The Honorable Marksley

by Sherry Lynn Ferguson

  “Yes,” Marksley agreed, in such a tone that Hallie’s attention shot to his face.

  “‘Twas not Jeremy’s idea for me to assume the pen name. He was a fair friend and argued that you would not balk at publishing a woman”

  “Bravo, Jeremy,” Marksley muttered. “Yet he honored your desire in the matter. I believe I shall have much to say to him when next we meet. But do go on”

  Hallie swallowed.

  “Well … you know my uncle and Millicent. I feared my uncle’s temper. I had no one else-my father died when I was fourteen-and no resources. The small legacy due to me will not be mine until next year. You have not read all my journals, my lord. You cannot know how difficult it was for me. The poems were relief, yes, they gave me purpose, but ‘twas like speaking into a gale. Someone stronger, or perhaps with less to say, might have remained quiet. But I-” She drew a breath. “Jeremy trusted you would publish, but I did not know you, so I dared not trust you. It was too important to me to have someone listen. I am still not certain that you would have published a woman’s poems.”

  “I have published a woman’s poems.”

  “But you did not know she was a woman.”

  “Unfortunately not” He smiled, which she found she could not abide.

  “Sir,” she said sharply, “you cannot lie to me”

  “No, my dear, I am quite certain I cannot. Or not nearly as well as you can lie to me” He knew that had hurt her, because he turned away. “Still … I would like to believe that I’d have found a way. If not perhaps in The Tantalus, then in a separate-”

  “Precisely, my lord. In something separate and quite, quite apart. In one of the publications for ladies-those that are scarcely read and so easily disdained even before reading. If you deemed such sufficient, my lord, why do you not pen The Tantalus for the ladies?”

  “I might yet, my dear. Now that I know there is so much talent to be had.” His glance was amused and something else she could not identify. Could he have been proud of her? As her confidence faltered she glanced down. She was conscious of the absurdity of debating in this abandoned mill in her wedding gown.

  “There were clues,” she said, “signs by which you might have known Henry Beecham was a woman”

  “Ah, Hallie! Do you truly believe so?” He smiled. “You say there were clues. You see them because you provided them. But try to understand the position of your reader, poor deluded R.E. Marksley. He believes in other clues. He might think he knows his author, that by some experience or insight all is revealed to him. If the writer is good, that is. And when the writer is exceptional-” he stopped, and his gaze sought hers, “as you are, poor Marksley hears himself as well. He says: this writer thinks as I think, feels as I feel.” He cleared his throat.

  “I know so little of women-” Catching the incredulity in her gaze he amended, “in that respect. How could I have supposed you so different from myself? And someone as young as you are. You are quite correct; I would not have believed it. But that is the irony. I also dared imagine, and imagination is often false to reality. Knowing you now, having seen your journal, all of this seems not only plausible, but right. Do you comprehend, though, how impossible it would have been to deduce? I should set you a challenge, my dear, and have you guess at authorship. I think you would be surprised.”

  “I did not intend to fool anyone.”

  “Didn’t you?” His smile disputed the claim. “Such elaborate efforts seem calculated to fool someone. Permit me to say that you seem confused.”

  Confused! The word was inadequate.

  “Tell me, Hallie,” he pursued. “What could have compelled you to find so drastic an undertaking as marriage to a virtual stranger, to me, to be preferable to discovery?”

  She could hear the edge to his voice. She must have him understand.

  “I did try to leave before this eventuality … before our agreement became permanent. If you read my journal, you may have seen the letters?” He nodded. “The Tantalus-you, Richard Marksley-had paid me a goodly sum. But Jeremy arrived too late and now … I find I cannot”

  “No, you certainly cannot,” Marksley agreed shortly. “I’ve been determined to have you speak with me before absconding.”

  “Absconding!”

  “Was that not your plan?”

  “I-hardly absconding!”

  “Nevertheless” He shrugged. “Pray continue. I find myself intrigued after so many months of correspondence. Correspondence that, by the way, I thought genuine, and that I found eminently satisfactory in its candor and confiding friendship.” He held her gaze. “You might have trusted me, Hallie. Or entertained the notion that the rest of us have feelings, though not perhaps as delicately discriminating as your own. Did you not once consider revealing your true identity to me?” he asked bitterly.

  “I did,” Hallie said, clasping her hands nervously before her. “And I did.”

  Marksley looked more patient than amused.

  “You must explain your riddle, my dear. I find my stumbling mind struggles to your pace.”

  “Reginald,” she said. “‘Tis why I confronted your cousin. At the inn at Tewsbury. I heard his two companions speaking with him. He made some quip they found witty and one of them clapped him on the back and claimed it was `truly worthy of R.E. Marksley.’ I did not suspect them of sarcasm. As they were served, I overheard them making a toast `to literature.’ Even then I had no thought to be bold. But we passed in the corridor and I … I addressed him as Mr. Marksley, and told him I was a friend of Henry Beecham’s. The rest you know”

  “No, I do not know,” he countered darkly. “He took advantage of you?”

  “He pulled me into a side room, asked me how old Beecham was getting on, called me smart and saucy and … kissed me. Millicent found us before I could break away. Then he claimed to be Marksley of The Tantalus.”

  Marksley observed her as her hand covered her lips. “I have been apologizing for Reggie for many years,” he told her. “It seems I must continue to do so even after his death”

  “I was foolish and forward. I have not wanted to admit to you just how foolish I was.”

  Marksley shook his head and moved as though he would reach for her. But his arm fell away. “How can I fault you,” he said softly, “for at last seeking me out? I never thought I would be grateful for Miss Binkin, Hallie, but, in all honesty, she may have spared you much. Reginald was known for worse. We can hardly dispute, though, that the result was as undesirable as anything else that he ever contrived. If you had only turned to me at once-” His glance held hers. “Perhaps your caution was understandable. I have behaved con temptibly. You must lay my bad temper at the door of jealousy.”

  Jealousy? Of his cousin? Reginald Marksley could never have held a candle to him-surely he must know that.

  “I would never have married Reginald Marksley,” she told him.

  “I am glad to hear it, although I suspect you would have had no more choice in the matter than you had in marrying me. For the past two days, however, I have been very busily engaged in assuring you are not married at all” He turned away from her to watch the river. “In addition to forwarding the funds Beecham earned in all fairness, I have arranged for your passage to Italy. You will, I hope, enjoy my friend’s villa in the north, at Lago Maggiore, for however many weeks or months may suit you. An annulment is difficult, but hardly impossible. I have sounded out my solicitor. The process will take some time. Needless to say, he was surprised and concerned” He paused briefly. “‘Twas just last week he was drawing up settlements. But Fulton is discreet. You will be at liberty to write and travel as you choose-as you deserve, Hallie. The thought that a sensibility such as yours should be confined in any manner is abhorrent. Henry Beecham always wrote freely-and of freedom. He might enjoy its experience.”

  For a moment, Hallie could only study his back-the implacable set of his shoulders in that midnight blue coat. Then he turned to her.

  “It is a remedy, of a sort. I
f after some time you choose to return to England, my expectation would be that any gossip will have run its course. There is a certain relief in how quickly new misfortunes claim the scandalmongers’ interest. Then, should you wish to marry Jeremy, you would face no difficulty.”

  “I do not wish to go to Italy,” she said softly.

  “Well, perhaps somewhere else then. Jeremy might wish to help you with your plans. Though why he could not simply have given you the funds you needed-”

  “I would not have taken money from him. `Twould not have been proper.”

  “Less proper than marrying me? I believe I hold the institution of marriage in higher esteem than you do, my dear. Now if Jeremy had married you-”

  “I would not have married Jeremy. I might have married Jeremy at any time,” she told him boldly, “and I did not.”

  Again, he frowned.

  “I have been trying-I have tried to make amends, Hallie. If none of this appeals to you, you must of course let me know. A certain amount of notoriety is inevitable, but those with literary leanings seem to be indulged these days. Conventions need not bind anyone of talent and purpose, particularly with the wherewithal-”

  She interrupted him. “You speak of conventions, of how objectionable they can be, and yet you have professed that what might be acceptable to the radicals would not be acceptable to you.”

  “I do not recall-”

  “You said as much to Archie Cavendish … and to me”

  “There are many things I’d have dearly loved to have said to Mr. Cavendish, Hallie. Yet as I remember that particular interview, I was trying-rather too hard-to feign an indifference I was far from feeling. Your friend Cavendish assumed I must condone certain reckless and dishonorable behaviors. I mustn’t, and I do not. I have not,” he stressed. “Surely one may speak generally with regard to society’s strictures, without advocating their eradication?”

  “Then you will understand that I … I do not want an annulment.”

  At that he looked perplexed. Then his gaze narrowed.

  “I see. You prefer, after all, to be a viscountess.” He shrugged, which incensed her. “Perhaps Fulton can arrange something along those lines. I shall not marry again. My aunt will no doubt find that unacceptably contrary, but I-”

  “Oh, will you not listen?” Her own voice startled her even as it silenced him. “You have made every plan, you have been most honorable and generous, yet everything you have said … everything you have chosen to interpret-oh, I cannot breathe!” She turned to the windows and spread her fingers against the cold glass panes. The darkness outside reflected her ghostly white form, framed by Marksley’s dark shape behind her.

  “May I tell you what I wanted?” She spoke to his image in the glass. “All I have ever wanted? I wanted to continue as Henry Beecham, to write to you and have you respond to me, as nobly and kindly and cleverly as you always had. I wanted to save something of that, of what I treated as friendship. And to have you value me, not knowing anything else of me. But I also wanted to sit at breakfast with you and hear you laugh and have you hold my hand. To have you look at me as you do sometimes, even when you are angry. I wanted both. Only everything changed-such that I knew I could not have both. And now I see I shall have neither.”

  For a moment she heard only her heart, beating too loudly in her ears and in the stillness. Then Marksley asked softly, “That poem-the one you left me the night I set out to find George. The night you braved the gypsy camp. I would have sworn Henry Beecham was in love-with Jeremy Asquith?”

  She turned at the question, but hid her trembling hands behind her.

  “Would Henry Beecham be in love with Jeremy Asquith?” she asked. She felt at once expectant and afraid.

  “Would he?” Some growing comprehension softened Marksley’s expression. “When did you write that poem, Hallie?”

  “I was writing it at Penham. I finished it at Archers that morning. I wished to say goodbye”

  “That was not a farewell,” Marksley insisted. “It was a love poem” His steady gaze would not permit her to look away.

  She swallowed and raised her chin.

  “Perhaps it was, then. Or one of joy. A joy that prom ised everything in life for the faint favor of my own. I could not … I could not refuse it. But it had to be returned, in the only way I knew to return it. In a small, spare sum of words. Yes-if it pleases you,” her gaze at last fell to the floor. “‘Twas of love.”

  In the seconds following, she wondered at the silence. Surely he should laugh, or clear his throat in embarrassment, or storm from the room in disgust? She was too conscious of the warmth in her cheeks and constriction in her chest.

  “Do you wish to know my very first thought on seeing you, Hallie,” he said at last, so gravely that she was drawn to look up at him, “that astonishing morning at Archers? With your red-faced uncle breathing down my neck, and Miss Binkin and Geneve pushing me at once toward marriage and Bedlam?” While she hungrily watched his face he stepped closer. “I wondered what unintended good I had done in life to deserve even to meet you”

  “Then you played … as carefully at our contest … as I,” she managed, “for you gave every indication … you despised my company. And after we were wed … you could not suffer more than fifteen minutes in my presence.”

  “My sweet, I could not bear it,” he said simply. “What hint had I that you had ever come to me willingly? My harsh treatment had all to do with Reggie and the circumstances, naught to do with my inclinations. And after discovering your secret, I knew that I would have to let you go. The prize seemed always to dance before me, ever out of reach” He captured one of her hands. “Dare I believe that I might make you happy? I find I haven’t the heart for anything else.”

  He drew her arms to his. He kissed her hands and fingers and finally both palms, while she still stood entranced.

  “The gypsies read my fortune that night, Hallie, before they took me to see George Partridge. They believe their gift of foresight offers a glimpse at character, into divining one’s purpose. Amid much jesting they revealed to me that I would love a man. Needless to say, I was surprised.” He drew her a few inches closer and again kissed her trembling fingers.

  “And do you,” she breathed, “‘love a man?’ “

  “Aye,” he smiled broadly. “Henry Beecham-and his fiendish twin, Harriet”

  She knew she returned his smile. Every part of her smiled.

  “But if I had … if Henry Beecham had been a man?”

  He sighed and pulled her abruptly to him.

  “Then, dear heart, you may trust I’d have quoted something else at Augusta Lawes’ dinner. `Let me not,’ “he spoke to her lips, “`to the marriage … of true minds … admit impediments.’”