The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  For a brief, blinding moment, everything else is forgotten. His skin is still cold from the snow, but his tongue is warm as he parts my lips, a gentle, probing kiss. I yield, my bones turning to jelly as I twine my arms up around his neck, reveling in the smoothness of his skin under my fingers. My body flushes with an aching longing. I want so badly to be as close to him as possible.

  Breathless, I pull back. “We can’t.” Inside my head a little voice is yelling at me to hold my tongue, to pull him back down to me. Why can’t I just have this moment? Why do I have to destroy every little droplet of happiness that rolls my way?

  Mr. Barrett clears his throat, straightening up. I vaguely wonder if my lips look as swollen and beautiful as his do right now. “I know. Your mother is upstairs ill, but I couldn’t—”

  I shake my head, doubly miserable because I hadn’t even been thinking about Mother when I pulled away. “No, I mean, yes...” I self-consciously tuck back a loosened strand of hair behind my ear. “You might not be engaged, but I still am.”

  His body stiffens and he blinks at me. “I see.”

  I can’t look at him, instead I concentrate on my hands in my lap. “I’m so sorry, John.”

  He’s quiet for a moment, the sound of Snip’s even breathing, the crackling fire, my own thudding heart filling the silence. “Do you love him?”

  “What?”

  “You heard what I said.” His voice is rough and holds a note of reproach. “Do you love him?”

  I drop my gaze to my slippers, the pretty white ones with the little silk rosettes. There’s a tuft of Snip’s fur on the oriental carpet by my feet. The cleaning has grown lax now that Mother has taken to her bed. I can feel Mr. Barrett’s gaze burning into me.

  “No,” I whisper. “Of course I don’t. I love y—” I catch my breath, stopping myself just in time. It doesn’t matter though. He takes a hesitant step toward me, then falls to his knees beside the chair, folding me back into his embrace.

  “You don’t love him,” he murmurs against my neck, squeezing me so tightly that I think my ribs might crack. When he pulls back, he holds me at arm’s length, surveying my face with unmasked delight. “You can call it off. Don’t go back to Boston, stay here, with me.”

  “John...” My heart is fluttery and pounding, my body cold and burning up at the same time under his hands. “What are you saying?”

  His voice is ragged, his gaze holding mine. How I could fall into those eyes and never come out. “I’m asking you to marry me.”

  I suck in my breath. Instantly the fire glows brighter in the grate, the lamps flicker happily. I don’t know how it’s possible, but he really does want me. My heart soars and then immediately plummets again. Which will make it all the harder to tell him what I must tell him now.

  He looks at me with warm, expectant eyes, though there is a quiver of uncertainty around the corners of his lips. He drops his arms and gets to his feet. “Oh,” he says quickly, his face coloring. “Forgive me, I thought—”

  There’s a sinking realization in his eyes that twists my heart. “You misunderstand me.” I stumble to my feet, the blanket slipping away and with it all of his lingering warmth. “I—I want to be with you too. You have no idea how much.” My cheeks are flaming and my tongue thick as I try to get my words out. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “Yet you just said that you don’t love him. If you think your father won’t give his permission, I—”

  “No, it’s not that. I don’t, I...” I can’t stand the hurt in his face, even worse, knowing that I caused it. I can feel my resolve crumbling. Tears are bubbling up, my emotions already rubbed raw from a long day of travel and finding my mother on her deathbed.

  He tilts my chin up in his hand so that I have no choice but to look into his questioning eyes. He couldn’t be making this harder for me if he tried. “Lydia, you can tell me anything.”

  I’m so close. It would be so easy for it to all just well up and spill out of me. But if I tell him, that soft look that’s melting my heart will harden in disgust. He would want nothing to do with me. So instead of words that come tumbling out, for the second time today, it’s a deluge of tears.

  32

  “I’M SORRY.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve, desperate to pull myself together. I can’t help myself, I care what he thinks of me, and right now he must think I’m a madwoman. Forcing a smile, I take a step back from his arms and stand up straighter. “I’m fine, really. I don’t know what came over me.”

  There’s a dark patch on his vest where the brunt of my tears fell, and a stray hiccup escapes my lips. Mr. Barrett doesn’t look so convinced. “Lydia, sit down.”

  “I told you, I’m fine. I just—”

  But he’s already installing me back in the chair, his movements brisk and brooking no argument. “Now. Will you be all right for a few minutes? I’m going to make you some tea.”

  I gracelessly snuffle back the last of my tears. “Tea?”

  He gives me a long look, seems like he wants to say something and then changes his mind. “I’ll be right back.”

  I let my head loll back against the chair, listening to the sounds of Mr. Barrett trying to find his way around the kitchen. What would Mother think if she knew I was downstairs alone with a man in the middle of the night? I laugh to myself. If only that were my biggest concern right now.

  He returns a few minutes later with a wobbly tray of tea. The water is scalding, but I take a few polite sips under his apprehensive gaze before giving him back my cup.

  “Now,” he says, crouching down beside me, “do you want to tell me what that was all about?” His eyes are tired, his face ravished, but despite everything he offers me the hint of a weak smile.

  Snip is lying in his basket beside the fire, snoring softly without a care in the world. Outside the wind wraps itself around the house in a crushing embrace.

  I shake my head. “I... I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t.” Even if I hadn’t promised Catherine, how could I tell him that those vile rumors he heard about us were true? He would be disgusted, walk away from me without a second look back. How do I tell him that Cyrus is exploiting us, that I have no choice but to marry him, lest he expose everything to the world? How do I tell him that I’m not even what I seem?

  Mr. Barrett tents his fingers as he considers this. “Here’s the short of it, Lydia. I love you. I have ever since that day I called to find you hiding behind your book. You glowed when I asked you what you were reading. I wanted you to go on forever. I... I think before that even. The first day I saw you, in the woods.” He takes my hands in his, looking at me with heartbreaking earnestness. “Am I wrong in thinking that you might love me too?”

  My fingers tighten around his. “No,” I whisper. “You’re not wrong.”

  He squeezes back, raising my hand to his lips, imparting a soft kiss on the tender skin of my wrist. “Then what?”

  I think of Catherine upstairs, running herself ragged to take care of Mother. She may be my sister in name only, but there is still some primal part of me that grows protective when I think of her in trouble. Maybe I can still protect her where I failed to protect Emeline. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  “I see.” He rocks back on his heels, pressing his lips in thought. “Whoever’s secret you’re keeping is very lucky to have you as a confidante and friend.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I won’t ask you to betray this person’s trust, but you must see how it pains me to hear that you love me, but can’t be with me.” He reaches up from his position below me and grazes my cheek with his fingertips. “I wish you would let me help you.”

  Do I still owe Catherine some allegiance even after everything she’s done? I squirm a little as it comes to me that I’m not keeping her secret because I care about her, so much as that I don’t want Mr. Barrett to be
disgusted with me by association. I was the one who carried her baby through the woods at night, the one who bundled it with stones and tossed it into the pond like a piece of rubbish. I’m the one who twisted Tommy Bishop’s legs round ’til he couldn’t stand, the one that put a mark on him with my mind so that his luck would run bad for the rest of his days. I might have forgotten about the way I saw his legs snap in my mind before it happened it front of my eyes, or the black cloud I envisioned circling him, if not for Catherine’s and Cyrus’s reminders that have brought everything back with sickening clarity.

  “It’s not just that it’s a secret, it’s...” I take a deep breath, choosing my words carefully. “I’ve done bad things. They were for good reasons—or so I thought—but I did them all the same. I’m afraid that if you knew who—what—I was, you wouldn’t...” I look down at his concerned face, the high planes and Roman nose illuminated in the flickering candlelight. How can a man so beautiful, so kind, really feel that way about me?

  He stands up and motions me to move over. It’s a big chair but when he sits down the cushion dips, and my head falls against his chest. He wraps his arm around my shoulders, holding me. I close my eyes. A comfortable silence envelops us as I listen to the steady beating of his heart beneath my ear, and feel his warm breath against my hair. No matter how loud the wind whistles outside, no matter all the things that stand between us, as he pulls me closer to him, in this moment we are safe. We are together.

  “Whatever it is you think you’ve done, I can assure you, you’re not a bad person.” I raise my head to object but he stops me with a gentle hand. “Listen to me. I’ve seen the goodness in you.” He hesitates. “There are things about me, if you knew, might make you think differently of me. Perhaps if you can accept them, then you’ll understand there’s nothing you could tell me to make me change my feelings toward you.”

  The deep, sweet timbre of his voice reverberates against my ear, and even though I know there’s nothing he can tell me that will fix everything, I’m content to let him talk as long and about whatever he wants. I give a little nod.

  I feel him take a deep breath. “I had an older brother named Moses who died when I was a young boy. You saw his portrait with my mother when you were at my house, and, judging from what you said earlier, you’ve heard of him somehow already.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Even though I’ve heard this story before secondhand from Mrs. Tidewell, hearing it from his own lips sends fresh waves of pity and sorrow through me. My words are inadequate to express how truly sorry I am, but Mr. Barrett brushes the top of my head with a kiss before going on.

  “He was a cruel, vicious boy, though my mother doted on him all the same. He could do no wrong in her eye. She spoiled him, dressing him like a little prince, buying any trifle that might catch his fancy in a shop window. He expected to get anything he wanted, and if he didn’t he would throw such tantrums. My mother would try to subdue him, often at the expense of injury to herself. I remember the livid bruises around her wrists that she used to try to hide with her sleeves.”

  “But... Your father. That is... I thought...”

  I can feel Mr. Barrett look down at me, feel his surprise as his body tightens. “I would ask you where you heard that, but I have a feeling I already know.” He takes a long, strengthening breath. “No, it wasn’t my father. When Moses hurt her it wasn’t intentional, it was always in the act of thrashing out during a tantrum. He loved her just as strongly as she loved him. But when he turned his sights on me, there was no mistaking his intentions. I was a small child—weak, my mother used to tell me—and there were many evenings I came home from playing with him in the woods with a black eye or bloody lip.” The smallest of tremors runs through his voice. “God forgive me, but I hated my own brother.”

  I shiver. If he started this story as a distraction for me, it’s veered into something else. His words come faster, more urgent, as if he must unburden himself of whatever it is he’s been carrying with him.

  “My father was a gentleman, in every sense of the word. He pleaded with my mother to send Moses away to a boarding school in Hartford. On the rare occasions when he disciplined Moses himself, my brother screamed and howled so wretchedly that my mother would collapse in fits of tears. I watched my father transform into a bitter, hollow man, driven to drink.

  “One day Moses was in the nursery, even though he had long outgrown his room there. He had emptied out the chest where I kept all my prized wooden soldiers and was lining them up as target practice for his little rifle. It was thick and gray outside, and Moses had brought in a lamp to set on the floor for more light.

  “I don’t know what made that day different for me, but instead of slinking away, I went up to Moses and demanded that he stop. He pushed me, and though I was smaller, I pushed back. When he turned his rifle on me, I grabbed the lamp from the floor and threw it at him. It missed, and landed at the foot of the window, shattering. The drapes ignited and before I knew what was happening, flames were shooting up to the ceiling.

  “My mother heard the commotion downstairs and came running. When she found us, Moses was red-faced and coughing on the floor. I was frozen. I must have looked guilty as sin. I never thought that the fire would spread so fast, that my brother would suffer a fit. My mother was kneeling beside him, trying to get him to his feet and escape from the fire. I...”

  For the first time he falters, and instinctively I curl my fingers into his hair, wishing I could take away all his pain.

  “I ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. But you see, the nursery door locked from the outside. I never meant to... I never thought about what I was doing.” His voice is flat, his eyes devoid of emotion.

  “I didn’t stop running until I was halfway down the road to town, where I met my father on his way home. I told him that a fire had started, that I didn’t know how. He rushed off but by the time he got there it was too late. Half the house was in flames, the other half already collapsed. They found my mother’s body where the nursery had been, but Moses’s body was never recovered.”

  My skin prickles. Moses is still out there, wandering the woods. Lost and angry.

  “Afterward, a rumor began going around town that my father had flown into a jealous rage against my mother, locking her and her favorite child in the house as he set it ablaze. My mother was a great beauty, and well loved in the town. Everyone turned against my father and he lost his business, his standing, everything. He had drunk himself to death by the time I was sixteen.”

  “Oh, John.”

  “You’ll think me insane, but my brother haunts me still. I hear him laughing, laughing at me in my dreams. He...the day I met you, in the woods behind the mill, I was looking for him.” He glances at me to gauge my reaction. When I don’t say anything, he goes on. “Sometimes I fancy I see him, just a glimpse, in the woods. I chase him, hoping that if I can just catch up with him I can beg him to go, to let me be. But I never do. You must have thought me terribly rude when we first met, but I hope you’ll understand why now I was so dismayed to learn your father had brought his family here. There’s something about this place, something terrible and sad. It invites tragedy. I think it’s always been that way, long before Moses and I came along.”

  I find his hand with mine. “You’re not insane. I’ve seen him too. Spoken with him. I...” I stop myself, not sure how much I should tell him about what I’ve experienced. Moses is still here, his mortal remains forgotten and trapped beneath our house. The laughter, the footsteps, the endless watching, it’s always been him. And the wailing in the night, the pale lady pacing the garden, that must have been his mother, her spirit somehow trapped, endlessly searching and mourning her beloved son.

  Mr. Barrett studies me, his face unreadable. He’s very still, only the slightly quicker pulse in his neck betraying that he’s not in full possession of himself. He clears his throat. “Well,” he says. “Now you kno
w my darkest secret. I killed my own mother and brother, and I was responsible for the death of my father as well. I don’t tell you this because I seek absolution or even because I’m haunted by guilt. I tell you because whatever it is you think you’ve done, whatever it is that you think can come between us, I guarantee that you’re wrong. If you can take me as I am—secrets and all—then I can take you as well.”

  We’ve come to the fork in the road again. One path leads to more secrets, more walls, more heartache and loneliness. The other path, once dark and closed, now opens before me in blinding illumination. I can put my hand in John’s and we can walk together in love and truth. My resolve shrivels up to nothing, the last bastion of familial responsibility crumbling in the wake of his confession.

  So I tell him everything. I pray he’ll still want me when I’m finished. It pours out of me, everything from Catherine and Charles, to the baby and what became of it, the darkness that has plagued me since coming to Willow Hall, and even Cyrus and what he’ll do if I don’t marry him.

  Mr. Barrett listens patiently, not once interjecting or flinching, even when I can’t help but doing so. His steady, solid presence gives me the courage to go on. I unburden everything to him, everything except the book that lies wrapped in a shawl in my trunk upstairs and what my mother told me this afternoon.

  For what man in his right mind would want a witch for a wife?

  * * *

  I’m not in John’s arms the next morning when I awaken, but in my own bed, tucked up and warm with a well-stoked fire. I turn my head, almost expecting to see him sitting in the chair, watching me, like that day he came to visit me after the pond. But only the weak morning sun and crackling of the dying fire fill the room.