Gravesend—which I had last seen on the day that I had been sent away in ignominy—I was surprised at how quickly the time had passed.

  An old-fashioned coach bearing the Blackwood coat of arms took us the last two miles of our journey. Between the season and the weather, the countryside I observed along the way was bleached of color. Drab and sere, the parkland stretched its gently rolling expanse as far as the eye could see. The afternoon sky was darkening from pearly gray to slate, and wind whistled in around the windows of the coach. The cold seeped in through my cashmere paletot, and I shut my teeth firmly so they would not chatter. I hoped that the housekeeper had had the forethought to have fires lit in our rooms before our arrival, as my mother would have.

  To this point I had avoided thinking very closely about the housekeeper I would find at Gravesend. So much of the tenor of a household rested on her shoulders, and it would be crucial for me to forge a strong understanding with her, whatever she was like. Would she be a motherly, comfortable sort of woman, happy to guide the new Mrs. Blackwood through her new role? Or a stiff-necked martinet who would have no respect for me if I showed any signs of weakness? Or worst of all, a sly two-faced creature who might profess to be my bosom friend but would avidly spread tales about me below stairs? I had encountered all three specimens, and many more. She might be a nervous, dithering, ineffectual woman without the ability to keep the other servants on their tasks. She might even have expectations of some form of friendship between us, and when I tried to assert control might grow outraged and bear a grudge.

  And any of these problems could be felt in a thousand tiny ways. A household whose mistress and staff were at odds could be a highly uncomfortable place. I knew, for I had committed some of the petty crimes myself, the minute forms of revenge: a bell left unanswered just long enough to put someone out of temper. Lukewarm water brought for washing. Mail “forgotten.” Gowns singed by the iron… no, that I had never done. Surly and rebellious though I had been at times, I would not have harmed an innocent garment—not unless it had first committed the cardinal sin of being ugly.

  I was distracting myself from what lay ahead by mentally creating a moral hierarchy of clothes when the carriage slowed, and the wheels crunched on gravel. “We’re nearly there,” said Atticus unnecessarily, and my frivolous thoughts vanished as anxiety claimed me again.

  Gravesend was a bleak sight. Under the lowering sky, its white limestone was the moldy, lifeless gray of some desiccated creature in a state of decay. The flat, featureless face was as merciless as a guillotine blade. The blue panes in the leaded windows were dull in the wan light, so that there seemed to be no color at all about the scene—nothing that spoke of life. No friendly light shone from any window; the drapes must all have been drawn against the gray day. A cheerless and foreboding home for a new bride to come to.

  It was not always like this, I reminded myself. I had been happy here… not always, perhaps not even frequently, considering how hard my work had been, but it was still the closest thing to a home that I had experienced to that point in my life. But now, faced with it again, I wondered how much of my happiness in those days had been due to Richard’s presence.

  “You needn’t be nervous,” said Atticus, and I realized he was trying to be reassuring. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Or at least”—honesty compelled this emendation—“if there is something to be afraid of, it isn’t the house itself.”

  How can you be so sure? I wanted to ask, but bit the question back. Through some conflation of light, weather, occasion, and architecture, Gravesend loomed up in my path like a sheer, implacable wall, a stern obstacle whose every line and surface said No.

  But as my mother had been wont to observe in exasperation, I am a willful person, and I was in the frame of mind to take the house’s rejection as a challenge. “I have come back,” I might have said to it. “You sent me running once, you took from me security and my beloved and my mother, but you have not beaten me. I intend to stay—and this time I’ve no weaknesses for you to exploit.”

  Chapter Six

  There was no more time for such reflection, for the coach was drawing up before the imposing staircase. As a footman was handing me out of the carriage, I glanced up and saw a man watching my descent. A servant, to judge by his rough woolen and homespun clothes; a discontented one, to judge by his glower and the fact that he did not touch his cap when he saw me looking at him. I placed him at forty or over, not disagreeable in appearance except for the surly expression and heavy brow that hooded his eyes. He was above middle height and broad across the shoulders, and as I continued to gaze at him he folded his arms across his chest and deliberately spat. Charming.

  “Who is that man?” I asked Atticus as he joined me.

  His jaw tightened as he saw the direction of my gaze. “A villager,” he said. “He sometimes comes to work at Gravesend when we need extra staff. I’m not aware of any business that brings him here today, though. Robert”—this to one of the footmen—“has my father hired Collier for anything at present?”

  “Not that I know of, sir. I’ll find out and tell him to move along if he’s no business here.”

  The man called Collier exchanged
a few words with Robert, who matched him in height and build, a fact that I found reassuring. Even though the man did not show outright signs of violence, there was a tension about his stance that suggested that he might be prone to physicality. After Robert had spoken to him, he looked once more toward me and Atticus, and grudgingly touched his cap—a more reluctant gesture of deference I had never seen—and set off down the drive the way we had come, his hands clenched into fists.

  “I hope this Collier isn’t emblematic of the welcome I’ll receive,” I said. I meant it to sound light and jesting, but it didn’t quite emerge that way, and Atticus took my hand and drew my arm through his as if to reassure me.

  “Collier is discontented with his life, I’m sad to say. Wherever he looks he sees the happiness that he feels has been denied him. Pay no attention to him, my dear. I’m certain you’ll be welcomed warmly by everyone who matters.”

  I did not share that certainty, having discovered through questioning him earlier that a few employees of Gravesend might have known me during my time there as a girl. They might be put out to find me placed so far above them now. Perhaps this Collier was related to one of them and had a personal reason to resent my arrival as the new mistress of Gravesend.

  Of more immediate concern, however, was the staff actually resident at Gravesend. I took a breath to calm my too-rapid heartbeat, smoothed my skirts—taking some comfort in the feel of the twilled silk—and touched the tiny velvet toque riding atop my head to assure myself that it was still in place. “I’m ready,” I said.

  “Have no fear,” said Atticus in a low voice as we proceeded to the front doors, which were thrown open for us by two of the footmen. “You’re mistress here now. No one can rob you of that place.”