A Bouquet of Thorns

by Tania Crosse

  Rose was numbed. Something must have happened. Oh, not Seth. Please God, no. ‘Wh . . . what’s the matter?’ she stammered as she tottered forward.

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘Nothing. Just the opposite in fact. ’Tis just that I’m pregnant and I feel awful. Even my own remedies aren’t helping with the sickness. And late morning, this is the worst time. I’m just having a raw carrot.’

  ‘Oh, yes! I used to find carrots helped. Or an apple. But . . . what wonderful news! I’m so happy for you! And Richard must be pleased. I . . .’ She paused, shying away from her own thoughts. Molly, and now Beth. But she gritted her teeth and went on, ‘I expect he’s hoping for a boy.’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Elizabeth’s smile was content now. ‘He’s never said as much. I mean, he’s always joking about being surrounded by women. ’Tis why Seth being here is so good for him. But a farmer needs a son. Chantal’s a great help. She’s out in the vegetable garden now. Hannah’s helping her. Or supposed to be,’ she chuckled. ‘But you need a man’s strength. Talking of which, you’ll be wanting to see Seth.’

  Rose gulped. And nearly melted into the floor with joy. ‘He’s still here then?’

  Elizabeth glanced at her sideways. ‘Of course. He’s much better, though he still needs to build up his strength. He’s been going out with Richard the last few days. They’re down in one of the fields near the village. Planting flatpoles. Richard’s asked him to stay on when he’s fully recovered. We can’t afford to pay him, but you know we’ve an old farm worker’s cottage just on up the track. Used to be old George’s, but both he and his widow have passed on now. We’ve said Seth can live there if he wants. He’s still thinking about it.’

  ‘Oh.’ The sound that issued from Rose’s lips was devoid of expression, she was in such a state of shock. She didn’t know what she thought, what she felt, at this unexpected news. Not only had Seth survived the fever but there was a possibility he might stay on at Rosebank Hall. That she could continue to steal away from Charles to ride over the moor to see Seth for . . . for how long? Until Charles found out? And his jealous rage led him to the wrong conclusions? For it wouldn’t be an affair. Not in the carnal sense of the word. No. In that, she would remain utterly faithful. It would be a deep and intimate friendship, no more than that. She owed Charles that much. And one day, Seth would find a wife. It would tear at her heart. But to know he was happy and safe, and to see him on occasion, would perhaps get her through the bleak and barren years ahead with Charles.

  Elizabeth gave her directions to the field that sloped down to the River Tavy. It was not difficult to find, with one of the farm horses pulling a cart loaded with seedlings that the two men were planting in the neat furrows while a young boy was keeping them supplied with seedling trays and working ahead of them, watering the furrows with a can he was refilling from the river. It was laborious work, and both men straightened up, arching their backs, when they saw Rose approach. She slipped from Honey’s back, tethering her to the gate, and hurried towards them, almost keeling over with happiness.

  ‘Congratulations, Richard!’ she called as she neared them. ‘I hear you’re to be a father again!’

  A proud grin spread over Richard’s weather-browned face as he used the back of his shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. ‘Thank you, Rose! Good to see you!’ He was still smiling as his dark eyes swivelled across at Seth. ‘But it’s not me you’ve come to see, I’ll be bound. Go on, Seth. Take a rest. Beth wouldn’t be very pleased with me if I allowed you to work too hard, and I think you’ve done enough for today!’

  He went back to the monotonous, arduous task, and Rose’s heart gave a little squeal as Seth came towards her, stepping carefully over the planted rows. He met her gaze then, a wide smile lighting his face, and she couldn’t believe how much better he looked and so much more his real age. His gentle, hazel eyes shone, the dark hollows beneath them vanished. His ashen skin was now a healthy amber and his hair, not straw-coloured like Joe’s but a deep, golden blond, was an inch-long cap on his head and already showing a tendency to curl around the nape of his neck. There was beginning to be a little flesh on his bones, and the hand he held out to her was strong and firm.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, bowing his head sheepishly. ‘I’m covered in earth.’ But then he looked up again, his handsome mouth stretched once more in a broad grin. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you again. How was London?’

  Rose couldn’t answer for a moment. Seeing him so recovered, so virile, more attractive even than the vision of him she had conjured up in her mind, had quite taken her senses away. And yet it was a spear in her side.

  ‘London was . . . London,’ she laughed at last, shaking her head. ‘Busy. Tedious. I hated every minute of it. Apart from the two concerts Charles took me to. I loved those. At one of them they played an orchestral piece based on Romeo and Juliet, by some Russian composer called Tchaikovsky, I think his name was. ’Twas very moving.’ She broke off breathlessly. It seemed incongruous, telling him this here, nearly three hundred miles from the capital, when her soul was empty of everything but her love for this man. Who could never be hers. ‘And you, Seth. How are you?’

  They had reached the rear of the cart now, and Seth pushed back some of the empty seedling trays so they had room to sit. He brushed the worst of the dirt from his hands, then took her around the waist to help her as she jumped up backwards to perch on the end. Their eyes engaged, awkward, wishing . . . but he stepped back and glanced down at himself, his palms spread.

  ‘As you see, much improved. I get tired pretty quickly, but it’ll come.’ He bounded forward, leaping up on the cart and twisting round to sit beside her, legs dangling over the end. ‘Did Beth tell you, they’ve offered me a cottage in exchange for work, if I want to stay on?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose murmured as her stomach turned right over. ‘And will you?’ she hardly dared to ask.

  His voice was serious now, cautious. ‘If you want me to.’

  She gulped, her heart suddenly racing. ‘Yes. I do. But you know . . . you know there can never be anything . . .’ Her words trailed off in a broken sigh, the pulse vibrating at her temples.

  ‘Yes, I know. I understand. But we can still be friends.’

  She turned to him, her mouth twisted in a wistful half smile, so grateful to him. As if some intangible thread linked them together. ‘Of course. But my husband must never know. He’s . . . well, a very jealous man. Which is why I should be getting back.’ She wriggled off the end of the cart and turned to face him as he, too, dropped to the ground. ‘I’m so glad you’re so much better. And you will take care?’

  He answered her with an anxious smile. ‘I think you’re the one who needs to be careful. Come again soon, Rose. But only when it’s safe.’

  They stood, facing each other, for just a few seconds. And then, once again, they did the only thing they could. They shook hands.

  ‘Did you have a good ride, my dear? You didn’t say.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Charles. ’Twas good to be out on the moor again. You know how I begin to feel stifled in London after so long, even though I realize you try to make it interesting for me.’ She prayed her voice didn’t betray the uneasiness that thrummed in her chest as she turned down the sheets that night and began to unfasten the ties of her dressing gown. She had been prepared, though, ready to deceive, and though the falsehood came easily, she hated herself for it.

  ‘You’re not a very good liar, you know, Rose.’

  His voice was suddenly ice-cold and she threw up her head. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We weren’t back twenty-four hours before you were off to see your lover.’

  ‘My lover?’ Her eyebrows arched in derision, her mouth open in a mocking, contemptuous laugh. ‘Oh, a chance would be a fine thing with the way you keep a check on me!’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t have to, but first it was that convict, and now it’s . . . Well, God knows who it is! Joe Tyler, perhaps—’

  The fury spiralled
up within her, grasping her by the throat. She could scarcely believe she had heard right. ‘Joe?’ she rounded on him, her eyes flaring. ‘How dare you! Joe’s like a brother to me, and he’s Molly’s husband! My God, your mind’s even filthier than I thought!’

  ‘Well, you’re the one having the affair, not me.’

  She watched as his eyes hardened to steel, his mouth in a cruel, compressed line, and in that moment of confrontation, her heart turned to stone. ‘An affair! Good God! And suffer what you put me through every night at the hands of another man as well? You must be joking!’

  Before the bitter words had even left her lips, he had gripped her by the upper arms and with a violence that terrified her, shook her like a rag doll so that her neck cracked in agony and for a sickening instant, she feared for her life.

  ‘So, it’s all my fault, is it, you little whore?’ his roar bellowed in her ears. ‘You’re only doing your duty as my wife, may I remind you!’

  ‘I know that!’ she yelled back at him with such anger that he at last stopped shaking her and they glared at each other like two rutting stags, Charles panting heavily while she flared her nostrils with vitriolic disdain. ‘But at least I’m trying to do something to make our marriage work,’ she succeeded in spluttering as he seemed to be calming down. ‘I want another child as much as you do,’ she lied convincingly. ‘But I do wish you’d be gentler with me. Show me that you love me as much as you say you do. And I swear on Alice’s grave that I’m not sleeping with another man.’

  He was glowering at her, his forehead dipped in a wary frown as he turned his head to study her sideways, his cheeks sucked in distrustingly. ‘Show me, then,’ he rasped, releasing his grip.

  Outrage, disgust, the triumph of deceit, pain, grief and an unfathomable despair. None of these and yet all of them were tangled about her soul as she stripped off her nightdress and stood naked before him.

  Her spirit died as his hungry hands reached out . . .

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Rose?’

  She couldn’t hold the tender concern in those clear hazel eyes, and slowly averted her gaze. She wanted to lean against him, let him see her pain, soothe and comfort her wounded heart, but she must try to hide it from him, for there was nothing to be done. It was the same every time she managed to escape from Charles’s jealous vigilance, meeting Seth at some pre-appointed hour, changing the venue but always nearer to Princetown now, since she could not rely on Charles’s absence for long enough for her to ride to Peter Tavy and back. Ned, too, was a problem, as she had found to her cost that he would relay her movements to Charles, and it tested her ingenuity to have him out of the way, even if it meant spiking his tea with laudanum! She communicated with Seth through Molly, but often Seth would wait hours for her and she did not come. It was not always safe, and she must give Charles no grounds for suspicion. Once he had locked her in the bedroom again, but she had climbed out of the window, letting herself down on knotted sheets stripped from the bed, and then marched boldly into his study to smile at him audaciously.

  The bruises had lasted for weeks.

  And now she knew Seth would not be satisfied with a denial. She had winced when he had held her at arms’ length as they found each other in the woods along the Walkham valley. It had been more than a fortnight since last they had managed to meet. The summer was drawing to a close, the stolen moments they snatched together the only flickering candle in the damning obscurity that her life had become. Half an hour at most they would sit and talk, no word or gesture of love passing between them. For it was impossible. A mere shaking of hands, or a natural touch of greeting, as just now, was all they allowed themselves.

  But somehow, this time, the fight had gone out of her, her courage, her spirit exhausted. The memory of Charles’s attack on her the previous night was too much. She had told him wearily not to bother to make love to her because her period had started, and he had lost his temper, cursing her for not being pregnant. And now she stood, her liquid eyes riveted on Seth’s face as he unbuttoned her riding jacket and slid it from her trembling body, and then unfastened the shirt beneath just enough to slip it over her shoulders. Her stomach, already aching, constricted even further and her pulse beat fast but quietly as she watched Seth’s eyes move downwards and he sucked the breath in through his teeth.

  ‘The bastard,’ he muttered as he took in the livid finger marks on her arms and even around her neck, the scratches visible on the pearly skin above the neckline of her chemise, angry welts which he rightly guessed reached down to her breasts. His eyes met hers again. She thought she would drown in them, and hung her head in shame.

  ‘Not again, Rose.’ His voice was thick, choked. ‘This can’t go on. I can’t just sit back and let . . .’ He rolled his head with an agonized sense of helplessness, shaking his fists dementedly in the air before he let his arms drop limply to his sides. ‘You know, I was so livid that first time that I told Richard. I just had to tell someone! He flew into such a rage—’

  ‘Richard? But he always seems so . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know. But I think something else happened a long time ago that they never talk about. But he was so incensed that Beth and I physically had to restrain him. He was all for giving that bloody husband of yours a taste of his own medicine. Well, that’s just how I feel, too. And how often has it happened since, tell me that, eh?’ He shied away, his jaw clenched in maddened frustration. ‘I feel such a coward, doing nothing to protect you.’

  He turned his back on her, his head tipped skywards and his eyes wildly searching the trees for an answer that simply wasn’t there. Rose stepped up to him, her fingers patting the air in hesitation before she leant her cheek against his shoulder.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ she whispered. ‘’Tis not your fault. ’Twill be better once I’m with child again.’

  ‘And what then?’ he barely murmured. ‘I’ll never see you once you have a family to care for. I just couldn’t live, thinking of you under the thumb of that . . .’ His voice faltered, and he gulped hard before he croaked, ‘You must know I love you, Rose.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was hardly breathed. Miserable, wretched. Lodging in her throat like a stone.

  He spun round so suddenly that she started, her shoulders jerking backwards. ‘Then leave him,’ he said gravely.

  She blinked at him, and he watched her pupils widen. ‘What?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Leave him. And come away with me.’

  Her fine brow puckered, her eyebrows arched as she shook her head. ‘He’d find us,’ she moaned piteously.

  ‘No, I mean really come away. America, South Africa. Wherever you want.’

  His eyes were piercing earnestly into hers, and she felt the shiver reach down to her toes. ‘But . . .’

  ‘I know I’m a pretty poor catch. I’ve nothing to offer you but my love, but we could start a new life together. I’d work hard for you. We could travel under my real name. As Mr and Mrs Warrington. No one would know any different. We could sail on one of Adam’s ships to France or Spain, so there’d be no passenger list for your husband to find us on, even if he knew what name to look for. Then we could take a ship from there. He’d never find us.’

  He was speaking urgently, his expression sharp and alert as she stared at him, her eyes stretched wide. Escape. Travel. Adventure. But most of all, to be free. Her heart began to bang against her ribs, her reeling senses vibrating with each beat of her pulse. But . . . the enormity of it . . .

  ‘But . . . leave Dartmoor?’ she stammered, the sadness stabbing into her soul. ‘I don’t think . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ His voice was low, deep with understanding. ‘You’d have to leave the place you love. And all your friends. Without saying goodbye. It’d be best that way. We couldn’t risk anyone knowing that we were leaving. Except Adam, of course, and Richard and Beth. They’d have to know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her white lips trembled and the world seemed to drop away as she felt herself swooning. B
ut she was being supported, and she could hear Seth’s heartbeat, strong and steady, as her head drooped against his chest. If she left, she would never have the chance to find Gospel. But was she likely to, after all this time? And she would have to leave Florrie and Joe and Molly, everyone she knew and loved.

  ‘The dogs?’ she squealed desperately. But she knew the answer.

  She felt the shock drain from her limbs, and acceptance trickled into the void. Seth was right. It was the only way, though it would break her. Shred her heart. And what did she really know of Seth? But love had touched her. And it was nothing like the uncertainty that had made her hesitate over Charles. This was so strong . . . With Seth beside her, there would be no more fear.

  She lifted her head, and his dear, beloved face was there. Ready, waiting. Trusting.

  ‘Yes,’ she croaked.

  And when his lips brushed against hers with the softness of gossamer, she knew her heart was lost for ever.

  Charles sauntered into his study to fetch a cigar to go with the large brandy he held in his other hand. He had to look over some papers his agent had sent him that morning, outlining an opportunity for investment in a new business enterprise in Exeter. The returns from the South African diamond mine were proving a major success, but he was always looking for new avenues to explore. It would certainly be more practical to keep an eye on something in Exeter than some of his other interests. Take the powder mills, which he knew so well now. And when he had studied the proposals, he would sit and drool over what he had in mind to do with Rose when he went up to join her in bed a little later. She was back ‘in working order’ now, and he would make up for what he had missed. By God, he’d have a son out of her, and he’d bloody well enjoy the making of it!

  Oh, drat it! The fire was nearly out. He went to ring the bell, but the thought of Rose’s enticing, lithesome body exposed to his greedy eyes had put him in a good mood, and he supposed he was quite capable of rekindling the moribund embers. A pile of old newspapers was stored in the corner, and he languidly reached out for one and began to crumple the sheets into balls.