by Kate Sheperd
It was in conversations like this that Willy showed his age. He was only a few years younger than I, but at times like this he seemed one of the most juvenile men I knew.
“It may not be humping out of windows, but it has its own excitement to it. It was a lady who I spoke to, and a most interesting one, and I danced with her five times, consecutively. It was nearly inappropriate, or so I’m told.”
I rolled my eyes at him, which I knew to be a particular annoyance of his. But in this case he deserved it.
“I know you may be insensible to these matters, but you know my mother and my sisters have been urging me for some time to at least consider the possibility of marriage. It isn’t such a sorry state as you imagine it. And it might be that, if I were to marry the lady I met last night, it would not be a bad state to be in at all.”
I rolled my eyes at him, again, because it was clearly annoying him.
“My dear Willy,” I said, confidingly, “if marriage were anything like so happy and rosy a state as your mother and sisters are doing their damnedest to convince you, then my morning wouldn’t have been nearly so eventful as it was, would it have been?”
There was nowhere to go with this conversation, and we mutually sulked in each other’s presence until the arrival of our food. It was not a very dignified state, but we had that lucky kind of friendship that needn’t always be dignified. The food cheered us both immensely. Though the clock informed me it was afternoon, Willy had got the club to make me breakfast, and it improved my spirits greatly.
“Now then,” I said to him, when we had mostly done eating, “what have we for work today?”
And thus began our nearly daily conversation of those visiting men who would make eager but not skilled professionals for a game of whist. Willy knew of these things with an amazing regularity, owing no doubt to his outgoing nature. He’d made the rounds already, and felt out what men would and would not be prime targets, and who I should avoid.
And so I played cards, as I often did, until my pockets were as full as I judged the crop of talent at the club could make them, on balance with how soon the management would get in for the evening shift, and realize that I was still there not having paid my bill.
And then I slipped out, as unnoticed as I could. Willy tried to convince me to go out for the evening with him. I would meet Miss Evangeline! But I didn’t want to do that, and if Willy were a more honest and less inclusive man, he would have realized himself that he also did not want me to accompany them.
Instead, I used what winnings I had gathered to buy a bottle of wine. I counted the coins and resigned myself that I would not be able to afford a taxi cab, so I began the long walk home.
When I reached it, the gate to my family home was closed. I had the key, but I had to lift and move the heavy iron myself. The darkness of the estate after the lighted city streets was always a bit disorienting. I could see the parlour was lit, and could hear laughing from it. Was it my imagination that I could also hear the occasional clinking of glasses?
I walked towards the front door. It was closed. They were expecting no visitors.
I diverted my path, and headed down the worn way to the little cottage at the back of the property. It had been years now since I had lived in the main house. What the renters living there now would do with the rooms and what parties they would throw was their business now, and theirs alone.
The cottage was small, and I did not keep it very clean. But I tried to take as little time there as possible.
I opened the wine I had bought and began to drink it. Perhaps if I’d been in a more excited mood, I would have looked at the goings on about town and found some new damsel with an open home and an empty bed, so I would have not had to come here at all. But there was something that one of my whist mates had said that was gnawing at the back of my mind.
A lady was returning to London. The way he’d said it, sort of specifically in my direction, had piqued my interest. I’d written it off at the time as merely a distraction technique to try and avoid his eventual and inevitable loss, but now I wasn’t so sure.
I still had the paper that I had collected at the club folded up in my pocket. Gingerly, I pulled it out and examined it. The candle was dim, and I was forced to light another so as not to strain my eyes as I read the announcement.
Finally, I reached the bottom of the page.
Miss Cavendish, heir to the Cavendish fortune and previously well-known in London circles, will return tomorrow after many years’ long absence.
I burned the paper. I did not want to read the words again. I did not want them in existence at all, and destroying at least one place where they dwelt would be a start.
I did not ask myself why she would return. I only asked myself what cruel man saw fit to announce such a thing.
Such an announcement wasn’t uncommon. Perhaps her grandmother wished it to be known. Perhaps a friend. Perhaps they wished for her what they wished for all dignified ladies.
I drank the entirety of the rest of the bottle of wine, though I had intended upon saving half, and went to bed, as out of sorts at the end of the day as I had been in the beginning.
Chapter 2
Emma
“No, no, please. I don’t think it was along the back wall. It was along the side!”
The conversation was fruitless, but I had in anyway. We’d been here only a month, and yet none of us were quite certain what the arrangement of the furniture had been when we had come. My main dresser and maid was insisting it had been one way, and Lucy, my long-time traveling companion was insisting it had been another.
“What does it matter anyway?” Lucy was saying now, exasperated. “They’ll only go ahead and change it back to however they want it once we’ve gone. We were never supposed to stay in Calais this long, in any case. They’re probably just glad to have the room filled for so much longer than they had expected. They’ll take the room however we leave it.”
I chided her, a bit strongly. It was important how we leave things, I told her. I told her it was a matter of reputation, and a matter of pride. But she didn’t believe me. She often didn’t. Sometimes when I said these things, I didn’t really believe myself.
We were blessedly interrupted by a knock at the door and a note delivered, inviting me to Anna’s to lunch.
“Are you not dining with the captain?” Lucy asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “but that’s not until later. It seems we have a friend in Calais after all! How I didn’t know Anna was here is beyond me, but apparently she’s been living here for some years now.”
I’d met Anna when we were children together in London. She’d been a bright, precocious girl, but we’d lost touch long before I left London, let alone before she apparently had as well. We’d had many of the same ideas, but we’d gone about realizing them in different ways, and it had always caused a tension and a rivalry between us. I hadn’t thought of her in years, but found now that I thought on her more favorably in past tense than I ever had in present.
“Are you going to go?” Lucy was asking me, and I nodded, absentmindedly. If nothing else, it would let me leave Lucy and the maid to their own negotiations, and I could leave well enough out of it.
Anna’s house was larger than I’d expected, but a bit more run down. It looked as though there should be a fair few more servants than it had. The woman who asked my name, and escorted me to my hosts, was the same servant who served us tea and sandwiches, which to my mind was unusual in the extreme for a woman of Anna’s background. It did not set me at unease, though. After ten years of travelling there was very little that could.
“So you are a French woman, now?” I found myself asking Anna after the most basic of pleasantries had been used and laid aside. Anna laughed, with more openness and generosity than I had remembered her possessing.
“Oh, I’ll never been a French woman. I’m reminded of that daily.”
“I should think it would be a pleasant reminder,” I replied, half under
my breath, and a little harsher than I meant it. Anna laughed again, and I found myself blushing.
“Oh, no, don’t blush,” Anna said, “I know you meant nothing by it. And I mean nothing by it. It’s only strange, that’s all.”
I didn’t mean for my words to bring us so quickly to the heart of the conversation. I supposed when Anna had summoned me that we would become up to date with each other’s lives, but it didn’t strike me until just now that there was conflict to be had there.
“I only mean that it seems a lot of trouble for you,” I said, by way of explanation. “I don’t mean that he mustn’t be a very nice man. I’m sure he’s handsome and true and good and rich and whatever you might want in a man. I only mean I’m sure there must have been more appropriate choices. You’re a woman, passably beautiful, with an acceptable fortune in London.”
“You mean that I could have done better?”
There was a defensiveness to Anna’s voice now that I hadn’t intended to cause. I hadn’t thought it would be like this.
“I only mean that you could have done differently. You could have done more conveniently.”
A silence grew between us as we both sipped our tea. It was a little bit uncomfortable, but all I could think in that moment was that I was glad it was there. I was glad this wasn’t one of those interminable dinners with polite women who never speak a word unless they’ve carefully considered it and determined it would be impossible for such a word to cause any offense.
“I suppose I could have done more conveniently,” Anna said at last, no longer riled. “But I dare say it wouldn’t have been as well. You of all people should know that.”
I was stung. Anna and I had lost touch with one another well before any … unpleasantness had occurred. But if Anna was honest, she was also, it seemed, capable of gossip.
“I’m not sure what I know,” was all I could say, lightly, as though it hardly mattered to me.
“And you’re returning to London?”
I wanted to put down the cup and simply walk out of the house. I’d accepted that we would talk about Anna and the strange choices she’d made. I had thought it would be a bit awkward in that way. But I’d thought that if we spoke about me, we would speak about my travels. I would tell the same three or four stories that every Englishwoman wants to hear about the Americas or those bits of Asia I’d managed to reach in my initial fervor to get as far from London as I could.
But there were some bounds of propriety I found I could not slip, however much I may want to.
“Yes, I’ll be on the boat to Dover tonight. I should be in London tomorrow.”
Anna smiled, as though she knew something I did not.
“And what is it?” I asked her, at last, when it became clear she was not intent on sharing without being questioned.
“Oh, I am only glad I’ve made the right suppositions. I placed an ad for you in the paper so that everyone who might want to see you will know you’ve returned to London.”
My face went white and Anna, apparently, knew why. She tried to soften her words, quickly.
“It’s only in your best interests,” she was saying. “I only mean I really think you ought to consider. I really couldn’t have done better. To do conveniently is not to do well.”
The lunch upset me somewhat, though I did stay for the rest of it. We spoke about less important things, but under the surface all I could think about was her gross impertinence. Who was she to say what was in my best interests?
After we had eaten, as soon as it could possibly be deemed appropriate, I made my excuses and left. We did not leave on bad terms, but we did not leave on good ones. I tried to put it out of my mind. She was a foolish woman. She always had been, in the end, hadn’t she? And foolish women sometimes did foolish things.
On returning to the room, I found it much altered. The furniture had been moved to something like we’d found it, and things had been put back in their places. There were also, it seemed, pieces of clothing everywhere. I surveyed it briefly, making certain that none of it was mine.
“I see you’re packing, then,” I asked Lucy, as she passed by me with her hands full. After years of travelling together, I knew well how she managed her last scattered hours before leaving a place. It was always so very hectic, but it also always came right in the end … eventually.
As for me, our servant usually did my packing for me. It wasn’t that I was unwilling, as packing is a bit of a chore once one is settled, but she always got very annoyed with how I did things when I tried to help. She said I put things in the wrong places and made them impossible to find later. So I let her do her job. She’d been with me for so many years, and it seemed the least I could do to respect her wishes.
Even so, as the afternoon stretched before me, I longed for something to do. My hands sat idly in my lap, and my mind ran circles round itself. What paper had Anna put the advertisement in? Would it be read? Who would have read it? Would I return home after all this time to a welcome, or anger?
Probably both. I found some books from the shelf and tried to read them. They were the only ones I hadn’t read in my time here, and this was simply because they were unforgivably dull. Eventually I gave up on them and accepted that I would simply have to reread those I had read already. I got lost in their worlds again, leaving aside my troubles and questions.
Lucy had set up the dinner with the captain. It was an awkward affair that I’d never managed well, to offer the service of conversation with a well-mannered and well-born woman for a reduced fare for the three of us. It felt wrong to me, but it had been surprisingly useful over the years. There was a limit to the funds available to me, in my current situation and with so much of my inheritance still to fall to me, or tied up in the family estate. And it was true I’d had some surprisingly interesting conversations with men and families whom I’d never have spoken to otherwise.
But a French captain of a channel boat? This I did not find promising. So I went to dinner with him with a heavy heart, determined to make only the smallest of talk with him, and display only the necessary care and manners so that he would not feel slighted and hopefully my reputation would be under no threat from whatever idle gossip he might be able to spread to his passengers.
I complimented the food, though it did not, in truth, deserve it. We spoke of the boat trade. I showed interest in it although, truth be told, I’d heard more about boats from more captains than most women could ever hope to, though they might live a thousand lives. What he had to say was unremarkable, but reassuring. He had, in my somewhat expert opinion, sound practices and sound viewpoints on the things that make a ship the safest. I felt our journey would be an easy and a safe one.
“And as for you, my lady, what brings you back to London?”
“Family,” came my much-rehearsed reply. I did not wish to say the words in any way that would invite him to further discussion on the matter, and I don’t believe I did. And yet he either misinterpreted, or simply had no care himself for the comfort of his guest.
“Family?” he asked. “After all this time? It seems if you care about your family so much to come and see them without due reason, you’d not have been gone so long. Missing family would call you back much sooner than you claim it has, miss.”
I set my cup down a little too hard on the table, which caused it to spill a bit. I apologized profusely, and mentioned that I was not used to these kinds of crude cups. It was a useful tactic I’d learned some long time before for redirecting the conversation, and reminding my companions of our relative stations just enough to bring them back to less insistent social territory.
But he did not seem to receive this comment in the spirit it was made. Instead, after he had cleaned up the table, he returned, undaunted, to the same tack.
“As we were speaking of,” he continued, “if I may inquire: what brings you back to London after all this time?”
I considered telling him that he most certainly may not inquire. But the man meant me no
malice. And for all these sorts of dinners and parties were a bit of a necessary evil at times, it would be shameful for me to forget that they were simply men, with whom one can simply converse, and this should not be forgotten.
“Truth be told, my grandmother is very ill. I have received word that she is in a worse way than she has ever been, and the time has reaches us where we must begin to face … certain necessities of her passing.”
The captain appeared confused at first, but the confusion soon cleared.
“You mean your inheritance,” he said, as it did, under his breath.
“You must have hated her an awful lot to only return when you know she’s dying.”
Perhaps I would have been justified in simply telling him my personal matters were not his business after all!
“I did not hate her!” I said, a bit too loudly. Perhaps a bit too defensively, as well.
The man smiled.
“What, it was not your grandmother who has kept you from returning to London all this time?”
“No, of course not, not her!”
I suddenly felt my cheeks redden. I’d fallen into a trap, to be certain. The captain leaned back, knowing he had gleaned more from me than I wanted to share. I chided myself inwardly. Perhaps had I not struggled so long over how I did in fact feel about my grandmother, I would not have been blind to this man’s not-so-subtle machinations.
“You know,” the captain said, “once when I was much younger than I am now, I left home as well. I was gone for a long time. I had many adventures. And if anyone had asked, I would say simply that I wanted adventure. But that was not true. No, no, a woman I loved dearly from my village had married another man, and I wanted to be far away from them.”
I did not comment. I did not lend any credence to his assumptions.
“I suppose this is not such an interesting story for you,” he continued. “But I only wish to tell you that when I did return, it was not so very bad as I had feared. I had imagined that the pain would haunt me, and that all these years would mean nothing.”