She pulled her ear from the door and, wondering if it was unlocked, put her fingers on the handle.
“Miss Bennet!”
Mary cried out in alarm. Her shoulders bunched up, involuntarily, towards her ears.
She whipped around towards the sound of the deep, sharp voice.
It was only Mr. Withrow. She breathed in and out slowly, attempting to calm herself. “You startled me,” she managed to say, with a bit less dignity than she intended.
“I can see that.” Mr. Withrow chuckled.
“Are you laughing at me?”
His emotion slid from his face like water off a roof. “I would not attempt to laugh at someone as serious as you, Miss Bennet.” He scratched his ear. “What are you doing next to the garden?”
“This is a garden?”
“Yes. What did you think it was?”
“That was what I was attempting to ascertain when you came upon me without any warning.”
“Do you make it a habit of prying about other people’s property?”
“I thought I was a guest here,” said Mary. “I have done no wrong. And I believe it is quite appropriate to familiarize oneself with one’s surroundings. As long as curiosity is kept within certain bounds, it can be quite a productive character trait.”
Withrow shrugged noncommittally. “If you will excuse me, I need to open this door.”
Mary felt anger rise within herself, but she could not pinpoint why or justify the emotion, so she stepped aside.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside a space brimming with green. The smell reminded Mary of home, of Longbourn and the fields behind the house. Withrow turned back to her. “I am going to check with the workers on their progress. If it would please you, you are welcome to join me.”
“I would like that,” said Mary as she followed him inside.
Withrow walked quickly through the space, pausing only when he saw one of the workers. He would stop for a moment, check if they needed anything, and ask about their progress. He would often give them a few words of encouragement. They appeared to be collecting some of the final harvest of the crops—beans and onions and tomatoes.
Withrow did not speak to Mary, which she found preferable. It let her lag a little behind and experience the garden at her own pace. As a young child she had spent some time in her father’s fields, but as she had grown older she had stopped, though she could not remember why. This area seemed about half the size of her father’s—no, no longer her father’s—Mr. Collins’s crops at Longbourn.
“Would you like a tomato, Miss?” asked one of the women, holding out a small, yellow tomato in her hand. Mary was still feeling a bit jumpy, so she had to bite back her surprise.
“I think I will be fine,” Mary began to say, but then she saw Withrow shaking his head with his lips pinched together. “Actually, I would like it, thank you.”
She knew that tomatoes were not poisonous, as had long been believed, so she took the tomato and, as the woman watched her, rubbed off a bit of dirt with her finger and put it into her mouth. She had never particularly liked the texture of tomato seeds, but she chewed and swallowed, as that was clearly expected of her. “Thank you.”
Withrow gestured for her to join him and led her around the rest of the garden. “Why is this space walled?” Mary asked him. “Will that not prevent the plants on the outer perimeter from receiving as much sunlight?”
“Unfortunately, this is the only area of the estate with the ideal soil and light for crops. In the first few years there were incidents of animals and vagrants getting into the crops. Because this area is so far from everything else, the most practical solution was to build a wall.”
“Why not build the workers’ dwellings next to here?”
Withrow answered with not a little impatience, “First, many of their cottages were built before planting the gardens. Second, it is easier for the workers to live near the road. And third, we have no desire to disrupt the entire view of the ocean from the castle. Even this mars the view a little, though there was no helping it.”
They left the garden from the south door, emerging into the apple orchard.
Withrow examined his pocket watch. “Have you been to the beach?”
“No,” she said. “Not once in my entire life.”
“You have been here for five days and you have not visited the water?”
“I have had no opportunity or reason for doing so.”
“I had planned a short visit, and you may accompany me.” He began walking south, through the trees.
“I do not know that I want to visit the ocean—it is a long way away!”
“It is only a mile, Miss Bennet, and you have no choice in the matter,” he said without turning around.
She was not sure what he meant by that. But, after he had walked a few steps, she decided to follow him. It might provide her with more insight into his character and motives.
The walk to the beach, in Mary’s estimate, was actually longer than a mile. As they approached, she saw the tiny village of Goring-by-Sea—a cluster of houses, really—off their path, further east. The smell of the sea gradually increased, plants and fish and salt all mixed together. Gulls squawked to each other, and several flew overhead. The closer they came to the ocean, the larger it looked. Water extended in all directions, farther than the eye could see, a rolling, shifting, unstable backdrop. Its immensity made her feel very small and insignificant. It could carry her away in a moment and no one would notice.
She peered out across the water. If her understanding of geography was correct, this was not actually the full ocean, but rather the English Channel. “Can you see France from here?”
“If it is a clear day, you can see it from the cliffs at Dover. But not here. Yet even though it is never visible, France is only a few miles away.” Withrow continued his walk forward and she followed him.
There was not an exact moment when the grass shifted to sand and pebbles, but as the sand overtook the grass, Withrow stopped. He crouched down, untied his shoelaces, and removed his shoes and socks.
“What are you doing?” asked Mary, feeling rather scandalized. She had never seen a gentleman with bare feet before—not even her father.
“I have no desire for my shoes to fill with sand. You could remove yours as well.”
She looked away so she did not see his feet. “I will be fine as I am.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, and he walked down into the sand, not bothering to see if she followed.
He turned and walked parallel to the water. By the time Mary caught up with him, her shoes were indeed filled with sand. Grains of sand had somehow crept within her stockings and ground between her toes. With every step her feet sank into the sand, and with every step she had to fight against the sand to pull them free again. Withrow, with his bare feet, did not seem to have the same difficulty, though she could not tell whether it was due to the lack of shoes or to the fact that he walked on damp sand, lapped at by the waves.
She looked at Mr. Withrow’s profile against the backdrop of the ocean. His face seemed less guarded than she had ever seen it. They walked in silence for a few minutes before Withrow spoke.
“I would always come here, as a child. Sometimes I would visit for a few months, other times for a year. Whenever the opportunity arose—or whenever we ran away from tutors—my cousins and I would come down to the beach and play in the water.”
He rolled up the fabric of his trousers, exposing the bottom portion of his legs. Mary felt that if he had not before, now he had certainly overstepped the bounds of propriety. It struck her that they were unchaperoned and that she did not, in fact, know Mr. Withrow very well.
He stepped out into the water.
It was not very deep—the water only came to his ankles. But then he stepped out farther.
A sudden gust of wind bit through Mary’s clothes. The day went from feeling mild for September to very cold. The wind seemed stronger here than at the house. She w
alked away from the ocean and sat on a grassy patch. She watched as Withrow stood in the water. He always seemed to be in motion, even when seated at a desk, and yet now he embodied stillness. Mary did not know what to make of it, could not imagine how something as tempestuous as the ocean could calm him so.
A wave approached, much larger than the others. It rushed towards the shore, yet Withrow did not move. Maybe his eyes were closed; maybe he did not see it.
“Mr. Withrow!” she cried out in alarm.
The wave hit him, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was still standing. She breathed a sigh of relief.
He turned around. His trouser legs were wet a little above the knees, but besides that he seemed unharmed. “Whatever is wrong now, Miss Bennet?”
“That was a huge wave! I thought it would carry you away, and I did not know what I would do.”
He laughed again, and this time he did not stop when she glared at him.
“Do you know anything, Miss Bennet?”
Her cheeks flushed in anger and she felt her jaw drop. She began preparing a rebuttal, but she was never as good at a quick response as her sister Elizabeth and before she could speak, he spoke again.
“That was a little wave and could do no harm to anyone.” His voice was less sharp, but she still took offense.
“So the ocean is not a thing to be afraid of?”
“Not today. It can be frightening. It can be dangerous. You have lived a very protected life, Miss Bennet, but everything and everyone can be dangerous, given the correct circumstances. You would do well to remember that.”
Mary swallowed. The way he said everyone made her think that he meant even himself. Yet he did not know that she had seen him with the thief, so why would he want her to fear him?
“Do you know how to swim, Miss Bennet?”
“No.”
“Then you would do well to take especial care and not go into the ocean alone. Even a strong swimmer can be carried away by a powerful current.” He gave her a disdainful look and then stepped out of the water and headed back towards his shoes.
Mary stood quickly and brushed the sand off her dress. She turned away from the ocean, but then looked back. Withrow thought she was a fool; he thought she was fearful. Neither was true: she simply lacked knowledge in certain areas, and maybe she was a little fearful, but she could overcome her fears.
She walked slowly up to the ocean, contemplating the pattern of how the water moved up and down, then leaned down and dipped in her hand. It was bitingly cold, yet pleasant somehow, and she liked the movement and the energy of the water around her fingers.
After standing, she wiped her hand on her dress. Withrow was still walking towards his shoes. She did not think Withrow had seen her touch the water, but she had not done it for him. She had done it for herself.
She managed to catch up to him as he finished putting on his shoes. He had been more relaxed at the water, and they had spoken more to each other than they normally did, so she thought she might ask him about Lady Trafford’s chart and tell him about how she had looked in the family Bible and initially thought they were not related. She wanted to observe and analyze his response.
“Mr. Withrow—”
“I apologize, Miss Bennet, but I have no more time for conversation or amusement. I have lost too much already. If you will excuse me, I must be going. Can you find your way back to the castle by yourself?”
“Of course,” said Mary. He inclined his head towards her and then set off at a jog.
Mary watched him go but did not immediately follow. Madame Dieupart had sent word that she was ill, so Mary had no lessons today, and no reason to rush back to the castle.
Mr. Withrow ran quite quickly. He was one of the most unusual people she had met: cordial and almost charming one minute, and then harsh and abrupt the next. She still could not make out his character.
Rather than return to the castle, she walked farther up the beach, staying at least ten feet from the water; she had touched it once, but had no need to do so again. There were some larger rocks, boulders almost, though she had no notion of how they had gotten there. Surely the ocean was not strong enough to move a boulder! But then again, maybe it was. She needed to find a book on the subject. Past the boulder was the larger part of a tree, a downed tree, stripped of leaves and smaller branches. The bark looked as if it had all been rubbed off, and the surface felt smooth beneath her fingers. In the distance was another boulder, and beyond that, something else that she could not make out.
As she approached, she was filled with a sense of foreboding. It seemed like she should recognize the shape in front of her—it was a familiar shape—and yet her mind refused to put a name to it as she stepped closer, closer, closer.
A few feet away, she finally recognized what was before her, or at least she recognized parts of it. The back of a shirt, a man’s shirt. There was no coat on top of it. She recognized breeches, men’s breeches. And hair, short brown hair. But the shirt, the breeches, the hair, these were not discrete objects. They were part of something larger.
It was a body.
The water lapped at the body’s feet—the man’s feet. He must have been washed ashore.
She knelt in the sand. Perhaps he was still alive, perhaps he simply needed his face out of the sand so he could breathe. She tugged on his body, flipping him over, and then scrambled away.
The man was dead. His face was discoloured, a dark greenish colour. His eyes were gone, missing entirely, and his empty eye sockets seemed to stare up at the cloudy sky.
Chapter Nine
“On Saturday last as Mr. Snasdale, a shopkeeper of Creake, and his apprentice, son of Mr. Samuel Cocksedge, of Larling, were walking out in the afternoon, they met with a boy who was keeping off crows. Mr. S. borrowed his gun to shoot at a rabbit, and whilst in the act, his apprentice crossed at the time, and received the contents of the charge in his head. He languished but a few hours after the melancholy accident. The young man was only in the fifteenth year of his age.”
–The Sussex Weekly Advertiser, Lewes, England, September 13, 1813
Mary could not take her eyes off the body; it both revolted her and commanded her attention. Since she could not look away, she would at least not dwell on the empty eye sockets, or the question of what had happened to the eyes. She focused instead on the mustache and the short beard, and then on the clothes, which led to the realization that she recognized the man.
It was the thief.
The dead man was the thief who had stolen her family’s mourning rings, who she had seen with Lady Trafford’s carriage in Meryton, and who had met with Withrow in the forest on her very first day at Castle Durrington. She had seen him, alive, a few days before, and now he was dead.
A morbid sense of curiosity overcame her. She approached the body again. Yes, his mustache and his beard were exactly the same as they had been when she had seen him last, and despite the discolouration of the skin and a certain puffy appearance, perhaps due to the time in the water, his facial structure was the same. His clothes were the ones he had worn that day in the forest with Withrow. He might have even died that very day.
A possibility struck her: could Mr. Withrow have killed the thief? She shook her head. Of course he would not kill someone. He was a gentleman. But even though he and the thief had parted with an embrace, Withrow had seemed severe, angry even, for a portion of the conversation. Perhaps they had met again, and things had escalated between them.
Part of the thief’s shirt was ripped—no, it had been cut. It was a long, straight cut, and beneath, the skin appeared as if it had also been cut open, though the time in the water had clearly caused further damage: at the top of the wound, the flesh was peeled back, and lower down, pieces of skin and muscle were missing.
He had been stabbed.
Someone had stabbed the thief with a knife in the side. She considered possible sequences of events and concluded that he must have been stabbed before his body entered th
e ocean.
Her stomach felt a touch indisposed, but surprisingly, Mary did not feel a sense of panic. She rubbed her hands on her skirt and stood tall. She could not stand here next to the body all day, hoping that someone would come along and solve this problem for her.
Two possibilities presented themselves before her: she could return to the castle and alert Mr. Withrow, Lady Trafford, and the servants; or instead of taking the path back to the castle, she could walk a little to the east of it, to Goring-by-Sea. With the length of time she had spent walking, she suspected it was several miles back to Castle Durrington, so she headed towards Goring.
After a few minutes, she reached the handful of houses, which were set a little farther back from the shore. Mary rapped her hand on one of the doors. No one opened it, so she tried the next house. Once again, there was no one there. These were working-class people, and they must be at work. She tried the third house, and finally someone answered, a woman with her baby.
Mary told the woman of the dead body, and the woman sighed, as if this was yet another annoyance in her day. The woman yelled into the house for her daughter. A nine- or ten-year-old girl with carefully plaited hair appeared and was sent off to Worthing to find help. Meanwhile, the woman made Mary a cup of tea.
“I don’t ’ave a place for a lady like yourself to sit,” explained the woman, and so they stood, outside, drinking from clean but chipped cups. Mary watched with fascination as the woman cooed and talked to her baby, and then sat on the steps and fed the child at her breast. People of Mary’s station did not raise their own children until they were two or three years old; Mary had spent the first several years of her life in Meryton, cared for by a woman such as this, and visited regularly by her parents. Mary twisted the mourning ring on her finger, struck by a longing for her family and the weight of her loss.
After a second cup of tea, Mary wished she had gone all the way to Worthing herself, rather than letting the woman send her daughter.
The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet Page 10