by Erin Satie
He whirled. “Why are you telling me this?”
She winced. “Because you deserve to know.”
“Why now?” He waited, but she didn’t answer. “Because you want something. You want me to sell your painting.”
She nodded.
And if she couldn’t convince him with reason, then she’d provoke him—and hope he obliged her out of spite.
“I’d have thought better of you if you’d answered my questions when I asked instead of saving your confession for the moment when it would serve you.” His voice emerged colder than he’d intended, and he hadn’t aimed for warmth. “And I’d have more hope for our marriage if you’d engage in honest discussion instead of trying to manipulate me.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears sheened her eyes, giving the brown-green irises a startling, crystalline depth. Her cheeks flushed to a rich rosy pink. As always, emotion heightened her beauty—while her beauty ennobled her emotions, made them seem pure and true. “Loel, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
He cut in. “I suggest you figure it out. You’ll have time—because I’m going to do as you asked. I’ll take your painting to London and I’ll sell it.” He paused. “You don’t have to trick me to get what you want, Bonny.”
Her shoulders trembled from the effort to hold back a sob. A single teardrop spilled onto her cheek. Had he gotten through to her? If she’d tell him what this was really about, talk to him like a husband instead of an antagonist, he wouldn’t regret a few harsh words.
“I’ll fetch the painting for you,” she said and clambered off the bed.
He really did want to yell at her then—but what would be the point? An hour later, he had the painting wrapped in cotton and oilcloth tucked under one arm, a small valise in the other, and he was on his way to the train station.
Bonny’s guilt spiked, and broke, like a fever. The thought of giving up Bowl of Cherries had been so horrible, so painful that her guilty conscience had seized on it and refused to let go. Loel’s unerring ability to see right through her had only tightened the vise.
Once he was gone, she cried. She wanted to be good—no, better than that. She wanted to be the woman Loel had told her she could be, the one her husband would get down on his knees and thank God for having brought into his life. But she wasn’t. She tried and failed and… she’d keep trying.
She had to be better. As much as it hurt her to sell Bowl of Cherries, she didn’t regret the decision.
After the fire, they’d funneled all their sentiment, all their emotion, into four objects because they’d had to get rid of the rest. First they’d lost the warehouses. Then the business her father’s family had spent generations building, then most of their friends had gone, the summer trips, the horses, the carriage. It had gone on and on for months. Weeping over every loss would have broken them.
Her father’s decree that they could each keep one thing had been important, because it meant they hadn’t lost everything. If they hadn’t lost everything, they could survive and rebuild. It didn’t make much sense, in retrospect, but it had felt true.
Just like selling the painting felt right. She now knew with certainty that she’d give anything to make this marriage work. Nothing barred, nothing stinted. All that remained was, well, to do it properly.
She never wanted Loel to be angry at her again.
She finished the evening chores in peace. Just as when Loel had been sick, caring for the orchids in his absence took all her time and energy. She even slept on his bed that night so that the chill would wake her to tend the stoves. Every time she lay down, his scent surrounded her. She breathed it in, fixated by the thought of his long-limbed body sprawled loose and easy in her place. Eventually her nose dulled and she drifted into sleep.
The next morning, after yet another night of rain, the roads had started to flood. The postman slogged up the drive with their mail, including two letters addressed to Bonny. The first was from Mrs. Twisby, asking why Bonny’s visits had ceased. The second was addressed in an unfamiliar hand. Bonny opened it with some trepidation.
Dear Lady Loel,
I hope you’ll forgive me for not writing sooner. I do not have the same freedom in my correspondence that Olympia does. What’s more, Olympia is a champion epistolarian who finishes ten letters in the time it takes me to complete one. I confess that I sometimes rely on her talents when I ought to exercise my own.
Olympia was shocked by your last letter—I was not. We met after you tossed yourself headlong into a filthy canal in order to save a pair of drowning children; you have again proven yourself to be selfless and reckless in nearly equal measure.
We appreciate your concern for our reputations. However, we feel you have given up too easily. Please reply with a precise accounting of the scandal that has so altered your life—we must know what happened in order to find a way for our friendship to survive it.
Address your letter to Olympia; letters sent to my home are not private.
Sincerely,
Tess Hurley
Bonny read it through three times in a row, hardly daring to believe the words in front of her eyes. Olympia and Tess weren’t abandoning her? They wanted to remain friends? It was the last thing that Bonny would have expected from two London sophisticates… perhaps she’d misjudged London sophisticates. Olympia and Tess were the only two she knew.
Bonny didn’t reply. If she cared about her friends, she would ignore their request. She distracted herself from this dismal conclusion with a visit to Mrs. Twisby. Cordelia had returned the widow’s borrowed books to Bonny before the wedding, so she unearthed them from her trunks, swaddled herself in several layers of protective rain gear, and braved the door-to-door puddles.
At Mrs. Twisby’s, all the hearths had been shoveled full of coal, cherry red glowing through the grates, generating so much heat that Bonny could have been back in the greenhouse. She handed her dripping cloak and hat to a manservant who grimaced at the wet floor and waved her upstairs.
“I should have returned these earlier,” said Bonny, greeting Mrs. Twisby in her comfortable salon. “I’m sorry to be inattentive.”
“Return them? I gave them to your circulating library—and I’m expecting new books, girl. It’s well past time.”
“I wish I had them for you, but as it happens we’re not operating the library any longer.”
Mrs. Twisby harrumphed. “Not very serious about it, were you?”
“We were very serious,” Bonny protested. “My partner especially. But… circumstances made it impossible to continue.”
“You mean you got married and decided you have better things to do?”
“No, not at all,” said Bonny. “All our other members quit.”
“Quit!” Mrs. Twisby seemed astonished. “Why?”
“Because…” Bonny floundered. “That is…”
“Well?” Mrs. Twisby prompted.
“Because they didn’t want anything to do with me,” Bonny said finally. “I thought, since you’d addressed your letter to me at Woodclose, that you might have heard…”
“Your husband told me,” said Mrs. Twisby. “I suppose I should have predicted the town’s reaction. Some people really will cut off their noses to spite their faces, won’t they?”
“It’s a terrible shame.”
“And so you haven’t visited,” Mrs. Twisby concluded, apparently content that she’d comprehended the situation adequately. “Well, if none of the gossips care to visit me, I don’t care to heed their warnings. Can I offer you some tea?”
Bonny blinked.
“Good,” said Mrs. Twisby. “Have a seat. It’s nice and warm, isn’t it? I hate the cold.”
Tea arrived a few minutes later, along with a selection of salads, biscuits, and sandwiches. Bonny ate more than was strictly polite, because the meals she’d been able to prepare herself were not half so satisfying. Mrs. Twisby kindly didn’t mention her appetite—in fact, she kept the conversation light and pleasant, discussing t
he weather, the harvest, her favorite summer receipts.
Bonny took the opportunity to ask about the book that she and her friends had been so confounded by. “Wherever did you find that book that you loaned to us—The Widow? Everyone who reads it is mad for it.”
Mrs. Twisby hemmed and hawed before answering, with sly pride, “My daughter gave it to me.”
“She must move in literary circles?”
“She does, yes.” Mrs. Twisby nodded. “But it also happens that she wrote it.”
Bonny gasped. “She wrote it!” She couldn’t quite believe it. “Your daughter is R. E. Timothy?”
“Roberta Twisby—though she goes by Ruby. And her middle name is Eleanor.”
“But wait—that means you know who killed the husband!”
Mrs. Twisby nodded serenely. “It does.”
“You must tell me! My friends and I are all desperate to know.”
“Oh, I couldn’t betray her secrets. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I respect your position on the matter… perhaps you could give me her address so we could write to her directly? My friends tell me they tried to send a letter via her publisher but haven’t gotten a reply.”
“I think I could agree to that.”
When they finished their circuit of the garden path, Mrs. Twisby called for pencil and paper and wrote down her daughter’s address in London. “I warn you, she may not answer your question.”
The conversation so energized Bonny that, upon her return to Woodclose, she replied to Tess:
Dear Tess,
Your kindness astonishes me. I admit, my first impulse was to reward it by ignoring your request. I couldn’t bear it if you were punished for coming to my aid. The people I love most have already suffered disproportionately—indeed, some find themselves in circumstances far more difficult than my own.
On reflection, however, this line of reasoning serves mostly to protect my own feelings. What I can or cannot bear must not be my first priority.
What’s more, I trust your judgment. If I impressed you with recklessness and selflessness, then you impressed me with your keen understanding of the social milieu you navigate with such mastery.
I rely also upon your discretion, as I will not spare you any of the details.
When I met you, I was engaged to a man who is both wealthy and well liked here in New Quay, Mr. Charles Gavin. I had discovered several defects in his character, however, serious enough to incline me against him. I ventured to London to gauge my chances at making a better match if I searched farther afield, which is how I came to make your acquaintance.
While I was away, Mr. Gavin persuaded several of his friends to join him in a physical attack on the man who is now my husband, Lord Loel. When I learned of this attack, I was more determined than ever to end my engagement. However, I was equally determined to nurse Lord Loel back to health. The latter seemed more urgent, as he had no one else to attend his sickbed.
I confess that my feelings for Lord Loel were warm even before the attack—improperly so. Nursing him heightened those feelings. The appalling truth is that I made advances on his person. I kissed him, all unprompted, and would have done more if we hadn’t been discovered.
We were discovered by the vicar’s wife. I had not yet ended my engagement to Mr. Gavin. I simply hadn’t had time to speak with him. And so I was proved before a pillar of the community to be both lewd and unfaithful.
Instead of condemning me—as he had every right to—Lord Loel chose to make me his wife.
This is the whole unfortunate truth. All blame falls to me, and my sins have been made public. I am a pariah here in New Quay, and you would be tainted by any acquaintance with me.
Sincerely,
Bonny
P.S. — I have learned that the author of The Widow is a woman! Her true name is Ruby Twisby. I enclose the address so you may query her directly.
The next two days passed quietly—metaphorically anyhow. The inside of the greenhouse echoed with the sound of heavy raindrops drumming unceasingly overhead. The vast space amplified the noise better than any amphitheater; it was like living inside a waterfall.
But the orchids flourished. Leaves plumped, stems straightened, tiny flower buds sprouted with sneaky enthusiasm, springing to life the very moment Bonny turned her back. If Bonny hadn’t accidentally killed hundreds of orchids while Loel was sick, she would have felt very smug—unfortunately, she knew the weather deserved all the credit.
After two days of complete isolation, she received two letters. The first was a note from Loel saying that he’d been successful and planned to return home the next day. The second was from Tess and read:
Dear Bonny,
Your new husband is a peer. Is he wealthy?
Sincerely,
Tess
Bonny replied:
Dear Tess,
He is not. What’s more, he is widely loathed here in New Quay. As a young man he accidentally started a fire that devastated the town. My family was among those ruined by the blaze.
Sincerely,
Bonny
Loel returned in the early afternoon. Bonny greeted him nervously, hardly daring to speak. He’d been so angry when they’d parted. And she didn’t know what to do with him in city clothes, with raindrops beading in his smooth dark hair.
He studied her, measuring and intense, and she quailed. He was still angry. He’d inspect the greenhouse, say something cutting—tell her that she’d failed—
The silence stretched. She worried that she might faint. And then Loel crushed her close and kissed her, an embrace that started politely but ended with both of them disheveled and gasping.
“You’re not angry at me?” she asked when she could speak again.
He chuckled, a low rumbling sound that went straight to her core. “Do you want me to be?”
“Of course not.”
He caressed her cheek with his thumb, then bent to kiss her again. Languidly this time, slow and thorough and deliberate. “I haven’t forgotten our last conversation,” he admitted. “But it mattered less as I missed you more.”
“I’m going to to better. You’ll see.” Bonny rose up on tiptoes, tipping her chin up and angling for a kiss—and received a dozen, soft and scattered over her lips and nose and cheeks.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” He pinched her lower lip between thumb and forefinger, his eyes going dark, before he took a step back. “The painting was worth well more than what the engineer wanted for a pump.”
“So there’s some left over?”
“Almost two hundred pounds,” he answered.
Bonny blinked. Two hundred pounds could go a long way.
“They’ll come once it’s dry—they can’t dig trenches in the rain,” he said, squeezing absently at her waist. “How did you manage alone?”
“Very well, thank you. Would you like a tour of the greenhouse?”
“Later. I’ll take your word for it.”
Bonny beamed.
“I have dinner,” he added, heading for the house. “Caviar and sour cream and champagne. I thought, for one night, why not?”
“Really?”
“No, not really.” Loel pushed through the green baize door and took the stairs down to the basement. “It’ll be tinned mutton and boiled cabbage for the week.”
Bonny’s face fell.
Loel offered her the bags. “Here, look for yourself. Is it so hard to tell when I’m joking?”
“Obviously, it is.” Bonny rummaged around in the sacks. They were full of London treats: pâté and candied chestnuts, cinnamon sticks and lemon curd, and—as promised—caviar and champagne.
“Oh!” Bonny turned the jar in her hands and admired the glossy perfection of the eggs inside. “I’ve never had it before.”
“I remember being fond of it, though it’s been years.” Loel uncorked the champagne and poured two generous glasses. He handed one to Bonny and selected a few items to carry up to the yard: the caviar,
of course, a slightly crushed baguette, the sour cream—its container wet from being packed in ice that had melted—and a box of chocolates.
Bonny was contemplating the lovely, shiny chocolates when she heard Cordelia’s familiar voice calling, “Hello?” from somewhere inside the house. She gave Loel a startled look and hurried upstairs, where she found her friend wearing a cloak and carrying something bulky enough to make her look round as a berry, dripping on the floor of the salon-turned-shed.
“Don’t mind the clutter.” Bonny reached out to unfasten Cordelia’s cloak. “Let’s get these wet things off you.”
Bonny stowed Cordelia’s outerwear in the cloakroom and then retraced her steps with a bit of toweling, wiping all the stray drops from the floor. It took long enough that when she finally returned to the shed/salon, she caught Cordelia unawares—slumped tiredly against a cabinet, dark circles under her eyes.
Bonny’s heart squeezed painfully. Something had gone badly wrong in her friend’s life, and she suspected that she was the cause.
“Cordelia?”
Cordelia started, straightening with some effort. She tried to look like her usual self, and the determined slant to her brows hadn’t changed, but there was no hiding her exhaustion.
“I have a favor to ask,” said Cordelia.
“Anything.”
“I’ve decided to leave my family and make my own way in the world—”
“No!”
“My parents have become intolerable,” Cordelia said fiercely, more emotional—more unrestrained—than Bonny had ever heard her. “From the time I was a little girl, my father taught me that it is better to be good than to be liked, that true courage lies in championing what is right, even though our fellows will object. But they refuse to understand that I am simply following their precepts—”
“Is this because of me?”
“No, it’s because they are hypocrites,” Cordelia answered. “They are horrified that I want to practice what they have preached to me for so long. And I fear they’ll go further.”