Married to a Perfect Stranger

by Jane Ashford

  The door opened halfway, and Mary looked around it. Traces of tears showed on her face. “I’m so sorry, John.”

  The tragic look in her dark eyes bothered him. And yet the question erupted, “Could you not have found a way to refuse?”

  “Everyone was looking at me,” she faltered. “It seemed it would be so rude.”

  “Perhaps. But perhaps that would not have been as bad as what actually happened?” She flinched, and he regretted it. Yet he couldn’t refrain from asking, “Why the deuce did you draw her in a way that…annoyed her so?”

  “I can’t help it,” Mary said. Her mouth trembled, and she blinked back further tears.

  This made no sense. “What do you mean?”

  “When I draw, it just happens.”

  “What happens? What are you talking about?”

  It was always a struggle to explain this. “When I draw, something…occurs,” Mary tried. “It lets me see deeper into people, and that becomes part of the portraits I create. It’s my…talent.” The last word seemed inappropriate in this moment.

  John shook his head, bewildered. “All sorts of girls play the pianoforte at parties, or sing. God knows, some chit is always being pushed forward to sing. You could have just drawn a pleasant picture. Why not make her ladyship a bit prettier than life, as portrait painters can do?”

  “It’s not like that for me.”

  “Why the devil make her look so…haunted?” Remembering Lady Castlereagh’s reaction to the image Mary had produced, John felt rather haunted himself.

  “I didn’t set out to do it!” Mary cried. “I can’t help it if that is how she feels…inside.”

  “Inside?” John gazed at his wife. He hated to see her so distressed, but he had no idea what she was talking about. He couldn’t control the annoyance that rose. “For this, my career is destroyed?”

  “You are not destroyed! They can’t be so unfair!” Mary sounded frantic. “It was my hand on the pencil. What I did should not hurt you!”

  John said nothing. They both knew that a wife’s actions always reflected on her husband. And it was even more true in this case. The memory of her face when Fordyce snatched away the sketchbook and Lady Castlereagh stared at her portrait returned to him. She’d looked devastated. She looked devastated now. He fought down his temper and, finally, sighed. “The furor will pass, Mary. Some other cause for gossip will arise, and interest will…lessen.” He couldn’t suppress a hint of regret. “I’ll fall back into the larger mass of Foreign Office staff…”

  “You shouldn’t! You’re so good at what you do! You work harder than anyone else. People know that. They’ve praised your work…”

  “I don’t expect Lord Castlereagh will want to hear me praised now.”

  Mary winced. She came further into the room. “John, we’ll find a way to fix this.”

  Just now, he couldn’t see it. But her eyes were pleading. He nodded.

  “You’re tired,” Mary added. “Come to bed.”

  “Not yet.” There was no sleep in him.

  “Please.” She came over and took his hand.

  Gently, he disengaged. “I can’t rest just now. Or…anything else. I need to think.” Tears pooled in Mary’s eyes. John rose and embraced her. “Don’t cry. We’ll get through this. I’ll take care of you.”

  “You don’t have to take… I want to help you!”

  “I think you’ve done enough.” He regretted the words as soon as they escaped him. Mary winced as if from a blow. “I’m sorry,” John added quickly. “Go and sleep.”

  “Won’t you come…?”

  He had to refuse. He was full of tension and afraid other harsh words might pop out. He couldn’t take this mood to her bedchamber. “Things will look better in the morning,” he told her.

  * * *

  The old adage was bunk, Mary thought the next day. Things did not look better, not in the least. She still felt as if something dear to her had died. No, she had killed it. Her insistence on drawing had brought a load of trouble down on her husband.

  Mary paced the front parlor, hands clenching and opening in distress. Her mother had been right after all; she should have resisted indulging in her peculiar talent and kept it hidden. Here was what came of revealing yourself. If she hadn’t let Eleanor see her drawings, then Caroline couldn’t have pushed her forward. And that wretched man Fordyce couldn’t have taken advantage of the opportunity to embarrass her. And everything would still be all right.

  John had gone off to his office, as usual. She could imagine the unpleasantness he’d face there. How many of his colleagues had been at the party? And how many more would be listening, agog, to the story of what had transpired? Imagining John’s exposure made her stomach twist with regret. If only there was something she could do.

  Unable to be still, Mary went upstairs. But she found no comfort in her studio retreat. She would not be sitting at her easel today. Back out on the landing, she noticed Arthur Windly through the open door of John’s study. To her surprise, he was placing a sheet of paper on the desk. “What are you doing?” Moving into the room, she saw that the page held a sketch, some sort of diagram. “What is this?”

  “It’s a steam engine,” the boy replied. “How it works, like.”

  “How it works?” Mary picked up the page and examined it. “I don’t understand.”

  Arthur pointed at a double square in the top corner. “That’s meant to be the boiler, see, with the firebox underneath.” His voice gathered enthusiasm as he spoke. “Once the water in the boiler heats enough, the steam goes up this pipe and drives a piston, right there.” He pointed to a cylindrical shape. “That turns a shaft. Or runs a belt. You can power just about whatever you like that way.”

  “I see.” And she did. “You explained that very clearly.”

  Arthur merely nodded. He looked glum.

  “How did you learn all this?” Mary wondered.

  “I heard a man talk at the Parish Hall. There was a fella visited back home, too. He’d seen the powered looms up north.”

  This was a whole new side of Arthur. “So you’ve always been interested in engines?”

  Head down, he shrugged. “Dad says they’re ‘the bane of the working man.’ Taking their jobs away, you know.”

  Must Arthur’s father belittle everything about his son? Mary wondered.

  “I thought I’d show Mr. Bexley, in case he’d like…” The boy broke off with a sigh. “It’s not an adventure. I couldn’t think of a good adventure.”

  “Adventure?”

  “He said I should have adventures. But it ain’t that easy to come upon a fire to put out or somebody to…rescue, like. I was thinking…inventions could be a kind of adventure. Don’t you think? Perhaps? I wanted to ask him.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be very interested.” Remembering her husband’s glum mood last night, Mary added, “He is rather busy just now.”

  “He’s always busy,” said Arthur, as if he was all too familiar with that excuse. “And I’m stuck in the kitchen, with Kate and Mrs. Tanner arguing over the stove. It’s gotten to be a proper donnybrook down there.”

  A spark of real interest penetrated Mary’s gloom. “Kate is making concoctions?”

  Arthur nodded. “She’s got a vast deal of bottles and such, but she says she needs more. They were all over the table. Mrs. Tanner came near to smashing the lot yesterday, so Kate put some of ’em in her room.”

  Mary hadn’t foreseen such friction when she introduced the maid to Jeremiah Jenkins. Here was something else she’d gotten wrong. She ought to go downstairs and speak to her staff, she supposed. But she didn’t want to.

  Then she realized that there was one person she might ask for advice. Fetching a cloak, Mary walked across the square to Eleanor’s house. She was admitted at once and ushered into her neighbor’s private parlor. Eleano
r turned from her easel and smiled. “You’re out early. How was the reception?”

  “You haven’t talked to Caroline?”

  “She’s still in bed. What’s wrong?”

  Sinking into an armchair, Mary poured out the story. The old woman’s face grew more and more concerned as she talked. “Sad and anxious,” she murmured when Mary was done. “I wonder what weighs so heavily on Emily?”

  Mary was briefly abashed. She hadn’t considered Lady Castlereagh’s state of mind and what might be troubling her. But after all, how could she be of help? She wasn’t really acquainted with her.

  “Well, there will clearly be a storm of gossip,” Eleanor added.

  “I suppose I can be thankful that we won’t hear it, since we don’t move in those ‘exalted’ circles.” And never would, Mary thought.

  “My family will complain about Caroline’s part in it.”

  Another factor Mary hadn’t considered. Social calamity apparently made one quite self-centered and sarcastic and just generally despicable. She rose from her chair. “I’m sorry. I mustn’t drag you any further into…”

  “Nonsense,” said Eleanor. “I was just thinking aloud. Sit down.”

  She did. Eleanor gazed out the window, lost in thought.

  Mary stayed quiet as long as she could, then words burst out of her again. “I must find a way to help John.”

  “It will be very hard for him,” her neighbor acknowledged. “Men can be far worse gossips than women, no matter what people say.”

  “I want to do something,” Mary exclaimed. “What can I do?”

  “You may leave everything to me,” declared Caroline from the doorway. She strode into the room like a Valkyrie. Her green eyes sparkled with defiance. “I shall go and see Lady Castlereagh this morning and explain how…”

  “No!” said her grandmother and Mary at the same moment.

  Caroline put her hands on her hips and glared at them.

  “It’s just…” Mary didn’t want to offend her, but she thought it only too likely that Caroline would make things worse rather than better.

  “A young lady with a reputation for playing pranks, who had a clear hand in last night’s events, is not the ideal emissary,” said Eleanor.

  Caroline looked stricken. “No one could think that I meant this to happen.”

  “People may think whatever they like,” responded her grandmother. “But after the ferret, and the brandy in the schoolroom tea, and the ‘ghost’ in the spinney…”

  Caroline sank onto the sofa next to her and took the old woman’s hand. “I would never set out to hurt someone—anyone—with my pranks. Particularly not Mary and her husband. You must believe that, Grandmamma!”

  “I do.” Eleanor squeezed her hand and let it go. “But then I know you very well and love you very much.”

  Caroline slumped onto the cushions. “I caused this tangle. I should fix it.”

  “From what Mary has told me, you were not the sole cause.”

  “Edmund Fordyce.” Caroline wrinkled her nose in disgust. “The toad. And I used to think he was rather witty. But whyever did he…?”

  “He and John do not get on,” interrupted Mary. It hardly mattered now why. “What can be done?” she asked Eleanor. “I will do anything, grovel and beg if need be.”

  Eleanor rose. “I shall go and talk to Emily. We are of different generations, but we are friends of a sort.”

  Mary clasped her hands tight in her lap. “Could you tell her…that I’m sorry…that I never meant to cause her any pain. That I just… Oh, she will never understand what happens when I draw.”

  “What does happen?” asked Caroline. “I mean, I did wonder why you made her so…”

  “Mary learns and, in a way, ‘speaks’ with her hands,” replied Eleanor, reaching for the bellpull.

  Mary’s mouth fell open in surprise. She stared at her hostess.

  “It’s simply a different way of dealing with information.”

  “How did you know…?” Mary couldn’t find words to convey her amazement.

  Eleanor smiled at her. “It happens to me, just a bit, also. Enough so that I can recognize and admire it.”

  “Admire!”

  “Your hands? How can they?” Caroline looked brightly curious. There was no censure in her gaze.

  Mary ventured an explanation. “When I begin to draw…they somehow know what to do without my thinking about it. They draw what…I might not be able to understand…otherwise.”

  “Really?” Caroline gazed at Mary’s hands. “How interesting.”

  The butler came in answer to Eleanor’s ring. “I need the carriage, Jenson,” she said.

  “It’s quite cold and blustery outside, my lady.” It wasn’t quite an objection, but there was a hint of reproach in his tone.

  Eleanor gave him a stern look. “The carriage. Immediately.”

  He surrendered with a bow. “Yes, my lady.”

  Caroline begged Mary to stay and await the result with her, and so the two young women tried to occupy themselves for an endless hour. Caroline asked further questions about the drawing process. In the face of her uncritical interest, Mary talked about portraits she’d done and the ways they’d helped her. After a while Mary began to hope that she could explain what had happened at the party to John as well.

  When the sound of carriage wheels finally came outside, they leaped up and met their hostess at the front door.

  But Eleanor shook her head as the servants took her hat and gloves and cloak. “Emily has gone down to the country for two weeks,” she said.

  They walked back into the parlor, closing the door on curious eyes.

  “As far as I could discover, her departure had been planned for some time,” Eleanor continued. “Hunting season, you know. There will be parties invited to Waletts for sport.”

  Mary sank into a chair, shaky from the release of tension as much as disappointment.

  “I was thinking on the way back that this may be just as well,” said Eleanor. “Over that time, the talk will decrease. We can consider what…”

  “So we do nothing!” exclaimed Caroline.

  “To think and plan is not nothing,” was her grandmother’s mild reply.

  Caroline paced the room, her skirts swirling around her. “It feels like it.”

  It did, Mary thought. She longed to put everything back the way it had been yesterday, when they’d been anticipating the party with such high hopes.

  “Scandal fades away,” said Eleanor. “Emotions cool. It will be far better to speak to Emily when she is…”

  “Not furious with me,” finished Mary.

  The silence in the room confirmed her judgment.

  Mary rose. “Thank you for trying to help,” she said to Eleanor. She nodded to Caroline to show that she included her in this, despite a niggling wish that Caroline had stayed silent at the reception. “I must go home.” She moved to the door. Caroline started after her, but Eleanor seemed to sense Mary’s need to escape and called her granddaughter back.

  Mary found several of the dowager countess’s servants in the entry. As she waited for her cloak to be fetched, the lady’s maid sidled up to her. “Quite a brisk wind today,” the woman said. “There’s talk of snow by morning.”

  Mary nodded.

  “If there was anything you could do to discourage her ladyship from going out in the cold…”

  Another thing to regret, Mary thought. There was no end to them just now.

  “Her family is always urging her to visit in the winter, when town is so grim and empty,” the maid confided.

  Empty of the haut ton, Mary thought. Yet thousands of people remained in London going about their lives as usual.

  “Her son the earl would be glad to have her,” the maid continued. “Or Lady Frist, her younger daughter,
you know. Not Lady Caroline’s family perhaps…”

  “Her ladyship makes up her own mind, Jenson,” was all she could find to say as she gratefully pulled on her gloves and cloak.

  * * *

  All through the afternoon, John felt like a zoo animal. So many of his coworkers made an excuse to pass by their office and peer inside. Conolly kept them out, for the most part, but John could feel the news of last night spreading through the building like an acrid fog. John was more than ever grateful that fate had made William Conolly the other inhabitant of this small room. The man knew when conversation was unwelcome.

  John buried himself in his work. And there he found some salvation. The tasks were familiar, and he knew he did them well. The pile of intelligence reports awaiting his scrutiny both challenged and reassured him. Exercising his faculties in analysis restored his spirits and renewed his determination. He would find a way through this. He would keep his head down, do his job, and endure. Tomorrow would be better, and the day after more so, as the talk subsided.

  Still, he was relieved when the day ended and he could head for home. Riding through the darkening streets, he bowed to a raw wind that found all the crevices in his scarf and coat. Small, sharp snowflakes raked his bare face like tiny knives. It was wonderful to reach the house and be welcomed by warmth and golden candlelight. His house felt like a sanctuary, far from Fordyce, rumors of war, and the slums where so many wretches shivered this night.

  He gave Kate his things and headed for the fire, holding chilled hands over the flames. Mary came to stand beside him. “John, I would like to explain about the drawing,” she said. “How it happened…”

  “Please.” His hand came up, unthinking. He was sick of the whole subject. “Going over and over the thing will do no good.” He smiled at her. “Let us talk of something else tonight.”

  “But you don’t understand!” She reached out a hand, looking agitated.