by Jaima Fixsen
“You are too quick in your assumptions. Especially in regards to me.” It stung because he knew it was true. He owed her an apology.
“I’m sorry, Mary—Miss Buchanan.”
She studied him, weighing his words. “Perhaps we’re even. If you really have lost a year of your life.”
He smiled. “Oh, I think it’s at least that. Six or seven, I expect.” Her eyes flickered back to him. He must explain, but this time there wasn’t any humour to ease his words along. They were rough-hewn and cumbersome. “I wouldn’t like anything to harm you.”
“Yes, but you think you should decide what does.” She swallowed. “You’re always rude to me. And unkind. And you don’t even know me.”
He thought he saw a gloss film over her eyes. “Samuel, again?” He said it gently, but her face closed and she stepped off the stool. Neil followed her to the hearthrug, leaving the book on the rigidly-ordered desk.
It was true he’d mishandled her. He’d been so worried about Samuel he hadn’t given a thought to her feelings, other than trying to wound them. It had seemed the best way to ward her off, but it hadn’t worked. Only the truth would do. He studied her profile in the firelight, deciding how to explain.
“I know him. Better than anyone else. And though you are pretty enough to please the most exacting man, clever as a wagonload of monkeys and almost as much trouble, he’s not in love with you.” She had to understand. “Samuel likes your drawings, but he’ll never care for the rest of you.” How could he, when he had never cared enough for Elspeth? “I see you setting yourself at him, and—”
“That’s quite enough.” Her chin was down, her shoulders curled in, and since she was a head shorter, he couldn’t get a good look at her. But it was easy to see he’d gone about it wrong.
“Someday there will be a man who wants nothing more than to pilot by your star. But it won’t be Samuel.”
The fingers wrapped around her arms tightened. “You can’t know that. No one can.”
“No, but I—”
“You think he’s still in love with his wife. Or that he should be.”
Neil shook his head, but she couldn’t be stopped.
“You loved her too. I can tell. But it’s a sin to covet another man’s wife, even a dead one.”
He froze. “I’m not—”
“Maybe he will always love her more than me. I won’t mind. I don’t care about—about physical passion. I love his ideals and intelligence, and if he respects mine—”
“If you think desire isn’t important, you’re seven kinds of a fool. Understanding gutter words and anatomy texts doesn’t make you any less ignorant. I was never in love with Elspeth.” Neil passed a hand over his eyes. “I loved her, though. She was my sister.”
She said nothing for so long he thought of escaping out the garden door, but the instant he moved she spoke. “You and Samuel are brothers-in-law?”
“We were friends first. I think he must have married her as a favour to me, for he certainly felt no passion for her. That was on her side.” His next words were brutal, but necessary. “That’s how you remind me of her. He blames himself for her death, you know, which is foolish of him. No one could have foreseen that.”
Her throat worked. “You don’t blame him.” He didn’t think that was the question she’d meant to ask, but he answered nonetheless. It was as good as any.
“No, I don’t. But she wasn’t as happy as she should have been, and he is responsible for that.” The fire wanted tending, but it was no job for him. He shouldn’t have come inside. “I was concerned for you, but shouldn’t have meddled. I’m sorry for that. You are quite free to drive yourself off any cliff of your choosing.” He just didn’t want to watch.
Neil bowed and propelled himself into the blackness beyond the garden door, desperate to escape, his pulse thudding in his throat.
“You have a strange way of showing concern,” she snapped after him.
Impossible to explain. He couldn’t even to himself. When he returned to number thirteen, Samuel was waiting for him.
Twenty
Her revenge had worked marvellously, except for the last part. Mary wasn’t sure what to make of Neil’s confession. For an hour or so she shunted thoughts of it aside, reliving his discomfiture and the sense of power she’d felt but couldn’t quite explain. She’d had him quivering with fury, and understood the attraction now of baiting a wolf. Just when she thought she’d mastered him, he shed his skin, revealing naked hurts that only proved there was so much more she didn’t know.
It was worse somehow, that Elspeth Brown had been his sister, not merely his best friend’s wife. The claims of a brother, especially one who looked as pained as he, could not be easily dismissed. Neil Murray might be a grumbling malcontent without looks or charm—all right, she’d hummed with a certain expectant thrill when he’d pursued her into the shadowed library—yet she could almost forgive him that when he felt so much for his lost sister. Grief shouldn’t excuse his interference, but Mary couldn’t rouse her former animosity. Without it she felt strangely low.
When she settled down to sketch a drawing for Samuel the following afternoon, she discarded half a dozen stunted sketches, ended with nothing, and sought inspiration at Mrs. Chin’s. She spent a half hour there in pleasant conversation, but conceived no brilliant ideas, and when she remembered Neil Murray might call there himself, she left in a hurry. She didn’t want to see him, at least not until she’d had time to unravel her tangled thoughts. Neil’s story was profoundly different than the one she had imagined for Elspeth Murray Brown.
Mary didn’t know how she died, or why Samuel and Neil disagreed over the blame for it, but it bore thinking on. The trouble was, when she imagined a preoccupied husband and a disappointed, lonely wife, the roles didn’t settle so much on Samuel and his Elspeth. The costumes fit her parents like they were made to measure, which was unsettling and uncomfortable. Mary didn’t like to think about her mother, and had certainly never intended to compare her to Mr. Murray’s description of his sister.
Long ago, when she was younger, Mary concluded Papa’s aloofness sprang from a broken heart, that his daughter was a painful reminder of the wife he’d loved and lost. It was a comforting explanation, even though no one suggested it to her. She’d embroidered quite a lovely picture around it: her beautiful, blonde Mama taken in childbirth, which circumstance made her bereaved Papa pursue his profession even more single-mindedly. Of course, Mama might not have died at her birth or been blonde. Mary didn’t know the particulars, never having seen a likeness of her. But it made sense, explaining a neglect that would have pained her more had she not sufficient reason for it. Naturally, if she were a boy, Papa would be more interested.
But without any proof, Mary realized what she’d accepted as truth was only a story. Her mother hadn’t left any trace, unlike the evidence of Elspeth Murray Brown: the paintings in Samuel’s house, the guilt that submerged him in his work, the bitter blundering of Neil as he fought to preserve her place and shield the husband she had loved. Elspeth’s mark on the people who had known her was plain, but Mary’s mother was less than a ghost. The only evidence left of her was Mary herself—not enough for anyone who had been truly loved, which led Mary to the throat-thickening questions. Had Mama been loved? Was she?
The more she thought on it, the sicker she felt. When Aunt Yates turned waspish in the afternoon with a headache, Mary snapped at her to fetch her own powders. For a moment Aunt’s eyes went wide with wonder as if Mary had grown a foot before her eyes, then she blinked, pursed her lips, and said: “I don’t hold with mooning about. You aren’t reading or drawing or doing anything useful. You might as well help Cook in the kitchen.”
Stunned by the mildness of the rebuke, Mary went. It was a relief to set aside her inks and the turmoil that felt curiously like heartache. Downstairs in the peaceful kingdom of glowing stove and flagstone floors, Cook was peeling apples, uncurling long spirals of flecked crimson and green. The air w
as warm, sharp with the smells of fruit and cinnamon.
“Sent down again, are you?” Cook nodded at a bowl on the table. “You can roll out that pastry.”
It must be nice to be a cook, Mary thought, flattening the lump of dough. When your thoughts were in a disorder, you could always roll out a pie.
“What’s on your mind?” Cook passed Mary a slice of apple.
“This and that,” Mary said as she chewed.
Cook slid the cut apples into the empty bowl. “Tart ones, these. Need extra sugar.” She went on, like it was part of the same thought. “It’s lonely for you, I know.”
Mary glanced at her sideways.
“It won’t always be so.”
“It might be,” Mary said. Cook was good to comfort her, but—
“You’ve a good heart, miss. I know you had eyes for that footman of Annie’s, but never once has an unkind word come out of you. Keeping her secrets, carrying her letters—”
“You don’t mind?” Mary asked, startled into interrupting.
“Couple of years ago, maybe. You’re old enough now to know what you’re about. Besides, I like Benjamin Pickett and our Annie.”
Mary smiled, dropping her voice to a confidential whisper. “Do you think they will marry?”
“Take a good number of years before they can afford to. But yes, I do. Won’t be easy, and you understand that. Not every young miss would. It’s good of you to befriend her when you could choose to be jealous.” She pinched Mary in the arm. “So trust what I say and don’t fret. I know your breed, and they don’t grow into spinsters.”
Mary laughed. “You sound very sure.”
“Course I am. One of these days some young man will notice just how fine you are—go on, laugh if you wish, but it will happen. It might not be easy just now, but you’ll find your legs. Or your wings.” She passed Mary another slice of apple. “Sweet enough?”
Mary gave her verdict: the apples tasted fine. That was easy to tell, less certain was her belief that Cook’s words concerning her would prove true. She stayed for the assembly of the pie and a cup of tea, smiling now, but with troubles still upon her, flea-bite worries impossible not to scratch. Not long ago, her biggest worry had been whether or not Samuel Brown would fall in love with her. It seemed silly now, when she doubted she’d ever had any love at all. Cook and Annie were fond of her; Mrs. Chin steadfastly kind; no doubt Samuel and even Neil felt some concern for her. It wasn’t nothing, but it didn’t seem nearly enough.
Neil decided he’d been too harsh with Mary when two days later he still couldn’t banish the picture of her stricken face from his mind. She was young, and ever since their first meeting he’d been ready to dislike her. It was true, undoubtedly, that she’d make a bad wife for Samuel, but she was right in one respect: he was meddling too much. And there was no immediate danger of Samuel marrying her. Not during an election, at least.
He’d been unkind though, and should try to apologize. He planned out speeches and conciliatory gestures, but all for nothing. He didn’t see her. Like the northern hares, she’d changed colour and disappeared. She didn’t linger by her windows or tarry in the garden or surprise him when he called on Mrs. Chin. Neil called every week all through the month of June, even though Mrs. Chin didn’t believe his assertions that nothing was troubling him. It was no good. Miss Buchanan was excellent at avoiding him. She might have flown the country, except for the evidence of her drawings, twice weekly in the empty birdhouse, and later in the Times.
“You don’t ever see her?” Neil finally asked Samuel.
“Don’t think I have lately. But she’s wonderfully prompt reviewing my notes, and she made some changes to the last drawing I suggested. I trust you’ve had no difficulty handling her funds?”
Neil hadn’t, but he left a note for her the following week, asking if she’d care to withdraw from her growing hoard. He got a polite reply asking for another five pounds and to please leave it in their makeshift mailbox.
She wrote a jubilant note to Samuel when the Whigs won the election and a mandate for electoral reform. Samuel wrote back in kind, miraculously clear-headed after a long night celebrating. Neil felt curiously hollow. She and Samuel shared something; he was an adjunct on the periphery. In July the Bill passed the House of Commons with a majority of a hundred and thirty-six and went to Committee. There were parades in beautiful weather, but all he saw of Mary was her drawings in the papers. He told himself they weren’t friends—she was in love with Samuel, for goodness’ sake. No reason he should miss her.
London’s new bridge opened in August in the presence of the king and queen. When the pavilion was taken down, the evidence of the celebratory banquet gone, and Neil recovered from his three bottles of wine (consumed not at the banquet but afterwards with Rennie and the foreman), he wrote his friend in France.
“Weren’t you going to France to work on that railway?” Samuel asked him on the second of September when he remembered that Neil had planned to be gone from London by now.
“I told Rennie I’d stay for the demolition of the old bridge,” Neil told him.
It was dull work, but just as dangerous as building. Perhaps even more since men tended to get careless. A second man fell and drowned in a single week. Neil always hated it when they had to pass a hat around to collect for some man’s widow. It was so pitifully inadequate. He felt shiftless, but without the inertia to leave. As the squabbling politicians once again veered towards a stalemate, he watched Samuel and worried about Mary. He’d given her reason enough to resent him and could see no way to make amends.
Twenty-One
Papa’s lectures kept him at the hospital and political worries drove him to his club where he could nod agreement with other angry men, sip scotch, and polish the buttons of his waistcoat—they ought to send all reformers to Bedlam, and be done with it!
Mary hadn’t seen him at the supper table in weeks. It was a problem because she had decided it was time to ask. She was almost nineteen, smarter than the girl she'd been a year ago when Samuel took the house next door. She was old enough now to know the truth about her mother. If her death pained her father, well, it would relieve Mary to know her first hypothesis was true. She would forgive Papa for not loving her if he had cared for her dead mother. If not…well, in either case, she must know. Twice Mary brought herself to the point of asking at breakfast, only to quail before an inauspicious menu, thwarted by dishes of fried eggs.
But Papa was home this evening, and they were to eat roast chicken. Mary listened to him splashing at the washstand in his dressing room. No more shrinking; she must ask him tonight.
Hiding her latest sketch behind her skirts (she was only moderately pleased with it, but it would have to do), Mary hurried downstairs. It was almost time. A quick peek out the library windows showed the gardens empty except for Mrs. Chin, who was dividing her perennials. Ben wore a smock and carried a trowel, but she tended the flowers herself and kept him busy with the book in his other hand, doubtless calling on him to entertain her with another soliloquy. He’s getting very good, Mary thought, as she darted to the birdhouse. Mrs. Chin spotted her and was gracious enough not to smirk. Mary knew what it must look like, but the embarrassing part was that no matter how she wished it, nothing lover-like was ever left in the box for her. She lifted the roof and instead of a lock of a hair or a letter, found Samuel’s notes, folded and sealed with a black blot of wax. The packet was too thick for her bodice; she’d have to stow it in the top of her stockings once she was inside. She left her drawing and marked the birdhouse roof with a piece of chalk so Samuel would know it was ready.
The packet of notes hidden, her hair and skirts smoothed, Mary ventured into the dining room. Her face was calm, but her hands damp when she clasped them beneath her bowed head and Aunt Yates said grace. It must have been Papa’s presence, for she was longer about it than usual, beseeching God to protect them from cholera and the mistaken whims of Lord Grey’s cabinet. When at last they came to the
amens, Papa lifted off the covers. Mary’s heart nearly failed her.
What had become of the chicken? This was roast duck, and the soup was even worse. Papa despised shellfish.
Just ask. If she waited for a meal that pleased him, it might take a full year.
“I didn’t hear you on the pianoforte this afternoon,” Aunt Yates said before Mary could speak.
“No. I didn’t play.” Mary reached for the salt.
“What were you doing?” Aunt Yates asked.
“This and that.” The questions hovered in her throat, but Mary couldn’t launch them. She stirred her soup.
Aunt Yates swallowed a spoonful. “Did you get that floss untangled for me?”
Too late, Mary remembered she’d been asked to tidy Aunt’s embroidery basket. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“Idling again, Mary?” her father asked.
She smiled, striving for a heartiness she was far from feeling. “You weren’t. I’ve scarcely seen you these last weeks. Is it ’flu?”
He shook his head and explained it only the start of the season for it, which Mary knew. There was no way to guide her father to the subject. Mary swallowed a tasteless bite. Might as well just ask. “What killed my mother?”
Papa’s knife slewed across his plate and Aunt Yates curled over in a fit of coughing. It wasn’t the question she’d planned to lead with, but it was too late to call it back.
“She always had trouble with headaches, didn’t she?” Aunt Yates said, recovering.
“It was something to do with them,” Papa said. “Some kind of apoplexy.” It was a very imprecise explanation for a man of his medical credentials. He filled his mouth with a piece of roast goose and chewed.
Mary waited, but he offered nothing more. “What did she look like?”
“About your size or a little smaller,” her father said.