by Jaima Fixsen
Twenty-Three
Neil heard nothing from Mary other than a note saying she didn’t wish to withdraw any more funds. He worried for her, especially since, months ago, Samuel said he’d overheard a spectacular quarrel coming from number fourteen. Samuel told him not to worry. She would have written if she was in trouble and as her cartoons were arriving punctually, everything must be fine. Autumn blew away on the gusts of winter with still no word. When Neil returned from a Christmas visit to Edinburgh, he thought it might be time to wait beside the letterbox, but camping outside in chilly January was different than sitting in an armchair in Samuel’s front hall.
He must have said a dozen times he didn’t approve of assignations, but finally he was forced to leave her a note. He wasn’t sure what to expect—there was every likelihood she would refuse—but her offer to meet him on New London Bridge surprised him.
He waited on the north end on the appointed afternoon, his muffler up to his nose, wishing he’d worn warmer gloves.
“Hello, Mr. Murray.” She came up beside him wearing a mulberry coat, dark bonnet, and a blue scarf that was supposed to make her stand out. Unnecessary. He’d winnowed her out of the crowd a hundred yards back.
“Miss Buchanan.” It seemed excessively formal and he couldn’t remember when he’d begun to think of her as simply Mary. “It’s a long way to come in this cold. Why choose this place?”
“I wanted to ask if you are proud of it.” The question surprised him since he was the focus of it. He couldn’t recall her being curious about him before. It wasn’t the only change he saw either. Self-possession clung to her, fitting as finely as the thick grey coat. It unsettled him, but the newfound poise—and the coat—looked well on her.
“I am.” The bridge did look fine today dusted with snow, but he’d rather look at Mary. And the snowflake caught on her left eyelash, slowly turning from crystalline white to a translucent tear.
“It’s also pleasant to get away from the house.”
Neil gauged the tightness around her mouth. This was new, too. “Troubles?” The possibility worried him. “Samuel said there’d been a quarrel.”
“That was months ago.” She blinked and the drop on her eyelash was gone.
“But I haven’t seen you, so I had no chance to ask.”
Mary sighed and thrust her hands deeper into her muff. “It’s as it always was, but it’s good of you to care.”
Neil glanced at the ground and moved one foot away from a slushy puddle. “I’m sorry things aren’t happier.” He felt foolish for making her come all this way to say only that.
She shrugged and started walking so he fell in alongside, keeping between her and the passing carriages. “I like your bridge,” she told him. “And seeing you on it. I imagine walking this bridge must feel different to you than others.”
“When I think about it.” It was true he had a lot of memories: days when things had gone well, and other times when the work and the drawings didn’t match and they had to work backwards to fix the mistake. Finishing a bridge was the grand part, but it didn’t come easy. “Lately my thoughts are with the old one.” He motioned up the river where the last remnants of the old bridge stood, broken and sad. “I know it can’t stay, and that this is a fine one, but I can’t help feeling bad for the first set of builders. Their work was good too.”
“Needs must,” Mary told him.
“They probably said that as they carted away the stones of the Colosseum,” Neil grumbled. The old bridge was nearly gone. After that, there was little to keep him in London. His time was limited; he must stop boring her with this kind of talk.
“Samuel might not have told you…” she began.
“Yes?” Neil looked up.
“He mentioned—well, he told me the circumstances of your sister’s death. I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you. I do miss her.”
“I can tell by the way you speak of her. She was lucky to have a brother like you.”
This was easier. Neil grinned. “That’s what I always told her. She didn’t seem convinced. Brothers can be a trial, you know.”
“I wouldn’t have minded one,” Mary said.
“I’ll tell that to my niece when she complains.”
Mary then wished to know how old his niece was and where she lived, and then the age of his niece’s brother. As Neil was blessed with a multitude of family statistics, there was no shortage of conversation; a fortunate circumstance, for with young ladies, Neil usually felt a lack. Of course, Mary wasn’t the usual sort. They walked to the middle of the bridge, then back, until Neil found a hackney to take them to Wimpole Street. Mary argued she was warm enough to walk, but Neil disagreed, judging by the redness of her nose. He dropped her off at the corner in better spirits than he’d found her and drove home, smiling. She was everything he’d worried about: an unpredictable mix of deviousness, determination, and straightforward honesty. She was much too fine to look upon for any man’s peace of mind. But he liked her.
It felt good to set things right with Mr. Murray, but after their meeting Mary’s work suffered. The thing she’d feared had finally come to pass: she was absolutely, entirely out of ideas, unable to wring out anything even halfway good. Samuel’s notes, though copious and detailed, hadn’t sparked any worthwhile designs, and she kept losing focus when she read them, her thoughts wandering to Scotland and the large, cheerfully squabbling family of Neil Murray. She wanted to paint herself onto the wallpaper just so she could watch his gap-toothed niece torment his sturdy, studious nephew (who apparently couldn’t run without knocking over something and took all the prizes at school). Neil had a bossy older sister, and even though he’d lost his beloved younger one, he’d had her for a while. She only had Aunt with her embryonic poems and novels, growing in fits and starts, and as ugly as the specimens Papa kept for his anatomy lectures.
Aunt Yates, who imagined Mary had taken an interest in her own pursuits, thought Mary was writing a novel too. It made a convenient excuse, so Mary didn’t bother explaining that not everyone suffered from literary compulsions. Unfortunately, even though respect for Mary’s imaginary novel mostly kept Aunt Yates out of the library, it didn’t keep her quiet. It was impossible to work with Aunt in the next room, priming herself for writing by reading poetry aloud. Not her own just now, thank heavens, but this one was almost as dreary. “The stream will cease to flow; the wind will cease to blow.” She paused to count the syllables.
Mary compressed her lips. Tomorrow, if it looked like poetry was in the offing, she’d work outside, even if her fingers froze.
She heard a noise and a moment later Aunt Yates came into the library for a book. She stopped in the middle of the room to bring a lace handkerchief with ostentatious trembling to her cheek. It was her latest method of eliciting guilt. Mary pretended not to notice.
Aunt Yates gave up and sighed. “All things must die. Spring will come never more. O, vanity!”
Suppressing a sigh of impatience, Mary laid down her pen. She might as well go out.
“You aren’t leaving,” Aunt Yates said, her eyes going wide.
“No, just going upstairs,” Mary told her.
“What about this quarter’s inventory? I can’t do it all myself.”
Mary struggled to be diplomatic. “I can’t do it today. You might ask me in advance next time.” She climbed the stairs, calculating the months until she would have enough money saved to leave Wimpole Street and find lodgings in a simple part of town. Something modest and affordable. Annie had told her how to go about it. Two more years, three if she were unlucky. It wasn’t so very long, but next week Aunt would probably want to beat the carpets again, which might just drive Annie to open rebellion, and Mary didn’t want that. She had no problem refusing Aunt Yates or Papa, but Annie and Cook couldn’t.
Mary re-opened her sketchbook and frowned at her last attempt. It deserved nothing more than obliteration with heavy cross-hatches. When this was done, she turned the page and sketched
out a table of fat Tory politicians quarrelling over slicing a pie. A neglected orphan languished outside their window, a lone crust in his begging bowl. It wasn’t her best, but was good enough, the grossly exaggerated faces of the politicians making up for the lacklustre idea. Before she could think better of it and return to a blank page again, she finished the drawing and rolled it up. Someone was tramping up and down the stairs, and since it couldn’t be Aunt Yates or Papa, Mary guessed it was Annie, pressed into service of the household inventory. Mary frowned. Hostage taking wasn’t fair.
She went into Aunt Yates’s bedroom, tore out the pages from a ledger two years old and left them on the stairway for Annie. The numbers would match, and even if they didn’t, it was unlikely Aunt Yates would bother sniffing about to check. Eager to rid herself of the drawing and escape inventories and poetry, Mary slipped into the garden and left the rolled sheet of paper in the birdhouse. She left the garden in a hurry, hoping a visit with Mrs. Chin would set her thoughts in order again. She didn’t notice Aunt Yates watching from the parlour.
Mary returned an hour later full of seed cake. The second slice had been a mistake. A creamy corner of paper stuck out from the birdhouse door. Samuel’s latest notes. Her rolled up drawing was gone. Mary pocketed the notes as she passed and went into the library.
Like a gargoyle come to life, her father emerged from a shadowy corner. “Why is Mr. Brown leaving notes for you?”
Mary flinched from his outstretched hand. Aunt Yates, hands clasped and the picture of righteous rectitude, sat on the wing chair. “Why are you exchanging letters with that man?” she demanded tearfully.
Papa folded his arms. “You must tell us what this means, Mary.”
She’d expected hysterics and fury if they ever found her out, not soft weeping and glacial gravity. Aunt Yates’s lap held two sodden handkerchiefs and Papa looked ten years older.
Admit nothing. They already think they know. Punishment could be endured, but she must not lose her work. It was her life, and eventually, her freedom. Safer to let them think it was only a romance.
“I won’t tell you,” Mary said.
Without warning, Papa reached again for the packet of paper. Mary stepped away, but there was no escape. Aunt leapt from her chair, blocking the door, and Papa loomed closer. “Please, Mary. You must—” She had just one chance. Mary took it, hurling Samuel’s letter into the fire. Papa strained after it, but Mary seized his arm, slowing him for the instant it took for the folded sheets to expire in brilliant glory.
“No! You won’t have them.”
“Mary!” he bellowed, turning on her.
“I won’t let you!” she cried, falling back.
He towered over her, dark and menacing in the fitful light of cavorting shadow and flame. Despite his age, he was strong—forceful enough to cut and suture and restrain when surgical orderlies struggled to hold patients down. He was used to pain and screaming and wouldn’t be swayed by it.
“It’s just letters,” Mary said in a dying whisper.
“I’ll have the truth from him. You may be certain of that.” He jerked his head to his sister, ordering her in a flat voice to see if John was ready with the coach. His fingers closed round her arm, but he didn’t notice her protests as he marched her into the hall. Annie stood there with three corded trunks, waiting. Her face was blank and obedient.
“Where am I going?” Mary hissed at her. Annie was rigid with fright, and the flicker of her eyelashes told nothing. Pinpricks of sweat burst on Mary’s forehead. She had no money on her and only a little upstairs. If they hurled her into the street, she’d have to beg help from Samuel or Mr. Murray, but one of them would take her to the bank. She could—
“I’m taking you away,” her father said.
Aunt Yates kneaded her handkerchief, her eyes brimming with tears—real ones. It surprised Mary enough she couldn’t immediately assimilate her father’s next words. “You’re going to Bath.”
The answer didn’t fit her gothic imaginings, but the firm grip on her arm did nothing to dispel them either.
“I can’t leave now,” Mary said, pulling desperately.
“You will.” Papa propelled her into the coach, surprising her by climbing in behind her. “You must.”
All the long way out of London, he kept his grip on her arm.
Twenty-Four
Neil returned to his lodgings after a long day clearing the last remnants of the bridge. He discovered Samuel in the sitting room, anxiously puffing on his pipe.
“I’m worried,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing from Mary.”
“I saw her just a few days ago. She said she’s fine. There have been delays before,” Neil said. Caution and the fear of discovery sometimes constrained her, but not nearly often enough.
Samuel shook his head. “Not like this. I haven’t seen her. Haven’t seen any of them, and that father of hers is as regular as the tide. She got my latest article, but normally she’s sent me a preliminary sketch by now.”
“What did Barnes say?”
Samuel shrugged. “Called down hail and blight upon me, a curse on my cattle and a pox on me and my children. He gets carried away.”
Neil smiled. “I can see why you are anxious to hear from her.” He poured out drinks and sank into the second-best chair, but neither of them could settle. The battered cushions stitched by Neil’s oldest sister didn’t offer their usual comfort, and the dinner offered by his landlady, though of excellent quality, didn’t tempt either of them. “Let’s go round to your house and have a look,” Neil said.
They took a hackney to Wimpole Street, saying little.
“See anything?” Samuel asked, as they stood on the pavement and stared up at Dr. Buchanan’s windows. Only the kitchen was lit.
“Let’s go round to the back,” Neil suggested.
They sat in the garden for an hour, but saw nothing in the windows of number fourteen. Neil was about to suggest they go inside when he heard a noise behind him.
“Wha—” Neil silenced his friend with a hand on his arm and turned in his chair. A shadow moved out of the laurels onto Mary’s terrace.
“Leave off,” Samuel hissed, shrugging off Neil’s hold. His grip had unwittingly tightened. “Mary!” This time Samuel used a whisper meant to carry.
“Is everything all right?” Neil was on his feet, almost to the border of the terrace.
Someone moved to meet him, taking shape in the light escaping from Samuel’s windows. “You’re mistaken. It’s not Miss Buchanan.” The dim light delayed recognition, but at last Neil identified him. It was that footman of Mrs. Chin’s.
“What are you doing here?” Neil asked. Like most footmen, this fellow was too handsome for his own good.
The footman took a step back, but only one, and Neil realized another figure stood behind him. “Who’s with you?” Neil asked, his pulse accelerating. He tried to step past, but the footman blocked his way and all Neil got was a glimpse of a girl. She was Mary’s height, but the hair was the wrong colour. Neil relaxed. “Never mind.”
As he turned away, the girl spoke. “Miss is gone. They caught her passing messages to you. Never seen the doctor in such a fury. Took her away to Bath, the both of them.”
“Is she all right?” Samuel asked.
The girl’s thin shoulders moved in the dark. “Haven’t heard.”
“Annie—” The footman gave her a nudge.
“I know.” She gave them one more glance than vanished through number fourteen’s long windows. The footman came to face them and cleared his throat.
“Don’t say anything,” Neil told him. He’d rather not know.
“Thank you, sir.” Long strides carried him away across the lawn.
“You don’t think we ought to do anything about those trysting lovers?” Samuel asked.
“Not our concern,” Neil said. “What should we do about Mary?”
They talked too late, drinking too much wine, so naturally came to no helpful conclusion. Nei
l woke the next day at home with a heavy head, unable to pinpoint how he’d arrived there. He went round to Samuel’s that evening and learned the doctor was back in London and had come round to give Samuel a ticking off.
“Called me a vile seducer. Said if I looked at her again he’d peel off my skin. Think he might have meant it.” Samuel shivered.
“You’d better tell Barnes,” Neil said. “It’s over.”
Samuel nodded. “I already have.” He looked deflated.
“Did you see her?” Neil asked.
Samuel looked at him. “Obviously not. I don’t think she returned with him, but I can’t very well ask.”
“I suppose not.” Neil paced out the room. He’d fought her all along, told her a hundred times it would come to this. Still she’d kept on. There was no earthly reason he should feel bound to help her, yet he did. “We must see how she is.”
“How?” Samuel said.
Neil gave him a look.
“You might not worry about it overmuch, but I must give some consideration to my skin. He’s her father, and he’s expressly forbidden me to look at her, so even—”
“He hasn’t forbidden me,” Neil said. “I’ll go see him tomorrow.”
Neil climbed number fourteen’s steps the following morning. The housemaid who came to the door went grey as ash at the sight of him, an awful shade for her brown freckles. Only the shape of her and the sheen of her hair told him she was the girl from the garden.
“I’ve come to consult the doctor. About my health,” Neil said. If she chose to canoodle Mrs. Chin’s servants, that was none of his business.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with you, then?”
“I’ll think up something. I’m really just trying to track down Miss Buchanan.”
If she was taken aback, she hid it well.
“I’m a friend of Mr. Brown’s,” Neil added. “Do you think the doctor will see me?”