“Or is it just that he prefers the attractions of London?” Mr. Merrick blundered on. “The theaters and coffeehouses?”
“The taverns more like.” Edmund smiled with such fondness and familiarity that I was almost jealous of his friend, for the fact that Edmund clearly had such affection for him. “Though he loves horses and weapons every bit as much as he does canary wine and tobacco. He is an extraordinary young horseman and swordsman.”
“And does he still like to swim?” Mr. Merrick asked.
“Oh, aye. He’s set on teaching me, did his utmost to get me into the Thames with him.”
“Would it be safe for you to learn to swim in the Thames, sir?” I was dismayed by the depth of fear I felt for him, the fact that already he meant so much to me the idea of him coming to harm was intolerable. That too must have been written all over my face, but I saw that it delighted Edmund to know that I was so concerned for him.
“I promise you, I will take good care of myself,” he said.
WHEN IT WAS TIME for the gentlemen to go to the parlor to drink their port and smoke their clay pipes, I went to my chamber, where the candles and the fire had been lit, and waited impatiently for Bess to come to get me ready for bed. I rushed at her and grabbed her hands as soon as she came into the room. “Bess, tell me honestly, do you not think Edmund Ashfield very pleasing?”
“Passable,” she said wryly, taking the candle from the stand and holding it up to examine my excited face by its light. Her almond eyes missed nothing. She sighed and smiled, revealing the large gap between her two front teeth. “Oh my, here we go. It is my guess that you still find Mr. Ashfield as pleasing as you did when you were a child. And I know what you’re like when you fix on a thing. You can never do anything by half measures, can you? So I suppose that’s all I’m going to hear from now on. Edmund. Edmund. Edmund. But then it makes a change from butterflies and caterpillars, I suppose. Or—what was it before? Tadpoles?”
“Bess, he’s the finest gentleman I’ve ever met.”
“Not that that is saying much. I can count the number of gentlemen you’ve had contact with on the fingers of my one hand. Or is it just the one finger? It’s no wonder you’re in such a stew, poor lamb.”
“I feel as if I’m floating.”
“Well, how about you float into your nightshift?” I lifted my arms obediently and she slipped the cool linen over my head, fastened the ties under my chin, then pressed me onto a stool beside the fire. “Now, sit and I’ll brush your hair.”
Bess took out the pins, let my hair tumble down my back and started work with the ivory comb, long, luxuriant strokes that normally made me feel pleasantly drowsy, but not this time. “I shall never be able to sleep,” I sighed. “I couldn’t eat my supper.”
“Well, that’ll not do you much good. There’s nothing of you as it is, and if you don’t eat you’ll disappear entirely and he’ll not even notice you.”
“He noticed me tonight, I think.”
“Oh, he most certainly did.” When I swiveled round to face her, nearly jerking the comb from her hand, she gave me a knowing look. “I happened to hear him.”
Bess was as inquisitive about people as I was about the natural world, and her friendliness and fondness for chatter meant that she received the confidences of all the servants. There was not much she didn’t happen to hear, either through their ears or her own. “What did he say?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know.
“He was talking about you when I went to knock on the parlor door to take in the Bristol milk. I felt obliged to wait until he’d done before entering.”
“But what did he say, Bess?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, just some nonsensical prattle about you not being nearly so bold as Mr. Merrick suggested, but how there was a refreshing sweetness and honesty about you that brightened his day.”
“Did he really say I brightened his day?”
“I’d be hardly likely to invent such silly mooning, now, would I?”
“I can’t believe he’d talk like that about me to Mr. Merrick, of all people.”
“Oh, your guardian seemed more than pleased to encourage the praise.”
I turned away. “I do not doubt it,” I said with a stab of unease that I did my best to ignore.
“So what was it that you liked so much about him anyway?” Bess asked cheerfully.
“Oh, every part of him.” I closed my eyes and tilted my head back as the strokes of the comb sent delicious tingles down my spine. “His hair,” I began. “And his smile. His hands, his lips.”
“His lips!”
“I wanted them to kiss me.”
“Just what do you know about kissing?”
“I know what it is to feel desire now.”
“Desire! You’re practically a child still.”
“I am not. I’ve been having my courses every month for six years,” I reminded her.
“Seems like only last week that I warned you about them.” Bess chuckled to herself. “You were that shocked!”
“Is it any wonder? How can it not come as a shock, to suddenly hear that you’re going to bleed, once a month, from between your legs?”
“You scolded me for lying to you, as I do recall.”
“I was sure you must be. Until you told me that when it happened it meant I had become a woman, that my body was readying itself to make and to carry a child.”
“You’ve always loved to talk about babies,” Bess said softly, no doubt thinking of her little Sam who had been born almost a year ago, after she had allowed Ned Tucker to take her to the hayloft for a fondle. I had been allowed to keep Bess on as my maid after her hasty marriage because I could not bear to part with her, and Sam was cared for by his doting grandmother. “You always wanted to know all about them,” Bess said. “About making them and tending them and everything.”
“I remember I asked you if it hurt, the bleeding I mean, if it was like when you cut your finger? You told me it was just an ache inside. Oh, Bess, I have such an ache inside me now,” I said plaintively. I looked down at my hands as they rested lightly clasped in my lap, my hair falling over my shoulders in a cascade of glossy new-combed gold curls. “He’s leaving in the morning and I don’t know when he’ll come back.”
“But you know that he will. If Mr. Merrick wants to see you wed to him, then wedded you will be.”
“I suppose so.” Again that confusing prickle of disquiet. Because I knew why Mr. Merrick wanted me wed to Edmund. And though I wanted very much to be wedded to him, I did not want what must come with it. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I could talk to Edmund and explain. Perhaps there was a way around the problem.
“When you do have a baby,” Bess said, “I suppose you’ve got it into your head that it must be Edmund Ashfield’s baby?”
“I’d like to bear him a little son to carry on his name.” I smiled dreamily. “And a little girl too, with hair as red as his.”
Bess tutted. “I’m tired of him already. I think I prefer your fixation for butterflies after all.”
“A little boy with freckles over his nose,” I ran on, “and a smile as sunny as his father’s. Oh, just imagine, Bess! A son of Edmund’s would be so placid. He would never cry and I would love him so much. Edmund would teach him to ride and I would make sure he learned all about the world and we would all be so happy. . . .”
“You’ll doubtless make some gentleman ecstatically happy one day,” Bess said salaciously. “There’s not a man I know who doesn’t want a hot and passionate lover. Every gentleman wants the joy of a whore in his bed even as he is expected to have a docile little miss on his arm in the parlor.” Then more seriously: “All men want to be adored and I don’t think you’re capable of doing any less than throwing your whole heart into a thing, and it is a big heart you have, for such a small person. Only be warned—there’s many folk think it unnatural to see such passion in a lady as they have always seen in you.”
I DID NOT SLEEP AT ALL. I did no
t even feel tired and I longed to be outside, to clear my head with fresh air and exercise. Heedless of drafts, I opened the hangings a little way at one side of the bed so that I could see out of the window and watch for the first blue tinge of dawn to creep into the sky. As soon as it did, I dressed myself in my gray wool gown, my boots and cloak. It seemed odd to be clothed for the day and have my hair all plaited still for bed, so I undid it and left it free. It was much more comfortable like this than in the pins and tight braids that pulled and scraped my scalp and always made my head ache by the end of the day. I liked to feel the weight and sway of it, tumbling over the hood of my cloak and down to my hips like a thick gold mantle. What did it matter that it was improper? Who was going to see me at this hour?
I wandered down toward the edge of the flooded moor, my feet squelching through the mud, the cold water lapping against my ankles, enjoying the special magic of dawn breaking over the wetlands. I breathed in the clean, cool air and listened to the piping of the waders and the somber beating of swans’ wings. There was no wind and the water was mirror calm. Ethereal wraiths of mist turned the flooded meadows into a land of great mystery, wreathing the pollarded willows so that only the tops of the trees were visible. The lone mound of Cadbury Camp floated above the grayness like a galleon, the only easily distinguishable natural feature for miles.
I untethered the flat-bottomed boat that was moored by the humpbacked bridge and set the lantern down in the bottom, away from the bilge. I clambered aboard and took up the oars.
The water could flood up to six feet deep in places in the winter, quite enough to drown a girl as small as me. The thought of it always made me afraid and exhilarated at the same time. It was the closest I ever came to an adventure.
I tried to imagine what kind of person could swim like a fish, as Edmund’s friend could apparently do. What an advantage it would be in a waterland such as this, to be able to slip away beneath the surface of the lake, to a world that none but the fishes ever saw.
Richard Glanville. The Cavalier. The fine horseman and swordsman.
His name had always held a fascination for me but I tried to push him out of my mind. He was just a phantasm. It was Edmund Ashfield to whom my heart belonged. Yet I was intrigued by his friend Richard. He must be very fearless, very strong, very strange. We were not made to swim any more than we were made to fly, or surely God would have given us gills and fins. I looked down at the dark water and almost imagined I saw a lithe body moving through it, a face looking back at me, ghostly through the ripples, a cloud of long, black Cavalier curls.
So powerful was the vision that I was almost afraid to turn around in case he had climbed soundlessly aboard my boat and was sitting right behind me. He could grab hold of me with cold hands and drag me over the side, take me down with him, into the depths of the lake where the drowned grass of summer still grew but was no longer green. I would not be able to breathe down there, but he would put his mouth to mine and breathe air and life into my lungs.
I took a deep breath to clear my head of such fanciful, romantic nonsense.
But when I looked up I saw a solitary light moving ahead in the mist, where the water gave way to bog and marsh, and I froze in real fear. There was no doubting this was real, even as unearthly as it appeared, a wandering marsh light, a will-o’-the-wisp, a creature of the Devil. Well, it served me right. I’d always yearned for color and brightness, silk and ribbons and Christmas candles, and here I finally had my wish, in the form of an evil apparition come to seek me out. It was growing brighter still and there was a long shadow moving beside it, gaining in substance as it came closer, the disembodied head and shoulders of a cloaked figure, drifting above the mist.
My grip tightened on the oars but as I kept on watching I saw that there was nothing unearthly about the light at all. It came from an ordinary lantern, carried by Edmund Ashfield. I rowed back to the bridge, my heart beating far faster than ever it had done from fear.
“You worry about me swimming in the Thames and yet you come out here all by yourself ?” There was a touch of admiration and respect in Edmund’s voice.
“I know what I am doing, sir.”
“I can see that you do. May I join you nonetheless?”
“Gladly.”
He climbed into the boat, sending it rocking wildly and dipping lower in the water. I moved to the facing bench so he could take the oars. There was not very much room for the two of us and we had no choice but to sit with our knees pressed up tightly together. Not that I minded that at all.
I watched his large hands, tilling expertly back and forth, his big, powerful shoulders flexing in a smooth, easy rhythm. I was about to warn him to steer away from a clump of rushes poking just above the water, indicating where we would run aground, but he had judged for himself, was already resting the right oar in the oarlock and we were turning. He took a deep, appreciative breath. “As a boy I spent all my free hours in a boat just like this,” he explained. “Now that our land is drained, we never have cause to use one.”
I was instantly on my guard. “Mr. Merrick sent you to talk to me, didn’t he?”
He glanced away awkwardly so that I knew I was right. “I would have come anyway,” he said quietly. “I wanted to see you.”
“I am well aware that Mr. Merrick was always trying to influence my father to drain Tickenham,” I said. “As heir to this estate, it is I who must now be influenced and I am afraid, sir, that he means to use you to do it. I may as well tell you now that I am against it.”
He laughed. “And I do pity any poor soul who hopes to urge you against your wishes.” His eyes sparkled with kindly and disarming humor. “I give you my word,” he said earnestly. “I would never try to convince you to do something I did not consider to be in your best interests. Do you believe that?”
I considered him. “I do,” I answered quite truthfully.
“So do you think you could trust me, even a little?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. I was sure that I could trust him more than a little, could trust him completely.
“You are very young to be worrying about land management,” he commented after a while. “It is a great weight to carry on such small shoulders.”
I gave those shoulders a quick shrug. “There has been nobody else to do it.”
“I have never met anyone like you before,” he said. “You are not at all like other girls.”
“Is that a good thing or bad?” I asked lightly, but with trepidation.
“Most girls do not run around at dawn with their hair trailing down their back. They do not know about the behavior of wild geese and chickens.”
“Don’t they?” I noted that he had neatly sidestepped my question.
“They can be very tiresome,” he added. “With their polished manners and their practiced coquetry and their perfectly painted faces.” He gave his easy laugh. “I confess I am terrified of most of them. I have no sisters, you see, so the ways of young women are a mystery to me. But you, I think, are as plainspoken and courageous as a boy. I like that. I feel I know where I am with you. You must call me Edmund, by the way.”
I had called him by that name in my head for so long that I was itching to speak it out loud to him, even though for a moment I could think of nothing else to say. “Edmund,” I said simply.
He smiled expansively. “Eleanor.”
If we were married, we should both have the same initials. Edmund Ashfield. Eleanor Ashfield. When I had sat at my little writing desk aged about fourteen, allegedly transcribing a passage in Greek, I had played at writing the name that I would have if I became Edmund’s wife, and it had seemed an impossible and lovely dream. It still did, and yet he was here with me now, wasn’t he? When I was fourteen that would have seemed just as unlikely. Which was probably why I expected to wake up any minute and find that I had been dreaming, that I had never come down to the lake, but was still alone in my great bed.
“What is it like, having William Merrick fo
r a guardian?” Edmund asked affably. “Don’t worry, he’s no particular friend of mine. And I promise not to repeat one word of what you say.”
“Oh, I hardly ever see him,” I said, determined to be gracious. I glanced at Edmund’s open face and instantly lost my resolve. “To be honest, that is a most blessed relief.”
“I can imagine,” he said, making me giggle.
“He’s always in Bristol. Except when he leaves his wife to mind his interests so he can come here for a day or two, but even then he is usually too busy with the estate to pay any attention at all to me, except for when he wants something. Have you ever met his wife?”
“Once.”
“What’s she like?”
“Not nearly so friendly or forthright as you.” He smiled. “For all her city sociability she’s like William in many ways, shrewd and shrewish. She likes everything immaculate and gleaming, new as their wealth. Their mansion is not so luxurious as to be unbefitting for a Puritan mind, but I swear not one item is more than a decade old. I can’t imagine she’d feel much inclination to care for a little orphan.” He looked at me with sudden pity. “You must have been lonely.”
“I don’t know what it is to be lonely,” I said frankly. “I am used to being on my own. I like it, in fact. Though sometimes”—I smiled at him a little shyly—“it is good to have company. Depending on who the company is, of course.”
Nevertheless I could not help thinking how lovely it would be to be part of a real family again, to make a new family of my own, here on this land that I loved, with a husband I loved and who loved me.
“So who said your prayers with you at night?” he asked as if it genuinely concerned him. “Who was it who comforted you when you were hurt?”
“Our minister John Burges and his wife, Mary, have cared for me very well,” I said gratefully. “John made sure I said my prayers. He used to play skittles with me, too, and he rides with me as far as Clevedon when he has time. I had Mary to put salves on my knees when I grazed them, and she always came to kiss me good night. And my maid Bess was always ready to play leapfrog with me and fly kites.” I did not add that all that had been missing, all I had needed, and increasingly so, was somebody to love. One person on whom I could lavish all the love that seemed to be filling my heart until it was almost ready to burst. “So you see, all Mr. Merrick had to do was manage the estate,” I finished.
The Lady of the Butterflies Page 9