by Merry Farmer
“I can’t leave until she comes,” Basil said, his nerves beginning to fray. “She’ll never forgive me.”
He turned in an attempt to break away from Malcolm, but before he could so much as think, a slap stung across his face. Basil blinked, his cheek smarting, and gaped at Malcolm.
“She’s. Not. Coming. You have a duty to your country, and so help me, if I have to knock you out and drag you by your feet, you’re coming back to London until this election is over,” Malcolm growled.
The last bit of Basil’s will to resist drained. He glanced around, face heating when he realized how many of his neighbors were watching him. Clearing his throat, he pulled himself together and stood straighter. “If Miss Bond comes to the station, tell her I waited as long as I could. Tell her I was dragged off against my will—” He glanced to Malcolm with a frown. “—and that I waited for her.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Wall, my lord,” Jerry, the porter, said, touching the brim of his hat.
The conductor blew his whistle again. Basil took one last look around at the town he’d come to love, not sure if he’d ever see it again, then followed Malcolm to the first-class compartment, its door standing open and waiting for him. He took his seat with a sigh, closing his eyes and resting his head against the back of the seat. The train jerked into motion, which gradually smoothed as the train picked up speed, carrying him away from everything that mattered.
Elaine’s heart pounded against her ribs as she dashed through the center of Brynthwaite. She’d sworn to herself that she would move on, that she wouldn’t try to see Basil again, that they could never belong together. She’d promised herself that she would start over, build a new life, as she’d done once before.
But she’d had Basil to help her build that new life before, to encourage her and fill her with ideas and dreams. She wouldn’t have become who she was without him, and the moment she heard the train whistle sound in the distance, she knew she wouldn’t ever be able to fully be without him.
She’d dropped everything and run. People dodged out of her way as she flew through town and down the long slope of the station hill. She stubbed her toe on a curb, but not even that could stop her for long. She had to see Basil one last time, to beg him to come back to her once the business of the election was over. Even if their lives would never fit together. Even if they were the proverbial fish and bird who would have no place to build their nest. She would give up everything, go anywhere with him, be his mistress and a pariah in the eyes of society. She was a pariah already, so nothing would change.
“Basil!” she called as she mounted the steps at the station two at a time. She tripped over the hem of her flowing dress at the top of the stairs, smashing her knees against the stone and skinning them, but she hardly noticed. “Basil!”
The train had already pulled away. She could just make out the last car as it curved into the distance and disappeared around the corner.
“Basil!” She shouted one final time, clamping a hand to her heart.
He was gone. He’d left. He’d actually gone and left her. All she could do was stand there and gape.
“He…he said to tell you that he waited as long as he could,” Jerry Root said, approaching her cautiously, as though she was likely to go mad at any second. “He said he was dragged off against his will, but that he waited for you.”
Slowly, Elaine shut her mouth and acknowledged Jerry’s words with a nod. She couldn't look at him, though. She couldn’t look at anyone, though a dozen or more people stood on the platform staring at her. All she could do was stand where her feet had stopped, staring at the empty, winding railroad tracks.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. It could have been minutes or hours for all she cared. She was only vaguely aware of movement around her, of people going about their business as though it were just an ordinary day. She couldn’t even bring herself to resent the rest of the world for continuing to function when she most certainly could not.
It wasn’t until Rose rested a hand on her shoulder and softly asked, “Elaine? Are you all right?” that Elaine was even aware of blinking.
She turned to Rose, all of the pain of loss hitting her at once. All she could do was shake her head as the tears began to flow.
“Oh, my dear.” Rose rushed forward, throwing her arms around Elaine and hugging her close.
Elaine wasn’t aware of moving. She was too numb to care about the stares from all around as Rose led her off the platform and down into the street. She heard one or two kind things said on her behalf, but she didn’t remember them seconds later. Brynthwaite seemed quieter somehow, the streets hushed as Rose took her hand and escorted her home.
The moment they stepped through the front door of Rose and Isaac’s house, they were met by the sound of little Alberta wailing.
“I can’t get her to calm down,” Isaac said, coming into the front room to meet them. “She wants her mama.”
“I’ll take her,” Rose said, letting go of Elaine to go to her baby.
Of all things, the crying snapped Elaine out of the fog that had carried her up from the station. She was still dazed, but as she sat on the sofa facing the windows at the front of the house, her mind began to churn into motion once more.
“Is she hungry?” Isaac asked as he and Rose stood in the doorway to the hall. “Does she need changing?”
“I think she’s just upset,” Rose said.
Without warning, a short, sharp laugh bubbled up from Elaine’s gut. Yes, in fact, she was hungry. She was upset as well. And if everyone else in the town of Brynthwaite was right, she needed changing.
“I’m exactly like a baby,” she murmured to no one in particular.
“I beg your pardon?” Isaac asked, his tone and manner gentle as he inched toward her, as though there was something he could do, as a doctor, that would help.
Elaine shook her head, which was beginning to pound. “Everybody says I need changing. I thought I had changed. But nothing has changed at all.”
“Elaine, dearest, what do you mean?” Rose came closer, bouncing Alberta in her arms. Even the baby settled and seemed to be watching her curiously.
“Nothing has changed,” Elaine said, her sorrow shifting bit by bit, like grains of sand bleeding through an hourglass. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but nothing ever changes.” Her chest squeezed tighter, but the listless feeling of sorrow had vanished, to be replaced by a storm rolling in.
“Things are always changing,” Rose said, sitting on the sofa beside her as though Elaine were a shell that might explode at any moment. She rubbed Alberta’s back, biting her lip.
“I was an outcast before and I’m an outcast still,” Elaine said, balling her hands into fists in her skirt. “Even when Papa was alive, I never fit, I never met expectations.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Isaac said, moving to stand beside the sofa, concern knitting his brow.
Elaine glanced up to him, her anger mounting higher. “It’s so easy for men to say things like that,” she hissed. “So easy for you to assume that being yourself is a simple matter. You have no idea how much of a struggle it is just to make it through the day with your reputation intact when you’re different.”
Isaac lowered his head, conceding the point without words.
“But my reputation is not intact,” Elaine went on, turning to Rose. “It never was. I was that odd girl who never belonged before, and I’ll be that odd girl forevermore. Nothing has changed.” Her voice shook with the bitterness of it all.
“Everything has changed,” Rose contradicted her in a gentle, yet still passionate voice. Elaine glared at her, but Rose calmly went on. “Everything has changed because Basil loves you. No matter who he is.”
Deep longing cut through Elaine’s fury, but all it did was make it hard to draw breath.
“Our lives will be forever different when someone loves us,” Rose went on, glancing to her husband with a painful smile. “Love changes everything without cha
nging itself.”
The oft-quoted line from Shakespeare’s sonnets—‘love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’—flashed through Elaine’s mind. Basil had read that sonnet and a few others to her over a year ago, after unpacking an order of books. She’d been so thrilled to see the new, complete set of Shakespeare, all bound in blue leather and embossed in gold, that she hadn’t stopped to realize the depth of feeling in the way Basil recited. He’d loved her then as much as he’d loved her when they were sprawled across the bookshop floor in the throes of passion.
The realization brought with it the agony of knowing that if she’d been clever as well as daring, she might have seen Basil’s love earlier. They might have been married for a year already, with a baby of their own. What would the great and mighty Lord Malcolm have done if he’d marched up to Brynthwaite to fetch the missing Earl of Waltham, only to find him with a wife and child?
He would have tried to nullify their marriage, she realized with a jolt that made her sit up straight. He wouldn’t have believed that an earl and a peer, a man who had fought in a war and served in the House of Lords, would be capable of loving a plain old miss from the far corners of the realm.
“He would have been wrong,” she finished her train of thought aloud.
“Who would have been wrong?” Rose asked, equal parts concern and compassion in her eyes.
“Lord Malcolm,” Elaine said, standing, her heart lifting as well. “Every man involved in this blasted election,” she went on, starting to pace. “Basil himself. They all would have been wrong.”
“About what?” Isaac asked, exchanging a puzzled look with his wife.
“About just how far a woman is willing to go to assert herself,” Elaine said, a plan beginning to form in her mind. When Rose and Isaac remained silent, she went on, talking mostly to herself as she paced. “No, I don’t fit. I don’t fit in his world at all. But I don’t fit here either. So why should that stop me from doing what I want to do?”
“What do you want to do?” Rose asked, a note of genuine worry in her voice.
“I want to claim what is mine,” Elaine said, stopping at the far end of the room and facing her friends.
“Lord Waltham?” Isaac asked hesitantly.
“And my pride,” Elaine answered. “I want to prove that it doesn’t matter whether I fit in or not. I am who I am, and I’m not about to let anyone change that.”
“So…so what are you going to do?” Rose asked, shifting nervously on the sofa to watch Elaine as she resumed her pacing.
“I’ll go to London,” Elaine said, deciding on the course of action right then and there. “I’ll find Basil, and I’ll show him that I won’t let him go without a fight.”
“Oh, my dear,” Rose inched forward, alarm painting her expression. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” Elaine demanded, pausing her pacing once again to face her friend. “I have enough ready money to get there.”
“London is expensive,” Isaac warned. “Do you have enough for accommodations once you’re there? Enough to get home if you need to?”
“I won’t need accommodations. I’ll stay with Basil. It couldn’t be that hard to find him. He’s an earl, after all.”
“Dearest, you cannot fly off to London and march up to the home of an earl, demanding entrance,” Rose said, shaking her head. “Assuming that the butler even lets you see him, how is a lord of his station supposed to play host to an unmarried woman?”
“You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right.” Elaine deflated a little, but bolstered herself again just as quickly. “My Uncle Daniel lives in London. I’ll stay with him. At least until I’m able to find Basil and lay down the law. I will not let him go without a fight.”
“But…but you can’t go like this.” Rose’s gaze flickered across Elaine’s artistic clothing.
“Why not? London is full of artists and eccentrics. I’m hardly the only woman who dresses this way,” Elaine insisted.
“Actually, you might be,” Isaac said, wincing.
“He’s right,” Rose agreed. “Oh, Elaine, I know that you’re strong and that you can handle the censure of the people of Brynthwaite, but dearest, people around here have been kind because they are your neighbors, your friends.”
Elaine huffed a wry laugh. “People in Brynthwaite have not been kind.”
“But people in London will be infinitely harder on you,” Rose insisted. “I’m afraid London society would eat you alive, especially if you have no money.”
“What do you know of London society?” Elaine demanded, not intending to be cruel to her friend, but unable to stop herself, now that the iron was in her soul. “It’s not like you’ve ever been there.”
“My friend Noelle lives there, and we correspond frequently,” Rose said. “She works in a shop on Oxford Street, and she deals with the upper classes every day. She’s filled with stories of the airs and cruelties of London society.”
“I can take them on,” Elaine said, tilting her chin up. “I will take them on.”
“It could be dangerous for you,” Isaac warned her. “If you arrive in London alone, without money and a place to go, your life could be in danger. London is not a place to be trifled with.”
“But I won’t be alone, as I’ve said,” Elaine insisted, her mind made up. “How many times have I told you that my Uncle Daniel and Aunt Abigail life in Mayfair. Or is it Marylebone? One of those places.”
“You don’t even know them well enough to know where they live,” Rose pleaded with her.
“Then this is a perfect opportunity to get to know them better,” Elaine said, a smile of triumph breaking out on her face.
“What kind of man is your uncle?” Isaac asked. “What does he even do? Does he have enough money to support you as a guest?”
“I’m sure he does.” Elaine shrugged. “The last time I met him, he was a successful businessman.”
“When was the last time you met him?” Isaac asked.
“When I was eight,” Elaine answered, refusing to see how precarious the connection was.
“That was over twenty years ago,” Rose said. “Do you know what kind of a situation he’s in now?”
“He’s quite well off,” Elaine said. “I receive a letter from my aunt every Christmas. I think my uncle used his business success to enter politics, or something of that sort.”
“Yes, but will he welcome you?” Isaac pressed on.
Elaine set her shoulders. “There’s only one way to find out. I’ll send him a telegram and tell him I’m coming.”
“Don’t you mean that you’ll ask him if it’s all right to come?” Rose asked.
“Oh, no. We’re family. I’m quite certain that once I tell him I’m coming, he’ll welcome me with open arms.”
“Are you certain?” Isaac asked.
“Yes.” Elaine nodded. “Absolutely certain. For if there’s one thing my mother’s family is known for, it’s generosity.”
Rose and Isaac exchanged a look as though they were as far from certain as could be, but Elaine didn’t pay it any mind. She marched to the far end of the room, where her reticule sat on a table next to a vase of flowers.
“If you’ll excuse me, my dear friends, I need to go send a telegram announcing to my uncle, and to all of London, that I’m on the way. And then I need to organize my things and pack them. By this time next week, God willing, you’ll find me at the London home of my dear uncle, Mr. Daniel Turpin.”
Chapter 11
Five days later, Elaine’s heart beat a rapid rhythm in her throat as the train she’d been on for what seemed like days squealed to a stop at London’s Euston Station. Before any of the other passengers—who had been staring at her with wide, wary eyes, as though she might be a carrier of plague—could rise from their seats, she jumped up, grabbing her bag from the seat next to her, where no one else had been inclined to sit, and darted for the door at the end of the carriage.
“Gross indecency,” one matronly
old woman muttered as Elaine whisked past.
A few more stares of disgust and outrage followed her, but Elaine didn’t have time for them. As soon as the conductor allowed her, she swept down the stairs at the end of the carriage and onto the platform.
“London at last,” she said with a heavy sigh. Basil was here, in this bustling, thriving city. And as soon as she figured out how to find him…well, she would march out to wherever he was, give him a sharp smack, and demand to know how he could leave her alone in the world, with no one else to rely on.
Although at that particular moment, she felt a certain thrill at the knowledge that no one was responsible for her but herself. She dodged her way through the milling throng of people disembarking from trains, rushing to catch them, or doing business at the train station. A good number of them leapt out of her way when they saw her coming, their noses lifted in the air and their gaze judgmental. A few rougher looking men sent her lewd grins or called out, “Need help findin’ your way to the theater, love?”
“No, thank you,” Elaine replied with a cheerful smile, hurrying on. She supposed it wasn’t wise to engage strange men in conversation of any kind, but she was so happy to have finally reached her destination and to be so close to reaching Basil that she didn’t care.
“Times of London,” a boy selling newspapers called out from the central area of the station as Elaine paused to get her bearings. “Times of London, get your Times here. Election enters second week! Gladstone accuses Disraeli of gross immorality and corruption!”
Two men who had been on the verge of passing the boy stopped to buy the newspaper. The boy smiled and doffed his hat as he collected his coins, then shouted, “Immorality! Indecency! Depravity and corruption! Read all about it here!”
Elaine laughed at the boy’s tactics and headed in his direction. “People do enjoy a scandal,” she said once she reached him. “I’ll take one.” She fished around in the reticule she carried to find the necessary coins, debating whether she could really afford to part with them. She’d grossly underestimated the costs of London and hadn’t brought enough ready cash with her. In the end, she decided helping the enterprising young lad was worth depleting her already dangerously low funds.