by Galen, Shana
“I want to know all the gossip!” cried their mother.
“We’ll get it later,” soothed Mrs. Redfern. “Either Viola will tell us, or I’ll write to Marianne and hear her side.”
“Or you could leave it be.” Jack retrieved his cup, drained his tea, then set cup and saucer on the tea tray. “And trust that I did my best and don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
All three women looked at him in surprised silence. Then, as if cued by a conductor, they all hooted with laughter. Jack recalled the feeling of being flipped and pummeled during one of Miss Carpenter’s lessons.
“Come on, we’ll walk back before you make a fool of yourself.” Viola took Jack’s arm. Bidding the older women farewell, they left the little house and stepped out into the blueing evening light.
Days were long in May, for which he was grateful. He’d arrived in daylight, able to blunder across his own land, able to orient himself to the familiar space of it. As if he’d never gone to London, given his heart anew, chopped cabbage, tried to set a new course for his life. Bought strawberries and honeycomb. Hunted for a bit of the past he’d thought he’d lost.
Their footsteps crunched on the neat gravel path. Jack bent to pluck a weed that interrupted the smooth, pale surface.
When he straightened, Viola looked at him quizzically. “It’s my responsibility,” he said. It was all his responsibility. Just as the Donor Dinner—that was today, wasn’t it?—was Marianne’s and Mrs. Brodie’s.
They were where they belonged.
“Sorry I got Mother and Mrs. Redfern laughing at you,” Viola said when Jack took her arm again. Their pace was slow, as if neither of them wanted to arrive at their destination. “I thought they’d ask you fewer questions if they took your arrival lightly. Neither of them’s been well, you know.”
“I know.” Mrs. Redfern had been in pain for years, unable to travel beyond the nearby hamlet. Certainly unable to go to London and visit her absent daughter. And his own mother—well, her health had been worn into his brain for days. “It’s all right. Just…don’t start laughing again yourself.”
“I wouldn’t.” Viola looked thinner since he’d left more than a fortnight before, but peaceful. Calm. Her smile was ready and knowing, as if she’d come to some decision Jack had yet to realize was facing him. “But I am surprised you left London without a promise from Marianne. So long, I lived in your house with the love you couldn’t have. I thought you’d want to do the same to me.”
“There’s no revenge of that where love is concerned.” His boots were dark on the gravel, each step square and careful. “I’d never have wished you a widow, Vee. I know you still miss her.”
She caught the gray lace at her throat. “Yes,” she said simply. “You might be the only one who knows how much.”
A spinster sister living with a newly married couple was ordinary enough. For that spinster to love the bride, though, and vice versa, was thought unnatural by many. In public, Viola’s grief had to be that of a sister, a friend. In private, Jack had let her cry on his shoulder as often as she’d needed to. He could never envy her loss, but he did envy her devotion. No one would shed so many tears over him. No one existed for him to weep over as if he’d lost his heart.
Maybe that was not such a bad thing. Some part of Jack had always longed for Marianne, his missing piece. Briefly made whole again, he’d been cleaved anew. He would need far more than a few days to forget that time at her side.
Was it better to forget? Or to be changed?
“I have been thinking,” Viola said, “that I should like to move households.”
Ah. So this was the decision behind that beatific smile. “Surely not to live with Mother?”
Viola’s expression of horror was eloquent. “Indeed not. I love visiting her, but living with her would make me only a daughter again. I’ve altered too much for that.”
Jack nodded, accepting. “What have you in mind?”
“A cottage, maybe. Not like a tenant. I don’t know how to do anything useful. But a cottage of my own, where I won’t be surrounded by…so much.”
After two years, she was ready to break from the constant reminders of loss in the house she and Helena had shared. He could understand that. He could smile, even, at her assertion that she didn’t know how to do anything useful. It reminded him of Marianne—and since those reminders were all too few here, he didn’t want to escape them. Yet.
“You know how to make a home,” Jack told his sister. “Nothing could be more useful for a woman who wants her own cottage. You find a place you like, and I’ll buy it and deed it to you. Helena would like that, don’t you think?”
“She would like to see us happy. And on an evening like this, how could we not be?” Viola lifted her face to the sky, breathing in deeply.
To Jack, the air smelled clean and cool. The sky was big and open, poked gently by treetops. There were the croplands, their earth rich and smooth and well tended. The wolds, high and rolling and treed, and the fens to balance, grassy and waterlogged and teeming with buntings and crickets and butterflies. The sun began to yawn gold and pink across the deepening blue above.
It was nothing like London.
He’d gone to find the man he used to be. He’d gone to feel something, to be absolved. And he had placed all that responsibility on Marianne’s shoulders, though he swore he wanted nothing from her.
He’d always wanted something from her. He had always wanted her to love him. When he tried to make himself into the sort of man he’d always wanted to be, it was because that was the sort of man he’d grown up admiring. Just as she’d been swaddled in silks and taught to paint and sew and flirt, his examples had been men who mended fences—literally and figuratively. Men who rode and learned and were accomplished at everything from Latin to getting a muddy field to produce. And never, in all those years, had anything made him as happy as learning to cook had made Marianne.
When she went away, she’d learned who she wanted to be. Never yet had Jack sorted out so much. He’d come all the way from Lincolnshire to London hoping she’d solve his problems. Hoping she’d make it all right that he’d spent the years away from her by leaping, now, into his arms.
But neither of them was the same as they’d been eight years before, when she might have leaped—but he wouldn’t have been able to catch her. They were, deep down, the same people, but they knew better now. She wouldn’t leap unless she knew she could land on her own, and he…here he stood with his arms empty.
It was what he’d earned. The reaping of the lonely life he’d sown, where he’d become a bounty to the people around him, but neglected to feed his own heart.
“Right,” Jack agreed into the silence. “Right. I can be happy here.” What was the alternative? Never feeling joy at all?
Viola looked at him sharply. “No. I’m sorry I said that. You don’t have to be happy this evening. It’s not a requirement, and there’s no schedule you must follow.”
But that didn’t comfort. If he didn’t have a schedule, how could he know he’d ever reach his goal?
Whatever the devil it was.
“Are you coming in?” Viola asked. They had reached the front door of the Grange, the old brick manor house.
“Not yet,” Jack told his sister. “I’ll be in by dark.”
She nodded, then climbed the steps and entered the house.
It was the only home Jack had ever known, and it wasn’t nearly the home it ought to have been. Not because of any flaw in the house, which had stood and abided generations of Grahames, but because of the people who had raised him.
Had Jack’s father had any regrets? He had no more regretted a life without passionate love than he would have regretted the temperature of the North Sea. It hadn’t been within his power. And Jack couldn’t blame him for that any more than he’d have blamed the sea for being cold.
He split from the graveled path before the house, taking a less-worn but ever familiar track onto lands that had once belonged to Marianne�
�s father. Now they were his.
Beehives and all.
The hives were cultivated in sawed-off logs mounted upright, a shortened forest abuzz at this hour with bees returning for the night. On top of some were little house-shaped structures, a newer sort of hive hinged and cunningly divided so the nest would form up the middle and the honey and combs be constructed along the sides.
The bees were dedicated and predictable. This was what made them survive.
He’d been dedicated and predictable too, to Marianne. He’d reacted to protect himself, to hoard the little drops of honey, because he thought he’d never get more.
The things he’d done with the past eight years were good. Though he didn’t give a damn about Latin and would happily forget it, he liked the fitness of his body, the quick understanding of the problems his land developed. He liked being able to understand when people were talking about him in another language, as if it were a secret code. He wouldn’t end these things.
But they weren’t enough—not for others, but for him. And if he wasn’t enough for himself, how could he ever be enough for Marianne?
He hadn’t really become the sort of man he wanted to be, the sort who trusted he could have what he wanted. The things money couldn’t buy.
The things one had to deserve, to earn. The things one couldn’t win with a bribe of a treat, or a week and a half of hard work and deep pleasures.
The things one received by being present, by being real, by being devoted and honest and true.
Marianne was right: He’d tried to buy his way out of the trouble he’d foreseen. And in doing so, he’d earned himself a problem entirely new.
He watched the bees find their hives. Homing in, knowing their place. But if their hive was upset, they’d build a new comb. Store more honey. They wouldn’t give up; if they did, they wouldn’t live.
There were worse examples. Even if his figurative hive lacked a queen.
So he thought about where he’d been most content. Not happy, brilliant and flashing, but content. Surviving and living and growing. Doing good.
And the answer was: with his hands in the dirt, making it easier for something to grow. With someone to talk to all the while at his side about anything from life’s deepest questions to whether that cloud looked like a naked breast.
Ah, well. His lover and best friend lived in London now. She’d chosen London over him, cooking over home, the academy girls over her mother. That was her choice, and it angered him not to be chosen, but he had to forgive it. Without needing her to apologize for it, because she’d the right to make it.
But maybe he could bring a little of London to Lincolnshire. There had to be more women like her, like Viola, who wanted to learn more than they had. Daughters of impoverished merchants and tradespeople, too fine for service but unlikely to wed. Women who wanted to stand on their own.
One might even call them exceptional young ladies.
He wouldn’t stop hoping for the return of the queen, but he couldn’t force her to love him. To choose him. So he planned something else.
And he told the bees, in that old tradition, and asked for their blessing and their joy.
Chapter Eight
SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Marianne pressed a hand to the small of her aching back and saw the last dish stowed by the scullery maid. She bade the girl good night, sending her up to the attic quarters with a candle, then took a moment to admire the newly peaceful room in solitude.
After three days of frantic activity, the kitchen was calm again. Dark, save for Marianne’s lamp and a crescent smile of moon through the high-up window. Clean from flagged floor to plaster ceiling. The staff was proud but weary to the bone.
And they would all be up early to make breakfast and do the whole round of meals and chores again, and yet again.
The Donor Dinner had come off without a hitch—as far as the guests knew, and that was good enough for Marianne. They’d never know the burnt-cream tarts were supposed to have spun sugar on their candied tops, but that it had all melted away. They’d never know that they’d been meant to have brawn, but it hadn’t set properly, and so instead, the shreds of meat were fried to a crispy hash and stuffed beneath the pheasant’s skin.
And they’d never know that the cook had overseen her assistant and four kitchenmaids with only half her mind on the task and her heart entirely absent.
It didn’t help that the four maids Jack had hired were named Jane, Joan, Jill, and Jenny. Honestly! Names could start with letters other than J.
Marianne had peeped at the arriving guests, timing the readiness of dishes with the arrivals of the final couples. The men Mrs. Brodie invited had come in superfine and patent leather, with signet rings and gold fobs and generous bellies and loud laughs. The women had been in silks and jewels and feathers, their finery casting the glittering serving dishes into shade.
Elegant and wealthy as they all were, they were still people with appetites. The first polite demurrals past, they ate their food with the same eagerness the academy’s young ladies demonstrated. The footmen reported to the kitchen each time they came for new dishes. The guests had finished the first course down to the bones; they had drunk the wines, then eaten yet more, then drunk an absolutely amazing amount.
The performances had been a success too, reported the footmen, from the sweetly framed needlework and watercolor paintings, to the recitations of poetry and translations from French. This last had been the cause of much amusement, as the students in French were given random phrases and sentences by the guests. As more and more wine was imbibed, the suggestions grew increasingly ridiculous. When Mademoiselle Gagne’s prize student composed an ode in French to the remains on a lady’s plate—a stalk of asparagus, the delicate bones of a quail, and a few droplets of spilled wine—the company had agreed that such an effort could not be topped.
Next year, they’d all try to top it, though. And somehow they would.
Just now, the notion made Marianne tired.
No—everything made her tired. She was damned tired. Since her work was finally done, she could have her bed in her own room.
Lamp in hand, she dragged the small distance to her chamber—only to find the door open, a lit lamp already within, and a quiet figure awaiting her.
She squinted at the shadow and glare, recognizing the headmistress. “Mrs. Brodie? Is everything well?”
“Yes, very well. I only wanted to speak with you about our grand event.”
Marianne set her lamp beside the other on the washstand, then glanced around the small space. “Ah—have a seat on the bed, if you wish? I’m sorry there’s no chair.”
“There’s not much of anything in here.” The older woman settled herself on the narrow bed, her back as straight as if she were seated on an antique fauteuil. “You look as if you are planning to leave the academy at a moment’s notice.”
“My room always looks like this,” Marianne excused. “I only sleep in here.” She bent her knees a tad, pressing her lower back against the wall to relieve its ache. Just being able to lean, not to hold up her own weight for a moment, was a relief.
“I see,” said Mrs. Brodie. Not in the polite way a woman might accept a small confidence over tea, but in a quiet way, a slow and understanding way. As if she’d realized something that Marianne didn’t intend her to.
For her two years as cook, she’d occupied this room without noticing its lack or loneliness—or her own. Yet they’d been obvious to Jack. They were obvious too, it seemed, to the headmistress.
But that was all Mrs. Brodie said on the subject. “The dinner was a great success, and the credit must go to your food and to the teachers who prepared the students so well.” When she named the amount raised in subscriptions and donations, Marianne’s eyes widened.
“You’ll be able to accept more scholarship students,” she realized.
“I will. And I’ll have to raise fees for the next year; so many inquired about having their daughters attend.” She smiled, stand
ing. “I should let you get to bed. Morning will come early for us all, and the girls will be wanting breakfast.”
On her feet, she hardly reached Marianne’s cheekbone. Yet she extended a hand, placed it on Marianne’s cheek, as comforting as a mother. “You do your best for us. Every meal, every day. Thank you for that, Mrs. Redfern.”
Marianne’s eyes watered. She squeezed them closed. “It’s not enough.”
“Not enough for what? Not enough for a cook to feed everyone at an academy?”
Not enough for me to be proud of myself. Not enough to go home.
Because she couldn’t go home until she did so in triumph. And that was the one thing she could never feel until she did return. Until she felt forgiven herself. You’re not the only one who had losses, Jack had told her, and she’d been the cause of them.
Mrs. Brodie stepped away. Marianne heard the rattle of the older woman’s lamp. She opened her eyes to see the headmistress, aglow with light from the lamp she held. “You are an exceptional young lady.”
Marianne dashed at her eyes. “It’s in the name of the academy. They all are.”
“Yes, they all are. There is no such thing as an ordinary young lady, because each is a human entirely unique.” The older woman tipped her head, as lovely as a Madonna painting. “And that includes you. Don’t you think your kitchenmaid always knew that? Not the newest ones, but the erstwhile Mr. Grahame?”
Each is a human entirely unique. The simple sentence, spoken with calm, struck Marianne like a thunderbolt.
She’d faulted Jack for placing his family’s needs above her, hadn’t she? Even though she knew they didn’t balance. She was just one person, and they were many. But it wasn’t a matter of mathematics or weight. It was a matter of people, and each was worthy.
To Jack, Marianne was. That was why he’d come to London—when he’d thought maybe, just maybe, she’d think him worthy of her.
And she’d sent him away. Just as she had cut herself off from her own family, all because of her own anger and humiliation.
“I’m not proud of what I’ve become,” Marianne said in a choked voice.